Conquest 03 - Knights of the Hawk

by James Aitcheson

  Our chance was gone. We had let Hereward escape, and a single paltry kill was all we had to show for our efforts.

  One kill, and one fallen horse. Whilst I had been watching the enemy vanish across the water, Pons, with Serlo’s help, had managed to free his trapped leg from beneath his mount, which lay quiet and almost still now as its bright lifeblood slipped away on to the grass. Apart from bruises and some scratches to his face, Pons himself was unharmed, but Hereward’s arrow had driven deep into the animal’s belly, puncturing its lung, I didn’t wonder, and so taking it beyond the ability of any of us to do anything. As Pons’s lord it would fall to me to find him a replacement, but the cost was not what was foremost in my mind then. A knight’s destrier was one of his closest and most trusted friends, and every bit as valiant a warrior. The beasts lived and fought and travelled with us, and while good horseflesh was valuable and prized above even swords and mail, their companionship and loyalty could not be measured in terms of weight of silver or gold. Pons had owned him for as long as he’d been sworn to me, which was to say a little over two years, and there was a tear in his eye as he crouched by the animal’s side. He stayed with it, rubbing its muzzle until it moved no longer and we knew it had passed.

  ‘I don’t blame you, lord,’ Pons said some time later while we were returning to Hamo and the carts. ‘We did what we had to.’

  But the truth was that I should have known better. I had been foolish. Thinking only of the rewards and not of the dangers, I had rushed into battle, and though some might say that I had paid for that folly, the truth was it could have been far worse. We were lucky that the price hadn’t been higher, that more Norman blood hadn’t been spilt and more lives wasted.

  At that thought a shiver ran through me, for I knew full well that some of that blood could easily have been my own.

  We arrived at Brandune later that evening, just as darkness was falling and the stars were beginning to emerge. As expected, the clerks were waiting for us when we reached the king’s hall. No sooner had I announced our names and our business to the sentries on duty at the gate and we had led the oxen and carts into the courtyard than they began pressing me with their questions. Where had these goods come from, and how had they been paid for? How many barrels of such a thing had we brought; what weight of this and what length of that? Answers to all these questions and others besides were recorded by a squinting monk whom I recognised, Atselin by name. I had crossed paths with him before and understood him to be chief amongst the clerks. He worked by light of a lantern at a writing-desk set up in one corner of the yard, close to the grain-sheds and the storehouses.

  ‘You’re late,’ Atselin said when I approached. He didn’t deign to look at me but continued to scrawl even as he spoke, his head down so that his tonsured pate reflected the orange lantern-glow. From the set of his wiry eyebrows I could tell there was a scowl upon his face.

  ‘We saw another hall-burning,’ I replied. ‘I took it upon myself to go and see what had happened.’

  He gave a snort of derision. ‘The rebels are always raiding. Every day we hear of yet more manors that have been razed to the ground. You wasted your time and ours for that?’

  ‘This one was Hereward’s doing.’

  My words had the desired effect. His hand stopped mid-scribble; the furrows upon his brow deepened. He looked up sharply.

  ‘Hereward?’ he echoed.

  Finally I had his attention, although I resisted the urge to smile at that small victory. ‘We saw him. He’d come by boat, at the head of a war-band numbering around fifteen men.’

  ‘How do you know it was him?’

  ‘It was him,’ I said firmly, meeting Atselin’s hard eyes. I had nothing to prove to this man.

  He seemed to consider my answer for a few moments. Though much had been spoken of him of late, no Frenchman had so much as laid eyes upon Hereward in several weeks. Until now.

  ‘I suppose, then,’ said Atselin, raising an eyebrow, ‘that you were able to put an end to their pillaging?’

  I sensed a barb hidden in his words, but I was determined not to let him provoke me. ‘We arrived too late for that. But we pursued them to the edge of the fens where they had their boats, and there we fought them.’

  ‘And killed a great many, I hope.’

