Earlier that evening the priest, Dudo, had come to inform Robert that the elder Malet’s illness had grown suddenly worse. He could not sit up; his fever had returned and he had been coughing up blood again. And so Robert had decided to stay by his bedside rather than join us tonight.
‘How often has Malet’s health waned in recent weeks?’ I asked. ‘Each time we were told he was close to death, but each time he recovered. What makes Robert think it will be any different on this occasion?’
‘These could well be his father’s final hours,’ Wace put in. ‘Surely you don’t begrudge him this time with him?’
‘Of course I don’t,’ I said, although it frustrated me, for I couldn’t shake the suspicion that Robert was shirking his duties. Not all men were born to be warriors; I had long known that he lacked the thirst for adventure of one whose life was lived by the sword. I understood that and thought no less of him for it, but I also knew that a good lord would have taken charge of this undertaking himself, showing his vassals that he was deserving of their service. No one ever received respect without earning it first, and in my eyes this was an opportunity squandered.
Doubtless the others thought I was being unkind, and so I kept my thoughts to myself after that. An eternity passed before we spied the wooded crest of the isle of Litelport. At my instruction Baudri took us not back to the place where we had made the fires, facing Elyg, but around to the far shore, where I reckoned there was less chance of us being spotted. We had all come in a single boat this time, without Hamo and his company, and we ran it aground in a narrow inlet overhung by willows, where we would be easily hidden amongst the reeds and the drooping fronds.
‘Get up,’ I said to Godric. His hands were bound, but he managed to get to his feet without too much trouble. Until the moment that we finally let him loose, he was still our captive, and I was determined to make sure he was reminded of that fact, lest he have any misapprehensions about his importance.
‘We won’t be long,’ I told Wace, who had agreed to wait and keep watch along with Baudri, Serlo and Pons. ‘If you see anything in the meantime, give the signal.’
The rest of us climbed from the punt. My feet subsided into the soft, sucking mud, and it took me a moment to find my balance. Chill marsh-water soaked my trews up to my ankles and crept into my shoes, curling its icy tendrils around my toes. There came the startled cries of a pair of moorhens woken from their sleep, followed by two splashes as they entered the water, but those were the only sounds to be heard. I gave the Englishman a shove in the back to start him moving, and Eudo and I followed behind him, keeping our hands close to our sword-hilts. None of us had seen anything to suggest the enemy were here at Litelport, and it would be bad fortune indeed if we happened to stumble upon them, but all the same it was better to be ready, just in case.
We ventured some hundred paces or so inland, to a patch of open grassland, in the middle of which a solitary marker stone rose to the height of a man’s waist, and I reckoned that would serve as a good landmark.
‘This is as far as we take you,’ I said. ‘You’ll find your own way from here.’
He nodded, understanding. Not wanting to linger here any longer than we had to, I set straightaway to loosening his bonds. I’d tied them tighter that was probably necessary, and I imagined his wrists must be raw from the rope chafing against his skin. Still, he’d made no complaint before and he made none now. Long moments passed while I picked at the knot, but eventually it came loose.
‘Here,’ I said, unbuckling Godric’s sword-belt with the gem-studded scabbard from where it hung around my waist, and passing it to him. We’d already returned his hauberk and chausses, on the king’s orders, and now Eudo tossed him his silver-and-gold-inlaid helmet as well. It would do no good to deprive the Englishman of such treasured possessions when we were trying to win his friendship. For the same reason I also gave him back his four gold rings, although with some reluctance, since they were beautiful things, engraved with a fine runic script and polished to such a shine that they gleamed like the sun. They would have fetched a handsome price. As would Godric himself, had we simply ransomed him to his uncle as he’d begged.
‘Take this, too,’ I said, drawing from inside my cloak the parchment scroll that bore King Guillaume’s writ and seal. ‘Allow no one to see it save for your uncle.’
The Englishman nodded, trembling slightly as he took it. ‘What should I say? When I return to Elyg, I mean. How do I explain where I’ve been?’
