A great bubble of water suddenly billowed out onto the surface of the water as the horse, presumably, breathed its last. The northerner gave a sigh of relief.
‘Now he is dead,’ he called. ‘We can go back to the others.’
Their voices receded into the undergrowth as they left, but Bartholomew made no move to leave the water. Shock and cold were eating away at his reactions, and it seemed easier to stay where he was in case the soldiers returned. The rational part of his brain urged him to climb out, because if he stayed where he was he would die. With a supreme effort of will he dragged his body towards the bank, and struggled to stand upright. Immediately, black mud began to suck at his feet and he felt himself sinking. He grabbed the tree again, and crawled along it until he was able to roll off onto solid ground. For a while, all he could do was lie on his back and gaze up at the slowly moving slate-grey clouds above him. Then he realised that, far from his strength returning, it was ebbing from him, leached away by the cold. He forced himself to sit up, and then stand.
A dull ache above his knee caused him look down, and he saw a rent in the rough, loose material of his hose where the crossbow bolt had ripped it. He leaned against a tree, inspected his leg, but saw there was nothing more than a shallow graze. He had been fortunate, for a serious leg injury in the Fens, so far from the road, might have meant his death simply because he would have been unable to walk away. He looked at the tear in his leggings, noting that it was too large for Agatha to mend without a patch. He felt a sudden, irrational surge of fury towards Alan and his men: clothes had been expensive since the plague and a replacement pair would cost him most of the money he had been saving to purchase a scroll he wanted. His anger did a good deal to restore him to his senses.
He removed his clothes, wrung them out as best he could and then put them back on again. He almost abandoned his cloak, but suspected that, even though it was wet, it would help to protect him from the chilling effect of the wind. Reluctantly, he donned it. Contrary to common sense, his medicine bag was still looped over his shoulder. It was heavy, and he realised he was lucky it had not drowned him. He sorted through it, abandoning soggy bandages and ruined packets of powders, and keeping those bottles and phials he considered to be watertight. And then he was ready.
But ready for what? For the first time, the full implications of his predicament dawned on him. He was alone, wet and cold in some remote part of the Fens. Michael and Cynric were almost certainly dead, and the only people he would be likely to encounter would be those who wanted to murder him. He leaned against the tree as a wave of hopelessness washed over him. Why had Alan wanted to kill them? Was he from the Bishop as he claimed? Was this something to do with Michael’s declining of the post of Master at Valence Marie? He thought about Father Paul’s warning, and Stanmore’s and Edith’s misgivings about the unexpected summons, all of which he had blithely ignored. Hugh, Stanmore’s man, had come from Ely and had heard no rumours of an attack against the Chancellor – and news of that kind usually travelled fast.
With a sudden, horrible clarity, he was certain that the attack on the Chancellor, quite simply, had never happened. Tynkell must have decided not to make the long journey in the rain to attend an installation ceremony that would be tedious and lengthy, and was probably even now sitting in front of a roaring fire in the Bishop’s sumptuous palace. And Alan of Norwich had been remarkably cocky for a simple messenger – not the kind of man the Bishop would hire at all. Bartholomew cursed himself for a fool for having ignored the warnings of his friends and his own common sense.
He found he was shivering uncontrollably and fought to pull himself together. He had two choices: either he could stay and perish in the marshes, or he could attempt to find his way to the main road and then to Ely or Cambridge, whichever was closer. He remembered the blundering path his poor horse had taken from the first river. It should be easy to follow that. And he had watched Cynric tracking often enough, so that he might be able to retrace the route Alan had taken when he had left the causeway – if he were lucky.
Slowly, and with infinite caution, he began to make his way up the trail forged by his horse. Every two or three steps, he stopped to listen, but there was nothing. The silence was as absolute now as it had been before they had ventured off the road, when he had been so unnerved by the sudden flapping of ducks. The only sounds were those of his own laboured progress along the path.
Contrary to his reasoning, it was not easy to follow the route back to the first lode. Branches had swung back into place, water covered any hoof-prints that might have been left and the horse’s long legs had made lighter going of the journey than could Bartholomew. The effort of walking, however, brought a degree of warmth back into his body, and the dead chill began to recede. He glanced up at the sky and saw that it was already late afternoon, which meant that there was little chance that he would reach the causeway that night. Tracking would be difficult anyway, but it would be impossible in anything other than full daylight; he would have to spend the night in the Fens.
He forced that unpleasant prospect from his mind and concentrated on walking. He was beginning to think he must have made a mistake and followed the wrong path, when he glimpsed Alan’s river lying parallel to his path. Within moments, he had reached the place from which the horse had bolted.
He stood still, hidden by the undergrowth, and listened intently. It would be ironic to have survived the manic ride, the near drowning and the crossbow bolts only to die because he had blundered into Alan. But there was nothing to hear and nothing to see. After a while, the silence became so oppressive that Bartholomew coughed just to prove to himself that he was not deaf.
Cautiously, he inched his way forward, alert for any sign of Alan and his men, but the small clearing was devoid of life. Jurnet was there, a great ragged slash across his chest, and his eyes gazing sightlessly at the sky. With trepidation, Bartholomew wondered about Michael, Cynric and Egil, and his steps faltered with the knowledge of what he might find ahead.
A search of the area, however, revealed nothing to tell him what had happened to the others. There were signs of a violent skirmish, where the ground had been churned underfoot by horses’ hooves, but there were no bodies. Bartholomew wondered whether Alan had taken them to the Bishop in order to claim they had been murdered by outlaws on the dangerous Cambridge to Ely road – perhaps he imagined the Bishop might reward him for bringing the slain corpse of a monk home to the abbey.
The daylight was beginning to fade and dusk was early because of the low clouds. The last place Bartholomew wanted to spend the night was in the very spot where two of his dearest friends had been slaughtered, but it would be foolish to attempt to find his way through the Fens in the dark. He looked around him helplessly.
Lighting a fire was out of the question. He did not have a flint, and even if he had, he would be unlikely to coax a flame out of any of the sodden undergrowth that surrounded him. And anyway, he would not want smoke or flames to attract the attention of Alan and his mercenaries, although, he thought disconsolately, by now they would be on the road home, and would be spending the night in a tavern somewhere with a blazing fire and hot food. With the onset of dusk, a light drizzle began to fall, and he knew he had a long night ahead of him.
He forced himself to concentrate on finding a place to spend the night that would be out of the wind and not too wet. He settled for the rotten bole of an old oak tree. Although its crumbling sides oozed dampness, it faced away from the wind, and, wedged into it and wrapped in his dark cloak, he felt as though he was more or less invisible to the casual observer should Alan return. This gave him a measure of comfort – although not much.