‘Godric’s learning his place,’ I said. The old saying came to mind. Men might govern the world, but it is women who govern those men. So it had always been, and so it would continue to be.
Having finished my bowl as well as his own, Serlo leant back and gave a loud belch. ‘What do we do now, then, lord?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘If I did, don’t you think we’d be doing it, instead of sitting here in this dank place?’
We had, as I saw it, two choices. The first of those was to hole up here for a few more days while tempers in the Malet household cooled, and then return to Heia with heads bowed once Robert’s mood had had a chance to soften.
‘How long might that take, though?’ Pons asked when I suggested this. ‘Even with Lords Eudo and Wace interceding on your behalf?’
‘If you think about it, Robert’s done you a favour,’ Serlo added.
‘A favour?’ I echoed. ‘How is this a favour?’
‘How many men saw you strike Guibert down, lord?’
I shrugged. ‘Fifty? Sixty? More even than that, maybe.’
‘And how many of those would have been willing to swear oaths to the same effect, had Robert made you stand trial for his killing?’
I saw what the big man was getting at. While undoubtedly a few of them would argue on my behalf, most were no friends of mine and would probably take great pleasure in bringing about my demise, not least Elise.
‘In your absence they’ll all be clamouring for your head, lord, and not just Guibert’s companions and hearth-knights, but also his kin, once news of what happened reaches them.’
Pons nodded. ‘By letting you walk free, Robert has denied them justice. Unless he’s willing to recompense them by paying the blood-price from his own treasure chests, he’ll come under ever more pressure in the coming days to seek you out and bring you before the shire court.’
I groaned and buried my face in my palms. I’d almost come to terms with the idea of prostrating myself before Robert and begging his forgiveness, much though it grated with me. But Pons and Serlo were right. Were I to return to Heia, I would be delivering myself into the hands of those who sought to destroy me.
‘I’m not saying that Lord Robert can’t be won round, but it will take some time, if it happens at all,’ Pons said. ‘Weeks, perhaps.’
Patience had never been one of my virtues, and I wasn’t prepared to stay here that long while we waited for news to arrive, even if funds would allow it. For my coin-pouch was growing lighter by the day. Altogether the stabling, lodgings and broth had cost me five of the little silver pennies — far more than it should have done, but this seemed to be the only alehouse in this mud-ridden town, and so it had been a choice between meeting the innkeeper’s price or else sleeping in a ditch. I had barely a fistful of silver left, some in ingots and small pieces broken off from arm-rings, and the rest in the form of coins, although many of those had already been clipped to pay for food and horseshoes and other small items over the past few months.
Fortunately Godric had had enough wit about him to gather, as well as his own pack, the saddlebags that contained most of my belongings, including the drinking horn that Malet had gifted me, so I was not quite reduced to the clothes on my back. Not yet, at least. But in the rush to leave Heia we’d been forced to leave behind our tents and our sumpter ponies and anything else we could not gather quickly. That included my sword, which I’d left in the safekeeping of the door-ward at Robert’s hall, although Godric had managed to bring my mail and helmet as well as his own, as had the others. Still, once divested of our hauberks and chausses, we didn’t much look like a noble lord and his retinue but more like a band of ragged pilgrims. My clothes were torn from the fight, my trews and boots, themselves desperately in need of repair, were caked in mud and filth, while a bright bruise had blossomed high on my cheek, or so the others told me, although I had no idea how that had happened.
‘In the meantime I suppose there’s only one place we can go,’ I said, and both Serlo and Pons nodded. I sighed. ‘With any luck all this uproar will have died down by the time we get there.’
‘We can but pray, lord,’ said Pons.
‘Where are we going?’ Godric asked.
‘Home,’ I replied, by which, of course, I meant Earnford. We’d been away so long. The barley was still green in the fields when we’d ridden out to answer the king’s summons more than three months ago. Now the harvest would be in. I yearned to be back there, to see its hills and the river winding between the wide pastures, to sleep under my own roof, in my own hall.
