Nor, if I were being truthful, could I lay any blame upon Byrhtwald for talking. A man will say and do anything if it means he might keep his life, and what he had suffered at their hands I couldn’t begin to imagine. Never in the short while I’d known him had he given anything away cheaply, whether goods or knowledge. To have got so much from him they must have worked him hard.
How long it was before either of us spoke again, I had no way of knowing. It might have been as much as an hour, and possibly more.
In the end it was Byrhtwald who broke the silence. ‘If only I hadn’t sold you that pendant. Perhaps if I hadn’t done that, the saint’s favour would still shine upon me and none of this would have happened.’ He gave a hollow laugh that quickly descended into a choke. ‘Do you still have it, lord?’
‘They took it from me,’ I said bitterly. ‘Bleddyn has it now, for all the good it will do him. St Ignatius never helped me.’
When I most needed his protection, where had he been?
The pedlar was quiet for a moment before saying, ‘I might as well tell you now, lord. Perhaps I should have spoken of it earlier, but I was ashamed. .’
‘Tell me what?’
‘My other sin. Those were never any sacred relics. What I sold you was nothing more than pig’s bone, the protection not of a saint but of an old sow. For that misdeed God now punishes me, by delivering me to my enemies.’
Pig’s bone. I’d long suspected the truth would be something like that, and still I’d fallen for the lie. Such a fool I had been. Yet even in the darkness, in the cold and the damp and the putrid stink that surrounded us, I laughed.
After a while spent feeling my way on my knees I found a patch of floor next to one of the walls that was a little firmer and drier, wide enough that a man could lie down. There I rested, or tried to at least. Every so often Byrhtwald would erupt into a series of coughs, waking me, and each time he sounded worse.
Eventually tiredness must have caught up with me, for I fell into a deep and dreamful sleep, finding myself back in the monastery at Dinant where I had spent so much of my youth, although somehow it was a different place to the one I had fled. A thick fog had settled everywhere, lending everything a grey and ghostly appearance. The ancient oak tree had gone and the walls were higher and somehow more forbidding, the cloister filled with looming shadows that, when I got closer, turned into the dark habits of monks, who gathered around, their cold gazes passing judgment upon me as if I were guilty of something, though what that might be I struggled to recall. I turned, hoping to escape, only to find the prior standing over me. In his hands he held a rod of birch.
‘For leaving us,’ he said. ‘For shirking your duties and turning your back upon the Lord our God.’
I wanted to protest, to tell him I had shirked no duties, that although the contemplative life was not for me, I had always remained a loyal servant of God. For some reason the words would not form and my tongue lay as if frozen in my head. The prior’s face was dark and drawn, lined with the marks of old age. From thin lips were issued two words, which he repeated over and over like an incantation while he lifted the rod: Deus vult. God wills it. Gradually the same chant was taken up by the rest of the brothers, whispered at first but steadily growing louder as they pressed so close that I could not move, until the words were ringing in my ears-
I woke to the sound of voices and the creak of hinges as the trapdoor opened. Daylight flooded in, so bright after hours spent in full darkness that I had to squint and raise a hand to shield my eyes while they adjusted. I was still trying to remember where this place was and how I had come to be here when men descended the steps. I was hauled to my feet once more and dragged, blinking, out into the open. Behind me I could hear Byrhtwald spluttering as they struggled to lift his limp form up the steps.
‘He needs water,’ I said to the guards flanking me. ‘Have some mercy; let him drink.’
Either they didn’t understand me, or they chose to ignore me. The pedlar looked worse than I had ever seen him. They had taken everything from him save for his braies, which were soaked through and marked with brown stains that were either mud or his own shit. Countless bruises and weals decorated his back and chest. He could barely stand without aid, but hunched forward like a man many years older, in danger it seemed of collapsing at any moment.
They led us to what I supposed had once been the stable-yard behind the hall, except that the buildings had long since fallen into disrepair and everything was overgrown with nettles and thistles. Half a dozen horsemen awaited us, with spears that carried pennons in the pale yellow and blue of the house of Cynfyn. There the guards made Byrhtwald get down on his knees, while one of the horsemen, a bald-headed man of solid build, dismounted. Handing his spear to a retainer, he drew a long sword with polished blade and gleaming edge.
And suddenly I understood why we were here.
‘No,’ I said, struggling against my captors, but their hands were firm upon my shoulders, holding me back. Hunger and thirst had weakened me and I was helpless to act. ‘You can’t do this!’
‘He is of no more use to us,’ said the one with the sword. ‘Now his life is forfeit.’
Byrhtwald looked up at me. His eyes were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and I saw the great sadness that lay behind them. Like the bravest of warriors he was doing his best to hold his nerve and show courage in the face of death, but he trembled nonetheless.
‘Remember me, lord,’ he said.
The tears were in my eyes as they were in his. I had witnessed the blow that killed Turold and seen the twins Snocca and Cnebba cut down before my eyes. All three I had known well, far better than the pedlar, and yet for some reason the knowledge of what was about to happen troubled me much more than had any of their deaths.
They forced him to bow his head, exposing the back of his neck. The bald man stepped forward, laying the flat of the steel upon it before raising the weapon high. Eyes closed and taking deep breaths, Byrhtwald first muttered a prayer in his own tongue that I could not make out, before reciting the familiar words of the Paternoster.
‘Et ne nos inducas in tentationem,’ he said, drawing the words out as he realised that with each one he spoke his end grew nearer, ‘sed libera nos a malo.’ Behind his back his fists clenched and he let out one final sigh. ‘Amen.’
No sooner had he finished speaking than the blade came down.
It took three blows to remove Byrhtwald’s head from his shoulders. Either the man who did it was unused to wielding a sword or else he was unskilled in such killings. The first stroke missed and sliced into the Englishman’s shoulder instead, causing him to pitch forward, screaming in agony. As he writhed on the ground, his hands clutching the place where he had been wounded, the blade struck again. This time it did find his neck, in an instant slicing through his throat and his spine. That was the stroke that killed him, though it needed one more to sever the head entirely.
Thus it was done, and Byrhtwald my friend was gone.
‘He was nothing to you,’ I yelled at the Welshmen, spitting in the direction of the one who had killed him. ‘He was nothing to you. He didn’t have to die!’
But dead he was. With bloody fingers, the swordsman held Byrhtwald’s head up by the hair, displaying it proudly for all to see, before with a roar and a chorus of laughter and cheers from his comrades he hurled it over the walls of the yard.