The Last Conquest

by Berwick Coates

  Taillefer spat. ‘For shame, Pomeroy. I did not think even your mind could stoop below the midden.’

  Pomeroy glared. One soldier laughed.

  ‘Taillefer would not have the energy. More probably he has been sleeping. That is his call of nature.’

  Taillefer ignored the jibe. He turned, and bent down to Edith, who had followed him out.

  ‘Here, child.’ He held out the tiny pipe.

  Edith cried out in pleasure, and seized it. Aud came up and put a hand round her shoulder. Gorm poked his head furtively round the door.

  ‘When you have finished giving alms,’ shouted Baldwin, ‘perhaps we can get on.’

  Taillefer managed a bow, coughed with the effort, and took his horse’s reins.

  ‘Ever at your disposal, Sir Baldwin.’

  ‘Move the prisoners.’

  Rowena had time to place a hand over Godric’s heart.

  ‘I shall come back,’ said Godric. ‘Watch and wait. Hide if need be. But watch. I shall come back. Give me your hand.’

  Rowena raised her fingers to Godric’s lips and pressed them gently. Gorm saw Godric’s eyes glow.

  Pomeroy pushed him on, and wrenched Edwin after him.

  Berry snarled.

  Capra dismounted suddenly and rushed back.

  ‘We may hurt no person, but by the Blood I shall have that hound!’

  He pulled out his sword, swung it viciously, and broke Berry’s back.

  Edwin cried out in pain, but was pulled again by Pomeroy. He kept turning his head to keep Berry in sight. As they passed a bend beyond the stream, he could still see the dog’s legs twitching.

  Aud rushed suddenly to the stream and called after him. ‘Be at peace, Edwin. I shall see to him.’

  Edwin heard her, and stumbled on, blinded by his tears.

  Gilbert pulled in beside Sandor, still furious. ‘The beast! To kill a dog!’

  Sandor shrugged. ‘A Saxon dog?’

  Gilbert whirled on him. ‘Sandor, how could you? Any dog! Capra is less than human.’

  ‘No, my friend,’ said Sandor. ‘He is very human. He lost face. How could he regain it? Only by killing, if only a dog. Ask yourself, which is better for you – the dog alive, or the family alive?’

  Gilbert swore. ‘He is still a wild animal.’

  ‘That is may be,’ said Sandor. ‘But you tamed him. I do not think you could tame the Bloodeye.’

  Gilbert shuddered at he knew not what.

  ‘What was it? And what stopped him?’

  ‘Sir Baldwin,’ said Sandor. ‘You saw. You heard.’

  Gilbert tossed his head. ‘Sandor! You know what I mean. What was wrong with him?’

  ‘It is a sickness. He has it many times. Excitement can cause it, they say. Danger. Passion. That woman was very . . .’ Sandor gestured expressively. ‘They also say in camp he is mad. Or that he is possessed by the Devil.’ He shrugged. ‘But then your Devil is always the mover of mysteries.’

  Gilbert frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Is what I say. When you have great happenings which you understand – war, death, pestilence, a bad winter – you say it is the Will of God. When you have happenings which are mysteries, you have fear, and you say it is the work of the Devil. So I say – the Devil is dark, and God is open. And the Devil is very busy,’ he added.

  The Devil! Gilbert stiffened as an answer to a problem flew almost within his grasp. When he strained his mind to capture it, it flew away again. He took up his original enquiry.

  ‘What does Matthew know about this – this sickness?’

  Sandor smiled. ‘My friend, he is no “Matthew”. He is a Turk.’

  ‘An infidel!’

  ‘So it is said. In Christendom we see little of infidels. That is why you gasp. But this “Matthew” has much knowledge in places that are dark to us.’

  ‘Knowledge of the Devil, you mean.’

  Sandor spread his hands. ‘You see? Is exactly what I say. You do not understand, and you blame the Devil.’

  Gilbert turned away, as the fugitive answer flew once more within his grasp. He reached out and this time caught it.

  ‘Of course!’

  Sandor looked at him.

  Gilbert slapped the top of his thigh. ‘The Devil. The Devil’s hand. I knew there was something odd about him. Did you see how Fulk held his dagger? He is left-handed. Devil-handed. Great Jesus!’

