Knights of the Hawk c-3

by James Aitcheson

  ‘Nobody mocks me,’ he barked. ‘You hear me? Nobody!’

  Gritting my teeth, I swung my fist at his face and managed to connect with his cheekbone. It was hardly a solid blow, but it was enough to make him let go of me as, reeling, he took a step back. That was all the space I needed. I barrelled into his midriff, hoping to bring him to the floor, but he was more stoutly built than I, and quickly recovered his balance, throwing me off him and towards the open space in front of the hearth. The rushes were sodden with spilt wine and mud; my feet found little purchase, and I found myself sprawling forward, barely managing to keep my balance. Men cleared a space around us, cheering, clapping, jeering, chanting.

  I turned in time to see Guibert draw a knife and rush towards me. By tradition it was forbidden to carry swords and other weapons into a feasting-hall, but knives were allowed since without them one would struggle to eat. He attempted a stab, but the move was ill timed and I was able to step to one side, at the same time grabbing hold of his arm and twisting sharply. He yelped in pain, dropping the knife, and I shoved him hard, sending him stumbling sideways.

  ‘Enough of this!’ someone yelled, and it sounded like Lord Robert, but the cry came from behind me and so I couldn’t be sure. ‘Guibert! Tancred!’

  Guibert came at me again, this time snatching up a brass candlestick that had fallen on the floor. He swung it like a club at my face, screaming through clenched teeth, and I tried to duck, but the wine had slowed my movements. Searing pain blossomed inside my skull as the base struck a glancing blow across the back of my head.

  For an instant there was nothing but blackness. Numbly, I felt myself stagger forward. Exactly what happened next I struggle to recall, but my feet must have gone out from under me, since when my sight returned I found myself on my knees, clinging to the edge of one of the long tables as if for support, with white stars dancing in my eyes. I blinked to make them go away, but they would not. The hall was ringing all at once with laughter and shouts of alarm.

  ‘Stop!’ the same man shouted, and this time I was sure it was Robert. ‘Stop this madness!’

  A wordless roar came from behind. My own blade I’d left on the table where I’d been sitting, but a long carving-knife lay on the table. I seized it in clumsy, unfeeling fingers, trying to ignore the throbbing in my skull as I turned-

  Shapes and colours swam before my eyes, but through the stars and the haze I saw Guibert’s eyes and the drunken hatred that lay behind them. I saw the gleaming brass of the candlestick, raised high, poised to be brought down upon my face. And I saw the opening I needed.

  There was no time to consider whether what I was doing was right or wrong. It was my life or his. That was the only thought running through my mind. I lunged forward, gritting my teeth and concentrating all my strength in my weapon-hand, trusting to God that I wouldn’t miss, that the steel would strike home.

  It did.

  The blade found Guibert’s belly and I plunged it deep, through cloth and skin and flesh, until I felt it scrape against bone. Blood bubbled forth and a stifled cry escaped his lips, and I drove it deeper and deeper and deeper still, yelling my anger and my triumph. The candlestick slipped from his limp fingers, and he stumbled backwards. I let go of the sticky, crimson-covered handle, leaving it lodged there in his gut.

  Breathless, I clutched at the back of my skull, rubbing the place where he had struck me. There was no blood but already it felt as if a lump were forming there. My legs felt weak, as if they didn’t quite belong to me, while my head seemed to be on fire. Sickness brewed in my stomach.

  No longer were men cheering, clapping, jeering, or chanting. I heard the sound of my breathing, and I heard a crash as Guibert met the floor, but that was all. No one moved. No one spoke. Silence reigned for what could only have been a moment, but so vivid is my memory of that moment that it feels as though it lasted an hour.

  Blinking to try to clear my sight, I gazed down at Guibert’s still form and saw his blood trickling away, staining the rushes and pooling by his side, soaking the front of his tunic. Men rushed to his side, vainly calling his name.

  Only then did I realise what I had done.

  All at once the warmth seemed to flee my body. My throat felt tight, as if I could hardly breathe. Bile churned in my stomach and I wanted to heave, but somehow I managed to resist the temptation and hold myself back.

