‘We have all that we need. That’s what’s left. Your entitlement as lord.’
‘And I want you to take this, too,’ said Father Erchembald, who along with ?dda had also risen early to bid us farewell. He unfastened a silver chain from around his neck, from which hung a gold-worked and garnet-studded cross.
‘Father—’
He took my hand, pressed the cross into my palm and closed my fingers around it. ‘You have been a good lord to us, and a good friend too. A better defender of this manor and these people I could not have asked for. This is the smallest token of my gratitude. God be with you always, Tancred. I only pray that you will be safe on your travels, wherever they take you.’
‘I will,’ I assured him. ‘I promise. As long as we have our swords by our sides, no harm will come to us.’
I tried to sound confident, but the truth was that the thought of venturing beyond the sea to lands unknown filled me with not a little trepidation. Some of that uncertainty must have been betrayed in my manner, for the priest gave me a look that suggested he didn’t entirely believe me.
‘I hope that you’re right,’ he said. ‘But, please, take care all the same.’
They had been steadfast allies through all the recent tumults, and a part of me wished they could come with me, but I knew very well that they couldn’t. Their place was here, at Earnford. Asking them to follow me into exile as outlaws was something I could never ask them to do. Besides, they had already given me so much: more, indeed, than Robert had in the past year, in spite of all his promises. Merely by harbouring me they were making themselves complicit in my crimes and thus putting themselves in danger. Words could not express my gratitude.
Having made our farewells, armed ourselves, gathered what other provisions we might need for the days ahead, saddled the palfreys and the rounceys that would carry our packs, and been offered trinkets and various good luck charms by the alewives and their menfolk, at last we set out along the winding tracks, leaving Earnford behind us for what, for all I knew, could be for ever. In time, perhaps, the rift between Robert and myself would be healed and I would find myself back here once again. But despite my best attempts to convince myself otherwise, I couldn’t shake the feeling deep inside that I would never again so much as look out over that valley, or tread its soil.
I’d reasoned that anyone pursuing us would be coming on Earl Roger’s orders from Scrobbesburh to the north, and so with that in mind we struck out in the other direction, making first for Hereford, where we were given directions to Glowecestre, the town on the Saverna in which the king had celebrated Christmas and held his court a couple of years previously. There we sold our horses, and managed to secure a good price for them, too, though not without some negotiation on my part, before buying passage on a wide-bellied Norman trader, which was bound for Cadum, where its captain planned to sell fleeces in exchange for stone for building. He wasn’t planning to make port elsewhere, but at the sight of our silver quickly changed his mind, agreeing to take us to Brycgstowe, where I reckoned we were more likely to find a ship that would take us where we wanted to go.
News had only just reached those towns of the king’s victory over the rebels, and so I doubted we would find any trouble there, but even so I was wary of attracting too much attention to ourselves. Thus we took care to disguise our appearance as far as possible, carrying rough staves hewn from fallen branches and smearing our faces and covering our cloaks and trews with dust and mud, while those of us who had beards allowed them to grow. That way, if we did by some coincidence cross paths with anyone who might otherwise have recognised the faces of Tancred the Breton and his companions, they would see instead only five dishevelled, road-worn travellers. Or so, at least, I hoped. Thankfully no one challenged us during the five days it took us to reach Brycgstowe, by which time I reckoned we were probably safe. The city was a busy port, and wealthy too, second in all of England probably only to Lundene: a place where merchants from all corners of Christendom and beyond came to sell their wares, where slavers sometimes held their markets, where wealthy pilgrims sought passage to holy places in far-off lands, all of them accompanied by bands of men for protection, so that a group of armed travellers such as us was far from unusual.