I stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘How, then?’
‘It was but a couple of weeks after you and Lord Robert left,’ Erchembald said with a sigh. ‘The child came early, in the middle of the night. I rushed up to the hall where I did everything that I could for her, but she lost too much blood in her ordeal. She died not long afterwards, with your son in her arms.’
My son. I almost didn’t want to say what I was thinking, in case that single glimmer of joy was stolen from me too. But I had to know.
‘What about him?’ I asked quietly. ‘Did he survive?’
The priest shook his head. ‘He was too small, too weak. He lived just long enough for me to baptise him before his soul left this world. We buried him with his mother in the churchyard.’
‘What was he called?’
‘Leofrun chose the name. She called him Baderon.’
‘Baderon,’ I repeated, barely able to raise a whisper. ‘After my father.’
She could have chosen an English name, one that meant something to her, that would have given her contentment in her dying moments. Instead she had been thinking of me and what I would have wished for, even at the very end.
A kinder, more gentle woman I had never known. But now she joined Turold and Byrhtwald, Snocca and Cnebba, Garwulf and Hild and everyone else.
Leofrun was gone, and without her I was lost.
After that it was as if a dense fog had descended upon my mind. Blacker even than the longest, darkest night, no light or warmth could penetrate it, so that I was powerless to do anything but stumble onwards, hoping but not truly believing that eventually I might find a way out. A feeling of loneliness overcame me, more intense even than that which I’d known whilst lying amidst my own piss and shit on the cold floors in my prison at Mathrafal, and no one, not even the priest or ?dda, could tear me from its grip.
I’d hoped that by leaving Leofrun behind in Earnford, rather than taking her with me on campaign, I would have prevented her from meeting the same end as Oswynn. And I had, except that a different fate had befallen her, one from which, even had I been there, I couldn’t have protected her. This time there was no one to blame, no one to swear vengeance upon, whom I could pursue to the ends of this earth until they paid for the blood they had spilt. This was God’s will, Erchembald reminded me, or, as the villagers called it in their tongue, wyrd. Destiny. He had taken her from me for a reason, even if none of us here on earth could understand what that reason might be. It was scant consolation, and I told the priest as much and worse besides. He was patient with me, however, as he always was, telling me that in the fullness of time the hurt would pass, and that when the end of days came and we passed as the Lord’s elect into the glory of the eternal kingdom, I would be reunited with her.
As sincerely as he spoke, his words could do nothing to raise me from my sorrow. So many I had known had perished of late: men and women who might not have died had it not been for me. With every day that passed it seemed the list of their names grew longer and longer.
But as day turned to night and fresh wood was cast on to the campfire, a new resolve kindled within me. Even if Bleddyn and Eadric and their kind were not responsible for Leofrun’s death, they had taken everything else from me. They had stripped me of my mail and sword and dignity, had slain my companions and torched my home. For those things I would not forgive them.
Under ?dda’s direction the others had built rough shelters by leaning branches against the trunks of two wide-bellied oaks and laying armfuls of bracken over the top to keep out the rain and the wind. Beorn and Nothmund kept watch by the fire while everyone else bedded down upon the stony ground and tried to rest. Everyone, that was, except for me. My mind was racing as I thought about what we would do come the morning, how I would sow terror in the hearts of my enemies and how I would make them suffer for everything they had done.
We marched as soon as the birds began their chorus. Eight men, five women, six children, a priest, three horses and myself. We were all that was left of the proud manor that had once been Earnford.