Though it was no larger than a nut, the man gazed on it as if it were a full roasted boar.
‘What else can you tell me of Drogo? What company did he keep?’
‘Little.’ The man shuffled back a little as though the smell of the meat was too great a temptation. ‘He was always with one or other of the men from his tent – and rarely with any others. Sometimes one of the captains would visit; sometimes Drogo bought goods from the Ishmaelite traders. Few others.’
‘Did he have any enemies?’
‘Neither friends nor enemies.’
‘And women?’
The man sucked in his cheeks and swallowed, as if there were too much spit in his mouth. ‘One woman, yes. A Provençal. I did not know her. She dressed always in white – a white robe and a white shawl about her head. Her name was Sarah.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because she announced herself at his tent. I heard her. Though whatever business she had inside, she kept quiet about that,’ he added, wiggling the end of his tongue between his lips.
‘When did you see her last?’
‘Yesterday afternoon.’
The answer stopped me short. Long years of habit had already trained my thoughts in certain directions, and the possibility of a woman’s involvement was prominent among them. That one should have called at Drogo’s tent scant hours before he died . . .
I let the liver drop into the old man’s hand. ‘Did they leave together?’
‘No.’ All his attention was clearly fixed on the meat in his palm, his eyes moonlike in wonder, but the answer was confident enough. As he noticed me staring at him, he added: ‘I saw her go before him, perhaps half an hour.’
‘And when he left, was he armed?’
‘No. No armour at all. Nor his sword.’
I remembered the blade that the bov Simon had been polishing, and wondered whether it had been his dead master’s. ‘Were his companions in the tent when he went?’
The man shrugged. ‘I do not think so. I saw Quino and Odard return later, near dusk. I heard they had been working near the bridge. The Provençal, Rainauld, I have not seen.’
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘If you remember any other facts which seem important, any other men or women who visited Drogo, you may find me in the Byzantine camp.’
The old man did not respond to my words – I guessed he would sooner seek me at the Caliph’s palace in Baghdad than in a camp full of Greeks. Instead, he gazed at the cloth I held in my hand, still stained with the rabbit’s blood. ‘Will you keep that?’
I looked at it in surprise. ‘If you want it . . .’
Before I could finish my sentence, his clawing fingers had snatched it from my hand. With a glance of gratitude, he pressed it into his mouth and began sucking the blood from the fabric. We left him to his feast.
I did not want to delay any longer in the Norman camp; we hurried away, back towards our own lines. I still had Drogo’s body in my possession, and I suspected it might benefit me to examine it in daylight before his companions buried it. We walked quickly, ignoring the angry glares that followed us.
‘You think the woman has something to do with this,’ said Sigurd.
‘I think the woman may have something to do with this.’ I tried to sound less certain than I felt, lest my confidence rebound on me later. ‘The knight left his tent without even his sword: it follows he must have planned to meet someone he knew and trusted.’
‘Someone with whom armour might have got in the way,’ Sigurd suggested.
‘Perhaps.’
‘I guarantee you it was no woman who swung the stroke that killed him. His neck was almost cut clean through. Even a man the size of Bohemond would need a sound arm to manage it.’
‘A man aroused by passion might find the strength,’ I said.
Sigurd tipped back his head and laughed, prompting yet deeper scowls on the faces that we passed. Doubtless they thought we mocked them. ‘I see. Demetrios Askiates, the famed unveiler of mysteries, needs only an hour speaking with two men and a boy to discover all. Drogo and the woman were lovers; she came to his tent and arranged to meet him in that dell; he went there unarmed, but was ambushed by a rival, perhaps with the woman’s connivance. Find the woman, find the rival, and Normans and Provençals and Greeks will all be friends again. Is that your