  And then the silence was broken, and the shrieking began. It was a woman’s shriek, shrill and piercing, and it came from the dais at the far end of the hall.

  ‘Murderer!’

  I looked up from where Guibert lay and saw that it was Elise.

  ‘Murderer!’ she screamed as she pointed at me, her cheeks flushed with fury.

  All eyes were upon me. I expected at any moment to be set upon and brought to the floor, but no one moved. Perhaps they all feared shedding more blood in Robert’s presence, but I think that they were simply too shocked by what they’d seen to do anything. Most were no great friends of mine, but they all knew well who I was and would have heard the tales of my deeds. They knew, too, that Robert and I were close, and that, I believe, is why they hesitated.

  ‘Seize him!’ Elise was screeching. ‘Seize the murderer!’

  Beside Elise on the dais stood Beatrice, her face pale, one hand raised to her mouth in alarm. She met my eyes for a heartbeat, and quickly turned away, not wishing to look upon me. Her husband was calling for one of the kitchen-boys to fetch him his sword, but like everyone else they merely stood as if frozen, waiting for instructions from their lord.

  My eyes met Robert’s. He stared at me with an expression that suggested he didn’t know whether to be horrified, or angry, or both.

  ‘If no one else will do it, I will,’ said Guillaume d’Archis, his scabbard having finally been brought to him. Drawing his blade, he began to advance down the middle of the hall, between the tables towards me.

  ‘No more bloodshed in my hall,’ Robert shouted from the other side of the high table. ‘Do you hear me? I order you to put your sword away!’

  ‘Guillaume, no!’ Beatrice said. She ran after her husband and clutched at his sword-arm, trying to slow him down, but he shook her off easily. The steel gleamed in the firelight, and I saw how keen was its edge. Weaponless as I was, I stood little chance against a man armed and roused to anger. I backed away, towards the open doors.

  ‘A blade,’ I yelled at the onlookers, desperately searching for a friendly face among them. ‘Someone give me a blade!’

  ‘Lay so much as a scratch upon him and you’ll have us to answer to,’ Wace said as he appeared on my flank, and with him, brandishing his knife drunkenly in front of him, his eyes bleary as if he were still half-asleep, was Eudo.

  ‘Stand back,’ Guillaume said, ‘or I will cut you both down as well.’

  ‘No more violence!’ Robert repeated, then turned and fixed his gaze upon me. His face was red and his hand made a fist.

  ‘Lord, I didn’t mean-’

  ‘No,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘You will listen to me. You have brought dishonour upon yourself and at the same time insulted both me and my family.’

  ‘He attacked me! What was I supposed to do?’ Everyone here had seen it happen, and knew that Guibert’s death was an accident. Surely Robert understood that I’d only been defending myself?

  ‘You have spilt blood in my hall, Tancred, and at my father’s funeral feast as well!’

  ‘He would have killed me otherwise!’ I shot back. ‘What would you have had me do? Tell me that, lord.’

  Perhaps I would have done better to keep my mouth shut, but my anger was roused, and I couldn’t stop myself.

  ‘By rights you ought to be on your knees before me, begging my forgiveness,’ Robert said. His eyes were hard and unfeeling. ‘Instead you merely stand there as if you’ve done nothing wrong, as if this is all some game to you. Why is it that every time there’s some quarrel taking place, I always find you in the middle of it?’

  His w
ords struck me hard, like a blow to the gut. ‘Lord-’ I protested.

  ‘Leave,’ he said. ‘Leave, and don’t return. You are my man no longer. Understand? Consider your oath to me absolved.’

  ‘What? You can’t-’

  I stopped, not knowing what to say. I could barely believe my ears. What did this have to do with my oath?

  ‘You’re letting him go?’ Elise screeched. ‘This is no time to show mercy, Robert. He killed a man! He cannot go unpunished. He must not!’

  ‘Go,’ Robert told me, ignoring his mother’s protests. I’d rarely seen him roused to anger, and certainly not like this. ‘Now, before I change my mind.’

  ‘Lord-’

  ‘Now!’

