by James Wilde
When his senses returned, he fumbled for his axe but it was gone. Those skull-faced night-creatures stood all around in silence, looking down on him with fierce eyes. Before he could speak, they parted and a figure walked through their midst. Hereward loomed over him, his face an emotionless mask. He felt a sword point at his throat, under his chin, forcing him to raise his head as the iron bit into his flesh. He looked deep into the Mercian’s pale eyes, and for the first time in his life felt unsettled by what he saw there.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
TORCHLIGHT DANCED ACROSS the ash-encrusted faces of the English as they watched their leader prepare to take the head of his enemy. Hereward pressed the tip of his sword into the Viking’s scarred flesh. A bubble of blood rose up, but still Harald Redteeth did not flinch. For this man, death was not a grim stranger to be feared, he could see that. Both of them had known too much of endings.
Silence lay heavily over all. Not a man moved. Hereward felt an unfamiliar calm descend. For most of that day, the blood-lust had raged through him. He had hacked and sliced with no thought but of stealing the last breath. Now he weighed a life in his hands. The Viking’s eyes were all-black, as if he had been consumed by the night from within, and in the torchlight his dyed beard and hair glowed like the embers of a home-fire.
‘You killed my friend Vadir. You lopped off his head and tossed it away as if it were nothing.’ He paused, scrutinizing the Viking’s unflinching gaze. ‘And you saved the life of my wife. You are a bastard, and the world would be better off rid of you. And you are a man of honour.’
Harald Redteeth grinned. ‘Aye, here is a riddle to hold any feast in its thrall.’
The trees rustled in the chill breeze, and if Turfrida had been there she would have said it was the voices of the vættir as they observed this momentous event. For one moment, he felt his wife’s presence in those willows too, and he shivered.
‘This blood-feud of ours will be ended,’ he murmured. ‘But not this day.’ He drew his blade back and sheathed it.
Harald Redteeth heaved himself to his feet and levelled his gaze at his enemy. ‘One day we shall find our ending.’ With a nod, he turned and plucked his axe from where it had fallen. Without a backward glance, he pushed his way through the English and was gone.
Guthrinc stepped up to Hereward’s shoulder and sighed. ‘This night will come back and bite you in the arse.’
Hereward shrugged. ‘Amid all this bloodshed, honour is like a beacon in the dark. These things matter.’
He looked around the faces of his loyal men. At his command, they had offered up their lives, and they had fought with a courage that far exceeded their raw skill. He felt proud of each and every one of them; he could have asked no more.
‘We have won a great victory this day, one that will ring out across this land,’ he called. ‘You, here, are the last hope of the English. And you have earned the glory that they will shower upon you. A greater battle lies ahead, one that will finally bring William the Bastard crashing into the mud. But you have shown here that it is a battle we can win.’ He grinned. ‘Now, to Ely. And let us feast as if there be no tomorrow.’
A cheer rang out across the chill wetlands, and that night Hereward thought he had heard no greater sound.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
WAR WAS COMING, and his horse would be red.
In the light of the feast-fire, the faces of the Ely folk might glow with hope, but Alric could see in their shifting eyes that they knew it would be so. War, and his three brothers too, as each seal was opened. And then, as sure as night followed day, would follow the Final Judgement. For Ely, for England, for all men.
As Kraki roared a mead-oath from the top of the Speaking Mound, he put on a grin and raised his own cup. It had been a great victory, no one could deny that. The king’s army in the east had been turned to dust, his sheriff, the Butcher, humiliated. And yet in that moment of glory lay the threat of all their tomorrows. The king would come as he had come to the north. And all the dead they had buried these last days, all the young men who had never before raised a spear in battle, would be as nothing to what lay ahead.
They all knew it would be so. He could see.
And yet he marvelled as he wandered among the crowds enjoying the battle-feast. The men sang and cursed and laughed and swilled ale down their throats as fast as their cups could be filled. Women whirled around the bonfire to the lilting tune of bone whistle and harp, their faces flushed with abandon. Children jumped dogs over the high poles, and wrestled so close to the blazing logs their scolding mothers had to drag them back from the heat. This was not a night for tomorrow; it was a night for days gone by. It was a night to say this is what our fathers built with their hands, and their fathers before them; this is what we have, and if we have it not in days to come, still we will know the fire it brought to our hearts and the warmth to our lives.
He sipped his ale and felt deep currents move him.
The throng was the largest yet, reaching down through the dwellings almost to the walls themselves. Ely folk, and earth-walkers from the Camp of Refuge, and now Morcar’s men, their eyes bright as they basked in the warm reception they had received. Alric eyed the girls’ favours trailing from their wrists and the ale-cups thrust into their hands by carousing men.
Through the crowd, Hereward walked, the way parting before him. He smiled and nodded to all who called his name, but Alric could see his thoughts were elsewhere, at a lonely grave beside the abbey at Crowland. The monk wondered if the day would ever come when those eyes lost their haunted look.
He watched Hereward lean in close and whisper in Acha’s ear. The conversation seemed intense and after a moment the woman’s face darkened. With the history that lay between the two of them, Alric felt himself grow suspicious, but only for a moment. With a nod, Acha hurried over to Godrun. The blonde-haired girl sat on her own, staring into the flames. Her face was blank, but the monk sensed her troubles heavy upon her. Since her return, she had barely spoken to anyone, even her own father.
