by Alys Clare
Rollo Guiscard, putting up in a mean, dirty and uncomfortable lodging house behind the quayside in Cambridge, was furiously angry with himself. He had made a grave error – or so he believed – and now, he feared, he was forced to run for his life.
It demonstrated to perfection the self-imposed stricture that, until now, he had ruthlessly abided by: don’t involve the heart in matters of business.
Well, he’d allowed himself to do just that. Now he was paying the price. His folly had begun a month ago, when he had interrupted his carefully constructed plan to sell the same information twice over to two very powerful men for no greater purpose than to seek out the fenland healer he believed he might love. He had contrived to watch her for a while before making himself known to her, and his observance had repaid him in bitter coin: he’d seen her with another man, a desperately wounded man who might even now be dead. He’d seen the way she looked at the man as he lay bleeding into her lap. Later, when he’d had a chance to speak to her, he’d asked her bluntly if she loved him. ‘No. Yes. I don’t know,’ she’d replied. To be fair, she’d told Rollo she loved him as well, but then, when she’d spoken of this other man, whatever thoughts about him that preoccupied her had made her weep.
So he’d left her. Set off on the next stage of his mission. Gone to Normandy, and sought out Duke Robert in Rouen. He had already made a provisional visit there, but then he’d been travel-stained and worn out, his purse all but empty, and in no state to present himself to the Duke of Normandy with any hope of what he had to say being believed, if it were even so much as heard. But he had used his time there well, finding out what he needed to know about the duke and his rule. When he returned, he had gone prepared: well dressed in costly new tunic, boots and a luxurious fur-lined cloak, freshly shaved, his fair hair well cut and shining with cleanliness. As he had anticipated, he hadn’t had to press a surreptitious coin or two into too many palms before he’d been ushered into the duke’s presence.
Rollo forbore to tell Duke Robert all that he had previously related to his brother King William of England; his first loyalty was to William, after all, whom he considered far the better man. But he saw no harm in revealing to the duke how matters stood in Outremer; how strife between the infidel and the Christians was intensifying; how rumour and propaganda were stoking the fire of hatred; how Alexius Comnenus, the ruler of Constantinople, was all but sure to demand help from the Christian lords of the West to help him halt the advance of the Turks. This intelligence, Rollo was sure, would soon be known throughout north-west Europe, for how could such an approaching cataclysm be kept secret?
Duke Robert, however, responded just as Rollo had hoped he would, treating the information as if it was Rollo’s personal gift to him. And – which Rollo had also hoped – paying him very well.
Duke Robert, Rollo had discovered on finally making his acquaintance, was largely as his people had depicted him. He was short but stout, his ample girth suggesting self-indulgence and an over-fondness of the board and the wine jug. His fleshy face was red and slightly sweaty, and his teeth weren’t good. In addition, as Rollo deduced after not many words had passed between them, he wasn’t very bright.
But in one crucial aspect, Duke Robert of Normandy had shown wisdom: perhaps in recognition of the fact that his grasp of complex matters of statecraft left quite a lot to be desired, he’d had the good sense to surround himself with cleverer, more astutely minded men than himself.
One of these, or so Rollo believed, had not been as convinced as his lord duke of the authenticity of the unexpected well-dressed wealthy visitor who had turned up so fortuitously, demanded audience with Duke Robert and talked to him for over an hour, emerging with a heavy bag of gold hanging from his belt. This man, whoever he was, had let misgivings harden into suspicion, and detailed a man to follow Rollo and see where he went. So skilful and subtle had been the tail that this close adviser to the duke had set on Rollo – the spy becoming the spied-upon – that, for all his experience in following and detecting when he himself was being followed, Rollo had not begun to detect his – their? – presence until he was almost back in Cambridge.
Now he sat in the darkness of the tiny space that had been let to him as a room, contemplating his own folly. The room was vile. He’d already crushed more than a dozen beetles – the whole building was dank, and didn’t appear to have been cleaned for a decade or more – and the sparse, soiled bedding had been jumping with fleas. He’d rolled it up and shoved it in a corner, preferring to sleep on bare boards with his cloak for warmth. The only advantage of his awful lodgings was that nobody would expect to find him there.
