“Well, I hope you’re right,” Emma sniffed. “I really do! But I don’t share your confidence.”
Even Adelia’s confidence faltered when they were mounted and she saw them through Emma’s eyes. It would be hard to find a more ragged-looking bunch of tatterdemalions: Penda in her wolf pelts, a battered crossbow, of all things, slung across her back; Rowley in his shabby hunting garb—his ecclesiastical robes packed away; and Allie in a most unfortunate assembly of homespun. Her only consolation was that, looking the way they did, they were unlikely to attract the attention of any highway robbers who might be at large.
“God send you safe,” she muttered under her breath as she limped over the cobbles to say her good-byes.
“Now, don’t forget,” she whispered when Rowley leaned down from his horse to kiss her, “that in spite of everything, and all your funny little ways, I love you dearly.”
Then she turned to Allie.
“And don’t you forget to send a messenger when you’ve arrived safely. And as soon as this damn ankle’s better I’ll join you.”
Allie grinned. “I will,” she said. “But don’t worry. All will be well.”
A moment later Penda picked up the reins and raised her arm, and they set off.
Adelia stood in the middle of the now-deserted courtyard watching them go, trying to remember when she had last felt quite so lonely.
“Indulgent nonsense,” she muttered to herself, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. She was about to head back into the house when Emma grabbed her arm and pointed tremulously at the large black crow following the riders into the forest.
“Look, ’Delia,” she gasped. “It’s a harbinger.”
Adelia froze and, for a moment, felt her blood run cold.
“I don’t believe in harbingers, Emma,” she snapped, brushing her hand away. “I refuse to!” But as she limped back to the house chuntering irritably under her breath, she couldn’t quite dispel an unaccustomed sense of foreboding.
Chapter 9
Penda rode like a woman possessed. The merciless pace reminded Rowley—and not pleasantly—of his days charging across England with Henry Plantagenet, who had been equally ruthless with his retinue, except that he had charm, whereas this woman did not, or certainly not as far as he could tell.
She was a very different creature this morning, he thought, studying her irritably from his place at the back of the cavalcade. All the charm and conciliation of yesterday were a distant memory now that she had gotten what she wanted. And that determined little mouth, which had been all smiles and moues until she had gotten her own way, was set firm now, like a small gash across her face.
With little else to think about, and to distract him from his buttocks—still aching from the day before—he had plenty of time to consider the person to whom he was about to entrust his daughter and was beginning to wonder whether he might have been a little rash.
That she was peculiar was obvious from the moment he clapped eyes on her, but it wasn’t only her appearance he found outlandish. There was something disconcertingly unfeminine about both her deportment and her demeanor, and there were times when she was so unapologetically, almost deliberately masculine that he was shocked.
And yet, he had to admit, though grudgingly, that there was a good deal more to her than met the eye. She had surprised him more than once this morning, first by revealing—and most unusually for a woman of the Fens—that she understood and spoke perfect Norman French.
He had been having a discussion with Allie in French about the unusual route they were taking when Penda—who had spent most of the journey gabbling away to her men-at-arms in English, or at least the thick, impenetrable dialect that passed for English in the Fens—surprised him by interrupting.
“We’re going this way!” she barked at them over her shoulder. “Because the bridge’s down at Emm Brook. We got caught up there on the way over.”
And there was something else:
When he had seen her climbing into her saddle with a crossbow, of all things, he assumed it was another of her sartorial eccentricities, a bit like those dreadful wolf pelts she wore, but as the day went on, and he saw how she handled the weapon, slipping it with the instinct and dexterity of a battle-hardened mercenary from her shoulder to the pommel of her saddle whenever they passed through outlaw terrain, he realized that, on the contrary, she was an arbalist of some skill. And since he had spent considerable time in the company of the breed, he knew one when he saw one.
So by the end of the morning, he had to concede that although not terribly likeable, she was intriguing, and at least she would indeed be able to protect Allie as she had promised. That was something in her favor at least.
