In any case, it would take more than a few chests of coin or precious jewels to convince me that it was worth abandoning my pursuit of Oswynn to spend almost a quarter of the year following the king on yet another of his expeditions. Another two and a half months and I might never find her again. Even now it might be too late.
‘Would that we could linger by our hearth-fires and regale others with the tales of our hard-won success,’ Robert said in a tone that was no doubt intended to soothe, but which did anything but. ‘In time we will have that chance, I promise. But not yet.’
I clenched my teeth to curb my tongue, feeling my ire rising. ‘Lord, I cannot.’
‘One more campaign before the year is out,’ Robert said. ‘That is all I ask.’
‘And after the Flemings, who will it be next?’ I countered, almost spitting the words. ‘The Scots, perhaps, or else the French king?’
If Robert wanted to go to such lengths to worm his way into King Guillaume’s confidence, then that was his choice. He hardly needed my help in that, and he was mistaken if he thought I would follow him blindly wherever he chose to go, like some dutiful puppy. I was sworn to Robert, trusted him and counted him among my friends, but that did not mean I had to obey his every whim.
‘God’s teeth, it’s hardly as if I’m asking—’
I’d heard enough. ‘I have given you my answer,’ I said before he could finish. ‘And the answer is no.’
I turned and marched towards the door.
‘Tancred,’ he called after me. ‘Tancred!’
I did not stop or so much as look back, but ignored him as I threw the door open and strode away along the passage and down the stairs, out into the yard, my mood as black as the gathering clouds.
Robert did not come after me, nor had I expected him to, but nevertheless I took pains to avoid him the rest of that afternoon. I needed some time alone while I tried to tease out the various skeins of thought that had become tangled in my mind.
As soon as the showers had passed, I went where I thought no one would think to look for me, to a place by the edge of the orchards that I remembered from my previous visit here, at Easter when Robert had welcomed all his vassals to a great outdoor feast beneath the blossoming branches. I sat on the rain-soaked ground, beneath the yellowing leaves of a gnarled pear tree, drew out my whetstone and ran it up the edge of my knife, as I often did when I wanted to clear my mind, pausing occasionally to gaze out across Heia. For all that I had grown to love Earnford’s green pastures and golden wheatfields, its woods and its ploughlands nestled in the steep river valley, this was far grander, a place of true beauty, and I could easily see how one might grow comfortable here.
The castle, a fine building of timber and dressed stone, stood on a hill in the triangle of land where two rivers met, commanding the crossing-places. Around it in every direction, bounded by the ancient trackway to the west and the woods to the east, lay broad expanses of hay-meadows and common lands where the villagers grazed their sheep and their goats, with cottages and vegetable gardens, barns and pig-pens and crofts dotted in between. A millwheel turned lazily in the distance; there was another further upstream that we had seen as we rode in. In spring, when I had last been here, it had seemed a place of wonder, with the winding river sparkling in the sun’s light and green barley-shoots bursting forth from the earth. In autumn, however, it was even more enchanting. The evening mist clung thickly to the land, forming a white ocean out of which the castle alone rose proud, its tower and encircling stockade standing sentinel across that wide land, under skies as clear and pale as they were vast.
All was quiet, save for the tumbling of water over the fish-weirs and the lowing of cattle and the flapping and honking of a skein of geese as they rose from the water-meadows, taking up arrowhead formation as they flew towards the setting sun.
West, I noted. Not south, to Normandy and Flanders, but west, to Dyflin.
The churchmen and scholars who studied the holy texts all shared the opinion that any attempt to divine the future was sacrilege, whether it involved studying the flights of birds, or examining entrails, or scattering runesticks as the Danes were known to do. God’s design, as complex as it was mysterious, could not be determined by such crude methods, they said, and I was inclined to agree. I didn’t believe in portents, although if I did, those geese were probably the clearest sign I was likely to receive.
‘Here you are,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’
Surprised, I fumbled the whetstone as, instinctively, my other hand clutched tight at the knife-hilt, and somehow in it all I managed to nick my finger, which began streaming with blood. Cursing at the pain, I shoved it in my mouth and began to suck hard, at the same time glancing up to see who this newcomer was.
It was Beatrice.
‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said. ‘Is it bad?’