The Firedrake

by Cecelia Holland

  He’s only a little older than I, Laeghaire thought. We are neither of us young men any more. I am nearly forty. He was born to it, what he is, and I was born to what I am. And our sons …

  He watched William come awake. He woke easily, stretching, saw Laeghaire and grinned. His eyes were half closed. Laeghaire saw them glitter. William got up and went down the deck. He yawned and moved his shoulders, loosening his muscles. His shadow ran over the men lying dull asleep on the deck, of the ship; his shadow was long as the boat, from the sun that had just risen.

  The English coast was long and low and gray. They moved swiftly on into it, the hundreds of little boats, nosing through the faint mist. Laeghaire watched the coast move in toward him. The features of this shore defined themselves and grew slowly familiar, as if he were coming home. He thought it might be that. He would have an earldom here, and a castle, and lands and serfs. He would have his own band of retainers. He would have his own knights and his own tenants. He would sit in the King’s council, and when they spoke of him, he would be Laeghaire, Earl of Such-and-Such, not Laeghaire of the Long Road. When he died he would have six sons to carry his coffin to the churchyard of the church he would build, and his daughters with silvery hair would weep for him. He would never leave his land.

  “All in my hands,” be said, and Guy turned to look up at him.

  “Will you build real castles, knight?”

  “Yes. Of solid stone. Get along, serf.”

  They nosed in against the beach, and the shock of their landing toppled two men into the water. The others cheered. They leaped off in droves, laughing. They drew their swords and hacked at the soil. Laeghaire climbed over the rail and felt the strong land under his feet and shouted. He almost fell over; the land seemed to move under him like the deck of a ship. He turned to help Guy down.

  “Any more noise,” he shouted, “and we’ll have the Saxons down on us.”

  Guy, laughing, ran a few steps backward. He turned and flung up his arms. “The Promised Land.”

  William climbed over the rail before they put out the plank. He jumped. He took a step and stumbled and fell on his face, in full sight of all his men.

  Guy gasped and put his hand to his mouth. Fitz-Osbern leaped to help. The Duke shook him off. He stood. He raised his hands; he had sand on his sleeves. He cried, “I have seized England with both hands.”

  His voice rang in a stony quiet. The men cheered suddenly. They turned, relaxing, reassured. The horses were coming off the boats, clattering down the gangplanks. Laeghaire saw William turn, say something to Fitz-Osbern, and walk up the beach, apart from the others. Laeghaire jogged through the crowd, wheeling by horses and laughing men. He found Hilde and Rolf, standing by the boat, watching the freed horses fly off the plank to the solid ground. Laeghaire put his arm around Hilde.

  The brown stallion came easily down the gangplank and stopped, and Rolf went to bring him. The black horse galloped down with a neigh and kicked up his heels. The other horses began to neigh.

  “Listen. They are cheering for us.” Jehan rode up, grinning. “The Duke wants you, as usual.”

  Rolf was saddling the black horse. Laeghaire drew Hilde in between the horses and trotted off to William.

  “That Roman fort is about a hundred paces down from here,” William said. “Get some men together and make an earthwork in it.”

  Laeghaire went back, mounted the black horse, and rode around collecting men. He took the largest groups he could find, the archers and the foot soldiers, who had nothing to do. They got spades from the supply boat and followed him up to the fort. The fort was almost overgrown. Laeghaire took his lance and drew a circle around it, riding with the lance dragging in the soft earth. The men bent and began to dig. They talked incessantly. Laeghaire rode back and ordered up some knights to guard them. The sun rose higher; it would be hot. He took his feet out of the stirrups and relaxed, watching the men dig.

  Below, on the beach, the rest of the army was getting organized. The boats drew off and were anchored offshore. Laeghaire could see the men gathering around the banner staff blessed by the Pope. He saw a band of knights gallop off to the east, along the coast, going to find Hastings.

