Lord of the Sea Castle

  ‘That witness claims he recognises the dead man for he saw him twice yesterday,’ Fionntán translated. ‘The first time was in the slave market with Jarl Sigtrygg while the second was when he was caught in the woods attempting to steal the konungr’s belongings and was summarily sent to meet his maker.’

  Jarl Sigtrygg sneered and again demanded to know what he was accused of stealing, but Raymond could tell that the production of the bodies had him rattled. Trygve ignored his rival as a last body was brought forward. It was the man who had been spying on Waverider, still with an axe buried in his head and his dead eyes staring at the heavens. As the dead man was draped on the edge of the gully alongside the first two, the lawspeaker turned to Raymond and asked him a question.

  ‘Do you swear to tell the truth on pain of death?’ Fionntán asked on the old man’s behalf. Raymond nodded and the Gael delivered his answer in the Danish tongue. ‘What did you see last night?’ he asked.

  Raymond looked at Trygve and then at Jarl Sigtrygg. Both were listening intently to his answer, one encouragingly the other with barely concealed contempt.

  ‘I will kill you and skin your children alive if you speak lies against me, Englishman,’ Jarl Sigtrygg shouted across at him. ‘I will sail down to your little fort and kill every man, woman and child I find there. I will…’

  ‘I anchored in the river close to the eastern shore,’ Raymond interrupted. ‘Having been attacked at the slave market I thought it best that we remain in the river’s midst and so keep the peace in Cluainmín.’ Beside him, Fionntán interpreted his words for the benefit of the people of gathered. ‘One of my men heard a clash of arms in the forest close to the riverbank and we saw that man,’ Raymond paused to point at Jarl Sigtrygg’s spy who was laid out to his left, ‘fighting with a brave young warrior.’ The captain grimaced as he indicated towards Trygve’s son. ‘Despite the darkness, my men and I watched as the two taunted and shouted at each other. Then they charged and with their last blows they each felled the other. It was only later that my friend,’ he put a hand on Fionntán’s shoulder, ‘told me what they had said before they had died.’ Raymond paused and bowed his head. When he said nothing for a few seconds Trygve barked a question in his direction.

  ‘What did I say?’ Fionntán asked nervously.

  Raymond levelled a finger at Sigtrygg’s crewman. ‘He said that when his jarl came back a-viking there would be silver for all who helped him.’

  The Þing erupted with noise as Fionntán reluctantly translated Raymond’s words. He then closed his eyes and began murmuring a prayer, but Raymond’s words had the desired effect – Trygve leapt to his feet and began issuing orders for his men to kill the men of Veðrarfjord while Jarl Sigtrygg’s men produced weapons of their own in an effort to defend themselves. The townsfolk to Raymond’s right squeaked in worry and began running away from the fighting, immediately swarming around the Norman and the Gael as they fought their way out of the gully.

  ‘Raymond!’ Jarl Sigtrygg screamed as his men fell back from the blades of Trygve’s men. For a second their eyes locked over the fighting and fleeing people as they were swept in opposite directions. ‘Raymond, you whoreson,’ the jarl yelled. ‘You are a liar. I know nothing of any silver and you damn well know it.’ In his fury, Jarl Sigtrygg was all but oblivious to the fighting that took place an arm’s breadth from him. His crewmen had to drag him away from the gully, along the ridge as they defended themselves from Trygve’s warriors. ‘We shall meet again soon, Englishman,’ Jarl Sigtrygg shouted. ‘I will bring the whole host of Veðrarfjord and burn you out of your little fort. I’ll let my axe do its work then,’ he bellowed as he brought his short sword down on the arm of one of the warriors who threatened him. ‘And all who stand beside you will die or burn.’ He pointed his weapon at the captain before fleeing down the far side of the gully and out of Raymond’s sight.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ Fionntán whispered at his side.

  ‘Come on,’ Raymond said and pulled the Gael back towards the tents where they had left their weapons. They had to dodge through the agitated crowd and by the time Raymond had his sword and mace back at his side all but a few of the people were left in the area and were on the street back towards the town.

  ‘What now?’ asked Fionntán. ‘Back to Waverider?’

  Raymond shook his head and raised his chin as Trygve appeared at the top of the hill above them. He waddled towards them with a smile on his face and embraced Raymond, squashing his rich adornments against the captain’s chest. He then babbled at Fionntán.

