‘Let’s go somewhere we can’t be overheard first,’ I told them. ‘Then I’ll tell you.’ I wasn’t sure that the walls or floors here were thick enough to stop anyone else from listening.
The mill was close by, and so that was where we went: far enough from the house or from the cloister that we could neither be seen nor heard. The door was unlocked and I pushed it open. Sacks lay piled along one wall, some of them split with grain spilling out. The dark forms of rats scurried away as we approached.
‘Enough of this, Tancred,’ Eudo said. ‘Tell us what’s going on.’
‘It was Eadgyth,’ I said. ‘She was the one who left this.’ And I brought the scroll out from my belt. ‘I caught up with her in the church.’
‘What did she say?’ Wace asked.
‘Nothing I could make much sense of,’ I said. ‘She kept talking about her husband. About Harold, and how Malet was betraying his memory.’
Eudo narrowed his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It seems he made some promises to her some time ago, though she never explained properly. Promises which he hasn’t kept, at any rate.’
‘So we were right,’ Wace muttered, raising an eyebrow. ‘He has been conspiring with her.’
‘Except that she seemed to want nothing more to do with him,’ I said.
‘Yesterday she called him nithing,’ Eudo put in. ‘It means someone who is worthless or depraved. It’s one of the worst insults the English have.’
I had wondered what that meant. ?lfwold himself had used it of us the night before we had arrived here, I remembered now. Was that how he regarded us? I tried to put it from my mind; it wasn’t important now.
‘I don’t see how Malet can be a traitor,’ I said. ‘Whatever pledges he might have made to her once, it’s clear that they mean nothing to him now.’
At the very least his message hadn’t given her the answer she wanted. What was it, then, that she believed she deserved to be told?
‘Still,’ Wace said, ‘as long as they continue to pass secret letters between each other, how can we be sure?’
‘There is one way,’ Eudo replied, and he pointed to the letter in my hand. ‘We have to open it.’
Wace nodded. ‘It’s the only way we can know for certain.’
‘That’s what we thought about Malet’s letter,’ I said. ‘And we’re no closer after that.’
It struck me as unusual, too, that Eadgyth would leave any important message in our hands, if she had any reason to worry it might be intercepted before it reached Malet. I’d made no assurances to her – as if I would to the widow of our enemy. And so whatever words were contained within this scroll, it seemed unlikely that they would tell us what we wanted to know.
But all the same I knew that Wace and Eudo were right. It was not the hardest decision I’d ever had to make.
‘I need light,’ I said. There were no windows in the mill-room, nor had we brought any torch or lantern, in case we should be seen. But I could hardly read in the darkness.
The moon was behind a cloud, but it was enough to see by as I stood in the doorway, with the other two gazing over my shoulder. I ran my finger over the seal, which I now saw bore the imprint of a dragon, or some other large winged beast, with the words ‘HAROLDVS REX’ around its edge. King Harold. Another mark left by the usurper. But Harold was long dead, and Eadgyth must surely possess a seal of her own. Why would she use his?
I pressed it between my fingers; it broke easily. I unfurled the parchment, and in the moonlight I saw neat lines of carefully rendered script, only this time it was not in Latin. Some of the letters I did not even recognise.
‘What does it say?’ Wace asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Whatever tongue it’s written in, it’s not one that I know.’
Latin was the one language in which I was lettered; even French and Breton I knew only how to speak, not read. I glanced down the sheet, hoping to find a word I might know. In the greeting on the first line was Malet’s name, as I might have expected; a little further down I found Harold’s, but otherwise there was nothing.
Of course it might be in English, I realised. That would make sense, since it was Eadgyth’s first tongue. And though I had never heard him speak it, it seemed likely that Malet knew it too, given his parentage and the many years he had spent in England.
My eyes passed over a phrase from the middle of the letter. ‘Ic gecnawe thone gylt the the geswencth, and hit m?g geweorthan th?t thu thone tholian wille,’ I said slowly, trying to pronounce the strange words. The writing was not as clear as the gospel books I had read when I was younger; the letters were smaller and harder to distinguish. I turned to Eudo. ‘Do you know what that means?’
He shrugged. If it was English, I was evidently saying it wrongly.
‘Is there anything at all you can make out?’ Wace asked.
‘Nothing of any use,’ I said. ‘Malet is mentioned, and Harold as well. That’s as much as I can tell.’