I’d been thinking about that. I hadn’t forgotten that some of his scouting-party had fled when they saw their leader captured, and presumably had given their accounts of the ambush when they arrived back at Elyg. His story would need to accord with theirs.
‘To anyone but Morcar,’ I said, and I spoke slowly so that he could hear me clearly, ‘say that we almost succeeded in capturing you, but you managed to slip away into the trees. We gave chase, of course, but eventually you managed to lose us. Then you hid during the day, waiting until darkness fell so as to make certain that you wouldn’t fall into our hands again. Do you think you can remember all that?’
‘I’ll try,’ he replied.
From anyone else’s lips such an admission of cowardice might have sounded strange, but from his I felt sure it would seem convincing enough.
‘This, then, is where we part,’ I said. ‘Remember this place. For the next three nights, there will be someone waiting here for you to bring an answer from your uncle. You will come unarmed and you will come alone. Do you understand?’
‘I understand.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘Now, go, before I decide that the king was wrong after all and that you’re of more use to us dead.’
He didn’t need telling twice. I barely had time to blink before he had turned his back and scurried off, half running and half stumbling, through the long grass. He was slowed a little by the weight of his mail, but the mist obscured the moon’s light and so it wasn’t long before he disappeared into the darkness. Thus Godric, thegn of Corbei, went to deliver his message and persuade Morcar to change his allegiance.
A part of me wondered whether we would ever see him again. I wasn’t alone, either.
‘You realise he won’t come back, don’t you?’ Wace said when we’d returned to the inlet where the willows grew and pushed out on to the water. ‘He knows he was fortunate to escape with his life. He won’t dare put himself at our mercy a second time.’
‘Even if he does deliver the message to his uncle as he promised, what if Morcar refuses King Guillaume’s offer?’ Eudo asked. ‘Where will we be then?’
‘We’ll be in exactly the same situation as we were before,’ I replied. ‘We lose nothing by trying, and if it works it might well give us the key to victory.’
I sounded more confident than I felt. Wace and Eudo were right. If I were Godric I would think twice about returning to the lion’s den. At the same time we were relying on appealing to Morcar’s ambition, the depth of which we could not possibly know. What if our offer wasn’t enough to overcome his suspicion? What if he judged the risks to be too great for the reward?
There was little point in wondering. The seeds had been cast, and there was nothing more we could do now, save to wait.
And hope.
Godric failed to show himself the next night, or the night after that. Twice we ventured out to the island, and twice we returned with heavy lids and empty hands.
‘I told you he wouldn’t come,’ Wace muttered as we made our way back that second morning under the grey light of dawn. ‘We’re wasting our time.’
‘He’ll come,’ I said, although I was steadily growing less sure of that. ‘If Morcar has any sense at all, he won’t let this chance slip from his grasp.’
Once more, then, we set out for the island of Litelport. Since we didn’t know whether Godric would heed the instruction to come alone, we travelled in force. With me were Serlo and Pons, Eudo and Wace and all their knights, together with Hamo
and a few of his bowmen. That way, if Godric’s friends tried to take revenge for our ambush, we would be ready. We were joined this night by Lord Robert, who brought a handful of his household knights, his father’s fever having abated a little, for now at least.
‘He grows weaker by the day,’ he told me. His face was drawn and his eyes hollow. ‘The bouts of sickness come more frequently, and though tonight he enjoys some respite, tomorrow he will grow worse again.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. I confess I wasn’t much used to families, and had never really understood them. Whereas Robert was close to his father, I’d hardly known mine. A Breton lord of no great standing named Baderon, he had been killed in a feud with a rival when I was only five or six summers old. Of my mother, Emma, my memories were even more vague. She had passed from this world a year earlier while giving birth to the girl who would have been my sister. The only kinship I knew, and had ever really known, was that which existed between myself and my sword-brothers: the bond of the conroi.
