Carey looked up unseeingly. He was amazed to find he could not feel anything. Perhaps it wasn’t so amazing: after a fight or a football match he often found bruises and grazes he had not felt at the time.
‘Sir,’ came a boy’s alien voice.
‘What? You still there, Young Hutchin?’
‘Ay sir. She had a verbal message. She whispered it to me when she give me the letter, sir, under cover of straightening my jerkin.’
Young Hutchin shut his eyes tight and frowned. ‘It was in foreign, sir. She said to tell ye, ah mow tay, Robin, ah mah bow simper.’
Carey thought hard to rearrange the sounds. ‘Amo te, Robin, amabo semper?’ he asked.
Young Hutchin nodded vigorously. ‘Ay,’ he said. ‘That was it. Is it French?’
‘No. Latin. Please forget it, if you like Lady Widdrington.’
Young Hutchin nodded again, a mixture of cunning and an attempt at forthright honesty on his face.
Simon came back with the small beer and some pieces of ox-tongue pie. Carey had lost his appetite. He told the boys to strip the ruined counterpane off the bed and see if they could find Goodwife Biltock to get another one for him. Then he wandered unseeingly down the stairs again.
By a kind of habit, he found himself in the stable yard where the Head Groom was at evening stables with Scrope. Carey went to Thunder’s stall, went in and started picking up Thunder’s feet to see how the farrier had done his work. Not bad. Not bad at all. But Thunder should go back to London. He had no use for a tournament charger here in the West March.
Amo te, Robin, amabo semper. She didn’t know much Latin. Perhaps she had persuaded Young Henry to tell her the words, or a tiny bit of schooling had stuck as it had with him. She had obediently written her letter cutting off their friendship at her husband’s dictation and then, being as honest as she was, she had quietly defied him. The words were curt but sufficient.
I love you, Robin, she had said, promising no more than that, risking God knew what kind of persecution, I will love you always.