Ælfwold rose. ‘The escort given to me by my lord,’ he explained, replying likewise in French.
‘Guillaume Malet,’ she said, and I thought I detected a hint of scorn in her voice, though I was not sure.
If there was, the chaplain did not seem to notice. ‘Indeed, my lady.’
The abbess looked pensive for a moment, then she turned her gaze towards the rest of us, as if inspecting us. ‘You look surprised,’ she said to me. ‘Why is this?’
I hadn’t realised it was so obvious. ‘You speak French well,’ I said, not out of politeness but because it was the truth. In fact she spoke it remarkably well, as only someone who hailed from the country would. Or at least, one who had spent a good many years in French company.
‘And that surprises you?’ she asked.
‘Only because I’m not used to hearing it from English lips,’ I answered, choosing my words carefully.
‘Yet Ælfwold here speaks it just as well as I.’
‘His lord is a Norman,’ I said with a shrug. That seemed to me plain; how could she not understand that?
‘Then, by that same measure,’ she said, with a smile that spoke of quiet victory, ‘should not the whole of England be French-speaking, since we are all subjects of our liege-lord, King Guillaume?’
I felt my cheeks turn hot. It seemed to me that I was being put to the test, for some reason that I could not discern. ‘Yes, my lady,’ I replied, not knowing what else I could say.
She frowned, keeping her gaze upon me.
‘My lady,’ Ælfwold spoke up, and for once I was thankful for his interruption. ‘I’m here—’
‘—to speak with the lady Eadgyth,’ she finished for him, turning her eyes away from me at last. ‘Yes, I had thought as much.’
‘To pass on a message from my lord, if you will allow,’ the priest said, unperturbed.
The abbess nodded. ‘It would be hard for me to deny you. Unfortunately at present she isn’t here, but in Wincestre.’
‘In Wincestre?’ Ælfwold was silent for a moment, his eyes closed as if in thought. ‘How long ago did she leave?’
‘A week ago, perhaps.’
‘But she will return soon?’
‘Tomorrow or the day after, I should expect,’ she said. ‘You are welcome as always to stay here until she does.’
Her words gave me a jolt. I was right; the chaplain had been to Wiltune before.
‘That’s most kind,’ Ælfwold said.
The abbess gave a thin smile that quickly retreated. ‘It is no more than what’s expected. You will, of course, remain in the guest house at all times,’ she said, and she glanced around at all of us as she did so.
‘I understand,’ the chaplain replied.
I gave a start as suddenly bells began to ring: a deep, long tolling which seemed to come from all around. The door opened and the same nun who had greeted us on our arrival appeared again, making her way carefully to the abbess’s side, where she whispered in her ear.
The abbess murmured something in reply, and then drew herself up. ‘I am afraid I must leave you now for compline,’ she said. ‘However, if you would all follow Sister Burginda’ – she gestured towards the nun – ‘she will lead you to your quarters. I will see to it that food and drink is brought to you once the service is over.’
‘Thank you,’ Ælfwold said, bowing.
‘My lady,’ I said, nodding respectfully towards the abbess, as I allowed the others to leave first.
She looked back, her eyes fixed without feeling upon me, until the rest had all filed out and I myself turned and followed, out into the blue twilight.
Twenty-five
NIGHT HAD SETTLED
quickly across the convent. Beyond the hills to the west there was only the faintest of glows, and even that was fading, while to the east the stars were already beginning to emerge.
A line of nuns, about twenty or so in number, proceeded in double file across the central cloister towards the church. Some of them held small lanterns and I could see their faces in the soft light. There were women of all ages: a few wrinkled and ancient, half shuffling, half stumbling on their way; and others, helping them along, who looked barely older than the girl who had met us in the abbess’s house. We waited until they had gone by, before the one the abbess had called Burginda led us away from the cloister, towards an orchard.
The other knights were murmuring and grinning amongst themselves, I noticed.
‘What is it?’ I said, though I guessed who it was they were smirking at, after the way the abbess had managed to discomfit me.
To my right, Wace only smiled and shook his head, while behind me I thought I heard Radulf snigger. Another time, I might have found it amusing, but I was only too aware of where we were. Every one of the nuns I’d seen had her head bowed, and not one had been speaking.
