WHAT I HAD MEANT TO DO WAS SAY SUNSET PRAYERS for my mother. But as the soft light filtered into our tent, I began to think about Oliver, our priest at Caldicot. And then I heard us arguing.
“No, Arthur. You’re wrong. Suffering scarcely matters.”
“It matters if you’ve got nothing to eat,” I exclaimed. “How do you think Gatty likes going to bed hungry? And with every bone in her body aching?”
“My dear boy,” Oliver said patiently, “you’re a foolish child of God. I’ve told you before: Poverty is part of God’s will.”
“How can it be?” I demanded.
Oliver drew in his breath sharply. No! It was the wind sucking the cheeks of our tent. And then I heard someone calling me. Far off, and repeated, and high-pitched.
“Arthur! Help! Arthur!”
I picked up my jackknife and dived out of the tent. Bertie was in the water up to his chest, and four squires were poking him with quarterstaffs and laughing.
I ran across the beach as fast as I could, but two of the squires saw me coming and waded out of the water to meet me.
They jeered at me, and one grabbed my right arm; the other made a dive for my right leg.
“Watch it!” I yelled. “I’ve got this knife!”
I waved the knife; I kicked my left leg. But the two of them dragged me into the water, and one of them put his foot on my chest and held me under until I was choking.
The water rushed around me, and right into me. My ears were blocked and bubbling, but I could still hear them laughing. I kicked. I twisted. I was drowning.
They let go of me then. I got onto my knees, retching, and coughed the salt water out of my nose, my throat. I rubbed my stinging eyes. Then I saw the other two squires were holding Bertie under as well.
Still kneeling in the water, I raised my left hand. I drew back my knife.
The squires jeered. They taunted us. Then they made off, hooting.
Bertie struggled to his feet. He too was fully clothed.
“What were they saying?” I croaked.
“Water rats!” said Bertie. “Lily-livers!”
“What happened?” I asked.
“Nothing.”
“You said something.”
“They gave me a chin-pie.”
I looked at Bertie’s red chin. “Why? What did you say?”
“Only what they are. Sausage bladders! German slime!”
“Bertie,” I said, “you shouldn’t pick fights. You know what my father said when I was thirteen and told him I wanted to go crusading?”
“What?”
“‘Shrimps don’t last long when they get washed out to sea.’”
“I’m not a shrimp,” Bertie said angrily.
My father. Sir William de Gortanore. I give thanks to merciful God each day that he decided not to come on this crusade. He does believe Christians and Saracens are equal in God’s eyes, and that’s more than Oliver does, but he’s sixty-seven now, and completely blind in his itching left eye, and half the time he’s in a rage.
I hate my father. He has stopped me from finding my mother. And he murdered her husband, Emrys—either that or he had him murdered—and he beats his wife, Lady Alice. The first time I talked to him as my own blood-father, he warned me, “When people start digging, they may find their own bones.” His right eye glittered.
I know it’s dangerous to go behind my father’s back, but the strange thing is I think he’s somehow nervous of me. Maybe he’s worried because he’s not sure exactly how much I’ve found out.
Bertie and I waded out of the water. “What about your father, then?” I asked him. “Milon told me he’s half-English.”
“He is.”
“Where is he?”
“At home. His whole body’s shaking, and his hair has fallen out. He can’t even hold a knife or a spoon.”
“What about your mother?”
Bertie flopped down onto the wet sand. It was quite hard, and rippled like the clouds above us. He splayed the fingers of his right hand and stabbed the sand, and then he just bunched himself up like a miserable wood louse.
“Is she dead?” I asked.
Bertie didn’t reply; he just nodded, and I squatted down beside him.
“My mother had to give me away when I was two days old,” I said. “I still can’t bring her to life again.”
Bertie went on staring at the sand. “What do you mean?”
“You’re shivering,” I said. “Go and get some dry clothes on. I’ll tell you sometime.”
I stood up and tramped back across the foreshore to our tent. No one was there, so I delved to the bottom of my saddlebag, and checked my seeing stone was safe, and then I pulled out the little screw of grey cotton. I unwound it and the inner wrapping of floppy cream silk. I took out my mother’s glowing gold ring. The tiny engraving of baby Jesus in his mother’s arms. I slipped it on.
When Thomas, my father’s servant, gave it to me, I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone about it, but I’m hundreds and hundreds of miles away from England and Sir William now.
I’m going to tell Lord Stephen how my mother secretly sent it to me, and ask him whether it is all right to wear it.
My mother’s ring on my right hand. My betrothal ring on my left. I’ll be well armed!
I got down on my knees. In the tent’s quiet vestry-light, I said sunset prayers for my mother and Winnie.…
Which is what I was going to do before Oliver interrupted me.