  I held his gaze for an instant. Guibert must have struck me harder than I’d realised, for I was still struggling to comprehend what was happening. Feeling at the same time numb and cold and sick, I turned on my heels and, without looking back, stalked from the hall.

  No one tried to stop me. The doors lay open and I strode out into the yard, into the icy, stinging rain, through the mud and the puddles. No sooner had I gone than I heard chaos erupt in my wake. Shouts were raised, and I heard Elise still shrieking, and dogs barking, but I didn’t dare glance back over my shoulder as I broke into a run.

  My mind was teeming with a thousand thoughts. Foremost among them was that I needed a horse. I didn’t know how long it would be before anyone came after me, if they came at all, but I wasn’t prepared to wait and find out. Fyrheard was in the stables close by the main gates, in the outer bailey. I had just passed through the inner gatehouse and was heading down the hill towards the long thatched building when I heard a shout from behind.

  ‘Lord!’

  Recognising the sound of Godric’s voice, I turned. ‘What?’

  He came running up. ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said.

  After what had just taken place, I was surprised he dared so much as show his face in my presence. Were it not for him, I wouldn’t be in this situation.

  ‘No, you’re not. But you can help me. Get word to the others. To Pons and Serlo and Eithne. Find them and tell them we need to leave straightaway. Tell them I’ll meet them by the crossroads on the old Roman way.’

  ‘But-’

  ‘Don’t argue with me.’ My patience was all but spent. ‘Just do it.’

  He looked uncertainly at me for a moment, but then ran on, down towards the outer gates, and I hurried inside the stables. The doors were unlocked but there was no one about at this hour, and so no rushlights were lit, and I nearly slipped on the wet hay that plastered the floor as I found my way down the corridor to Fyrheard’s stall.

  I’d thrown the saddle on to his back and was just about to lead him out into the yard when I heard voices and feet splashing through the mud, and saw the glow of a torch flickering on the plastered walls. I tensed, thinking that Robert had given in to his mother’s wishes and sent some of his men to apprehend me. They must have seen I’d left the door open.

  ‘Tancred?’ a voice called. Two figures entered, one of them holding a torch.

  Wace. Eudo.

  ‘You’ve done it this time, haven’t you?’ Wace said when he saw me. He shook his head. His eyes were hard and his mouth was drawn tight. He set the torch in a sconce on the wall.

  ‘You know I never meant to kill him,’ I said.

  ‘Does it matter?’ Eudo asked, and there was no mistaking the anger in his tone. He marched towards me and shoved me hard in the chest. ‘What were you thinking?’

  ‘Hey,’ I protested, shoving him back. Drink had made him clumsy on his feet, and that small push was enough to send him tumbling to the floor.

  He rose and made for me again, but before he could come near, Wace grabbed hold of his shoulder and held him back. ‘There’s no time for that,’ he said.

  Eudo swore violently. ‘Of all the stupid things you could have done,’ he said to me. ‘Is there anything inside that head of yours?’

  ‘Enough,’ Wace said sharply. ‘What’s done is done. You have to get away from here, Tancred, and quickly.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that?’ I asked. ‘What did you think I was doing here?’

  ‘Where will you go?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I hadn’t yet thought that far ahead. ‘Aren’t you coming with me?’

  ‘Come with you?’ Eudo echoed angrily. ‘This is your doing, not ours. If we join you, what’s to stop Robert expelling us from his service as well?’

  They were right, and I knew it. I cursed aloud. How had it come to this?

  ‘We can’t come with you, but we’ll do what we can to sway Robert and make him reconsider,’ Wace said. ‘Until then you’d be wise to find someplace quiet where you can weather the storm. I wouldn’t put it past Elise to send some of her friends to hunt you down before too long. If she does, it’s better that you’re as far away from here as possible.’

  I nodded, feeling helpless in a way that I hadn’t for many years.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘You should go,’ said Eudo, jerking his head towards the stable door. ‘Before I beat you to death myself. I have half a mind to.’