I glared in warning. After what had happened the night before, I didn’t want another argument with the priest. But he and Burginda were some way ahead of us, and the bells were chiming so loud that I doubted he could hear.
On the other side of the orchard stood a long hall, surrounded
by a wattle-work fence – there to set it apart from the rest of the convent, I supposed. Burginda set down her lantern by the door and reached inside a leather pouch fastened to her belt, producing a key. It gleamed in the light of her lantern as she put it into the lock and gently twisted. The door swung open without a sound. Within, the hall was dark. The nun picked up her lantern and went inside, followed by the rest of us. Orange light played across the walls, revealing a long rectangular table, a hearth with copper cooking pots beside it, a set of stairs at the rear.
Hardly were we all inside before Ælfwold turned on me. ‘When I speak with Eadgyth, I will do so alone,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I won’t have you always watching over me.’
‘Your lord made me swear an oath to protect you,’ I replied. ‘I am only following his instructions.’ It was not much of an answer, and I knew it.
‘I don’t need your protection,’ he snapped. ‘This is a place of God. What possible harm do you think will befall us here?’ He turned his back on me as he made for the stairs.
He was right, of course, though I didn’t like to admit it. ‘So what do we do now?’ I called after him. ‘Do we just wait here until she returns?’
‘There is nothing else we can do.’
‘We could ride on to Wincestre and see if we can find her there,’ Wace suggested.
‘And what if she’s left by the time we arrive?’ the priest asked.
Wace shrugged. ‘Then we might meet her on the road.’
Wincestre was not far, and it would take only a few hours to get there – a little longer by dark, perhaps, but even so, if we left now and rode hard we could surely get there before daybreak. Although that would mean even longer in the saddle.
‘This isn’t for you to decide,’ the chaplain said.
‘Wace is right,’ I said.
‘No,’ the chaplain replied, fixing me with a stare. ‘I won’t be dictated to. I say that we stay. Whether we have to wait a day or a week for the lady Eadgyth, it doesn’t matter.’
‘The king’s army will be leaving Lundene soon,’ Eudo put in. ‘If we delay here too long, we won’t be able to join it.’
‘I don’t care about the king’s army!’ Ælfwold said, his face as scarlet as it had been the night before. ‘This is the task that Lord Guillaume has sent us here for. Nothing else matters!’
The room fell silent. I realised that the nun was still with us, watching us as we argued. How much of what we’d been saying had she understood?
But before I could point this out, Wace asked, ‘Who is this Lady Eadgyth, in any case?’
Ælfwold closed his eyes and lifted his hands to his face, his fingers like claws digging in to his brow as he muttered something in his own tongue: a curse, perhaps.
‘She used to be the wife of Harold Godwineson,’ I said, before he could answer. ‘Harold the usurper.’
Wace looked at me in surprise, although I wasn’t sure whether it was surprise at what I had said, or because I was the one who had said it. ‘Is this true?’ he asked the chaplain.
‘It doesn’t matter who she is,’ Ælfwold answered. He was staring at me, his eyes full of menace.
‘It’s true,’ I said.
Wace frowned, and I could see the same question running through his mind as it had through mine. ‘But why—?’
‘It is not your business!’ the priest said. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, as if trying to calm himself, and murmured a short prayer in Latin. He spoke too quickly for me to follow all of it, but somewhere in the middle I heard the words for anger –
ira
– and forgiveness –
venia
.
‘I will stand this no longer,’ he said. ‘You are insufferable, every one of you. I promise you, the vicomte will hear of this. He will hear of everything.’ He shook his head as he stalked up the stairs.
‘You knew?’ Wace said once he’d gone. ‘He told you?’
‘I only learnt yesterday,’ I replied. ‘And only after I’d pressed him.’ That wasn’t strictly true, I realised, since I’d known the name of Eadgyth ever since we were in Lundene. But it was only yesterday that I found out who she was, and that was what was important.
‘You knew, and you didn’t tell us,’ Eudo said.
I felt my temper rising. ‘After what happened last night?’ I asked, making sure that Radulf and the others could hear as well. ‘Do you think I could have trusted any of you then?’
Eudo fell quiet.
Wace was the first to speak. ‘We were wrong,’ he said, glancing at Eudo and the others, as if seeking affirmation from them too. ‘Wrong to act as we did. We forgot ourselves.’
