A King's Comrade Part 9

"Where is that receipt? I suppose that if you paid for his man, my friend has to repay you for ransoming him. It is a simple matter."

"I do not carry it with me, stranger. You know not this land of ours. It is at my inn. I can show it, of course."

"Well, then," said I, "I will take my man and answer for him. Bring the writing to the house of the sheriff, where I lodge, and what is there set down I will pay you."

Now there were a dozen idlers gathered by this time, and seeing that the trader hesitated, I called to one, who seemed to be a forester by his staff and green jerkin, and bade him fetch the sheriff, if he could find him. I would have the matter settled here. Whereon the slaver gave in.

"Well, then," he grumbled, "I hold you answerable for him. Take him, and get your money ready.

"Let him free," he said, turning to his men.

That they did with somewhat more readiness than one would have expected. The Dane shook himself and looked round him. And then, without a word of warning, he sprang straight at the slaver and wrested his whip from him. Then he swung him round by the collar of his leather jerkin, and lashed him in spite of the sword which the man drew. The idlers shouted, and Werbode laughed, while the two men had all they could do to prevent the other slaves from breaking away; or else they themselves had no reason to object to seeing their master tasting his own sauce.

The heavy plaits of the whiplash curled round the legs of the trader, and he writhed. They caught his short sword and twitched it from his hand, to send it flying among the gathering crowd, and then the man lay down and howled for mercy. But the thralls of the crowd were only too pleased with the sport, and as I and Werbode did not interfere, to do so was no one else's business.

At last the Dane held his hand, and left his tyrant groaning. He broke the whip stock and twisted the thong from the end of the fragment. Then he tied it round the neck of the slaver, and rose up and saluted me in the way of the Danish courtman.

"Whither, lord?" he asked, quite coolly. "I am ready."

"Better go back to the sheriffs," I said. "Maybe we shall have to answer for this, and we will tell him first."

"No," he said, with the ghost of a smile; "you will not set eyes on this man again. What I told you is true. He has no more right to me than the thrall who found me; less, maybe, for I suppose the thrall would have taken me to his lord, who had some claim on me for a castaway."

The crowd closed in round the slaver, and the other slaves raised a sort of wretched cheer as we went away. Soon we turned the corner of the street and came to the outskirts of the fair again, and none had followed us. There the decent folk stared at us and our ragged follower somewhat, and a thought came to me.

"Comrade," I said, for I could not mind his name, "let me rig you out afresh before we part."

"They call me Erling," he said. "Have you so many men to serve you that we must needs part?"

"No," I answered, "but I am no sort of a master to serve. I will help an old comrade home, however."

"Home was burnt a year ago," he said. "Let me bide with you, thane; I must be some man's man. You will go back to the west presently, I suppose?"

"Yes, after a time. What of that? for it is not your way."

"Your way is mine, unless you drive me from you. You have given me my freedom, and I know it. Let me serve you freely."

"Well," said I, "you will be my only servant when once I leave King Carl's train, with which I have come."

"So much the better," he said. "I am likely to be as handy a servant as you can find, in most things."

"Oh," said Werbode, laughing, "take him, Wilfrid. Free service is not to be despised. Moreover, if you want any one well and soundly beaten, here is your man."

"I can keep the thane's back at a pinch, young sir," said the Dane quietly. "That mayhap is more than most will do if they are hired."

"Faith, I believe you could," said Werbode, looking the man's wiry frame up and down.

"Take him, Wilfrid."

"Why, then," said I, "so I will, and gladly, for just so long as I please you as a master. And when you will leave me, you shall go without blame. Now let us see to clothing you afresh."

So we went to the quarter of the fair where such things as we needed were to be had, and there we took pleasure in fitting my new follower out in all decent housecarl attire, not by any means sparing for good leather jerkin and Norwich-cloth hose and hood, for I would not have him looked down on by our Frankish servants.

And, indeed, with weapon on hip and round helm on head, over washed face and combed hair, he seemed a different man altogether. The old free walk of the seaman came back to him, and he looked the world in the face again as the free warrior he was.

He had been Thorleif's own court man, he told me, and knew the ways of one who should follow his lord, whether in hall or field, and I will say at once that so he did. I had little to teach him beyond some Saxon ways which came strangely to him at first.

We went back to the king's hall, and there I told the sheriff somewhat of the business with the slaver, and he laughed.

"Not the first time I have heard the like," he said. "If the man complains, pay him. But if he is a man stealer, as is likely, you will hear naught of him, and he will get him from Norwich as fast as he may."

As I suppose he did, for neither I nor the sheriff heard more of him, and next day his place in the market was empty.

I asked Erling of his shipwreck, and if Thorleif had been lost, but he could not tell me. He had been washed off the fore deck as the ship met a great breaker, and with him had come an oar, which he clung to for long hours, making his way sh.o.r.eward as best he might.

