her head, Emma looked back over her shoulder. Through a gap between two cottages, a couple of ploughboys were visible, hard at work in one of the field strips. One was pulling on the ox’s halter, while his companion steadied the plough. In their wake seagulls dived and mewed. And there, past the field strips, on the road beyond was Sir Richard of Asculf, the most powerful man in the district, riding back to his garrison at the head of his squadron. A couple of wolfhounds were loping alongside him, and a small white dog she was unable to identify.
The most powerful man in the district.
They were almost back in Winchester. Richard’s conroi had crested the rise overlooking Eastgate when his shoulder gave another twinge and his fingers tightened involuntarily on Roland’s reins. It was a mere twitch, but nonetheless it had Roland tossing his head. Richard suppressed a smile. For all that Roland was such a big-boned piece of horseflesh, these years in England had seen him become highly sensitised to Richard’s slightest movement.
‘Is your shoulder paining you, sir?’ his squire, Geoffrey, asked. ‘You rode like a demon back there. We almost lost the hounds.’
‘What, are you worried you might have to re-stitch me?’ Richard said, with a grin. There had been no surgeon handy when they had removed the arrow and his squire had proved to be a little squeamish when it had come to sewing him up.
‘It seems quite possible, you ought to take more care.’
‘Geoffrey, it was only a scratch. Best to keep moving. Don’t want to seize up.’
‘No, sir.’
Richard turned his gaze back to the road. In between Richard’s squadron and the city walls a row of cottages followed the course of the river. Some lads were doing some late ploughing, scoring the earth with dark furrows. Crops were being seeded in other holdings, apples trees were being pruned.
‘The city looks idyllic from here, eh, Geoffrey, the clear skies, the bright sunlight?’
‘Aye, just like home.’
Richard shot his squire a startled glance. ‘You think so?’ Winchester would never feel like home to him. He longed to return to Normandy, but King William had ordered him to remain in Winchester and command the garrison. And, as a loyal knight, Richard would obey.
As they approached Mill Bridge the road took the conroi past the wash-house. One of the laundry women was knee-deep in the river, talking to her child as she beat linen against the rocks. Another, a young girl with a thick blonde plait, sat to one side, hunched by the riverside in an attitude of exhaustion. She must have heard their hoofbeats though, because at their approach the girl rose. Setting her hands on her hips, she stared as they rode by.
There was a certain belligerence in the girl’s stance for all that she was a slender little thing. Her feet were blue with cold. Shapely legs, what Richard could see of them. Geoffrey had seen her, too; he nodded at her as they passed, but the girl didn’t respond. Richard doubted she even saw Geoffrey for she was, he realised with something of a jolt, staring at him with that narrowed gaze he had come to recognise in many Saxon eyes. Blue eyes, gleaming with hostility. And yet behind the hostility, if he was not mistaken, there was fear, too. Such a shame. She might be pretty, if ever she lost that scowl.
Just then the boy by the riverbank gave a shriek; the hostility vanished from the girl’s face and her head whipped round.
‘My boat, my boat!’ the child wailed.
The stick he had been playing with was drifting beyond his reach. The woman in the water tried to snatch at it as it floated past, but missed.
‘Mama!’ The child’s distracted wail drew the barelegged laundry maid to his side, concern in her every line.
Shaking his head, Richard looked towards Eastgate and wondered if, after what had happened at York, Normans and Saxons would ever learn to live in peace.
Some half an hour later, when Emma had calmed Henri about the loss of his boat and the shock of losing her work had begun to ease, her green skirts were neatly back in place and her veil was securely covering her hair.
‘Gytha will help us, Henri,’ she said, pushing through the crowd on Mill Bridge.
Henri glanced up and nodded as though he understood what she was talking about. Sometimes, it seemed to Emma that Henri really did understand everything she said to him, but that was ridiculous. Her son was not yet three, how could he? She paused to smooth a stray lock of his hair back into place. There was no trace of the tears brought about by the loss of his boat, thank goodness. Henri was smiling his normal sunny smile.
Emma’s nose wrinkled. Smoke! The smell of smoke was not in itself unusual, but great acrid gouts of it were hanging over the bridge, stinging her eyes, catching in the back of her throat. Henri began to cough. Someone’s cooking fire must have got badly out of control.
‘Mama, look!’
Emma waved her hand in front of her face to clear the smoke and her jaw dropped. The mill! Some fool had set a fire in the mill yard. Gytha was running to the river with a bucket in either hand and her husband, Edwin, was tossing water onto a smoking fire set all too close to the wooden wall of the mill.
Someone yelled, ‘Fire!’
An excited babble broke out among those on the bridge, but no one was running to help. Picking up her skirts, clinging to Henri, Emma elbowed through and into the cobbled yard.
‘Here, Henri, wait by the wall.’ Eyes round, Henri stuck his thumb in his mouth and went to stand by a couple of grain sacks.
Emma raced to Gytha’s side, grasped a bucket handle and set to work. The fire was not large and a few bucketfuls later it was reduced to a hissing black mass.
‘Lucky it was small,’ Emma commented, as she, Gytha and Edwin frowned down at the smouldering remains. ‘But what fool would light a fire so close to the mill?’
Silence. Gytha was biting her lips. Edwin refused to meet her eyes. Indeed there was something in his stance that put Emma in mind of Bertha. Oh, no, what now?
‘Gytha?’
Gytha’s throat worked. She glanced at the onlookers blocking Mill Bridge and Emma followed her gaze. A great bear of a man stood in between two nuns from the nearby convent. The hood of his cloak was up, but Emma could see that he wore his brown hair and beard long, in the Saxon manner. Emma sucked in a breath; she must be dreaming, but she thought she knew him.
Azor? In Winchester?
It couldn’t be. But for a moment it was as though Emma was wrenched back four years in time to 1066. The man had a long brown beard, just like Azor’s. She must be mistaken—many Saxons wore such beards. Even as Emma looked, he ducked back into the crowd, leaving the nuns staring avidly over the handrail at the goings on at City Mill.
Gently, Gytha touched her arm. ‘Emma, you had best come inside.’
Edwin exchanged glances with his wife. ‘I’ll make sure the fire is right out,’ he said, ‘and then I’ll shift the grain sacks ready for the carter.’
Usually when in the mill, Emma found the familiar rattle and rumble of the mill wheel calming, but today
