He rose and made for me again, but before he could come near, Wace grabbed hold of his shoulder and held him back. ‘There’s no time for that,’ he said.
Eudo swore violently. ‘Of all the stupid things you could have done,’ he said to me. ‘Is there anything inside that head of yours?’
‘Enough,’ Wace said sharply. ‘What’s done is done. You have to get away from here, Tancred, and quickly.’
‘You think I don’t know that?’ I asked. ‘What did you think I was doing here?’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know.’ I hadn’t yet thought that far ahead. ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’
‘Come with you?’ Eudo echoed angrily. ‘This is your doing, not ours. If we join you, what’s to stop Robert expelling us from his service as well?’
They were right, and I knew it. I cursed aloud. How had it come to this?
‘We can’t come with you, but we’ll do what we can to sway Robert and make him reconsider,’ Wace said. ‘Until then you’d be wise to find someplace quiet where you can weather the storm. I wouldn’t put it past Elise to send some of her friends to hunt you down before too long. If she does, it’s better that you’re as far away from here as possible.’
I nodded, feeling helpless in a way that I hadn’t for many years.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘You should go,’ said Eudo, jerking his head towards the stable door. ‘Before I beat you to death myself. I have half a mind to.’
I led a reluctant Fyrheard out into the yard. From further up the hill I heard men shouting, though what was being said was impossible to make out. Dogs were barking, and it sounded as though they were getting closer. Orange lantern-light played across the stonework of the inner gatehouse, where several figures, all in shadow, suddenly appeared, a hundred paces away still but rushing in our direction, some of them with swords drawn. No doubt they’d seen the light of Wace’s torch.
Not daring to delay any longer, I vaulted up into the saddle. ‘We’ll meet again soon,’ Wace said. ‘Of that you need have no doubt. For now, though—’
‘I know.’
I reached down to clasp first his and then Eudo’s hand, before spurring Fyrheard into a gallop, across the bailey and towards the outer gatehouse. His hooves pummelled the earth as I galloped beneath its vaulted arch, deaf to the questions of the men on sentry duty that night. I raced on, on, on, down the winding track towards the river’s tumbling black waters and the old stone bridge. The rain spat down, stinging my cheeks. My hair was plastered against my skull, my tunic and trews were soaked, and there was a hollowness inside me of a kind I’d never before known.
How could this have happened? I kept asking myself. How?
Only once I was on the other side of the river did I pause to look back towards Heia, at the dark shadow on the hill that was the castle, expecting to find a horde of horsemen riding hard in pursuit. Perhaps I’d lost them in the darkness, for I saw no one, and if there were any hoofbeats to be heard, they were lost amidst the patter of raindrops on the fields and the trees around me.
I tore my eyes away, dug my heels in, and from then on I did not look back as I rode away from Heia. Away from Robert. Away from the Malets.
And a part of me wondered if it would be the last time I ever saw them.
Seventeen
SERLO, PONS AND Eithne were waiting at the crossroads for me. No doubt they had heard all about what had happened from Godric, but although I felt my hearth-knights’ cold stares upon me, they did not say anything, and that was probably for the best. The Englishman was there too, having decided that he was coming with me after all, and I was too tired to argue any further. We had no time to spare. Every hour that passed was another few miles that we put between us and Heia, and another few miles closer to safety.
We didn’t stop until morning, and only then because we needed to give the horses a chance to rest and to eat. There were no stars that night and so in the darkness we kept to drove roads and ancient trackways, which tended to be better kept and where the footing was more assured. We rode on through the rain and the wind, until, a couple of hours after sunrise, with heavy limbs and bleary eyes, we arrived in a miserable river town by the name of Gipeswic, which I remembered had been raided by the Danes when they came last year. There was nothing much left of it now, save for the wharves and the slipways, a few warehouses and cottages that had escaped the fire, and a larger, two-storeyed hall that might have belonged to the port-reeve, but among those ramshackle buildings we managed to find an alehouse close by the river where we could stable the animals, rest our saddlesore arses, sup at the thin broth that the tavern-keeper brought us, and work out what to do next.
We sat in silence around a table close by the common room’s hearth. At this hour the fire wasn’t lit, but the alehouse’s walls were thin, the cob crumbling away from the wattle-work, and that was the only place where the draught didn’t seem to reach.