‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Can you remember something about horses?’
There was a long pause as Osric searched for the exact words as he remembered them. But the extract from the Oneirokritikon he quoted was not what I had expected.
‘To see blood flowing is unlucky for a man who wishes to keep his actions secret.’
I sank back on my blankets, too exhausted to keep my head raised.
‘So my dream was not about the horse and its rider. It was about me, the dreamer.’
Already I was wondering if one day Carolus would find out that I had lied to him about Ganelon and what I would find when I returned to Aachen. Did Bertha still expect me to continue with our affair? And how many of her intimate circle had she told that I had predicted the death of the king’s only son? With Osric’s help perhaps I could remember or reconstruct a few pages from the Book of Dreams and steer a safe path through the intrigues of the royal court. But Hroudland’s death meant that I had lost my patron and protector, even as I had started to come to terms with being winelas guma, a ‘friendless man’, an outcast from my own country. Once again, my future was uncertain.