From the moment he left the palace, he knew he was running for his life.
Panting, soaked in sweat, Rollo peered out from his hiding place. His face twisted briefly in a hard smile as he recalled the moment of fear as he approached the emperor’s stronghold. I should have heeded that warning voice, he thought. It told me there was danger, and I didn’t listen.
He knew he couldn’t get out of Constantinople without help. With at least three men on his trail and, undoubtedly, many more on the lookout for him, he wasn’t going to walk out through one of the city’s gates. Constantinople was built on a promontory, roughly triangular, and the north-western side was heavily defended by double walls, the inner ones rising high in the sky and reinforced with well-manned watch towers. Beyond the outer walls was a moat, which could only be crossed by drawbridges let down from the small number of gates; these, too, were heavily defended. The fortifications were to keep invaders out, but they served also to check those trying to leave the city. A fugitive stood no chance of getting away by that route. The better option was to escape by sea. If Rollo could make his way to an out-of-the-way harbour, perhaps further up the Golden Horn where traffic was lighter, he’d try to find a ship to take him away.
He was feeling sick. His wound was throbbing and his head ached. He didn’t seem to be able to think as quickly and decisively as usual.
He tried to think who, in all that great city, might help him. Those guards were friendly, he thought. He put a hand to his forehead, and, although he was shivering, it felt burning hot. One of them was going to try to find someone for me. Yes - the memory slowly surfaced as if through thick soup – he was going to find Harald.
He couldn’t remember who Harald was, or why he wanted to see him. As if his feet had a life of their own, he found himself heading back towards the Bucoleon Palace.
He had no idea how long he’d been walking, or if he was going the right way. He passed a vast, magnificent building whose brilliant gold decorations hurt his aching eyes. The interior looked cool and inviting, and he slipped inside. In his fevered and bemused state, he wondered if he had died and was in heaven, for above him rose a vast dome, apparently floating in the air and illuminated by bright sunlight that turned a riot of colour into a living, moving rainbow … Blue; everywhere, blue predominated. Turquoise, lapis, azure, violet, indigo, aquamarine, the clear warm shade of the sky. He slumped down beside a pillar, his hot skin shivering from the chill of the marble, and slipped into a doze.
Someone kicked him awake, and he left. Now, wandering with no specific goal, he had found his way into a maze of tiny narrow streets, most of them so overhung by the buildings huddling on either side that the bright daylight barely penetrated. The sea was near – he could hear and smell it – and he sensed that the street he was in would lead him out into the open area before the palace. He took a step, faltered, then, nerving himself, another. A brilliant sunlit space spread itself out before him, and, with a smile that cracked his dry lips, he moved towards it.
An arm like a hawser took him round the throat, and he was pulled against a body that felt tall, big and rigid. Steely fingers grabbed him round the wrist as, instinctively, his hand went down to grab his knife. The springy hairs of a thick beard tickled his cheek, and a voice in his ear said, very softly, ‘I shouldn’t go out there, if I were you.’
Rollo struggled, and the arm around his throat tightened. He began to gasp for breath, and bright lights swam through the blackness before his eyes. I’m dying, he thought. Sick, aching, weak with fever, it seemed almost a relief.
Jack and I set out for Aelf Fen at first light the next day. The rain had eased off but the ground was still sodden, the water level several feet above normal. We climbed on to the higher ground to the east, and the flooded basin of the Wash spread out below us on the right. Up there, the ground was firmer, although even so the track had been churned into a muddy morass by the passage of many feet and hooves. I was glad to be riding and not walking.
We had both felt deep frustration when the neat solution to our search for the dead woman’s identity slipped through our hands. She wasn’t Lady Rosaria’s maid, and no careful manipulation of the facts could make her be. I was beginning to wonder if we were even correct in the assumption that she must have ended up where she had as a result of being swept inland along the Ouse; the whole area had suffered from the surge, and every river, stream and rill had burst its banks.
The same thought occurred to Jack. As we stopped to eat at midday, he said, ‘She could have come from anywhere.’ I looked up into his clear green eyes. I knew he saw the same truth that I did: we had failed in our mission, and we were not going to discover who our drowned woman was.
I hoped very much that our unseen watcher realized we were no longer a threat.
For the rest of the journey back to Aelf Fen, it felt as if we had been given leave to abandon our responsibilities and simply enjoy ourselves. It was a beautiful day; the best that early autumn provides, with the sun shining out of a deep blue sky and sending dancing, twinkling points of light dappling on the flooded fen. The bright sunshine turned the dying leaves of copses and spinneys to rich shades of gold and russet.
Jack was good company, and once we had overcome our diffidence the conversation flowed. I sensed that, for that brief afternoon, I was seeing the man behind the office. He was, I realized, a man who did not often talk about himself, and I guessed what he told me on that ride home had been shared with few others. He asked me about my background – there wasn’t much to tell that he didn’t already seem to know – and he spoke of his family. His grandfather had provided horses for the dukes of Normandy – a particular breed that was a cross between the region’s native heavy horses and the lighter, faster animals introduced by the Arabs – and his father had joined Duke William’s army and been with him as he set about conquering England.
We both knew that if we were to judge by the actions and opinions of our forebears and what had happened in the past, he and I would be enemies. But I found myself putting that aside. Jack Chevestrier came from Norman stock, but it didn’t alter the fact that he was a decent man.
His father had been a carpenter, and the Conqueror, sufficiently astute and practical to ensure that each of the men under him was put to work best suited to his skills, had despatched him to the huge team building the wooden castles that sprang up across England as, following the victory in 1066, William the Bastard stormed his way through the rest of the land, ruthlessly quelling rebellions and imposing his iron rule. In 1068, Jack’s father had come to Cambridge, where he had met a woman and fallen for her.
‘And they married, and you were the result.’ I finished the story for him, for he had lapsed into silence.
He glanced across at me, and I saw the echo of some profound thought in his eyes. ‘Yes,’ he said, after a moment. ‘That’s right.’ There was a pause and then he said, ‘My father died when I was a boy, but I was big and strong, more than capable of being the man of the family, and I was ready to work.’ Again, he paused. ‘I became a soldier,’ he said softly, as if it were a confession. ‘My father talked of life in the king’s army, and it was the only job I knew about.’
Yes, I thought, I might have guessed. There was something military both in his bearing and in the air of command that radiated from him. Something I’d noticed, it dawned on me, right from that first moment, on the quay in Cambridge.
He spoke of his life in Cambridge. He told an entertaining tale, but the one thing he did not mention shouted out to me so loudly that it was hard to believe he hadn’t actually uttered it. Honest himself, he was surrounded by unscrupulous men, and the rot began with Sheriff Picot himself, who had instigated and encouraged the prevailing and deep-rooted climate of coercion, cheating, dishonesty and bribery. Jack did not believe that was any way to run a town, and probably made that fact clear. But being the one lone honest voice that insisted on speaking the truth, when everyone else around you took the easier path of fawning obedience to the man at the top, was a hard road, and it did not win you any friends.