He kicked aside the straw and exposed planks, roughly cut. In the gaps between the planks he saw a flicker of movement, a flash of a blue eye.

Orm braced himself, his sword raised in the air, ready to stab down. But he hesitated, sick of blood. He leaned down, slipped his gloved fingers between the planks and pulled them up.

A woman huddled in the hole, dressed in a grimy black habit. She flinched from the light, her hands over her face. In the hole with her was a half-chewed loaf of hard winter bread, a wooden pitcher of water, and a discoloured patch of ground that, from its stink, told him she had been in here some hours.

He ought to finish her off. It would be kinder than to let the Normans have her. He hardened his grasp on the hilt of his sword.

She lowered her hands and looked at him. She had bright blue eyes, a round, sturdy face, short-cropped hair.

He gasped. ‘Godgifu,’ he said. And he lowered his sword.

The woman in the hole watched him, her gaze fixed on his face.

‘But you are not Godgifu,’ he said in English.

She thought that over. ‘Are you sure?’

‘You can’t be. I saw her die.’ No, his pitiless memory informed him. More than that. Orm had killed her, or his murderous machine of a body had, in the blood-lust on Senlac Ridge, during the slaughter men had come to refer to as the Battle of Hastings. Killed the woman he loved, without thinking. He had never forgiven himself, even though he had obtained absolution of a sort from Sihtric, Godgifu’s priest-brother.

‘Well, you’re right. My name is Eadgyth. I wish I were your Godgifu, though.’ Her voice was scratchy from disuse. She wasn’t much older than twenty.

‘Why do you wish that?’

‘Because you would spare Godgifu. You will soon kill me.’

‘Why are you here, Eadgyth?’

‘I’m hiding.’

‘From the Normans?’

‘From the Normans, and my parents.’

‘Why your parents?’

She shivered in her hole. ‘I want to give my life to God. They want to give it to the Conqueror.’

He glanced around. The other troopers were busy with something they had found on the far side of the village, a cache of money, or a woman still alive. There was nobody near Orm, nobody watching. Orm squatted down, stiff in his grimy mail coat. ‘Tell me.’