The Retreat (medieval historical fiction)

Chapter 20 Fly Away, Blackbird

It troubled me that Cateline did not speak as we travelled. And what could I say to her? To talk of anything but her experiences seemed false; to talk of them, cruel. What's more, I was haunted by the thought that pagan warriors were hurrying after us and that there was a real danger my decapitated body would end up swinging by the heels from an old yew tree, my head beside the trunk. It was in grim silence then that we tramped southwards through the spikewoods.

Eventually, there was not enough light to see the ground that we walked upon and Gerard called a halt. While I tended the horses, the others cleared brambles from a patch of undergrowth that was nearly completely screened by a dense thicket of waxy holly leaves. There we sat, barely able to see one another despite the fact our feet almost met at the centre of our little clearing.

'Could you understand what they were saying, Cateline, your captors?' asked Gerard.

'No.'

'The boy said they were not expecting us on the road, but that they were just waiting for anyone who might fall to their ambush. Do you think that's true?'

'I've no idea.'

'Did you see more of them than the seven who took you?'

'No.'

'Do you think there are more settlements nearby? That we are in danger still?'

There was no answer to this from Cateline.

'I think there are plenty more,' said Jacques after a while. 'Those sacrifices we saw looked like they served a great many more people than seven.'

'They must have women somewhere too,' mused Gerard.

The thought that we were being pursued troubled me and for a while we discussed our plans for dawn, deciding that to continue back to the road remained the wisest course of action.

I put my arms around Cateline, intending to draw her to me, so she could lie her head upon my chest, but she resisted with surprising strength and determination. Instead, she remained sitting, arms clasped around her knees.

Laying on my side, worried at the harm that had befallen Cateline and listening to the birds and animals that rustled the branches of a now black forest, I fully expected to be awake for hours. A langour, however, crept over me and with it came dreams of home: again and again I discovered the hiding places of William and Alice as we played in the woods.

If we were subdued making our way back through the forest, we became rather more cheerful upon reaching the road with no sound of pursuit having ever troubled us. There, we hurried on, Cateline on my new destrier, while I led Tenebrous.

'What's the hungriest you've ever been?' I asked my companions.

'Me?' Jacques looked up.

'Both of you.'

'The winter five years ago was pretty bad, wouldn't you agree Gerard? In Burgundy.'

'Oh it was. Not that we were worried at first. Around new year, meat was as cheap as I've ever known it. You see, floods in autumn had ruined the crops. There was no fodder and the farmers were having to kill their beasts.'

'By spring the meat had long gone and we were down to the year-old hard butter they make there. Rotten, putrid barrels of the stuff came to our camp.' Jacques winced at the memory. 'You couldn't eat it without being sick, unless you melted tiny spoonfuls in cauldrons of hot water first.'

'Mind you. If you held your nose and gulped the drink down, it kept you alive.' Gerard shrugged. 'And the taste of that butter wasn't as bad as the taste of the boiled leather from our belts and shoes.'