Кен Фоллетт - The Evening and the Morning

Then she told him she was married, but it was already too late.

Her husband, Cyneric, was thirty. She had been fourteen when she married him. He had a small herd of milk cows, and Sunni managed the dairy. She was shrewd, and made plenty of money for her husband. They had no children.

Edgar had quickly learned that Sunni hated Cyneric. Every night, after the evening milking, he went to an alehouse called the Sailors and got drunk. While he was there, Sunni could slip into the woods and meet Edgar.

However, from now on there would be no more hiding. Today they would run away together; or, to be exact, sail away. Edgar had the offer of a job and a house in a fishing village fifty miles along the coast. He had been lucky to find a boatbuilder who was hiring. Edgar had no money—he never had money, Ma said he had no need of it—but his tools were in a locker built into the boat. They would start a new life.

As soon as everyone realized they had gone, Cyneric would consider himself free to marry again. A wife who ran away with another man was, in practice, divorcing herself: the Church might not like it, but that was the custom. Within a few weeks, Sunni said, Cyneric would go into the countryside and find a desperately poor family with a pretty fourteen-year-old daughter. Edgar wondered why the man wanted a wife: he had little interest in sex, according to Sunni. “He likes to have someone to push around,” she had said. “My problem was that I grew old enough to despise him.”

Cyneric would not come after them, even if he found out where they were, which was unlikely at least for some time to come. “And if we’re wrong about that, and Cyneric finds us, I’ll beat the shit out of him,” Edgar had said. Sunni’s expression had told him that she thought this was a foolish boast, and he knew she was right. Hastily, he had added: “But it probably won’t come to that.”

He reached the far side of the bay, then beached the boat and roped it to a boulder.

He could hear the chanting of the monks at their prayers. The monastery was nearby, and the home of Cyneric and Sunni a few hundred yards beyond that.

He sat on the sand, looking out at the dark sea and the night sky, thinking about her. Would she be able to slip away as easily as he had? What if Cyneric woke up and prevented her leaving? There might be a fight; she could be beaten. He was suddenly tempted to change the plan, get up from the beach and go to her house and fetch her.

He repressed the urge with an effort. She was better off on her own. Cyneric would be in a drunken slumber and Sunni would move like a cat. She had planned to go to bed wearing around her neck her only item of jewelry, an intricately carved silver roundel hanging from a leather thong. In her belt pouch she would have a useful needle and thread and the embroidered linen headband she wore on special occasions. Like Edgar, she could be out of the house in a few silent seconds.

Soon she would be here, her eyes glistening with excitement, her supple body eager for his. They would embrace, hugging each other hard, and kiss passionately; then she would step into the boat and he would push it into the water to freedom. He would row a little way out, then kiss her again, he thought. How soon could they make love? She would be as impatient as he. He could row around the point, then drop the roped rock he used as an anchor, and they could lie down in the boat, under the thwarts; it would be a little awkward, but what did that matter? The boat would rock gently on the waves, and they would feel the warmth of the rising sun on their naked skin.

But perhaps they would be wiser to unfurl the sail and put more distance between themselves and the town before they risked a halt. He wanted to be well away by full day. It would be difficult to resist temptation with her so close, looking at him and smiling happily. But it was more important to secure their future.

When they got to their new home, they would say they were already married, they had decided. Until now they had never spent a night in bed. From today they would eat supper together every evening and lie in each other’s arms all night and smile knowingly at each other in the morning.

He saw a glimmer of light on the horizon. Dawn was about to break. She would be here at any moment.

He felt sad only when he thought about his family. He could happily live without his brothers, who still treated him as a foolish kid and tried to pretend that he had not grown up smarter than both of them. He would miss Pa, who all his life had told him things he would never forget, such as: “No matter how well you scarf two planks together, the joint is always the weakest part.” And the thought of leaving Ma brought tears to his eyes. She was a strong woman. When things went wrong, she did not waste time bemoaning her fate, but set about putting matters right. Three years ago Pa had fallen sick of a fever and almost died, and Ma had taken charge of the yard—telling the three boys what to do, collecting debts, making sure customers did not cancel orders—until Pa had recovered. She was a leader, and not just of the family. Pa was one of the twelve elders of Combe, but it was Ma who had led the townspeople in protest when Wigelm, the thane, had tried to increase everyone’s rents.

The thought of leaving would be unbearable but for the joyous prospect of a future full of Sunni.

In the faint light Edgar saw something odd out on the water. He had good eyesight, and he was used to making out ships at a distance, distinguishing the shape of a hull from that of a high wave or a low cloud, but now he was not sure what he was looking at. He strained to hear any distant sound, but all he picked up was the noise of the waves on the beach right in front of him.

After a few heartbeats he seemed to see the head of a monster, and he suffered a chill of dread. Against the faint glow in the sky he thought he saw pointed ears, great jaws, and a long neck.

A moment later he realized he was looking at something even worse than a monster: it was a Viking ship, with a dragon head at the tip of its long, curved prow.

Another came into view, then a third, then a fourth. Their sails were taut with the quickening southwesterly breeze, and the light vessels were moving fast through the waves. Edgar sprang to his feet.

The Vikings were thieves, rapists, and murderers. They attacked along the coast and up rivers. They set fire to towns, stole everything they could carry, and murdered everyone except young men and women, whom they captured to sell as slaves.

Edgar hesitated a moment longer.

He could see ten ships now. That meant at least five hundred Vikings.

Were these definitely Viking ships? Other builders had adopted their innovations and copied their designs, as Edgar himself had. But he could tell the difference: there was a coiled menace in the Scandinavian vessels that no imitators had achieved.

Anyway, who else would be approaching in such numbers at dawn? No, there was no doubt.

Hell was coming to Combe.

He had to warn Sunni. If he could get to her in time, they might yet escape.

Guiltily he realized his first thought had been of her, rather than of his family. He must alert them, too. But they were on the far side of the town. He would find Sunni first.

He turned and ran along the beach, peering at the path ahead for half-hidden obstacles. After a minute he stopped and looked out at the bay. He was horrified to see how fast the Vikings had moved. There were already blazing torches approaching swiftly, some reflected in the shifting sea, others evidently being carried across the sand. They were landing already!

But they were silent. He could still hear the monks praying, all oblivious to their fate. He should warn them, too. But he could not warn everyone!