by Wayne Grant
His wife had named this little fort Danesford, to honour the thousand Danes who had fled across the river at the ford below to escape the Earl of Derby and Prince John’s Flemish mercenaries. The Danes were Roland’s people and had once ruled a third of England before the Normans came and drove them into the high country of Derbyshire. There, they had become a thorn in the side of the Normans. When Earl William de Ferrers was given command of Prince John’s mercenary army, he seized the chance to finally rid Derbyshire of the troublesome Danes.
But the Earl of Chester had other plans. He stood with King Richard and against Prince John in a growing civil war, but lacked the men to withstand John’s mercenary army. He had sent Roland Inness, his young commander, to seek an alliance with his fellow Danes and a deal had been struck—the Danes of Derbyshire would fight for Earl Ranulf in exchange for good farmland along the Weaver. And they had fought.
They’d defended Chester during a long siege and marched with Ranulf to the aid of William Marshall at Towcester. On that bloody field, their longbows had felled hundreds of Irish and Flemish mercenaries and turned the tide of battle. That victory had ended Prince John’s efforts to usurp the crown from Richard and, with the King’s return to England, there had been peace at last.
The Earl had kept his promise to the Danes. Each man who had fought for him was given a hide of good farmland. In the spring, they had put aside their longbows and happily hitched ploughs to oxen to break ground in their new steadings. By autumn, the harvest had come in bountiful and there was an air of contentment in the valley of the Weaver.
Roland raised his eyes to the timber watchtower by the gate and noted with approval that the guard was awake and alert. Peace might be upon the land, but it was a fool who thought it would last. The man in the tower was Gurt, one of his fellow Danes who had entered Roland’s service as one of ten men-at-arms. A few of the younger Danes, finding soldiering to their taste, had taken service directly with the Earl of Chester, but the rest had happily settled on the land promised them and had gone back to farming. All looked to Roland Inness for leadership in their new home.
Roland took a deep breath of the cold air and went back inside, his head feeling clearer. He saw Millie, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders, coming down the stairs. He smiled at his young wife and quickly grabbed an armful of firewood to stoke the hearth back into life.
“Good morning,” she said brightly. “Sleep well?”
“Very well, indeed, my lady,” he replied, as he used a small bellows to help the logs catch.
“Liar!” she said.
Roland sighed and looked over his shoulder, as she drew up a bench behind him.
“You heard.”
“Aye, I did. Was it the horsemen again?”
He laughed.
“It was,” he said, “and I almost made it to the woods this time.”
“You’re getting faster then, husband,” she said and laid a warm hand on his arm. “I think the day you outrun the horses, the dreams will be done.”
She smiled as she spoke, but Roland could see the concern in her eyes.
“I expect you’re right, but till then—they’re only dreams.” He gave the coals a few pokes with an iron and turned toward her as the fire began to crackle. She rose and he pulled her in close. She gave a little squeal as he buried his face in the crook of her neck. She smelled of wood smoke and love.
Millicent reached up and ran a hand along his cheek, brushing the raised scar left by an arrow that had ploughed a furrow there the night they had taken Chester back from William de Ferrers. When she reached his jawline, she stopped and drew back.
“You’re growing woolly in the cold, Roland!” she said with mock sternness. Roland raised his own hand to his chin and felt the stubble there.. Millie had never liked him bearded. He would have to take a blade to the growth before the day was done. He made as though to rub his bristles on her cheek and she pulled away laughing, just as the door swung open. Through it came Sir Edgar Langton, a mountain of a man with a tangled black beard that preceded him like a storm cloud. He saw the two embracing and hesitated.
“Beggin’ yer pardon, Roland…my lady,” he managed. “But there’s a rider crossing the ford and headin’ this way.”
Millie smiled at the big man and beckoned him forward. “Come warm yourself, Sir Edgar. Roland just stirred the coals.”
