by Paul Finch
Eric’s helmet flew off, broken, as he was flung headfirst from his steed.
He lay face down in the mire, stunned and yet somehow still alive.
The air was rent with screams and roars. Blood and ripped turf erupted everywhere. When Eric got to his feet, he fended off a couple of blows and turned – to find his horse tottering, a spear having transfixed its neck. With a shriek, it collapsed alongside him.
“Eriiic!” came Turold’s wild warning cry.
Eric swung back, just as a housecarl, built like an oak tree, demonic in his ring-mail and full-faced helmet, lunged with his Dane-axe. Eric parried the blow, but an immediate second one caught him across the face, slashing his cheek to the bone. The third time, Eric ducked and thrust with his sword, disembowelling the housecarl – purple entrails tumbled onto the already blood-soaked grass.
Gasping, Eric crab-crawled backwards to evade the melee, but the English shield-wall had broken, and the housecarls poured out of it. The Norman knights on foot met them head-on. Ruby fountains spurted; the sky overhead was dark with arrows.
Eric grabbed up a discarded shield, just in time to take a blow on it. In retaliation, he drove his sword through an exposed throat. A housecarl fell against him, gouting gore. Eric then received a stroke across his mail-clad back. He winced, spun and plunged his blade through a bearded face. An English fyrdsman toppled away. A second leapt onto Eric from behind. Eric flipped him over his shoulder, and transfixed him to the ground. But now there were Englishmen all around. Mattocks and cleavers rained down towards him – only for Turold to hurtle into them, a sword in one hand and a war-hammer in the other. By the time he’d hacked his way through to Eric, it looked as if buckets of blood had been thrown over him.
Wheezing for air, they stood back to back, battling all who came near.
“Rolf’s fallen!” Turold shouted.
“How bad?” Eric replied.
“I don’t know. I heard it was on the first charge. They’ve taken him to the rear.”
In the hall at Wulfbury, Eric and Dagobert continued to face each other. Sweat now ran from their faces.
“How many times did we charge the shield-wall that day, father?” Eric asked. You and me, I mean. How many times?
“How the hell do I know,” Dagobert replied. “Why would I even want to know?”
All across the crown of Senlac Ridge, the final struggle raged.
The twisting white husk of the hoar apple-tree was splashed red from root to branch. The screams and cries rose to inhuman levels as the exhausted armies tore in and out of one another. Those knights still in the saddle rode back and forth, laying around them. The English thegns who remained dealt backstroke after backstroke with their mighty axes, felling foes at every turn. Between them darted the fyrdsmen, armed only with knives and farm-implements, cutting throats and bashing in the crania of the enemy fallen. The dead lay in mangled heaps, steeped in blood, smeared head to foot with brains and ordure. There was no order, no pattern to the carnage. The English king – tall, fair-haired, once resplendent in his ring-coat and his billowing cloak of forest-green – lay amid the ragged pennons and the broken shafts of spears, an arrow buried in his left eye. And, one by one, his carls now fell around him, smitten down where they stood. Those last few sought to protect his body by throwing themselves across it, only to die under a storm of butchering blades …
Dagobert, with sword broken, now used a spiked mace to batter down a fyrdsman’s shield and smash the forearm below it. The fyrdsman stumbled away, shrieking. But Dagobert was too exhausted to chase.
Eric tottered up to him. “Rolf …” he began.
“I know,” Dagobert said. “I’m going to look for him.”
Eric now spied a housecarl coming at his father from behind. “Watch out!”
Dagobert ducked, and Eric swiped over the top with his longsword, chopping the housecarl’s throat. Another housecarl lunged from the other side. Dagobert met this one with his shield, which exploded under the impact, then replied with his mace, battering the housecarl to the ground, all the time bellowing for Gilbert.
Gilbert rode up, both he and his horse covered with wounds. He held aloft the household’s leopard banner, now bloodied and torn.
“Give me your horse!” Dagobert said.
