by James Wilde
After a moment, William nodded. ‘The king was right. The cunning fox keeps his belly full. Once he sees his wife in agony, Hereward will say whatever we want to free her. He will end the uprising himself.’
Grinning, Taillebois sheathed his sword. ‘Then it is agreed. We take the witch.’
Now forgotten, Harald watched the Butcher climb back on to his horse, but it was the old man who drew his gaze. The frailty in Asketil’s face had drained away. His eyes now blazed with an uncanny fire and he bared his teeth like a wolf ready to tear out the throat of a lamb.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
THE BODY LAY at the side of the road. The skin was black, the belly bloated, and ravens had taken the eyes. As he rode towards the corpse, Balthar scarcely gave it a second glance, so many had he seen on the journey. They lined the roads like markers to hell. The stink of human rot hung everywhere in the north, and even the nosegay stuffed with herbs and spices could not bring him respite. He coughed and gagged, his eyes darting towards his shadow riding in silence at his side. Faramond was a dour Norman knight who barely acknowledged his charge. But Balthar was glad of his companionship. No man should venture abroad alone in such a tormented place.
As they neared the body, undulating shadows rushed away into the growing dark. The knight grunted. ‘Some say there are more rats in Northumbria than men these days.’
‘Oh, to be in the south once again,’ the Fox sighed, thinking of Godrun. How distant her beauty and her tenderness seemed amid those grim surroundings. ‘Have you heard word when we return home?’ he ventured hopefully.
‘When the king’s work is done.’
Balthar sighed. And when would that be? Eoferwic was already William’s. In the days leading up to Christmas, they had ridden through a blasted land into a burnt city – a mere shadow of its former glory – with hungry, desperate folk proclaiming their saviour, the king. Their voices had been raised more out of fear than hope, he knew. They had seen the thick black clouds of carrion birds following the Norman army. But Eoferwic was only one stopping point on the long road of William’s bloody obsession. He would not be satisfied until no man was left standing between here and the Tees in the far north.
His breath clouded in the chill, and he shivered. As he looked up at the rising moon in the clear sky, he felt the sting of snowflakes in the wind. It had been a hard winter and it would get harder still, he was sure of it. He closed his eyes and dreamed of the warm fires in the hall the king now occupied in the ruined town. When he opened them a moment later, he glimpsed movement across the river plain outside Eoferwic.
‘What is that?’ he asked, squinting into the growing gloom and pointing. ‘One of the king’s war-bands?’ He flinched at the cold-blooded brutality of William, who had divided his army into smaller groups and each day sent them out to slaughter men, salt fields and burn any homes or barns in parts they had not yet devastated.
Faramond followed his gaze, and shook his head. Though he did not reply, Balthar saw the knight’s hand slip to the hilt of his sword.
They rode on, faster now. As they neared Eoferwic and the reek of wet charred wood that hung over the town, he heard cries carried on the wind. The winter chill seemed to bite even deeper into his bones when he saw that what he had taken to be a war-band was a large crowd of women and children, stumbling across the reed-beds and scrubby grassland towards the gates.
‘Do not speak to them,’ Faramond warned, his gaze as bitter as that wind. ‘Do not meet their eyes. And if they dare reach out to you, strike them with your cudgel.’
‘They are poor, hungry souls,’ Balthar protested.
‘They are already dead.’
As they drew towards the gates, the starving beggars noticed them and as one they turned and surged across the road, their cries like those of gulls at sunset. Little more than rags were their dresses, torn and filthy, and many had wrapped themselves in blankets and sack-cloth against the biting cold. They looked like spectres, he thought, with ashen skin and hollow cheeks and eyes fallen deep into shadow, and they reached out with thin, clutching hands as if they wished to draw him back to the grave with them. The children were worse. He could not even look at them.
Faramond shouted for them to clear the path, but only when he drew his sword and beat it against his shield did they cower away. Yet Balthar felt only pity for them. This wandering mob roamed the countryside in search of any morsel that might allow them to live to see another day. But there was nothing, anywhere. And when he looked into their devastated eyes, he saw they knew it.