  To that I made no reply. Atselin gazed expectantly at me for a few moments longer, but when it became clear that I had no answer to offer him he turned his attention back to his quill and the sheet of parchment before him, at the same time dismissing me with an absent flick of his hand. But I was not about to be summoned and sent away so readily, like some trained dog performing tricks upon command.

  ‘You don’t believe me,’ I said.

  He dipped the end of the goose feather into a pot of ink, and then resumed scratching his spindly letters upon the vellum, as if he hadn’t heard.

  I brought my fist down upon the top of the monk’s desk. It shuddered under the impact. ‘It was Hereward. We saw him.’

  Atselin did not so much as blink. ‘Did you cross swords with him?’ he asked. ‘Did you fight him in single combat? Perhaps you even managed to wound him, as they say you wounded Eadgar Ætheling.’

  At that I recoiled slightly. I hadn’t thought a mere monk would be so well informed about who I was or about my reputation, such as it was in those days. Eadgar was the man I had sworn to kill, the leader of the Northumbrians who had twice risen against us and twice been routed. The man responsible for the murder of my former lord and of many of my closest comrades on that bitter winter’s night. In return I’d laid a scar upon his cheek that he still bore to this day, though it was scant vengeance.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked, frowning.

  Atselin shrugged. From my dealings with him I knew he was a man of little humour, who rarely showed even the hint of a smile, but even so I sensed he was enjoying this sparring, and enjoying my discomfort too.

  ‘If you had captured Hereward and brought him here in chains, then as I see it you would have accomplished something of value. But since I don’t see him here, I assume he managed to escape. Just as the ætheling managed to escape at Eoferwic, and again at Beferlic last autumn.’

  Few people were aware that I had been in the battle at Beferlic. Again his knowledge surprised me, although when I came to reflect upon it, perhaps it shouldn’t have. Working within the royal household, he would have many opportunities to overhear scraps of knowledge and glean important details to keep for later use, just as all the records he made at this writing-desk were stored away in the chancery.

  ‘It isn’t my fault that Eadgar still lives,’ I said. ‘Neither of those battles would have been won were it not for me.’

  ‘Is that so?’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Perhaps a better warrior would have seen that he finished his task.’

  Anger swelled inside me and I had to clench my teeth to hold my tongue.

  ‘Besides,’ Atselin went on, ‘what proof do I have that you did these things that you claim, and which others say of you? Why should I believe that it was you who fought Eadgar upon the bridge at Eoferwic, that you were the one who turned the tide of battle against the enemy? For that matter, how can I believe that you faced Hereward this day?’

  ‘You can believe it because it is the truth,’ I said, unable to hold my temper any longer. ‘I was there.’

  ‘So says every man with such a yarn to spin.’

  I leant over his desk and lowered my voice. ‘Don’t try my patience, monk. I could run my sword through your belly and gut you in an instant if I so wished.’

  ‘You would kill a man of God and choose eternal damnation?’

  ‘He would thank me for ridding the world of such a worthless rodent.’

  Atselin sighed, and it was a deep, weary sigh, as though he had heard many such threats in his time and was no longer troubled by them. He pointed at me with the feathered end of his quill. ‘I have met men like you before, Tancred of Earnford. I know your kind. Hot-tempered and
wedded to your swords, you brag of your feats and wish others to praise you, to shower you in gold and write down songs of your brutish deeds so that they may pass into legend. It may surprise you to learn, then, that I have no interest in your boasts. I do not write songs. I am interested only in keeping the records for our lord king. So unless you have something truly important to tell me, trouble me no more with your wild tales.’

  My blood boiled in my veins, but I sensed that this was not a battle I was likely to win. Without a further word I stalked off, leaving him to his parchments and returning to Pons and Serlo, who were waiting while other officials from the king’s household, helped by a pair of stout knights, searched the carts. For each item on their list they counted out the number we had brought to make sure that it tallied with the number expected, that we had not been cheated in our purchases or that we ourselves had not taken the liberty of helping ourselves to any of the supplies. Goods were forever going missing in the camp, and while most men could be trusted, there were always some who wouldn’t hesitate to steal if they thought they could get away with it. And so we were forced to stand patiently and submit to their questions, in case they discovered something that required further explanation.

