‘You pray for her, father,’ I said dismissively, ‘and I’m going to look at the ship that will take us home.’ I led Finan into the early sunlight. Gunnald’s screams had faded and the loudest noise came from the gulls fighting over a carcass stranded on the mud at the far side of the Temes. A small breeze, too small to be of any use to a sailor, rippled the river. Gunnald, while he still lived, owned two wharves, both protected by walls of wooden staves. His ship was on the left-hand wharf, a long, big-bellied ship, made for distant voyages. She looked heavy. Her timbers were dark, almost pitch-black, and weed was thick at her waterline. A sail was furled on the yard, but its ragged cloth was crusted with bird droppings. I walked down the wharf, then stopped. Finan stopped with me, swore, then began to laugh. ‘Taking her to Bebbanburg, are we?’ he asked.

There was water in the ship’s wide belly. The dark of her timbers was not pitch, but rot. There were a half-dozen oars, good only for firewood, their looms warped and their blades cracked. A gull screamed at me. I stepped down onto a bench that creaked alarmingly and prodded the hull with Serpent-Breath, and her blade’s tip went into the wood as though it were fungus. This ship could not cross the river, let alone take us home to Bebbanburg.

I had captured a wreck.

Finan was grinning. ‘It would be quicker to swim to Bebbanburg!’

‘We might have to,’ I answered sourly. ‘It’s my fault. I should have sent Oswi to take a look. Not the boy.’

‘I think it’s aground,’ Finan said.

I climbed back to the wharf and gazed across the useless ship at the further berth, which was empty. ‘Benedetta said he had two ships.’

Finan followed my gaze and shrugged. ‘A second ship isn’t much use if it’s not here,’ he said. I made no answer. ‘Maybe he’s sent some slaves to Frankia?’ Finan suggested. ‘They say prices are higher there.’

That would explain the empty berth. ‘How many slaves have we got?’

‘A dozen women, four children, and three half-starved young men.’

‘I expected more.’

‘So maybe his second ship will be back in a day or two!’

‘Maybe,’ I grunted. I looked beyond the empty wharf and saw there were four guards watching us from the high parapet of the bridge that was a long bowshot away. I waved to them, and after a moment’s hesitation, one waved back. I doubted they had heard the commotion as we captured the yard, and though they could probably hear Gunnald’s desperate shrieks of pain they would surely not think such sounds unusual coming from a slaver’s warehouse.

‘So what do we do?’ Finan asked.

‘We think,’ I said sharply, but in truth I had no idea what we should do. My father, I thought, had been right. I was impetuous. I had been goaded by the attacks on my ships and, with the excuse of my oath to Æthelstan, I had come south thinking to find Æthelhelm and kill him. Now Spearhafoc was gone and I was trapped in an enemy-held city. ‘We wait for the second ship, I suppose. A pity we can’t ask Gunnald where it is.’