I left Rouen as if I already knew my pursuers were after me, Rollo thought. He, or they, must have assumed my speed was because I feared whoever was close behind me.
It was ironic, he reflected wryly, that the overwhelming need for haste had been for quite a different reason.
Which brought his depressing, alarming thoughts back full circle to where he had begun: to his stupidity in having permitted his impatience to return to Lassair to overcome his normal caution. Now he was in danger, and he didn’t underestimate its gravity. Duke Robert’s men would question him, probably, and if he refused to answer, they’d hurt him. Eventually, whatever he did or didn’t say, they’d kill him.
He glanced round the dark, stinking space. His eyes lit on the leather bag in the corner: Duke Robert’s gold. He smiled grimly. Here he was, wealthy by the standards of all but the richest men in the land, sitting in this hellhole of a room crushing insects.
It was time, he decided, to come up with a plan.
By the middle of the day after Sibert was attacked, it became clear to those of us concerned about him that he wasn’t going to die. Or, at least, so we hoped and prayed. He woke from his long, deep, herb-induced sleep, announced that his head hurt like the very devil and asked plaintively if he could have something to eat. While Froya set about preparing food, I slipped out to seek Hrype. He’d said he wanted to be present when Sibert was sufficiently alert to answer some questions, and I reckoned that time had now come.
Hrype had been at my aunt’s house. He and I walked back to Froya’s house in silence.
We found Sibert sitting propped up on pillows, spooning savoury porridge into his mouth from a wooden bowl, pausing occasionally to dip in a hunk of bread and wolf that down too. As soon as he had finished – I observed that although he looked much better, the effort of sitting up and eating had tired him greatly – Hrype said, ‘Sibert, it appears I only just missed a glimpse of the man who attacked you. Even if I had seen him, however, my concern was with you and I doubt that I’d have paid him sufficient attention. Is there anything you can tell us about him?’
Sibert closed his eyes, perhaps as an aid to memory. But after a while he opened them again and said, ‘No.’
‘You were muttering in your sleep,’ I said. ‘You seemed to be protesting that it wasn’t you the assailant wanted, and that you hadn’t been present when – well, when whatever it was they were trying to find out about had occurred.’
He turned to me with a frown. ‘Was I?’ He began to shake his head, abruptly ceasing the movement when, evidently, it pained him. ‘I can’t remember. I can’t recall talking in the night, nor can I remember answering any questions.’
I met Hrype’s eyes. He was scowling, as if Sibert had failed him somehow. Before I could stop myself, I said angrily, ‘He can’t help it, Hrype! He’s taken several heavy blows to the head and it’s quite a surprise he can even remember his own name!’
‘Sibert,’ said Sibert, grinning at me. Then, his smile fading as quickly as it had appeared, he looked at Hrype and said caustically, ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you yet again, but I’m not going to remember just because you want me to.’
Several expressions flashed rapidly across Hrype’s lean, handsome face. Then – and I reckoned he was having to work quite hard to speak civilly – he said, ‘Not to worry, Sibert. Perhaps memory will come b
ack once you’ve recovered.’ He shot a glance at me, then returned his attention to Sibert. ‘I only wish to help you,’ he said. ‘Someone attacked you and it is likely that had it not been for my arrival, you would now be dead.’
With that, he got up, strode out of the house and banged the door behind him.
I hurried out after him. ‘Hrype, wait,’ I called.
He stopped. He didn’t turn round, he just stopped.
‘Sibert isn’t the first victim of this attacker,’ I said. And I told him what Gurdyman had told me.
Or, at least, I started to, but I hadn’t said more than half a dozen words before he held up an imperious hand and said, ‘I already know.’
‘You – how? Have you seen Gurdyman since I left Cambridge?’
‘No.’ He gave me a superior smile. ‘I knew before that, when I visited Gurdyman last week.’
‘Then why—’ Feeling foolish – Hrype so often makes me feel like that – I stopped. I’d been going to say, Then why didn’t you warn Sibert? But that was absurd, since how could Hrype or anyone else have predicted that Sibert would be the assailant’s next victim?
