‘She never stopped believing that you would come for her,’ Eanfl?d said, and now at last she did come to kneel beside me, gazing down at the broken earth beneath which Oswynn lay. ‘Especially after she saw you at Beferlic. She often confided in me, and I in her. She told me you would come sooner or later, and I never had the heart to say otherwise. Every time we were allowed to venture beyond the fortress’s walls she was always looking to seaward. I knew she was hoping to spy a ship headed for the island, a ship of warriors who would kill Haakon and free her. She held on to that hope; it was what kept her alive through the dark nights, and there were many of those. It made her strong, and we in turn took our strength from her.’
Eanfl?d stopped, for she was sobbing. Her hands covered her face and her whole body shook. I placed an arm around her shoulder in reassurance.
‘She was right,’ she said, between sniffs, as she wiped her sleeve across her nose. ‘In the end, she was right, and it shames me that I never believed in the same way she did.’
‘She always was strong,’ I replied, not knowing what else to say.
Someday, I resolved, I would come back here; I would make the pilgrimage north and find this island again. It didn’t matter that there was no shrine, no altar, no great minster church to mark the site where she lay in the ground. To me, if to no one else, this humble place would always be sacred: here, beneath the eternal yew, the tree of ages, where the leaves never fell or lost their shade, where life was ever-present. Wherever my travels took me in future, to whatever far-flung parts of Christendom, always I would hold this place in my mind, in the same way that my memories of Oswynn would never fade, but instead would remain as vivid in the years to come as they did now. That was the solemn oath I swore to myself, and it was a pledge that I knew I would have no trouble keeping.
As long as I lived, I would not forget her.
‘Where will you go?’ asked Eudo the next day. We stood on the sands beneath the still-smoking ruins of Jarnborg, listening to the waves lapping on the shore and gazing out over the bay, across the choppy waters sparkling beneath the light of the sun, towards the distant peaks thickly robed with cloud. We had done what we came here to do; now the time had come for us to part ways, and to venture where we must.
‘Not back to England,’ I said. ‘That much I know. There’s nothing left for me there.’
‘You can still try to make amends,’ Wace pointed out. ‘Robert might yet decide to accept you back into his service, if you come with us and seek his forgiveness.’
On that, at least, I had made up my mind, and I think they both realised it, even if they didn’t want to admit it.
‘No,’ I answered firmly. ‘He doesn’t need me, or my sword. Not any more. He’s made that clear enough. He will do his own thing, and I’ll do mine. Maybe in time these wounds will heal and we’ll be able to see eye to eye once more, but until that happens, no.’
I would not humble myself before him. I would not beg forgiveness. What respect I’d had for him, recent events had steadily ground down. Until he earned it again, I would not bend my knee nor offer my oath to him anew. I couldn’t. Not without losing all respect for myself.
I would not go back. I only hoped that Eudo and Wace understood, and did not think any less of me for that decision.
‘If not England, then where?’ asked Eudo after a while. ‘Back to Normandy, or to Brittany?’
I shook my head. ‘First of all I’m going to take Eithne home, to reunite her with her kin, providing they still live. I promised her that much, and it’s time for me to make good on that promise.’
Since Haakon and his men had no further use for them, I had claimed the largest of his four longships. It turned out that one of the slaves we had freed from Jarnborg, a lank-haired, bone-thin countryman of Eithne’s by the name of Domnall, had been steersman to a wealthy merchant from Haltland before he was captured by pirates and thrown in chains. He, together with a good number of the other former thralls, had agreed to join us, partly because they had nowhere else to go, and partly because I think they sensed with Magnus and Aubert and myself opportunities to seek out their fortunes anew.
‘And after you’ve taken her home?’ Wace asked. ‘What then?’