She raises the knife to bludgeon him again, but he knows what is coming and lashes out with his arm as she strikes, dashing the blade from her hands and sending it spinning off into the darkness.
Now he is struggling to kneel, groping at his belt for his sword, but he is too stunned to act quickly enough and it is awkward for a kneeling man to draw a long blade from the scabbard. Even so, in time he will succeed in freeing the sword and then she will be at his mercy for she has no weapon. She cannot see her knife and she dares not waste time searching for it, for he is still yelling, shouting for help, and soon someone must hear him. She pulls the rope from her waist, the rope she meant to tie him with, but she knows now he cannot be tied. It is too late. She flings it over the kneeling man's head like a noose, pulling it tight against his throat. He struggles, trying to grab her hands as the rope tightens around his neck. If he does, he will be able to pull her over his head. She knows that, she has seen men do it.
Something rolls beneath her feet as she struggles with him. A kindling stick, not big enough to strike him with, but she snatches it up and thrusts it through the rope, twisting the rope tighter and tighter round the stick. She hears the rasp of his breath, sees the frantic and now futile beating of his hands. Still she twists the rope harder and harder. Finally she realises that it is only the rope which is holding the man upright. His hands have fallen limp at his sides. His head lolls forward. He is not screaming. He is not breathing. She lets the body fall and this time he does not rise.
Raffe stayed away from the manor until he saw the early morning smoke rising from the kitchens and the first of the carts trundling in through the manor's gates. If he went banging at the gate for Walter to open up in the middle of the night, word of it would race round the manor quicker than a lightning flash. But if he strolled in through the morning bustle of servants, with luck he would not be noticed. He thanked heaven Osborn and Hugh were away.
He had not wasted the night. Even now a small boat laden with sacks of grain was being sculled upstream towards Norwich, by the same boatmen who had taken Elena to safety. They would carry the message to Talbot that passage was required on a ship for a gentleman who needed to slip away quietly from these shores. Talbot would know where to find a ship's captain who would ask no questions.
The few hours' sleep in the bottom of the boat Raffe had managed to snatch before dawn had been fitful and uncomfortable. Perhaps it was meeting the priest that made him think of it, but for the first time in many years, when he did manage to sleep he dreamed not of the wars, but of the abbey where he lived as a child.
Those years in the abbey choir had been the happiest Raffe had ever known. After the initial shock of being left there by his parents, given to the Church to pay for his father's life, he had found himself among friends, boys and men like himself, mutilated for the greater glory of God. He was taught to read and write, to sing in Latin and to study music. The laity who flocked to the abbey church treated the castrati like princes. Stout matrons vied with one another to bake them the most delicious treats; girls gave them flowers; and rich men bought them costly trinkets. Among the ordinary choir whose voices, though accomplished, were merely human, these rare and costly boys and men were the elite.
The boy castrati worshipped the beautiful young men in their twenties whose looks and voices surpassed the angels'. But they'd giggle and whisper about the older castrati who dragged their bloated bodies about, yet whose voices, behind the screen, could still move men to tears. It never occurred to them that one day their own bodies too would become as aged and grotesque.
Raffe loved the comradeship of this little band of chosen brothers. But his greatest joy was to sing, to stand among the choir and hear their voices rising