Rotaida left the river and rushed to the Frankish camp. The sight of the mud-filled ditch beyond the stockade gave her a pang. If it hadn’t rained for three days and nights, the sides of the great ditch would not have slid into it and filled it with mud. They wouldn’t be packing today for the trek back to Aachen; men would be at work digging Charlemagne’s canal.

Her friend Martin came toward her from the cook tents with two empty water buckets swinging from his hands.

“Martin!” she called. “The two Saxons! They’re still there!”

“What happened? You’re all wet and muddy.”

“An ugly old woman and that blond man who worked with the canal diggers. Will they follow us back to Aachen? Do you know anything about them?”

“Henrik—I know him.”

“He went off in their boat. I swam to keep up, but I lost him.”

“Oh?”

“They mean to capture me!”

He dropped the buckets. “Why?”

“To bait a trap for Father, I thought at first. But Queen Fastrada knows I gave Benedetto the poison she’d ordered me to put into the king’s porridge. Alors, she—”