Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  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 would 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 B
randune, 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 like 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.

  ‘How should I know, lord?’ Godric said, a note of despair in his voice. ‘I haven’t counted them myself.’

  From another man’s lips that might have sounded insolent, but it was the fact that he spoke with such sincerity that made me laugh. Straightaway I tried to stifle it. The noise that came out was somewhere between a cough and a choke. The king glared at me, and I glimpsed the fire that lay behind his cold demeanour.

  ‘Has your uncle not spoken to you of such things?’ Atselin suggested. ‘Perhaps you can recall something of what he might have mentioned about their numbers and disposition.’

  ‘He tells me little,’ Godric answered. There was a look in his eyes that might have been anger or hurt, and perhaps it was a mixture of the two. ‘He says I am still young, that he values my loyalty but I am not a warrior yet, that I should worry about honing my sword-skills first before troubling myself with such details. I had to beg to be allowed to lead the scouting-band last night.’ He shook his head and sniffed. ‘I failed even at that.’

  Atselin narrowed his eyes. ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fifteen summers this year.’

  He was barely out of boyhood. Were he not my enemy I might have felt sorry for him. Eager to impress and to win respect, he was nonetheless a long way from fulfilling his ambitions. Doubtless I’d been much the same at his age, although he held one advantage over me, for he was only too aware of his shortcomings, whereas I had never been able to see them. That youthful arrogance had nearly proven my undoing on more occasions than one.

  The king, however, was unmoved. ‘Tell us something you do know.’

  After swallowing to clear his throat, Godric began to speak of the enemy’s defences, while Atselin scrawled upon his tablet, although in truth we learnt little that was new. Once in a while the king would interrupt to press the Englishman further, but otherwise he seemed content to let him talk. And so we learnt that nothing resembling a castle had yet been erected — not that we had expected any among the English to have the expertise to do so — but that Morcar and the other leading thegns had thrown up all manner of walls and earthen banks around the monastery, dug ditches and arrayed sharpened stakes in them to deter against attack, and behind those defences they waited for us to come to them. They had food enough to last until winter and even beyond, Godric assured us, although how he could possibly say that when he had no real notion of how many mouths they had to feed, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps that fact had come from his uncle, since it didn’t sound like the kind of judgement he was likely to have made on his own. Indeed he seemed almost as ignorant as the eel-catchers and other marsh folk, upon whose sparse knowledge and occasional observations of the enemy positions we had thus far come to rely.

  Still, everything he told us confirmed our worry, which was that the rebels were secure in their fastness and unlikely to be prised from it in the foreseeable future. Indeed, if their defences were as formidable as young Godric made them sound, we had only one choice: to lay siege to that stronghold, bombard them with our mangonels and try to starve them into submission, but that might take months: months that we didn’t have, and I suspected the king was coming to the same realisation. He paced in front of us, every once in a while tapping a finger against his chin as if in thought, no doubt wondering, as I was, what we should do with the Englishman now, and whether he might make a reliable guide through the marsh-passages that led to the Isle. I could not speak for the king, but certainly I wouldn’t want to entrust my life to him.

  Godric went on to describe the rich halls of the monastery at Elyg, which the abbot and monks had surrendered to Hereward and Morcar to use for their councils of war and as private chambers for themselves and their households. Had he any sense, he would have shut his mouth before going on any further, but desperation was loosening his tongue, and he could not stop himself. Oblivious to the king’s darkening expression, he told of the lavish feast his uncle had held there three nights before, of the various dishes of hare and boar that had been laid out, of the wine, ale and mead that had flowed and how men had fallen about insensible with drink, of how a poet had sung of the great victory that would soon be theirs.

  ‘I have heard enough,’ the king said eventually, cutting Godric off as he was telling of his uncle’s great hoard of gold, and the largesse he had bestowed upon the abbot of Elyg in gratitude for his generosity. ‘Unless you have anything worthwhile to offer, I have no more time for you.’

  He signalled to two of his scarlet-clad knights, who stepped forward from the shadows where they had been waiting, took hold of the Englishman’s shoulders in spite of his protests and hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Take him outside and kill him,’ the king said. ‘Then hang his corpse somewhere by the marsh’s edge where his countrymen might come across him. He will serve as an example.’

  Godric tried to struggle, but his arms were pinned. ‘No, lord!’

  ‘You are of no use to us, and I have wasted my breath speaking to you. I do not wish to look upon your loathsome face any longer.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, as the king’s knights dragged him towards the entrance. They stopped, glancing first at me, and then at the king. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert cast a warning glare my way, but I was not to be discouraged.

  I could have held my tongue and left the Englishman to his fate without risking incurring King Guillaume’s wrath, but an idea was beginning to stir within my mind: an idea that just might help bring a swift end to this war. In all the weeks we’d been fighting, the rebels had never once sent us an envoy, nor us them, since showing one’s enemy that yo
u were willing to talk was often taken as a sign of weakness, and neither side wished to admit to that. In Godric, however, I realised we had been gifted an opportunity, and one that we had to take.

  The king rounded upon me. ‘What is it?’

  ‘My lord king,’ I said. ‘If I may speak, I have a suggestion to make.’

  He stared long and hard at me, then at Eudo and Wace, who were standing beside me. ‘I recognise you,’ he said. ‘Your faces are familiar, though I cannot say from where. Our paths have crossed before, haven’t they?’

  They had, though I hadn’t expected him to remember. It had been the briefest of encounters, and more than two years ago besides.

  ‘They were among the men who opened the city gates to your army on the night of the battle at Eoferwic,’ Robert said. ‘It was Tancred who led the charge on to the bridge, who faced Eadgar Ætheling in single combat and almost killed him.’

  The account as he gave it was more or less true, although others had embellished those feats in their retellings of the battle. Robert, Wace and Eudo all knew well that if anyone had nearly met his death that day, it was I and not Eadgar, but I had rarely admitted this to anyone else, and thought it wise not to say anything now.