‘It was foolishness,’ Philippe said sombrely, and beside him Godefroi nodded his agreement. But Radulf’s expression did not change; his lips remained unmoved.
‘It was more than that,’ I said. ‘What you did was reckless. But we’re here now, and that’s all that counts.’
Floorboards creaked and muffled footsteps sounded through from the room above – the chaplain moving about, I thought. My gaze fell once again upon the nun and, as my eyes met hers, she turned quickly, knocking over a stool behind her. It clattered to the floor.
‘Why is she still here?’ said Wace as the nun bent down to pick it up.
‘Why worry?’ Radulf asked. ‘She won’t have understood anything that we’ve said.’
‘We don’t know that,’ Wace said as he approached her. ‘The abbess spoke French well enough, remember. In these places they learn many tongues.’
The nun stood, regarding him with a look of defiance, though she was at least a head and a half shorter. Whether or not she understood exactly what was being said, I could not tell, though she clearly knew we were talking about her.
‘Perhaps we should speak somewhere else,’ Philippe suggested.
‘It might be best,’ I said. ‘Though we’ve not said anything that she probably didn’t know already.’ She already knew that we were here to deliver a message to Eadgyth. And if she had lived here any length of time it was likely she already knew of the lady’s connection to the usurper.
‘Why is she here, though?’ Eudo asked.
‘It’s just the custom,’ I said. ‘One member of the convent is
appointed to stay with guests and watch over them. She’s here for our care and, supposedly, our safety.’
Wace raised the eyebrow above his one good eye. ‘Our safety?’ he asked, a smile spreading across his face. He turned back to the nun, who remained standing where she was, unblinking, watchful.
‘It’s what happened where I grew up, at least,’ I said with a shrug.
‘What do you mean?’ Radulf asked. ‘How do you know so much?’
‘I know’, I said, ‘because before I was a knight, I myself grew up in a monastery.’
He made a sound halfway between a snort and a laugh. ‘You were a monk?’
‘Only an oblate,’ I said sharply as I stared him down. ‘I was given to the Church when I was seven; I fled when I was thirteen. I never took the vows.’
Wace stepped back from the nun, though still he did not take his eyes off her.
‘Let her alone, Wace,’ Eudo said, yawning and grinning at the same time. ‘What’s she going to do? She’s just an old woman.’
Now that Wace had retreated, Burginda set about making a fire. Next to the hearth stood a soot-blackened pail filled with sticks and logs, which she began to arrange across the grate.
I imagined fresh meat roasting over that hearth, and my stomach rumbled. Compline must soon be coming to an end; I hoped it wouldn’t be long until food arrived. We’d bought fresh bread and sausage from the innkeeper when we left the alehouse that morning, but it was still in our saddlebags, and we had left them together with our animals at the stables.
‘Ask her when our packs are going to be brought to us,’ I said to Eudo.
He paused for a moment, probably to think of the right words, then crouched down beside the round frame of the nun, who had lit one of the smallest twigs from the lantern and was now trying to get the rest to take flame. She didn’t meet his eyes, instead kept concentrating on the hearth as he spoke to her and she mumbled something in return.
Eudo stood. ‘They’ll be bringing them after compline, she says.’
So my stomach would have to wait, although as it turned out, it wasn’t long before the abbess arrived. She came with four nuns, who as Burginda had promised brought our packs, together with bread and jugs of water – clearly all that could be offered at this hour. It was hardly much of a feast, but it was welcome nonetheless. Ælfwold joined us for that meal, though he said nothing throughout, save for giving a simple thanks to God before we ate, and he was joined in his silence by the abbess and her sisters, who did nothing but sit and watch us from across the long table. Of course they’d have eaten before the service; there would be nothing more for them until sext the next day. I did my best to avoid meeting the abbess’s gaze, but she kept her eyes trained on me, and I saw little warmth there.
At last they left, and Ælfwold retired upstairs. Only Burginda stayed with us, and for most of the evening she kept out of our way. She knelt by the fire, eyes closed in prayer, while we ate from our own provisions and diced upon the great oak table. I didn’t know the rules on guests gambling, though of course it would be forbidden between the sisters themselves, but the aged nun did nothing to stop us and so we played for several hours. After a while Eudo took out his flute and started to play a few short passages, trying to recall a piece long forgotten; he kept stumbling over the same few notes until we all called for him to try something different: something we could at least sing to.