Chapter 15

Now we were just about to ride off the ancient road into the woods when we heard the muffled sounds of a party coming along the way. For a moment I thought that we were pursued, but then I knew that whoever came was bound in the direction of the palace. The causeway was straight as an arrow, as these old Roman roads will be, but the track men used on its crest was not so. Here and there a great tree had grown from acorn or beech nut, and had set wayfarers aside since it was a sapling, to root up which was no man's business. So we could not see who came, there being a tree and bushes at a swerve of the way. The horses heard, and pricked up their ears, and told us in their way that more steeds were nearing us.

"Ho!" said Erling suddenly. "Mayhap it is just as well that these good folk should see us in flight eastward. Spur past them, and look not back, master."

I laughed, and let my horse have his head, and glad enough he was. Round that bend of the track we went at a swinging gallop, and saw a dozen foresters ahead of us, bearing home some deer, left in the woodlands wounded, no doubt, after the great hunt, on ponies. They reined aside in haste as they saw us coming, while their beasts reared and plunged as the thundering hoofs of our horses minded them of liberty; and through the party we went, leaving them shouting abuse of us so long as they could see us. And so long as that was possible we galloped as in dire haste, nor did we draw rein for a good mile.

Then we leaped from the causeway, and went northward through the woodlands, sure that the chase for us would hear from the foresters whither we were heading, and would pass on for many a mile before they found that no other party had seen us. Whereon they would suppose that we had struck southward to pass Worcester by the other road, even as we had said in the hearing of the thrall in the house.

Then I thought that the chase for us was not likely to be kept up long, for it would grow difficult; but Erling shook his head. He had a deadly fear of Quendritha.

Now we rode for all the forenoon in a wide curve, northward and then westward, across the land which the long border wars had ravaged so that we saw no man save once or twice a swineherd. More than once we passed burned farmsteads, over whose piled ruin the creepers were thriving; and all the old tracks were overgrown, and had never a wheel mark on them, save ancient ruts in which the water stood, thick with the growth of duckweed, which told of long disuse.

And at last we came to the valley of the little Lugg river which we sought, and then were perhaps ten miles north of Sutton and its palace stronghold. The day had grown dull, and now and then the rain swept up from the southwest and passed in springtime showers, just enough to make us draw our cloaks round us for the moment, soft and sweet. In the river the trout leaped at the May flies that floated, fat and helpless, into their ready mouths, and the thrushes were singing everywhere above their nests.

Those were things that I was ever wont to take pleasure in, and the more since I had been beyond the sea. But today I had little heart to heed them, for the heaviness of all the trouble was on me. Maybe, however, and that I do believe, I should have been more gloomy still had I been one of those who have no care for the things of the land they look on, lovely as they are. I dare say Erling the viking took pleasure in them, if he would have preferred the wild sea birds and the thunder of the shore breakers to all this quiet inland softness. At all events, he had no mind that I should brood on trouble overmuch, and strove to cheer me.

"Thane," he said presently, even as I began to quest hither and thither by the riverside for the track of the cart, which indeed I hardly thought would have come thus far, "it seems to me that food before search will be the better, an you please."

"Why," said I, having altogether forgotten that matter, "twice men have told me that when Quendritha is at a man's heels he had better not wait for aught. Yet I blame myself for having forgotten. It is not the way for a warrior to be heedless of the supplies."

"When the warrior is a seaman also he cannot forget," quoth Erling. "Had you bided with Thorleif for another season, you had found that out. I have not forgotten. Dismount, and we will see what is hidden in the saddlebags."

We went into a sheltered nook among the water-side trees, and he brought out bread and venison enough for two meals each, and I was glad of the rest and food. He had helped himself at breakfast, he said, being sure that sooner or later we should have to fly the palace.

"Well, and if we had not had to fly?" I asked.

"Betimes I wax hungry in the night," he answered, smiling broadly. "It would not have been wasted."

When that little meal was done I leaned myself against a tree trunk, and said naught for a time. Nor did Erling. The horses cropped the grass quietly at a little distance, and the sound of the water was very soothing.

The next thing that I knew was that Erling was bidding me wake, and I opened my eyes to see that the sun was not more than two hours from setting, and that therefore I had had a great sleep, which indeed I needed somewhat sorely after that last night. The sky had cleared, but here and there the rain drifted from the sky over the hills to the west. I sprang to my feet, somewhat angry.