Overcome with compassion, he looked down at a hooded woman holding out a trembling hand towards him. But as the dancing light from the gate torches illuminated her face, he recoiled in horror. Her nose and lips had blackened, and the rest of her face was swollen and purple like an overripe fruit. Glancing around, he saw the tell-tale signs on too many other women. Ravaged faces, opened sores, black fingertips, blood caking their ears and nostrils.
‘The sickness,’ he cried, his voice breaking. ‘They carry the sickness with them.’
Faramond cursed loudly. ‘Ride hard,’ he ordered, ‘and let none touch you.’ He jabbed his heels into his horse’s flanks and it lurched forward. Too slow to move out of the way, a woman fell beneath the hooves, screaming.
Terror gripped Balthar. He drove his steed forward in the knight’s wake, half-glimpsing the ragged shapes stumbling into his path, hearing the shrieks rise up around him as his mount ground flesh and bone into the frozen earth. Those ruined faces flashed by as if in a fever-dream. Fingers scrabbled at his cloak, his legs. He whimpered a prayer. Lord, let him live and he would be a godly man. Let him live to be with Godrun.
Eoferwic’s gates ground open. The mob fell behind, but still the two riders did not slow. Across the ramparts they thundered and on to the rattling bridge across the moat. Only when Balthar heard the gates trundle shut behind him did he bring his horse to a halt. He blinked away tears of fear and looked around. Seemingly unmoved, Faramond loomed over one of the king’s men who was hauling the oak bar across the gates.
‘Pestilence is abroad,’ he was saying. ‘Let no stranger enter. And if it is one of our own, look into his face for the signs.’ He crossed himself. ‘All four horsemen are now at large. Our time must be short. Confess your sins and be ready.’ The knight caught Balthar’s eye as he dismounted and, almost as an afterthought, he muttered, ‘Take care,’ before striding off into the night-dark streets.
Still shaking, Balthar clambered down from his steed and all but ran towards the new hall that had once belonged to the Earl of Northumbria. He called for wine, and swilled down the first cup in one draught before staggering to the fire blazing in the hearth. As the warmth began to seep into his frozen bones, he glanced around and saw the remnants of the feast for the Nativity of the Christ on the long table: venison, goose, boar and beef, and honey-cakes and mead too. Even those scraps would have fed the starving mob at the gates for a week or more. He sagged on to the stool and covered his face. How had his world come to this? The promise of Wincestre seemed so far away. Those ravaged faces beyond the gate haunted him, and the bodies that littered every corner of that land. All the monstrous sights he had witnessed since he had ridden north with the king would be seared into his mind for ever more, yes, and the part he had played in such carnage, however small.
‘You are weary, Fox? Eat. Drink. This is a time for feasting in praise of the birth of our Lord.’
At the king’s voice, Balthar jerked upright. He felt too worn down to play the complex games that would keep him on the monarch’s good side. But as he peered into the gloom at the edge of the hall, he saw that William stared into the middle distance, his thoughts elsewhere. He swayed, drunk from his day of celebration. Ale slopped from the cup in his hand. Balthar thought he looked in a morose mood, his mouth turned down and forehead creased. ‘Lord, I would not have come here had I known—’
The king flapped his hand to silence the apology. ‘How went i
t today?’ he muttered.
‘I met with the thegns, lord. They follow only you and will offer any tribute you see fit to demand.’
William shrugged, uninterested. ‘You must think me a cruel man, Fox,’ he said, wandering towards the hearth.
‘My lord—’
‘I have seen the way you look at me,’ the monarch snapped. His eyes blazed, but only for a moment, and once his melancholy mood had returned, he put one foot on a stool and peered into the flames. ‘One day, what I have done here in the north will be seen as a great victory. All the deaths will be forgotten. All that will be remembered is that William sealed his hold upon the English crown.’ He took a swig of his ale, adding in a slurred voice, ‘This is war, Fox, and war is never won by heroes, only by those who kill faster and better than the next man.’
‘You are winning a great victory, my king.’