Allie, on the other hand, seemed quite taken with her. He watched her heels nag at her palfrey’s sides all morning, coaxing it to keep up with Penda’s, chattering away like an old friend when it did . . . And yet, despite knowing it was churlish and feeling a little ashamed of himself, he found her affection for this peculiar stranger had the effect of putting him off the woman even more.
They stopped only once, around noon, to rest their horses and help themselves to the provisions Emma had managed to smuggle past Penda. One of the men-at-arms lifted a large saddlebag off one of the sumpter ponies, from which he produced several flasks of ale, a large cheese, a ham, some smoked trout and four loaves of bread. As soon as it had been gratefully and greedily devoured, Penda—who appeared to have even less respect for the digestive process than Henry Plantagenet—gave the signal and they set off again!
She pushed them even harder after lunch, so that the discomfort of the morning bled, quite literally in Rowley’s case, into an equally uncomfortable afternoon cantering down a succession of boggy tracks. His only solace was his earlier insistence that they spend that night with his old friends Lord and Lady Da Port at Chewton Manor, where they were certain to find good food and comfortable mattresses.
Chapter 10
“My lord bishop!” The gatekeeper at Chewton was delighted to see Rowley. “A pleasure to see you again, my lord! Welcome, welcome.”
He doffed his cap and turned to a young man waiting in the shadows. “Quick as you please, Enulf, lad. Mustn’t keep our lord bishop waiting!”
Moments later, the young man’s shoulder hefted to the winch and the heavy apparatus of the portcullis lifted, admitting them to a vast outer bailey where several grooms were waiting to take their horses.
Just as Rowley had hoped, the Da Ports’ hospitality was as prompt as it was lavish, and soon they were seated at a table in the hall, where a trout of biblical proportions, festooned with almonds, was laid out on a plate in front of him.
“Fresh from the pond this afternoon, Rowley, dear,” Lady Alice told him, amused by his ill-concealed admiration of it. “It was a devil of a job crowning it by all accounts, but I knew you, of all people, would appreciate it.”
It turned out to be such a convivial evening that Rowley even began to thaw toward Penda. Now that he was no longer in any discomfort and his belly was full, she didn’t seem quite so bad—and, during the musical interlude, he even felt generous enough to initiate a conversation.
“Lady Penda,” he said, leaning across the table to her, “it seems to me that it is a rather strange business, and, I should add, a matter of some regret, that our paths have never crossed before. After all, Adelia and I—Allie, too, of course—have spent a great deal of time in the Fens with Gyltha over the years and yet we’ve never met.”
If he’d expected gratitude for the overture, he didn’t get it. Instead Penda looked at him long and hard above the rim of her cup, took a large swig of whatever it held and wiped her mouth indecorously with the back of her hand. Just as he was about to give up hope, she replied.
“Not so strange as you might think in actual fact, my lord. Gylth and I spent most of our lives apart from one another. We was separated when we was little an’ it took a long time for me to find ’er again.”
&
nbsp; “Oh,” said Rowley, disconcerted by the response and wondering how best to proceed, and, indeed, whether or not he wanted to, when a distant memory sputtered to life and the fragments of a story he had once heard returned . . .
“Oh,” he said again.
For the life of him he couldn’t remember the details, nor, indeed, whether he had heard it from Adelia or Gyltha herself, but he knew that it was an intrinsically sad tale, something to do with the Anarchy—that vicious war of accession between the empress Matilda and King Stephen, during which, according to those who had been unfortunate enough to have lived through it, God and his saints had slept.
“I see,” he said, shifting uncomfortably, anxious to change the subject, when it suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t have to, that Penda’s attention had drifted through and beyond him as though into a distant nightmare from which she wouldn’t return for a while.
Chapter 11
The next morning, when they had assembled in the bailey, ready to leave, a messenger arrived with a letter for Rowley bearing the Count of Mortain’s seal.
