A Man's Word (The King's Hounds series)

by Martin Jensen

  Also available in The King’s Hounds series

  The King’s Hounds

  Oathbreaker

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 by Martin Jensen and Forlaget Klim

  English translation copyright © 2015 by Tara F. Chace

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  A Man’s Word was first published as En bondes ord by Klim in 2012. Translated from the Danish by Tara F. Chace. Published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2014.

  Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and AmazonCrossing are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477822203

  ISBN-10: 1477822208

  LCCN: 2014916474

  Cover design by Edward Bettison

  Front cover pitchfork illustration created by Edward Bettison

  Floral pattern from The Art of Illumination, Dover Pictura, 2009, royalty-free

  Back cover illustration public domain images found in the British Library Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/reuse.asp

  Contents

  England, Anno Domini 1018

  The Hundred Court

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  Noses on the Trail

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  The Trails Diverge

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  One Trail

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  About the Author

  About the Translator

  England, Anno Domini 1018

  The Hundred Court

  1

  Eadred shot the arrow into its target without hesitating. The monastery’s sharpshooter was the best archer I had ever met. He could sight down the shaft past the arrowhead, even at a target in motion, and hit the mark practically every time.

  The goose stopped midflight, struck by the heavy fowl-hunting arrow. It folded its wings and fell, spinning down after the arrow, which struck the surface of the water a second before the dead bird. They had scarcely hit the lake before Eadred’s muffled whistle dispatched his long-legged dog to splash out into the water and return with both the bird and the arrow in his mouth.

  I gave the archer an appreciative smile. Then I stretched and breathed the fresh spring air deep into my lungs, while my gaze followed a skein of squawking barnacle geese on their way north after a night’s rest in the marsh.

  Eadred and I had become friends over the winter. I’d saved him from a nasty beating in an alehouse, where he’d flirted with the wrong wench.

  The evening Eadred and I met, just before Christmas, I was sitting peacefully over a tankard of ale after spending yet another idle day wandering through the town. At the town’s center was the monastery where my master, Winston, spent his days meticulously filling pages of parchment with illustrations in accordance with an agreement he’d made with the monks.

  We lived in one of the buildings the monks owned, a post-and-plank structure outside the monastery itself. “We” included me, Winston, and his woman, Alfilda. Alfilda had sold her tavern in Oxford to shack up with my master and follow him wherever his text-illuminating expertise took him.

  In the mornings when I emerged from my own chamber, she had already set out warm ale and porridge for us. Winston and I would sit on either side of the plank table, and once she was sure we had enough in our bowls, she would sit down beside Winston.

  I usually left with my master in the morning, parting from him at the entrance to the monastery. Then, I was on my own for the rest of the day. By the time I came home shortly before dark, Alfilda would have seen to our supper, so her days were probably filled with visits to market stalls and little shops. At any rate, the meals were quite ample as well as expertly prepared.

  Now and then Prior Edmund would send a messenger to fetch me, and I would gladly comply; these occasions meant a welcome break from my idleness.

  Once he wanted me to take a message to the Archbishop of York—a trip I was particularly glad to make since it entailed three whole weeks of riding through the countryside. Other times his desires were more modest: Would I accompany a noble guest to the next resting place or inn? Would I ride out with the monastery’s spearmen to collect taxes from the villages on the monastery’s property? But no matter how great or small the task was, I would agree to it—not out of love for those monastic farts but for the chance to break out of my rut.

  So one evening just before Christmas, after a day devoid of any challenges greater than remembering suppertime, I left Winston and Alfilda as soon as I had gulped down the last of my lard-slathered bread and headed to the alehouse, where I hoped to run into a certain redheaded lass who had previously agreed to spend the night with me.

  She never showed up, and the other wenches, who giggled to each other and flashed their gums in flirtatious grins, did not entice me. So I was sitting quietly in my seat against the wall—I always like to have an unimpeded view of any establishment I find myself in—enjoying the tang of the sweet-gale-flavored ale when the door opened.

  The girl who walked in was somewhat more inviting than the other whores, and the way she conducted herself quickly convinced me she did not share their profession. All the same, I refrained from going over to her since I still hoped the redheaded wench might show up.

  A thin man dressed in a peasant’s coat did decide to approach her. I recognized him as the monastery’s archer from the few times we’d run into each other in the chapter house.

  His name was Eadred, as I later learned. He immediately sat down beside the wench and started gabbing away. Even though she apparently turned down his offer of a drink, she still seemed to listen to him, although I did notice her eyes straying over to the door at regular intervals.

  I had just emptied my tankard when the door swung open again, revealing three young men. They headed straight for Eadred’s table, where he had just made the girl laugh about something.

