the vicomte of Eoferwic, Guillaume Malet, and against the king.’
A murmur rose up amongst the assembled canons, who until then had been silent, and out of the corner of my eye I saw them exchanging glances with one another. They did not concern me; I was interested only in finding the truth.
‘No,’ the dean said as he backed against the wall. ‘It’s not true. I would n-never speak against the king, I swear!’
‘The dean is a loyal servant of King Guillaume,’ another of the canons spoke up. ‘You have no right to come in here and address him in this way, to accuse him of such things.’
I turned to the one who had spoken: a wiry man not much older than myself. He shrank back under my stare. ‘We won’t leave until we have the answers we’re looking for,’ I said, and then to the rest of them: ‘Go. We will speak with the dean alone.’
He glanced at me, then at Eudo and Wace, whose hands rested upon their sword-hilts in warning.
‘Go, Aethelric,’ Wulfwin said. ‘The Lord will protect me.’
The man called Aethelric hesitated, but at last his better judgement prevailed and he signalled to the rest of the canons. I watched as they filed out of the chamber. Wace closed the doors after the last had left and then set the bar across. I thought it unlikely that any of them would try to disturb us, especially since they knew we all carried swords, but I did not like to have to resort to such threats if I could help it.
Throughout all of this the dean had not moved, as if his feet had somehow taken root where he stood. He watched me with wide eyes as I marched up to him.
‘Tell me, then,’ I said. ‘If you weren’t conspiring, what were you doing?’
‘I w-was only receiving the instructions that Malet had sent me, through his chaplain, Aelfwold. He wanted Harold’s relics removed to another place of his choosing.’
‘He wanted them moved?’ Eudo asked, but I waved him quiet. I would take care of this.
‘P-please,’ the dean said. ‘I have merely been doing as the vicomte asked. I swear I have done nothing wrong.’
‘Where is the usurper’s body now?’ I said. ‘Is it still here?’
Wulfwin shook his head. ‘They took it. The chaplain and two of Malet’s knights came for it last night. I had to arrange for the high altar to be moved, the church floor to be pulled up. The coffin was buried beneath it-’
‘Wait,’ I said, as a memory long buried came suddenly to mind. ‘These two knights. Describe them to me.’
A look of bewilderment crossed his face. ‘Describe them?’
‘We don’t have time for this, Tancred,’ Wace said. ‘What does it matter what they looked like?’
The dean glanced at him, then back at me, uncertain what to do. I glared at Wace. We had been on the road for four days; I had not slept properly since before the battle, and I was not prepared to stand here arguing while Aelfwold put ever more miles between us and him.
‘Think,’ I told Wulfwin. ‘What did they look like?’
The dean swallowed. ‘One was tall, about the same height as him — ’ he pointed at Eudo ‘- while the other was short. I remember the tall one’s eyes, of the kind that you imagine could see right into a man’s soul, with an ugly scar above one of them-’
‘He had a scar?’ I interrupted. That was what I had been waiting to hear. ‘Which eye was it?’
‘Which eye?’ There was a note of despair in the dean’s voice. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘The right one, as you would look at him.’
‘To him it would be his left, then,’ I murmured.
‘How is this important?’ asked Eudo.
‘It’s important because the man who attacked me, that night we arrived in Lundene, had a scar above his eye. His left eye.’
‘There could be hundreds of men with a mark like that,’ Wace pointed out. ‘How can you be sure it’s the same one?’
‘This man,’ I said to the dean. ‘He was unshaven, with a large chin?’
He looked at me in surprise. ‘That’s right,’ he replied.
‘It was him,’ I said, turning to Eudo and Wace. ‘Which means those men were serving Aelfwold all along.’
To have hired them he must have been planning this for some time, I realised. Since before we set off from Eoferwic, at least, and perhaps longer ago than that: since before we’d even met him. Which meant that all this time he had been deceiving us. At last I was beginning to see how everything fitted together. My fingers tightened around my sword-hilt. Not only had the priest lied to me, but his own hired swords had tried to kill me.
I cursed aloud, filling the chamber with my anger. The dean withdrew towards the far wall, his face even paler than before. He was trembling now, his breath coming in stutters, and I wondered if he thought we meant to kill him now that we had our answers.
‘P-please,’ said Wulfwin. ‘I have t-told you all that I know. By God and all his saints I swear it.’
‘It’s all right,’ Wace told him. ‘Our quarrel is not with you.’
Indeed I knew that for all the dean’s squirming, he was not at fault. He was merely unlucky to have been caught up in this business.
‘You were deceived,’ Eudo said. ‘Those weren’t Malet’s knights who came to take Harold’s body away, but sell-swords. And the instructions you received came not from the vicomte but from Aelfwold himself. He is a traitor; we’re trying to stop him.’
‘A traitor?’ A little colour was returning to the dean’s cheeks, but he nevertheless kept his distance. ‘Who, then, are you?’
‘We’ve been sent by Malet from Eoferwic,’ I said, though even as I did so I was aware of how feeble it sounded. ‘We are knights of his household.’
Wulfwin glanced about at each of us. ‘How do I know that you’re speaking the truth?’
‘You don’t,’ I said, no longer caring to keep the ire from my voice. The longer we delayed, the less chance we had of catching Aelfwold. ‘Now tell us: where did they go from here?’
‘I don’t know,’ the dean wailed. ‘I swear I’ve told you everything.’
‘Did they leave by road?’ Wace said.
Wulfwin shook his head. ‘B-by river. We had the coffin carried down to the village, where it was loaded on to a barge they had hired for the purpose. They sailed downstream, but they didn’t say where they were bound.’
‘Where does the river lead?’ I asked.
‘It flows into the Temes, a short way east of Lundene.’
‘And they left this morning?’
The dean nodded hesitantly, as if afraid he might give the wrong answer. ‘It was still dark, an hour or so before first light.’
‘Which means they have only half a day’s start on us,’ Eudo muttered. ‘If we ride hard, we might catch them before they reach the Temes.’
‘If that’s where they’re headed,’ Wace said, his expression grim.
‘I don’t see what choice we have,’ I said. We had but a few hours until night fell, after which time it would be all but impossible to track them. I turned to the dean, still cowering in the corner. ‘We will need your fastest horses.’
‘Of c-course,’ Wulfwin said. ‘Whatever you need.’
I glanced first at Wace, then at Eudo, and saw the resolve in their eyes. Both knew, as did I, that this was our last chance. More than the battle for Eoferwic, more than anything that we had done since HAestinges itself, this was what mattered. For if we failed to catch Aelfwold, if we couldn’t recover Harold’s body-
I drove such doubts from my head; now was not the time for them. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Thirty-eight
The river wound south through the hills, a brown ribbon showing us the way. We did not stop, did not eat, did
