We waited until that night to speak to the priest, when we could be sure that he was alone and that no one would interrupt us. The house was silent: Radulf, Godefroi and Philippe were asleep downstairs in the hall, while the ladies had long since retired to their chambers – almost as soon as they had returned, in fact, so I had not yet even seen them. It was probably a good thing, since I didn’t think I could face them now, knowing what I did about Malet. If we were right and he was a traitor, how was I to tell them?
It was a blustery night; outside the wind was howling, the rain pattering upon the yard. We stood on the up-floor outside the door to the chaplain’s room: Wace, Eudo and myself, swords by our sides. It was so dark that I could barely make out their faces, though each was standing not an arm’s length away from me. Their lips were set and they did not speak. Neither of them wanted to do this, and nor in truth did I, but we did not have much choice.
I nodded to them and placed my hand on the handle. There was no lock on this door so far as I could see, and if there was any bolt on the inside, it had not been fastened, for the door opened easily and without a sound.
The room was small and sparsely furnished, not at all like the one in the guest house at Wiltune, which had been more akin to a royal bedchamber. Ælfwold lay asleep on his bed, his blankets twisted about him, his face pressed downwards into a pillow filled with straw. I entered slowly, taking care not to make too much noise. The walls were thin, and I didn’t want to disturb the others in the house. Wigod’s room was next to this one, and on the other side of that were the Malet family chambers.
I shook Ælfwold by the shoulder; he grunted and tried to roll on to his side, clutching at the blanket, but I wrenched it away. Beneath it he was dressed only in his undershirt.
‘Wake up,’ I said, shaking him again, more roughly this time.
He rolled back, hand still flailing for the blanket, and this time his eyes opened. ‘Tancred,’ he said, bleary-eyed and blinking. He looked up at Eudo and Wace, who were standing beside me. ‘What’s happening?’
‘We know,’ I said. ‘About your lord and Eadgyth, and the promises he made to her.’
‘What?’ he asked, sitting up abruptly, glancing about at the three of us. ‘What is this?’
‘What promises did he make, Ælfwold?’
‘Why should I tell you?’ he retorted, and began to get up. ‘I will not stand for this—’
‘Stay where you are,’ Eudo said, and I heard the scrape of steel as he drew his sword, pointing the tip towards the priest’s throat. ‘Otherwise I swear my blade will meet your neck.’
‘You would not dare,’ Ælfwold said, but he quickly sat back down as Eudo edged closer to him. ‘I am a man of God; you kill me and your souls will burn for all eternity.’
I had not forgotten that, but then I had no desire to kill him. All I wanted was to frighten him enough that he would tell us what we needed to know.
‘What do you know about a body?’ I asked.
His face turned red. ‘Who told you about that?’
I drew Eadgyth’s letter out of my cloak pocket and tossed it to him. He caught it in his lap, unfolded it and, squinting closely, began to read.
‘This is treachery,’ he said after a moment. ‘You swore an oath to the vicomte. You have no right to be meddling in his business, to betray his trust!’
‘It is no more treacherous than what Malet has been doing,’ Wace said. ‘Conspiring with the widow of the usurper.’
‘What are you talking about?’ asked Ælfwold, growing angry all of a sudden. ‘Lord Guillaume is no traitor. He will hear of this, I swear. He will hear of your disloyalty—’
‘Don’t play games with us,’ I said. I was fast losing patience with him. ‘What does she mean when she says Malet has blood on his hands? Whose is this body?’
‘This is not your concern!’
‘Tell us,’ Eudo said as he advanced further, the point of his blade lightly touching the skin on the Englishman’s neck, ‘or I will kill you.’
I almost shot him a glance, but then thought better of it as Ælfwold stiffened and fell suddenly silent. If the chaplain had doubted our resolve before, he surely did not now.
‘Whose is the body?’ I asked again.
