looked again at his perfect young body. When I’d finished giving my undeniably wicked eyes their most gorgeous feast since the last one, I rammed the stick hard into his stomach. As he went down spluttering, I kicked him hard in the balls, and gave him a few hard blows to his shoulders. Knees drawn up to his chest, hands covering his face, he cowered whimpering at my feet.
‘Master, Master!’ Wilfred cried behind me. ‘Have you lost your senses? Master, I beg you-’
I wheeled round and cut off the complaint with a poke into his own chest. That had him straight down on the ground, gasping for breath.
‘Don’t you ever presume to question what I do,’ I blazed at the boy. He tried to get up, but fell down again and crawled before me on all fours. I breathed in and then out and counted the beats of my heart. ‘Go back over there,’ I said heavily, ‘and get my clothes ready for when I want them.’
With a frightened wail, Wilfred crawled off to where he’d hung up our clothes to catch the sun. I turned back to Edward, who hadn’t moved.
‘You little snake!’ I snarled softly. I looked down for some conveniently unprotected soft area I could go at again with my stick. He squealed something I didn’t catch and began to cry. ‘You treacherous bag of shit!’ I added, with a hard whack to his buttocks. He screamed with the sudden pain and curled harder into a ball. There were some vicious little stones on this part of the beach, and they were doing to his underside what I was to the exposed areas. With every jerk of his body, he screamed at the double pain. ‘If that soft bugger Hrothgar had known half as much about you as I do, he’d have left you alone in your village to starve – or to drag yourself up into the churl that nature surely intended you to become.’
‘Master, I must insist.’ It was Wilfred again. He’d recovered his nerve and was now pushing himself between me and the terrified Edward. I struck at his face with my free hand. He winced at the pain, but now took hold of both my hands. ‘Put that stick down, Master,’ he insisted with quiet force. ‘You’ll give yourself a seizure.’ He pushed me gently but firmly down on to a convenient boulder and took the stick from my hands.
I did think to knock him aside and set about Edward again. But there was no resisting that unexpected strength, and I could see I’d already produced the effect I wanted. Letting the rage continue would be a waste of effort – and Wilfred might be correct about my own state of health. Already, I had a nosebleed starting. I wiped the blood with a piece of cloth he handed me. I took the cup he’d carried from the boat and drank down the fresh water. I looked again at Edward. He was staring up at me from between spread fingers. I took deep breaths and waited for my heart to stop banging like a smith’s hammer.
Chapter 20
‘Behold our Judas and our double Judas!’ I said ironically to Wilfred. I stared down at Edward, who’d uncoiled and, whimpering, now looked up at me like a beaten dog. ‘Hrothgar saved him. Hrothgar gave him bread. Hrothgar bought him an education. Hrothgar took him away from a land that offered him nothing. At his first opportunity, he got Hrothgar hanged.’
Edward uncoiled slightly and began some attempt at objection.
I silenced him with a cold look and continued. ‘Oh, I’ll grant I have no evidence that he’s the one who got Hrothgar into that gibbet. But I do know that he took a written statement ashore at Cartenna, informing the authorities that His Magnificence Alaric of Britain was on board the ship.
‘Isn’t that so, Edward?’ I asked, with a brief lurch into the direct mode of address. ‘You weren’t happy with promises of your share of the reward when Hrothgar eventually and somehow got the ship to Kasos. You wanted it all for yourself. And you wanted it at the first port of call within the Empire. Isn’t that so?’ I stretched out a foot and kicked him lightly in an exposed part of his belly. He said something muffled that sounded less like a denial than a plea for mercy. But I found that I was overbalancing, and being caught and set right again by Wilfred took away both opportunity and inclination to go beyond my own guesses.
‘The problem with this act of treachery,’ I continued, ‘was that his note wasn’t passed to the right authority until it was too late to do the little rat any good. When I gave him the choice between joining our escape and staying behind to explain what he might have been able to deliver, he chose to stick with us.