He watched me, the remains of that annoying smile still playing around his mouth. ‘Two young men, roughly the same age, both with longish fair hair’ – that was news to me, since Gurdyman hadn’t described the first victim’s colouring or, indeed, anything else about him except that he was youngish – ‘attacked within a few miles of each other.’ He paused, staring unblinkingly at me. ‘I’m sure you can draw your own conclusions.’ Then he turned and strode away.
Draw my own conclusions? Beyond the fact that this attacker seemed to be looking for a specific man – which was so obvious it wasn’t really worth stating – I was at a total loss.
I walked slowly back to Froya’s house and let myself in. She’d prepared some of the porridge for me, but I shook my head. Anxiety and the lingering pain of the strained muscle in my lower back were combining to make me feel queasy, and I had no appetite. I’d had a headache when I woke up, although it had eased later. I sat down beside the hearth, wrapped my shawl around me and tried to work out what had been so clear to Hrype that I was missing. But, puzzle as I might – and my head was aching again by the time we settled for sleep – I couldn’t see what he meant.
I woke to darkness.
The fire had burned low, and nothing remained but a very faint glow. I could hear Sibert’s long, deep, steady breathing. I’d given him a second, weaker draught, and I knew he’d sleep soundly for some time. I was just thinking how clever nature is, to give us the gift of profound, healing sleep which is just what we need when we have been sick or injured, when an agonizing pain shot through the very base of my spine.
I gasped. I couldn’t help myself.
Then, while I was still reeling from the first onset, it altered its attack. A band of white-hot pain circled round my body from my lower back right into the base of my belly. It seemed to clench me in its fist, and I stifled another cry.
I was wet.
Alarmed, horribly afraid, I put my hand down between my legs and felt the warm rush of my blood.
I heard myself cry out. Then, even as I turned my face into my pillow to suppress it, I whispered aloud, ‘Jack.’
There was the flicker of a candle flame. Firm, warm hands were upon me. Froya’s long, soft hair brushed across my face and she whispered, ‘Hush, now. I am here. I will help you.’
She seemed to know what was happening. Reaching down under my blanket, she took hold of my balled fists; I’d been pressing them hard into my belly, as if that might assuage the pain. ‘I know,’ she said, in that same calm, gentle tone. ‘I know how it hurts, but you must let me help.’
She must have felt the pooling blood. She got up, went to a shelf and returned with a woven basket of soft rags. She bunched up several of them and placed them ready. She poured water from the pot kept suspended over the hearth into a bowl and dipped in another of the cloths. Then she turned back the blanket, folded my undergown up over my chest and looked down at me. I was watching her face, and saw her expression. She met my eyes, and hers were full of sorrow. ‘Oh, my dear,’ she said very quietly.
Then she got to work.
Later, when she had finished and we were sipping the hot drinks she had prepared, she said, ‘Do you wish me to summon your mother? Or your aunt, perhaps? She’s a healer, and perhaps she should—’
‘No!’
I’d almost spat out the word, and I sensed her slight recoil. ‘I’m sorry, Froya, but I haven’t told them I was—’ I hadn’t told anyone, I thought. Not even the lost baby’s father. ‘Nobody knew.’
Froya nodded. She turned to me, and in that long look I seemed to perceive that she too had been in this exact position. She said, ‘Very well, then.’
After a moment, she reached out and took my hand.
That small gesture of solidarity, of sympathy, of kindness, undid me. I began to weep and found I couldn’t stop.
When she had made us another drink and I was feeling very slightly better, she said, ‘I can see that you do not wish to talk about this, and I shall not try to make you. I promise you that no word of what has happened here tonight will emerge from me.’ She shot an amused glance at her deeply sleeping son. ‘Nor, naturally, from him, blissfully oblivious as he is.’
‘Thank you,’ I whispered. Then, for I felt I had to know, I said, ‘Why are you being so nice to me?’
