As well as my dried braies they found me a linen shirt, frayed at the hems, and a tattered deerskin cloak that might well have belonged to the man’s father, if not his grandfather too, so many times had it been patched and restitched. Neither Cadell nor Annest wore any shoes and so they had none spare to offer me, but I was content to go barefoot, my blisters and sores being close to healed by then.
And so I gathered my strength, until the morning came when I knew it was time for me to leave. To say that I was fully recovered would have been a lie, but I’d tarried in this place long enough already. As long as there were battles to be fought and the fate of the kingdom remained at stake, I could not rest. Somewhere my brothers in arms, my lord and my king needed me, and it was my duty to do what I could to help them. And so I had to return.
The Welshman and his daughter knew it too; they had seen me growing restless over the days and they did not try to stop me – as if they could. At first I’d been hoping to leave without disturbing either of them, while they still dreamt, but the girl was a light sleeper and woke at the first sound of my rising. I’d hardly made it halfway to the door when she shook her father awake.
‘Estrawn,’ Cadell said as he rubbed his bleary eyes. That was the name by which they had come to know me.
‘I must go,’ I replied, feeling that I ought to say something even if they could not understand me. ‘I need to get back to my people.’
‘Aros titheu,’ he said, pointing a finger sharply at me as he cast off the blanket covering him and climbed from his bed, making for the trestle table that stood against the wall. He gathered some of the crumbling cheese and a few ends of bread from the previous evening’s meal into a scrap of cloth and tied it to the end of a sturdy stick that rested by the door.
‘Dos ragot a Duw ath gatwo.’ His face was solemn as he held it out to me.
A parting gift. As if he and Annest hadn’t already shown me enough kindness. Lesser folk might have left me to die, but they had troubled to shelter, feed and clothe me, and it wasn’t right that their compassion should go unrewarded. I wished I had silver or something more useful to give them in return, by which I could show my gratitude. Save for the clothes on my person, however, I had nothing. Guilt made my throat stick and I had to choke it back.
I accepted the stick with the food bundle. Both smiled warmly; Annest threw her arms around me; her father clasped my hand. In that way we bade each other farewell, and I stepped beyond their door into the breaking dawn. Their house stood alone, sheltered from the wind in a shallow cleft between two rises, overlooking a pasture where goats grazed. Of any other cottages, a church or a lord’s hall nearby, there was no sign, and the same was true of any road or track that I might follow. The sun was rising so I knew at least which direction was east, which was good, since from what I recalled of my flight in that rough direction lay Mathrafal, and I had no intention of walking back into the lions’ den if I could possibly avoid it. If Scrobbesburh had fallen or lay under siege then it was pointless trying to seek refuge there, while to the west was nothing but a bleak land of mountains upon mountains, or so I had heard from those who had ventured into those parts, with the sea beyond them. With that in mind I headed south, knowing that somewhere that way was Earnford.
I turned to gaze back just once. The house was by then nearly out of sight, a mere speck of brown upon the green hillside. Cadell and Annest still stood outside the door, and I waved to them, hoping they would see me. Whether they did and whether they waved in return, I was too far away to be sure, but I liked to imagine that they did before I turned and was on my way.
If Eadric’s men had been looking for me this past fortnight, there had been no sign of them in the valley where Cadell and Annest lived. Unless they planned to scour the entire land this side of the dyke I reckoned they must surely have given up the hunt by now. With luck and with God’s grace that meant I would find myself in no trouble on my travels.