The flames reflected in William’s dark eyes. For a long moment, only the crackling of the logs echoed through the gloom of the hall. ‘Fighting to win is all I have known,’ he murmured. He seemed to be speaking only to himself. ‘Seven summers. That was all I had seen when I became Duke of Normandy. Seven summers, and then the blood-letting began. My father, he was barely a man himself when I was born, and my mother …’ The words died in his throat. He sipped more mead to moisten his throat and continued, ‘My father killed his own brother to become duke before me. And then he himself was murdered, while on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Poisoned.’
Balthar sat back upon a stool, his attention piqued. The king’s guard was down. Would he reveal something that could be used in times to come? He scrutinized his master, watching every thought and emotion reveal itself in the subtle play of shadow and light. ‘Your childhood was hard,’ he said gently, encouraging the king to continue.
‘My childhood was good. It forged me.’ He drained his cup and tossed it aside, but his gaze never left the flames. ‘There is no play for a child who is a duke. No, not when every high family in Normandy wanted the power that came with that title. My life hung by a thread, always. Yet there was one man who showed me kindness, my guardian, Osbern. He would sit me on his knee and sing me songs. And sometimes he would tell me tales from the hot lands to the east, where my father died. Every night he would sleep beside me with one eye open, and when they came for me with knives or axes, as they often did, he would put a hand over my mouth to stop me calling out, and he would pick me up in his arms. Then we would sneak out of a hidden door and down into the village, to hide in a peasant’s house until the danger had passed. Osbern kept me alive, and he taught me what I needed to do to go on living when I was grown.’
‘Then he taught you how to be a good king, my lord,’ Balthar said with a nod.
‘Not in the way you think, Fox. One night I woke in the throes of a dream. It was summer, the room was hot. I remember now how I was soaked with sweat, and the bed was soaked too.’ He smiled. ‘Yet it was sticky. I called out to Osbern and rolled over. There was no ear for me to whisper in as I did most nights. His head had been cut off and set upon a stool the other side of the sleeping chamber. Watching me …’ His brow furrowed as he reflected on this. ‘How soundly I must have slept. His throat slit, his head sawn off, and never did I murmur.’
‘And they left his head there to frighten you?’ Balthar said, aghast.
William nodded, tapping the side of his head. ‘Clever. Why kill a boy when you can make him dance? So, yes, Fox, Osbern taught me how to be a king. For he was weak, and he died. And I learned that night that I would never be weak.’
‘You are strong indeed, my lord.’
William chuckled silently, though Balthar saw no humour in his words. The king eyed him for a moment before enquiring, ‘You would consider yourself a hero, would you not, Fox? In your own world? An Englishman who rose from humble beginnings to stand alongside a king.’
‘I am but your servant.’
‘But you would rather be back in Wincestre with that serving girl who brings me my wine.’
Balthar flinched.
The king laughed at his reaction. ‘Do you think that anything in my court passes beneath my notice?’ He tapped the corner of his eye. ‘I see like a hawk. Fox, you are as white as snow,’ he added, laughing. ‘Steady yourself. She is a pretty child. Many of my men have had their way with her.’ His face hardened as he said these words and Balthar knew he was driving home a spear. ‘You have a wife, and this girl is young and … once … was pure,’ he added. ‘So do not judge me, Fox. We are alike, you and I, yes? We both take what we want without a thought for others. We both do what we must to satisfy our desires.’