  The sun climbed up to the zenith, and Hilde brought him dinner. A new group of men came up to relieve the diggers. On the beach, the last of the boats was unloaded. The knights came back and met William. Laeghaire wanted to go down there and find out what was happening. He rode once around the fort; the earthwork was almost completed.

  That night they slept inside the earthwork. Hilde, wrapped in blankets, shivered beside Laeghaire. It was not cold. She dreamed, and woke him once, muttering and sighing in her sleep.

  At dawn they gathered again on the beach. William’s voice rose over them. He ordered some four hundred men to stay in the fort of Pevensey. They growled and moaned and went up to the lonely little fort. The rest of the army prepared to march. Within moments the beach was a swarm of men and horses. Laeghaire put Hilde and Rolf both on the brown stallion. The stallion stood in the jumble of bodies, calm, taking the shock of colliding horses, never moving. Laeghaire put his hand on the horse’s neck. The stallion lowered his head. His forelock dipped into his eyes. Once in Thuringia they had gathered up, and heard the Duke there talk of the great and glorious work they were doing for God against the pagans.

  The tangle of horses and knights and archers was sweeping quickly into order. Laeghaire watched the men fall into groups, and the groups into lines. The banner blessed by the Pope traveled swiftly along the beach. Behind it William rode at full gallop. His fur cloak swirled around him. The men sent up a great shout for him. It grew, as he passed, into a roar that made the waves silent. Laeghaire sat without a word, beside the stallion that never moved. He watched the Duke ride after his banner. William was the finest horseman and the greatest warrior in his army. Laeghaire felt as if the cheering were for him.

  The shouting died slowly. Under it grew the steady noises of the march. They rode at an easy pace. The men on foot marched a little apart from the others. Laeghaire heard them laughing and telling stories. The men around him were silent. They were all knights, horsemen. Laeghaire felt the black horse moving under him.

  “Where are we going?” Hilde said. She looked down at him from the brown stallion’s back. She held the rope of the pack with one hand, and her body moved easily with the movements of the horse.

  “Just a little way. I’ll have to go raiding. I’ll leave you with Rolf.”

  “You’ll be all right, won’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “It would be so horrible if anything happened to you now, when we have everything almost in our hands.”

  “I won’t die.”

  Her face was troubled. She looked at him strangely. When she turned her face away, she was still frowning.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “I don’t know. I had a feeling …”

  “Sh.”

  He saw William, riding under the shadow of the blue banner. He thought he could almost see William’s muscles and bones through his surcoat and mail. Muscles and bones like me. I’m not a young man any more.

  In a few days, in a few months, it would not matter if he were young or not. He watched William riding, his head dark against the sky.

  They rode along the shore. The scouts rode on ahead of them. Laeghaire saw some of them riding in the thin cover of trees on the top of the cliff by the sea. Guy was riding a chunky dun horse, up ahead, crouched awkwardly in the saddle. He was not a horseman: Little spymaster, you’re useless now. The army stretched out around him. The boats followed them, close in to the shore. The army ran easily over land and water.

  Hardraada. What had happened? The Norwegians and Tosti must have invaded. Perhaps they had not. The legend was very big. Breaking the golden chain across the straits by Constantinople with the prow of his longship. Sooner or later we will have to fight him. Unless Godwin’s son had beaten him. The housekarls are… Nonethele
ss. Hardraada was a king, Harold was a king. I hope we fight him. I fight him. There was Hastings.

  He called to Rolf to saddle the brown stallion, but the old men of the city were already out on the sand, waiting, and they surrendered Hastings almost before the army had stopped its marching.

  Odo said a Mass the next morning, under the dawn sky. His voice was strong and wild. He blessed them all, the men crowded into the market and the boats in the harbor. Laeghaire swung his weight from one foot to the other. “Go out and raid,” William had said. “Be back here by sundown tonight. I want your report on what you see, what you take, whatever there is that you know that you did not know when you left. Everything.” And, turning, slower, “The old men here say that the Norwegians landed in the north. They took York but the—but Godwinson rode north and fought them. Hardraada is dead. And Tosti Godwinson too. He was with Hardraada.”