Gilbert dismounted. Dagobert climbed into the saddle, and cantered away over a carpet of smashed armour and broken bodies. Eric had to pursue him on foot.
“Thirty times,” Eric said. “That’s how many. Thirty times we charged between nine o’clock in the morning and five o’clock in the evening. Thirty times before the shield-wall finally fell.”
“What does it matter?” Dagobert retorted. “It’s over now.”
“For some it was over much earlier.”
On the lower slope of Senlac Hill lay piles of dying Normans. Priests moved among them, hearing their confessions. Squires, monks and household surgeons applied any crude remedies they could. There were relentless groans as men and boys begged for death.
Dagobert, dismounted, searched helplessly among them.
“Rolf!” Eric called, also searching. “Rolf!”
At last he spied his brother, who was sitting with back braced against a heap of corpses. He was grey-faced and glassy eyed. Part of his upper hauberk had been torn, and he clasped a blood-soaked compress to the exposed flesh beneath.
Eric crouched. “Let me look.”
“I’m alright,” Rolf said, dazed. “I just need to rest a while.”
Delicately, Eric tried to remove the dressing.
“I’m alright,” Rolf insisted, sounding angered. He pushed Eric’s hand away, but as he did the dressing fell to reveal a wound that was actually very slight. It was barely even a flesh wound.
Eric stood up. Dagobert was now behind him. Rolf returned their gazes boldly, and began to hoot with laughter.
“See,” he jabbered in a singsong voice. “I told you I was alright.”
Eric gulped an entire goblet of wine.
“You think I should have disowned Rolf and made you my heir?” Dagobert said.
“I’ve never asked for that.”
“I knew how good a warrior you were, Eric. You didn’t need my help.”
Eric rounded on him. “No, but mother did. And she didn’t get it. Even when she was dying. Because once the battle was over, you knew that milksop upstairs wouldn’t have the strength to seize our share of this land. So you had to stay. And mother died alone, and in misery ...”
“That’s my fault too, is it?”
“No. But neither is it mine. You sired a weakling as your first-born. No-one can blame you for that. But don’t blame me just because I’m the only other one who knows.”
Dagobert pointed a quivering finger at him. “You sided against our people, Eric. Nothing you can say will wipe that away.”
“I don’t want it wiped away. I want it proclaimed.”
“The joy of infamy, eh?”
“When they bury my body, they won’t be burying my name. I’m no landless knight. I’m Wakedog, the resister of oppression.”
“Get out of here!”
“Nothing will ever win me over to you, will it? Nothing I do, nothing I say …”
“I can’t allow it to,” Dagobert said coldly.
Eric nodded slowly. “Then maybe I wasted my blade on Hugh de Valognes. Maybe I should have saved it for Rolf? Maybe I still will …”
Dagobert gazed at his son hard. But before either could speak again, there was a croaking cry from the far end of the hall, and a figure flopped into view from the eastern door. It was Rolf – dishevelled and tottering with drink. On entry into the hall, he’d fallen to his knees, but now he was up again and approaching. He hobbled first towards Eric, his eyes swollen with tears.
“Ki’ me now!” he said inarticulately. “Don’t waste your breath making threats. Just do it, Eric! I’m here. Cut me down.”
Eric glanced awkwardly at his father, who regarded the newcomer with sho
ck and horror. Clearly Rolf had overheard every word.
“It’s easy for you, isn’t it?” Rolf said, turning from one to the other. “Do you think I’m in love with what I am? Do you think I don’t regret that day, and a thousand better days when I also failed to screw my courage down?”
And now fresh tears began to flow.
Dagobert’s face tinged with red. “For Christ’s sake, Rolf …”
“And you!” Rolf retorted, rounding on his father. “You’re hardly the best example of a Christian nobleman …”
In a corridor adjacent to the hall, Count Reynald advanced through the shadows. He wore only his leather breeches, his boots and a cloak. He’d been drawn from his bed in the kitchen by a distant commotion, and now that he was within actual earshot he listened with interest to an apparent dispute between Dagobert and his eldest son.
