– trying to run – had screwed tight the pain in his foot until it was all but intolerable, making him weak and faint. Leaning heavily on his gleeve, he forced his legs to move. One step. Two steps. Three. Four.
They came at him out of the impenetrable darkness of the shadows beneath the walls, and he had no warning of their presence. One of them took his gleeve out of his hand, and without its support he fell heavily, into the arms of the other one. He tried to wriggle free, tried to leap away, but his foot would not let him – and, anyway, they were too strong. One went on holding him and the other backed off. But only for an instant; then something hit Morcar with the force of a charging bull and suddenly he was in the air, flying in a smooth arc out over the bank. Then he fell into the filthy ditch and foul, black water closed over his head.
TWO
W
hen I started work this morning, I had not the tiniest inkling that today was going to be the start of something so extraordinary. So much for the skill at reading the future on which I pride myself. I can do piddling little things like saying when it’s going to rain (easy when someone’s taught you how), when a ewe is going to deliver her lambs (again, relatively easy, and pretty much a matter of observation and experience) and reading the sex of an unborn baby (quite tricky, that one, but then I don’t always get it right). But if something really big is looming, I’m as blissfully oblivious as everyone else.
I live with my aunt Edild, who is a herbalist and a healer. I’ve been living with her since my sixteenth birthday back in the summer, mainly because I’m now officially her assistant and there’s so much work to do that it would waste time having to go home to my parents’ house late at night and then return early in the morning. Living with Edild means I get a little extra time in my bed in the morning, and that’s reason enough for me. In fact I love sharing the house with her, anyway, and it’s certainly not because I was unhappy under my parents’ roof. Far from it; I love my family dearly and, once my elder sister Goda had married and left home three years ago, I have nothing but happy memories of life with my clever and efficient mother Essa, my dreamy, precious father Wymond, my stammering brother Haward, my mischievous younger brother Squeak, my baby brother Leir and my Granny Cordeilla, who is a bard and the most wonderful story teller. I love my sister Elfritha, too, although like Goda and me she no longer lives at home. Ever since she was a small child she has wanted to be a nun and last year she got her wish. Now she’s a novice with the Benedictine nuns at Chatteris and, as far as any of us can tell from the few short visits any of us have made, she’s as blissfully happy as if she were already in heaven. The last time I saw her was just after I’d moved in permanently with Edild and we shared a big, silent and slightly self-congratulatory hug because both of us were living the life we wanted.
I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a nun. It is a hard road, I know. I have looked into my sister’s face, pale, thin and tense inside the unfamiliar white wimple that covers her throat and her bright hair, framing her forehead, temples and chin. I have seen the haunted look in her wide eyes and taken in the dark grey circles around them. I have seen her bite her lip and mutter as she strives to commit to memory the words of new and unfamiliar prayers. I am in no doubt that learning to be a nun is not easy. I had expected all that, and when first I saw my sister in her new life I tried not to let it dismay me. What I had not expected was the laughter. Despite the rigours of the life, despite the huge challenge of living up to vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and of spending all your waking hours either praying or working as hard as the lowliest slave, Chatteris rang with laughter. Whatever else they may be, I have had to accept