  “Tosti.”

  “And now in all Christendom there is no greater warrior than you, Irish. Your rival’s dead.”

  “My lord.”

  “One of my lords told me. Tosny. He’s traveled in Italy. He remarked that I had you in my army, and said that as lighting men go, you ranked only below Hardraada.”

  “I’ve never been to Italy.”

  Odo’s voice slid through his ears and he shut it out.

  “Not in the flesh, perhaps. But you’ve been to Italy.... What does your trade say of the d’Hautvilles?”

  “Dirty fighters. Low pay, long wars, bad risks, good booty, good women.”

  “Who told you that?”

  Laeghaire shrugged. “My informers.”

  “Informers.”

  “Merchants, gypsies, innkeepers on the roads, other fighters.”

  “What do they say about me?”

  Laeghaire grinned. “Bad pay, no women, hard fighting. The fighting’s good, they say.”

  “Hunh,” William said through Odo’s voice.

  Odo finished and they prayed. Laeghaire prayed deeply. He wanted to come back. Hardraada was dead. He prayed for Hardraada. He turned away and waved his arm. The horns were blasting all through the marketplace.

  “Mount up,” he shouted, and went to his horse. His men gathered and mounted, all separate from the others. It seemed to Laeghaire that the whole army stood and watched them mount. These men, his men, two hundred men, so few compared to the others. But when they had mounted they seemed greater. He lifted his hand and they were ready, like unhooded hawks. He thought he saw something in the faces of the vast crowd that watched him; he could not understand it.

  He rode up to William and saluted him. William said, “Come back, remember.”

  “My lord, would I leave you?”

  “Fare well.”

  Laeghaire put on his helmet and rode back. He signaled to his men. They rode off at a jog. They rode north.

  They burned several fields that day and were back in time to eat supper with the rest of the army. The Saxons made no resistance. He saw nothing of them but the peasants’ backs, running for shelter in the walled houses. The land was open and rolling, with many trees and little forests. They rode easily through it. It was rich, dark land.

  The next day they rode again, and the day after that. The Saxons tried to defend against them that day, when they attacked a village. The Saxons fought them in the streets. It was easy fighting. The horses ran the Saxons down and they fled. Laeghaire had his men torch all the buildings. That night they did not return to Hastings until the moon had set. They slept all the next day and did not ride the day after that.

  Hilde was very happy. She had a little hut all to herself, except for Laeghaire and Rolf, and she pretended it was a castle. She swept it every morning and cooked in it and sang all day long. Laeghaire enjoyed this. He had made her happy. At night when she slept next to him he listened to her breathing and thought that she smiled in her sleep. Her songs were happy songs. She needed him to make her happy.

  William ordered him out after the few days’ resting and told him to capture a Saxon and ask him what Harold Godwinson was doing. William told him to stay somewhere near Hastings but that he had no need to come back every night, if his Saxon gave him any reason to stay out. Laeghaire rode out with fifty men. They rode due north, well past the farthest limit of their previous raidings, and Laeghaire spread his men out in a long line through the fields and little stands of oak. In the mid-afternoon they brought a Saxon to him. He ordered them all to make a night camp, and took the Saxon into the shade of an oak tree.

  The Saxon was bound hand and foot. Laeghaire got some dried meat and ate it. He looked at the Saxon. “Take off the rope,” he said.

  “My lord—” the Norman said.

  “Cut him loose. I want to talk to him, and a man who’s bound can’t talk right.”

  He drank water from a bucket while they untied the Saxon. The man’s eyes followed his hands.

  “Are you thirsty?” Laeghaire asked in Saxon.

  “Yes.”

  Laeghaire put the bucket in front of him.

  “It’s Norman water,” the man said.

  “It’s English water.”

  “It’s a Norman bucket.”