  ‘Jarl Sigtrygg and his men have fled. The konungr claims that if that is not the sign of his guilt then he does not know what is. The jarl had horses waiting in a copse a little way to the north and was able to fight his way there and make good his escape. He thanks you for your evidence and says it made all the difference.’

  Raymond smiled as Trygve slapped him on the arm. ‘Tell him I don’t fully understand what I said that was so controversial, but that I am glad that the truth was of benefit to Cluainmín. Give him my condolences for the death of his son.’

  Konungr Trygve began laughing.

  ‘He says that he has plenty more sons and that none of them will be taking part in any attack on Dun Domhnall,’ said Fionntán. ‘He also says that he will make our trip home quicker than that which brought us to Cluainmín.’ The Gael looked confused as he translated Trygve’s words.

  ‘How?’ Raymond asked. ‘Is there some river system that we do not know about?’

  Trygve grinned at that and shook his head as he replied.

  ‘He says that we will be faster because he will see us on our way lighter by those six casks of the beautiful French wine which you promised him,’ Fionntán interpreted.

  Raymond nodded appreciatively at the jest. ‘First the wine and then we are for home.’

  Chapter Ten

  Alice of Abergavenny watched as the crew of Waverider pulled one last time at the oar to build up speed. The hiss of the wooden keel as it slid up the sand could even be heard high up on the headland of Dun Domhnall where she stood. Laughter rose from the ship and Alice gasped as she watched her brother leap over the side of the ship with a rope in hand and land in the shallows, water reaching his middle and a smile upon his face. A month ago he would not have been so audacious. Raymond’s influence had rubbed off on her brother. She grimaced with sudden jealousy.

  ‘Good, they are back,’ said Borard from Alice’s side. Bare-chested and sweating, he was nursing his right arm where a large purple bruise was beginning to appear. ‘You see that?’ he said showing his injury to Alice. ‘Hell of a bang I’ve got there.’

  Alice said nothing and kept her gaze directly ahead. She had felt too many eyes stealing glances as she moved around the fort while Raymond was absent. She knew what they wanted. Her gaze drifted away from her brother, who anchored the ship to a tree on the cliff face, and towards Raymond de Carew. Infuriatingly, he was smiling. Even overseeing the unloading of goods from a ship, he was still having a good time. What, she wondered, was so funny about fruit, leather shoes, skins and barrels of live mullet, plaice and crab?

  ‘Of course,’ Borard continued, inching closer to Alice with his arm held out, ‘when you play our game you are lucky to come out of it with your head intact,’ he laughed. The game of which he spoke involved two teams of mounted men throwing a dog pelt stuffed with wool around outside the bailey. There were rules of course, but they were rarely enforced and usually the Norman game ended with a fistfight when competitiveness made way for anger.

  ‘So, you and Raymond, eh?’ Borard said through pursed lips. ‘Or are you…?’ he allowed his words to stretch hopefully.

  ‘How dare you,’ Alice gasped and stepped away with a look of sheer fury on her face, recognising immediately what the warrior was implying.

  ‘No, no. You misunderstand...’ Borard began to say as she stormed away from him, downhill towards the double embattlements; anywhere to get away
from the warriors of Dun Domhnall. Wolf-whistles screeched around her as Alice dashed past the two guards on the gate.

  ‘How are you, lovely lady?’ another man said as she scampered through the bailey, dry mud crumbling under foot as she increased her speed. ‘Come on back here and give me a smooch. You could pretend that I was the Young King,’ he laughed and made a kissing sound.

  Alice was blushing now and tried to walk towards Raymond’s new cattle pens with as much dignity as she could muster. The cows stirred in their enclosure, looking for food, but Alice scuttled past towards the main gate where a lone warrior sat beside the inner gate. When he turned to look at her, Alice was horrified to see that it was the leper, Ferrand.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he croaked, letting her get close before speaking. There was no warmth in his voice and Alice shied away from him rather than breathe the air which Ferrand exhaled.

  ‘I’m going for a walk, to greet my brother.’

  Ferrand watched her, his eyes sunken beneath the gnarled and granulated folds of diseased skin which gave him such a suspicious look. ‘Captain Raymond will want some dinner.’

  ‘He can get it himself.’

  ‘Yes, he could,’ he said, reaching out to take her blue sleeve. ‘But I would rather you made the effort.’

