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

by Martin Jensen

  My eyes came to rest on our host. He was about thirty, my height but a little burlier, with broad shoulders. His blond hair was neatly trimmed, his clothes clean and well made, and his freshly trimmed Saxon mustache hung down around his mouth.

  My eyes scanned in vain for the sword that should have been leaning against his chair, and when I glanced at the bed behind the trestle table, I saw no weapon there either. Nor could I hear or spot the dogs that are permanent fixtures in every thane’s hall.

  The explanation came during the meal, which was copious and well prepared. Alfilda was invited to enjoy the food, even though the lady of the house remained in the kitchen area. Arnulf explained that we could travel together the next day since he had business in Thetford. “Partly,” he said, chewing a crust of bread, “because the market tomorrow is open to all farmers.”

  I sensed Winston looking at me and nodded to show that I, too, had understood that we were not the guests of a thane here but rather of a ceorl, a well-to-do farmer.

  Winston politely waited for Arnulf to finish chewing before he asked, “Partly?”

  Our host nodded and said, “The Hundred Court is sitting in Thetford the day after tomorrow, and I have a case against a man.”

  We looked at him with curiosity as he sat wearing the serious expression men adopt when they want their audience’s full attention.

  Arnulf was in no rush and raised his tankard to drink to us. I had already emptied mine, but the slave wench appeared in a flash, refilling it with one hand, which shook at the exertion of managing the heavy pitcher.

  The farmer set his tankard down.

  Winston asked if the case had anything to do with land. “Or perhaps an inheritance?”

  Arnulf shook his head meaningfully. “No, it’s about a rape.”

  4

  Alfilda, Winston, and I looked at one another in surprise.

  A ceorl like Arnulf would not typically put up with the rape of a relative long enough to take it to court. He would gather his kinsmen and friends to exact revenge, allowing a spearhead to do the talking.

  But our host sat before us utterly calm, apparently content with the situation, or at least with our astonished looks.

  Winston finished chewing his mouthful. “Rape?” he asked quietly, surveying the hall.

  My gaze also swept through the room without spotting any women other than the ones, like the wench, who were flocking around the mistress of the house in the kitchen area.

  Arnulf nodded and brought a piece of meat to his mouth with the tip of his knife.

  “And the victim?” I asked.

  “That wench there,” Arnulf said, gesturing with his hand.

  We looked where he was pointing. Ah, so the girl’s hands weren’t trembling from the weight of the ale pitcher but from dread that her shame would be put on display.

  Winston kept his eyes on our host, but Alfilda and I exchanged meaningful glances: if that was Arnulf’s daughter, he must be really stingy not to dress her the way a farmer’s daughter should be dressed. I felt a vague discomfort at this stinginess, leaving a freeborn girl to walk around in slave’s rags.

  “Your slave?” asked Winston, who apparently was not thinking the same thing.

  Our host belched behind his hand, and leaned back in his chair. “Yes, my slave wench. I had been hoping to fetch a good price for her.”

  Alfilda seemed displeased, but I nodded knowingly at the farmer’s words. A slender, pretty slave wench would have fetched significantly more if she went to her new master unsullied.

  “So you must have sought compensation in vain,” Winston concluded, sitting very still, but I saw his jaw muscles tremble slightly.

  “And why would you suppose that?” Arnulf said in surprise.

  “Why?” Winston echoed with a shrug. “You’re a man who values affluence, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “What’s your point?” Arnulf asked, narrowing his eyes.

  “Well, you must have sought compensation for your loss,” Winston replied. “In vain, I presume, because otherwise there would be no reason to take your case to the Hundred Court.”

  Arnulf bit his lip and nodded.

  “The culprit didn’t think he had committed a crime, then?” Winston asked, rubbing his chin.

  Arnulf’s response was a snort.

  “Well, at any rate, he refused to reimburse you?” Winston surmised. Only Alfilda and I could recognize the contempt in Winston’s voice, his disdain for a man who valued money more than anything else in life.