She gave a swift chuckle; a sound I didn’t think I’d ever heard from her before. ‘Why not?’ she answered simply. But then, perhaps realizing that the reply wasn’t really enough for either of us, she elaborated on it. ‘Lassair, I know, because he told me’ – she nodded in Sibert’s direction – ‘that you have been aware of the truth about his paternity for some time. You could have shared such a choice bit of gossip about the stiff-necked, stand-offish Froya, who thinks herself above her peasant neighbours, and the haughty, mystical man who looks down his long and elegant nose at everyone who is not as intelligent as him. But you didn’t.’ She squeezed my hand. ‘You kept my secret, and now I shall keep yours.’
I wanted to thank her but I was weeping again and could not speak.
‘You shall stay here, and I shall look after you,’ she went on. ‘You have every reason to stay with us, for it is you who is caring for my son. When you are ready – when you have decided what you wish to do – then and not until then will it be time for you to go. Now’ – her tone was suddenly brisk, and she rose gracefully to her feet – ‘let me fetch fresh cloths for you, and then perhaps you can settle down and sleep, right on into the morning if you can.’
As soon as she said the word sleep, it was all I wanted to do. ‘What will you tell Sibert?’ I asked drowsily as she worked.
She smiled. ‘Merely that you need to rest, having sat up for the majority of two nights caring for him.’
‘But I haven’t, I’ve managed at least some sleep, and—’
‘Hush,’ she said. ‘Yes, I know you didn’t really sit wakeful for the entire time, but he doesn’t.’
She had finished. She drew the blanket up to my chin, then bent down and dropped a soft kiss on my forehead. ‘Go to sleep,’ she murmured.
It sounded like an incantation. It acted like one, too. I was asleep in moments.
FOUR
In his sordid little room, Rollo had been planning.
He now had the final confirmation that Duke Robert’s agents were after him, and that their intent was not to ask him politely what he’d been doing sneaking in to see their lord and selling him information when here he was, back in England, and very likely an agent of the king; there was no logical way that the duke’s men could know for certain about his allegiance to King William, but he was in no mood to go by cool logic.
Their intention was not to question him but to kill him.
A body had been found, caught by the tatters of its remaining garments under the Great Bridge. The face had been eaten by rats, and not
a lot remained of the clothing except one of the boots, which was of fine quality and had obviously cost a good deal. The body was that of a man roughly Rollo’s age. And he’d had shoulder-length, well-cut fair hair.
The rumour-mongers in the market place were bright-eyed with the thrill of spreading the gruesome tale, enhancing its effect by telling each other with avid fascination that the dead man was the second victim, and that the first, too, had been a young and fair-haired man.
Rollo’s intelligence and common sense would normally remind him that fair-haired men were far from uncommon in England, and for the two victims to have had the same colouring and hair style was nothing more than coincidence. Once again, however, his capacity for logic was in abeyance and his mind wasn’t amenable to reason.
The first conclusion that he reached after his lengthy spell of deep thought was that, having aroused the wrath of Duke Robert – or, at any rate, of one of the men who protected his interests – it was time to ensure the favour of the man to whom he owed first allegiance, King William of England. If the worst happened and somehow William came to hear of Rollo’s mission to Rouen, he would have to dress it up as a spying mission for the king. I needed to ascertain how much your brother knew, he would say, and how accurate the information was. We do, after all, he would add, want to make sure he is encouraged to go in the right direction.
That ought to appeal to the king, Rollo thought. William’s hope was that when the appeal from Constantinople came and Robert hurried to answer it, his urgent need for cash to fund the excursion to save the East and the Holy Places from the infidel would make him turn to his brother. William would lend him the money, but demand Normandy as surety. When, as seemed more than likely, Robert failed to return, William would win the dukedom without the loss of a single man or horse.
Rollo had agents placed in several towns in England, as well as in outlying, lonely places where nobody went and where it would be safe to hide. Now, he would use his Cambridge contact. Like all the rest, for Rollo had selected them carefully, this one – a woman of middle years or more, widow of a merchant, intelligent, discreet – was good at what she did for him and would, he hoped, be able to provide answers to the questions he planned to ask her.
