I still had the captain’s large knife in my hand. The cog’s crew had murder in their eyes as they watched me begin to saw through the heavy rope. It took several minutes. When the last strands gave way, I had the good sense to jump backwards. The big sail came slicing downward and collapsed in a great heap on the deck.
I ran back to rejoin Osric and the captain.
‘Now take away the helm,’ Osric told me. I had no idea what he was talking about until I followed his glance and realized he meant the big wooden handle controlling the ship’s direction.
I walked across the deck towards the steersman and when he hesitated to step aside I raised the blade of the captain’s knife menacingly; I was beginning to enjoy myself. He retreated, and I found I was able to pull the wooden bar free. Osric did not need to tell me what to do next. I threw it overboard.
In a couple of strides I was back with Osric and the captain, whose tunic front was now stained with blood. The cog was no longer moving through the water but was wallowing awkwardly, heaving up and down, turning this way and that, pushed by the wind.
‘You first,’ said Osric to me. I scooped up my satchel and Osric’s pack and dropped them into the little boat. I swung myself over the side of the ship, hung for a moment, then let go. I landed awkwardly in the little boat, falling in an ungainly heap. I recovered myself as Osric joined me, dropping nimbly down from the cog. Without a word he took the captain’s knife from my hand and slashed through the rope that fastened us to the larger vessel. Instantly the gap between us widened as the wind blew our boat away.
I looked to Osric for guidance. He was busily untying a pair of oars that had been lashed in the boat. Only then did it occur to me how Osric’s broken leg and twisted head had made very little difference to his agility aboard the cog. For a man with his handicap, being on a ship was altogether different from being on land.
Something plunged into the sea nearby, throwing up a little spout of water. I looked up. Someone on the crippled cog had found a bow and arrows, and in his rage was shooting at us. But we made an almost impossible target, and very soon we were out of range. The last I saw of her, the cog was drifting helplessly away into the distance, the small figures of her crew gathered on deck trying to raise sail.
I took the oars from Osric and he showed me how to slide them through two rope loops to hold them in place as I settled on the bench and made ready to row.
‘Which way?’ I asked.
He pointed. I could see only the waves around us. Then the rowing boat rose on the crest of a large wave, and far in the distance I saw a low grey line. It had to be the coast of Frankia.
I turned to my task and took a pull at the water. One oar dug into the sea, the other waved in the air. I nearly fell off my bench. Rowing a boat at sea was not going to be easy.
Osric had found a wooden implement that looked like a grain shovel with a short handle. He began using it to scoop loose water from the bottom of the boat and back into the sea. He paused for a moment and reached inside his shirt. He pulled out a purse that I recognized had belonged to the captain of the cog, and passed it across to me. As I took it, I opened my mouth, about to thank him for saving our lives, when I saw that my words were not needed. Osric was doing something which I had not seen since the day my brother drowned, a death for which he had blamed himself.
Osric was smiling.
Chapter Three
WE CAME ASHORE ON a beach of round, smooth grey stones. Two urchins stood up to their knees in the shallows and watched me clumsily row the last few yards. The boys had been gathering shellfish and cautiously retreated as I climbed out of the little boat. The land swayed slightly as I walked towards the boys with a smile fixed on my face.
‘Can you take us to your homes?’ I asked.
They looked at me blankly. Without a word, they turned and ran, the stones clattering under their bare feet as they disappeared over the dunes at the back of the beach.
Osric and I picked our baggage out of the boat and began to trudge after them. With an afterthought, I stopped.
‘Let me have that pack for a moment,’ I said. He took off the pack and I searched among the garments that I had managed to save from my home: shirts and underclothes; a pair of spare shoes and a rolled-up cloak; an extra tunic and sandals for Osric; an embroidered belt; leggings. There was nothing else. I used the captain’s dagger to trim a strip of cloth off an old shirt and wrapped it around my head, covering one eye. At home everyone had known about the colour of my eyes, but now I was among strangers and it would be best to leave it to others to suppose that the bandage concealed an empty socket.
Osric looked on and said nothing. He closed the pack and swung it on his back, and together we resumed our journey. We crested the slope and, a short distance away, hurrying towards us across an expanse of boggy ground thick with reeds was one of the two lads we had seen on the beach. He was accompanied by a man dressed in the long brown robe of a priest.