Sworn Sword

make out distinct words, even if I did not understand what they meant.

‘Eadgyth-’ I heard the chaplain say, in what sounded like a soothing tone. He was cut off.

‘He is min wer!’ Eadgyth said.

‘“He is my husband,”’ Eudo whispered, as a frown crossed his face.

‘What?’ I said, too loudly, and he waved me quiet. That wasn’t what I had been expecting. He is my husband. Eadgyth’s husband had been Harold, but what did the usurper have to do with this?

‘Hit is ma thonne twegra geara fAece,’ she shouted. ‘For hwon wAere he swa langsum?’

‘Two years,’ Eudo murmured. ‘Something about it being more than two years. The rest I’m not sure.’

It was more than two years since the invasion, I thought. Was that what she meant?

‘Thu bist nithing,’ she screamed, over what sounded like protests from Aelfwold. ‘Thu and thin hlaford!’

Nithing. That word, at least, was familiar. Had not the priest himself used it of us not so long ago?

‘What is she saying now?’ I asked Eudo.

He shook his head as he drew away from the door. On the other side I began to hear footsteps. ‘Quickly,’ he hissed. ‘Let’s go.’

I turned and made for the stairs, but in doing so forgot about the table behind me. I crashed into it, and it shuddered loudly against the floorboards. I stumbled forward, cursing my stupidity. Before I could recover, the door flew open.

Aelfwold stood there. ‘Tancred,’ he said. ‘Eudo.’ He looked confused for a moment, before his face turned to anger. ‘I told you to stay behind.’

I was paying him little heed, however, for behind him was standing the oath-breaker’s wife herself: a woman somewhere in her middle years, although she was not unattractive for that. Slight of build, her complexion was milky-pale, her neck long and graceful as a swan’s. It was not hard to understand what one even such as Harold Godwineson might have seen in her. But her eyes were brimming with tears, her cheeks wet and glistening in the candlelight, and despite myself I felt a sudden stab of sympathy for her. What had the priest said that had driven her to such sadness?

Then I saw that she clutched to her breast a sheet of parchment that curled at the edges, as if holding on to the memory of the scroll it had once been. The same parchment that I had found and read in the priest’s room last night; it had to be. Was that what had distressed her?

‘Why are you here?’ Aelfwold demanded. ‘Were you listening?’

I hesitated, trying to think of some reason I could give, but nothing came to mind. The silence grew, and I felt I had to say something, anything at all just to break it, when anxious shouts rose from the floor below. I looked down the stairs and met the aged eyes of the nun Burginda. She was pointing up at us, and beside her stood Cynehild, the abbess, her gaze fixed unflinchingly upon us.

‘You,’ she called up to us. She raised the skirts of her habit and climbed the steps, the hem just trailing upon the stone. Burginda followed close behind her. ‘You’re not allowed in here. These chambers are for the sisters of the convent alone.’

‘My lady-’ I began to protest, though in truth I could think of nothing to say. For I could hardly tell her why we were really here, and what good would it do in any case?

She reached the top and glanced about the room. ‘Aelfwold,’ she said, in French still, no doubt so that we too could be party to what she had to say. ‘You know that men aren’t allowed in the nuns’ dormitory.’

‘I told them not to come with me,’ he said angrily, and he glared at me. ‘I don’t know what they are doing here.’

A number of other nuns were beginning to gather at the bottom of the stairs, and I spotted amongst them the two sisters we had passed beneath the cloister.

‘I don’t just mean them,’ the abbess said, almost spitting the words. ‘You cannot be here either. This is not a place for any man, even a priest.’

She walked past me and Eudo towards Eadgyth, whose face was streaming with tears, then looked back to us, placing an arm around the lady’s shoulders.

‘You dare to upset the nuns under my care,’ she said, her voice rising. She was speaking to all of us now; her eyes, glinting as if aflame, settled first on the chaplain, then on Eudo, and finally on myself. ‘You dare to come here and disturb the order of this house.’

‘Min hlAefdige-’ Aelfwold began, more gently, almost beseeching, I thought.

The abbess was not to be placated. ‘There will be order in this house,’ she said, raising her voice over the chaplain’s, silencing him. ‘As long as you are here, you will respect that order.’

I bowed my head. None spoke: not myself, nor Eudo or the chaplain, nor the nuns gathered outside the dormitory below.

‘Now,’ the abbess said. ‘Return to the guest house while I decide what is to be done, and consider yourselves fortunate that I’m not expelling you from here forthwith.’

The priest bowed deeply to Eadgyth. Her face reddened, and I thought she might be about to cry once more, but she did not. Instead she clutched at the parchment, crumpling it in her hand, and threw it at the priest, her gaze defiant.

‘Go,’ the abbess said.

The day was not warm but suddenly it felt stifling in that chamber.

‘My apologies, my lady,’ I said to the abbess as I left. But I did not dare meet those fiery eyes again, nor witness the wrath of God contained therein.

Twenty-eight

Throughout the rest of that day the priest said nothing to us. Towards evening one of the nuns arrived with news that the abbess wished to speak to him, and he went to her hall to meet with her. I wondered what they were discussing, for he was gone some time, and it was dark when at last he returned.

While he was gone I spoke with Malet’s men, to see what else they knew, which turned out to be very little. As I had thought, this wasn’t the first time that Malet had sent them here, nor was the name of Eadgyth unknown to them. On the other hand, it seemed that they hadn’t known until now who she was — that this was the same Eadgyth who had been wife to the usurper — and so that at least had been a surprise to them. But still I did not trust them completely; the thought that they had been hiding things from us all this time made me more than a little uneasy.

All six of us were gathered at the long table when the priest came back in, bringing the cold air with him. It played at the hearth-fire and rustled the rushes that lay upon the floor.

‘We’re to leave tomorrow morning,’ he announced, and made for the stairs.

‘Tomorrow?’ I asked. It seemed as though we had hardly arrived, though I supposed that, now we had done what we had come for, there was no reason for us to stay.

He paused for a moment, regarding me with tired eyes. ‘Our business here is done,’ he said. ‘We leave for Lundene at first light, at the request of Abbess Cynehild. She has given us her grace and allowed us to stay this night, but no longer. Make sure that you are ready to leave on the stroke of prime.’

He carried on up the stairs; I watched him go. The abbess had decided, then, that we should leave after all. It didn’t surprise me, for we had broken the rules of the convent, and though I was not proud of that, at the same time neither did I feel particularly ashamed. We had done only what we had to, though I was still unsure what we’d learnt. Nothing of what Eudo and I had heard seemed to have been of much consequence. Except, that was, for Eadgyth’s mention of her husband, Harold. And what was it that she and the priest had been arguing about?

The rest of us retired not much after that. For a while I lay upon my bed, listening to the calls of the owls in the orchard. There had to be some way of finding out, though I could not see it. After I had seen how distressed Eadgyth had become earlier, I could hardly go back, for she would only raise the alarm. And I couldn’t bring myself to force information from a nun.