Raymond had heard enough and swept the knight’s hand from under him with one swift strike. All of Roger’s weight had been propped on the table and in his stupor he was slow to react so that he cracked his head off the heavy oak with a sickening thud. The heir to Striguil grunted once before sliding under the table unconscious.
Raymond de Carew turned to the crowd in the hall. They had gone quiet again and many of them stood on their stools to get a better view of the encounter between their lord’s son-in-law and the captain of his conrois. Beside Raymond, Borard was laughing uncontrollably at Sir Roger’s prone body, his head in his hands attempting to muffle his mirth.
‘That’s what happens to any man who thinks he can drink more than Raymond the Fat,’ the captain announced jovially before raising a mug from the table beside him. ‘Cheers,’ he saluted the men and women of Striguil before downing the coarse liquid. Alongside him Borard, finally free to laugh with the rest of the people at the feast, broke down in fits of good cheer while Raymond scowled at the minstrels in the corner of the room until they began strumming loudly on their harps.
Milo de Cogan poked Sir Roger with his foot. ‘I think you’ve killed him,’ he told his cousin as he calmly and leant down and robbed the knight of an emerald ring from his finger, secreting it amongst his wine-soaked clothes. ‘Good riddance, I say,’ he added, rising to his feet after patting the nobleman’s pockets and finding nothing else to steal. ‘Well, I should get back to the palisade. Have a good time in France, Raymond,’ he said and leaned forward to shake his hand.
‘I will. And you make sure that Sir Roger doesn’t start a war while we are gone,’ Raymond joked as he knelt to attend the stricken man.
Milo snorted a laugh. ‘That depends if I think I can win or not.’ And with that he disappeared into the midst of the people who still danced and gossiped in the great hall.
‘Is he really hurt?’ Alice of Abergavenny asked as she lured one of the many hounds of Striguil over to the table by waving a small scrap of meat in their direction. One big lolloping alaunt took the bait and trotted towards the woman who, instead of giving the dog the sliver of beef, threw it onto Roger’s face. The dog leapt after the morsel and greedily scooped it off the nobleman’s lips before licking them for their taste.
‘Borard, Geoffrey,’ Raymond beckoned his two companions. ‘Get Sir Roger up into my quarters. Don’t trouble Lady Basilia. Stay with him until morning. I don’t want to find him choked on his own vomit tomorrow. That would put pay to Strongbow’s voyage.’ Both Borard and Geoffrey of Abergavenny looked annoyed at having to care for the insensible nobleman, but nodded their assent and then, not too delicately, manhandled Sir Roger de Quincy from under the table and out of the great hall.
‘What a day,’ Raymond mumbled as he dropped onto a stool and took another swig from a wine cup. Only Alice remained at his table and she watched him intently. She had perceived Raymond’s affection for Strongbow’s daughter, his gallantry in his treatment of the detestable Sir Roger de Quincy, and even the esteem in which the people of Striguil held him. Suddenly Raymond’s eyes flicked up and caught her staring at him. He said nothing but simply smiled at her. If she needed one more reason to know that this was a good man, she had it.
‘Will you see me back to my rooms, please?’ she asked.
Five minutes later, Alice and Raymond were standing in the shadow of her room in the bailey of Striguil. Flickering firelight spilled from the donjon into the darkness where most of Strongbow’s warriors lived. Alice had clung to the warrior’s arm, though it was not especially cold, as they crossed the dusty expanse towards the guest quarters. To their left, a dog yelped suddenly at their appearance before a white-faced page appeared and calmed the hound.
Raymond giggled as Alice jumped in fright. ‘I used to have the same job when I was esquire to the Lord of Raglan, Walter de Bloet’s uncle. The dogs would keep you up all night,’ he recalled. ‘Still, it was better than being assigned to the lady of the castle. I had to do that for many years for the earl’s late mother here in Striguil – extremely boring work, even for a seven-year-old.’
‘What will become of my brother?’ Alice asked suddenly, ignoring his recollections. ‘What will become of me?’
‘For the moment your brother will serve me as esquire,’ Raymond answered. ‘As for you...’ he tailed off. ‘I still am in your debt and will do whatever you ask of me. So what do you want?’
