Moonlight through the canvas showed Godive walking naked across the room to the bed where her husband lay in drugged sleep. A grunt of surprise, anger from the short, padded box to the left. In an instant Shef was standing over it, looking down into his stepfather’s face. He saw the recognition, saw the mouth open in horror. Stuffed the bloody shift firmly between Wulfgar’s teeth. Instant resistance, a furious twisting like a giant trapped snake. Though Wulfgar had neither arms nor legs, he still struggled desperately with all the force of his back and belly muscles to get a stump over the edge of the box, maybe roll to the floor. Too much noise, Shef knew, and the privileged couples sleeping in the little canvas boxes around him would wake as well, perhaps decide to intervene.
Perhaps not. Even noble couples learned to turn a deaf ear to the sounds of love. The sounds of punishment too. Shef thought of Godive’s scarred back, thought of his own, conquered the momentary repugnance. A knee in the belly. Hands forcing the shift deep down into the throat. Twisting the ends behind the head and knotting them, knotting them again. And then Godive was with him, still naked, thrusting forward the rawhide ropes Alfgar’s men used to fasten their trunks of belongings onto the pack-mules. Quickly they ran the ropes round the sleeping-box, not tying Wulfgar down, but making sure he could not climb out, crawl across the floor. As they finished, Shef waved Godive to the other end of the box. Carefully they lifted it from its stand, placed it on the floor. Now he could not even tip the box over, make a noise.
The short struggle over, Shef took two paces across to the big bed, looked down at Alfgar, asleep in drugged slumber in the moonlight. His mouth hung open, a steady snore coming from his throat. Still a handsome man, Shef recognized. He had had Godive these twelve months and more. He felt no urge to cut his throat. He needed Alfgar still. For the plan. And yet a gesture. A gesture would make the plan work better.
Godive was coming forward, in gown and mantle now, recovered from the box where Alfgar had locked them. In her hand she held her little seamstress’s scissors, a look of set determination on her face. Quietly Shef blocked her, forced the hand down. He touched her back, looked inquiringly.
She pointed to a corner. There it was, the bundle of birch-twigs, fresh ones, without blood. He must have been planning to use them later. Shef straightened Alfgar on his bed, folded his hands on his chest, placed the birch-bundle between them.
He moved over to where Wulfgar lay in the rays of the moon, eyes bulging, staring up with an unreadable expression: terror? disbelief? could it be remorse? A memory came to Shef from somewhere: the three of them, Shef and Godive and Alfgar, small children, playing excitedly at something—bulliers maybe, the game with the plantain-shoots, where each child took it in turn to cut at the other’s shoot with their own, till the head of one or the other came off. And Wulfgar watching, laughing, taking a turn himself. It was not his fault he was a heimnar. He had kept Shef’s mother, not repudiated her as he might.
He had watched his son flog his daughter half to death. Slowly, making certain Wulfgar saw every movement, Shef took the borrowed silver pendant from his pouch, breathed on it, polished it. Laid it on Wulfgar’s chest.
The hammer of Thor.
Silently the two slipped from the room, headed through the darkness for the door to the privy, guided by the muffled sounds of scraping and clanking. A problem occurred to Shef suddenly. He had not thought of this in advance. A noble lady, gently bred and brought up. There was only one way out for her. Cwicca and his gang could walk out, protected by the obviously shameful nature of their task and their own size and gait, the unmistakable marks of the slave-born. He could seize the spear and shield again and walk with them, complaining loudly if need be about the shame of a noble thane escorting a shit-cart to see the slaves did not steal or loiter. But Godive. She must needs go in the cart. In her gown. With a dead body and twenty buckets of human dung.