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of buildings bordering the square. The Bastard’s men will not pursue them among their own shadows and secret shortcuts.
    Bishop Odo, still conspicuous by the fatal flamboyance of his horse’s harness, still bareheaded, though his brother and the rest of his officers have by now retrieved their helmets from their squires, glances up at Queen Edith, exchanges brief words with the Bastard, then spurs his horse into the affray, shouting more orders to the soldiers, kicking away his assailants with his spurred boots, fending off the more determined with a hefty, nail studded club as well as a sword. His saddle, marvels Gytha ruefully, must be some kind of portable armoury, his harness a chain of pennies for dead men’s eyes. Does he, she wonders, bother to carry the Sacrament with him also, or is he not that kind of bishop?
    The Bastard dismounts, and to her horror, Gytha sees him disappear into the gate tower directly below her, accompanied by several of his men. Stupidly, she had believed herself safe up here, high above the square and concealed behind the parapet of the wall. But if he intends to come up here looking for the queen, she cannot help but be discovered. She could go to the queen, to whatever protection her status and her two pages can offer, but there is little love lost between her and Lady Edith, whose three sons by King Harold she has always seen as an impediment to the ambition of the Godwins for legitimate kingship. She would as lief hand Gytha over to the Normans as protect her against them. Her only other alternative is to make her way around the walls in the opposite direction in the hope of finding her way down by some ladder or stairway not yet occupied by William Bastard’s troops.
    Hoisting her skirts, she begins to run, stumbling over the rubble strewn surface of the parapet, dodging around the ramshackle shelters that have made their appearance over the years, temporary homes to the watchmen with their makeshift hearths, pots, and tripods, and the telltale scatterings of straw which can be hastily kicked into a bedding mound once the officer of the watch’s back is turned. Though her feet are bruised through her fine calfskin shoes, she is scarcely even out of breath before a voice hails her from within one of these rough huts.
    “Help! Help me.” An English voice. She ducks without hesitation under the lopsided lintel. As her eyes become accustomed to the gloom inside, she can make out a face, a glimmer of pale skin in the feeble light from the doorway, a glint of an eye, a dark scribble of beard. But something is wrong; the features seem to stand in the right alignment to one another, yet the face itself is not where she would have expected a face, but resting on the floor, one cheek pressed into curious undulations by its lumpy surface.
    “I fell, you see,” says the man. Gytha begins to see. The stranger is lying on his side, stranded on account of the fact that the half of his body in contact with the floor has only bandaged stumps of arm and leg, no leverage to get him back upright, too painful no doubt for him to roll himself over. Though she feels sympathy for him, she cannot help laughing, and her laughter is like the mob in the square, because once it has escaped she cannot stop it up again. It spills from her like ale from a leaking spigot, washing away the sight of the little boy falling under the bishop’s horse, the awful, helpless anguish of his mother, the white-lipped fury of the bishop hacking and clubbing his way through the mob in the square as though the disaster were somehow their fault.
    “I lost my limbs at Hastings,” says the man indignantly, but there is laughter in his voice also, as well as pain, and she can feel the twinkling of his eyes through the dusty dark.
    “These Normans have brought us all very low, sir,” she responds, wiping tears from her eyes, kneeling at his head and pushing him into a sitting position. “How did this happen?” He sucks in his