‘We must go now if at all, lord,’ the girl said. ‘The longer my lady is out, the greater the risk she takes that someone will find her missing.’
I closed my eyes and offered a silent prayer for guidance, but none was forthcoming. The decision was mine to make, and God would not try to sway me.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘Wait here while I fetch my cloak.’
It was not especially cold out, but I could hardly go to meet Beatrice in clothes that were covered in dust from the road, and I had brought no better tunic to wear instead.
I returned to my tent, found the sheath for my knife and buckled my copper-bound scabbard on my waist. I did not know Scrobbesburh, but all towns were dangerous places by night and I wanted to be ready for whatever danger might be lurking. Besides, I felt naked if I went anywhere without some manner of blade with which to defend myself. I lived by the sword, someone had told me once: probably the truest words I had ever heard.
After putting on my boots and my cloak I slipped away again, down to the spot by the river where I’d left Papia. At first I thought she had gone, but then I found her sitting on the ground, her back resting against the trunk of a birch. She stood up as I approached, brushing grass and dirt from her cloak. Her tears had dried and her composure had returned.
‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘Show me the way.’
We headed up the rise towards the maze of shadows and narrow streets, of squat timber houses and long merchants’ halls that made up Scrobbesburh. The only sound I could discern was of men laughing and shouting drunkenly on the other side of town, probably out enjoying the many pleasures of the night.
A dark alleyway branched off from the main thoroughfare, and Papia led me down it. Some of those voices were nearer now, and I heard English words as well as French. Dogs were barking and infants, woken by the noise, began to wail. I wondered what the commotion was about. The girl did not stop, though, but hurried onwards, bunching her skirts in her hands, raising them so that they did not trail in the mud and the clods of cattle dung that littered the street. We turned a corner and then I saw the church. Its stone belfry rose before me, so tall that from the top it must be possible to see for miles in every direction.
‘Lady Beatrice is waiting inside,’ Papia said as we reached the door by the nave. ‘I will keep watch here in case anyone comes.’
I nodded but could not speak as I stared at the door: the only thing now keeping me from Beatrice. I felt a lurch in my stomach, of sickness mixed with anticipation. Taking a deep breath, trying to still my beating heart, I grasped the ring that served as a handle, curling my fingers around the twisted rods of cold iron, turning it until I felt the catch lift.
I pushed. The door opened easily, without so much as a murmur, and before I could think twice, I stepped inside.
Seven
She knelt in front of the altar, her hood drawn back. A small lantern rested on the flagstones beside her, its light falling upon her hair, which shone like spun gold. I pushed the door to behind me, and at the sound of the catch falling into place she glanced over her shoulder. Seeing me, she got hurriedly to her feet, as if startled, nearly knocking over her lantern as she did so.
‘Beatrice,’ I said.
‘I thought you might not come.’
To tell the truth it was not quite the greeting I had been expecting. My footsteps sounded loudly upon the floor-tiles as I crossed the nave towards her. Every heartbeat felt like an eternity.
‘You sent for me and so here I am, my lady,’ I replied in just as neutral a tone. The blood was pounding in my head, making it hard to think properly. Even now I wasn’t entirely sure why I was here. I stopped a few paces short of her. ‘Are we safe?’
I glanced about at the painted stone pillars and the arches between them, searching in the shadows of the side aisle flanking the nave for signs of movement. A narrow gallery ran along one wall, where it would be all to easy to hide. Probably I was being over-anxious, but a part of me still wondered whether this was a snare and I was the unwitting victim who had fallen into it. Even were that not the case, I couldn’t shake the feeling that we were being watched.
‘Of course we’re safe,’ Beatrice said. ‘Do you take me for a fool? Only Papia knows that we are here, and she will say nothing of this to anyone.’
‘Can you be sure of that?’ I asked, though even as I did so I realised it was too late. The time for those kinds of questions had passed.
‘She is the most loyal of all my maidservants,’ Beatrice replied indignantly. ‘I trust her as far as it is possible to trust anyone on this earth.’
I had the feeling that she had said something much like that before, when I had last seen her back in Lundene all those months ago, though I could not recall exactly.
‘You clearly have faith in the girl,’ I said. ‘She is little more than a child, yet you sent her into an army camp by night. Didn’t you think what might happen if someone else found her before me?’
She had been lucky indeed, for if I hadn’t woken when I did, then things might have been very different.
‘Questions would have been asked, I know,’ she said. ‘Still, I would have found some way to answer them.’
‘There would have been more than questions.’ Most knights were men of honour, but for every dozen of them there was bound to be one who, depraved or drunk enough, would not think twice about forcing himself on a girl like Papia, no matter her age.
‘You would rather I hadn’t sent her, then?’ Beatrice said, rounding on me. ‘I did what I did because I had to.’
I frowned. ‘Because you had to?’
She looked away, suddenly embarrassed. ‘Besides,’ she said hurriedly, ‘no harm has been done, and you are here.’
I had not come here to begin a quarrel, yet that was what I had found.
‘Why did you send for me, my lady?’
She looked away, towards the altar. In place of the white gown she had been wearing earlier, she had on a dark blue one under a black cloak trimmed with fur: the better for blending into the night. In that respect at least she had come prepared.
‘I had to speak with you,’ she said. ‘To tell you, although perhaps by now you have already heard the news. I don’t know when it will be. Perhaps not for some weeks or even months yet, with everything that’s happening. Fitz Osbern has agreed to Robert’s proposal-’
‘I know,’ I said with some impatience. ‘Robert told me so himself.’
Stung by my interruption, she turned to face me again, and as the faint light of the lantern-flame shone upon her face I saw tears glistening in the corners of her eyes. Yet she was the one who, in Lundene last year, had turned her back on me. In that moment I realised that whatever her reason for bringing me here tonight, I was not prepared to play these games with her. What love I might have felt for her had been fleeting, sincere at the time but now diminished, a ghost of what it once was.
‘It’s been more than a year since I last saw you,’ she said. ‘You could have come back after Eoferwic. Why didn’t you?’
‘Why?’ I choked back a laugh. ‘You are the sister of my lord. Is that not enough of a reason?’
‘That didn’t stop you before.’
That was true. I had been stupid, and so had she. As in many ways we both were this very night, merely by being in this place together.
‘If we were discovered it would bring disgrace upon the both of us,’ I said, although doubtless it would be worse for her than for me. ‘You know this now, just as you knew it then.’
Even now I kept thinking that someone would come upon us. It wouldn’t have been difficult for someone to follow us here if they had been careful: this town had so many dark corners in which one could hide. If anyone found
