The Wanderer and the Way 18
The Lesser Part
This is Chapter 18 of The Wanderer and the Way
They did not have a sighting of the Moorish horsemen again for some hours, but then the stream that they were following turned in a broad curve to the right, and the road followed it. This meant that if the Moors were tracking them, they were now on the inside of the curve, which would give them a chance to get ahead of Hathus’s caravan on the road. Men who had noticed the curve and understood its possibilities rode up to Hathus to ask about it. But none of them, including Hathus, wanted to say a word about the danger in Agnes’s hearing for fear of alarming her. Understanding this, Agnes dropped back and rode beside Theodemir, who, for his own part, had understood the possible danger of the curve well enough but had trusted Hathus to judge the matter for himself.
“You men boast of your deeds in the hall,” Agnes said, “You tell battle tales to court us. And then you expect that we will know nothing of war.”
“It is one thing to hear boasts of war in the hall,” Theodemir replied, “And quite another to face it in the field, especially for a woman.”
“You should be with us at our lying-in,” she said. “There is as much of blood, as much of pain, and as much of danger there. But we keep you away because you would fret so.”
“Would you want us there, interfering?” he asked.
“No more than they want me hearing their war talk,” she replied.
“Nor present on the battlefield,” he said.
She fell silent for a while, then said quietly, “At least it might be an end for me.”
“It would not end for you if those horsemen took you,” Theodemir. “You would be far too rich a prize for them to injure you. But it would be better if I had left you in Witteric’s care than if you fell into their hands. They would do all that he would have done to you and worse.”
“Well at least you do not waste your breath trying to comfort me,” she said.
“I have found I have no skill in comforting you, lady. Sometimes it seems more apt to warn you.”
“Are you afraid?” she asked him.
“I am afraid for you,” he replied.
“And you would fight for me?”
“I would, lady. To my last breath.”
“Then why should I not be careless with my life since you are willing to be so careless with yours for my sake?”
“That is the proper part for a man, lady.”
“And they all think the same?” she asked, inclining her head towards the men who rode around them. “They would all die for me?”
“For any woman, I believe, lady.”
“Do you? Would you or they be as ready to die for a plain woman? For an old woman? For a quarrelsome woman? For a woman who sang out of tune?”
He did not answer her, and after a moment, she said, “I am more trouble than I am worth, to God and to men alike.”
“Find one man in this company to say it is so, lady,” he replied, “and I will agree. But you will not find one such man.”
“Men are fools,” she said grimly. “If you fight them, I think I shall lose count of how many have suffered or died because of me. Shall I remind you of the tally? Thor. Leif. Gwyneth, who Eric sacrificed to his god. Hogni, who Eric killed because he insulted me. The monks who stood against Eric and were cut down. Eric. Eric’s crew. The women torn from their home to be wives to Eric's crew, who are now widows and will now be ripped from their children and sold for slaves by Witteric. Their children who have lost their fathers and will grow up in slavery, if they are allowed to live. And perhaps also my father, my mother, my sisters, if my secret has been told in Northumbria, which I will never know. Quite a count already, you see. And thirty more by nightfall, like as not. Or should I count the Moors who will die in the fight as well?”
“Good riddance to the Moors, lady,” Theodemir said with conviction. He was grateful that she had provided him the opportunity for this response, so that he did not have to at once address her terrible catalogue.
“Then I shan’t count the Moors,” she said flatly.
They rode on in silence for a few minutes. The road began to curve in the direction where they had last seen the Moors. Agnes did not ride forward to join Hathus. The hubbub around the captain had subsided, but two of his most trusted men now rode beside him, their eyes scanning all around them. Occasionally, they exchanged brief words with their captain. At one point there was some brief excitement when one of them thought he had spotted movement among the trees on their right. But though Hathus and his two lieutenants then watched the place intently, they did not see any other sign of movement.
Then Agnes spoke again, her voice soft and low. “God is pursuing me,” she said. “I cannot escape the punishment that is my due.”
“This journey is not on your account, lady,” he reminded her. “I am the king’s ambassador and we would have come this way whether I brought you with me or not.”
“But not at this hour,” she said. “I have delayed you several times. When I tried to return to my sisters. When Hathus would not journey in the heat of the day to spare me. When you traveled slowly so that I would not be jostled in the cart. Without me you would have passed here yesterday or the day before and never have been seen by those horsemen. Now many more men may die because of me. It would have been better if you had left me to Witteric’s mercy. It would be better still if your surgeon’s draft had killed me.”
