The Splintered Kingdom (12 page)

Trying not to make a sound, I made for the entrance to the tent. The flaps were closed over but not laced up, and I opened them just enough to be able to see through. The stars were out but the moon was behind a cloud; the campfire had died long ago, leaving only gently smoking ash. Of whoever had been here there was no sign. Brandishing my knife in front of me, I ducked my head and ventured out.

The night was indeed cold. I was wearing just my tunic and my trews; I could move more quietly in bare feet and so I left my boots behind. Keeping low, I looked around. Eight tents stood around the fire, of which mine was one, but a few were pitched a short way back from it, and as I rounded the side of my own, I saw a short figure dressed in a black cloak, crouching in the shadows outside Serlo and Pons’s tent not half a dozen paces away.

The figure reached for the flaps, and as he did so I rushed forwards. He heard me coming and started to turn, but I was on him before he could do so, dragging him to his feet, reaching one hand around his torso and clamping it across his mouth, while with the other I brought my blade up towards his throat. The steel gleamed softly in the starlight.

He struggled and tried to cry out, but I was by far the stronger and I held firm, wrenching his head back so that the flat of my blade rested against his skin.

‘Make a sound and I will slit your throat,’ I said.

He couldn’t have been much more than a child, and a scrawny one at that, slight of build and half starved too, I didn’t wonder. A thief, most probably, or else one of the beggars we had passed by the bridge. Either way he had some nerve if he thought to try to steal from men like us.

‘Who are you?’ I demanded. ‘What are you doing here?’

His breath came in stutters as he shuddered, too afraid to answer, and then those shudders turned to tears as he began to sob.

‘Stop crying, boy.’ If he thought he was going to get any sympathy from me, then he was sorely mistaken. ‘Speak.’

‘Don’t k-kill me, lord, p-please.’

I froze in surprise. That was a girl’s voice. I lowered my knife and spun the child around, and as I did so her hood fell from her head and I saw her face. She was the young maidservant who had been with Beatrice earlier, her brown hair shining in the faint light.

‘P-please, lord,’ she said, her face streaming with tears, not daring to meet my eyes.

‘Why are you here?’

But she was sobbing so much that she did not answer. Still in shock, I didn’t doubt. We could not stay here, or someone would soon hear us. With my free hand I grabbed her wrist as I made for the river glittering under the stars. She did not resist, but let me pull her along, until I thought we’d put enough distance between ourselves and the camp that we could talk freely, without having to lower our voices.

‘I’m sorry, lord,’ she said as soon as we had stopped. ‘I didn’t know which one was yours. I didn’t mean to—’

The words came tumbling out and I raised my hand to quiet her. ‘It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. What’s your name?’

She bowed her head. ‘Papia.’

‘You’re one of Lady Beatrice’s maidservants.’

She nodded, still trembling, although at least her tears had ceased flowing now.

‘Do you know who I am?’ I asked.

‘Tancred a Dinant,’ she said, and I saw a lump form in her throat as she swallowed. ‘Seigneur of Earnford and once knight of the Earl of Northumbria, Robert de Commines, may God rest his soul.’

Clearly she knew my face; she must have recognised me from earlier. But my fame was not so widespread that every serving-girl would naturally have heard that I had once served Robert de Commines.

‘Did Lady Beatrice send you?’

Again the girl nodded. ‘She would meet with you tonight, if you wish to see her.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Even as I speak she is waiting for you at the church of St Ealhmund.’

That she would send for me so soon seemed more than a little strange. Even as my heart stirred, suspicions were already forming in my mind. How could I know that this wasn’t some kind of trick?

‘Is she alone?’ I asked Papia.

‘She is alone, lord.’

Of course it was a pointless question, and that was no answer at all, for it was exactly what she would tell me if this were indeed a ruse designed to trap me.

‘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 out we had met here, word would soon get back to Robert, and what might happen then didn’t bear dwelling upon.

Knowing that I was right, she gazed down at the floor-tiles, shaking her head. She had come here holding on to the faintest of hopes, without knowing whether or not they would be fulfilled; without knowing how I would respond. She had taken a chance in more ways than one.

‘It’s strange,’ she said quietly. ‘You’re exactly as I remember you and yet somehow different.’

Whether she meant that as an observation or a slight, I wasn’t sure, although I could see the truth in it. She might have changed little, but I was not the same person as I had been that day in Lundene. Back then it had been only a short while after Dunholm,
where I had lost everything. My lord, my woman and many of my closest comrades had been killed, and without them, without my sword and my horse and my silver, I was nothing. Little more than a year later, however, I had land and a hall and knights of my own. Whereas before I’d had naught to lose and all to gain, now the opposite held true.

I sighed, not knowing what to say. Somehow I had to tell her that this could not go on, that what had once passed between us was now faded into memory, yet the glimmer of affection I still held for her was enough to give me pause while I considered my exact words.

‘Beatrice—’

Before I could continue, a piercing noise from outside broke the stillness: a noise that sounded for all the world like a scream. At the same time there were men’s voices, laughing and shouting loudly enough to wake the whole town. My hand instinctively reached for the knife-hilt at my waist as I turned towards the door, expecting it to open at any moment, waiting for men to come charging in with swords in hand, but they did not.

‘Papia,’ Beatrice whispered, and there was fear in her eyes.

Someone must have followed us, I thought, and now they had found the girl. I cursed myself for not having been more careful even as, blade already in hand, I rushed to the door and flung it open, searching out into the night.

I saw them straightaway. There were five of them, some forty or so paces down the street, barely more than shadows in the darkness. And in their midst I glimpsed the smaller form of the maidservant. She was on the ground, desperately lashing out with her fists and her legs as they tried to pin her down. Two of them were trying to tear her dress from her, while another stood over her, unlacing his braies. The others looked on, swigging from flagons and leather bottles, jeering at the girl and shouting insults in French.