"You should have waked me earlier," I said. "Now it grows late for our quest."

"About time to begin it, master," the Dane said, "if we do not want to run our heads into parties from the palace. Maybe they will be out also on the same business. What we seek cannot be far from thence."

Then we mounted and rode down stream, quickly at first, with a wary eye for any comers, searching the banks for traces of wheels, carelessly for a few miles, and afterward more closely. But we saw nothing more than old marks. The track ended, and we climbed the rising ground above the river, and sought it there, found it, and went back to the water, for no cart had newly passed to it here. And so we went until we were but a mile or two from the palace, and then we were fain to go carefully.

In an hour I was due in the copse to meet Selred, and then men would be gathered in the palace yards in readiness for supper, so that we might have little trouble in being unseen there. Now, on the other hand, men from the forest and fields might be making their way palaceward for the same reason.

"I would that we could find some place where we might hide the horses for a while," I said. "What is that yonder across the river?"

There was some sort of building there, more than half hidden in bushes and trees. Toward it a little cattle track crossed the water, showing that there was a ford.

"The track passes the walls, and does not go thereto," said Erling. "It may be worth while to see if there is a shelter there."

So across the ford we rode, with the trout flicking in and out among the horses' hoofs. The building, whatever it was, stood a hundred yards or more from the river on a little southern slope which had been once terraced carefully. Over the walls, which were ruinous, the weeds grew rankly, and among them a young tree had found a rooting. The place had been undisturbed for long years; and I thought that it seemed as if men shunned it as haunted, for of a certainty not a foot had gone within half arrowshot of it this spring.

We stood in the cattle track and looked at it, doubting, for no man cares to pass where others have feared to step for reasons not known.

"It is an uncanny place," said Erling; "which may be all the better for us. At any rate, we will go and look into it. Stay, though; no need to make a plain track to it hence."

The cattle tracks bent round and about it, and as we followed one it seemed at last to lead straight into the ruin. So we went with it, and found the entrance to the place. Last year the cattle had used it for a shelter, but not this, and there were no signs that any man had followed them into it. And then I knew what the place was, and wondered at its desertion little, for it was a Roman villa. Any Saxon knows that the old heathen gods those hard folk worshipped still hang about the walls where their images used to hold sway, not now in the fair shapes they feigned for them, but as the devils we know them to have been, horned and hoofed and tailed. Minding which a fear came on me that the marks we took for those made by harmless kine were of those unearthly footsteps, and I reined back.

"What is there to fear?" said Erling--"fiends? Well, they make no footmarks like honest cattle, surely. Moreover, I suppose that a good Christian man need not fear them; and Odin's man will not, so long as the horses do not. The beasts would know if aught of that sort was about."

Whereon I made the holy sign on my breast, and rode to the gap in the white walls which had been the doorway, and looked in. I suppose that some half-Roman Briton had made the house after the pattern his lords had taught him, or else that it did indeed belong to the Roman commander of that force which kept the border, with the Sutton camp hard by for his men. If this was so, the Briton had kept the place up till Offa came and burnt the roof over it, for the black charcoal of the timbers lay on the floors. Only in one place the pavement of little square stones set in iron-hard cement still showed in bright patches of red and black and yellow patterning, where a rabbit had scratched aside the gathered rubbish. Across walls and floors the brambles trailed, and the yellow wallflower crowned the ruins of the stonework everywhere.

One could see that there had been many rooms and a courtyard, bits of wall still marking the plan of the place. And in this one corner there was shelter enough in a stone-floored room whose walls were more than a man's height. The cattle had used that for long.

"This is luck," said my comrade. "Here we can leave the horses, and if one does happen past here before dark and spies a pied skin, he will but deem that kine are sleeping here. After dark, who will come this way at all?"

"We shall have to," said I, somewhat doubtfully.

Erling leaped from his horse and laughed. "We may hide here for a week if we must," he said. "I think that the trolls have all gone to the old lands where men yet believe in them; and seeing that we are on a good errand, your fiends should not dare come near us. I care not if I have to come back here alone to fetch the horses when you will."