The ship was in danger at the time, and he lost sight of her very soon. Presently some eddy of tide took him and cast him on the sands of Humber mouth, and there he lay till he was found. That was a month ago, and since then he had been hawked up and down the coast with the other slaves till we met.

"But I was such a scarecrow, and so savage withal, that no man would look at me," he said. "It was a good day for me when the knave brought me to Norwich. Mayhap it was a lucky day for him also, for sooner or later I should have got adrift, and then you would not have been looking on to hold me from paying him somewhat more than a beating."

Next day was the last of the fair, and again I went to seek a horse, with my new follower after me. There was less choice but more quiet, and soon I found that Erling knew more of the points of a steed than I did. A Dane is a born horse dealer. So I sent him one way while I went another, and when I was almost despairing of finding what I thought would suit me, he came in search of me, leading a great skew-bald horse, bright brown and white in broad splashes all over him, in no sort of pattern. After him came a man who might be a farmer, and looked as if he cared not whether he sold the beast or kept him.

"The best horse in the fair, thane," Erling said to me. "I will not praise his colour; but if you forget that and look at his build, you will like him."

So I did; but if a man wanted to be noticed everywhere in such wise that folk would reckon a week's time from the day when the man on the skew-bald rode through the village, he could not choose a better mount, and I said so, laughing.

"There is somewhat in that," Erling allowed; "but if you ride through the foe at the head of your men on such an one, none can deny that you did it. Nor can your men say that they lost sight of you."

In the end I mounted and tried the horse. Presently I rode him out of the town and away across the heaths, and had no fault to find with him. Indeed, by the time that I brought him back I did not care if he was of all the colours of the rainbow, for he was the best horse I ever backed.

Then the franklin who owned him asked me a long price for him, and I left Erling to settle that. Afterwards I knew that the man was a known breeder of these horses, and that men thought me lucky to get the steed. I think the Dane managed to bate somewhat of the price, but very little, for it was a matter of taking or leaving with the owner.

After that I bought a horse for Erling, or rather he chose one and I paid for it; but that was a small matter, for the last day of the fair brought prices down.

Then I had to put up with the jests of my friend Werbode concerning my new horse, and the older Franks thought his colour was a bit of vanity on my part. Werbode said that he was an unsafe beast to go chicken stealing on, for he would be too well known on a dark night; and the others said that they supposed that men would know that I had come home now. But that sort of jest one gets used to in camp life, and I cared not. I had a better steed than any one of them, whether here or across the sea, and presently, as we travelled toward Thetford, they knew it, and forgot to laugh at his skin.

So we left Norwich, and rode across the moorlands to find the king; and the gladness of homecoming grew on me every day, so that I longed for the state affair to be over, that I might turn my horse's head south and west for my own home. And thus, in all gladness, and joying in every mile of the way, we came to Thetford, strong with its earthen ramparts above its still river, and were made most welcome at the hall of Ethelbert the king. There had gone messengers before us to tell of our coming, and the greeting was fitting for the men of Carl the Great.

Truly I saw the Franks smile at one another as we were led into the great hall, homely and pleasant, with its open timbered roof and central hearth, arms and antlers and heads of forest game on walls, and bright hangings round the high place at the upper end; for it was but a hut compared with the palaces of their own master. But when Ethelbert the king came from his chamber to greet us, they had no eyes for aught but him. Young and handsome and free of speech and look as he was, none could doubt that here was one who was worthy of his throne, for in every way he seemed a king indeed. He minded me of Ecgbert, and if he did that, it may be certain that I need add no more to my praise of him.

Now it happened that the day after we reached Thetford was a Sunday, and I need not tell what a pleasure it was to me to hear again the old English services that once I had thought so long, as a boy will. And on that day, for the first time, it came to me that my man, Erling the viking, was a stark heathen, Odin's man. Truly he came to the church with me, and there he stood and stared at all that went on, quietly and reverently enough, but in such wise that I thought that he had somewhere seen the like before. So presently when we came forth from the church I asked him if he had no knowledge of the faith.

"Ay," he said; "I have helped to burn a church or two in my time, and now I am sorry therefor. I have heard good words in this place, so that I think I know why you were ready to risk gold to free a captive. Let me go with you again."

"I will find some good priest who shall tell you more and teach you," said I.

But he shook his head.

"That is another matter," he answered. "Let be for a time. I am content to go your way and see what it is; but no man, if he is worth aught, will leave the G.o.ds of his fathers offhand, not even for the faith which is good for you and for Carl the king, and this king here who has death written on his handsome face."

"What mean you by that?" I asked, almost angrily. "On the face of Ethelbert?"