Outside the wind continued to howl; it rattled the shutters and rustled the thatch. I stepped towards the priest, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet; he tried to edge away but I reached forward and grabbed him by the collar of his undershirt. He stared back at me for what seemed an eternity, trembling in my grip, and I saw the fear in his eyes.
‘It belongs …’ he said, his voice starting to quiver. He broke off, and even in the dim light I saw drops of sweat forming upon his brow.
‘To whom?’ I demanded.
‘It belongs’, he said, speaking slowly, ‘to the man who, three years ago, would have been king. To the oath-breaker and usurper, Harold Godwineson.’
Thirty
I STARED AT him for what seemed like an eternity. This wasn’t what I had expected to hear. Harold Godwineson. His was the body that Eadgyth wanted to see.
I let go of Ælfwold’s collar and stepped back; he sank back on to the bed. I glanced at the other two, and they back at me.
Wace frowned. ‘Is this true?’
‘It is the truth,’ the chaplain answered, eyeing us nervously, as if unsure what to expect from us. As well he might, for this was far larger than any of us had been considering.
Eudo held his sword out once more, towards his face. ‘If you are lying to us …’
‘By God and the saints, I swear it is the truth!’ Ælfwold said, his eyes wide, his voice trembling even more than before.
‘But why should Malet know where Harold’s body is?’ I asked.
Wace frowned. ‘I thought it had never been found. From what I heard no one could identify it among the fallen, so trampled and broken were all the corpses that day.’
I’d heard the same tale. We had all been there at Hæstinges, but there had been so much confusion that few had known exactly when the usurper had been killed and the field became ours. Some said that he was already maimed when an arrow had pierced his eye; others that it took the efforts of four mounted men, Duke Guillaume himself among them, to defeat him as he fought on alone, clinging to the vestiges of his power to the very end. The only thing we knew for certain was that it had been done.
Of his corpse, however, nothing had ever been said. Like most people, I assumed it had never been found: that he had simply been left to be eaten by the wolves and the crows, no different from the thousands of Englishmen who were slain that day. For as long as he was dead, it did not matter what became of his body. In the eyes of God he was a perjurer and a sinner, and even had he been recovered, no Christian burial could have been accorded him.
‘That at least is the story as King Guillaume would wish it told,’ Ælfwold said. ‘But it is not what happened. The body was found – don’t you see that it had to be? Without it, he couldn’t be certain that Harold was truly dead. At first he called upon my lord to look for it amongst the slain, thinking he would be able to recognise him on account of the friendship he knew they had once shared. But when he was unable to do so …’
‘He sent for Eadgyth,’ I finished for him. Her words came back to me now, from that night when we had spoken in the church at Wiltune, and I understood what she had meant. She had been there after the battle, she had told me so herself. And she had seen her husband’s battered corpse. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
Ælfwold nodded, still watching us warily. ‘They came to an understanding, that if she identified the body, in return she would be told where it was to be buried.’
‘That was the promise Malet made to her, then,’ I muttered. My heart beat faster; everything was beginning to make sense at last. ‘And she upheld her part of the arrangement?’
‘She did,’ he said. ‘She was able to recognise him by certain marks on his body: marks that only a wife could know. Tho
ugh once she had done so, the resemblance soon became clear to the rest of us. His head had been severed, and was found some way from the rest of him, which even then was missing one leg, hacked off at the thigh. But it was him nonetheless.’
‘You have seen the body?’ I asked. ‘You were there as well?’ It was not unusual for chaplains to travel in their lords’ companies, even to war, but I had not thought Ælfwold would have the disposition for it.
‘I was,’ he said with a touch of impatience. ‘And I was on your side then, just as I am now.’
‘Perhaps.’ I wasn’t sure that I yet believed him. ‘What happened to Harold’s body after that?’
‘After that the duke entrusted it to Lord Guillaume’s safe-keeping. He was told to see to its burial.’
‘Except that he obviously went back on his word,’ Wace pointed out. ‘He didn’t tell Eadgyth where he was burying it, or else she wouldn’t be asking to see it still.’
