His kiss had been tentative, gentle.
Hers, however, was neither.
EIGHTEEN
Some time after we had released each other, I looked at him and realized just how much he meant to me; how much I would give to keep him safe. The next thought followed seamlessly on that one: the peril we had faced in that fearsome place was something so far beyond my experience and my knowledge that every impulse was telling me to flee.
But I had to convince him to come with me, for I would not leave alone.
He was on his feet, standing in the middle of the track and looking north towards the shore. Towards the wood circle, for all that we could not see it. I could feel it, though. Its power was neither good nor eviclass="underline" it was simply power — fundamental, elemental power — and it scared me rigid.
I said, having thought carefully, ‘I am not equal to what the storm-raiser has imprinted on this place. I cannot fight his magic and find a way out to the place of power within the old wood circle.’
He spun round to me. ‘I would not ask you to,’ he said. ‘But I-’
‘You are even less well equipped to fight what is out there than I am,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady and sound authoritative. ‘You-’ I had been about to remind him what happened the first time he made the attempt, but it was too cruel.
He knew, though. His face had clouded again into grief. He hung his head.
I hurried over to him. ‘There is nothing more that either of us can do here,’ I said urgently. ‘You have done what you were commanded to do; you have found out that the rumour is true, and that the storm was raised by human agency.’ Human? I wondered about that. The being who possessed such magic was more than human. .
He raised his head and stared up into the sky. He looked fierce, full of energy that could not be released in the direction he desired.
‘I have a suggestion,’ I said, moving closer to him. ‘The dread deed whose echoes still haunt the very air here may be far beyond my experience, but I know of not one but two men who will be able to help.’ I was not quite as certain as I was making out, but I was desperate to get him away before he did something rash. ‘I’m not sure where one of these men is just now — ’ Hrype could have been almost anywhere — ‘but the other one does not venture far from his home, so I would wager that’s where we’ll find him.’
I had Rollo’s attention now, so fully focused on me that it almost hurt. ‘Where does this man live?’ he demanded.
I smiled. ‘In a twisty-turny house in Cambridge.’
He shouldered his pack and set off down the road. Hiding a grin, I hurried to catch him up.
Hrype was on the road too, heading for the same destination. He was half a day ahead, although recently he had been only a few miles away.
He had covered the journey from Crowland to Lynn in a very short time, driving himself on and only giving in and taking a short rest when he was all but exhausted, and he conserved his strength wherever possible by waiting for ferries and lone boatmen to take him by water and give his aching legs a respite.
Nevertheless, it was mid-afternoon of the next day when he finally reached the port. He was intending to request an audience with a bishop, so he found a quiet back street where nobody would notice him and spent some time amending his appearance. When he was satisfied, he stepped out from his alley and mingled seamlessly with the crowd pushing and shoving along the quay.
He had not known what to expect of Lynn. He understood it to be little more than a trading settlement which had grown up because of its location, on the south-east corner of the Wash at a spot where several river and land routes converged. Yet the port he entered that day was virtually growing before his eyes, with building work on many sites and a general sense of stimulating activity. Hrype bought himself a pie and a mug of ale from a stall by an impromptu fish market and engaged the man standing beside him in conversation.
In response to Hrype’s mild remark that the town seemed much busier than he recalled, the man drowned him in a flood of chatty, gossipy comments. ‘It’s all thanks to our Bishop Herbert,’ he said brightly. ‘That’s Herbert de Losigna, him that the king brought here, but we’ve got over minding about him being a Norman in view of what he’s doing for the town.’ He ran a hand down the cloth of what was very plainly a new tunic, and Hrype guessed that he was benefiting in no small measure from Lynn’s new prosperity. Leaning so close that Hrype could smell the onion and garlic taint of his breath, the man added, ‘They say he paid the king handsomely for Thetford, but we’re prepared to forgive him that as well, being as how he’s all set to build us a fine new church!’
‘Really?’ Hrype responded, slipping into the role of wide-eyed innocent visitor. ‘I heard tell of maybe a priory as well?’
The man gave him a sly look. ‘That’s only talk as yet,’ he said reprovingly. ‘But the church, why, they’re already pegging out the site, and it’s going to be a fine building, my friend!’
‘Has the bishop constructed a fine building for himself, too?’ Hrype asked.
‘He has, and you can go and see it for yourself if you head out across the square and take the road over there!’ The man waved his beer mug in demonstration, and, thanking him, Hrype slipped away.
The bishop’s residence was clearly still in the process of construction but already very fine. Hrype got as far as a big hall just off the courtyard, where he was informed by a black-robed cleric with a permanent sneer on his thin face that Bishop de Losigna was very busy and could not be expected to make time for importunate strangers demanding to see him without an appointment. Hrype adopted a humble pose and said would it be all right if he waited, just in case? The cleric gave a sniff, a swirl of his generously-cut robe and turned away, as if to say: if you want to waste the rest of the day, it’s up to you.
The bishop appeared shortly afterwards, and Hrype leapt up and went to stand in his path. One of the two men flanking the bishop tried to brush him aside, but Hrype would not be moved. He leaned close to the bishop and said softly, ‘My Lord Bishop, it is imperative I speak to you concerning Father Clement, late of Crowland Abbey, who I understand came to see you some months ago and who, I regret to tell you, is dead.’
The swift words achieved the right effect: the bishop grabbed Hrype’s arm and hustled him aside, down a short passage and into a beautiful room furnished with plain oak, the very simplicity of which spoke of fine craftsmanship.
‘How and when did he die?’ The bishop, it seemed, was not one to waste words.
‘He was found on the fen margins a little to the south-west of here,’ Hrype replied. ‘He had been poisoned, stabbed and garrotted, and his body was tethered to stakes. It would appear that he was killed soon after he came to see you, probably as he set out for Chatteris, where another man impersonates him.’
The bishop assimilated all this information without comment. There was a brief silence, and then he said, ‘There is no doubt of this?’
‘Very little, if any,’ Hrype replied. ‘The description of the dead man appears to be that of Father Clement.’
That seemed to satisfy Bishop Herbert. ‘What do you want from me?’ he demanded.
‘I need to know when he came to see you, and when he set out for Chatteris.’
The bishop thought briefly, located the relevant information and said, ‘November last year. Crowland had burned; the few monks who remain there could go to the Thorney priest for confession, and there was no need for a man of Father Clement’s abilities to stay. He came to ask me to reconsider, but I had already decided to send him to Chatteris. We spoke briefly; he accepted my orders and left.’