“Have you any idea what it’s like not being able to live up to expectations?” came the muffled voice of Rolf.
Reynald smiled. He created this sort of angst wherever he went. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t consider that he performed his office properly.
“Always acting the part,” Rolf added. “Maybe tricking those around you but never tricking yourself?”
Reynald made to creep away again, when he half-tripped over a prone body. He knelt to examine it, and found that it was one of his own men-at-arms, unconscious from a gash in the side of his head. His scabbard was empty.
“Of course you can,” Rolf’s voice echoed from the hall. “Because you hate me for it, don’t you! You despise me!”
“Don’t be a fool,” Dagobert’s voice rejoined.
Reynald’s face twisted with fury. But before he did anything else, he had to check on the prisoner. He scrambled for the stair leading down to the dungeon.
In the hall, Rolf was still in mid-tirade. “Oh yes ... ‘fool’, ‘dolt’. Common phrases where I’m concerned. Even my wretched wife uses them.” His breath was coming in choked gasps, and he swayed where he stood. But he still had the energy to turn on Eric again. “And now you! Emerging from a hateful past like some revenant. And having the nerve to put mother’s death on my shoulders!”
“Not just yours …” Eric tried to argue, but Rolf silenced him.
“Shut up, Eric! You’ve said enough tonight already. Whatever you think, you’re no better than me. Oh yes, you were always good with a sword. But they’ll sing no chanson for you. Killing is in your blood, whether you admit it or not. You may hate what we’ve done in this country, but you did as much of it as anyone until you were thrown out. And then what … you turn your blade against your own comrades. Hugh the Red might’ve deserved to die, but who the hell were you to pass that judgement? Oh yes … Wakedog. Oh, they’ll turn the pages of history to celebrate your deeds.”
Suddenly, there came the blast of a hunting horn from below, and a furious shouting. Count Reynald’s voice was in the middle of it.
“Yes, he’s gone!” he was bellowing. “No, do it now! Now, you bloody idiots!”
“Our destiny is at hand,” Eric told his father and brother.
“Search the castle!” Reynald bawled. “The one that finds him doesn’t hang!”
Rolf stared hard at Eric. “Well … aren’t you going to run?”
Eric shrugged. “Where to?”
“For God’s sake …”
“No, he’s right,” Dagobert said. “He’ll never get out of the castle now. Eric, over here!”
The count crossed the hall to the south wall, where a large tapestry depicted a hunt in a wooded glade. Drawing it aside, he revealed an embrasure for an arrow-loop. It was just large enough to enclose a man.
Eric glanced from one to the other. Rolf’s tears were drying, but he watched his younger brother dumbly. Dagobert, for his part, looked old and tired. From outside the hall there were more shouts; feet hammered on flagstones.
“Eric!” Dagobert hissed. “In here now!”
Eric still hesitated, glancing towards the main door.
“Eric, they’ll kill you!” Rolf said.
“They’ll pay a price trying.”
“You young wretch!” Dagobert snarled. “You think I want more blood on our family name?”
Eric scrubbed a hand through his hair, slotted the sword under his rope-belt and ducked behind the tapestry. But first he glanced to the hall’s far end, where the Korred stood ramrod straight in its cage, paws still clutching the bars. Its bloodshot eyes were fixed on them with eerie fascination, as if had been listening to their discourse and understood everything.
“See how it watches us,” Eric said. “It’s like it doesn’t know who its enemies are any more.”
“It knows who its enemies are, be assured,” Dagobert replied. “Now do as I say.”
Eric disappeared, and the embroidered cloth rustled into place just as the main door crashed open, and Reynald stalked into view. He still wore only a cloak and leather breeches, but he was now buckling his sword-belt to his waist.
“Do you take me for an imbecile, Count Dagobert?”
Dagobert shrugged. “If the cap fits.”
“You think you’ll get away with this?”
