Sworn Sword

as his chaplain I am privy to. But you are not. You are just a knight, a sworn sword. You are nothing more than a servant!’

I was about to open my mouth to reply — to say that as leader of this party how could it not be my business too — but his last remark stirred a fury inside me, and it was all I could do to restrain myself.

‘Leave me,’ Aelfwold said, his face scarlet. ‘Go and rejoin your men. We ride again tomorrow at dawn. I don’t want to see any of you until then.’

I hesitated, searching for something to say, but I could find no words to convey my disgust at him. Just a knight, a sworn sword. Nothing more than a servant-

‘Leave,’ he repeated.

Casting a final glare at him, I turned, slamming the door behind me.

Twenty-four

The following day passed in relative quiet. I did not speak to the chaplain and he did not speak to me, instead keeping his gaze on the way ahead as long as we were on the road. The few times that I met his eyes, they held only disdain. But if he expected me to offer him an apology, he would be disappointed, for I had said nothing that hadn’t been deserved.

And yet I was still no closer to understanding what his business was with this nun Eadgyth; what was so important that Malet would send his men halfway across the kingdom? The fact that she was the widow of the usurper was significant, it seemed to me, though in what way I could not work out. At least I had managed to glean that much from the priest, whose determination to tell us as little as possible was sorely testing my patience. There would be answers once we reached Wiltune; I would make sure of that.

I told the others none of this, for I was still angry with them. Angry with Eudo, who after his words to me about trust had only betrayed mine in him. Angry with Radulf, who had caused the commotion in the first place. Angry with Wace, whom I had thought would have had more sense. I did not see that they deserved to know what I had learnt. In any case, it would not be long before we were on our way back to Lundene, and thence on to Eoferwic. If it was battle that they wanted, then they would get their chance soon — so long as Malet still held out, I reminded myself.

Hills rose and fell before us like creases upon the fabric of the earth, each valley a tapestry of green and brown, interwoven with silver threads where streams wound their course. Once or twice we spotted deer amidst the trees in the distance, their bodies rigid as statues, watchful heads turned towards us, though most of the time we didn’t see them until they came darting across the road in front of us: three or four, even five at a time, all in a line, bounding one after another.

And still the ancient way went on, stretching seemingly without end into the west. Such tremendous builders the Romans must have been, I thought, for their works to remain standing after so many centuries. And yet, as the chaplain had pointed out, even they were made to suffer God’s wrath; even they had left this island in the end.

It was evening when we finally left the road, at a place Aelfwold called Searobyrg. Whatever his reason for meeting this nun, he was clearly anxious about it, for he kept looking at the position of the sun between the clouds, then back at us, telling us to keep up the pace, even though we’d been making good progress that day. That he was feeling the burden of our company was obvious, though probably like us he was simply eager for our journey to come to its end. It had been eleven days since Malet had sent us from Eoferwic, and apart from those two nights we had spent in Lundene, we had been travelling all that time. Of course it was nothing compared to the kinds of marches we had endured on campaign, but an army travels slowly, rarely more than fifteen miles from sunrise to sunset, whereas on some days we must have covered more than thirty miles. It was not a pace that could be sustained for long, especially for one unused to long periods in the saddle, as I suspected the priest was.

As the Roman road turned away to the south, then, we headed west, into the setting sun. The cart-track we followed was rutted and ill travelled, and it took us some time to make our way through the woods; by the time we emerged again the sun had gone completely. Amidst streaks of purple cloud the evening star shone brightly, and beneath it, rising out of the gloom in the depths of the valley, was a church, built of stone with three towers rising to the sky. Around it, a cluster of buildings formed a square cloister. One had smoke rising from it, and that was surely a kitchen; nearby stood a long two-storeyed hall which might have been a dormitory.

Wiltune. And so at long last we had arrived.

There was no wind, almost no sound at all. I gazed down upon the church’s towers, silhouetted against the fiery skies with the mist settling around their lower courses, and as I did so, something of the serenity of the sight touched me. It was a feeling I had known before, brought up from the very depths of my memory, more intimate than anything else in the world. The feeling that I was in the presence of God himself.

Only then did I realise how many years had passed since I’d last set foot in a monastery. Now I was to go there once more, except that this time I was no longer a boy, but rather a man who had knowingly fled that path, who had rejected the ideals of poverty, chastity and obedience which had been laid out before him.

A shiver ran through me. Yet I had served God with heart and mind in everything that I had done since I’d left. Why did I still feel guilty?

‘Tancred,’ Aelfwold called sharply. He was some way down the track, and I realised I had stopped, the other knights behind me, waiting.

‘Come on,’ I said to them as I followed the chaplain down the muddy hillside. My cross weighed heavy around my neck, the silver cold as it pressed against my chest.

I inhaled again, letting the earthy scent of the evening air fill my lungs as I tried to rid my mind of such thoughts. We were here with the priest, I reminded myself: here to make sure he delivered Malet’s message, whatever that was. Until we returned to Lundene, I could not afford to be thinking about anything else.

I gritted my teeth, concentrating on the track before me. All that could be heard was the faint kew-wick of an owl somewhere off to our right. In the distance, beyond the convent, fires were being lit, for I could see their smoke rising into the steadily darkening heavens.

The nunnery itself was ringed by a wide ditch and low wattle-work fence, both of which ran all the way down to the river to the south. The entrance was defended by a stout gatehouse of dressed stone, of the kind I might have expected to see at the manor of a lord, not at a house of God. From beneath its archway shone a single feeble light; a number of figures, all in dark vestments, were closing over two great oak doors.

‘Onbidath!’ Aelfwold called to them, waving his hand above his head as he pulled ahead of us. ‘Onbidath!’

The gates stopped and a woman’s voice replied in English. I glanced at Eudo, in case he had managed to make anything out, but he only shrugged.

‘Ic bringe Aerendgewrit sumre nunfAemnan,’ the chaplain said as he stopped his horse on the cobbles before them.

‘He says he brings a message for one of the nuns,’ Eudo murmured.

I rode forward, motioning for him to follow. Three nuns stood in the gateway, each dressed in a brown habit. The one Aelfwold was speaking to was holding a lantern, and the light flickered across her lined face. She was shaking her head, gesturing up towards the east, where the sky was turning an inky blue.

‘Tomorgen,’ the nun said. Then she saw us riding up behind him, and drew back inside the half-closed gates. She was a round woman, and short, with a gaze like a falcon’s, watchful and sharp.

‘Ic wille hire cwethan nu,’ the chaplain said, in a stern tone.

‘He wants to be allowed to enter now, I think,’ Eudo said. ‘She’s telling us to return in the morning.’

The nun looked nervously up; the chaplain turned and saw us there, and straightaway raised his hands in what I took for a calming gesture. ‘Ic eom preost; ic hatte Aelfwold,’ he said, producing a wooden cross from his cloak pocket. ‘Me sende Willelm Malet, scirgerefa on Eoferwic.’

There was a moment of silence, before the nun repeated, ‘Willelm Malet?’ She turned to one of the other women, taller and more youthful in appearance. The two conversed in their own tongue before the younger one hurried away somewhere inside the compound.