I only hoped that Robert’s men didn’t get there first.
That worry continued to plague me over the following days, as we made the long journey from East Anglia to the Marches. Assuming that Robert didn’t go back on his decision to expel me from his service, then sooner or later he would come to take back possession of his lands. For the truth was that, for all that I’d come to think of Earnford as my own, I only held it as his tenant. My hall, my home, belonged by right to him. Without his lordship, I had nothing.
With that in mind we rode hard, or as hard as we could, given both the state of the roads, which were clogged with mud after the recent rains, and the poor directions offered by other travellers and field labourers whom we passed. From Gipeswic we sought out the old Roman way that led to Lundene, where the talk was of the king’s victory over the rebels at Elyg and the fleet he was said to be assembling for the expedition to Flanders. We stayed the night in an inn outside the walls, so as to avoid the murage and pavage that all travellers entering the city were now required to pay. Even so, I had to argue at length with the innkeeper before he would finally agree upon a sensible price. Probably he took us for bandits or outlaws, which I supposed was fair considering our unkempt, dirt-stained clothes, our unshaven chins and the weapons we carried, and that was why at first he demanded so much, but eventually I was able to secure us beds for the night. At least the place was in slightly better repair than the inn at Gipeswic, with solid timber walls that kept out the cold and a roof that didn’t leak, which meant that when we left the next morning we were a little more rested.
From Lundene we made west along the valley of the Temes as far as Oxeneford, after which we struck out along winding paths in the direction of the market town of Wirecestre, where we crossed the wide Saverna River and obtained directions to Leomynstre from a travelling monk who knew the country well. Day after day we woke at dawn and travelled until dusk, spending the nights in alehouses, in the guest houses of monasteries where they would take us, and, when there was no other shelter to be found, in abandoned cattle barns. And so it was that, on the tenth day after we had first set out from that draughty alehouse in Gipeswic, on the edge of the grey German Sea, we found ourselves, tired and cold and sodden and hungry, riding the familiar tracks that would bring us home, at last, to Earnford.
We rode through a land wrought in bronze and gold. The woodland paths were thick with leaves that rustled beneath our mounts’ hooves, while beneath us through the swaying boughs I could make out the river sparkling silver in the afternoon sun, showing us the way. The skies were clear, the day bright, and I hoped that was a happy portent, though of course I didn’t believe in such things.
Before long we were able to spy the turning wheel of the mill, which marked the eastern edge of my lands. Sheep grazed contentedly by the riverbanks, and a broad-shouldered man who could only be Nothmund the miller was busily hauling sacks of grain down from the back of a cart and in through the wide doors. So far there was no sign of anything amiss.
We kicked on down the slope and across the ford by the rickety wooden bridge that, with all the rebuilding elsewhere, no one had found the time to repair, towards the mill and towards Nothmund. At the sound of our hoofbeats he stopped in his tracks, letting the sack he was carrying fall to the ground as he regarded us warily, and it was only right that he did so, for it wasn’t often that mounted men came to Earnford.
‘Lord!’ he exclaimed when we grew closer and he saw who we were, and there was both relief and joy in his voice. He shouted into the mill-house, in his own tongue: ‘Gode, get out here, woman!’
His plump wife appeared at the doorway, the sleeves of her dress rolled up to her elbows, her round face creased in indignation, but her expression changed the moment that her gaze settled upon me.
‘Is it you, lord?’ she asked, as if she couldn’t quite believe her eyes. ‘Is it really you?’
‘It’s me, Gode,’ I said, and managed a smile, though it wasn’t nearly as broad as the grin upon Nothmund’s face.
‘It’s been too long, lord,’ he said as he reached up to clasp first my hand, then those of Serlo and Pons. He glanced in the direction of Godric and Eithne, who rode behind us, but if he was curious at all about them, he said