Alice pouted for a moment and looked up into Raymond’s friendly face. ‘I want my brother to be given back what is his.’
‘I don’t have the resources to capture Abergavenny.’
‘I know,’ she interrupted and laid a finger to his lips. ‘However, you can take him with you to France. You could engineer a way for my brother to meet the king and argue his case directly.’
‘I could?’
‘And to do that he needs to be alive – I won’t let Geoffrey get himself killed chasing you into some stupid fight in the mountains. So I will have to stay with you, Raymond de Carew, to make sure that you don’t put him in too much danger on one of your adventures.’
Raymond laughed in response, not knowing what to say, only aware that Alice was standing very close to him.
Moments passed before Alice spoke again. ‘You are in love with Lady Basilia,’ she told him.
‘What?’ Raymond stepped away from her. ‘She is married to another man. She is a noblewoman and I am only...’ he tailed off and shrugged. ‘I am only Raymond the Fat,’ he said with a sorry smile, ‘and that will never be enough for someone like her, or her father.’
Alice smiled sympathetically. ‘I told myself that I was in love with William de Braose,’ she admitted and closed the gap between them. ‘At least I had convinced myself that he would promise me marriage as well as keeping Geoffrey safe and I stupidly gave him my maidenhood to ensure he kept his promise. But like all men, he lied.’
‘William de Braose is a fool.’
She nodded in answer but said nothing. Instead she suddenly grabbed Raymond by two clumps of his surcoat and kissed him hard upon the mouth.
‘Wait,’ he mumbled for a fraction of a second. ‘Wait,’ he appealed again. He needed time to consider what was happening.
‘They say that I am not a noblewoman,’ she told him as she withdrew from their kiss, ‘and I won’t be until we find a way to defeat William de Braose and reclaim Abergavenny. For now, you are what I want, Raymond de Carew.’
Seconds passed in the silence as their lips again came together. Suddenly Alice dragged Raymond into her room and threw the door shut behind them.
Chapter Three
Sir William de Braose was in no mood to be merciful. The men on their knees before him were Danes, their long-haired heads bowed as if resigned to the death that would soon take them. All of them, that was, except their leader who had to be tied like a hog awaiting slaughter. He still screamed profanities at the Lord of Abergavenny. The Dane was a giant of a man with bright red hair and a braided beard which sat like tusks on either side of his mouth. At his side were his axe and his fallen circular shield marked with the mask of a charging black boar.
‘Would someone please quiet that damned pirate?’ Sir William shouted at his warriors as the first light of the new morning spilled over the small hills to the east. Dull grey skies reflected in the puddled rainwater. In the distance cattle called for their morning fodder. ‘Shut up, shut up,’ Sir William mumbled in frustration as his men fought to gag their leader and avoid his attempts to bite them.
Sir William was learning to hate the Welsh March. He had thought that inheriting Abergavenny and Brecon would have meant liberation from an overbearing mother and an untrustworthy father, but it had brought nothing except violence and intrigue, problems, complications and obstacles. A day and a half in the saddle riding to Sweynsey had done nothing to improve his outlook.
It had been only a week since he had led a conrois of his warriors through the Gwent hills to recapture the ba
stards of Abergavenny, Alice and Geoffrey; a week since he should have secured his inheritance; a week since he had been embarrassed by Raymond de Carew. His anger at his treatment by Strongbow’s warlord had driven him to cross Wales and visit John de London, the effete Lord of Oystermouth and Sweynsey, in the hope of an alliance which would allow him to attack Striguil from two sides. But nothing that he said or promised would compel Sir John to join him in his revenge, and Sir William had turned for home even angrier than he had been before. That was when the thunderstorm had struck, forcing his soaking conrois to seek shelter for the night in Nedd Abbey. The abbot had not denied them beds, but had pleaded poverty when Sir William had asked for food and wine. Ornate tapestries showing the lives of the saints adorned the walls of the chapterhouse as the abbot had deprived hospitality to the dripping and shivering men at his door. Sir William knew that the wall hangings were expensive and new, possibly even imported from Flanders, and that there was no way that an abbey with that wealth on display could possibly be as destitute as the abbot claimed. His first impulse had been to force his way into the pantry and see for himself what was available to eat, but one look at the abbot’s rapacious face had stopped him.
