The Splintered Kingdom c-2

by James Aitcheson

  It was no use. Unable to support me any longer, my legs gave way. They had carried me from Mathrafal across hills and moors and fields and streams, across miles and miles of open, wind-blasted country, but no further.

  He was within a spear’s throw now, his cloak flapping in the wind as he laid a hand upon the sword-hilt at his waist. My heart thundered in my chest; my mind was spinning, my eyes throbbing with pain as white stars were added to the dark spots. It would not be long.

  Make it swift, I prayed. Make it swift.

  I bowed my head, not wishing to look upon the face of my killer, concentrating solely on keeping the tears from my eyes. A noble end was all I wanted now.

  His footsteps grew louder, until he halted about five paces away. I waited for the scrape of steel being drawn; the last time I would ever hear that sound. For this was the moment.

  It did not come.

  ‘Do it,’ I said, unable to bear this much longer. ‘Do it quickly.’ I swallowed, readying myself for the blow to come. Would it hurt? Or would it be so sudden that I wouldn’t even feel it?

  ‘Lord?’

  That voice. I knew that voice. Weakly I managed to lift my head, enough to meet the man’s eye and see the blotched white skin on the side of his face where many years ago he had been burnt.

  Like a weir bursting under the weight of the winter flow, the tears came again, streaming down my cheeks, but instead of tears of sorrow, for the first time in what seemed like an eternity they were tears of relief and of joy.

  It was?dda.

  He was alive and as well as I had ever known him, though the same could hardly be said for myself. Seeing how weak I was, the Englishman gave me a handful of nuts and berries that he produced from a pouch at his belt, as well as the small draught of ale that was left in his flask. And with that we left Earnford. He allowed me his horse while he walked alongside, leading the animal by the reins and making sure I didn’t fall from the saddle.

  ‘I came back to see if any others were left alive,’ he explained. ‘The Welshmen laid everything waste after they left. I didn’t think I’d find anyone, least of all you. How is it that you’re here, lord?’

  The tale was too long and too complicated, and I was too weary to answer. Thankfully he did not press me. He took me to the others who had survived, the few of them that there were. They had taken shelter deep in the woods across the valley and over the hill, so far from any path or cart-track that at first I thought the stableman must have made a mistake and we had become lost. I should have had more faith in him, for not half an hour later we came upon them. Father Erchembald was the first I saw, his stout frame hunched over a fire upon which he and the rest were cooking a hare on a makeshift spit.

  ‘God be praised,’ said Father Erchembald when he saw me. ‘Is it really you?’

  Next to the priest stood the miller Nothmund with his plump wife Gode, Beorn the brewer with his daughter and two young sons, as well as a handful of the field-labourers — R?dwulf,?lred, Ceawlin, D?gric and Odgar — some of them with their families and some without. Looks of surprise turned to delight as they got to their feet and rushed to greet me. For the briefest moment hope stirred within my breast as I thought Leofrun might be there too, but as they crowded me and?dda helped me down from the saddle, that hope was quickly crushed. For her face was not among them.

  ‘Where is she?’ I asked, glancing wildly about, craning my neck to see over their heads in case she was somewhere behind them. ‘Is Leofrun here?’

  At first no one wanted to speak, nor even meet my gaze. Deep inside I knew what their answer would be, knew the reason for their silence, though I did not want to believe it. Not until someone spoke it plainly.

  ‘Someone tell me,’ I demanded in English so that they all could understand me. ‘Where is she? Nothmund? Odgar?’

  Neither of them replied. Nor did Ceawlin or Beorn or any of the others, their eyes downcast. Eventually Father Erchembald broke the silence, his eyes heavy with sadness and sympathy.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tancred.’ His voice was consolatory but to my ears his words sounded hollow. ‘We all are.’

  ‘No,’ I said, shaking my head, not wanting to listen. ‘You’re lying. It’s not true. It can’t be-’

  I broke off, not knowing what to say. My mind was reeling. This could not be happening. Had I not been here before, not so long ago? First Oswynn, and now, barely a year later, Leofrun: both taken from me, their lives cut short because of me.

