Griselda evidently thought so, too. ‘We also hear,’ she said, lowering her voice, ‘that the chap won’t be visiting us for a while. Seems he had a mishap while he was scurrying away after Jack had finished with him. Fell down some stone steps and knocked a couple of teeth out. He’s in a bit of a sorry state, it seems.’
I wondered if Jack’s hard-muscled arms had orchestrated that fall. I’d seen Jack lose his temper before and lay into a man. He’d had justification then, too. But it was something to set against the image I was forming of an upright, principled man who always followed every last letter of the law.
‘When can we bury her?’ the dark woman asked.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted.
‘Is she safe?’ whispered the plump woman sitting beside Griselda. One of the others sniggered.
But I knew what the chubby woman meant. ‘She is,’ I said gently. ‘She’s lying in an old chapel, covered up with a sheet, and no further harm will come to her.’
Soon after that I stood up, thanked the women and left them. Margery, I reflected, had been patient, indulging me, or rather Jack, with quite a lot of her girls’ time. I ought to go now.
Jack was standing at the edge of the quay, looking down at the river flowing silently past. He came to meet me as I emerged, and we fell into step as we headed back to the town. I told him what the girls had said, distilling it to its essence, which wasn’t really very much.
‘I hear you spoke to the man she was with shortly before she died.’ I tried to make my tone casual. ‘They said you were convinced he didn’t kill her.’
‘He was with her much earlier,’ he said shortly. ‘She was slain after dewfall, because the ground beneath her was wet. He was back home with his mother by then.’
‘His mother might have been lying,’ I suggested.
‘She might, but it’s unlikely all the other guests round her table were, especially as one of them was a priest.’
‘Oh.’
I thought for a while. ‘She must have stayed out there, then,’ I said slowly. ‘Do you think she was meeting someone else?’
‘I don’t know. Yet.’ Jack looked at me; a quick, assessing look. ‘What I do know is that had he walked back to Margery’s with her and seen her safely inside, perhaps she wouldn’t have been out on the river bank when the killer came by. Which is why,’ he added, ‘I shoved him down the steps.’
SIX
Rollo Guiscard was heading north-west through Normandy. After months of travelling over both land and sea, on foot over deserts, mountains and the roughest, wildest terrain, he was mounted on a good, sturdy horse on a much-travelled and well-maintained road. He was not far from Rouen now, and only some thirty miles beyond the town was the coast. He reckoned he was almost on the last leg of his long journey back to England.
Even after so many days in the saddle, it was still a relief to be on dry land. He had spent weeks at sea on the sleek ship Gullinbursti, and although the voyage had been exhilarating, and an experience he was pleased to have had, nevertheless the gradually worsening conditions as autumn came on had steadily become harder to endure. The days of sunshine and calm deep-blue seas as they left Constantinople had become nothing but a memory, and even that was clouded for the ship’s crew by the tragedy that had befallen them at the mouth of the Dardanelles. [2] They might have been led by a madman, but he had been their captain; they had shared in his impossible dream, and to a man they grieved for him.
By the time Gullinbursti reached the port of Marseilles, nobody except Rollo had possessed the strength or the heart to sail any further. Rollo, desperate to get to England, had pleaded and shouted, reminding Brand, the ship’s new master, of his obligation to his passenger. But Brand had simply looked at him out of sad blue eyes and said, ‘Your bargain was with Skuli, and he’s not here to honour it. We stop here, and we don’t sail on till spring.’
Accepting the inevitable, Rollo had enjoyed a fierce-drinking farewell celebration with his brothers in endurance and hardship, then bade them goodbye.
He set out the next day, having utilized the modest facilities of the tavern by the port where he had put up to wash himself and his garments, and generally refresh his gear. He counted his money. His purse was worryingly light, but he reckoned he ought to have enough to see him back to England. He spent as much as he could afford on his horse. It was going to have to bear him a long way, and as swiftly as possible.
More than once he had been tempted to make use of the chain of contacts which he had personally set up over the years; men and women who lived their mundane lives in towns, villages and isolated settlements up and down the land, going about their quiet business with no outward sign that they had another, clandestine role in the employ of a man whom they barely knew except as a good paymaster. In exchange for information, the passing of messages, the occasional requirement of a bed for the night and a hot meal, or the production of the small bag of gold coins they kept hidden for their mysterious stranger, Rollo paid them handsomely. Not that the money came from his own pocket: the King of England was the provider of the bounty, and he always paid well for good, loyal, trustworthy service. Such was Rollo’s network that he could have travelled right up to the northern coast, and spent barely more than a handful of nights in inns or taverns. His contacts never turned him away; it was in their interests to help him in any way he required, since his was probably the easiest money they would ever earn.
Rollo trusted his men and women; he wouldn’t have selected them for his service had he not. But he preferred not to let anybody know where he was, even his own spies. For he wasn’t going straight back to King William in England; there was another place he intended to visit first.
William had sent Rollo to discover the state of affairs in the Holy Land: specifically, what truth there was behind the rumours that Alexius Comnenus of Constantinople was going to appeal to the lords of the West to help him resist the terrifyingly swift advances of the Turks. After a long and arduous journey, and at considerable risk and one grave injury, Rollo now had his answer. He would deliver his information first to William – his life wouldn’t be worth a silver coin if William were ever to discover he had done anything else – but Rollo had decided that there was nothing to stop him then proceeding to sell what he had discovered, at such personal cost, to another interested party: William’s brother, Duke Robert of Normandy. If William was right – and he usually was, being shrewd, intelligent and an excellent judge of men – Duke Robert would be among the first to answer the call from Alexius when it came. Unlike William, Robert was a romantic, and would not be able to resist the appeal of adventure in the East. But, being perpetually short of funds, Robert would have to look to his brother in England for the cash to pay for his expedition, and the only collateral he would be able to offer was his dukedom. With any luck – for how likely was it, William reasoned, that Robert would come back safe and sound? – William would acquire Normandy without so much as raising a sword.
The journey up from Marseilles had been long and lonely. Rollo had ridden north along the banks of the wide, slow-flowing Rhone, leaving behind the Mediterranean and the fascinating southern city of Arles, with its ancient Roman buildings gently crumbling in the golden light. At Lyons he had crossed the river, after which he struck out north-west towards Orleans and Chartres. Then he had slipped unobtrusively into Normandy.
Now Rouen was only a few miles ahead. Rollo’s purpose there was not to seek out Duke Robert, but to hunt around for the sort of snippets of information that gradually built up into a full picture.
King William would, Rollo hoped, be impressed to learn that his spy had ventured right into Duke Robert’s home territory. As far as the king was concerned, this part of the mission would have been purely with the intention of discovering the current trend of his brother’s thinking. Only Rollo need know that there was a second purpose: for him to find out where to go, and who to speak to, when he went back seeking the duke’s ear.