“I am no wit at finding the finger of God in the affairs of men, lady,” he replied. “But it seems to me that rather than pursuing you, God is preserving you through many trials. He has even preserved your virginity by marrying you to the one man who, though you accepted him, would let you remain a virgin.”
“You offered me marriage,” she replied. “If I had accepted you, would you have let me remain a virgin if you saw hatred in my eyes?”
“Do you hate me, lady?”
“Why should you think I hate you?” she asked.
“My gaze offends you,” he said, “and I cannot learn to look at you without giving offense. I kidnapped you and nearly killed you with my surgeon’s draught. And you have shunned my company from the first time I met you.”
“That was to save you,” she replied. “Do you not understand? It is death to a man to hold me in affection.”
“It is my vocation to save you,” he replied. “God sent me a vision. You are my vocation. I only wait to discover what the final purpose of that vocation is.”
“God sends you visions,” she replied. “He sends me pirates.”
“He sends you men who love you, lady,” he retorted.
“I wish he would not send so many,” she replied.
At this point, Hathus held up a hand, and the caravan halted. Hathus rode back to where Theodemir and Agnes waited.
“I am liking this way less and less,” he said. “We keep seeing flashes in the trees over there. Perhaps we are all just jumpy, but there is something in my belly that says the Moors are over there and in some numbers. We are much more in the open here, so they will know our numbers while we can only guess at theirs.”
“What do we do, then?” Theodemir asked. Agnes kept silent.
“The road is following the river as it curves around the ridge before us. It must turn back toward the north further on. There is a narrow track cutting away through the bushes on the left up there. Do you see it?”
“I see it,” Theodemir said.
“I reckon that’s a shortcut someone has made to avoid the bend. It must be a steep climb or the road would have gone that way. But my guess is that it finds the road again on the other side.”
“So we will take that way?”
“No,” Hathus said. “It will likely be the slower way for horses or mules, or it would have become the main path. If they saw us take that path, they would be sure to find the other end and be waiting for us. We will continue along the road. But you and the lady will slip off your horses when we draw near to it, and while we screen you from their sight, you will lead them up that path. You will soon be hidden by that stand of trees. You may mount again then. Follow the path, and I expect we will be waiting for you at the end of it, laughing at our folly.”
“And if you are not waiting for us?”
“Wait a day for us. Then continue if it is safe to do so. Be very vigilant if ever you are in a place where you might be observed. Go by night if you must. Leave your horses and walk if you must. But do not let anyone see you unless you have first seen that it is us.”
“I understand,” Theodemir said.
“Good man,” Hathus said. Then he turned to Agnes and said, “Don’t be alarmed, lady. This is probably just me being an old man and jumping at dappled light among the trees. Theodemir will take as good care of you as I would.”
“I’ve always enjoyed a good scramble in the wild,” Agnes replied without any show of particular anxiety or enthusiasm.
“I’m sure that is all it will be, lady,” Hathus said.
“Your lives are all worth just as much as mine, captain,” she said.
“Our lives would be worth nothing if we did not protect you, lady,” the captain replied. “And if we must sell them, we shall demand a very heavy price, I promise you.”
Suddenly, Agnes, who had been as stoic as a woman in a fresco until that moment, urged her horse next to Hathus, leaned over in the saddle, and threw her arms around his neck, weeping. “You are my second father,” she said. “Do not make me an orphan again.”
Hathus embraced her briefly but then pushed her away. “Best not to let them guess that we have a woman with us, lady,” she said. “You are another daughter to me. All my daughters are brave women who have seen their father ride to war many times. But always I have returned to them, as I shall to you. So you must be as brave as them so they don’t have occasion to laugh or tease you.”
“I will be as brave as them for your sake,” Agnes said.
“You understand what you must do, my daughter?”
“I do, my father,” she said.
“Then we ride on.”
Hathus gave a signal, and the company moved on. As they rode forward, Theodemir and Agnes directed their horses to the left side of the column, and when they came to the place where the rough track diverged from the road, they slipped off their horses so that their heads should be low and led their horses onto the track while the rest of the column moved on down the road at a walking pace. The track tended down for a hundred paces or so and then began to climb, but as it rose, it became shielded from the road and from any watching eye on the other side of the stream by a dense stand of holm oak and birch.
By mutual unspoken agreement, they halted their horses and waited until the sounds of the caravan faded away, leaving behind that strange woodland silence, which is not silence at all but a chorus of whispers, as if nothing there dared raise its voice lest it should terrify itself by its own utterance. They looked at each other without speaking. Anges nodded, and Theodemir mounted and urged his horse forward up the steep way while Agnes followed behind.
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