  ‘She is with God now,’ said the priest, laying his hand upon my arm in comfort. ‘Her soul is at peace.’

  Leofrun had been my one precious thing in all the world, more precious than any number of sparkling rubies or silver pennies, gleaming swords or battle-trained horses. More precious than land or rank or reputation. Gladly would I have given everything I owned if it meant she might live, if I might hold her even once more, one final time. The thought that I would never again see her face, never caress those cheeks or gaze into her grey-blue eyes or run my hands through her auburn tresses was too much to bear.

  ‘It was Bleddyn’s men who did this, wasn’t it?’ I asked, my fists clenching. ‘They killed her.’

  Erchembald glanced at?dda, who said quite simply, ‘The Welsh razed Earnford, lord, but they did not kill Leofrun.’

  I stared at him, uncomprehending. ‘How, then?’

  ‘It was but a couple of weeks after you and Lord Robert left,’ Erchembald said with a sigh. ‘The child came early, in the middle of the night. I rushed up to the hall where I did everything that I could for her, but she lost too much blood in her ordeal. She died not long afterwards, with your son in her arms.’

  My son. I almost didn’t want to say what I was thinking, in case that single glimmer of joy was stolen from me too. But I had to know.

  ‘What about him?’ I asked quietly. ‘Did he survive?’

  The priest shook his head. ‘He was too small, too weak. He lived just long enough for me to baptise him before his soul left this world. We buried him with his mother in the churchyard.’

  ‘What was he called?’

  ‘Leofrun chose the name. She called him Baderon.’

  ‘Baderon,’ I repeated, barely able to raise a whisper. ‘After my father.’

  She could have chosen an English name, one that meant something to her, that would have given her contentment in her dying moments. Instead she had been thinking of me and what I would have wished for, even at the very end.

  A kinder, more gentle woman I had never known. But now she joined Turold and Byrhtwald, Snocca and Cnebba, Garwulf and Hild and everyone else.

  Leofrun was gone, and without her I was lost.

  After that it was as if a dense fog had descended upon my mind. Blacker even than the longest, darkest night, no light or warmth could penetrate it, so that I was powerless to do anything but stumble onwards, hoping but not truly believing that eventually I might find a way out. A feeling of loneliness overcame me, more intense even than that which I’d known whilst lying amidst my own piss and shit on the cold floors in my prison at Mathrafal, and no one, not even the priest or?dda, could tear me from its grip.

  I’d hoped that by leaving Leofrun behind in Earnford, rather than taking her with me on campaign, I would have prevented her from meeting the same end as Oswynn. And I had, except that a different fate had befallen her, one from which, even had I been there, I couldn’t have protected her. This time there was no one to blame, no one to swear vengeance upon, whom I could pursue to the ends of this earth until they paid for the blood they had spilt. This was God’s will, Erchembald reminded me, or, as the villagers called it in their tongue, wyrd. Destiny. He had taken her from me for a reason, even if none of us here on earth could understand what that reason might be. It was scant consolation, and I told the priest as much and worse besides. He was patient with me, however, as he always was, telling me that in the fullness of time the hurt would pass, and that when the end of days came and we passed as the Lord’s elect
into the glory of the eternal kingdom, I would be reunited with her.

  As sincerely as he spoke, his words could do nothing to raise me from my sorrow. So many I had known had perished of late: men and women who might not have died had it not been for me. With every day that passed it seemed the list of their names grew longer and longer.

  But as day turned to night and fresh wood was cast on to the campfire, a new resolve kindled within me. Even if Bleddyn and Eadric and their kind were not responsible for Leofrun’s death, they had taken everything else from me. They had stripped me of my mail and sword and dignity, had slain my companions and torched my home. For those things I would not forgive them.

