By the time they reached Harold’s headquarters, Gilbert had accepted that he was as good as dead. He was so consumed with self-reproach that he now welcomed the prospect. He had failed to find Edwin and therefore failed to redeem his honour. He had failed to get vital news back to the Duke, and so had nothing to justify his breaking of Sir William Fitzosbern’s strict orders. Worst of all, he had proved once again his incompetence as a scout; he had neglected the most basic points of Ralph’s training, and had allowed himself to be surprised and caught like a stupid farm boy stealing eggs. He had betrayed his family, his honour, his friend, his comrades, and his duke. What would Adele say? What would Ralph think of him when he heard that he had tamely allowed a Saxon fyrdman to pull from him the precious hauberk? What shame would his poor father feel!
By the time he stood before the King, he was looking forward to the royal gesture of dismissal and the axe-blow that would release him.
At first the questions were put in English. The King lowered his head and watched him carefully as he waited for an answer.
Gilbert shrugged.
A priest was brought who spoke French.
‘I have nothing to say.’ Gilbert decided that he would at least not add cowardice to his other crimes.
Again that watchful look with lowered head. Gilbert stood and awaited the inevitable.
The King walked away to another group sitting by a wagon. There was a murmured conversation. The King returned with another man.
Gilbert gaped. They were almost identical.
The two men looked at each other and laughed. Then one of them stepped forward and took out a knife.
Gilbert braced himself and shut his eyes. He heard a second laugh, and felt the rope fall from his wrists. When he opened his eyes, he received another shock. Standing between the two ‘kings’ was a third, taller and fairer. He put an arm round the shoulders of each of them.
‘This is my brother, Gyrth, and this is my brother, Leofwine.’ He grinned. ‘Baffling, eh?’
Gilbert found some memory of ’sixty-four coming back. During Harold’s visit to Normandy, he had seen the Earl, as he then was; but he would not have been able to distinguish him now from his two brothers.
Harold’s French accent was good. Gilbert was also taken aback by the charm and the frankness. The man in the middle was watching him.
‘Surprised at my French?’ he said. ‘We had plenty of Normans here in the Confessor’s day. Court was crawling with them. And I got a lot better when I was in Normandy in ’sixty-four – visiting your duke. You will know therefore who I am. Now, who are you?’
‘Gilbert of Avranches, sir.’ Gilbert amazed himself at how easily the ‘sir’ came out.
The King looked him up and down.
‘Well, Gilbert of Avranches,’ he said at last, ‘it was careless of you to get captured, was it not?’
The question was so direct that Gilbert found himself answering with total honesty.
‘Yes, sir.’
The King began munching an apple.
‘And now that you have discovered us, what are you going to tell your duke?’
Gilbert began to resent the bantering tone.
‘Why play with me, sir? I was stupid. You have caught me. Why not kill me and have done with it?’
Harold paused with the apple in front of his lips. ‘If for no other reason, because it seems to be the one thing you want me to do. Why does a young soldier with everything to live for wish to die?’
Gilbert lowered his head. ‘I have nothing to live for, sir.’
‘Hate yourself that much, eh?’
Gilbert looked up again. Harold chewed thoughtfully.
‘Well, I am going to give you someone to hate even more – me. That should keep you going – till you get back, anyway. Tell me,’ he continued, ‘did you ever hear the story of the torturer and the martyr?’
Gilbert looked blank.
‘No? Well, it went like this: the martyr said to the torturer, “Torture me and kill me.” And the torturer thought, and said, “No.”’
The King beamed at him. Gyrth and Leofwine chuckled.
‘Well?’
Gilbert still looked blank.
‘Never mind,’ said Harold. ‘Just understand – I shall not oblige you by killing you. If one Norman scout has seen us, I am sure a dozen have, and they did not get captured.’
Gilbert grimaced in bitter shame.
‘So,’ continued the King, ‘if we can not arrive quietly, we shall arrive with a banging of drums. It is all one in the end. You will return from here and you will tell your duke from me that he can squat in his castle and wait for me. He has a castle, of course?’
