‘Let me past,’ Wace said, and even in this faint light I could see the tiredness in his eyes.
I straightened and turned back towards the door. Burginda glanced at me, then back at Wace, before grudgingly moving aside, no doubt deciding that two of us was more than she could deal with.
‘I thought you were asleep,’ I said to him. I had waited until both he and Eudo had gone upstairs before venturing out, and had not expected to see either of them again until the morning.
‘I came down for a piss,’ he said. ‘What are you doing out?’
‘Thinking,’ I said, and looked away again, towards the main part of the convent and the three dark towers of the abbey church, like giant pillars holding up the great vault of the heavens. ‘Until today I hadn’t set foot inside a monastery since I was thirteen. Being here brings so much from that time back to my mind.’
Wace said nothing. How much of this did he understand?
‘I was just seven years old when my uncle gave me up to the monks,’ I went on. ‘He was the only family I had left, after my father’s death.’ Of course I had told Wace all this before, though it would have been long ago, and whether he would remember, I did not know. At any rate he did not stop me.
‘It was probably the kindest thing he could do for you,’ he said.
‘Probably,’ I agreed. ‘Though it did not seem that way at the time.’
‘Nor after what happened later, I’m sure.’
I nodded. ‘You know the rest.’
‘Why do you mention it now?’
‘I’ve been thinking how much our lives are shaped by events beyond our control. My father’s death, and everything that followed. What happened at Dunholm, and where that has brought us now.’
‘What of it?’
‘Is all of it just chance?’ I asked, and I could hear the bitterness in my own voice. ‘Or have all these things happened because that is God’s will?’
He shot me an admonishing look. ‘We must believe that it is,’ he said. ‘Otherwise what meaning is there to anything?’
I fingered the cross that hung around my neck. I knew that he was right. For everything on this earth there was a purpose ordained by God, difficult though it might be to comprehend what that was. From that at least I knew I ought to draw some comfort: the thought that He had a design for me, in spite of all that had happened.
‘And He has brought me here,’ I murmured. I looked up again across the orchard and towards the bell-tower, and hesitated, unsure whether I should say what I was about to. ‘I’ve been wondering,’ I said. ‘Wondering what it would be like to go back.’
‘You would give up your sword?’ he asked, with a wry smile. ‘You’d take the vows?’
He sounded like Radulf had only a few hours ago, I thought. It was a mistake to have mentioned it. ‘Someday, perhaps,’ I said, trying not to let my irritation show. ‘Not for many years, but someday, yes.’
The smile faded from his face. Maybe he had not known at first how seriously I was speaking, but now understood. I often found it hard with Wace to tell what he was thinking, and it was rare that he let anyone, even those closest to him, know his true feelings.
‘I’ve been wondering as well,’ he said after a while. He glanced behind him at Burginda, who was only a dozen paces away from us, and spoke more softly. ‘About Malet and everything that we spoke of earlier. And I know that whatever friendship he might once have had with Harold Godwineson, he can’t be a traitor.’
‘What makes you say that?’ I asked.
‘Because if he were, he wouldn’t at this moment be under siege by an English army in Eoferwic.’
Indeed in the midst of all our excitement earlier we had forgotten that. Of course it made no sense for Malet to be engaged in any kind of plot with Eadgyth when he himself was threatened by her own countrymen in Northumbria – when his own life was in peril. Had we been trying to make connections where there were none, where in fact there was a perfectly ordinary explanation?
Even if that were true, I could not help but still feel uneasy. There were so many things that we didn’t yet understand.
‘Have you spoken to Eudo?’ I asked.
‘Not yet,’ he replied. ‘I wonder if we owe the chaplain an apology.’
‘Perhaps.’ After what ?lfwold had said last night, the idea was not a welcome one.
‘He’s not our enemy.’
‘How do we know that?’ I asked, and when I saw that Wace had no answer, said, ‘The longer we travel in his company, the less I trust him.’