I dismounted also, for he shamed me, and I said so. Then we tied the steeds carefully, loosening the girths, and managed to get a sapling or two from the undergrowth set across the door to keep wandering cattle out. More than that we could not do, but at least the horses were safe till we needed them, and that would hardly be long, as we hoped. They had well fed as I slept.

Then we went away from the ruin, passing behind it up the little slope on which it stood, meaning, if we were seen, to come down as if we had not been near the place. And from the top of that slope we could see the walls of the palace, with the white horse banner of Mercia floating over them. From the roof of his villa the Roman captain could have seen his camp, and maybe that deadly passage into its midst was for his use. It led this way.

We waded through the ford again, and wandered down stream once more, looking as we went for the first sign of wheel marks. I was on the banks above the water by twenty yards, and Erling was at their foot, close to the stream, when we had the first hope of finding what we sought. I spied a rough farm cart standing idle and deserted fifty yards away from me and the river, in the brushwood, half hidden by it, as if thrust hastily there out of sight; and the very glimpse of the thing, with its rough-hewn wheels of rounded tree-trunk slices, iron bound, made my heart beat fast and thick, for I feared what I might see in it.

I called Erling, and as he ran to me I pointed, and together, without a word, we went to the cart and looked into it. It was empty, but on its rough floor were tokens, not to be mistaken, which told us that it was indeed the cart which Gymbert and his men had used. And so we knew that we could not be far from the place where they had hidden the king's body.

Now, if there had been traces of that burden which would once have led us to its hiding place, the rain had washed them away, and we had naught to guide us. The turf held no footmarks of men, and it was not plain how the cart had come to this place; for men had been hauling timber and fagots hence, so that tracks were many, and some new. All round us was wooded, and it seemed most likely that somewhere among the bushes they had found a place; and so for half an hour we went to and fro, but never a sign of upturned ground did we see.

"They brought the cart far from the place," said I presently.

And at that moment from the palace courtyard the horns called men to their supper, and I started to find how near we were to the walls. We had wandered onward as we searched, and it is a wonder we had seen no man. But perhaps it was because this place was mostly deserted, being out of the way to anywhere, that Gymbert chose it. The traffic of the palace went along the road to Fernlea and the ford of the host there, away from here. The carting of the wood cut during winter was over now, and it was too near the palace for the deer to be sought in these woods.

"Selred will be waiting me, and all men else will be within the walls," I said. "I must go to him. Will you bide here and search, or risk coming with me, comrade?"

"I come with you, of course," Erling answered. "The search can wait. There is moonlight enough for us to carry it on again this night, if we will, between these showers."

It rained again as we went through the thickets. Under cover of the driving squalls we might pass unseen to where the little copse we sought came close to the river. And we cloaked ourselves against the shower, pulling the hoods over our helms. None, if we were seen, would take us for aught but belated men hurrying to the hall.

Unseen, so far as we could tell, we came to the edge of the little copse and entered it. The whole breadth of it lay between us and the palace; and under its trees was pretty dark, for the sun had set. We turned into the path where I had walked with Hilda, and I half hoped to see the priest there, but it was lonely. Down that path we hurried and turned the corner, but an arrow shot from the ramparts, and again I saw no one coming.

"We must bide and wait," I said. "He will come when the men are in hall."

"I don't like it," Erling answered, speaking quietly. "You were to meet him at the same time as before; yet he cannot have come. None would wonder at a priest staying out after the supper call, but maybe men might wonder at his leaving after it had sounded."

For a quarter of an hour we walked to and fro in the wood, down one path and up another. Then we thought that we might be following the priest round the wood as he looked for us, and we dared not call. The watch on the ramparts was set already. Now the loneliness of the wood had made us bold, and we thought we had best go one each way, and so make sure that we should find Selred if he were here.

At that time we were at the far corner of the wood, which was square, with a path all round it and one each way across. It was a favourite walk of Offa's during summer, men told me.

Erling turned to the left and I to the right, and we walked fast away from each other. It was getting very dim in these overarched paths under the great trees, but not so dim that one could not see fairly well if any figure came down the way. There was no wind to speak of, and it was all very silent. One could hear the noises from the palace plainly at times, and in one place the red light from the hall shone from a high window through the trees. Just at this time the clouds fled from off the face of the moon, and it was light, with that strange brightness that comes of dying day and brightening night mingled.

