27

A smile lit up Gilda’s face as Simon and his companions approached.

She was so beautiful in the afternoon sun, her countenance such a relief from the events Simon had just witnessed, that he was swept with emotion.

“What are the horn blowers telling us?” she asked.

Gilda had been carrying a wicker basket down to the ship, the freighter alive to the tide, the unanchored ship stretching her mooring cables, the ship eager to depart like a living thing made of spruce and tar. Walter made a gracious gesture from horseback as he rode down toward the river, acknowledging her with a show of courtliness, and Nicolas offered her a pleasing, “Good afternoon, my lady.”

Gilda’s spirits began to wilt.

Simon realized what an enigmatic group they must be, all courtesy and tense smiles, while their horses were spiky with blood and spattered with the claylike mud of the local byway.

Gilda’s smile was further replaced by an expression of concern as Simon’s companions rode their mounts to the river and out into the water. The horses splashed the current with their muzzles, taking a moment to drink, the water around them stained dark at once with mud and with gore.

Walter climbed aboard the vessel and turned to help Nicolas on board, with the air of a man who owned and disposed of everything within sight—including the services of the astonished Oswulf, standing beside the ship’s tiller. Tuda, Oswulf’s chief rope mender and seaman, climbed up from the ship’s hold, his mouth agape.

Simon told Gilda, “We require the ship.”

“What do these people want?” called Oswulf, indicating Walter and his herald as though they were a pair of beggars who had blundered onto the vessel.

Simon repeated his statement to Gilda’s brother in a voice that would have been audible across the river.

“The ship is not available for hire,” called Oswulf, without explanation or courtesy, ignoring his visitors and preferring to speak at a shout with Simon.

Walter had the manner of so many aristocrats, believing that his station in life, his wealth—and his skill with sword and lance—made speech unnecessary and even a little unseemly. He would not engage in a parley, and he certainly would not utter a word of English. He folded his arms and waited.

Oswulf, for his part, ignored Walter, making a point of having freight to secure, canvas to tug into place, matching a nobleman’s arrogance with a freeman’s disdain. Tuda took his master’s stance as an unspoken command, and he worked a sweep through an oarlock, getting ready to push the ship off with the long oar.

Nicolas set to work rearranging cargo on the deck, and Tuda smiled, pleased to have a helping hand.

“Oswulf, will you take us to Normandy?” asked Simon, riding to the river’s edge and dismounting.

“I won’t,” said Oswulf, with deliberate bad manners, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand.

“The ship is ours,” responded Simon, realizing as he spoke that his rights as a lord of all the farmland around did not extend to piracy. It was true that, in an emergency, a man and his ship could be pressed into service, but free folk like Oswulf and his sister would have to be paid a fair price.

Oswulf moved deliberately, but his actions were emphatic. He sprang from the ship and hurried through the shallows to the stony bank. He seized a mooring peg from the shore, a tall, heavy stake with one sharp end and the other shaped like a mushroom from being struck with hammers and mauls over the years.

He held the object like a club. His message was clear. This was his ship, this his mooring place. He would do what he chose. “Our ship needs no passengers, Simon. We are full of Aldham cheese for the merchants of Brugge harbor.” He lowered his voice. “What is this the horn blowers are saying? What’s wrong?”

“Walter will pay a good fee,” said Simon.

“Surely, Oswulf,” urged Gilda, “we have room for three gentlefolk.”

Oswulf said nothing.

“What has happened?” Gilda asked, turning to Simon.

It was easy for Simon to understand Oswulf’s position. He was protective of his sister, not wanting her to spend shipboard hours or even days with a high-handed Norman lord. And he felt resentful of Simon’s ability to play the English and the Norman lord all at once, and perhaps was even further confused as to Simon’s ultimate loyalties.

Simon could see that Oswulf understood that something uncommon had happened, and that a crisis was unfolding. Furthermore, he had a businessman’s sense that, as the owners of the sole ship of any substance on this stretch of the river, he and his sister could secure a good, round purse.

“Oswulf, take the price he offers you,” said Simon.

“Why?” Oswulf seemed to like the sound of his own obdurate inflection.

He made a show of sauntering past Simon, gazing up toward the trees. It sounded as though horses were approaching, a good many, and coming on fast. “Why should some crisis in the woods have anything to do with my sister and me?”

“He’ll take the boat without your leave, otherwise,” said Simon.

Lord Walter was still wearing his sweeping hunting mantle, and leaning against the rail, he looked like a gentleman in no hurry and quite pleased at the way Nicolas was stowing the huge, wax-coated wheels of cheese into the hold.

“He certainly will not take the ship,” said Oswulf in a confrontational tone, awakening to a new stubbornness.

“Accept his silver, Oswulf,” Simon pleaded, but the big Englishman brushed past him, hurrying down toward the vessel that gave every sign of being ready to depart in his absence.

Perhaps Oswulf realized the tactical error he had made, leaving the two strangers with only Tuda to attend them. Nicolas was already hauling on the severed length of mooring cable, and the ship was turning with the outgoing tide, her prow quick to catch the current toward the sea. Far from hindering this effort, Tuda was working hard with the oar, compelling the keel away from the shore.

Oswulf hurried, climbing over the side. He seized the tiller of the broad freighter, just as the vessel began to make way toward a half-submerged stump. At the same time a new sound reached them, the high notes of an alarm, and another one across the woodland, two ascending notes, echoing along the river. The horsemen had arrived, and were taking positions along the bank beyond the trees.

Simon accepted Walter’s help in climbing on board the ship, and in turn assisted Gilda. The vessel was already slipping well into the current, the rocky bank drifting away as the abandoned horses accepted their freedom, plunging playfully like dogs in the water.

“Master of the ship,” said Nicolas, using the English title of respect, “my lord gives his word of honor, before all that is holy, that you and your vessel will be rewarded.”

Oswulf shook his head with a confused frown, acting out the role of a river man confronted with the incomprehensible. But when he spoke he was less blunt, showing that he had understood enough. There was a shift in his tone—even a stubbornly single-minded river merchant like Oswulf realized that months and years later he would see Simon in church and at market, and that intractable behavior was unwise as well as unneighborly.

“Simon, do tell me, please,” he said, softening his manner. “Why should we endanger our lives and our ship?”

Simon could not for a long moment bring himself to broach the tidings.

“Something terrible has happened,” he allowed himself to say.

Oswulf’s eyes were round with the unspoken question.

Simon made a gesture, the wave of his hand that meant that he could bring himself to speak no more.

“What is it?” asked Oswulf.

Riders rode hard up and along the bank above. Commands were barked, horses snorting, spear shafts clattering against stirrups as Simon got ready for a hail of arrows, or the whistling approach of a javelin.

Simon said, “The king has been killed.”