‘Where is it, then?’ Eudo said. His sword was still in his hand, though it was no longer pointed towards the priest.
‘I cannot say,’ Ælfwold replied. ‘It has been hidden these past two years. No one knows where it is, save for the vicomte himself.’
‘Hidden?’ said Wace. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Don’t you understand?’ The priest rose to his feet, staring at each of us in turn. ‘There are many who still support Harold, even this long after his death – many who now regard him as a martyr. If the place of his burial were to be made widely known, it could become the centre of a cult, a rallying point for rebellion. The king cannot allow that to happen. No one may know where the body is – not even Eadgyth.’
The priest was right, I realised. There were already many who wished to see us gone from these shores. I thought of the army that had attacked us at Dunholm, which even now was besieging the castle at Eoferwic – all those thousands of men. How many more might there be if King Guillaume had allowed the English to openly honour the usurper?
‘Do you know?’ I demanded of Ælfwold.
‘No!’ he said. ‘I told you. Only the vicomte knows. Even I am not trusted with such knowledge.’
That hardly surprised me, but I did not say it. Certainly after all that had happened in the course of our travels, I would hardly trust him. Though Malet had felt secure enough at least to give him the letter in the first place. But then again, there had been nothing in it of any consequence, even if one knew what it was referring to—
And all of a sudden I understood how the pieces fitted together. ‘So that was what he meant,’ I said, turning to Eudo and Wace. ‘He couldn’t risk telling her where it was, in case word got out, and so that was all that he could say. Tutus est. “It is safe.”’
‘How do you know that?’ Ælfwold said. Anger flashed across his face as he turned to look at me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but I had no answer. Silently I cursed myself for having let it slip.
‘The vicomte will hear of this,’ Ælfwold said, and it was not the first time that I had heard those words from him. ‘You swore an oath to him!’
‘We thought he was conspiring with Eadgyth against the king,’ Wace said.
The chaplain gazed sternly at him. ‘And so instead you betray the confidence which he placed in you. You are fools, all of you. You think you know what you’re doing, but you’re just interfering in matters that are beyond you. Lord Guillaume is no traitor, and never has been.’
I remained silent. Beside me, Eudo sheathed his sword.
‘What about the other three?’ Ælfwold asked. ‘Have they had a part in this too?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘They haven’t.’
‘Perhaps that is as well.’ The chaplain sighed. ‘Now, I’ve told you all that I know. You have what you wanted. Leave me, please.’
He closed his eyes as if in silent prayer. This was the man who had done so much for me after my injury at Dunholm. What had happened to our friendship to cause it to sour so quickly – to sow such distrust, such enmity?
I nodded to Wace and Eudo and we went, closing the door as he sat down upon the bed, his head bowed, hands clasped before him. We had what we had come for, which meant that we could now return to Eoferwic in good conscience. After everything, Malet was to be trusted.
And yet despite that, for some reason I could not help but feel uneasy, though at what I could not say exactly. Something in what the priest had said, perhaps: something that did not quite make sense. I no longer knew what to think. So far all my suspicions had been misplaced. We had held Ælfwold at sword-point; we had got all that we could from him. What else was there?
In any case we had other concerns now. The rebels awaited us in Eoferwic, and whether we fought for Malet, or in the name of Normandy or out of vengeance for Lord Robert, what was important was that we were there. For the army of King Guillaume was marching, and I meant to be with it when it struck.
We gathered at the stables the next morning as soon as we had broken our fast. Ælfwold was not to be seen, which I took to mean that he wouldn’t be coming with us. In truth I was glad, for I had seen far more of him this past week than I would have wished, and my patience with him was all but spent.
Each of us took two mounts. Wigod had supplied us with destriers from Malet’s own stables, and others he had managed to purchase while we had been away. He had a good eye for horseflesh, it turned out, for each one of them was in fine condition, strong and spirited as a knight’s mount needed to be. As the leader of our small conroi, I assumed first choice – a brown with powerful hindquarters and a white diamond on his forehead – leaving the other knights to decide between themselves.
