‘No, it’s better if you don’t. We can’t risk being seen together.’
It was a little late to be worrying about that, I thought. Indeed, if she had made that decision an hour ago, then she would not have sent the girl to me in the first place; I would still be asleep in my tent and two men would not have lost their lives in needless bloodshed.
I was too tired to argue, though. I needed to find water or, better, spirits to put on the gash, and the sooner the better. A slight cut such as it was would heal by itself without any need for stitches, but I had to keep it clean.
She took my hand in hers, squeezing it tenderly, and I realised that with everything that had happened, I’d failed to divest her of this notion that there could exist something between us. Before I could say anything, though, she had let go, turning her attention to Papia, who was sitting huddled on the ground with her back against a stack of barrels, shivering with cold and with fear, her knees drawn up towards her face, which was buried in her hands. There was blood on her fingers, blood staining her dress.
Beatrice crouched down in front of her. ‘We have to go.’
Sobbing, the maidservant shook her head. Her hair fell in disarray over her eyes, and gently Beatrice pushed it aside and hugged the girl tightly to her chest. ‘Come,’ she said.
This time the girl nodded and got to her feet. Not once did she look at me. Beatrice held her hand as the three of us made for the far end of the alleyway, where it opened out on to one of the main streets.
I glanced out into the road to make sure that no one was watching. One way headed up the hill, towards the heart of the town; the other led back in the direction of the camp. Both were deserted.
‘This is where we part, then,’ I said.
‘Be safe, Tancred.’
‘And you, my lady.’
She held my eyes, but only for a moment, before she and the girl were hurrying away up the rutted street. The skies were cloudy and there was little light from either moon or stars. It wasn’t long before they had vanished into the night.
I woke the next day to find the sun shining in through the flaps at the entrance to my tent, confusing me, for in my dreams it had been night and I was in my hall at Earnford, with ?dda and Erchembald and all the rest. But then I recalled where we were: Scrobbesburh.
Blinking at the light, I rolled over on to my side, remembering my wound too late. Sharp heat flashed through my shoulder and I clutched at it, wincing and cursing at the same time, and sat up. Thankfully the cut had long since stopped bleeding; the bandage that Beatrice had tied around it had helped see to that. I loosened the knot she had made, hoping to get a better look at the wound now that it was day, though there was not much to see. A narrow line of dried blood ran down my upper arm, about the length of my little finger: proof that last night had been real and I had not just imagined it. Proof that I had fought those men, that I had met Beatrice in the church. I retied the cloth and rolled my sleeve back down, covering it lest anyone should see.
A fire was already burning when I emerged from the tent. Serlo, Turold and Pons were sitting around it, together with Snocca and Cnebba and several of Robert’s men, as well as his own servants: resting their shields on their knees and using them as tables, passing around bottles filled with water fetched from the river.
But among all those faces was one I hadn’t expected to be there. Someone I hadn’t seen in a long time, but whom I recognised at a glance: rangy and long-limbed, with a thin face, thick eyebrows and dark hair.
‘Eudo!’ I let out a laugh at the sight of my old friend and comrade.
‘Tancred,’ he said, likewise grinning as he leapt to his feet. ‘I was wondering when you’d wake.’
For more than a dozen years we had served the same lord, fought under the same banner in the same conroi. Shoulder to shoulder we had stood in the shield-wall; knee to knee we had ridden alongside each other in the charge. Together we had lived through so many battles that I had long since lost count, and in so doing we had forged a bond stronger even than that of kinship: a bond that could never be broken.
‘It’s been a while,’ he said.
‘It has,’ I agreed. Indeed the last time I’d seen him was the previous summer, when the king had gathered his host to stand against the great Danish fleet that had been supposed to sail. The fleet that we had been waiting all year for, but which in the end never came. ‘What are you doing here?’