  They were solid-looking boys, those three. They had broad shoulders and chests, with upper arms like my thighs, and they strode purposefully across the packed-dirt floor to the table, where the girl was the first to notice them. She smiled at the boy in front, a Saxon with flaxen braids hanging down his back. She offered him her hand with a gesture more suitable for a relative than a lover.

  Eadred leaned back and stared into space, apparently too wise to provoke three strangers by looking them in the eye. All the same, one of the other two stepped forward and leaned menacingly over the table. Only those seated nearby could hear what he said to the archer, but Eadred’s flush of anger and pursed lips gave me a good idea.

  I watched the archer rise with an exaggerated slowness, making it clear that like everyone else in the tavern, he was armed. Then he calmly w
alked across the room.

  I was convinced he had yielded not because of fear, but because he knew he would get the worst of it if it came to blows with the three boys. In addition, he was the monastery’s archer and subject to the abbot’s rules. No one in the service of the abbot was allowed to get into fights.

  Maybe everything would have gone better if he hadn’t turned around after a few steps to nod farewell to the girl. It was an innocent gesture that nonetheless provoked the three rascals, who didn’t hesitate to step forward and grab hold of him.

  My assumption that his retreat was not due to fear of a brawl proved correct, because as soon as he freed himself from their grasp, his hands were up and ready to fight.

  The boys closed in on him right away. The one in front took a swing at the archer’s jaw. Eadred dodged him while hammering his own right hand into his attacker’s breastbone. The guy faltered but managed to stay afoot, and with a muffled oath, the first boy who had spoken to Eadred launched forward to punch Eadred in the gut.

  I briefly contemplated whether this fight was any of my business, but of course I knew I couldn’t just stand by as a passive observer and let one of the monastery’s men be beaten to a pulp just for speaking to an attractive wench. So I reached across my table, grabbed the tankard of the man sitting closest to me, and jettisoned its contents into the attackers’ faces. Then I followed up by smashing the tankard itself into the back of the closest attacker’s skull. That one collapsed to the ground with a hollow cough.

  The other two looked around in confusion, a blunder that allowed Eadred and me to each fell a man, after which we stepped outside and strolled away down the street shoulder to shoulder, without saying a word.

  That was the beginning of our friendship, which was further solidified when I entered the chapter house the next day to testify about the incident in the pub. Those three gamecocks had accused Eadred of assaulting them. I testified that this charge was baseless and that, to the contrary, it was they who had attacked Eadred, who had conducted himself as a perfect monastery layman in every regard.

  Eadred’s friendship had made my days far less plodding. I often rode out hunting with him. I never did learn to be as good a shot with a bow and arrow as he was, but I was better at letting wild boars skewer themselves to death on my spear. As a former soldier, I understood how to position the spear correctly so that the brunt of the boar’s strength flowed through the length of the spear instead of trying to counter the attacking animal’s weight, which would splinter the shaft.

  The archer was rarely idle, for the monks—who themselves lived by the Rule of Saint Benedict and didn’t eat the flesh of four-footed animals—were generous with their guests and gladly set out venison steaks and boar alongside roast beef and ham on the guests’ table. I went hunting with him whenever I could.

  On this drizzly spring morning, we’d ridden north into the fens that extend from a few miles west of the monastery all the way to Thetford in the east, then gradually disappear in the south as you move through East Anglia into Essex, and end in the north at the Wash, the bay that juts into the land from the North Sea.

  The marshland was hard to move around in if you weren’t from there, but I felt like I was in good hands since Eadred had grown up in a small town in the middle of a local polder, low-lying marshland he claimed the Romans had reclaimed with dikes. He knew every path, every half-eroded dike, every age-old cobblestone, and he guided me safely. With Eadred in the lead, we rode through the drizzle, which gradually gave way to spring sunshine so that half a dozen geese hung from each of our saddles by the sun’s midday zenith. The geese were destined for the abbot’s end-of-fast table tomorrow, as the abbot had decided on some roast goose to please his palate.

  We rested on a little knoll, scarcely bigger than a tussock, and wolfed down a couple thick slabs of bread and allowed ourselves a taste of the ale from the cask. Then we slowly walked the horses back to the monastery.

  The day was bright and fresh, and countless birds flew over us on their way north. The sun warmed our tunics, and deep down I hoped restlessness would soon uproot my master from Peterborough; the spring made the idea of moving on most inviting.

  But Winston hadn’t seemed inclined to move on. He had been idle for a few weeks now that he had completed a large book about Seaxwulf for the monastery. Lord knows the monks had paid him well, and he, Alfilda, and I did not want for anything. To the contrary, we had enough to last for a long time. And we had more than just the money from Winston’s illuminations, for King Cnut had given us a handsome reward for a little job we’d done for him on our way to Peterborough.

