As we neared the door to the dean’s hall, I began to make out a voice, intoning some words in Latin. It sounded like scripture, though I did not recognise the verse.
‘This must be it,’ I said to Wace and Eudo as we arrived before the doors. They were not barred or locked, and I flung them open. Both met the stone walls at the same time, sending a double crash resounding through the candlelit chamber.
At the far end a bald, round-faced man stood behind a lectern, with a thick-bound gospel book set upon it, its leaves open. His cheeks were ruddy, and his ears stuck out from the side of his head, and for some reason I thought he looked familiar, though I could not place him exactly.
He had stopped reading and his mouth hung agape. Another twelve canons, all of them dressed in black robes, sat upon wooden benches around the edge of the room. All looked up; a couple of them rose and were quickly seated again when they saw our mail and the scabbards swinging from our belts.
‘Dean Wulfwin?’ I asked.
‘I-I am Wulfwin,’ the man at the end said, his voice trembling as he stepped back from the gospel book. ‘Who are you? What is going on?’
And suddenly I remembered where I knew him from. He was the priest I had seen in Lundene, that night I had been attacked – so long ago, it seemed, that until this moment it had all but faded from my mind. The bald head, the red cheeks, the prominent ears: it all came back to me now, as clear as if I were standing there still.
Which meant that the one he had been speaking with had to have been Ælfwold. Nothing else made sense; it was too much of a coincidence otherwise. I saw now how stupid I had been. If I had but trusted my own eyes, rather than let myself be tricked by him, then we might have saved ourselves all this trouble. But of course I hadn’t known then everything we did now about Eadgyth and Harold. I only hoped that it was not too late to make amends.
I stared at the dean. ‘You,’ I said. ‘You were in Lundene four weeks ago.’
Perhaps he was too afraid, or perhaps he simply had no answer to that, for he did not speak.
I advanced across the tiled floor towards him. ‘Do you deny it?’
‘H-h-how …’ Wulfwin began, faltering over his words as he stepped away. ‘How did you know that?’
‘I saw you by St Eadmund’s church. You were speaking with the priest Ælfwold, conspiring with him against the vicomte of Eoferwic, Guillaume Malet, and against the king.’
A murmur rose up amongst the assembled canons, who until then had been silent, and out of the corner of my eye I saw them exchanging glances with one another. They did not concern me; I was interested only in finding the truth.
‘No,’ the dean said as he backed against the wall. ‘It’s not true. I would n-never speak against the king, I swear!’
‘The dean is a loyal servant of King Guillaume,’ another of the canons spoke up. ‘You have no right to come in here and address him in this way, to accuse him of such things.’
I turned to the one who had spoken: a wiry man not much older than myself. He shrank back under my stare. ‘We won’t leave until we have the answers we’re looking for,’ I said, and then to the rest of them: ‘Go. We will speak with the dean alone.’
He glanced at me, then at Eudo and Wace, whose hands rested upon their sword-hilts in warning.
‘Go, Æthelric,’ Wulfwin said. ‘The Lord will protect me.’
The man called Æthelric hesitated, but at last his better judgement prevailed and he signalled to the rest of the canons. I watched as they filed out of the chamber. Wace closed the doors after the last had left and then set the bar across. I thought it unlikely that any of them would try to disturb us, especially since they knew we all carried swords, but I did not like to have to resort to such threats if I could help it.
Throughout all of this the dean had not moved, as if his feet had somehow taken root where he stood. He watched me with wide eyes as I marched up to him.
‘Tell me, then,’ I said. ‘If you weren’t conspiring, what were you doing?’
‘I w-was only receiving the instructions that Malet had sent me, through his chaplain, Ælfwold. He wanted Harold’s relics removed to another place of his choosing.’
‘He wanted them moved?’ Eudo asked, but I waved him quiet. I would take care of this.
‘P-please,’ the dean said. ‘I have merely been doing as the vicomte asked. I swear I have done nothing wrong.’
‘Where is the usurper’s body now?’ I said. ‘Is it still here?’