  Alfilda leaned over the table and asked, “Perhaps we could hear the whole story?”

  Arnulf ignored her and held his tankard out to the slave wench, who filled it immediately.

  “What my woman means,” Winston said, his jaw muscles working hard now to conceal his rage, “is that it would be easier for us to understand the whole thing if we knew the background.”

  “It’s none of your business,” Arnulf said, shaking his head.

  “Quite true,” Winston admitted, shooting Alfilda a glance that silenced her. “But apparently you wanted us to be aware of it.”

  “I did?” Arnulf straightened up in his seat in surprise. “What gives you that impression?”

  Winston’s lip curled. “You were eager to tell us you have a case and weren’t reluctant to share the nature of the matter when I asked.”

  My brother Harding once said: Men could often make things easier for themselves if they remembered their own words.

  The farmer looked annoyed that he had played right into Winston’s hand, but then his self-important look returned.

  “Well, I don’t suppose it can do any harm for you to hear about the case.” He scooted forward in the seat, knees apart. “A month ago the wench was out on the heath looking after the sheep up there. Sometimes the lambs are born early, and I don’t like to lose a lamb. The next day I rode up there along with three neighbors because we had some problems with wolves this winter. We successfully killed a couple on our way, finally reaching the sheep shelter. We were somewhat surprised to see a horse tethered to a Scotch broom shrub outside the shelter, so we rode closer with our spears at the ready.”

  Arnulf stopped to take a sip of his ale. I glanced around the hall. The women who had been cooking and the men who had been carving were all sitting now, eating slices of bread with meat on top. The slaves were sitting and eating with everyone else. The wench was half turned to us, and I noted the tension in her back muscles.

  The farmer wiped the beer foam from his mustache and continued, “Well, we went closer and heard the wench’s cries and squeals from inside the shelter. I was horrified when we got to her and saw the reason for all the noise, because a man was on top of her and had just finished bedding her. He jumped off as we came into view. When I scolded him for his misdeed, he just grinned, mounted his horse, and rode away.”

  I heard Alfilda stifle an exclamation, and I glanced at her in acknowledgment. The story didn’t sound very plausible.

  “You just let him ride away?” I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

  His answer was terse. “What else could I do?”

  Winston and I exchanged silent glances. Alfilda’s face was so full of disdain that I was relieved it wasn’t directed at me.

  “Didn’t she leave a mark on him?” I asked. Arnulf shook his head and said he didn’t let his slaves bear arms.

  “Not even a knife?” I wanted to know. But the answer was no.

  “And now you’re bringing a case against the rapist,” Winston calmly interrupted before I could say anything more.

  “He’ll pay me the fine for the loss I suffered,” Arnulf said, unable to hide a smug smile. “So far he has refused, but now it’s up to the Hundred Court.”

  “Refused to pay?” Winston repeated, sounding tired.

  “Refused to admit to committing the crime.”

  Now something dawned on me, so I asked, “Was the man a farmer?”

  Arnulf snorted again and said, “Darw
yn is his name, and he’s the son of a thane.”

  Thanes, particularly young ones, tended to take a liberal view of farmers’ rights, I knew all too well.

  “And his father?” Winston asked.

  “Delwyn, who owns a great deal of land not just in this hundred but all over East Anglia.”

  I opened my mouth, but Winston beat me to the question: “And what does this Delwyn say to the accusation against his son?”

  “As thanes are wont to do, he believes his son over a farmer.” Our host’s lips twitched. “And yet this time he will be forced to bend.”

  I didn’t understand. What made Arnulf so sure that the court would side with him?

  “Your companions will swear in support of you?” Winston asked.

  Now Arnulf laughed openly and replied, “Aye, that they will. It will be the word of four farmers against one thane.”