‘I see such pain in his eyes,’ Robert went on. ‘He is determined to live to see our victory over the rebels, but God only knows when that may be, if indeed it happens at all.’
‘I pray for him,’ I said. ‘We all do.’
He smiled in thanks, but it was a smile that quickly faded. ‘I sent word a few weeks ago both to my mother at Graville, and to Beatrice. I hope they will have a chance to see him before he passes away, although with each day that goes by, it seems ever more unlikely.’
‘We can but hope, lord,’ I said, although to speak truthfully I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Malet’s wife, Elise, again. A stern-faced woman lacking in humour, she hadn’t much taken to me the last time we’d met, and I had little reason to suppose she would be any better inclined now. With Beatrice, Robert’s sister, I was on better terms, and indeed counted her as a friend, one of the few I seemed to have in those days. She was married now, or so Robert had told me, to the vicomte of Archis in Normandy, a baron of moderate wealth and noble parentage, who was both a close friend and a tenant of the Malets. It could easily be a week before word reached them across the Narrow Sea, however, and another before they were able to make the crossing, depending on the wind and the tides, and perhaps another still to reach us here in the fen country. Whether Malet had strength enough to last out until they arrived, none but God could know. Doubtless Robert was making the same reckoning, for he had fallen quiet now, lost in his own thoughts.
In silence, then, we rounded the northern shore of the island until we found the familiar inlet where the water ran shallow and the willows grew. We guided our punts close to the bank, where banks of tall reeds kept us out of sight from the river and the low-hanging branches provided a good mooring place. Leaving a few men behind to guard the boats, we ventured away from the inlet, up a gentle rise through long grasses and thick bramble hedges until we were just within sight of the marker stone that I’d chosen as our meeting place. And there, for the third night, we crouched in the shadows and we waited.
And waited.
Hours passed. The glittering stars became obscured as cloud spread across the sky. The wind rose, rustling the grass so that it seemed there were voices all around us, whispering, and the rain soon followed, hesitantly at first but quickly growing heavier. We huddled down inside our cloaks, our hoods raised, letting the water roll off the wool. The smell of moist earth rose up, reminding me of the green pastures of Earnford, and for a moment I was back there again, as it was during the spring with the new shoots breaking the soil and the first leaf-buds appearing on the trees in the woods.
Thunder pealed out, like the roar of some fearsome beast unleashed from the caverns of hell to wreak its fury upon the world. I made the sign of the cross to ward off any evil spirits that might be lurking, hoping that it wasn’t a sign of ill fortune to come. No sooner had I done so than the rain began to ease. Another roar resounded through the night sky, but it seemed further away. It was followed some moments later by another, and another, each one quieter than the last, until all was still again.
And through that stillness came a sound. A sound like a voice, except that this time I was sure it wasn’t just the wind. It came from the direction of the marker stone, though from so far away I couldn’t make out what they were saying.
‘Did you hear that?’ I asked, taking care to keep my voice low.
Robert nodded and put a finger to his lips, while out of the corner of my eye I saw Pons rest his hand upon his sword-hilt. Through the heads of the grass and the all-enshrouding mist I glimpsed twin points of orange light, the sort that could only come from torches or lanterns.
Godric had not come alone.
Shadowy figures moved around the light; in the darkness and from such a distance it was hard to tell exactly how many, but at a guess I would have said they numbered about ten, most of them warriors, if the glint of their spearpoints and their helmets were anything to judge by.
‘Show yourselves,’ a man shouted out in French, but I didn’t recognise his voice, which was deep and harsh and carried the proud tones of one who was used to being obeyed. ‘I know you’re there.’
Serlo looked at me. ‘What do we do, lord?’
I glanced at Robert, whose face bore a grim expression. ‘Don’t move,’ he said. ‘Wait until I say.’
‘I have no time for this,’ the man called. ‘I’ve come to talk, not to fight.’
That sounded like the kind of thing Morcar was likely to say, although I hadn’t been expecting him to come in person. I’d thought he would prefer to stay where there was no danger, in his hall in the monastery at Elyg, rather than speak with us himself.