‘No,’ said Gilbert feebly.
Harold roared with laughter.
‘Boy, you are an even worse liar than you are a scout. A Norman duke goes campaigning without building castles? Perhaps you should be a jester. I fought beside him in Brittany – remember? And anyway, do you think I have been awaiting this fight for nearly a year without studying my enemy?’
He threw away the apple, walked up to Gilbert, and prodded him in the chest with his finger.
‘You tell your duke – Duke William the Bastard, the son of the tanner’s daughter – tell him that he can cower behind his castle walls and shiver beneath the shelter of his precious Papal banner, but Harold the King is coming, and coming very soon. He has already thrown one load of waterborne vermin back into the North Sea, and he is about to throw another into the Channel.
‘If Duke William sees sense and wishes to change his mind at the last minute, then he can leave under my flag of truce and I shall hold the door open for him. If he does not . . .’
Harold looked hard at Gilbert.
‘I could kill you now, but it will be easier, and tidier, to kill you all together at Hastings. You are a fine young fellow; it would be a pity if you were to die for an act of foolish presumption by an illegitimate adventurer.’
‘I follow my duke,’ said Gilbert, finding his voice. He sensed that Harold was a man who respected honesty.
The King smiled. ‘Well spoken, son. Nevertheless, go tell your duke what I have said. Follow him by all means. Follow him to Normandy, or follow him to the grave.’
Harold turned to Leofwine and took the apple that his brother was holding. He tossed it to Gilbert, who was so surprised that he nearly dropped it.
‘Here! Not as good as Norman apples, perhaps, but we do our best. While you eat that, you can wander round and see a real army. And it is all army too – no excess weight or surplus fat, lumbering wagons or screeching whores. You will have my safe conduct, and I give you my housecarl Wilfrid here. He will accompany you until you decide to leave. You will take with you everything with which you came.’
‘Including my horse, sir?’ said Gilbert in surprise.
‘Well, of course. We want you to get there ahead of us, you idiot. Is there anything else?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Gilbert pointed at the large fyrdman standing behind him. ‘My hauberk. He has it.’
‘Take it off,’ said the King.
‘But, sir,’ protested the fyrdman.
Harold nodded to Wilfrid, who at once began to bear down on the dismayed Saxon.
‘Oh, all right, all right.’
He wrenched it off with a bad grace and flung it at Gilbert.
The King ordered Gilbert’s remaining bonds to be cut, and himself put his sword and dagger back in place. For all that, he was the enemy, Gilbert could not help experiencing a thrill of excitement at such proximity to this remarkable man.
‘There!’ said Harold. ‘Now you are all in one piece again. Soon we start afresh on the march. See what you want. Ask what you want. Then go. You can rely on Wilfrid. We do not want any of my wild fyrdmen slicing you up, do we? And I have an interpreter for you. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye, sir.’
The King smiled, and his moustache twitched. Then he turned away, beckoning his brothers after him. As the three mo
ved away, he shouted over his shoulder.
‘Edwin! See to him.’
Edwin and Gilbert stared at each other, then went off in awkward silence.
Gyrth said to Harold, ‘That was a fine performance.’
Harold sighed wearily, and flopped onto a fallen tree.
‘You take any luck that presents itself. We have lost the element of surprise. So let us try to overawe them. We can be no worse off.’
‘You will not quicken William.’
‘No. But I quickened that boy. And he will talk. And the stories will get bigger every time.’
‘So you show him the army? We are hardly at our best. Look at us.’
Gyrth gestured at the bent backs and sagging shoulders all round them.
Harold shook his head. ‘It is numbers, not faces, that the boy will take away with him. We must be strung out for over two miles. How can he count? By the time he gets back to the Bastard, we shall be fifty thousand strong.’
‘That will not fool William either,’ said Leofwine.
‘Of course not,’ said Harold.
‘Well?’