  Sandor was not impressed.

  ‘It is God who gives a man two hands, not the Devil. If a soldier injures one, must he tie the other to his side? Does your Bible decree it thus?’

  Gilbert shook his head in despair at his friend’s ignorance.

  ‘Sandor, it is well known.’

  Sandor shrugged.

  Gilbert muttered a brief prayer under his breath and crossed himself.

  ‘They make a good pair – one with the hand of the Devil and one with the knowledge of the Devil.’

  ‘I did not say that,’ said Sandor. ‘The Turk knows much of medicine. Did you not see the herbs he prepares for the illness of Fulk? Did the Devil make the plants grow? Matthew is never far from the side of Fulk. Like a shadow.’

  Gilbert remembered that he had seen Godric watching intently as the little Turk ministered to Fulk. He remembered too that he owed his own recovery to Godric’s secret knowledge. (Was it only three days ago?) Was Godric privy to the same dark science as this infidel? But then he, Gilbert, had been cured, and he was quite sure that Godric was a good man, as he knew that Rowena was a good woman. He could still see the blood on her neck at the end of Fulk’s dagger.

  He shook his head. It was all too confusing. Sandor had not helped.

  ‘Why does Fulk call him “Matthew”?’ said Gilbert.

  Taillefer dropped back beside them. ‘Do you think it would be good for the spirit of a Christian army, marching under the banner of His Holiness the Pope, if its best doctor were known as “Selim-ud-din from Damascus”?’

  Gilbert snorted. He thought of the cat-like grace, the lurid red sash.

  ‘Selim or Matthew, he still makes my flesh creep. Those yellow eyes!’

  ‘When you are wounded you may change your mind,’ said Taillefer.

  Gilbert gave a nervous laugh. ‘I suppose you know all about wounds and actions, you old trembler. I notice you were well hidden when Fulk drew his dagger.’

  Taillefer looked down his beaky nose. ‘I was in the house, blessing the children.’

  Gilbert gazed at him in disbelief, then remembered the gift of the pipe.

  ‘Yes. I must admit that really was generous, Taillefer.’

  Sandor chuckled. ‘Have you seen the payment he took for his playing?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Gilbert.

  ‘Show him,’ said Sandor.

  Taillefer fished three small onions out of his wallet.

  ‘And the other payment,’ said Sandor.

  Taillefer delved once again.

  Gilbert gasped as he recognised Edwin’s dagger.

  ‘Taillefer!’

  Taillefer pulled down the corners of his mouth. ‘I needed something to cut the onions, and you were not, as I recall, a willing lender. This was lying on the table. Nobody seemed to have need of it. Then Sir Baldwin called.’ He lifted his shoulders in a heron-like shrug. ‘I forgot it was in my hand.’

  ‘Taillefer, you are impossible!’

  Bruno paused on the edge of some forest.

  ‘Rest here. Good cover. We shall see them first.’

  Ralph raised his eyes Heavenwards.

  ‘It speaks. It actually speaks.’

  ‘What is it you want? If I tell you the truth, you are in rage. If I tell you lies, you will be in rage again. I can not please you.’

  ‘Company. I want company. The English will be better company than you.’

  ‘You have too much company already – in your own head. There is no room for me. I hope you can make room for the English when we find them.’

  ‘Suppose
they have scouts out as far as this,’ said Earl Gyrth.

  ‘Then they will probably see us,’ said Harold.

  ‘Does that not worry you?’

  Harold chuckled. ‘Brother, they have known we were coming ever since they landed. And I am sure they are ready for us. The only doubt concerns when.’

  ‘Are you not taking a chance?’

  Harold shook his head. ‘It is William who has taken the chance by coming here in the first place. And in two or three days I intend to show him just how big a chance that is.’

  Tears and sweat stained Edwin’s face as he stumbled along behind Pomeroy’s horse on the weary way to the Norman camp. Godric stumped doggedly on the end of a rope behind William Capra. He neither spoke nor looked back. Edwin could tell nothing from his huge shoulders of what was passing in his mind.

  Dully he recognised the landmarks they traversed. He had coursed here many times with his hounds and the Earl Harold, as he was then, especially in the happy times before the fatal voyage.