  Under?dda’s direction the others had built rough shelters by leaning branches against the trunks of two wide-bellied oaks and laying armfuls of bracken over the top to keep out the rain and the wind. Beorn and Nothmund kept watch by the fire while everyone else bedded down upon the stony ground and tried to rest. Everyone, that was, except for me. My mind was racing as I thought about what we would do come the morning, how I would sow terror in the hearts of my enemies and how I would make them suffer for everything they had done.

  We marched as soon as the birds began their chorus. Eight men, five women, six children, a priest, three horses and myself. We were all that was left of the proud manor that had once been Earnford.

  On our way I told them of everything that had happened since I had left, from our expedition across the dyke to the battle at Mechain, our retreat and then our desertion from Scrobbesburh, my capture by Bleddyn and how I had managed to get away. There were parts that I left out: some of it seemed so long ago that it was already fading from my memory, but there was plenty, too, that I was less proud of and which they did not need to hear about, my quarrel with Berengar being one of those things. How petty did all that seem now, after everything that had happened?

  When we were nearing Earnford I made the rest wait while?dda and I rode ahead on two of the palfreys that, along with one of my stallions, he’d managed to save from the stables. The sight of the burnt houses and the smell of decay was no easier to bear than it had been the day before, but we skirted around the worst of it and I tried to keep my gaze fixed on the summit of the Read Dun ahead of us, and on the path that led there. Crows scattered from our path, cawing in chorus as they circled above us, their obsidian beads of eyes watching us.

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said?dda, making the sign of the cross upon his breast as we began to climb the hill. ‘This is an evil place, lord. Why have we come here?’

  ‘You know why,’ I replied. ‘We aren’t leaving until we have what we came for.’

  Despite the Englishman’s mutterings, I spoke no more until we had climbed the steep stony paths that led through the trees to the ridge above, and from there along the ridge to the summit where the stones kept lookout over the valley. It took me a little while searching in the long grass, but eventually I found the smallest one, slid my palm into the gap beneath its flat underside, and with the Englishman’s help lifted it and rolled it to one aside.

  The enemy had not found my hoard, I was relieved to see. All was exactly as I had left it.

  ?dda made a sound of astonishment when he saw it. He knew I sometimes came here, but perhaps he had not quite guessed how much silver and gold I had managed to amass over the last few months.

  ‘How much of this do you mean to take with us?’ he asked.

  ‘All of it,’ I answered. ‘We won’t be coming back here.’

  We lifted out the saddlebags filled with coin, the pagan arm-rings with the strange inscriptions — which I donned straightaway — and the two gilded brooches. I had no idea exactly how much it was all worth, but I reckoned there was sufficient for a dozen strong warhorses, with enough left over to buy spears and shields for every man, woman and child in our party. Of the three seaxes I gave one to the Englishman, kept one for myself and placed the third with the silver, thinking to give it to one of the other men later. Odgar, perhaps: he was the youngest and the strongest of them, and would be a useful man to have beside me in a fight.

  That left the sword, the last of three I had once owned, and now my only one. It had been given me by Lord Robert’s father, Guillaume Malet, when I had entered his service for a few months the year before. Though he had released me from my oath after the unpleasant business with his traitorous chaplain, he had never asked me to return the blade. In some ways I would rather he had, for in my eyes the steel was imbued with the memory of that time, with all the betrayal and deceit that had surrounded it. For that reason I’d never much liked using it and thus it had lain resting in the ground for all these months. That I had not sold it had proven a blessing. Perhaps I’d known there would be a time when it would be needed again.

  I buckled the sword-belt around my waist as I looked down upon the valley and upon Earnford, at the same time praying silently that it was not for the last time. But even as we began the slow journey back down the hillside, a cold sensation came over me, as if I knew it would be. As if my words to?dda had been somehow prophetic, though I had not meant them in that way. In my mind I’d been speaking about the hoard and the hiding place upon the hill, but perhaps there was a greater truth contained within them: a truth I did not want to admit but which deep down I knew.

