I shoved him in the back to start him moving as, guided by Baudri, we made our way back across the islet towards where Hamo and his men were waiting with the punts. They had worked quickly, dragging the small vessels down from the thicket and pushing them out into the shallows so that they were already afloat by the time we arrived.
‘Whatever price you demand for my release, my uncle will pay it,’ Godric said as we reached the shore. ‘I swear it.’
‘Why should anyone pay a single penny for the sake of a wretch like you?’ I asked with a snort as we splashed our way through the murky knee-deep waters out to the boats.
‘I’m his only nephew, and the closest to a son that he has.’
‘Many men hate their sons,’ I replied. ‘He might not want you back. Besides, how are we supposed to get word to him?’
Godric had no answer to that, and since he wouldn’t get into the punt willingly I had no choice but to shove him over the gunwale. He gave a cry as he tumbled forward, landing awkwardly on his side. I took my place next to him, where I could keep a close watch over him.
‘Don’t speak another word unless you want to feel my blade between your ribs.’ I laid a hand upon the knife-hilt by my waist. ‘Do you hear me?’
He said nothing, and I took that to mean that he did. Wace and Hamo in the other boats were already pushing off from the shore and I gave the signal to Serlo, who once more had the punting-pole, to do the same. And so we left the island of Litelport behind us. Not half an hour could have passed since I’d spied what I thought was the first glimmer of dawn, but already the skies were noticeably brighter.
We were barely a dozen boat-lengths out from the shore when Godric, speaking more quietly, began again: ‘My uncle—’
‘I heard what you said,’ I interrupted him, before he could go on. If he had any sense at all he’d have realised it was far better for him to shut his mouth and not to provoke us further.
‘But, lord—’
He broke off as I grabbed the collar of his tunic. ‘Tell me, then,’ I said. ‘Who is this uncle of yours, who’s so wealthy that he can afford to waste good silver for your sake?’
Obviously he had something he wished to tell me, and I wasn’t prepared to have him chirping all the way back to Brandune. Neither did I want to have to make good on my promise, since if I killed him this entire expedition would have been for nothing.
His mouth opened but his tongue must have been frozen, for no sound came out. There was fear in his eyes, and I realised then just how short was the distance he’d travelled along the sword-path. This was no warrior. Certainly I would not trust him to stand in any shield-wall. I wondered if his sword had ever run with the blood of his foes, or if he had ever unsheathed it outside the training yard before tonight.
‘Tell me,’ I repeated. ‘Who is he?’
I saw the lump form in Godric’s throat as he swallowed. My patience was fast running out. Eventually he managed to compose himself enough to speak, although the words that emerged from his lips were not at all what I’d been expecting.
‘My uncle, lord,’ he said, ‘is Earl Morcar.’
Six
HE’S MORCAR’S NEPHEW?’ Robert asked later that morning, once we’d brought Godric to his hall and told him everything that had happened that night.
‘So he claims,’ I replied.
Already it all seemed an age ago. The thrill of the fight had long faded, and tiredness was beginning at last to catch up with me. My limbs felt like lead, fatigue clawed at my eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to find some quiet spot in which to lay myself down and sleep.
Robert fixed his gaze upon the Englishman, who sat on a stool beside the smoking hearth-fire, his hands bound with rope in front of him, his flaxen hair plastered to his skull. Since leaving Litelport behind us he’d uttered barely a word, except occasionally to murmur what sounded like a prayer, but he spoke now.
‘It is the truth, lords,’ he protested. ‘Upon my life, with God and all the saints as my witnesses, I swear it!’
To some men lying came naturally, while others learnt the art through years of practice. Nonetheless, to spew falsehoods when one’s very life was at stake was a skill that few possessed, and required no small amount of nerve, too. Perhaps I was wrong about the Englishman, but I doubted he was so daring, and for that reason alone I was inclined to believe him.
‘If you want to change your mind, you’d be wise to do so now, before you meet the king,’ Wace warned him.