Wulfwin shook his head. ‘They took it. The chaplain and two of Malet’s knights came for it last night. I had to arrange for the high altar to be moved, the church floor to be pulled up. The coffin was buried beneath it—’
‘Wait,’ I said, as a memory long buried came suddenly to mind. ‘These two knights. Describe them to me.’
A look of bewilderment crossed his face. ‘Describe them?’
‘We don’t have time for this, Tancred,’ Wace said. ‘What does it matter what they looked like?’
The dean glanced at him, then back at me, uncertain what to do. I glared at Wace. We had been on the road for four days; I had not slept properly since before the battle, and I was not prepared to stand here arguing while Ælfwold put ever more miles between us and him.
‘Think,’ I told Wulfwin. ‘What did they look like?’
The dean swallowed. ‘One was tall, about the same height as him –’ he pointed at Eudo ‘– while the other was short. I remember the tall one’s eyes, of the kind that you imagine could see right into a man’s soul, with an ugly scar above one of them—’
‘He had a scar?’ I interrupted. That was what I had been waiting to hear. ‘Which eye was it?’
‘Which eye?’ There was a note of despair in the dean’s voice. He hesitated for a moment, and then said, ‘The right one, as you would look at him.’
‘To him it would be his left, then,’ I murmured.
‘How is this important?’ asked Eudo.
‘It’s important because the man who attacked me, that night we arrived in Lundene, had a scar above his eye. His left eye.’
‘There could be hundreds of men with a mark like that,’ Wace pointed out. ‘How can you be sure it’s the same one?’
‘This man,’ I said to the dean. ‘He was unshaven, with a large chin?’
He looked at me in surprise. ‘That’s right,’ he replied.
‘It was him,’ I said, turning to Eudo and Wace. ‘Which means those men were serving Ælfwold all along.’
To have hired them he must have been planning this for some time, I realised. Since before we set off from Eoferwic, at least, and perhaps longer ago than that: since before we’d even met him. Which meant that all this time he had been deceiving us. At last I was beginning to see how everything fitted together. My fingers tightened around my sword-hilt. Not only had the priest lied to me, but his own hired swords had tried to kill me.
I cursed aloud, filling the chamber with my anger. The dean withdrew towards the far wall, his face even paler than before. He was trembling now, his breath coming in stutters, and I wondered if he thought we meant to kill him now that we had our answers.
‘P-please,’ said Wulfwin. ‘I have t-told you all that I know. By God and all his saints I swear it.’
‘It’s all right,’ Wace told him. ‘Our quarrel is not with you.’
Indeed I knew that for all the dean’s squirming, he was not at fault. He was merely unlucky to have been caught up in this business.
‘You were deceived,’ Eudo said. ‘Those weren’t Malet’s knights who came to take Harold’s body away, but sell-swords. And the instructions you received came not from the vicomte but from Ælfwold himself. He is a traitor; we’re trying to stop him.’
‘A traitor?’ A little colour was returning to the dean’s cheeks, but he nevertheless kept his distance. ‘Who, then, are you?’
‘We’ve been sent by Malet from Eoferwic,’ I said, though even as I did so I was aware of how feeble it so
unded. ‘We are knights of his household.’
Wulfwin glanced about at each of us. ‘How do I know that you’re speaking the truth?’
‘You don’t,’ I said, no longer caring to keep the ire from my voice. The longer we delayed, the less chance we had of catching Ælfwold. ‘Now tell us: where did they go from here?’
‘I don’t know,’ the dean wailed. ‘I swear I’ve told you everything.’
‘Did they leave by road?’ Wace said.
Wulfwin shook his head. ‘B-by river. We had the coffin carried down to the village, where it was loaded on to a barge they had hired for the purpose. They sailed downstream, but they didn’t say where they were bound.’
‘Where does the river lead?’ I asked.
‘It flows into the Temes, a short way east of Lundene.’
‘And they left this morning?’
The dean nodded hesitantly, as if afraid he might give the wrong answer. ‘It was still dark, an hour or so before first light.’
