Father Erchembald found me as I was returning along the cart-track which ran beside the church. He did not show any surprise that I was out so early, since he knew of my hoard, though he knew better than to ask exactly where it was hidden.
‘He’s awake, for the present at least,’ he said, and I guessed he meant ?dda. ‘He’s been asking for you. He’s weak and in great pain, but if you want to speak to him before you leave, this is your chance.’
The priest showed me inside his house to where the Englishman was lying on the bed, so quiet and still that at first I thought Erchembald was mistaken. ?dda must have heard me come in, though, since his eye opened. At first he stared blankly, as if he couldn’t quite work out who I was or how he had come to be here. Whether he was just tired, or whether it was due to the wine and infusion of poppy that Father Erchembald had been giving him, I couldn’t tell. But then after a few moments he recognised me.
‘Lord.’ He lifted one arm from the fleece covering him and offered his hand.
I clasped it in mine and crouched down at his side. ‘?dda,’ I replied. ‘I’m glad to see you’re still with us.’
‘And I, lord.’ His voice was quiet, little more than a croak. ‘And I.’
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Better.’ He tried to smile, and I caught a flash of his crooked and yellow teeth. ‘Give me a spear and shield and I’ll ride with you.’
His humour caught me by surprise, for ?dda rarely joked, if ever. I didn’t know if it was a good sign that he was recovering, or if it meant he had been struck on the head as well as in the side.
I smiled back at him. ‘We’d only slow you down.’
He made a sound that was somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. The effort of speaking was taking its toll on him. I would not stay for long.
‘The priest says you’re going away to fight the Welsh,’ he said.
‘We are,’ I replied, wondering how much Erchembald had told him. Did he know that we were leaving to join Fitz Osbern’s army, or did he think we were going after the ones who had attacked him?
‘Kill a couple of the bastards for me,’ he said. ‘Show them no mercy.’
His face creased in discomfort and he began to cough. I helped him to sit up. There was a wine-cup standing on the stool beside his head, and I raised it to his lips while he sipped at it. He nodded when he’d had enough, then lay back down again, drawing the blanket up over his shivering shoulders, clutching at the hem as he closed his eyes.
‘No mercy,’ I said. ‘I promise.’
But he was already asleep, his chest rising and falling in even rhythm. I heard movement behind me and glanced over my shoulder to find the priest standing in the doorway.
‘He’ll sleep through most of the day, I should expect,’ he said. ‘You did well to get so much from him. He woke a few times during the night but he was far from lucid.’
To see such a bear of a man lying so still, as fragile as a child, sent a shudder of discomfort through me. If someone like ?dda could be so easily laid low, what did that say about the rest of us?
‘He kept murmuring something in his sleep,’ Erchembald continued. ‘The same few words again and again. At first I couldn’t make out what he was saying, but as he repeated it I started to write it down.’
He went to his writing-desk, on which rested a sheet of parchment with a single line of neat script in black ink at its head. I got to my feet and he handed it to me. The sheet was dry as bone and curling at the edges.
‘This at least is what I made out, though I can only guess what he meant by it.’
Ten words. That was all there were, though they were not ones that I recognised. From having seen similar writings before I supposed that it was English.
‘“Crungon walo wide; cwoman woldagas, swylt eall fornom secgrofra wera,”’ I read aloud, pronouncing the strange combinations of letters as best I could, at the same time trying to work out what they meant in French.
‘“Far and wide men were slaughtered; days of pestilence came, and death took all the brave men away,”’ said the priest. ‘That is the best translation I have been able to manage.’
I glanced first at him, then at ?dda, unconscious on the bed. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Nor do I,’ said Erchembald. ‘To begin with I thought it was probably just the effects of the poppy; its juice can do strange things to a man’s mind. The more that he repeated it, though, the more I wondered if there might be something else in what he was saying.’
Far and wide men were slaughtered; days of pestilence came, and death took all the brave men away. Merely repeating the words in my own mind sent a chill through me. Indeed they had a portentous note to them that seemed to me could only bode ill. I touched the cross which hung around my neck, as if doing so would somehow shield me from them.
‘Is it from Scripture?’ I asked.
‘Not from any verse that I have heard before. But I concede that there are several books that even I have not read, so it is not impossible.’