by ten years, and much knocked about by the world he had coveted fromwithin the cloister. It had never paid him well in goods or gear, forhe went threadbare and thin, but in wisdom he might have got his fairwages. A little soldiering, a little clerking, some horse-tending,any labour that came to hand, until he could turn his hand to almostanything a hale man can do. He had seen, he said, Italy as far southas Rome, served once for a time under the Count of Flanders, crossedthe mountains into Spain, never abiding anywhere for long. His feetstill served him, but his mind grew weary of the road.

“And you?” he said, eyeing his companion, whom he hadknown now for a year in this last campaign. “You’resomething of a vagusyourself, by your own account. All those years crusading and battlingcorsairs in the midland sea, and still you have not enough of it, butmust cross the sea again to get buffeted about Normandy. Had you nobetter business of your own, once you got back to England, but youmust enlist again in this muddled melee of a war? No woman to takeyour mind off fighting?”

“What of yourself? Free of the cloister, free of the vows!”

“Somehow,” said Alard, himself puzzled, “I neversaw it so. A woman here and there, yes, when the heat was on me, andthere was a woman by and willing, but marriage and wiving… itnever seemed to me I had the right.”

The Welshman braced his feet on the gently swaying deck and watchedthe distant shore draw nearer. A broad-set, sturdy, muscular man inhis healthy prime, brown-haired and brown-skinned from eastern sunsand outdoor living, well-provided in leather coat and good cloth, andwell-armed with sword and dagger. A comely enough face, stronglyfeatured, with the bold bones of his race—there had been women,in his time, who had found him handsome.

“I had a girl,” he said meditatively, “years back,before ever I went crusading. But I left her when I took the Cross,