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up his mind and he followed them across the drawbridge. There was comfort and solidarity in companionship and they would not care what his father might or might not think of his behaviour.
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    Chapter 3
    Sabin was too drunk to be clear who or what started the fight, only that it erupted out of nowhere with the force of a storm wind. It might have had something to do with a jostled elbow and a spilled pitcher of ale, or perhaps an adverse roll of the dice or a look that was taken amiss. There was shouting, some of it his own, raw with drink-fuelled rage, and then the punch in his already tender gut that felled him to the rushes, his knees doubling towards his midriff and his mouth wide open, gasping for air that would not come.
    Above him a knife flashed. There were more shouts and a struggle of shapes and shadows. He rolled away from the strike of the steel, became entangled in his own cloak and in a last effort to prevent himself being skewered, lashed out with his feet. His assailant staggered, struck his head on the solid oak corner of the trestle as he fell, and sprawled his length. The knife jerked once in his hand, then fell into the straw.
    The shouting grew ragged and subsided. A soldier leaned over Sabin and his assailant. 'Robbie?' He shook the prone shoulder but to no response. When Robbie was rolled on his back, it became obvious why. There was a dimple in his skull the width of three fingers and he was dead. The sound of stertorous breathing came from the living who were staring at the scene in horror. Robbie stared back, unblinking, unmoving. Sabin tried to rise, wobbled, fell, and stayed down.
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    'What is going to happen to Sabin now?'
    Poising her needle, Countess Matilda looked up from her embroidery and fixed her attention on her son. Simon had been aimlessly wandering the chamber for several minutes.
    'That is for your stepfather to decide,' she said. As soon as news of the tavern brawl and its fatal outcome had reached their chamber, David had ordered Sabin clapped in manacles and thrown in Roxburgh's dungeon. Matilda had never seen her phlegmatic husband so close to losing his control — fists clenched, mouth white around the edges, nostrils pinched with the effort of containing his rage. She suspected that Sabin had been chained out of sight to prevent a second killing.
    The youth folded his arms and scowled. 'It wasn't Sabin's fault, everyone says so.' His voice, recently broken, was rough with challenge.
    'It does not alter the fact that a man is dead and all the witnesses so drunk that they could scarcely remember their own names in the morning, let alone what happened the night before.' She pursed her lips. 'Thank Christ that you were not with him.'
    Simon gave the floor rushes a rebellious kick. 'I wish I had been.'
    'Then you are a foolish child,' Matilda snapped, made waspish by her anxiety. With an effort, she moderated her tone.'Your stepfather will deal with him justly. He is never unfair, you know that.'
    He flashed her a resentful look. 'That's what I told Sabin about you when we were in Barfleur. His mood was sour and he said that you wished he had never been born.'
    Matilda resumed her sewing, as if she could order her thoughts through the precise control of the needle. Although her expression did not change, Simon's words had struck a tender part of her conscience. 'Even if I took no pleasure in the circumstances of his birth, I do not begrudge Sabin his life,' she said curtly. 'Although God knows what he is going to make of it. In truth I worry for him.' She worried too at the effect
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    that Sabin had on this son of hers. Her eldest, Waltheof, was studying for the Church and well removed from the dangerous glamour of Sabin's reputation, but Simon was made of a different metal and was at an impressionable age. She could understand the attraction that Sabin's wild ways might hold for a youth beginning to chafe at the parental rein.
    'Do you?' Simon kicked the floor rushes again,