We passed by two more villages. The first was on the western bank and was surrounded by the rotting remnants of a palisade and by a ditch that was half filled in. That fallen palisade was a reminder of how peaceful this part of Britain had become. It had been a wild frontier once, the border between the Saxons of Mercia and the Danes of East Anglia. King Alfred had signed a treaty with those Danes, ceding them all the land to the east, but his son had conquered East Anglia, and the river was peaceful again. Now Edward’s will, that divided his kingdom between Æthelstan and Ælfweard, might mean that the palisade would need to be repaired and the ditch deepened. The second village was on the eastern bank and had a wharf fronting the river where four barges, each about the size of Brimwisa, were tied. None of the barges had a mast stepped, but all were equipped with stout tholes for oars and one had her deck heaped with sawn timbers. Beyond the wharf were felled trunks that two men were splitting with wedges and mauls. ‘Timber for Lundene,’ I said to Finan.

‘Lundene?’

‘The ships don’t have their masts stepped,’ I said, ‘so they can get under the bridge.’ The Saxon city beyond Lundene’s Roman walls was where the hunger for timber, for new houses, for new wharves, and for firewood, was unending.

The two men splitting the trunks paused to watch us pass. ‘There’s a ford up there,’ one shouted, pointing north. He spoke in Danish. ‘Careful now!’

‘What’s this place called?’ I called back in the same language.

He shrugged. ‘A timber yard!’

Finan chuckled, I scowled, then looked behind, but still saw no pursuing horsemen. At best, I thought, Waormund would return to Lundene and set out in the morning with sufficient men to slaughter us. He would search the river till he found Brimwisa and, if she was deserted, scour the nearby countryside. For a moment I even thought of turning the ship and rowing downstream, hoping to reach the Temes and then the open sea, but it would be a night-time journey against the tide with an exhausted crew in a shoaling river, and if Waormund had a shred of sense he would leave his ship with sufficient men to block the Ligan and so trap us.

We crossed the ford north of the timber yard without scraping the shingle, though some of the oars faltered as they struck the river bed. ‘We must stop soon,’ Benedetta insisted, ‘look at the men!’

‘We keep going while there’s light,’ I said.

‘But they are tired!’ she said. I was tired too, tired of trying to escape a predicament all of my own making and anxious because of the horsemen we had seen. I wanted to stop and I feared to stop. The river was wide here, wide and shallow, and Benedetta was right, the oarsmen were near the end of their strength and we were barely making progress against the sluggish current. The sun was low now, touching the crests of distant hills, but outlined against that burning sun I could just see a high thatched roof above a stand of elms. A hall, I thought, and a chance to rest. I pulled the steering-oar towards me and ran Brimwisa aground, her bows just nudging the bank.