  Now I understood why he was so confident in his case. The thane wouldn’t have had any trouble winning a case against one farmer, or even against three, but the word of four farmers carried more weight than the word of one thane. The law says that a man’s word carries the same weight as his wergeld. That means 600 shillings for a landless thane, such as the young lawbreaker in question, and 200 for a farmer. So four farmers swearing together would tip the scales over this one Darwyn fellow.

  “The fine for raping another man’s slave is sixty-five shillings,” our host smirked. “Plus the money the court will award me for the loss of her virginity.”

  It was dark out by the time our meal was over. We didn’t linger at the table after the farmer’s story, but thanked him right away, and were then shown to our sleeping places. Luckily we were not next to each other. I was sure I would hear Winston’s snoring anyway, but at least it would be more muffled than if we were lying head to foot on the bench that ran along the side of the hall.

  We hadn’t exchanged a single word with the lady of the house, so we took pains to seek her out and thank her for the food, but she just nodded and went back to giving her girls orders.

  I went outside in the cold spring evening to relieve my bladder. I couldn’t stop thinking about the farmer who was so obviously looking forward to having his palm covered with silver the next day.

  As soon as I’d realized the culprit was a thane, I had assumed the four spear-wielding farmers hadn’t made the boy pay for his crime on the spot due to fear of the lad’s kinsmen. Turns out I was wrong about that. They hadn’t taken revenge on the spot because Arnulf was hoping to profit from the situation. He wasn’t the first man I’d run into who was hungry for silver. As my brother Harding said: Men like that are as plentiful as sparrows flocking around horse droppings. And the rape hadn’t even involved his wife or daughter, so it’s not like he was required to seek revenge. He was free to merely appeal for reimbursement for his monetary loss.

  Something else he’d said actually shook me more. When I was a boy, I was taught that noblemen are expected to take care of those in their employ, whether they be free farmers, serfs, or slaves.

  A nobleman is only a nobleman, my father used to say, if he is magnanimous. I remember more than one occasion when my father drew his sword to defend one of his farmers’ rights or to avenge a serf. I remember another time he hanged a neighbor’s slave because the man had killed one of our own slaves. Of course, Father had offered to pay the wergeld for the slave, but our neighbor had not accepted since the hanged man had in fact killed our man.

  Apparently Arnulf didn’t share my father’s view of things. True, Arnulf wasn’t a nobleman, but a farmer, and yet such a man has the same obligations toward his subordinates as a nobleman has toward his.

  And he was the one who sent a slave girl out into the heath, not just alone but also unarmed, even though he knew there were wolves.

  5

  The morning brought drizzly weather, thick porridge, and hot ale.

  I had noted the drizzle through the door when I poked my head outside. Shivering, I decided my bladder could wait. The porridge slid down my gullet accompanied by the ale. And by the time I had my fill, the rain gave way to wisps of fog between the buildings.

  I walked out to the paddock and saddled our horses. The red gelding greeted me with a nicker and nuzzled my hand, snorting and searching for the crust of bread I had sneaked into my pocket from one of the kitchen girls, who had been every bit as uncommunicative as her mistress.

  I was tightening the girth beneath Alfilda’s mare when Winston and she joined me, their arms full of odds and ends that they set about securing to the disagreeable Atheling’s back.

  “Are we leaving right away?” I made sure my hand couldn’t slip under the girth. Two mornings earlier, Alfilda’s woolly mare had tricked me by distending her belly as I attached the girth so that Alfilda’s saddle had slipped downward as she rode.

  Winston looked around, but we were alone in the paddock. Arnulf’s people had saddled the farmer’s horse for him while we were eating breakfast.

  “We’ll wait and ride together with the farmers,” Winston said. They would be our cover when we rode into Thetford.

  We led our nags out of the paddock and tied them to the post in front of Arnulf’s hall. Two other horses already waited beside Arnulf’s. We went back into the hall, and on seeing us from the hearth, Arnulf introduced us to the two men standing with him.