‘Yes,’ Eudo added. ‘If he finds out you’ve lied to him, he won’t be best pleased.’
That silenced Godric, who no doubt had heard of King Guillaume’s unpredictable temper, and knew all about the fits of rage to which he was rumoured to be prone. It was often said that no man ever crossed him twice and lived, for while the king was sometimes prepared to overlook a first offence, he was rarely so forgiving the second time. By taking up arms in rebellion, Godric had committed his first transgression. Already, then, his fate rested on a knife’s edge.
The drapes across the hall’s entrance parted, allowing in a sudden burst of sunlight: something we had seen little of in recent days. Through the parting stepped a pale-faced, dung-reeking lad of perhaps twelve or thirteen, whom Robert had sent to the royal hall with news of our prisoner. He stood, panting heavily as if he had just run all the way to Cantebrigia and back.
‘You bring news?’ Robert asked him.
The boy nodded. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said in between breaths. ‘I returned as quickly as I could.’
‘Well, what is it? Did you give the message as I instructed?’
‘I did, lord.’
‘And?’
‘He is on his way, lord. The king’s steward told me himself.’
Robert nodded and dismissed the boy, who looked relieved that his questioning was finished, and that he wasn’t about to be sent with any more messages for the royal household. The officials of the palace were powerful men, useful to have as allies but dangerous to have as enemies, not just because they had the king’s ear but also because their orders carried his authority. They were respected by lords both petty and distinguished, and the boy had shown determination to have secured the attention of the royal steward.
In honesty, I wasn’t much looking forward to facing the king either. For much as I admired the will that had brought us here to England, and as great as his achievement was in winning this kingdom, nevertheless I feared him, as did many men in those days, both French and English alike. Although few had seen it with their own eyes, we had all heard the stories of how he and his raiding-bands had gone into the north last winter. We had heard how they’d harried the land and its people and despoiled both town and country, burnt storehouses newly filled with the autumn’s harvest, slaughtered sheep and cattle in the fields where they grazed, put entire families to the sword, from hobbling greybeards to the youngest babes in arms, and left the meadows to run with blood as they spread fire and ruin, all in the name of retribution for the Northumbrian uprisings. It was, of course, a long-spoken truth that wars were fought with rape and pillage as much as they were with sword and shield, but the ferocity of his vengeance on this occasion sowed great alarm among his followers, and I was glad to have had no part of it. That one act revealed an aspect to King Guillaume that had rarely shown itself before, but which with each passing day became clearer as this campaign dragged on, as his desperation deepened and his mood grew ever more foul.
And so it wasn’t just Godric who was nervous as we awaited the king. Fortunately it wasn’t long before he arrived. I had barely enough time to slake my thirst from the ale-barrel Robert kept in the hall and give a yawn before I made out the sound of hoofbeats in the yard outside, shortly followed by someone bellowing: ‘Make way! Make way for your king!’
He was here.
‘Get up,’ Wace said to Godric, but the Englishman seemed frozen to the stool, for he did not move, and my friend had to take his arms and bodily haul him up before he woul
d stand. Even then the boy’s feet seemed hardly able to support his weight, and at any moment I thought he would spew.
Wace shoved him in the back to start him moving, and we followed Robert out, pushing aside the linen drapes and ducking beneath the low lintel of the doorway before emerging into the heat of the mid-morning sun. For a moment I was blinded by the brightness, although I noticed dark clouds approaching, threatening rain. As if we hadn’t had enough of it in recent weeks. Raising a hand to shield my eyes, I made out a conroi of some fifteen horsemen, most decked out in hauberks freshly polished, their features masked beneath helmets inlaid with swirling designs in gold and silver, their shoulders draped with the blood-red ceremonial cloaks, embroidered at the hems with golden thread, which marked them out as knights of the royal household.
