We led Eudo with his mount back to where we had tied our horses. I gestured for him to go ahead of me and struggled on behind. My leg was agony to walk on: already it seemed worse than when I had woken.
‘You’re wounded,’ Eudo said, when he saw that I was limping. He glanced down at my calf, at my blood-stained braies and the crude bandage I had made.
‘It’s not bad,’ I said, grimacing despite myself. ‘I’ll be fine until we can get back to Eoferwic.’
I saw the doubt in his eyes, but he said nothing. We settled down behind the earth bank close to our horses. Eudo found some nuts and damp bread which he had in his cloak pocket and we shared them out. It was the only food any of us had.
‘We should shelter through the day, travel by night,’ Wace said, when we had all finished. ‘If the enemy are still marching, we’re less likely to be spotted that way.’
I nodded in agreement. With any luck we would be in Eoferwic within a couple of nights. I only hoped that my wound did not get any worse in that time.
After that, each of us took it in turns to keep watch while the others slept. Since I had already rested some that morning, I offered to go first, and neither Eudo nor Wace objected. My eyes stabbed with heaviness but I knew I could not sleep, for fear of what my dreams might bring.
I thought back to the day I had met Lord Robert, when he had been as old as I was now, and I was but a boy in my fourteenth summer. It had not been all that long since I had left the monastery – a few days at most – and I was travelling I did not know where, free but hungry, walking alone. All I knew was that I wanted never to return.
Already it had been a hot summer, I remembered, though it was still only June. I had not found a spring in more than a day and all the streams were dry to their beds. Where I could, I had kept to the woods, since there I was protected from the heat of the sun; but as evening drew on I suddenly came upon a winding river: a river I later learnt was the Cosnonis, which marked the boundary between Brittany and Normandy. Between its banks and the edge of the woods a number of tents had been erected around a campfire, beside which half a dozen men were practising with swords and shields, stepping deftly forward and back in time with every stroke, ducking and turning before thrusting again.
Their blades flashed brightly in the late sun; the scrape of steel against steel rang out as they clashed. I crouched behind a bush and for a while I simply watched them, almost forgetting my thirst and my empty stomach. I had never seen such a thing before. It was like a dance: each movement, each swing, each parry all carefully considered and yet it seemed at the same time instinctive.
Eventually, though, my hunger had got the better of me, and I realised that if these men meant to stay the night here, they must have food. I moved back amongst the trees, around the back of their camp. There were more men sitting by the fire, passing bread around and speaking in what sounded like French, a tongue which at that time I only half knew. All had beards and wore their hair long, which took me aback a little, having spent so long in the company of monks, with their tonsured heads and clean-shaven chins. One of them was dressed in a mail coat, polished and gleaming, and had silver rings on his fingers. He must be their lord, I thought. His shield he had across his knees, using it like a table from which to eat; on its white face was painted a black hawk.
Had I been thinking more clearly, I would have understood that these were fighting men – men I would do well not to cross. But at that moment my stomach was all that I cared about, as the smell of roasting meat drifted on the breeze. And so, taking care not to stumble or to tread on any twigs, I carried on. One tent on the other side of the camp stood slightly further back from the rest, and I chose this as my target.