  Herward was a portly, wispy-haired Saxon man with a long mustache and a potbelly held in place by a wide leather belt. He nodded when Arnulf introduced him, and his eyes lit up at the sight of Alfilda, although he quickly looked away at the fire.

  His companion, Bjarne, was tall and strong, with extremely long auburn braids and a neatly trimmed, graying Danish beard. He also nodded at us and then immediately turned his eyes back to our host, who was listening to something outside the door, his head cocked.

  We later learned that the Dane, Bjarne, owned an outlying farm a ways outside the village but still met his neighborly obligations to the little community.

  The Saxon farmer, Herward, who was munching with great relish on a strip of cured meat, was master of one of the medium-sized farms we had noticed the day before. In addition to that, he confided to me between mouthfuls, he did quite a bit of trade in sheep.

  Our host overheard this statement and informed us with a smile that he, too, knew a lot more about the sheep trade than about running a farm, which caused both Bjarne and Herward to laugh, though Herward’s laughter sounded a little forced.

  “When a man is as good a farmer as Arnulf, it’s easy to poke fun at others who are not as fortunate,” Bjarne said, brushing aside the kidding and holding his tankard out to a slave wench, who immediately refilled it.

  After a while, we heard hoofbeats approaching. We all went out onto the green, which was bathed in cold morning light, to wait for the riders coming down from the hills.

  A skinny Dane was in the lead, dressed in yellow breeches and a red linen shirt beneath an open doublet. He rode with the reins in his left hand and his spear in his right. His belt held a long knife, the polished-silver inlay of its bone handle gleaming in the sun.

  Two others rode just behind him. On the left, a young lad who looked so much like the leader it had to be his son, and next to him, a heavyset Angle with a brown cape draped over his powerful shoulders.

  The lady of the house must have been standing just inside the doorway of the hall because she instantly emerged with one of her girls in tow, presenting the new arrivals with steaming tankards. The refreshment was quite welcome, judging by how eagerly the contents disappeared down the three men’s throats.

  Although the morning was coming to an end, Arnulf invited us all back inside, as the rules of hospitality dictate, and we each received fresh tankards along with slices of bread topped with salted eel. It wasn’t until we finished these that Arnulf introduced us to the new arrivals.

  The Danish farmer’s name was Sigvald, and he owned a farm about five miles to the west. His son, whose blond hair was cut
short, was Sigurd. Their Angle companion owned a farm a bit south of theirs, and he was known as Alwyn of the Heath, he said, because the farm itself was up in the heathery knolls—although his land extended over the fertile ground bordering the marshland.

  Sigvald did the talking, probably because he owned the largest farm. Sigvald’s son didn’t say anything, but his eyes were always on the move. The boy was vigilant, constantly scanning the hall to make sure all was well. Maybe despite his youth he knew that testifying against a thane’s son wasn’t the safest thing for a farmer to do.

  Our host asked Alwyn if he had business before the court. Alwyn responded that since he was a man who mostly took care of things on his own, that was not the case. He said he was going to the market to collect on a debt. A sheep dealer had bought some of his animals at the Michaelmas market but had been allowed to postpone a portion of the payment, which was now due.

  Winston explained what we were doing in the land of the East Anglians. Aside from the fact that Sigvald laughed condescendingly to learn that Winston made his living by filling pieces of parchment with lines and colors, the men accepted the story on face value: we were on our way to Saint Edmund’s Town but wanted to spend a few days at the market in Thetford to see if Winston could add to his supply of inks and other items necessary for his work.

  And so we rode toward Thetford as a large, well-armed group. The six farmers carried spears, which they held raised in their right hands with the shafts resting in a leather strap attached to their saddles. In addition, they all had decent knives in their belts, although none of the others’ was as grand as Sigvald’s.

  They had all stolen glances at my sword, but none of them mentioned it or even asked where in the kingdom my lands were. Neither I nor my companions saw any reason to explain that the sword was the only thing that remained to show I’d been born the son of a thane.