and quiet that I did not realise at first how fast the River was flowing. Then a torn branch came past the door. And was gone. Just like that. I have never been so near thinking the River a god as then.
“I wonder if there’s water all round the house,” said Hern. We put the pots in the boat and waded back to see.
This was very foolish. It was as if, among all the other things, we had forgotten what Uncle Kestrel had told us. We climbed the slope beside my loom and took the plank off the shutters there. Luckily we only opened the shutter a crack. Outside was a tract of yellow, rushing water as wide as our garden, and not deep. On the further edge of it, in a grim line, stood most of the men of Shelling. Zwitt was there, leaning on his sword, which looked new and clean because he had not been to the war. The swords of the others were notched and brown, and more frightening for that. I remember noticing, all the same, that behind them the yellow water had almost reached Aunt Zara’s house. Where they were standing was a point of higher ground between the two houses.
“Look!” we called out, and Duck and Robin crowded to the open crack.
“Thank the Undying!” said Robin. “The River’s saved our lives!”
“They’re making up their minds to cross over,” said Duck.
They were calling to one another up and down the line. Zwitt kept pointing to our house. We did not realise why until Korib, the miller’s son, came past the line with his longbow and knelt to take aim. Korib is a good shot. Hern banged the shutter to just in time. The arrow met it thock a fraction after, and burst it open. Hern banged it shut again and heaved the plank across. “Phew!” he said. “Let’s go.”
“But they’ll see us. They’ll shoot!” I said. I hardly knew what to do. I nearly wrung my hands like Robin.
“Come along,” Hern said. He and Robin took hold of Gull and guided him to the woodshed.
“Just a minute,” Duck said. He splashed over to the black pool of the hearth and gathered the Undying down out of their niches. It shocks me even now when I think of Duck picking them up by their heads and bundling them into his arms as if they were dolls.
“No, Duck,” said Robin. “Their place is by this hearth. You heard your father say so.”
“That,” said Duck, “is quite ridiculous nonsense, Robin. The hearth’s in the firepots, and the firepots are in the boat. Here.” He pushed the Young One into Hern’s hands. I noticed Hern did not object. Because Robin was busy with Gull, Duck pushed the One at me. He kept the Lady himself. She has always been his favourite. The One felt heavy in my hands, cold and grainy. I was afraid of him and even more afraid of slipping in the water and losing him. I took him so carefully to the boat that they were all calling out to me to hurry and trying not to call too loud. I could hear Zwitt talking outside. He sounded near. They had a heavy blanket over the boat, hanging over the mast. Robin was holding it down on one side, Duck on the other. Hern had the boat untied and was standing ready to push it out of the shed.
“Get in, Tanaqui. You can be religious in the boat,” he said. I climbed in carefully and found Gull lying in the bottom where Robin had put him. As soon as I was in, Hern started to push the boat. It was so loaded that he could hardly move it. I pushed up the blanket and offered to help. “Get down!” he snapped, red in the face, with his teeth showing.
As he said it, the boat was through the door, and the current took her sideways along the end of the house, all in seconds. I am not sure whether Hern meant to get in straight away and did not have time or whether he meant to stay out and push us into deep water. At all events he was still surging through the edge of the floods with his hands on the stern when the boat came out beyond our house, in front of Aunt Zara’s, and the Shelling people saw us.
They shouted. I had not seen how they hated us till I heard them shout. It was terrible. Some of them were wading in the water towards our house, and they ran through it towards us. Zwitt slipped over. I hoped he drowned. The others on dry land yelled and pointed at us and cursed. And Korib, on one knee, bent his bow to an arrow again.
“Hern! He’s shooting!” I screamed.
Hern was trying to push us sideways into the deep River. He tried to get round to hide behind the boat at the same time. That pushed us the other way. We wove about. Korib shot. It was as good a shot as the first. Hern would be dead, but at that instant we reached the real Riverbank at last, and the ground went from under Hern. He disappeared up to his neck, and the arrow hit the rudder instead. Korib took another and bent his bow again.
Hern had the sense to hang on to the boat. If he had let go then, he would have drowned, for he lost his head completely. “My clothes are heavy!” he screamed. “The River’s pulling me down!”
Duck and I climbed about over poor Gull, trying to heave Hern up, and Hern went hand over hand along the boat to keep out of Korib’s aim. The boat tipped frighteningly, and Hern’s caution was undone, because it spun round and let Korib see him again. The boat was spinning all the time after that. Every time I saw the bank, it was in a different place. Korib kept shooting, at Duck and me as well as at Hern, but we were too busy trying to get Hern aboard to be frightened. Afterwards we counted six arrows stuck in the blanket, besides the one in the rudder.
We got Hern up in the end. Robin, by that time, had hooked the tiller in place and was trying to steer, but the boat still went round and round. Hern sat streaming beside Gull, very much ashamed and trying to laugh it off. “When your clothes are full of water, you can’t swim, you know,” he said. “They weigh a ton.” We made him get into dry things.
By this time we were almost at the end of the part of the River we knew, right down to the thick forest. We had gone that fast. I took the steering from Robin and tried to stop us spinning so. It was not easy. The current ran so strong that if you pushed the boat at all sideways, you were spinning again before you could count five. It took all my skill, but in spite of what my brothers say, I am as good a waterman as they.
“This is dangerous,” said Duck, watching me. “We can only go where the River wants. How can we get to the bank?”
Before I could say to Duck what I felt like saying, Gull said suddenly, “We can go where the River wants.” He sat up with his back against a thwart. He seemed happy and dreamy, as he used to be when we went fishing on a summer day, and we were sure he was better.
This made us realise – as if we had not known till then – that we had left Shelling far behind, and we were glad. I do not think one of us has ever regretted it. We laughed. We talked over all the lucky things that led to our escape, which is a time none of us will forget, I think, and all the while we were going, fast as a swallow skims, straight down the centre of the River, and the trees on the bank seemed to spin about with our speed.
We must have gone leagues that day, and in all those leagues there was nothing on either bank but flooded forest. All there was to see was tall bare trees, with the green just coming to the upper boughs and water winding among their trunks. They had a chilly, slaty look. I confess I was disappointed. It is often the way when you dream of doing something new; it is not so new after all.
When night came on, I tried to work the boat across the current to the eastern bank. Shelling is on the west bank. We did not think Zwitt had sent anyone after us, but we kept to the other side of the River for a number of nights all the same. This caution nearly drowned us that night. The River whirled; the boat whirled and went on whirling, despite all Hern, Robin and I could do, pulling together at the tiller. Only Gull sat calmly. Duck picked up the Lady and hugged her to his chest. Then the River rushed beneath one side of the boat, and we tipped. I put out my hand and took hold of the One. But he felt so cold and hard that I put him down and picked up the Young One instead. It surprises me still that we came among the trees without sinking. I am sure it was because of our Undying.
We poled and pushed on the trees until we came to higher ground, where we landed and let some of the fire out of our firepots. We cooked pickled trout for supper, and very good it was. Gull seemed so far recovered that he was able to eat for himself.
“I