He left her to go and search among the baggage littering the street.
Epona sat down beside Matilda. “I put it in the beans,” she said, “but I don’t think he had any. Didn’t seem peckish.” She watched the mercenary as he searched, stooping awkwardly, and said: “His back’s still poorly. I’m sorry for him.”
Matilda sat up. “If anybody’s going to be sorry for him,” she said, “it’s me.”
After all, there was still this somebody else’s life to live and there was plenty to do. She had a church of thanks to build. There were ducks to shoot and eels to catch and a bittern yet to see. And the mercenary would need help in setting up his manor.
And if it was the last thing she did, if it killed her, she would teach the English to speak French.
Epilogue
Eustace died, it is thought, of appendicitis. His father, Stephen, died a year later, probably of the same thing.
Stephen spent the year left to him in a long, triumphal procession of his broken country. As one of his chroniclers said rather bitterly of him: “He was a man who cared for the appearance of things.”
Christina of Markyate did not achieve a place in the calendar of saints.
Nobody knows what happened to Brother Daniel.
Even after Stephen’s death Fitzempress did not sail for England immediately. He knew there was no rush. Sure enough, England waited peaceably for the reign which was to see the beginning of the jury system and the Common Law.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1985 by Hodder & Stoughton
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2019 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © Diana Norman, 1985
The moral right of Diana Norman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788635110
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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