‘You’ve come to talk, have you?’ Robert shouted out. ‘You have a strange way of showing it.’
He rose and strode forward, towards the flickering torch-glow, at the same time signalling to the rest of us to get to our feet, which we did, albeit a little stiffly after so long spent crouched in the cold and the damp. Hamo and his men nocked arrows to their bowstrings in warning, and I laid my sword-hand upon my hilt as I followed Robert, my boots sinking into the soft earth. A thin drizzle still fell; droplets rolled off the leaves, pattering on to the sodden earth.
‘I didn’t come with a whole army to protect me,’ the man pointed out. He stepped closer to the light and I saw him properly for the first time. What I was expecting, I wasn’t sure. There was little resemblance between nephew and uncle, for while the boy had been short of stature, fair in complexion and round in the cheek, the elder one was tall and dark-featured, with a face composed of hard lines that drew together to form a stern expression. How many he was in years, I could not say exactly, although I might have guessed around thirty-five.
‘Are you Morcar?’ Robert asked, coming to a halt about ten paces from the Englishmen.
‘Were you expecting someone else?’
Robert shrugged. ‘At least you had the nerve to come yourself this night, rather than send a boy to do a man’s work.’
‘If you’re hoping to win my allegiance, you’re not doing very well,’ Morcar said. ‘I might decide I don’t want to parley after all, and go back to the Isle. Then you would have to face your king’s displeasure for having let your one chance at winning this war slip away.’
‘Or else I could kill you now and be done with it.’
‘You could, but you would as likely die trying,’ Morcar said with a sneer. ‘And several of your men with you, besides. Your little raiding-band might have managed to surprise my nephew the other night, but we both know that an open fight is another matter entirely.’
Had the numbers lain more in our favour, I might have thought like Robert, but as it was I found myself agreeing with Morcar. Giving battle was always a risky business, and never a course of action to be undertaken lightly, unless victory could be all but assured, which in this case it could not.
‘Where is your nephew?’ Robert asked. ‘Is he here, or have you left him back at Elyg where he can do
no harm?’
‘He is here,’ Morcar said, and gave a snap of his fingers. ‘Godric!’ One of the men I’d taken for Morcar’s hearth-troops stepped forward, untied his chin-strap and removed his helmet, revealing a plump-faced youth whom I recognised at once. He looked even more nervous, if that were possible, than he had three days ago while kneeling before the king. I could not recall ever seeing anyone so finely dressed for war and yet looking so uncomfortable, and so terrified.
‘Don’t forget that if I hadn’t let Godric lead the scouting-party that night, we might not be standing here now,’ Morcar said mildly. ‘Your king ought to be thanking me for making this meeting possible.’
‘I will make sure to tell him when we return to camp,’ Robert said, and there was no mistaking his sardonic tone. ‘Should I suppose that you have an answer for him?’
‘I do. I have listened to his offer and received his writ, and considered it carefully.’
‘And what do you say?’
‘That I accept his terms, and that I promise to lend my spears in your support when you make your next attack across the bridge in a few days’ time.’
‘How are you so sure that we’re planning another attack?’ I asked.
Morcar snorted as he turned to me. ‘Do you think we are blind? We have all seen your men labouring to repair the causeway and the siege platforms, and to clear the ground all about of reeds and sedge. It is hardly any secret that King Guillaume is preparing for another attempt to capture the Isle, and soon, if the number of tents and banners that gather daily around the guardhouse at Alrehetha are any clue.’ He turned to Robert. ‘I’ll tell you what will happen. As soon as I hear that the first of your conrois has crossed the bridge, I’ll turn my spears against my countrymen, and send word to those of my loyal followers to do the same. The Isle will belong to us within hours. I will surrender Elyg to your king and at the same time make my formal submission to him.’
‘What makes you think you have the right to direct the course of the battle?’ I asked.
Conquest 03 - Knights of the Hawk Page 12