The Hammer and The Cross. Chapter 9, 10, 11, 12
Chapter Nine
The stars were paling in the eastern sky behind them as the young man and the girl stole carefully and cautiously through the depths of the wood. If he looked back Shef could see the topmost branches now silhouetted against the sky, moving slightly in the breeze, the little wind that comes before dawn. Down at ground level nothing of it could be felt. Where the two crossed the occasional clearing created by the fall of oak or ash, the dew soaked their feet. It would be a hot day, Shef thought, one of the last of the late, event-filled summer.
It could not come soon enough for him. Both were cold. Shef wore only the boots and woolen breeches which he had snatched up when the English attack came in. Godive had only her shift. She had stripped off her long dress before slipping into the water by the fired ships. She could swim like a fish, like an otter; and like otters they had swum out, underwater for as many strokes as they could, concentrating on noiselessness and cutting out both splash and gasp. A hundred slow strokes and ten breaths up the river, against the slow, weedy current; eyes alert every time they came up for watchers on the bank. Then a careful filling of the lungs while Shef warily eyed the stockade edge, where surely guards might still be posted. Then the deep dive and the long swim underwater, till it was time to come up and repeat the otter stroke, on, on, for another quarter mile before he decided it might be safe to creep ashore.
He had felt no chill while they were escaping, only a momentary prickle on his burned hands and body as he dashed into the water the first time. But now he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably, the great shudders wracking his body. Shef knew that he was close to collapse. He would have to let go soon, lie down, let his muscles relax. And let his mind come to terms with the events of the last twenty-four hours. He had killed a man; no, two men. He had seen the king, something he might have expected to do once or twice in a lifetime. But this time the king had seen him, had even spoken to him! And he had stood toe to toe with Ivar the Boneless, champion of the North. Shef knew he would have killed him if it had not been for Godive. He could have been the hero of all England, of all Christianity.
But she had stopped him. And then he had betrayed his king, delayed him, all but handed him over to the power of the pagans. If anyone were ever to know about that… But his mind shied away from the thought. They had escaped. He would ask Godive about her and Ivar when he could.
As the light strengthened, Shef’s eye caught the faint trace of a trail. It was overgrown, had not been used for weeks. That was good. Used last to flee from the Viking landing. But at the end of the trail there might be something: a hut, a shed. Anything left behind would now be worth its weight in silver.
Now, the trees were thinning, there was something in front of him: not a hut, he realized, but a shelter, a lean-to made of branches. The coppicers must have made it to store their gear in as they worked through the forest cutting the poles that all farmers relied on for hurdles and fencing, for handles, and for the centerpieces for their flimsy wattle-and-daub walls.
There was no one there. Shef led Godive over. Turning her toward him, he held her hands in his own and looked down into her eyes.
“What we have here,” he said, “is nothing. One day, I hope we will have a real house of our own, somewhere we can live together untroubled. That is why I came to take you back from the Vikings. It will not be safe to travel in the day. Let us rest as well as we can till evening.”