Taster's 34

The trees began to turn from green to speckled scarlet. Aedan removed his splints and kept them off, managing now with just the cane. And his wretched little boat grew sounder and sounder, and the gulf between them wider and wider. Io felt as if she watched it all from a very great distance, a man on a island, determined to leave. A siren drowning in heartache, who had no words to keep him.

Indeed, in these final days, she had no words at all. She could not speak to him. He did not seem to mind, or even notice. At night, in the dusk, all he said was her name and his same demand of before, come with me, come, come.

Io could only close her eyes, shake her head. Awash in impossible thoughts.

Yet he kept trying.

Too often she would wake to find him standing at the window, gazing out at the waves and his imagined home. When he turned back to her, his face was always the same: lined and stark, a dear-held memory in his eyes.

He was not with her then. He was already back in his kingdom, living a life she could never touch. She mourned a man who was already gone.

The day came when the boat was finished ...

It was still totally dark. Never before had he experienced the sensation of literally not being able to see his hand in front of his eyes. He was just experimenting, wriggling the fingers of his right hand to see if he could make out the movement, when it happened.

There was no warning, not one single sound to put him on guard. There was just the one flash of bright light and , right there in front of him, a face staring intently into his, so close that he could look into the silver-grey eyes and feel the cool breath on his cheek.

Then darkness closed in again.

Sweat breaking out on his cold flesh and his heart in his throat, Josse fought for control. His body remembered its training even while his horror-struck mind was in shock and he was on his feet, sword in hand, lunging forward out of the shelter, before he knew it. Then his voice came back and he shouted in a great roar, 'Who's there? Show yourself!'

Nerve endings tingling as he subconsciously awaited the blow, he twisted from side to side, his sword making great deadly sweeps in a wide arc in front of him. 'Show yourself!' he cried again. 'I am armed and I will attack if you approach again without warning!'

But I cannot see him, he thought. How can I attack what I can't see?

He waited, listening.

There was nothing.

Presently the rain began to fall again.

I lost my virginity to a king's wife.

Few people can make such a claim, least of all when hunched over a desk in a monastery scriptorium while pretending to make a fair copy of St Luke's gospel, though in fact writing a life's chronicle. But that is how it was and I remember the scene clearly.

The two of us lay in the elegant royal bed, Aelfgifu snuggled luxuriously against me, her head resting on my shoulder, one arm flung contentedly across my ribs as if to own me. I could smell a faint perfume from the glossy sweep of dark chestnut hair which spread across my chest and cascaded down onto the pillow we shared. If Aelfgifu felt any qualms, as the woman who had just introduced a nineteen-year-old to the delights of love-making but who was already the wife of Knut, the most powerful ruler of the northern lands, she did not show them. She lay completely at ease, motionless. All I could feel was the faint pulse of her heart and the regular waft of breath across my skin. I lay just as still. I neither dared to move nor wanted to. The enormity and the wonder of what had happened had yet to ebb. For the first time in my life I had experience utter joy in the embrace of a beautiful woman. Here was a marvel which once tasted could never be forgotten.

The distant clang of a church bell broke into my reverie. The sound slid through the window embrasure high in the queen's chambers and disturbed our quiet tranquillity. It was repeated, then joined by another bell and then another. Their metallic clamour reminded me where I was: London. No other city that I had visited boasted so many churches of the White Christ. They were springing up everywhere and the king was doing nothing to obstruct their construction, the king whose wife was now lying beside me, skin to skin.

The sound of the church bells made Aelfgifu stir ...