  Whenever my back was turned I felt Atselin’s eyes upon me. What right did he, a mere scribe and a keeper of rolls, have to question my sincerity? What right did he have to pour scorn upon my deeds, when without me the kingdom might have fallen to the enemy? After all, without a king to serve and chancery records to write, he was nothing. He owed me more than he could possibly realise.

  And yet the truth was that by that September, in the year one thousand and seventy-one, my standing was not as great as once it had been. After our victory in the great battle at Eoferwic I had been rewarded with a manor of my own, with enough wealth to attract men to my banner, and a reputation that had travelled before me. Now, however, I found myself all but destitute. My hard-earned silver was mostly spent, while my once-rich manor at Earnford had been burnt by the Welsh and half the folk who had lived there slain by their hands. We had done our best to rebuild it in the months since, but the winter had been hard and many more had perished through starvation or sickness, and the spring had brought unrelenting rains that led the river to overspill its banks and flood the pastures, and caused many of the newly built houses and barns to collapse. Now it was a place of sadness, where those who had survived toiled hard to produce enough food to keep themselves and their families fed, all the while surrounded by the memories of what had happened and of their fallen kinsfolk.

  My reputation, too, was dwindling. No longer did men respect me to the extent that they had even a year ago. Fame is fickle, and already the tales of my exploits had grown old; men had found other heroes worthy of their admiration. Nor was my current lord as highly regarded as once he had been. Like the man to whom I had sworn my first oath, he too was named Robert, although the two men were very different in character. Whereas the first had been like a father to me, this Robert was more like a brother, being similar in age to myself. He and his family had suffered greatly during the rebellions of the past couple of years. They had lost many good retainers, including several whom I had known, shared repast with and led in the charge. His father, Guillaume Malet, once a powerful man responsible for governing much of the north of the kingdom, had fallen from the king’s favour, been stripped of his position and made to forfeit many of his estates as a consequence of his failure to defend against the Northumbrian rebels and their Danish allies. The stain upon his character was a stain upon the entire Malet house. All of which meant that they had little now to offer by way of land or silver, even for the man who had risked his life to save theirs. I had rescued them from imprisonment at the hands of Eadgar and the Danes in Beferlic, and for that deed alone I deserved some form of recognition.

  So far, though, my only rewards had come in the form of promises, which appeared ever more empty with each day that went by. Meanwhile I remained shackled to their service by the oaths I had given them: bonds woven from words and yet stronger than words. Bonds of my own making, that I could not escape, only endure.

  Three

  THE ENCAMPMENT SPRAWLED around the manor at Brandune: a sea of tents and horse paddocks, fenced-off pens for sheep, swine and chickens, and training yards marked out with stakes. Countless campfires dotted what had been pastureland and hay-meadows, and around them men cooked whatever meagre provisions had been given them that day from the royal storehouses. The king had seized the main hall, a high-gabled, timber-built structure, for the use of himself and his own household, while the various lords who had been called upon to serve on this campaign had been left to squabble between themselves for the other houses in the village.

  At one time I imagined this would have been a prosperous place, untouched by the wars that had gripped the kingdom these past five years. But no longer. Where once had been pastures and paddocks, now there were only wide quagmires. Livestock had fouled the pens and barns, while outside the slaughtering sheds and on the banks of the Lyteluse carcasses of pigs and cattle had been abandoned, left to the flies and the carrion birds, which swarmed around them, feeding upon the flesh as if it were the most lavish of feasts. The recent rain had only made matters worse, causing latrine pits to overflow and making rivers of all that mud and filth. The passage of several thousand feet had done the rest, churning everything into a reeking sludge that clung to one’s shoes and caused wagons to become stuck, horses to lose their footing, and men to sicken and die from the poisonous vapours it gave off.