‘Which means they have only half a day’s start on us,’ Eudo muttered. ‘If we ride hard, we might catch them before they reach the Temes.’
‘If that’s where they’re headed,’ Wace said, his expression grim.
‘I don’t see what choice we have,’ I said. We had but a few hours until night fell, after which time it would be all but impossible to track them. I turned to the dean, still cowering in the corner. ‘We will need your fastest horses.’
‘Of c-course,’ Wulfwin said. ‘Whatever you need.’
I glanced first at Wace, then at Eudo, and saw the resolve in their eyes. Both knew, as did I, that this was our last chance. More than the battle for Eoferwic, more than anything that we had done since Hæstinges itself, this was what mattered. For if we failed to catch Ælfwold, if we couldn’t recover Harold’s body—
I drove such doubts from my head; now was not the time for them. ‘Let’s go,’ I said.
Thirty-eight
THE RIVER WOUND south through the hills, a brown ribbon showing us the way. We did not stop, did not eat, did not speak, but pushed our horses ever harder, pressing our heels in, drawing all the speed that we could from their legs, and more besides.
We galloped across the hills, through fields recently ploughed, skirting woods and villages, all the time keeping the river in sight, watching for the barge that might be Ælfwold’s. But all we saw were small ferries and fishermen’s boats, and as the sun descended towards the west and the shadows lengthened, and still there was no sign, sickness grew in my stomach. In one town we tried to ask some of the peasants who lived there if they had seen anything, but their speech was not of a kind that Eudo could understand, and so we had no choice but to keep going.
Slowly the river grew wider, bounded on either side by wide flats of mud and reeds where waterbirds had made their nests. The sun sank beneath the horizon and the last light of day was upon us when, just a few miles away to the south, I glimpsed the river-mist settling over the broad, black waters of the Temes.
I glanced at Eudo and at Wace, and they back at me. Neither of them said anything; defeat was heavy in their eyes. We had failed.
We carried on nonetheless, to the top of the next rise: the last before the land fell away towards the water. From here we could look down upon the river as it wound its way through the mudflats out into the Temes. The tide was on its way in, slowly flooding across the marshes, working its way into the many inlets that lay along the shore. At our backs the wind was rising, howling through the woods and down the valley. Streaks of cloud, black as charcoal, were drawing across the sky. The light had all but gone, and with it, our hopes.
All I could think about was how we were to tell Malet what had happened, what his response would be. We had done our utmost, and yet even that had not been enough to stop Ælfwold.
‘What now?’ asked Wace after what seemed like an eternity.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. The wind gusted, buffeting my cheek. ‘I don’t know.’
I gazed out upon the Temes. For the first time I noticed there was a ship there, out in the midstream. It was yet some way off – a mile or so perhaps, barely visible through the river-mist – and heading upriver, but even so I could see that it was too big to be the barge that Wulfwin had spoken of. A trader, probably, from Normandy or Denmark, though it was late to still be out on the river, especially when there were ports further downstream where they might easily have put in for the night. I did not know how far exactly Lundene lay from here, but night was falling so fast that it seemed to me they had little chance of reaching the city before dark.
I watched it for a few moments. Certainly it seemed in no rush to make port this evening, for I saw that the vessel’s sail was furled. Instead it seemed to be drifting on the swell of the incoming tide, its oars hardly moving, almost as if it were waiting for something—
‘Look,’ Eudo said, pointing out towards the south. ‘Over there.’
I followed the direction of his finger, out to a sheltered cove perhaps a quarter of a mile away, close to the mudflats where our river joined the Temes. There, almost hidden behind a line of trees, was an orange light as might come from a campfire, around which were gathered several figures. I could not say how many and we were too far away to make out anything more, but I did not doubt that one of them was Ælfwold.
‘That’s him,’ I said. ‘It has to be.’
From thinking that all had been lost, suddenly my doubts fell away. My heart pounded and I tugged upon the reins, spurring my mount into a gallop one last time.
