I picked up her shoes from where they lay, beside a gnarled log that must have washed up with the last tide, and held them out to her. ‘Put these on,’ I said.
She snatched them from my grasp and clutched them to her chest as she sat down upon the log, glaring at me all the while, before finally doing as I’d asked. I held out a hand to help her up, but she ignored it.
‘I can manage by myself,’ she said, almost spitting the words as she rose and hustled past me, following the others up the beach towards the town.
For a moment I watched her walk away, wondering why she was being so difficult. Inwardly I was dreading the thought of the week to come, for it would take that long for us to reach Lundene. Whether I could keep my temper with the ladies for that long I did not know.
I went to round up my horse, who was still grazing upon the bank, though he had wandered a short way downwind. As I climbed up into the saddle, I paused to gaze back down at the ship. Aubert saw me and waved one last time; I returned the gesture before at last pressing my spurs in.
We made good progress over the days that followed. Each morning we rose at first light, while each evening we stayed on the road until almost dark. Though the mounts we had purchased were not as strong as the warhorses with which I was familiar – they couldn’t be pushed too hard or too long – we were still, I reckoned, able to make between twenty and thirty miles each day.
We overnighted in alehouses to begin with, and there were many of them, since this was the old road from Lundene to the north of the kingdom. But while the innkeepers we met were happy enough to take our coin, I was wary of bringing too much attention upon ourselves. A party of just seven men and two women, with horses and silver to spare, would not go unnoticed. Everywhere we heard stories of Frenchmen being set upon out on the roads: merchants and knights and even monks killed not for what they carried but for who they were. Though I tried not to set much store by such rumours, it was not only my own safety that I had to consider, and so after a couple of nights we took to camping in the woods.
Elise did not like the idea of sleeping in the wild, and while the rest of us set up tents and built a fire, she complained loudly of the cold, the damp, the wolves that she had heard howling up in the hills. This was not how a vicomte’s wife should live, she said; her husband would not be happy when he came to hear how she had been treated. She soon fell silent when I made it clear we wouldn’t be going any further, but as we set off the next day she began again, and when later that morning we stopped by a stream to refill our wineskins, I saw the irritation in the faces of the other knights. Only Wace seemed unperturbed, and Beatrice, who accepted everything with a quiet dignity that I could not help but admire. Even ?lfwold seemed to be growing weary, especially when Elise suggested that the priest was taking my side, at which point he spoke a few words in her ear. What he said I could not hear, but inwardly I gave my thanks to God, for thereafter she stayed quiet.
The next night we spent in a clearing a short way south of the town of Stanford. ?lfwold and the two ladies were already in their tents, though it had been dark but an hour or so. The rest of us were sitting around the fire, eating from our shields laid across our laps.
No one had said anything in a while, when Eudo delved into his pack and brought out a wooden pipe, about two hands’ spans in length and with half a dozen holes along its length. His flute, I realised, with some surprise; it was a long time since I had heard him play.
‘I thought you’d lost it months ago,’ I said.
‘I did,’ he answered. ‘Some bastard stole it from my pack around Christmas. I bought this one while we were in Eoferwic.’
He held it before him, closing his eyes as if trying to remember how to use it, then put the beaked end to his lips, breathed deeply, and began: softly at first but slowly building, lingering on every wistful note, until after a short while I began to recognise the song. It was one I remembered from our campaigns in Italy all those years ago, and as I listened and gazed into the fire I found myself there again: feeling the heat of the summer, riding across the sun-parched fields with their brown and withered crops, through olive groves and cypress thickets.
Eudo’s fingers danced over the holes as the music quickened, rising gracefully to a peak, where it trembled for a while, before settling down to a final pure note and fading away to nothing.
He lifted it from his lips and opened his eyes. ‘I ought to practise more,’ he said, flexing his fingers and laying it down beside him. ‘I haven’t played in a long while.’
If he hadn’t said so, though, I wouldn’t have been able to tell, so confident and sweet was his playing.
‘Give us another song,’ Wace said.
The fire was dwindling, I noticed, and most of the stack of branches we’d collected was gone.