  When they had left Bosham he had guessed that Harold’s captain had set course for Hastings. They had done the same journey several times; it was often quicker than the pit-strewn roads of Sussex. But they hated doing it; they feared and loathed the sea. How they had cursed Harold for never feeling seasick. They cursed even more when the storm arose, and more still when it blew them onto the Norman coast. Cursed it and blessed it at the same time – for marooning them and for saving their lives, even though the waves took his beloved dogs.

  Edwin would never understand the ways of the Almighty. Why should God see fit to wreck them, not on the English coast, but on the coast of Normandy – stranded game, waiting to be snared by the bandit Guy of Ponthieu? Then, at the very moment of capture, Edwin blessed his God that he had lain exhausted among some rocks, and had escaped notice by Guy’s soldiers.

  In the midst of his hungry wanderings from Ponthieu to Rouen, he cursed his God yet again. Then, fed and warmed in the Duke’s great kitchen at Rouen, he forgot his misery and his fear.

  For Adele was there.

  At once all the wretchedness and worry and loneliness became worthwhile, because they had led him to her. God’s Wisdom suddenly became blindingly clear. In the long days of high summer, while his master, the Earl Harold, and his captor, the Duke, dallied and feasted and hunted and made war together, he breathed joy and fire with Adele, and learned French faster than any monk of Fécamp or Jumièges could have taught him.

  When they made love, he forgot his master, his country, even his beloved dogs lost overboard. When they lay softly together afterwards, each murmuring endearments that the other only half understood, he knew that God had singled him out for special favour.

  When the sudden embarkation came after Harold’s oath to William, Edwin had little chance to say a proper goodbye, and he knew just as surely that God had marked him instead for special pain.

  And yet – when God gave him the dog Berry, his sun shone once more.

  And now his beloved Berry was dead, and he was being dragged by a rope from the saddle of his murderer – at any rate, his murderer’s brother. He cried bitterly in his despair, and swore in mindless, endless monotone.

  As they drew nearer the Norman camp, he noticed the burned farms and stiff bodies, only to swear all the more. He took no fear from the hard stares of the Norman sergeants or the sweaty glowerings of the fatigue parties, still at work on the soaring fortifications. He now expected to be killed anyway; the method, whether torture or hanging or a speedy knife-thrust, did not really matter. In any case, he would be relieved of his suffering. The only pity was that his king would not arrive in time.

  The one thing he was not prepared for was for nothing to happen. Pomeroy tied him to one of the few remaining trees. Capra did the same with Godric, then took his horse and his brother’s – despite Sandor’s grinning offer to look after them – and went to find some food. Pomeroy waited in surly silence. When two idle Norman archers came by and loitered to ask the obvious questions, he swore at them and they slouched off in ill humour.

  Baldwin dismissed the rest of the detachment, and went to make his report to the Duke. Sandor made straight for the horse lines. Taillefer felt the need for a good sleep.

  As he stretched his long body on some of Sandor’s horse blankets, he pushed to the back of his mind the knowledge that he was sleeping more and more as the weeks went on. It might be significant, but he could not be sure. He was frankly too tired to worry about it. Life was hard enough in any case, without adding to it by fruitless speculation. God, he had discovered in a long and eventful life, was not kind to thinkers and philosophers. He punished those who pondered His ways overmuch by leaving too many conclusions behind in the mind when the thinking was finished. It was altogether too disturbing.

  Oblivion was preferable every time, if not from drink, then from sleep. As he lay back he dandled Edwin’s knife in his bony fingers, but decided that an excess of conscience was also too disturbing. As conscience faded, so did consciousness. Sleep, regretfully, did not taste as good as wine, or even English beer, but at least one did not wake up with a headache.

  He did not move when Gilbert flopped down nearby and began making up a fire. There was a comforting blaze going by the time Sandor came back from his beloved horses. He pulled some food out from inside his jerkin.

  Gilbert thanked him, but ate in silence.

  After a while, Sandor fidgeted. ‘Are you still angry?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Anger brings only misery.’

  Gilbert took another moody bite. ‘What do you suggest?’ he said with his mouth full, gazing into the fire.