  The truth that we would not be coming back to Earnford at all.

  Twenty-four

  We struck out across that burnt and wasted land, staying off the main tracks as much as possible, while also keeping a look out for any raiding-bands that might be roaming. Spires of smoke rose on the horizon where the torch had been taken to other manors, and we took care to avoid them in case some of the enemy still lurked. Even from a distance it was clear they had not spared a single house, animal or soul. All about wheatfields lay blackened, the pastures devoid of any sign of movement. Where I might have expected to hear the bleating of sheep and the lowing of cattle and oxen, there was only an unearthly stillness.

  ‘Crungon walo wide,’?dda muttered as we skirted the edge of one such manor. ‘Cwoman woldagas, swylt eall fornom secgrofra wera.’

  Something about those words was familiar. ‘Far and wide men were slaughtered,’ I said, trying to remember. ‘Days of pestilence came, and death took all the brave men away.’

  Surprised, he shot me a glance. ‘You know it, lord?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘But you said the same thing when you were insensible with the poppy-juice after you were injured. Erchembald thought it might be Scripture, although he didn’t know the passage.’

  ‘Not Scripture,’ he said, his voice solemn as he turned his gaze down. ‘It comes from an old verse, one that was spoken to me when I was small by my mother, God rest her soul. She received it from her father, and he from his father in turn, and in that way it has been passed down through my family across several lifetimes. I know not who first laid down the words, but all my life I have never forgotten them. Sometimes I think of all those I have known who have perished, and certain lines will spring to mind.’

  Death took all the brave men away. I thought of Serlo and Pons and Lord Robert, and hoped that somewhere they still lived: that death had not also taken them, my own fellow brave men.

  And yet I sensed there was something the Englishman was not telling me: something he had hinted at before but of which he had never spoken openly. For my part I had never pressed him, but it seemed more important than ever now, when I needed strong and reliable men around me.

  ‘You used to be a warrior yourself, didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘You’re no stranger to the field of battle.’

  He did not answer, not straightaway at least, and for a while we rode on in silence. I caught a glimpse of a dog, thin and wretched, wandering the ruins of its former home, plaintively barking for its master who would not come. Apart from birds and the occasional hare darting across the path, it was the only creature we had seen all day.

  ‘Do you remember that day earlier this summer when the Welsh
came, when we pursued them into the lands across the dyke?’?dda asked.

  He knew I did, and so I waited for him to go on.

  ‘That was the first time I had killed a man in fourteen years.’ Anger stirred in his eyes and in his knuckles, which had turned white as his hands balled into fists. ‘I did not like doing it then, and I like it even less now. Yes, it is true that I have seen war, but I am no warrior.’

  ‘What happened fourteen years ago?’

  He snorted, as if the idea that I might be interested were somehow ridiculous, but when he saw my stern expression, he answered: ‘This story I have told to very few others. If I am to tell you, lord, you must swear not to repeat it, not to the priest or anyone else either.’

  The rest of the party was a little way behind us, not so far separated from us as to be vulnerable should any attack come, but far enough to be out of earshot.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Go on.’

  He regarded me for a moment, as if considering whether or not he could trust me, then sighed. ‘Since the beginning of that year the Welsh had been raiding all along the borderlands: plundering, raping and burning much as they are now. In the summer my lord chose me and my two brothers, Brun and Tatel, to go with him when he was summoned to the war-band of Bishop Leofgar of Hereford, whose writ at the time held sway along this part of the March.’

  ‘The bishop?’ I asked. ‘What would he know of war?’

  ‘Very little, as we would come to learn,’?dda said bitterly. ‘He was an angry man as I remember, overly fond of his wine and with a high opinion of his own talents. For all his posturing he was no more a war leader than myself or my brothers. I was barely twenty summers old then, and they were some years younger, both of them strong-willed and eager lads. Of the three of us only I knew anything of horsemanship or had any sort of skill at arms, but even I had not seen battle before.’