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making the sign of the cross with a wavering hand before unconsciousness claimed him.
    ‘Go with God,’ Alexander translated.
    ‘I know that one. Come, he’ll be all right. It isn’t the first time I’ve seen him to his bed.’
    Alexander gazed at the fire nearby. One of the women thrust out her bosom and pursed her lips at him in blatant invitation. Another, a straggle-haired blonde, rose from her place and approached the brothers.
    ‘Hervi,’ she purred, rubbing against the discomfited older man like a cat. ‘I hear you took some fine ransoms today.’ She wrapped her arm around his.
    Hervi shook her off. ‘Let be, Alys, I’m not here on business.’
    She pouted at him. Her eyes slid to Alexander.
    ‘Neither is he. Go and find Osgar if you’re short of coin.’
    ‘Oh, Hervi!’ she said in an impatient voice. ‘You know I prefer you!’
    ‘You do at the moment because I’ve got silver in my pouch.’ Lowering his head, Hervi took Alexander by the arm and set off at a determined pace. Hands on hips, Alys tossed her head and swayed back to the fire.
    ‘I have seen her before,’ Alexander said with a frown.
    Hervi cleared his throat. ‘She was in my tent when I brought you there out of your senses.’
    Alexander looked at his brother with interest. ‘Do you know her well?’
    ‘Hah, only too well! She’s a camp whore, good at her trade, but as fickle as a west wind and given to emptying a man’s purse in short order. Don’t you go getting any ideas,’ he warned sharply.
    ‘I wasn’t; I was just curious.’
    ‘Well, keep your curiosity above your belt.’
    Alexander thought of several retorts, but was sufficiently prudent not to utter them. Hervi had a powerful right arm. Instead, he asked about the priest they had just helped to his bed.
    ‘Brother Rousseau?’ Hervi pinched the end of his nose. ‘He’s French, a former chaplain to some noble family in the Seine valley. He was thrown out for embezzlement and drunken debauchery, among other things. He acts as our confessor and comforter – when he’s sober, which is not very often. Earns his money by baptising and shriving.’ They arrived at their own tent and Hervi unlaced the opening. ‘He is not a proper priest, but no ordained cleric will touch those who live off the tourneys unless they are very high nobility with the necessary bribe-silver. Any man who dies jousting is considered to have committed suicide and is therefore beyond the Church’s grace.’
    ‘I know. More than once at Cranwell the prior condemned such gatherings as this.’
    ‘And I suppose that only made you all the more determined to sample the life for yourself,’ Hervi said drily.
    Alexander shrugged as he followed his brother into the musty darkness. ‘Nothing could ever be more damning than the life I lived at Cranwell,’ he replied bleakly, and knew that tonight his dreams would haunt him.

C HAPTER 5
     
    ‘Again,’ Hervi said relentlessly, and beckoned with his forefinger. ‘Come at me again.’
    The noonday sun sizzled overhead, and the air was motionless, saturated with the heat of late July. Alexander blotted sweat from his brow with his forearm and tightened his grip on the damp leather hilt of the sword. His left arm was encumbered by the weight of a shield, and a quilted gambeson hampered his body. Hervi was similarly attired, the high dome of his brow glistening and his breath rasping in his throat. Dust rose from the grassy Norman meadow on the western edge of Rouen. A three-day tourney was to begin on the morrow, and the competitors were out, honing the skills which Alexander was only just learning.
    He tried to remember what he had been told. Don’t go for the beckoning bright target of the shield, go for the man behind it, disable him. How to do that when your limbs felt like lead weights had not been explained.
    Drawing a deep breath, he launched himself at Hervi, aiming high above the rim of the shield. Hervi ducked out of the way and directed