The Prince and the Pilgrim Read Online Free PDF

silent Alexander. She pulled open one of her saddle-bags. “Here. It’s one of his night-robes. He was asleep when we – when he –” She was silent for a few moments, busying herself over the bag’s fastenings, but when she spoke again, trying to find some more words of thanks, Sadok reached for her hand again, lifted it, and kissed it.
    “No more, Princess. Get you gone now, and make haste. We’ll contrive to delay our return till well after daybreak, so God go with you and your orphaned son, and some day let us pray we may meet again in peace and safety.”
    He wheeled his horse, putting it to an easy trot, and soon he and his brother were lost in the dimness.
    Goren rode out from under the trees. “I heard. We are safe?”
    “We are safe, thanks be to God and to two honest men! So Alexander may now cry all he wants to. Come, Sara.” She turned her horse’s head eastward once more, adding, but not for the man to hear: “But so may not I.”

4
    It took them the best part of a month. Not knowing how March would receive Sadok’s story – or in fact if he would believe it – they dared not take the direct road, but went by the tracks used by peasants and charcoal-burners, rough riding through forest or along secluded river-valleys or across low-lying marshland, which, when they reached March’s borders and entered the Summer Country, was perilous with bog and quagmire. Anna found that she had money in plenty; besides what she had snatched up as she packed her belongings, and what Drustan had pressed on her, she found another pouch of gold in her saddle-bag, put there, presumably, by Drustan. So the travellers were able to pay their way. Now and again they managed to put up at a reasonably respectable tavern, where they could rest themselves and their horses for a day or so, but usually they were thankful to find the shelter of some wayside cottage, or a farmer’s barn, or even, at the worst, a shepherd’s hut, abandoned for the summer while the shepherd kept his flock on the high hillsides.
    One thing the rough riding and the constant care needed for the child – and the support and encouragement she had to give Sara – did for Anna: she had no time for grief. The days were a strain of riding, finding a safe way, looking, as the day waned, for shelter; and at night she was so tired that she slept soundly, and without dreams.
    It took them three weeks to reach Glevum, and then they had to take a roundabout route to the bridge, but once across the Severn, and beyond the edges of the Summer Country, where the High King’s men kept the roads between them and the Cornish border, they felt safe, even though Anna feared that March would guess where she was heading.
    The castle where Anna’s cousin had lived, Craig Arian, lay towards the head of the Wye valley, a little way back into the hills and beside one of the tributary streams. The widow, Theodora, had recently married again, an elderly man called Barnabas who had been an officer in one of the High King’s troops. Anna and her cousin had never been close, but she had from time to time exchanged greetings with Theodora. All parties, of course, knew that, since Theodora had no children, Anna’s claim to Craig Arian and its estate took precedence of that of the widow and her new husband, so Anna had every right to seek refuge there, but there had been no time to send a message reporting Baudouin’s death and begging for shelter for herself and her son.
    So as the weary little party rode slowly up the winding river valley on the last stage of their journey, Anna was by no means sure what sort of welcome would await them. She had never met Barnabas, and had no idea what kind of man he was . A veteran of Arthur’s army, married to a widow of means and retired to a snug little property in this rich countryside? It was possible, it was even likely, thought Anna drearily, that he would shut the gates against Baudouin’s widow and the young son who could