text: Aedwen looked down at Dunston and whispered another prayer to the Blessed Virgin. Dunston's skin was grey and his cheeks hollow. The wounds he had sustained in the fight beneath the walls of Exanceaster had taken a cruel toll on his body.
  
  "He is not a young man," Abbess Bebbe had told Aedwen when Dunston had been carried to the monastery and placed under her care. The abbess was a tiny woman, with a bird-like air of fragility about her. And yet she brimmed with energy and bustled about the wounded man, cleaning and binding his cuts, tying tight strips of linen about his ribs and probing with her twig-like fingers to ascertain how deep the damage was. Like Dunston, she was not young and to Aedwen, she seemed as old as the crumbling Roman walls of the town. But the woman was kindly and had set up a pallet for the girl in the room beside Dunston's. Aedwen had asked whether she might be allowed to sleep in the cell with the old man. She felt safe when she was near him and she could not bear the thought that he might die. At the suggestion, the abbess had tutted and shaken her head so vigorously that Aedwen had thought her wimple might fall off.
  
  "That would not do," the elderly woman had said. "No, no, no. You are not even of his blood. It is not seemly."
  
  The morning after they had arrived at Exanceaster, Aedwen had woken at dawn. She had gone outside to the courtyard where the nuns and monks were going about their tasks, trudging through the mud in a thick, drenching drizzle that fell relentlessly from an iron sky. Gone were the bursts of rainbow-bringing sunshine of the day before, replaced with this incessant, dreary downpour. Odin had been curled up in a doorway, half-sheltered from the rain, but wet and cold all the same. He'd stood on stiff legs and shaken himself, gazing up at her with his single brown eye. Abbess Bebbe had forbidden the hound's entry into the monastery, but Aedwen could not allow the animal to remain outside in the rain. He had been lost for so many days, alone and hurt. Yet he had still found them. Her eyes filled with tears whenever she looked at his blackened, cauterised wound, and the pain he must have felt. She wondered whether they would ever know who had saved him and tended to his wound.
  
  Aedwen had brought the hound inside and led him to Dunston's bedside. There they had sat vigil together. The abbess had found them there and had shooed them out of the room.
  
  "That beast cannot be in here," she had complained, but it seemed to Aedwen without much conviction. And the old woman seemed to have forgotten her own rule about the dog when she had changed Dunston's bandages and Odin was lying patiently outside the room beside Aedwen, waiting to be allowed back in to sit with his master. The old woman clucked her tongue disapprovingly, but later, when one of the young novice nuns, a pinched-looking girl called Agnes, whose nose reminded Aedwen of a weasel's, brought Aedwen some soup and bread, she also carried a ham bone that she tossed onto the rushes by Odin's paws.
  
  That was four days ago and each day had passed in the same way. Aedwen had sat with Odin watching over Dunston, searching for some sign of improvement in his condition. Each day the abbess would come to clean the old warrior's wounds and to bind them with fresh linen. Every day the old nun would usher the girl and the dog out of the small cell, impatiently clapping her hands for them to hurry. And every day when Aedwen and Odin returned to Dunston's side, Aedwen would enquire about his state.
  
  For the first three days, the abbess had shaken her head.
  
  "He is not young, but he is strong. If it is God's will, he will live."
  
  But to Aedwen's eye, with each passing day Dunston had looked more feeble, older, more fragile.
  
  Closer to death.
  
  She clung to Bebbe's words, taking comfort from the scant encouragement in them. Surely such a godly woman would only speak the truth. So Aedwen prayed and dozed. And when she slept, her dreams were filled with visions of death; the screams of horses, thrashing in long grass; Ithamar's heart-rending wails of agony in a forest glade. She longed to see the soft, smiling face of her mother in her dreams, but it seemed as though the horrors she had witnessed had burnt her mother's memory from her mind.
  
  On the fourth day, something had changed in the atmosphere of the monastery and for a moment Aedwen lay on the straw-filled mattress and listened, trying to ascertain what was different. Bright light streamed through the small window, spearing the gloom of the room, the lance of light illuminating motes of dust that danced in the air.
  
  That was the change: it had stopped raining. The day had dawned bright with the promise of warmth and sun. She felt her spirits lift. But, just as she was rising from the pallet, she heard sobbing from a nearby cell. Such sounds were not uncommon here. Many of the young novices were homesick and sad, and weeping was often heard, especially at night. But now, the sounds of sadness struck Aedwen like an ill omen.
  
