Threads of Treason Read Free Page B

kicked by the waves; sometimes it gave to them; other times it rode them; and sometimes it seemed to fight them. The boatmen yelled at each other and Therese felt her thrill of life shift to wanting to live just a while longer. God, she thought, would not mind waiting for her. She curled up in the bottom of the boat until the movement and shouting subsided. She wasn’t sure if they’d reached safety even when she felt the boat scrape on sand. In the dark she could not tell if she’d reached the land of her birth.
    Abbess Eleanor was holding her shoulders and pulling her upright. “We are here,’ she said. ‘I have spoken to our remaining knight, Sir Gilbert. He will be coming with us to Canterbury. I will dismiss the others. I cannot trust them.’
    ‘ But we need more than one knight to guard us, Abbess?’
    ‘ I cannot take the risk, Sister Therese. We have our own investigations to make, and we must not be prevented from completing them. It is the only way I can be sure we will not have a traitor with us.’ With the sea behind her the Abbess seemed to have regained her sober authority.
    ‘ Yes, Abbess.’ Therese tried to sound as if she understood, but she remembered clearly the Bishop’s instructions to help the Abbess. And this woman was her superior in every way.
    ‘ We will go on to Canterbury through the night. Lympne Castle is not far from here I am told. They will provide us with dry clothes and a cart, and a wagoner to drive us.’
    Therese didn’t doubt Abbess Eleanor’s ability to do as she said and indeed she soon found herself seated next to her on a cart headed for Canterbury driven by a wagoner with Sir Gilbert riding next to them. She fell to praying. It comforted her to pass the beads of her rosary through her fingers as she recited her Ave Marias. The Abbess did not seem to be praying. She sat very upright staring at the stars in the clearing sky.
    ‘ I feared this, Sister Therese,’ she said. ‘I begged Bishop Odon to leave you in Normandy. You would have been safe there.’
    ‘ But only half-alive,’ said Therese forgetting to grip the bead she was up to firmly. Her fingers slipped. She looked down at her rosary. She would have to start that set of ten again.
    ‘ I may have brought you to your death, child.’
    ‘ I will say an extra rosary for good measure.’ Therese smiled to herself. She was beginning to sound like Sister Miriam.
    ‘ To be sure,’ agreed the Abbess and she returned her attention to the sky.
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 2
     
     
     
     
    Normandy
     
    Odon de Bayeux came out of the chapel. He was energised and comforted by his prayers. Today would be a better day. The rising sun brightened the host of painted angels on the wall. The birds captured by the artist flew among the heavenly creatures and Odon fancied they sang with the voices of the birds outside.
    Feet fell on the stone corridor beyond the turning ahead of him. They took him back to his youth, when his mother’s other, elder son was already Duke of Normandy. The young Duke William would run with the same step as that which approached him now. The owner of the steps came around the bend and halted in front of him. Robert. He could see the likeness to his father in his steady eyes and strong limbs, but there was a gentleness about him that was not like his father and a laugh which could only have been inherited from his mother, Queen Mathilde.
    ‘ Uncle, you will risk my father’s ire coming here,’ Robert said with a frown. ‘I am already virtually an outcast.’
    ‘ I have risked King William’s anger more than once, Robert. But it is always a pleasure to see my nephew.’
    ‘ Being my father’s half-brother does not make you untouchable, Uncle. He is just as likely to throw you into prison as a plundering Dane.’
    ‘ You have fought him