I came to the corner where my path turned, and before me there was a figure, as it were of some one who had just turned into the wood from toward the ramparts. The way by which Selred and I came here last night was there. And it was surely the cassocked priest himself, though I could not see his face. I hurried toward him with a little word of low greeting which he could hardly have heard. My foot caught a dry twig in the path, and it cracked loudly, and with that the figure stopped suddenly and half turned away.

Then I said, "Stay, father; it is but I."

And with that came a little cry from the figure, and it turned and came swiftly to me.

It was Hilda herself, and how she came here alone thus I could not guess. She had on a long black cloak which was like enough to the garb of the chaplain to deceive me at first in the dim light, so that I made no movement to meet her. I think that frightened her for the moment, for she stayed, as if she doubted whether I were indeed he whose voice she thought she knew, until I spoke her name and went toward her.

And then in a moment she had sought the safety of my arms, and was weeping as if she would never stop; while I tried to stay her fears, and bid her tell me what had befallen her. And it was many a minute before I could do that.

As we stood so Erling came hastily, having heard the hushed voices. More than that he had heard also, for his sword was drawn. He half halted as he saw who was here, and pointed over his shoulder toward the palace gate, and then held up his hand to bid me hearken.

I lifted my head and did so. There were footsteps in the stillness, and a gruff word or two, and the steps came this way, and nearer, fast.

"Hilda," I said, "are you likely to be pursued?"

For I could think of nothing but that she had managed to fly from Quendritha, and that perhaps Selred had bidden her seek me here.

"I cannot tell," she said, and her voice was full of terror. "Take me hence quickly--anywhere. That terrible queen told me that you had fled, and so thrust me out to seek you--"

I did not wait to hear more, for the steps came on. Between us Erling and I half carried the poor maiden back toward the place where we had entered the wood, and we went swiftly enough. Yet we could not help the noises that footsteps must needs make in the dark of a cover, where one cannot see to pick the way.

Nor, of course, could those who came, as they tried to follow us. We heard them plainly entering the wood as we came to the edge of it and passed out toward the river bank.

"We must get back to the horses, and then ride to Fernlea and the archbishop," I said, under my breath.

"Ay, if we can," Erling answered; "but that is more easily said than done."

He pointed to the river and up it. The moonlight was flooding all its valley, and the last of the day still lingered in the sky. If these men came to the place where we stood, they could see us before we had time to get to any cover.

As we came hither we had gone easily, under the shelter of the gray rain, because no man was at this place to spy us. It was different now. The men were in the wood at this time as we stood and doubted. Next we heard them running to right and left, that they might be sure to meet whoever it was they sought; and plainly that could be none but Hilda, unless we had been seen. Yet we could hardly have been suspected to be any but late comers homeward.

"There is but one thing," I said suddenly. "We must cross the river. They will be here in a moment and looking into the open."

Hilda shrunk close to me in terror, and Erling looked at the stream. It was coming down in full volume after the rain, for up in its hills there had been much more than here. Across the stream were bushes enough to hide us.

"You have your mail on, and there is the lady. But it is not far; maybe we two could manage. We can't fight these men, or we shall have the whole place out on us like a beehive."

So said Erling, looking doubtfully at the water. I asked Hilda if she feared, and she shivered a little, but answered that aught was better than to bide and be taken by Quendritha.

"I can trust you," she said quietly. "Do what you will."

"Faith," said Erling, "one must do somewhat to stay these men, or else little chance shall we have of aught but a good fight here against odds. I count six of them by the voices. Wait a moment and we will try somewhat. Get you to the water, thane, ready."

I set my arm round Hilda and led her to the water's edge. Erling went to the very verge of the wood and listened for a moment. The men from either side were nearing each other, but as yet neither party could see the other. Then, of a sudden, Erling lifted his voice and called, as if hastily:

"Back, back! Get round the far end--quick!"

The footsteps stopped, and voices cried in answer. Each party thought the other called to them. Erling gave a hunter's whoop, as if he saw the quarry, and cried them back again. Then there were a quick rush away on either side, and more shouts, and at that Erling came to us, laughing.

"There will be a bit of a puzzlement at the other end of the cover," he said. "Now, master, let me see what water there is."