  She rose, crossing herself and whispering the words of the prayer to Maria, Mother of God, under her breath. She hurried to the courtyard, to allow Odin in to the building. Abbess Bebbe's good nature had not stretched so far that she would permit the animal to sleep in the monastery overnight. Odin was not where he usually waited for her. She whistled, but he did not appear. Her unease grew. Could it be that he had fled, or been hurt somehow? Perhaps one of the monks or the city guards had beaten him, or worse, killed him. She had seen the corpse of a small dog in the river on the day they had arrived and ever since, she had worried that Odin might meet the same sad end.
  
  Panic rising in her chest, she whistled again and called the dog's name, ever more urgently. After several heartbeats, the hound came bounding into the courtyard. His tongue dangled from the side of his huge maw and her fear disappeared in an instant. She laughed at his expression, for he seemed to be grinning. The warmth and sun must have pleased him. The beast seemed full of puppy-like energy.
  
  She was still chuckling and scratching Odin's ears when they arrived at Dunston's cell. Unusually for this time of day, the abbess was there, and the slender woman's bleak expression sent a chill through Aedwen.
  
  "Is he…?" she could not bring herself to voice her fear.
  
  Bebbe shook her head and took one of Aedwen's hands in hers. The old woman's skin was cool and dry.
  
  "He yet lives," she said. "But you must prepare for the worst, child. There is nothing more I can do for him. He is in the Lord's hands now."
  
  Aedwen bit her lip and closed her eyes. Taking a deep breath, she thanked the abbess and entered the room.
  
  She immediately sensed the change. The air was dank and Dunston's skin seemed to glow in the shadowed cell. She sat beside him, taking his huge hand in hers. His skin was hot. Odin sniffed at Dunston's face and licked his cheek, before whimpering and curling up on the rush-strewn floor.
  
  Taking a clean piece of linen, Aedwen dipped it in a bowl of water. She used the wet cloth to drip cool water on Dunston's lips, then, wringing out the linen, she moistened his brow. He made no movement. Her heart lurched, suddenly certain that this was one fight too many for the old man, that he had given in to his wounds and left this world.
  
  And yet his skin still burnt and, when she looked closely, she could see his chest slowly rising and falling.
  
  She prayed to the Virgin, Christ and all His Saints, that they might spare Dunston. She babbled in her prayers, caring not for the words. She clutched his hand tightly and wept. Tears streamed down her cheeks and soaked into the blanket that covered Dunston.
  
  "You cannot die," she sobbed. "You got me safely here, but it is not enough. I am alone. Would you just leave now? Leaving me alone to my fate? I do not wish to be a nun." She sobbed, uncaring that her words were unfair. Her anger swelled within her and she let it burst forth in an outpouring of ire directed at this frail, dying man. She was furious at her mother for her sickness, for leaving her alone with her father. Enraged at her father for leading her into peril and for allowing himself to be killed. For his inquisitiveness that had led him to discover the plot against the king and then for his sense of duty that had seen him tell the secret to one of the conspirators. Tears washed down her face and the words tumbled from her in a cataract of anguish and anger.
  
  "I want to see the forest and learn your skills. You said you would teach me. Would you die now and break your promise to me? You are no different from my father. All promises that you never meant to keep." She sobbed, dragging in ragged lungfuls of air.
  
  Dunston's leathery fingers pressed against her slim hands. She started, sniffing back the tears and the rage that had consumed her.
  
  "Dunston?" she whispered, terrified now that this was his body's last convulsive movement before his spirit departed. Would the last words he heard in this life be hers rebuking him for having the temerity of succumbing to his wounds?
  
  "I—" his voice croaked in his throat. She could barely hear him.
  
  "What?" she asked, leaning forward, placing her ear over his mouth. "What is it?"
  
  "I have broken enough promises," he whispered. "I will not break this one. Stop your crying and let me sleep, girl. I need to rest."
  
  Scarcely believing her ears, she sat back and looked at him, but he was quiet once more. She stared for a long while at his chest. Was his breathing deeper than a moment ago? Yes, she was sure of it.
  
  Leaning forward, she placed a soft kiss upon his brow. He was warm, but the feverish glow of sickness had fled.
  
  He slept.
  
  It seemed he would keep his promise to her after all.
  
  When Agnes brought a bowl of pottage sometime after Terce, she found Aedwen standing by the window and looking out to the trees and the wide, silvered waters of the river. Aedwen turned to greet the young nun and saw that her face was blotched, her eyes puffy. Had she been the one weeping that morning?
  
  Aedwen took the bowl from her with a broad smile. For the first time in many days, she felt as though she had come out of the darkness and chill of a cave, stepping from the cool, black shadows of a barrow and into the bright sunshine of a summer's day.
  
  "Do not be sad, Agnes," she said.