  Winston seemed satisfied to idle away his days with Alfilda. Every time I suggested we move on, he would just shake his head and mumble that Peterborough was as fine a place to let the days slip by as anywhere else.

  I led the horses to the monastery stable while Eadred delivered our fowl to the cook. Our plan was to reunite and then pay a visit to the nearest tavern, but a novice grabbed me to say my master had been asking for me.

  “Winston the Illuminator?” I was surprised Winston had even left the building we were staying in.

  The novice nodded and said, “He was in the chapter house a while ago.”

  I told Eadred he’d have to drink his ale alone, and I headed home through the narrow town streets to our quarters.

  Winston and Alfilda were both sitting at the table when I walked in. Alfilda turned to me and smiled while Winston made do with just looking up.

  “So you’re back,” he said sarcastically.

  Which was downright childish. He knew I’d been out hunting and had no instructions to hurry back. Still, I just nodded because I noticed the letter on the table between them.

  “Well, there is the end to your life of ease,” Winston said, tipping his head at the letter.

  I didn’t say anything. I figured he was annoyed to be uprooted from our current situation, although surely, like me, he realized it was only a question of time before the monks kicked us out.

  “We’re heading southeast,” he said, like a peevish child.

  I flashed him an encouraging smile and said, “Southeast, huh? Into East Anglia? I’ve never been there. Is the letter from the king?”

  He nodded and held the letter out toward me, but then set it back down when he remembered that reading was not a skill I had mastered.

  “It’s from Cnut, yes. It was delivered by a soldier, who rode back right away. The king is in Hampton.”

  Presumably with his consort, Ælfgifu, and her son. More importantly, Hampton was only a day’s ride from Peterborough. The soldier must have set out that same morning, and the king would receive confirmation of the delivery by nightfall.

  “So what will we be doing among the East Anglians?” I asked, taking a seat across from Winston and Alfilda.

  “Humph,” Winston said, smoothing out the letter, his eyes following the spidery signs running across it in even lines. “Cnut has asked me to go to Saint Edmund’s church and offer my artistry to the monks there.”

  Saint Edmund is said to have defeated Cnut’s father, Sweyn Forkbeard, with a deadly disease when Sweyn threatened to burn the church and the whole town unless he received the taxes he demanded.

  I smiled at Winston. “So the king wants to suck up to the saint who killed his father.”

  Winston smiled wryly back and said, “That’s what the monks are meant to believe.”

  I had already guessed the king was not dispatching us out of piety. I pondered his real motivation, which wasn’t easy with Winston looking at me with a teasing smirk on his face. He obviously already knew the answer to my unspoken question; the king’s messenger had likely just told him. But I figured it out quickly on my own anyway.

  “Thorkell,” I said.

  Winston nodded. “Jarl Thorkell, formerly Cnut’s and his father’s most powerful enemy and now his sworn man, yes.”

  This wasn’t the first time we’d run up against Cnut’s—justifi
able—mistrust of his jarls. The king used men like Winston and me, who could move through the land surreptitiously, to safeguard himself against seditious, rebellious noblemen who sought to throw the country into war.

  “Let’s hear it,” I said, leaning over the table.

  Not that there was much to hear. The king’s message as relayed by his housecarl went like this: “Head into East Anglia, and be my eyes and ears.”

  Despite its brevity, the implication was clear. The only reason to send us to East Anglia was to sniff out what we could about Jarl Thorkell. People called him Thorkell the Tall, and not without reason. He was not only taller than most men, but he also had a very lofty view of himself. He had already changed sides a number of times.

  I once heard him called Thorkell Turncoat by a man who didn’t live long after he called him that.

  2

  Before we sat down to supper, we decided we might as well set off the next day. Actually, Winston decided. I looked at him in puzzlement because past experience had shown that he needed at least a day to pack up his paints, brushes, jars, and paper cones—all of the equipment he needed to do his illuminations.

  It turned out he had packed it all up the previous week, that sly old fox. In other words, even if he wasn’t quite as eager to move on as I was, he hadn’t been planning on staying at the monastery forever.

  The only hard part, then, was deciding which road to take. The best sniffing is generally not done on the shortest route. We agreed on that.

  So we had two options. The first was to stick to a western route as we rode south, skirting the large Bruneswald forest and making our way through the fens to the Cam Bridge, and from there heading northeastward to our final destination. However, that route would take us along the eastern border of Mercia, keeping us out of East Anglia until the end. It didn’t make sense, since our job was to spend as much time as possible in Thorkell’s jarldom in East Anglia.

  We quickly chose the second option of traveling due east through the fens, crossing the River Ouse at the place that goes by the name of Danes’ Ford, and continuing out of the marsh until we reached the Icknield Way. We could then travel south through Thetford until we reached the track that ran east to Saint Edmund’s Town.