“What does it say?” Allie asked, alarmed by his expression of trepidation when he received it.
“How should I know? I haven’t had a chance to read it yet,” Rowley replied, spinning away from her for privacy, his eyes rapidly scanning the parchment: “Bugger! Just as I thought.”
“Well?” she asked impatiently, standing on tiptoe, trying to read it over his shoulder.
Rowley sighed and turned around reluctantly to read it out. “It says: ‘Our best-beloved Rowley, Bishop of St. Albans, greetings from John, Count of Mortain, Lord of Ireland—’”
“Yes, yes,” she snapped. “I got that bit, I think I know who it’s from! I want to know what it says!”
He took a deep breath and returned to the parchment. “Well . . . ,” he continued. “It says: ‘Tell your impertinent, infernally impatient daughter to keep her pretty nose out of other people’s business . . .’”
“That’s not funny.” Allie scowled.
“I thought it was,” said Rowley. “But, very well, if you insist . . . What it actually says is . . . Oh, God’s teeth! I haven’t got time to read the bloody thing again . . . It’s the summons I’ve been expecting . . . to go to St. Paul’s—the council I told you about for the wretched Longchamp business—and it means that I can’t come to the Fens . . . or, not immediately, anyway.”
Although Allie didn’t say anything, he was pleased to see that she looked disappointed. Perhaps she was going to miss him after all.
“Come along!”
Penda had already mounted and was impatient to leave, and as soon as they were aboard their horses, she set off at a trot toward the gatehouse, only this time Rowley made sure that he rode beside her. Now that he was leaving, there were certain things he wanted to establish.
“Not to put too fine a point on it, Lady Penda,” he said, “but you will promise to guard my daughter with your life, won’t you?”
She nodded. “I will indeed,” she said. “No need to worry on that count, my lord; ain’t nothing going to happen to her while she’s in my care.”
“Thank you,” he said, and they rode in silence for a while until he remembered something else.
“And that other business,” he said, glancing nervously over his shoulder to make sure Allie wasn’t in earshot; he still felt guilty about the subterfuge. “This, erm, this introduction to Lord . . . er . . . whatshisname . . . the fellow you mentioned at Wolvercote. You will endeavor to make it as you promised, won’t you?”
Penda glanced sideways at him with, he thought, a rather sardonic look in her eye. “If that’s what you want,” she said. “After all, what is it they say? ‘Better to marry than to burn.’ Ain’t that right?”
She was smiling as she said it and perhaps hadn’t intended the barb, but it struck him nonetheless, stinging him into silence for a while.
Of course, he wanted Allie married off—as any father would—and although the alternative terrified him and he didn’t want to countenance it, he refused to believe it extended to the fires of hell and bitterly resented her implication that he might.
“And you, madam?” he asked when he recovered. “You are married, I presume?” After all, she must have been. She was in possession of a title that could only have been conferred by marriage.
To his surprise, though, she shook her head. “Nope,” she said.
“Widowed then?”
Again she shook her head, and to his even greater surprise, she started laughing. “Nope,” she repeated, shoulders shaking with mirth. “Never married. Never wanted to and . . . now, you’d best hold tight to them reins of yours, my lord, ’cause this’ll come as a terrible shock . . .” She was so convulsed at this point that she almost fell off her horse. “Ain’t never been asked neither!”
Clutching her sides, bent double over her horse’s neck, she was laughing so infectiously that, despite himself, Rowley started laughing, too.
“Well, well, madam,” he said, thrusting his arm out to grab the reins she had dropped. “That is indeed a shock, and, if I may say so, enough to make one weep for whatever it is that ails the eyesight of the men of England!”
From the back of the cavalcade Allie looked on, bemused. She was pleased to see them enjoying one another’s company at last but couldn’t imagine what on earth had caused them such amusement.
