Berengar shouted at them to stop me, but they knew better than to risk their lives in something that was none of their concern. I rounded the end of the row of stalls, pausing for the barest heartbeart to kick over a low table stacked with baskets of wet-glistening eels and other fish.
I was wondering where Byrhtwald had gone when I heard the Englishman shouting to me from further up the street. Leaving Berengar and the others to negotiate the fallen table and baskets, I rushed after him. He was nimbler than his years and his squat stature suggested, diving in between the stalls, fighting his way through the throng. Ahead lay the farrier’s workshop, from which clouds of white charcoal-smoke were billowing out across the street.
‘This way!’ Byrhtwald said before darting through the smoke and down an alley that led between the forge and the tanner’s place.
I charged after him through the clouds, shielding my face, for all the good that seemed to do. My eyes stung with the smoke and the heat, but I was quickly through it—
And straight into the flank of an ox, one of a pair hauling a wagon loaded with timbers up the alley. The beast snorted indignantly and its owner yelled at me in words I didn’t understand, but I had no time to stop and apologise, even if I could remember the right English phrase. No sooner had I recovered my senses than I was turning, breaking once more into a run, only for my forehead to meet the end of one of the planks, which was jutting out across the side of the wagon. Stunned by the blow and cursing in pain, I lost my footing on the soft ground, and found myself lying amidst the mud and the cattle dung. Blood, warm and sticky, trickled across my brow and down between my eyes. Dazed and not entirely sure what had happened, I put a hand to it and my palm came away smeared with crimson streaks.
Somewhere in the smoke shadows moved about. The man with the cart and oxen had stopped but now there were voices and he was being hurried on. One of the shadows resolved itself into the shape of a man. At first I thought that the pedlar had come back for me, but then the figure stepped closer and as I blinked to clear my sight I saw his face, fixed as it always was in an expression of hatred and spite.
Berengar. He stood over me, sword in hand. The tip of the blade he pointed towards my chest in warning, lest I had any thoughts about trying to get up. I hadn’t; my head was pounding and already I thought I could feel a lump forming. My own blade had fallen from my grasp when I fell, and lay easily more than an arm’s length away, in one of the puddles that had formed in the wheel-ruts. Too far for me to be able to reach in the time it would take for Berengar’s sword-point to come down.
‘At last the great Tancred a Dinant finds himself at someone else’s mercy.’ He spat in my face; I blinked and turned my head in time but that only meant his phlegm struck my cheek rather than my eye. ‘Have you anything to say?’
‘Only that if you kill me you’ll have my men to answer to,’ I said, with more confidence than I had any right to, given the situation. ‘As soon as they find out what you’ve done, they’ll hunt you down like the worthless dog you are. When they catch you, they’ll string you up from the nearest tree, tear out your guts and enjoy watching you squirm as they roast them in front of you. They will—’
‘Quiet!’ He moved the tip of his blade a fraction closer to my neck; I felt the cold steel touch lightly upon my skin. ‘I do not fear your men, any more than I fear you.’ But a tremble in his voice betrayed his uncertainty.
‘What about Fitz Osbern?’ I asked, changing tack, doing my best to hold my nerve. I couldn’t afford to show any weakness. ‘He won’t take kindly to blood being spilt in his streets.’
With every moment that passed I was growing more desperate. I hoped at least that Byrhtwald had managed to get away, that he was bringing help, until I noticed him being held by one of Berengar’s knights – Frederic by name, as I recalled – with a knife at his throat. He met my gaze, an apologetic look in his eyes.
‘Fitz Osbern is too far gone in his cups to care,’ Berengar was saying. ‘He has more things to worry about than the death of one man who defied his word.’
I was not convinced that Fitz Osbern would be so callous; one way or another justice would be dealt. Unless Berengar planned to flee the town altogether, he would struggle to avoid it. Even if he managed to evade those who would avenge me, he would still have God to answer to eventually. Perhaps those same thoughts were what was causing him to stay his hand now, or at the very least to doubt himself. He stood unspeaking with clenched jaw, his gaze fixed upon me. I counted each breath I took, wondering if it would be my last, waiting for the finishing blow that never came, until eventually I could hold my silence no longer.
‘Are you going to kill me, then? Or are you simply going to stand there?’
I meant it as a challenge, but the words came out less strongly than I would have liked.