Balthar felt a chill run deep inside him. As he watched the flames leaping in the king’s dark eyes, he began to wonder if William had in some way intended Godrun to seduce him. At that moment, he felt as if he had fallen into deep water. Before he could consider the matter further, the king walked away. On the edge of the shadows, he turned back and said in a flat voice, ‘For the next ten days, my men shall ride out to harry the last of the bastards who live on. And once this land is cold and dead, we shall push north to the Tees, and then south-west to Cestre. Peace will come, Fox, heed my words, if I have to leave behind the head of every man in England to show my will.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
ALRIC’S BREATH STEAMED in the bitter cold of the church. Along the wall he crept, relieved that the suffocating gloom of that grey day had filled the nave with dense shadows. Guilt tightened his chest, but he had to see. By the altar, two fat candles glowed. The abbot knelt in prayer, and beside him another figure was hunched in supplication. Alric squinted to be sure. It was Redwald, just as Alric had been told by one of the other monks of Ely. Hereward’s brother sought absolution from some unnamed sins, they had said, and he had committed to long hours of prayer each day. The monk cocked his head, listening to the drone of the whispered voices. Though they were kin in name only, Hereward and Redwald had much in common, he decided. Each one battled to contain the devil he carried within him. He murmured a quiet prayer that Redwald would be as successful as his brother in finding the road to God. He listened a while longer until he felt too much discomfort at intruding on such a private moment and then he edged back towards the door.
Outside, he looked up at the lowering grey clouds. It was the last gasp of the cold weather. Soon spring’s promise would be with them. He felt relieved. That winter had been harder than most and there were times when he had thought they would not survive it. But God had watched over them as they clung together through desertions and hunger and want. Other threats waited, he knew that. Not the least, the certainty that the king’s men would at last launch their attack. Ivo the Butcher’s eyes and ears within Ely must surely have told him how weak the English were. Only the bitter weather would have kept them at bay.
He pulled his threadbare cloak around him against the northerly wind cutting across the flat lands and hurried to the nearest hall. How long had the English and the Normans been circling each other like wounded dogs, watching for weaknesses, waiting for an opening to attack, but never quite finding the right moment? It seemed like forever.
In the hall, he threw off his cloak and warmed his hands over the hearth. He smiled as he looked to the far end where the children sat in a semicircle, rapt, listening to Acha tell a tale of dragons from her home in the west. Though her nature was often severe, she had surprised him with the gentleness she had shown once she had begun to help with the children’s lessons. Beside her, Edoma looked up from her embroidery, and, after a moment’s hesitation, came over.
‘Have you seen Madulf?’ she breathed, a note of worry in her voice.
‘Is he not with Sighard at the bake-house?’
‘No, I have searched everywhere for him.’ Alric smiled as he watched her bite her lip. It seemed she had made her choice of the two young men who had been bidding for her affection. He felt surprised, though, that it was not the sunnier Sighard.
‘I am sure he is well. He
is likely away learning to use his spear like a warrior now that Hereward has said he is ready to fight.’
She frowned. ‘Perhaps. But this is not the first time. I have seen him creep away at all hours, but he denies it when I ask him where he has been. Do you think he has a secret love?’
Alric felt another tug of suspicion. He was starting to see the king’s spies everywhere. ‘Do not worry so,’ he said, putting on a smile. ‘But I will speak with him, if it helps.’
As he tried to recall if he had seen anything troubling in Madulf’s behaviour, the door crashed open. Kraki stood in the entrance, glowering. He swayed and his scarred face was flushed. Drunk, Alric thought. The Viking lurched in, jabbing a trembling finger towards Acha. ‘I would have words,’ he growled.
The raven-haired woman flushed, but her eyes grew cold. The children looked round uneasily at the intrusion. ‘If you have a grievance, take it elsewhere,’ Alric hissed. ‘You are frightening the young ones.’
‘Away, monk,’ Kraki snapped. ‘My anger is hot and if you get in my way you are likely to feel the full force of it.’
Acha sauntered across the room, her head held up in defiance. ‘What is it you want?’ she asked in a wintry voice.
‘You bring shame on me with everything you do,’ Kraki raged, spittle flying.
‘You bring shame upon yourself with your actions,’ Acha replied, seemingly unconcerned that she was driving the Viking to greater heights of anger. ‘You drink, you sweat, you stink like a pig, and now you speak to me like this, here, in front of these children.’
Kraki’s bloodshot eyes bulged. When Alric stepped forward to block his path, the Viking thrust him aside with such force that he spun across the floor. Dazed, the monk looked up to see Edoma fleeing from the hall. The warrior’s temper was as terrifying and unpredictable as a summer storm.