‘Come on,’ I shouted. I gritted my teeth, clutching the brases of my shield so tightly that my nails dug into my palm. A row of stunted, wind-blasted trees flashed past as the land fell away. Through the gaps in their branches I could see down towards the cove, where a low-sided barge had been drawn up on the stones. Beside it the campfire burnt brightly; a glint of mail caught my eye, but it was quickly lost amidst the trees.
I glanced out into the Temes, where the ship was closer than before. For it seemed to me that it was not there by accident, but was somehow connected with Ælfwold. And if so, that meant we had to get to him before they did. My blood was running hot, but even so I knew that the three of us could not fight a whole ship’s crew alone.
I willed my horse faster, cursing under my breath. At last the line of trees came to an end and we were racing down the slope towards the cove, past shrubs and rocks. A stream lay ahead and I splashed on through it. Water sprayed up and into my face, but I did not care. I heard the crunch of stones beneath my mount’s hooves as they pounded the ground; grass gave way to gravel as we arrived upon the beach. I looked up and there, directly ahead, lay the fire.
Men were running in all directions, scrambling to reach their spears and their knives. I was shouting, letting the battle-rage fill me. My sword slid cleanly from the scabbard and I flourished it high above my head, roaring to the sky as I did so.
‘For Malet,’ I called, and I heard Eudo and Wace doing the same as they drew alongside me: ‘For Malet!’
In front of the fire stood the two knights, the one short and the other tall, just as the dean at Waltham had said. Their swords were drawn, their shields held firm before them.
And then behind them, next to the barge itself, I saw the chaplain, Ælfwold. He did not move. His eyes were fixed upon us, his feet frozen to the ground as if in shock. As well he might be, for he could not have thought he would ever see us again, and yet here we were.
‘No mercy!’ I yelled as I crashed my sword into the shield of the tall knight. It struck the boss and slid harmlessly off its face, and I was riding onwards, turning as an Englishman rushed from the barge, screaming in his own tongue. He raised his axe above his head, but I had seen him coming and my blade was the quicker, slicing across his hand before he had finished the stroke, taking three of his fingers before finding his throat. Blood gushed forth as he fell first to his knees, clutching at his neck, then collapsed face down upon the ground.
But I could not pause even for a heartbeat as the tall knight came at me, raining blows upon my shield. Below the rim of his helmet, above his eye, I saw the scar that Wulfwin had spoken of, that I remembered from all those weeks ago.
His eyes met mine and a flicker of recognition crossed his face. ‘You’re the one who was there in Lundene,’ he said between breaths. ‘Fulcher fitz Jean.’
‘My name is Tancred,’ I spat back. ‘Tancred a Dinant.’ And I heaved my sword down towards his helmet, faster than he could raise his shield, and the steel rang out as it struck his nasal-guard. His head wrenched back under the force of the strike and he staggered backwards.
‘Bastard,’ he gasped, as a stream of crimson flowed from his nostrils, dripping on to his hauberk. ‘Bastard, bastard.’
All around us the bargemen were shouting. Most had at least a knife in their hands, but only a few were daring to attack us; the rest had seen the fury of our blades and were running up the beach for the cover of the trees. I looked for Ælfwold, but amidst the confusion I could not see him.
The knight with the scar howled as he charged again, the light of the fire reflected in his eyes, but he had let his anger overtake him and there was no skill in his assault. His strokes were wild, lacking in control and grace, and I fended them off with ease.
The fire was at my flank: twisting tongues of orange and yellow writhing up towards the sky. Flames danced upon my blade, reflected in the steel, and I concentrated all my strength in my sword-arm, bringing the full weight of the weapon to bear as I slashed towards his neck.
His shield was out of position, ready for the low strike to the thigh that no doubt he had been expecting, and instead he raised his blade to try to parry. For the briefest moment our blades clashed, but he could not match the force in my blow, and suddenly with a great shriek of steel his sword shattered, shearing clean through above the crossguard, leaving him with just the hilt in his hand.
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