  “If you’re thirsty, drink.”

  The man plunged his hands into the water and scooped it up and drank. He drank feverishly.

  “What is your name?’’ Laeghaire asked.

  “Byrth.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “I have land of the lord of Dunmer.”

  “Much land?”

  “No.”

  “Do you hunt? In these woods?”

  “Yes. That’s why they caught me.”

  “Then you know the land.”

  “Yes.”

  “Good,” Laeghaire said. “You’ll guide us.”

  “No.”

  “You want your land, don’t you?”

  “You’ll never beat Harold. Not King Harold.”

  “He’s a foul oath-breaking usurper prince.”

  “He’ll kill me if he finds out.”

  “He’ll never know. Besides, he doesn’t seem to be in any great hurry to come and catch us.”

  “He’s coming. He’s in London already.”

  “He’ll never come out. He’s frightened of us.”

  “No, he isn’t.”

  “Then why doesn’t he come fight us?”

  “He will. You wait around.”

  “We will.” Laeghaire grinned.

  * * *

  He sent all this by a messenger back to Hastings. He collected his men and set off to scout the countryside. So far they had not taken any booty. After moonrise, they turned a little west, and found a walled house, near a river. They withdrew and pretended they were going away, and in the middle of the night attacked it and burned part of the wall and one of the inside buildings. The Saxons surrendered, and they spent the rest of the night sacking the place. Laeghaire found a little chest of silver pieces hidden in the floor under the lord’s chair, where a lot of Saxons kept their hoards, and carted it back to Hastings. He woke up Hilde and told her about the raid. She was happy. She smiled at him.

  A few days later William gave him permission to go off again. Laeghaire took the same fifty men and rode toward London. He still had Byrth and he made Byrth guide them. Byrth tried to take them onto the wrong road but Laeghaire knew enough of the way to keep them straight. In the night they slept until the moon rose and rode out to a little village Byrth knew of.

  The Normans kept to the woods as far as they could, and charged across the half-harvested fields to the village. They waved their torches and made a lot of noise. The people fled out of the huts, running for the fort. The Normans, whooping and whirling their torches, set fire to the huts. The flames caught quickly and leaped up with a merry crackling.

  Laeghaire rode up and down the square, shouting and making his horse buck. His men galloped around the burning huts, and some of them set the field on fire. Laeghaire collected several of his men and sent them to
herd out the cattle and swine that were in the common pasturage, before the fire caught in the dry grass. He turned and rode back up the square. His men were racing off, bored with this sport.

  He passed close to a building. Something struck the side of his helmet. He reeled in the saddle. He straightened and wheeled the horse. A slight man burst out of the shelter of the burning building and ran off through the high grass behind the village, headed for the narrow band of the woods nearby. Laeghaire spurred the horse between the fires. The slight man was far ahead of him, running fleetly. Laeghaire kicked the horse. The horse bolted after the man. He shied suddenly and Laeghaire almost went off. He looked down. A wide ditch lay before him. He laughed and galloped along it. The slight man had almost reached the woods. Laeghaire found the shallow part of the ditch, put the horse across it, and chased.

  That small figure vanished in the trees. Laeghaire charged across the last of the field and into the forest. He saw nothing. He rode around and put the trees between him and the fire. He began to laugh. The man was huddled in a fork of a tree, clear against the leaping fire.

  Laeghaire rode straight to the tree. The man knew he had been seen; he leaped down. He ran two steps. Laeghaire swore. It was a woman. He lashed the horse, bent, and scooped her across his saddle. She fought like a man, silently, her fists thudding on his mail and his face. He bent his head and wrapped his arm around her. He veered the horse into the deep woods. The horse was in a full gallop. The girl cried out suddenly.

  He caught her right wrist and twisted it behind her back. The branches swiped at them. He bent down, bending her with him. He reined the horse in suddenly.

  Her face was bright with pain. He eased her arm a little. Her eyes stared scornfully at him.