‘My brother, everyone will know the boy is wrong, but they will not know how wrong. We have sown doubt – and that is the most fruitful seed of all in an enemy camp. Come. We now have a meeting to keep.’
‘Where?’
‘In the hall of the Bastard’s castle at Hastings. The one he has not built.’
When Godric caught sight of the thin column of smoke, he feared the worst. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he tried to hobble faster to the top of the hill.
Thank God! It was not the mill that was burning. The smoke was coming from further down the valley, where two or three cottars’ huts were in ruins. A burning wagon was slewed across the track between them.
There was no sign of life anywhere.
Godric made what jerky speed he could, fresh sweat running down his neck and back. No figure emerged when he splashed noisily across the stream.
Then he heard it. A moaning. Not a sound of physical pain. More a lament.
Turning a corner, he nearly fell over Gorm. The miller was sitting propped against the wall. Across his lap lay Sweyn, his neck loose, like a broken doll. Hideous red-ringed holes gaped in the boy’s clothes. Gorm cradled the body in bloodstained hands and gently rocked it. He gazed into the distance and intoned a tuneless dirge in his native Danish.
Godric spoke, then shouted. Gorm took no notice until Godric flopped to his knees and shook him.
‘Where is Rowena? Where is Aud? Edith?’
Gorm paused briefly at the sound of the names, then continued moaning.
Godric hit him across the face.
‘Rowena! Where is she?’
The shock brought awareness, then recognition. Gorm reached into his jerkin, pulled out a rag, and began wiping his brow. His eyes narrowed in hatred.
‘You!’
‘Where is Rowena?’ shouted Godric, his voice almost breaking.
‘You! You dare to lust after my daughter.’
Godric shook him again. ‘Is she alive?’
Gorm’s tiny eyes gleamed at the frantic appeal in Godric’s face. At last, after all these years, he had seen Godric truly moved.
‘You want her. Admit it – you want her.’
Godric clenched a fist under Gorm’s nose.
‘Do not play with me, old man. Your son lies dead in your lap. It is no time for riddles. Where – is – Rowena?’
Gorm wiped his face again. His eyes caught sight of the piece of cloth in his hand, now stained with blood as well as with sweat. He gazed at it for a moment, seeming to draw inspiration from it.
‘They were taken, all of them. Dragged away. I tried to stop it. See? A piece of her dress came away in my hand.’
Godric cried aloud.
Gorm leaned forward, his eyes alight. ‘You know what that means? One man after another, passed from hand to hand, and the remains spitted on a sword. Look at my Sweyn.’
Still groaning in pain, Godric struggled to his feet, and began to move towards the door of the house.
Gorm, sensing triumph, called after him, ‘If she died after one or two, she would be lucky.’
Godric disappeared. Gorm eased Sweyn’s body off his lap and stumbled after him.
Godric was putting food into a satchel.
Gorm came close and shouted in his ear, ‘Now you will never have her. Never!’
Godric turned in fury. Gorm reeled backwards at the awful sight of him. One blow from those huge hands could half kill a man.
Gorm flopped on to a stool, leaned his elbows on the table, and put his head in his hands. Godric moved to and fro, adding to the pile on the table. The limp somehow added to his deliberation. Last of all, he went out and came back with his great axe. Gorm had retrieved it after the Normans’ previous visit.
Godric rummaged in Rowena’s kitchen corner and pulled out a knife. He sat down at the table, and started to fashion a proper crutch out of a stave he had brought in from the barn. When he had finished, he picked up a whetstone and began sharpening the edge of the axe. The slow, regular rasping grated on Gorm’s nerves.
‘What are you going to do?’
Godric ignored him.
‘Where are you going?’
Godric behaved as if he were simply not there. He packed the satchel and slung it over his shoulder, along with a rolled blanket and a sheepskin. Fixing a thong near the head of the axe, he hung it from his belt, and put the knife in a scabbard on the other side. The whetstone went into a pocket. He tied some material round the crosspiece at the top of the crutch, and tested it under his armpit.
Satisfied, he moved towards the door without a glance in Gorm’s direction. Gorm looked up in alarm.