Dagobert looked at Rolf. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
Rolf made a vague gesture.
“Closing ranks will not save you!” Reynald shouted. For the first time since he’d arrived here, his face was red with anger. Froth flecked his lips.
“We know your prisoner’s escaped,” Dagobert said matter-of-factly.
“Because you released him!”
“That isn’t true. But if you want him, you’ll have to find him. We won’t help you.”
The door banged open again as Drogo dashed in, breathless. “My lord! Bishop Anselm and his retinue have just ridden out.”
Reynald looked baffled. “At this hour?”
Drogo nodded. “The guards on the gate say they had a hooded man with them.”
Reynald spun back to face his hosts. “You’ll pay for this, Dagobert!”
“I believe I will,” Dagobert said.
“Drogo … send the men. Tell them to arrest that scoundrel and bring him back here. If the bishop objects, they can arrest him too.”
“And enrage the Holy See?” Drogo asked.
“If the Holy See says a single word, the king will withdraw his troops from Sicily and the infidels can run riot.” Drogo headed for the door, but Reynald called after him again. “And Drogo! Assemble Count Dagobert’s family. All of them.”
“I advise you to be careful, Reynald,” Dagobert rumbled.
“And I advise you not to advise me anything,” Reynald said, going and standing as close as he dared to the Korred’s cage. “Whatever happens to your people tonight, it’s a fate you chose for yourselves.”
14
The final blow for our people came in the wake of the Roman folk’s departure. In four centuries of rule, they had turned Albion into a peaceful, pastoral land. They had also turned the Britons into farmers and servants. But now barbarous tribes of every sort fell upon them. First, in the north, a new race of Scythians, wild renegades who took their name from an ancient queen of theirs, Scotta, came ashore, drove out the Picts and set up the kingdom of Dalradia. In the south, the yellow-haired people invaded. These were the Saxons and the Angles. They warred against the remaining Britons, making them vassals or driving them west into the rugged mountain lands that had become our home. We resisted these new incursions but it was futile. While the Britons fought the yellow-hairs under their leaders, Arthur and Cai, they also sent warriors against us, lone adventurers – heroes, in their eyes – to hunt us like beasts. The list of our dead became a roll-call of honour: Gogmagog, Cormoron, Bolster. Such losses we could not sustain. Soon only the far western fringes of Albion – ‘Corn Waelas’ as the yellow-haired invaders knew it, and ‘Cymru’ in the language of the Britons – remained to us. But already the Britons were building new strongholds in these places, and even the Saxon folk who held
the lowlands, and divided them into kingdoms of their own, would come to revile us as monsters and devils, and offer bounties on our heads.
For Ella, to be roused in the middle of the night was nothing new. Several times in her life she had experienced such a thing. First, on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, had come the terror of the Norse invasion under the ‘Hardraada’, and almost immediately after that came news that the Normans had landed. From then on there had been many sleepless nights, as tidings arrived on an hourly basis detailing the enemy’s advance. After the battle near Hastings, the news of her father and brothers’ deaths was also delivered in the middle of the night. The horror of that moment eclipsed all others, but now, with screams and whimpers, and hurrying feet in the castle passages, the terrible memory came back more vividly than ever before.
Ella was roused by Agnes, though all the maid knew was that the servants had been ordered to leave the keep and find what refuge they could in the outbuildings, and that every other member of the household was to assemble in the great hall. Of course, Ella suspected the reason for this, and it excited her as much as frightened her, but it was important now to play along and feign innocence. She placed a shawl over her nightgown and climbed into her woollen slippers – as she did, the door to her chamber crashed open. Reynald’s man, Drogo – the squat, shaven-headed brute with the hideous scars – stood there.
“Good morrow, Lady Ella,” he said, entering uninvited.
“How dare you come in here unbidden,” she replied haughtily.
“Why, my little English flower. How fresh you look at this early hour.” He leered at her state of undress, and licked his toad-like lips. “I fancy I’ll pick you.”