A handful of beggars were waiting by the bridge and we had to slow as they crowded about with outstretched hands and plaintive eyes. They knew that men of the sword like us usually had silver to spare, and unlike many of their kinsmen they were not afraid to approach us, though our swords and our helmets and our polished hauberks should have marked us out as men who were not to be crossed.
Our mounts’ iron-shod hooves raised a clatter against the timbers. On the open ground on the opposite bank lay the camp. Several men rose to their feet as we approached; Robert called a greeting to them and in return they lifted their fists and their wooden flasks to the sky.
‘The black hawk!’ one cried out, recognising the pennon nailed to my lance. ‘It’s Tancred a Dinant!’
A cheer rose up. Robert was right about my fame going before me, although I hadn’t believed it until then. Unsure what else to do, I raised a hand, acknowledging them as we passed by.
Along the riverbank, where the grass was lush and plentiful, paddocks had been marked out with wooden stockades and horses grazed contentedly, or else drank their fill at shallow inlets. In the shade of a broad-bellied oak a dozen men were training with cudgels and wooden practice swords, circling patiently about each other, each one looking for an opening, waiting for his opponent to make a mistake before they came together, raining blows against each other’s shields and then backing away once more.
At a guess I would have said there were probably fewer than five hundred fighting men encamped there, with as many horses. If truth be told, it was not much of a host, not yet at any rate, though it would grow as more of Fitz Osbern’s vassals arrived over the coming days. Robert had said the summons had gone out all along the borderlands, which meant there could be men coming from as far afield as Ceastre in the north and Estrighoiel in the south. It would take time for them all to muster, and I could only hope that they did so before the Welsh and their English allies began to march.
Ahead, Robert gave a shout, and he spurred his mount into a canter. I turned to see what the noise was about, shielding my eyes against the glare. The flaps to the pavilion were drawn apart, and a figure emerged. She stood beneath the wolf banner, and with the light behind her she was almost entirely in shadow, but it took only a moment for me to recognise her. Her hair shone like filaments of gold, and her face was full of warmth, her cheeks radiant as the sun.
Robert reined in his horse in front of her, leaping down to the ground and striding forwards to throw his arms around her. I followed slowly behind.
‘Sister,’ he said. ‘I’m glad to see you safe.’
‘And you, Robert,’ Beatrice replied, as they broke off the embrace.
She was exactly as I had remembered, from her large eyes to her milky-pale cheeks and her fair hair, which was bound and all but covered by a wimple. Tall for a woman, she was also slender, with a good figure that it was hard to tear one’s eyes from, and delicate features that many men would have given anything short of their lives to hold and to caress. A silver band decorated her wrist, and she wore a simple linen gown, loosely draped in the English fashion and a perfect white in colour.
All of a sudden I was there in her chambers in Lundene again, feeling her pressed against me, the warmth of her breath upon my cheek, the softness of her lips upon mine. I felt that pang again, and tried to bury it, but it would not go away.
‘You remember Tancred, don’t you?’ Robert asked, clapping a hand on my shoulder as I dismounted and joined him.
Smiling, she turned to me. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘Although it’s been some time since we last met.’
My throat was dry all of a sudden and I swallowed to moisten it. ‘You look well.’
‘As do you,’ she said, glancing up and down, from my helmet to my boots. ‘You look like a lord.’
‘Lord and defender of Earnford,’ Robert put in. ‘Last month he pursued a Welsh raiding-party for an entire day just to avenge the men they had killed. Ten of the enemy were slain by his hand alone.’
I regarded him with a questioning look. Only last night he had sought to chastise me for my actions, yet now he made light of it.
‘Is that so?’ Beatrice asked, in a way that left me unsure whether she was impressed by that, or whether she believed it at all.
‘He exaggerates, my lady. It was only four.’
Robert laughed. ‘You are as modest a man as I have ever known.’
‘Not modest, lord,’ I said. ‘It’s the truth, that’s all.’
I glanced at Beatrice and her eyes, chestnut-brown, met mine. I gazed into them, searching for I knew not what. Some hint that she acknowledged what had happened between us all those months ago, maybe. But there was nothing.
She turned to Robert. ‘Fitz Osbern asked to see you as soon as you arrived. There is some business he wishes to discuss.’
Robert nodded. ‘Where is he?’
‘At the hall in the castle,’ she replied. ‘He and the castellan have been in council for the past hour at least.’