‘Would this make a difference?’ he had asked, brandishing a heavy silver coin from his heavy purse. Of course it had been enough and the men of Abergavenny had gone to their beds happy and contented, if a little damp, with full bellies and the soothing effect of fine French wine.
God, it seemed, had been watching over the Cistercians of Nedd and their avaricious abbot. He had seen fit to send a storm to Wales and drive Sir William and his warriors to stay at the abbey on the very evening that the crew of Danes had come raiding.
Sir William could not remember the last time he had heard of Danes pillaging a monastery in England, though he did not doubt that it was still a common occurrence on the dangerous March of Wales. The abbey had no defences other than a high wall and it seemed to Sir William that the local lord, Richard de Grenville, was a dullard, for the Danes were upon them without warning or response from the wooden castle a little way downriver. Nonetheless, it had been a short fight. The Danes – less than thirty in number – had been caught totally unprepared to combat anything other than squealing clerics, and had no idea that there were knights sleeping in the same dormitory as the monks; knights with weapons close to hand. Some of the Danes had died in the tight corridors of the abbey as William de Braose’s warriors had spilled from the chapterhouse in full mail. Others had been killed in the open space and sanctity of the southern transept. Another group had put up a stiff fight in the grassy cloister, but all had eventually fled back towards the muddy river where their ship was moored. It wasn’t even half a mile, but the land was boggy and the retreating Danes laden with all the treasures they could carry. Sir William and his men, on horseback, had no such problem and had quickly outpaced the retreating raiders using a short path pointed out by the abbot. They had cut the foreigners off from their ship and had killed four men left to guard the vessel.
The Danish captain should have surrendered. The enemy had no chance of fighting their way past the thirty men of Abergavenny, but their giant of a leader forced his warriors to lock shields and advance, their swords and axes silver above their helmets. That was when Richard de Grenville had turned up with four of his household warriors on horseback and twenty more men on foot. The encircled Danes had been ordered to throw down their arms and they had complied, except for their captain who had killed one of the local men before being felled by a ringing sword blow upon his helmeted head. It hadn’t killed him, but while he was insensible Sir William had ordered him bound, knee and ankle, elbow and wrist.
‘I’ll kill you, bacraut!’ the Dane shouted in Sir William’s direction, having wrestled free of the gag. ‘If you were a man you’d fight me.’
That the savage could speak French surprised Sir William, but he ignored the captive man’s ire and turned to meet Sir Richard de Grenville. The Lord of Nedd was bearded and dressed like a Welshman, though he had chainmail and an elaborate Norman cloak which kept off the rain.
‘I’ve never heard the like of it,’ the old man coughed after swapping introductions with Sir William. It was cold and his breath turned to steam on the morning air as it escaped his mouth. ‘Bloody brigands! Here, by God, at Nedd.’
His heavily accented French annoyed Sir William. ‘You don’t watch the river at night?’
Sir Richard laughed, the rain spitting off the end of his nasal protector. ‘Who would? There hasn’t been an attack like this since my father was a boy. When my steward awoke me I thought it must be the bloody Welsh and that I was in real trouble. But this lot?’ He kicked the legs of the Danish captain, earning a wolfish snarl from the bound man. ‘They are good for nothing unless you want somebody murdered.’
His words echoed around Sir William’s head. ‘They do that sort of thing?’ he asked.
The Lord of Nedd shrugged. ‘They get up to all sorts for the right price.’ He scratched under his mail coif and began counting the Danes. ‘I’ll return the abbey’s belongings and you can have anything that is in the ship. I’ll take the ship itself. Agreed?’
‘And the crew?’ asked Sir William without assenting to his claim over the spoils of the fight. ‘What will become of them?’