I knew, though, that if we rode these horses north they would not be fresh when we needed them for the fighting, and so instead we saddled the rounceys we had bought in Suthferebi: the same ones that had also borne us to Wiltune and back. It meant we’d have twice the work, since we were not travelling in our lord’s company and didn’t have the retinue of servants who would usually care for the animals, but we had little choice.
I was leading my horses out into the yard when I spied Beatrice watching us from one of the windows on the up-floor. It was the first time I had seen either of the ladies since we had returned from Wiltune. Her eyes met mine, and she signalled to me, or so I thought, but it was only for a moment, for then she turned and was gone.
‘I should go and tell the ladies we’re to be on our way,’ I said, leaving the others to see to the horses.
‘Don’t be long,’ Wace called after me. ‘We need to leave soon if we’re to make best use of the day.’
There was no one in the hall. Wigod and Osric I knew were in the kitchens, mustering provisions for us to take on the road. I had seen little of the steward that morning; he had hardly spoken to me and in fact seemed to be avoiding me. I could hardly blame him for that.
‘Your lord is a good man,’ I had assured him when I’d met him in the yard earlier. ‘I know it.’
I didn’t feel that I could tell him yet what we had learnt. It was too soon, and still these doubts kept coming into my mind. There was something that we had overlooked, I was sure, though again I could not work out what.
‘There is an explanation for all of this,’ I told the steward. ‘Whatever it is, I will find it.’
‘I trust that you will,’ he’d replied solemnly before hurrying away.
I ventured now up the stairs, towards the family chambers, which were at the far end of the up-floor. The door was fitted with a sturdy iron lock, while at either end of the lintel above it were carved the shapes of flowers with wide petals.
I knocked on the door; Beatrice opened it. Her face was drawn, as if she had not slept well. Her hair fell loosely across her shoulders, which took me slightly by surprise, but then she was in her own house, in her own chambers, where she had no need to keep it covered.
‘Come in,’ she said.
I remembered the last time we were together – the kiss she had laid upon my
cheek – and suddenly I felt the same shiver running through me.
I tried to put it from my mind as I entered, finding myself in a small anteroom. A light breeze blew in through open shutters, and I could hear the rest of the men talking down in the yard. On one wall hung bright tapestries depicting a hunt in progress: men on horseback pursuing a tusked boar, with dogs running beside them, while other men waited with bows raised and arrows notched, waiting for the moment to let loose their fingers. An embroidered rug lay on the floor; at the other end of the chamber were two chairs, positioned either side of carved double doors.
‘Is your mother here?’ I asked.
‘She is still abed,’ Beatrice replied, glancing towards the doors. ‘She worries for my father.’
‘As do we all, my lady.’ I did not like to think what she might say if she knew I had been accusing him first of consorting with Harold’s widow, then of conspiring against the king.
‘She has had stomach pains for several days. Since Robert left she has been hardly sleeping at night, and she is eating less and less during the day. Some days she barely goes beyond her room.’
‘I’m sure Ælfwold will care for her, now that he’s here.’ The words did not come easily, and I had to force them out. I was no longer sure of anything when it came to the priest.
‘I know,’ she said.
‘You’ve known him a long time, haven’t you?’
‘Almost all my life,’ she replied. ‘He came into my father’s service when I was very young.’
‘How young?’
‘Five, perhaps six summers old,’ she said. ‘No more than that. Why?’
‘What do you remember of him from then?’
She frowned at the question. ‘I don’t see what—’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘I’d like to know.’
For a moment she hesitated, her brown eyes searching, but then she bowed her head. ‘He often took care of me when I was small and my father was away on campaign,’ she said. ‘He liked to teach me things: how to speak English, to read Latin, to play chess. Even when I was older he was always ready to listen when I had something to say, always watching over me.’
Sworn Sword Page 33