‘Where are you going?’
Godric paused, but not because of the question. It was as if something had just occurred to him. He turned and looked very hard at the miller. Gorm swallowed nervously. His lower lip hung loose.
‘Why are you not dead?’ said Godric at last.
‘What?’ Gorm played feebly for time.
‘Your son is dead. Your daughters are dead. Yet you are alive. You are not even hurt; the blood on your hands is Sweyn’s.’
Gorm’s whole body seemed to sag.
‘I – I was only one. There were many.’
‘Did you not try, man?’
Gorm grimaced piteously. ‘I – we needed help. Yes. I tried to get help.’
Godric stared. ‘You ran?’
Gorm slid off the stool and onto his knees. Godric hobbled across the floor.
‘Look at me!’ he roared.
Gorm raised his head by inches. Godric spaced the words with terrible clarity.
‘You – ran – away?’
Gorm put up his arm as if to ward off a blow. Instead, he heard Godric kneeling down. Huge hands grasped his shoulders. He found himself looking into the dark eyes that had baffled him so many times over the years. Now they no longer glowed or smouldered; they blazed. Gorm was struck with fear to his very soul.
‘Old man, you have befouled your name, broken trust with your kin, blotted out your flesh and blood. You had no wife. Now you have no son, no daughters, no reason for living. What is left to you is the memory of how you helped to lose it all.’
Gorm’s face practically crumbled. The chins hung like half-filled bags on a hook. What made it more terrible was that Godric did not raise his voice. It was not temper but truth that Gorm was hearing.
‘You do not need my curse upon you,’ said Godric. ‘You could fly from it. But the great burden you have fashioned for yourself – your own memory – you will never fly from that. Never.’
Godric fought his way to his feet and readjusted the crutch.
Gorm collapsed to all fours, grovelling and whimpering.
Godric paused at the door.
‘I have no life now, only strength. Enough to fight, and maybe find the man who did this. You are the only father I remember. I a
m the only child you have left. Yet I tell you this: I strike you from my memory, I strike you from my mind, I strike you from my heart. Gorm Haraldsson, you do not exist! You are a nithing!’
Gorm cried aloud in torment, but Godric did not hear him . . .
When the tears would no longer flow, Gorm sat up. He picked bits of straw off the front of his shirt. Then he looked around the house. Nothing moved. Outside, the only sounds were the rippling of the stream and the steady creaking of the wheel. No animal made a noise, no chicken scratched at the straw, no gate rattled.
Gorm clawed his way to a sitting position on the stool. The pot of beer lay smashed in front of him, but for once it did not matter.
He gazed for a long while into nothing, his chest still heaving with emotion, his eyes wide . . . What did it matter whether it was deceit or cowardice that had brought him to this?
At last, levering himself to his feet, he went searching. Tools, pots, bags, clothes were swept or kicked aside. He paused when he pulled out an old leather strap that looked as if might serve his purpose. It was grey with dirt and stiff with age, but he recognised it. How often had he used it on Godric’s young back! How suitable, therefore. He continued searching, and found what else he wanted in the end.
He knotted together the few scraps of frayed rope, and attached one end to the leather strap, which he fashioned into a noose. He could not control the trembling of his hands.
He looked up at the beam in the house, and placed a stool underneath it. There was not enough space.
Lumbering into the mill, he found a beam high enough, but could not get the rope over it. Every time he swung it up, he overbalanced. He tried putting the noose round his neck first and then throwing up the other end, but he fell, and grazed his chin painfully.
He crawled to the doorway, trailing the rope from the noose still round his neck. Using the door jamb for support, he struggled once more to an upright stance, and tottered back to the house.
He took the table apart, and began lugging it, plank by plank, to a position under the beam in the mill. He could think of no other way except to hold one end of each plank and drag it backwards. Several times he caught his heel and fell down. By the time he had dragged the two trestles as well, there was a large patch of mud over the seat of his sacking breeches.
The Last Conquest Page 34
