Threads of Treason Read Free

with us.’
    ‘ Just you and I, Sister Therese, will be travelling to England. Sister Miriam will remain at Bayeux and pray for our success.’
    * * *
    Therese sat on a bench next to Abbess Eleanor as the breeze pulled them away from the Normandy coast. Suddenly the world seemed so large. She licked her lips; they were salty. Surely God had truly worked to make this wondrous place with the movement of the water and the vastness of the sky above it. Among the complement of guards were the two knights promised by Bishop Odon. They took up their positions: one at the bow, the other at the rudder. Both wore chain mail tunics and helmets with nose-guards; they carried heavy swords and shields shaped like birds’ wings. Norman knights, Sir Gilbert and Sir Brian. Their very presence made Therese feel safe, but her Abbess seemed uneasy. Therese had never seen her so preoccupied.
    The boat turned in to the open sea, towards England’s coast. Cold spray found their faces. As the hours turned the sun from east to west so the movement of the water beneath them became rougher.
    ‘ I’ll fetch us something to eat,’ said Abbess Eleanor.
    ‘ I’ll go,’ said Therese. If the Abbess required food, it was surely her job to fetch it for her.
    But Abbess Eleanor shook her head and laid a hand on her shoulder as she rose. Therese had noticed the care she’d taken in stowing the casket she’d brought on board containing their food. It had been placed with that of the boatmen, alongside the supplies for the guards and knights. But when Abbess Eleanor came back she brought nothing with her.
    ‘ Are you hungry?’ she asked Therese.
    ‘ My stomach could not take anything, Abbess, with the boat rising and falling like this.’
    ‘ That is just as well,’ said Abbess Eleanor, taking back her seat on the bench.
    The boatman cast a cover over them. ‘That will keep the spray off you,’ he said, so they sat under it like a makeshift tent.
    ‘ You may never see your home again, Sister Therese,’ said the Abbess.
    ‘ No, Abbess?’
    ‘ No, Sister. Nor may we see Normandy or France again.’
    ‘ The sea will not take us, Abbess.’
    ‘ It may not be the sea that takes us, child.’
    Therese searched the eyes of her Abbess. She’d never called her, ‘child’, before, even though she’d lived all her life in the convent with her.
    ‘ We have someone on board we cannot trust. I packed the food myself and it has been tampered with.’
    ‘ Perhaps they were just hungry?’
    ‘ Nothing has been eaten,’ said Abbess Eleanor. ‘I placed seals on the pots myself, and they have been broken.’
    ‘ We must tell our guards.’
    ‘ I fear it was one of them that did it, child.’
    ‘ But if we do not they could be…’ Therese didn’t dare say the word, “poisoned”.
    Before either of them could say anything a blast of wind caught their cover and a shout went up, ‘Man over-board!’ The corner of the sheet flipped over revealing a group of men stooped over the stern of the boat, but the knight who was stationed there was not among them. The men were looking into the black sea.
    ‘ We have no hope of finding Sir Brian in this storm,’ the boatman told Abbess Eleanor. ‘It is set to get worse. We must make haste for the English coast. It is not far now.’
    Therese pulled at Abbess Eleanor’s sleeve and said, ‘Do you think Sir Brian ate anything?’ Any sense of feeling safe was draining away with the loss of one of their protectors.
    The Abbess nodded in acceptance of the idea, but said, ‘I doubt if he had, but I will ask. In addition, I will instruct the food to be put overboard. We must take every precaution.’ She made her way over to the remaining knight and the boatman at the rudder. Abbess Eleanor held what she could to keep her purchase with the rolling sea beneath her. Therese heard the boatman’s voice raised against the wind and sea in reply: he would carry out her instructions. She saw his head dip towards the