Sir Richard took a long swig from a wineskin. He had thought to allow the younger man to take whatever trinkets the Danes had in the belly of their great ship, and leave him the merchandise of real value: the crewmen themselves. ‘I’ll hand them over to the sheriff in Cardiff, of course,’ he lied and wiped the wine from his lips. The truth was that the Danes would fetch a huge price in the great slave market of Dubhlinn in faraway Ireland and he needed their vessel to transport the captured men across the sea. ‘Unless you would prefer to hang them here and now?’ he chanced and held his breath.
Sir William did not answer immediately. Instead he turned his back on Sir Richard de Grenville and stood over the Danish raiders as if doing his own calculations of their worth. All had been ordered to sit down and their hands had been bound, but only their leader had to be hobbled like an animal. None could hold Sir William’s gaze.
‘Gamla vis Hruga uskit’r,’ the foreigners’ leader snarled in Sir William’s direction. The Dane had fallen onto his shoulder, his long red hair and beard sopping and dark. ‘Brísfaídh mé do magairlí,’ he added in a different tongue.
‘Help the Dane to his feet,’ Sir William ordered two of his warriors. The foreigner cursed at the two men and attempted to bite. He was a vast man who exuded violence. He was as big in the chest as Raymond de Carew, and his bare arms bulged with muscle, but he was also easily the tallest man that Sir William had ever encountered. Before he could begin to curse at him again, the Lord of Abergavenny held up his hand.
‘I have a proposition for you, Dane,’ he said. ‘It would be in your interest to listen to it for, in ten minutes time, my warriors and I will ride away and that man,’ he pointed towards Richard de Grenville, ‘will sell you and your crew into slavery. If, that is, he doesn’t hang you.’ While the fury in the Dane’s eyes did not depart, he did stop struggling. ‘I heard you speak the French tongue, so I know you understand me,’ Sir William coolly told him. ‘What is your name and where did you come from?’
For many seconds the man said nothing, simply staring back at the knight through narrow, suspicious eyes. ‘Release my bonds,’ he finally demanded and spat onto the ground close to Sir William’s feet. His hands were tied behind his back and that was where they remained as one of the Abergavenny warriors sliced apart the ropes on the Dane’s legs to allow him to stand. As the man went to free the remaining bonds, Sir William stopped him.
‘Your name?’ he demanded again.
He bared his teeth angrily at the command. ‘I am Sigtrygg Mac Ragnall Mac Giolla Mhuire, Jarl of Veðrarfjord. I am no Dane. Now, release me.’
In answer Sir William drew his own dagger from the base of his spine and dis
missed his warrior back to his companions and their watch over the crew. ‘My name is William de Braose, Lord of Abergavenny and Brecon,’ he replied as he walked behind Sigtrygg.
‘I don’t care who you are, boy,’ Jarl Sigtrygg replied as the first of his bonds at his elbows snapped apart. ‘Just say your piece and I’ll decide if I want to help you or not. Now,’ he stressed his words, ‘release my hands.’
The men from the nearby castle of Nedd were swarming over the ship and hunting through surrendered weapons for those better than their own armaments. One man had stripped a dead man of his chainmail and helmet and was testing his short sword to see if he liked the balance and weight.
‘You say that you are from … Wether ford?’ Sir William asked the jarl, struggling with the pronunciation of the strange word as his dagger danced upon the final piece of twine which fettered the captain’s hands. ‘Where is that?’
‘Veðrarfjord is in Ireland,’ Jarl Sigtrygg told him and tensed his arms to urge Sir William to grant freedom to his hands. With a moment’s hesitation, he nicked the ropes binding him, allowing Jarl Sigtrygg to pull his hands free of the restraints. Sir William didn’t immediately return the weapon to its sheath. Instead he watched the foreigner as intently as a shepherd would an unruly alaunt around his flock. Jarl Sigtrygg did not attack as he had feared. He simply nodded reassuringly towards his crewmen who returned the gesture.
‘So, William de Braose of Abergavenny and Brecon, tell me what you would have of me?’ Jarl Sigtrygg asked as he turned to face him.
‘A private matter,’ the knight replied. He hated that the giant man filled him with so much dread. He forced himself to return the dagger to its sheath and return Jarl Sigtrygg’s unwavering gaze with as much composure as he could summon. ‘It is an enterprise that will pay well and, more importantly, will save your hide from slavery or a hanging.’
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