  ‘Revenge.’

  Gilbert looked up. Sandor’s eyes were twinkling. He stood up and picked up the remains of the food.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Follow.’

  Sandor took the food to the prisoners. Gilbert hung back because he did not wish to face the jibes of Capra about his friendship with Edwin. He stood out of Capra’s sight and watched as Edwin and Godric ate.

  Sandor rejoined him. ‘There it is,’ he said.

  Gilbert blinked. ‘What?’

  ‘Your revenge.’

  He pointed at the prisoners. Beside them Capra and Pomeroy munched at the food Capra had obtained.

  Gilbert blinked again. ‘I do not follow.’

  Sandor put a finger beside his nose. ‘You want revenge?’ he said quietly.

  ‘Yes. Yes. But how?’

  ‘I too wish revenge – for my stolen horses.’ He looked over his shoulder again at the prisoners.

  ‘Well?’ said Gilbert impatiently.

  ‘Time and patience. Patience and time.’

  Gilbert narrowed his eyes. ‘Sandor? You have an idea. What is it?’

  Sandor screwed up his face in a simulation of deep thought. ‘In this moment, my plan is only a light in the eye. But it will grow, and then I tell.’

  ‘Oh, Sandor, tell. You must tell.’

  Sandor cautioned him to a quieter voice, and grinned. ‘I tell you this much. For my plan I need three good liars. I am devilish good liar. This is one. Can you be two?’

  Gilbert hesitated.

  ‘To punish Capra? For the dog?’ prompted Sandor.

  Gilbert set his jaw. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Good. Then go and finish your food. And pray to the Devil to make you a good liar.’

  As Gilbert went off, Sandor smiled wryly. The Devil would have a big job.

  The Duke, as always, was a good listener. He sat patiently through Baldwin’s report. When it was over, he turned to Sir William Fitzosbern.

  Fitzosbern, reading his thoughts, nodded. ‘That completes it,’ he said. ‘For nearly twenty miles around we have prepared the ground.’

  Baldwin grimaced to himself. It jarred on his quartermaster’s nerves that they had to destroy so many valuable supplies solely in order to win a victory that would increase their need for food.

  ‘A
nd the avenues?’ pursued the Duke.

  ‘All intact, and according to plan. If Harold desires to surprise us, he must march twenty miles before battle, with no food available on the way. I do not think even he will risk that. If he does, his army will be hungry, foot-sore and leg-weary before the first arrow is fired, and his wagons of spare weapons will be miles behind. If he wishes to feed his men, he will come by way of the avenues, and we shall be prepared for him; our ground is chosen.’

  William nodded. ‘Yes. Now – where is Ranulf?’

  There was a slight murmur of anticipation among the members of the assembled council of officers. With any luck, there might be a modest measure of entertainment to be extracted from the next few minutes.

  Ranulf of Dreux limped in to make his report. His leg had not been properly set after he had fallen off a ladder on a half-built tower in the Vexin, and it always pained him in damp or chilly weather.

  The experience served only to add doctors, ladders and autumn to the long list of things he regularly complained about. When asked why he put up with the hard outdoor life of a castle-builder, he had answered by claiming that any alternative could only be worse. When asked why he had chosen to work for the Duke, he said that it gave him scope for experiment. ‘It certainly was not for the money,’ he would say, and to the Duke’s face.

  Ranulf saw all choices in life as finding the lesser of two evils. Commanders put up with him because he was a fine engineer, probably the best fortifications expert between Brittany and the Rhine. William could recognise talent when he saw it, and understood leadership deeply enough to know that Ranulf’s ill humour sprang from natural pessimism and not from insubordination. Though William rarely laughed at a joke himself, and even more rarely made one, he appreciated that Ranulf’s gloomy manner made men smile, and that was good for morale. He was prepared to tolerate his outspokenness, safe in the knowledge that nobody else would dare to try and emulate him.

  ‘Well?’ said the Duke.

  Ranulf shrugged. ‘I am sure your Grace is aware of the appalling difficulties under which I am labouring—’

  William interrupted him. ‘I want progress, not difficulties.’

  Ranulf winced at another spasm of pain in his leg, and eased it into a better position.