Looking at the two with their arms around each other, Sir Edgar thought to ask what sort of coals, exactly, his young master was stirring, but he held his tongue and strode over to the hearth. It was one thing to poke fun at Sir Roland, but Lady Millicent was quite another matter. The big knight was just a little overawed by her.
“Obliged, my lady,” he said and stretched out his huge paw-like hands toward the growing blaze.
Roland crossed the room and took his heavy wool cape from a peg on the wall. He pulled it over his shoulders and headed for the door.. Sir Edgar paused one more second to soak up a bit more heat then followed him, limping just a bit on his one bad leg.
Roland and Millicent had met the big man years ago in a tavern in Towcester. They’d been travelling to London to seek out the Queen when they’d met Sir Edgar, a bitter veteran of the King’s great Crusade.
Sir Edgar had taken a wound on the walls of Acre—in the mad charge up the rubble strewn breach with the first wave of the English assault. Few men survived that charge and those who did knew they owed their lives to a young squire who had rallied them just below the top of the breach. A horde of Saracens had counterattacked the exhausted English and the Crusader line began to break and stumble back down the slope. Had the rout continued, slaughter would have surely followed, but the squire had refused to run.
Roland Inness had shouted at them to form a shield wall and they had scrambled into a tight-packed line as the enemy wave crashed into them. As men hacked and thrust desperately at each other, their shield wall bent but did not break. Roland and Declan O’Duinne had been knighted by the King for their actions that day.
Over a year later, Sir Edgar had recognized the two young knights cross the tavern floor. He was drunk and penniless that night, but he did know the whereabouts of the Queen. For the price of a new horse, he had pledged his service to Roland and had not wavered since. He had fought beside his young master in the wilderness of Wales and in the high country of Derbyshire. He had helped to break the last desperate charge of Prince John’s mercenary cavalry at Towcester.
When peace had finally come, he had been made Master of the Sword for Danesford and had proven more than up to the task, training Danes and local boys to become men-at-arms. As they left the hall together, Sir Edgar jabbed Roland in the ribs.
“I’d a waited a few minutes if I’d known ye were romancin’ the missus,” he said and laughed at his own joke. Sir Edgar might be big and have a forbidding countenance, but there was something playful beneath that frightening appearance. Roland grinned.
“I’ll tell Lady Millicent that you apologize.”
Sir Edgar scowled. Fun was fun, but there was a limit.
“No need to bring her in ta’ it!” he grumped as they trudged down to meet the approaching rider.
A few white flakes drifted slowly onto the dirt courtyard as Jamie Finch rode through the gate. Finch looked younger than his nineteen years, but appearances deceived. He had been raised in the back alleys of London where every day was another chance for a young boy to take a wrong turn. He had survived to his fourteenth year when he managed to convince a sceptical sergeant that he had soldiering experience. He’d sailed with King Richard’s army to the Kingdom of Palestine where he’d fought bravely, until grievously wounded by a Saracen spear.
He’d been sent home and, unlike many injured veterans of that brutal war, had found a welcome waiting for him in his old haunts. He’d taken to picking pockets and occasional armed robbery—all skills he had learned as a boy, but found these old pursuits had paled after his time in the east. Neither money, nor drink, nor women, had
filled an odd void inside.
Finch knew of the Invalid Company. They were men who, like him, had come home damaged from the Crusade. Some were missing limbs. Some had hideous scars. For some, the scars of war were not visible to the eye. Few had been able to take up their old lives upon their return to England. The King had ordered that they be provided for, and many had gathered in London where they were billeted in a rank barracks outside the Ludgate and given a small stipend. With nothing to occupy them, they had fallen into indolence, drunkenness and violence. Londoners, Finch included, had looked on these men with a mixture of pity and disgust.
It had only been out of desperate necessity that Earl William Marshall, Justiciar of the Realm, had mustered the Invalids at Oxford to go in search of the Earl of Chester who had fled a trumped-up charge of treason and was a fugitive in Wales. They’d been put under the command of the incompetent Sir Harold FitzGibbons who fled at the first sign of danger. But Roland Inness had rallied the Invalid Company and they had decimated a troop of Flemish mercenaries lying in ambush.
