‘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 carefuclass="underline" 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.
Even as I stood there, feet rooted to the ground as I tried to work out what to do, Beatrice was pushing past me. She darted out into the street, almost tripping over her skirts, shouting her maidservant’s name. Almost as one, the men heard her and turned, some of them already casting aside their flagons and reaching for their weapons.
‘Beatrice!’ I shouted. I broke into a run after her, gripping my knife-hilt firmly, my feet pounding the soft earth. After a few paces I had caught her, grabbing her waist to hold her back.
‘Papia,’ she called, trying to wriggle free from my hold, but I was too strong for her and she soon gave up.
The girl was on the ground still, though now that the men’s attention was elsewhere she was backing away in crab fashion, pulling her skirts back down over her legs, trying to regain her modesty.
‘Who’s this, then?’ their lord shouted, and I took him for such not just because he had spoken first but also because of the gold rings which adorned his fingers. ‘Another man and his whore?’
They looked drunk, and not entirely steady on their feet, but that did not mean they were any less dangerous. Ale dulled men’s sword-skills but it also made them more reckless and unpredictable, and I knew from experience that a man with little regard for his own life could be a fearsome foe.
‘Stay away from the girl,’ I called back. ‘Otherwise you’ll have my blade to answer to.’
How I planned to take on five men on my own I didn’t know, but I could hardly stand by and do nothing, and besides my blood was rising, my sword-hand itching.
‘You hear that?’ the lord said. ‘He thinks he can fight us!’
He laughed aloud, and some of the others began to snigger. They were all sizes and shapes, I saw now as they came out into the middle of the street: short and tall, some broad-shouldered and squat, others rangy and long-limbed. All had swords, which meant they were almost certainly knights, yet none was wearing anything more than a loose tunic and trews. Five well-aimed blows was all it would take to fell them. I hoped it would not come to that.