  I led a reluctant Fyrheard out into the yard. From further up the hill I heard men shouting, though what was being said was impossible to make out. Dogs were barking, and it sounded as though they were getting closer. Orange lantern-light played across the stonework of the inner gatehouse, where several figures, all in shadow, suddenly appeared, a hundred paces away still but rushing in our direction, some of them with swords drawn. No doubt they’d seen the light of Wace’s torch.

  Not daring to delay any longer, I vaulted up into the saddle. ‘We’ll meet again soon,’ Wace said. ‘Of that you need have no doubt. For now, though-’

  ‘I know.’

  I reached down to clasp first his and then Eudo’s hand, before spurring Fyrheard into a gallop, across the bailey and towards the outer gatehouse. His hooves pummelled the earth as I galloped beneath its vaulted arch, deaf to the questions of the men on sentry duty that night. I raced on, on, on, down the winding track towards the river’s tumbling black waters and the old stone bridge. The rain spat down, stinging my cheeks. My hair was plastered against my skull, my tunic and trews were soaked, and there was a hollowness inside me of a kind I’d never before known.

  How could this have happened? I kept asking myself. How?

  Only once I was on the other side of the river did I pause to look back towards Heia, at the dark shadow on the hill that was the castle, expecting to find a horde of horsemen riding hard in pursuit. Perhaps I’d lost them in the darkness, for I saw no one, and if there were any hoofbeats to be heard, they were lost amidst the patter of raindrops on the fields and the trees around me.

  I tore my eyes away, dug my heels in, and from then on I did not look back as I rode away from Heia. Away from Robert. Away from the Malets.

  And a part of me wondered if it would be the last time I ever saw them.

  Seventeen

  Serlo, Pons and Eithne were waiting at the crossroads for me. No doubt they had heard all about what had happened from Godric, but although I felt my hearth-knights’ cold stares upon me, they did not say anything, and that was probably for the best. The Englishman was there too, having decided that he was coming with me after all, and I was too tired to argue any further. We had no time to spare. Every hour that passed was another few miles that we put between us and Heia, and another few miles closer to safety.

  We didn’t stop until morning, and only then because we needed to give the horses a chance to rest and to eat. There were no stars that night and so in the darkness we kept to drove roads and ancient trackways, which tended to be better kept and where the footing was more assured. We rode on through the rain and the wind, until, a couple of hours after sunrise, with heavy limbs and bleary eyes, we arrived in a miserable river town by the name of Gipeswic, which I remembered had been raided by the Danes when they came last year. Th
ere was nothing much left of it now, save for the wharves and the slipways, a few warehouses and cottages that had escaped the fire, and a larger, two-storeyed hall that might have belonged to the port-reeve, but among those ramshackle buildings we managed to find an alehouse close by the river where we could stable the animals, rest our saddlesore arses, sup at the thin broth that the tavern-keeper brought us, and work out what to do next.

  We sat in silence around a table close by the common room’s hearth. At this hour the fire wasn’t lit, but the alehouse’s walls were thin, the cob crumbling away from the wattle-work, and that was the only place where the draught didn’t seem to reach.

  ‘I never thanked you, lord,’ Godric said, in between mouthfuls.

  ‘Thanked me for what?’ I asked.

  ‘For vouching for me,’ Godric said. ‘Again.’

  Not that it had done me much good. Because of his reckless boastings and my own foolish sense of honour we now found ourselves here, cast out and wandering the bleak, flat lands of East Anglia.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘For whatever that might be worth.’

  As well he should be. I couldn’t help but wonder if perhaps I’d have done better to leave him to whatever fate Guibert might have dealt him. Straightaway I castigated myself for the thought. The boy had saved my life, and for that I owed him. What else could I have done?

  My head ached. I rubbed at the lump that had formed, though it did nothing to relieve the pain. Serlo lifted his bowl to his lips and drained what was left of its contents. My own was going cold in front of me. There was cabbage in it, and leek as well, and the smell of both was enough to make me wrinkle my nose, but it was the whiff of salted eel that made me want to spew. For weeks in the marshes we had lived on almost nothing but eel stew, and I was sick of it.