Finan glanced at me. ‘Stopping?’

‘It’ll be dark soon. I want a place to shelter.’

‘We could stay on the boat?’

‘We’ve come about as far we can,’ I said. The river was increasingly shallow and for the last few minutes we had been rowing through sinuous water weed and our oars and keel had been constantly scraping the river bed. I decided it was time to abandon the Brimwisa. ‘We could wait for the flood tide,’ I told Finan, ‘and make a few more miles, but we’ll be waiting for hours. Better to walk now.’

‘And rest first?’

‘And rest first,’ I assured him.

We went ashore, taking with us the captured weapons, clothes, food, mail, and money. I distributed the food, letting everyone take what they could carry. The last things I took were the two long chains that had linked the shackles of the rowers. ‘Why these, lord?’ Immar asked me after I draped one of the heavy coiled chains around his neck.

‘Chain is valuable,’ I said.

Before we left the river I had Gerbruht and Beornoth, the only two of my men who could swim, take off their boots and mail, then take Brimwisa’s bow line across the river. Once there they hauled the ship to the East Anglian bank, tied her to a willow, then half waded and half swam back. It was a small and probably useless precaution, but if Waormund did follow us then he would discover the ship on the eastern bank and might perhaps lead his men across the river and so away from us.

It was twilight as we walked across a lush river meadow that was thick with buttercups, through the elms and so to a large steading, which, like the villages we had passed, had no palisade. Two tethered dogs greeted us with frantic barking. There was a large hall from which smoke rose into the evening, a newly-thatched barn, and some smaller buildings which I took to be granaries and stables. The three dogs barked more urgently, straining at the thick ropes that held them to the hall, and only stopped when the door was thrown open and four men were outlined against the glow of the fire inside. Three of the men carried hunting bows that had arrows notched on their cords, the fourth held a sword. It was that man who bellowed at the dogs to stop their damned noise, then looked at us. ‘Who are you?’ he shouted.

‘Travellers,’ I called back.

‘Jesus, enough of you!’

I gave my sword belt to Finan and, accompanied only by Benedetta and Father Oda, walked towards the hall. As I got closer I saw that the man holding the sword was elderly, but still hale. ‘I seek shelter for a night,’ I explained, ‘and have silver to pay you.’

‘Silver is always welcome,’ he said guardedly. ‘But who are you and where are you going?’

‘I am a friend of King Æthelstan,’ I answered.

‘Maybe,’ he said cautiously, ‘but you’re not Mercian.’