At the head of them was the king himself. I had met him only once before, but his was not a face that one forgot easily, for it was drawn and entirely lacking in humour, with heavy brows above keen eyes that missed nothing: eyes that seemed to look into one’s very soul. He was around forty-four in years if I recalled rightly, only a handful of summers younger than Malet, but had lost none of his youthful vigour or his passion for the pursuit of war. Tall and set like an ox, he possessed stout arms that were the mark of long hours spent in the training yard, where he was said to practise daily at both stake and quintain, and in mock combat with his trusted hearth-troops.
‘Kneel,’ I hissed at the Englishman. Thankfully he needed no second telling, but did as he was bid without hesitation, and the rest of us did the same as the king jumped down from the saddle, handed his destrier’s reins to a retainer and strode towards us. Where earlier the yard had been filled with the sounds of timber being chopped and the clash of oak cudgels as men trained at arms, now a hush had fallen, broken only by the lowing of cattle in the fields and the calls of sheep in their pens, the clang of steel from the smith’s workshop some way off and the thumping of my own heart. I breathed deeply, trying to still it.
The king’s shadow fell across me. To begin with he said nothing, and I wondered whether he was expecting one of us to speak first.
Robert must have thought the same, for he began: ‘My lord king—’
‘I gave clear instruction that there were to be no more expeditions against the enemy without my permission,’ the king said, cutting him off. ‘Is that not so?’
‘It is so,’ Robert replied, not daring to meet the king’s eyes, probably wisely.
‘You know full well that we need every man we can muster for this next assault on the Isle, and that we cannot afford to waste good warriors on such reckless adventures. And yet I am told that you saw fit last night to send a raiding-party out into the marshes, almost within arrowshot of the Isle itself. This, too, is true, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, lord, but—’
‘I would have thought that you more than anyone, Robert Malet, would take care to heed my instructions, given your family’s current standing. Instead you choose to defy me. By rights I should order you strung up by the nearest tree, or at the very least have you stripped of your landholdings. Perhaps that would be a suitable punishment. What do you think?’
Robert opened his mouth as if to speak and then promptly closed it again.
‘Yes,’ the king continued. ‘You would be wise to think carefully about your next words, lest they be your last.’
Never before had I seen Robert forced to bend his knee for anyone, and I confess the sight was strange, though there was no reason why it should have been. That was the order of the world, after all: every man, from the poorest swineherd to the most powerful baron, was bound by oaths to someone else, and in the same way the king was bound to God’s service, obligated to govern his subjects well and to uphold the virtues of our faith. This I knew, and yet in spite of that I couldn’t help the anger welling inside me as Robert, the lord whom I respected, was forced to humble himself. Anger, and not a little guilt too, since it was because of me that he found himself in such a position.
‘Have you nothing to say?’ the king asked with a smirk. ‘Well, perhaps that is for the best. Fortunately you find me in good humour this morning, so I am prepared to overlook your misdeed on this occasion, especially since you have brought me this gift.’ He turned his attention upon Godric, whose head was bowed, his whole body trembling. ‘So this is your captive,’ he said. ‘Godric, thegn of Corbei.’
‘He claims to be the son of Morcar’s brother,’ Robert said.
‘I know well who he is,’ the king snapped, his tone as sharp as a butcher’s cleaver. ‘We have met before, although the last time our paths crossed, he was, I believe, still a boy under the fosterage of his uncle, not a man full-grown.’
His voice was thick with scorn, but if he was trying to provoke a response from Godric, he was disappointed.
‘Look at me,’ he said, and when the Englishman did not obey, he repeated more forcefully: ‘Look at me!’
Slowly and with not a little reluctance, Godric raised his head, his gaze eventually coming to rest on his king, and I saw the lump in his throat as he swallowed.
‘Not so long ago you and your uncle gave oaths to be my loyal servants,’ the king said. ‘Now, however, you renounce those oaths and ally yourselves with the rebels upon the Isle. You are a worthless creature, a perjurer and a traitor.’