  Bordered on its western side by the marsh and on its eastern by an expanse of heathland thick with gorse, Brandune stood on a ridge of higher ground above the slow-flowing Lyteluse river, where rowing boats, punts and ferrycraft were moored. The low-gabled building that my lord had claimed for his own use lay on the very edge of the village, a good half a mile from the royal enclosure with its stables and gatehouse and surrounding stockade. Barely twenty paces in length and built of wattle and turf, it wasn’t much to look upon, although it was in better repair than some of the other houses. One of Robert’s household knights stood on guard outside the door, a spear in his hand to which was nailed a pennon in the Malet colours of black and gold. Around his shoulders was wrapped a thick winter cloak, though it was only late September. I didn’t know the man’s name but I recognised his face, and he recognised mine, and so he let me pass without challenge.

  Heavy drapes hung across the doorway to keep out the draughts. I pushed them aside to find Lord Robert holding council with some two dozen or so of his vassals, who stood or sat on various stools, barrels and chests in a circle around him. They were men much like myself, minor barons who had sworn their swords to the Malets, and in return for loyal service had been rewarded with land. Most of those faces were unfamiliar to me, for they had only recently arrived from Normandy or else had been called from other far-flung parts of England to be here, but I spotted my long-serving comrades Wace and Eudo seated on the other side of the hearth, where a peat fire was gently smoking, the only source of light in that grim, dung-reeking hall. They nodded greetings to me but said nothing, for Robert was speaking. His back was turned as he paced around the room, addressing his barons, so he didn’t see me enter.

  ‘The banks have been strengthened and the roadway widened, with platforms for our bowmen and catapults to stand upon,’ he was saying. ‘If the enemy do send another band to try to destroy it, they’ll find themselves cut down under a hail of steel.’

  One of the barons, a rotund, red-faced man in his middle years, gave a snort as he swallowed a gulp of ale from a wooden cup. ‘That’s what we were told before. And we all remember what happened when we tried to cross that first bridge, as I’m sure you must also recall, lord.’

  ‘I lost four men,’ put in another, before Robert could answer. A tall man, he had thick brows that in the dim light made shadows of his eyes. ‘The king has lost his wits if he thinks we’re going to risk our necks pu
rsuing the same strategy again.’

  I expected at least a murmur of protest, for no one ever besmirched the king’s name openly and in so light a manner, but there was none.

  ‘He is fixated on the idea of this bridge,’ Wace said. One of my oldest companions, he had a wise head upon his shoulders and was ever a source of shrewd advice, even if, as was often the case, he ended up being outspoken. ‘We would do better to attack by water from the north, where their defences are said to be weakest.’

  ‘The rebels have erected chains across the largest of the creeks surrounding the Isle,’ Robert replied. ‘And the smaller channels are too narrow and too shallow for anything but small punts and ferry-craft. It would take days to convey our entire army across that way, and in that time they would be able to throw up all manner of earthworks to obstruct us. Besides, think how many boats we’ll need for an army of four thousand men.’

  ‘Is that the king’s reasoning or your own?’ the ruddy-faced man asked, prompting laughter from a few of the other barons. Robert waited for it to subside before answering. More tolerant and mild-tempered than many men of noble birth I had known, it took a lot to stir him to anger.

  ‘It is the king’s reasoning, Guibert, but in this case I agree with him,’ Robert said.

  ‘You agree with the king?’ Guibert cried. He raised his cup aloft, sloshing ale over himself and the man sitting beside him. ‘This is indeed a rare occurrence!’

  Robert stiffened. ‘I think you’ve had enough to drink for one night,’ he said as calmly and as evenly as possible, but there was no mistaking the warning in his tone.

  ‘No,’ Guibert said. He got to his feet, not entirely steadily. Even as he recovered his balance he managed to spill yet more contents of his vessel over his comrades, but he seemed deaf to their protests as he jabbed a finger in Robert’s direction. ‘No longer will I blindly obey our bastard king’s every whim. I’ve had enough of these foul marshes, of bedding down night after night on ground that might at any moment slip away into the bogs. I’ve had enough of—’