When news of this reached London, these broken men, so recently objects of disdain, became instant legends. Drunken men sang rousing songs of the band of cripples who had beaten the hated mercenaries. For Finch, the Invalid Company seemed to offer him a way to fill the void. He had ridden the breadth of England to find them in Chester and soon thereafter had returned to London where he had helped Lady Millicent ferret out a French spy. Jamie Finch looked like a boy, but all who knew him, knew he was a steady man and deadly in a fight.
Finch swung out of the saddle and Roland clapped him on the shoulder.
“Good to see you, Jamie! What news from Chester.”
Finch smiled at Roland and nodded a greeting toward Sir Edgar.
“Doubt you’ll like it, sir. The Earl requires your presence. He says you are to come with all necessary gear to take the field.”
Roland furrowed his brow.
“That’s it?”
“Aye, sir. He said he would have need of your services for some length of time and you were to pack accordingly.”
Sir Edgar shook his head.
“Just like an Earl to be uselessly vague.”
“When am I to report, Jamie?”
“He says you’re to come with ‘due haste’, sir.”
Roland sighed.
“Very well. Come along. Lady Millicent will be happy to see you. Are you hungry?”
“Aye, sir. Rode most of the night, till the track got too rough for the horse in the dark—and took no time for breakfast when it started to show light. The Earl said I was to make haste.”
Roland draped an arm over the tired young man’s shoulders.
“We’ll leave in an hour, but have some breakfast first. Edgar, have the stable hand saddle The Grey.”
Sir Edgar nodded and trudged off toward the stables.
The grey gelding had been a wedding gift from Lady Millicent and Roland had come to appreciate the choice over the past year. The animal was no warhorse and he was glad of it. The gelding was smaller than the massive destriers and could outrun any of those big brutes, but he was big for a palfrey. What’s more, the horse had proven to be even-tempered, sure-footed and tireless.
Roland had never sat a horse until he was fourteen and had learned to ride as a squire from an expert—his own wife-to-be. He had not been an apt student, but, of necessity, had grown competent enough in the saddle, learning to fight from horseback, as any knight was expected to do. But at heart, Roland would always be a bowman. And for that, the big steady gelding was perfect. Over time he’d come to love the good-tempered horse, but had not come up with a suitable name for the animal. After a while, the gelding became known simply as “The Grey” to everyone at Danesford. He thought the name suited.
***
Millicent was happy to see her old friend Jamie Finch, but not happy with the news that he brought. Roland could see the tightness at the corners of her mouth that gave her away. She had Cook bring an extra plate to feed the young messenger and, for a few minutes, the two cheerfully recalled their adventures together in London trying to flush out a French spy in William Marshall’s household. It had turned out that the spy was real enough, but had been only a cat’s paw for a more dangerous agent close to Archbishop Walter of Coutances.
“Master Finch had to drag me though a bawdy house to finally run the treacherous clerk to ground,” she said and laughed. Roland grinned at her. He had heard the story before, but he was pleased for anything that would lighten the mood of his leave-taking.
Breakfast and packing took little more than an hour. Finch left to see to a new mount and Roland lingered at the door while Millie stuffed a final pair of woollen stockings into a bag. Leaning against the wall were two unstrung warbows he’d fashioned with his own hands and a quiver with fifty good arrows—half with bodkin heads that could rip through mail or plate armour at close range.
He had already belted a short sword around his waist and, in his boot, was a long dagger with a small ruby in the hilt—a long ago reminder of an assassin sent by Earl William de Ferrers to kill him. Ivo Brun’s bones were somewhere at the bottom of the Thames now, but the Earl still lived—a fact that nettled the young knight whenever his mind touched on it.
On the floor at his feet was his mail jerkin, rolled and secured with a leather strap. He had not worn the mail in a year and was surprised to find it glistening.