‘Even so, he didn’t like that he hadn’t stepped into Hrothgar’s shoes. He hadn’t realised that I’d be the one who took over, and that I’d insist on a fast return home. So, as they worked themselves up into whatever frenzy we’ve just escaped, he made a deal with the northerners. I don’t know what its nature was – brokering my head to the Imperial Government? Promising his arse to whoever might be big enough to save him from the others? I don’t know and don’t care. But we can both be sure he knew what was coming on that boat journey, and it wasn’t his wish to be there with us.
‘Double Judas! And let’s not overlook his treason against Benedict, who took him in, no questions asked, to study in the world’s finest school west of Ravenna. Treble Judas! And, if we include the little matter of Cuthbert, quadruple Judas! And how many others has the boy fucked over in his short life?’
I leaned back into Wilfred’s arms. My nose was bleeding more, and I felt ready to drop. In one day, I’d gone far beyond the limits anyone might have thought my age allowed. Now, it was time to pay the debt incurred and all the heavy interest.
‘Set me on the ground over there,’ I said, pointing to where some rocks made a shadow on the sand. ‘Put me there and get my clothes ready for when I can stand again.’
‘I’d already guessed the same, Master,’ Wilfred said quietly as he tucked my now dry robe about my legs. ‘Edward has grievously sinned. But all we can do now is ask him to repent. I might also suggest’ – he paused and looked for his words – ‘that the text “Let he who is without sin, cast the first stone” might have some value here.’
Though half comatose, I sat up here and looked hard at the boy. He took one proper look at my face and went into another of his coughing fits. He sat down heavily in the sand and clutched miserably at his knees.
‘Wilfred,’ I said sternly once the boy was back in some kind of order, ‘I am aware that what little you know of my life fills you with horror. There are things you don’t know that would make you sit up and stare. But never – never in all my time, not even for reasons of state – have I shat on those who helped me. If I don’t force myself back up to flog that boy to death, it’s only because he saved me in Cartenna. I could argue that he was only rescuing valuable property that he could try selling again later. But I won’t. At the same time, if I’ve had to put up with worse from others in the snake pit of Greek politics, I’ll not put up with behaviour like that from those under my control.’ I let Wilfred help me to my feet and walk me over to where Edward was stretched out and weeping uncontrollably. Forcing myself not to shake with exhaustion, I stared down at him.
‘Get up,’ I commanded him. ‘Go and wash yourself in the sea. It’ll hurt but do you good. Then get dressed. Now that we are free – now that we hold together solely by free choice – I propose to write off all that has happened to date. It cannot be undone or excused. But it can be put out of mind. If my respect means anything at all, you can start earning it from this moment on.’ I went by myself and sat again in the shadow of the rocks. ‘Now go and clean yourself up,’ I said. ‘You might also look how much water that boat has shipped. We may still have need of it.’
‘Do you think, Master, anything he told us was the truth?’ Wilfred asked once we were alone.
I took another sip of water – oh, for a jug of wine! – and wiggled my toes in the sand. I passed him the cup and watched him drink. His own clothes had long since dried off from his cautious dip in the sea. Now, I was looking to see any sign of a sweat. Except when forcing himself to life to attend to my own needs, he was increasingly listless. If I was hoping he’d improve once off the ship, I hadn’t yet seen any evidence.
‘Yes,’ I answered, turning to his question. ‘I do think he’s mostly been telling the truth. I have a good nose for insincerity. He really does know as little about things as he’s said. It’s at least because of ignorance – fear of those drunken beatings may come into it – that he stitched up Hrothgar. Don’t suppose I really hold that betrayal against him. The man had it coming.’
‘But, Master, do you think he was telling the truth about Brother Joseph?’
I smiled at that one. For myself, I hadn’t the slightest doubt Joseph had been on that warship. I could close my eyes and see him standing there, looking across the narrow space of water that separated him from a man who shouldn’t have survived the dark, towering waves of the open sea, let alone have made it so far into Imperial