Alric grunted his thanks to a serving woman as she handed him a chunk of sticky boar-meat, and then he wandered up to his friend. ‘Is something amiss?’ he asked, looking to where Acha now sat close to the younger girl. The two women chatted and smiled.
‘Acha has agreed to watch over Godrun,’ Hereward replied. ‘She has a good heart, though she tries to hide it.’
‘And succeeds most of the time,’ the monk muttered.
‘You have felt the edge of her tongue,’ the Mercian said with a laugh.
‘Who here has not?’ He eyed his friend as he finished the sweet boar-meat and licked the grease from his fingers. ‘God’s road can be hard at times, but you walk it better than any man I know.’
‘Do not try to make me a saint. No one will fight over my bones when I am gone.’ He looked around at the revels and nodded with satisfaction. ‘After the hardships we have endured, these folk deserve one night of joy.’
‘And you think they are prepared for what lies ahead now that the iron circle closes upon Ely?’
Alric felt pleased when he saw the fire in the other man’s eyes. ‘Let the Bastard come. He thinks we are trapped here, on Ely. He thinks we quake and quail at the thought of the great king striding to our door with his mighty army. Instead, we lure him in as the hunter lures the rabbit. Why sweat and moan as we march to Wincestre when we can bring the king here to die in this land that is our fortress?’
The monk searched his friend’s gaze for some sign that might assuage his fears. So much had been stolen from Hereward – wife, mother, friend, yes, and father and brother too. How easy it would be for him to give in to that devil who promised succour with blood and fire. But what if victory could only come if that devil were freed? What then? He choked down his worries and put on a grin. ‘Then let us eat well and drink mead until we fall over,’ he said, sweeping one arm out towards the feast. ‘For the war will begin soon.’
‘Aye,’ Hereward agreed. ‘An
d it will be a war that will shake the very halls of heaven.’
Alric watched his friend walk towards the drunken cheers of Guthrinc and Kraki. His worries refused to die. Into the roaring flames of the feast-fire he peered, as if answers might lie within, but there were none. And then he looked to the red, gold and white sparks that swirled up into the night. They were carried far out over the quiet wetlands, accompanied by the sound of song and laughter. Somewhere near by, an owl shrieked and took wing. A cold breeze had picked up and, in its stirring, the willows out in the darkness seemed to whisper, Beware … Beware.
Beware.
HISTORICAL NOTE
As I embarked on this second volume detailing Hereward’s resistance to the Norman invaders, I again spent many days travelling across the fenlands of eastern England. It’s a part of the country that can, at times, seem bleak and windswept. But on other occasions, particularly when the sun’s out and the sky is blue, it’s pleasingly unspoilt and relaxing. History lies all around, and that’s the true attraction for anyone who loves the past. Prehistoric tracks and medieval cathedrals, Roman defences and Elizabethan carriage routes.
But the research I had to complete was, for me, of a completely different stripe: historical geography. Or geographical history. The Fen country has changed phenomenally in the thousand years since Hereward walked there. At the time of the Norman Conquest, this was a land that altered by the day, by the hour. Water flooded across it, at times turning lakes and meres into what was almost an inland sea with ferocious currents, the settlements rising up on small islands. In other sections, treacherous bogs were all but impassable beyond the narrow flint causeways that crisscrossed the area. Bounded to the west by a dense, near-impenetrable forest and to the east by the sea, the Fen country was almost a natural fortress.
Land reclamation, drainage, the changing environment and modern agricultural techniques have created a gentler, pastoral world far removed from Hereward’s wild land. I spent long days looking at ancient land records and old maps, and talking to academics to try to comprehend the true nature of the Fens at that time. By the end I had realized it was impossible to understand that bloody rebellion without truly understanding the Fens.
One other thing: eagle-eyed readers may notice a change in the style of place-naming from the first book in this sequence. I’ve now decided to use the eleventh-century names of towns and rivers wherever possible, and I apologize for the inconsistency. In my defence, I can only say that it felt right. I’m not a huge fan of long lists of character and place names at the beginning of a book so you are left to your own devices, but I feel most readers can easily decipher the modern spelling of, say, Snotingeham or Wincestre. The only one worth noting here, I think, is the Wellstream, which Hereward and his men travelled along to reach Burgh. Before the reclamation of the fens, it was a three-mile-wide channel surrounded by quicksand, that drained the River Nene.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Laura Hall at Lincoln Visitor Information Centre; the staff of Ely Museum; the staff at Ely Cathedral and Peterborough Cathedral.
About the Author
James Wilde is a man of Mercia. Raised surrounded by books, he went on to study economic history at university before travelling the world in search of adventure. Unable to forget a childhood encounter – in the pages of a comic – with the great English warrior Hereward, Wilde returned to the haunted fenlands of Eastern England, Hereward’s ancestral home, where he became convinced that this near-forgotten hero should be the subject of his first novel. Hereward was a bestseller. Wilde indulges his love of history and the high life in the home his family have owned for several generations in the heart of a Mercian forest.
Also by James Wilde
HEREWARD
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First published in Great Britain
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Copyright © James Wilde 2012
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