Chapter 12
The Fens
“We’ll crown a few jacks today, won’t we, Arthur?” Tom looked up reverently at the boy beside him, who, a few months older and substantially taller than his peers, commanded a certain respect in the hierarchy of boys, especially on fishing expeditions like these, because he also possessed the water wisdom of an otter.
“Shh!” Arthur cowed him with a look, his finger pressed to his lips.
He had taken them on a shortcut through the abbey gardens and was anxious not to attract the attention of the monks, who disapproved of trespassers.
“Hurry,” he hissed at Will, the third member of the party, who, as usual, was lagging behind, making heavy weather of the dead heron he was dragging, complaining bitterly about it under his breath:
It wasn’t fair! He hadn’t wanted to bring the bloody thing and didn’t see why it was he who had to carry it, but Arthur had insisted, thanks to some stupid idea about heron fat being magic and rubbing some on your line meant you’d catch more fish. Well, they’d have to catch a lot of bloody fish to make up for this! Bloody herons!
“Come on!” Ignoring Will’s chuntering, Arthur grabbed Tom’s puny wrist, pulling him past the dreaded kitchen garden latrines that the monks had dug to enrich their vegetables. The odeur de merde emanating from them was almost overwhelming, and because it haunted the boys’ olfactory memories from previous visits, they had all been holding their noses for longer than was good for them . . .
“Is it safe yet, Arthur?” Tom asked, pinching his nostrils so tightly that his voice sounded stuffy and peculiar.
Arthur let go of his and gave a cautious sniff, then immediately clapped his hand over his face again.
“Bit longer yet,” he said.
They scurried on, holding their breath and noses as though their lives depended on it until they were safely through the gardens and out into the meadow.
“Phew!” Tom gasped, bent double, small hands clutching his knees, as he greedily gulped down the fresh air.
Arthur did the same. “Tha’s better,” he said, standing upright again.
“’S’all right for you.” Will had caught up by now and was glaring morosely at the dead bird at his feet. “This thing stinks worse than them latrines.”
“Give it here.” Arthur snatched the string out of his hand. “I’ll take it. And I won’t make such a fuss neither. Here . . . ,” he said, shoving the eel glaive he’d been carrying at him instead. “You can carry this. Can’t ’spect me to do everythin’.” Then he spat contemptuously into the grass and set off again, complaining bitte
rly to himself about ingratitude, the nature of responsibility and the burden of leadership, and wondering where they would be without him: lost, most likely, in the great forests of rush and sedge, and even if, by some miracle, they were able to find their way on their own—which he very much doubted—without his superior knowledge to guide them through the secret pathways of the marsh they’d drown in the bogs that lurked there, deep enough to suck in a horse and rider, let alone two stupid little boys.
All that and they expected him to carry the equipment, too!
“Come on, you lazy pillards,” he called back over his shoulder. “I ain’t telling you again!”
He wouldn’t, either. He was too tired for patience this morning. Last night he had slept badly, plagued by the nightmares Cousin Hawise’s story had inspired, so if they didn’t hurry up he would leave ’em where they stood, and sure as eggs were eggs, they’d probably never get found again. Besides, it was a long time since they had come this way, and in their absence, the cold had crept in like a thief, stripping the place of its foliage and altering the landscape entirely so that the naked willow and alder branches stuck out at harsh, unfamiliar angles and made it look like a foreign land.
For a moment even he was confused. He stopped briefly to get his bearings just as a wavering, soughing bank of birds half a mile long swept in from the North Sea.
He looked up at the sky and saw the rheumy outline of the moon, pale and milky like an old man’s eye . . . Like God’s eye!
The idea that God himself might even now be fixing on him like a hawk on a mouse made him shiver beneath his heavy sheepskin mantle and hurry on toward the river.
Chapter 13
Brother Gilbert, Ramsey Abbey’s infirmarian, was equally suspicious of the moon that morning and was staring at it ruefully through the solar window at Elsford Manor.
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