‘No, lord,’ Godric protested. ‘I will p-pledge my allegiance to you anew, if you will only …’
He didn’t finish, for the king had drawn his sword from its sheath and was turning it over slowly, showing the Englishman the swirling smoke-like pattern embedded in the steel, and the keenness of its point. It was indeed a fine weapon, as one would expect, although clearly meant for display rather than fighting, since there was not a single nick anywhere along the edge, or any other mark to suggest it had ever seen use on the field of battle.
‘By rights I should kill you now and be done with you,’ said King Guillaume, and raised the tip of the blade so that it gently touched against the skin beneath Godric’s chin, not enough to draw blood but enough that a single slip of his hand would spell the Englishman’s death. ‘Perhaps I will send your head back to your uncle Morcar as an example of how I deal with those who dare rise against me.’
‘Please, lord, no,’ said Godric, his eyes closed tight as if expecting the killing cut to come at any moment. ‘Have m-mercy, I beg of you.’
‘If you wish mercy,’ the king said, ‘then first you must earn it.’
‘Whatever you ask, lord, I will do it.’
The king regarded him for long moments. Around us the first few raindrops pattered upon the mud, while the breeze tugged at the scarlet cloaks of the king’s guard and caused the pennons nailed to their lances to flutter. Eventually he withdrew the weapon, returning it to its sheath with a whisper of steel, while with his other hand he gave a signal to one of his retainers. The sun was behind him and so at first I could not make out the man’s features, save that he was dressed in long, black robes, but then he stepped closer and I made out his shining pate and the small, hard eyes squinting out from beneath owlish brows.
Atselin.
I stared at him, and he at me. A quizzical look came across his face as he recognised me, as if he hadn’t been expecting to find me here, but it quickly disappeared as his brows hardened into a frown. In truth I was just as surprised to see him. Although he was chief among the clerks and scribes of the royal household gathered here at Brandune, for some reason I hadn’t thought he would be known to the king himself.
‘Brother Atselin,’ the king said, ‘may I rely on you to bear witness and to write down anything of note that our English friend may say?’
The monk broke off his stare, blinking once as a raindrop struck the end of his prominent nose, and then again as another bounced off his tonsured head.
‘Of course, my king,’ he said stiffly. From somewhere within the folds of his robe he produced a wax writing-tablet, along with a stylus carved from what looked li
ke either bone or ivory. ‘Although perhaps it would be best if we venture inside,’ he added, pointing towards the sky just as the sun disappeared behind the dark cloud. ‘Before we are all drowned.’
Hardly had he finished speaking than the deluge began, so suddenly and with such force that it seemed all the heavens were crashing down upon us. Hard drops bounced upon the yard and lashed my back, plastering my hair against my head and my tunic to my skin. Without delay, the king made for the hall, leaving his retainers to see to their horses, and the rest of us followed him.
Godric alone was reluctant to move, but Eudo and I hauled him to his feet and dragged him inside, where his fate would be decided.
The rain pummelled upon the thatch. From one dark corner of the hall came a steady drip-drip as it seeped through a hole and fell upon the floor, where it formed a pool, in which fragments of rushes floated.
‘Speak, then,’ the king said when we were once more gathered around the hearth-fire. ‘Tell me everything you know about your army.’
Godric sat with hands tied on the stool before the fire, his face lit by its flickering glow. ‘Everything?’
‘Everything,’ the king repeated, his expression hardening. ‘I want you to tell me how many men you have, how well they’re armed, how they’re divided and who commands them. How well is Elyg defended? Are there walls, a stockade and a castle mound? What is the mood within your camp?’
‘What do you wish to know first?’
‘Give me numbers. How many men of fighting age do you have?’
‘A thousand?’ Godric hazarded. ‘Possibly more than that.’
The king snorted, as well he might. ‘A thousand? You expect me to believe that?’
The real number, we suspected, was probably three times that. In the absence of any reliable information, however, it was admittedly something of a guess.
Conquest 03 - Knights of the Hawk Page 10