“Lorea and I took it down to the bar on the river a week ago and scoured it from one end to the other,” Millicent said. “It was fearfully rusted.” Her words had been spoken lightly, but with an unmistakable hint of sadness. “Perhaps I should have taken it as an omen.”
Roland looked back at his wife and for the thousandth time thought what a lucky man he was. He walked back to her and gently grasped her hands, which had been aimlessly sorting through his kit. She looked up at him, her eyes shining. He pulled her close
“I won’t cry,” she murmured into his shoulder.
“I know you won’t. You are a soldier’s wife.”
Roland stepped back and reached inside his tunic. He pulled out a silver talisman with a spreading English yew carved on its surface. It had been a gift from a twelve-year-old Millicent de Laval to remind him of home—the day before he followed her father off to the Crusade.
“This has always brought me luck, Millie. It won’t fail me now.”
***
Roland sat astride The Grey and looked down at his wife.
“Millie, I’ll send word to you when I know where I’m bound. Tell Oren and Lorea I’m sorry that there was no time for farewells.”
His brother Oren’s farmstead was an hour’s ride to the west along the Weaver. Like every man among the Danes who had wielded a bow in the defence of Chester, Oren had been given a hide of good farm land in the river valley. Roland’s sister, Lorea, lived here at Danesford and had attached herself tightly to Millicent since she had arrived, but just the day before they had left her with Oren for a long-planned visit.
Jamie Finch was already edging his horse toward the gate. Roland leaned down and grasped Millicent’s hand.
“Trust to Edgar and to Oren while I’m gone and you’ll be all right.”
Millicent Inness gave him a little smile.
“And what of you?”
“I’ll be back. I promise.”
These were the words soldiers always spoke to their wives when they were leaving for a fight—and where else would a soldier be going?
Not to pick daisies, she thought.
Millicent let her hand fall away and watched her husband and Jamie Finch ride out. She ran across the small dirt courtyard and climbed the ladder to the wall walk on the south side of the palisade. A cold north wind blew her long brown hair across her face, and she snatched it back in time to watch Roland and The Grey disappear into the valley of the Weaver. Only then did she cry.
Chester
The winter sun had passed to the west of the Northgate to
wer when the two riders neared Chester. Roland looked around him as they approached the walls of the city from the north. Much had happened in this innocent looking patch of cleared ground. It was here that he and his Danes had rained fire down upon the siege engines of the mercenary force that besieged the city for months. Here it was that he had unhorsed Earl William de Ferrers with a bowshot that men still spoke of in awe. The distance had been over two hundred yards and his arrow had struck the Earl’s helmet as he fled the field. The blow rendered the nobleman senseless, though the wound was not mortal.
As he rode past the spot where de Ferrers had been struck and unhorsed, Roland thought of the other chance he had had to kill the man who had murdered his father. De Ferrers had fled the field after the battle at Towcester, but he had ridden the man down. All that saved the Earl that day was ancient custom. The coward had thrown himself on the mercy of the King and Earl William Marshall had ordered that he be spared and face the King’s judgement.
To everyone’s shock, Richard had simply banished him from England. De Ferrers was now somewhere in Brittany, living comfortably through his exile. In three more years the banishment would end and until then, Roland’s oath to kill him would likely have to wait.
The two guards who stood watch at the Northgate recognized Jamie Finch and waved the riders through. The men were unfamiliar to Roland, but it had been over a year since he had led the men of Chester in defence of their city. New members of the garrison were to be expected. The two riders clattered through the arch of the gate and into the city.
It had been six months since Roland had seen the Earl and on their several visits to Shipbrook since then, he and Millie had skirted Chester. It was not out of any desire to shirk his duty to his liege lord, but the Earl was always surrounded by men of substance who still found Roland’s hill country accent amusing and who constantly jockeyed for favour. He felt ill at ease in such company and understood why Sir Roger de Laval had always steered clear of Chester when he could. Roland knew that if the Earl had need of him, he would come when summoned—as he had this day.