He stepped into it, trying the depth with his spear as he went. For ten paces it deepened gradually, and then more quickly. He passed on, up to his waist, then to his elbows, and so to his neck. Then he disappeared suddenly, and Hilda almost cried out. His head came up again in a moment, and he swam for three strokes or so, and then he was on his feet again.

Now he turned toward us, and felt about with his spear once more, and so walked steadily back to us--not quite in the same line, but with the water hardly more than to his shoulders.

"It is easy enough," he said. "I did but step into a hole, and so lost my footing. Pass me the cloaks, for we will have them over dry."

I took his from where he left it by me, and rolled up mine and Hilda's in it. Silently, but with a little wan smile, she took a scarf from her neck and gave it me to tie them with. Then Erling took them on his spear and waded back till he could toss them to the far bank, and so turned to my help.

By that time I had taken up Hilda as best I might, holding her high, bidding her fear not, and clutch me as little as possible. She said nothing, being very brave, but nearly choked me once when the water struck cold as it reached her.

The rising flood water swirled and beat on me as I went deeper and deeper, and glad enough I was when Erling came to my side upstream and helped to steady me. Once we stopped and swayed against the rush for a long moment, half helpless; but we won, and struggled on. Then a back eddy took the pressure from us, and we went more quickly and steadily, and so found the shallows, and at last the bank.

Thankful enough I was, for it had nearly been a matter of swimming at one time; and if that had happened, I hardly care to think how we should have fared.

I set Hilda down and gasped. She was not light when we started, but with each step from the deeps to the shallows she had grown heavier with the dragging weight of wet skirts; and that had puzzled me in a foolish way, so that I thought that the weeds were holding her down. Now we three stood and dripped, and were fain to laugh at one another; while the men we had escaped from were talking loudly at the far end of the cover, where they had met.

"That will not last long," I said; "they will be back at the water's edge in a minute."

Thereat we took to the bushes, which were thick here, in a little patch. Beyond them was a clear space of turf a hundred yards wide, which we must cross to reach more wooded land, where we might go as we pleased back to the ruin where the horses waited. Hilda went slowly, for the wet garments clogged her, and were heavy still.

We must bide here till the men went away, or till it grew darker; for there was no need--though they would hardly follow us--to let them know who was with their quarry, or that she was anywhere but on their side of the water. We might find our way to Fernlea cut off. We took Hilda into the thicket, and crept back to see what happened, leaving the dry cloaks with her.

The loud voices had stopped suddenly, and we knew that it meant that the men were coming back through the wood, beating it cautiously. We lay flat under the nut bushes and alders, watching, and the edge of the cover was not more than an arrow flight from us.

Presently there was a rustle in it, and a man looked out, but we could not see much of him. He spoke to another, and then came into the open, peering up and down the moonlit river. Another joined him, and this newcomer wore mail which glistened as he turned. A third man came from the other side of the wood and saw these two, and came to them, and there they stood and wondered.

"I could swear the girl went into the wood," said one; "I saw her plainly."

"Then she must be there still," answered the second comer. "Get back and look again."

"We have beaten the wood as if for a hare," said the third. "Unless she has climbed a tree she is not there."

"Well, then, look in the trees," said the mailed man, and with that he came down to the water, and turned his face toward us.

It was Gymbert himself.

"Mayhap she has drowned herself," said one of the men sullenly.

Gymbert growled somewhat, and turned sharply, going back to the wood. The other men looked after him, and one chuckled.

"Best thing she could do," he said. "Gymbert would surely have sold her to the Welsh."

"Maybe made her his own slave, which were worse."

"No, but he is out of favour just now. The money she would fetch will be more to him maybe. He dare not let Offa see him."

They turned away slowly. At least it did not seem that these two were much in earnest in the matter. As they went, one asked the other who cried the chase back after all.

"Some fool on the other side who doesn't care to own to it now, seeing that he must have fancied he saw her," was the answer.

Then they turned into the wood again and were gone. Still we waited; and it was as well, for suddenly Gymbert came back, leaping out into the open as if he thought to surprise the lost object of his search. He glanced up and down, and then went back. I heard him call his men together and rate them, and so they seemed to pass back to the palace. Their voices rose and died away, and we were safe.