  ‘Why?’ she stormed, tearing her arm from his hand.

  ‘Because you owe him a great deal and you getting him a few meals will be a great comfort to him.’ Ferrand said calmly. ‘He made himself an outlaw for you.’

  ‘I didn’t ask him to save me,’ Alice replied, feeling her anger rise. ‘I didn’t need his help.’

  Ferrand’s hand shot out again and grabbed Alice by the cheeks, twirling her so that she faced the same direction as him, his chest against her shoulder blades. ‘Look,’ he said, shaking her face painfully.

  Alice was shocked and sore, and disgusted that the leper was touching her skin. ‘Let me go,’ she exclaimed through her pinched cheeks.

  ‘Look,’ he stressed and shook her again. ‘Up on the hill, who do you see?’

  Alice adjusted her gaze and saw that Borard had followed her out of the ancient fort and was standing watching the sea. ‘Him. Borard.’

  ‘Did he have to ask Raymond to save him? Borard disappeared from Striguil one day, right out of the blue, and Raymond spent a week hunting him down. He finally found him, penniless and drunk out of his mind, in a Gloucester gutter. The captain convinced Strongbow to take him back into his service and now Raymond keeps his pay safe so that he can’t kill himself with booze and can buy himself a farm when he gets too old to keep up with the conrois.’

  Ferrand flipped her around so that she saw William de Vale, the esquire, as he tended to his armour and shared a joke with Dafydd FitzHywel. She could feel his breath hot on her neck.

  ‘William’s father sold his sword to Maredudd ap Gruffydd and helped him take Llansteffan Castle from Maurice FitzGerald of Pembroke. No noble knight would take his son on as his apprentice because they feared to offend Sir Maurice, but Raymond was willing to upset his own uncle in order to give the boy a chance at making a future for himself.’ His voice hissed in her ear. ‘And Dafydd? He is a mongrel son of a Welshman and a lowborn Norman lady – who else but Raymond would’ve had him in his service?’ With that he let Alice go, allowing her to spin around to face him. ‘And then there is the poor leper who had been dismissed from every door in Gwent, but Raymond gave him back his sword and gave him the chance to find a noble death in battle rather than a shameful end as a pauper in the streets. Everyone in Dun Domhnall owes Raymond loyalty, girl, in one manner or another. And we all have our ways of paying him back.’

  Alice did not answer, but backed away from Ferrand before fleeing through the gate and into the darkness between the battlements. She could not accept that she owed Raymond anything; he had taken what he wanted from her when he had the chance and in return had provided nothing – no meeting with the king and no route to regaining Abergavenny. Anger infused Alice’s chest as she skirted the deeper patches of mud which appeared amongst the carpet of woodchips. Her fury took her past the four archers who lounged on the wood barbican and out into the grasslands beyond the walls of Dun Domhnall. Yelps and whoops and thundering hooves immediately surrounded Alice as she was presented with a game of charging horsemen. The trampled grass led a path across the peninsula, and then a full mile inland before the game had brought the Normans back towards the gates of the fort. As well as the noise from the men in the free-for-all, there was more from those on horseback who circled outside the main fracas, shouting encouragement and tactics.

  Alice frowned and turned to her right, skirting along the wall to escape the danger of the horses. Though she had said she had wanted to greet her brother, she turned northwards to avoid the beach where Waverider was landed. She knew of a little copse which hid a small, private cove. The steep sides meant that horses could not venture down into its belly and she knew that the little inlet would provide her with the solitude she so craved, away from Borard, Ferrand and Raymond de Carew. She had only arrived at the top of the small bay when she heard more hooves, thumping into sand and coming in her direction.

  ‘Oh, what now?’ she asked and climbed over a root so that she could hide. In the shadow of the rowan tree she was well hidden and was able to see over the slope of the hill and down to the beach where a beautiful black horse without a rider thundered towards her. Foam was at the gelding’s mouth and Alice could tell that he was terrified. Without thinking she began to clamber out from behind the tree with the aim of scaling the cliff and soothing the wayward horse. Before she could move Alice saw Raymond in the distance as he detached himself from the crew of Waverider and began jogging down the beach towards her. She ducked back amongst the shadows to watch him. The skirts of his bright surcoat splayed out as Raymond trotted up the beach and Alice could see that he was scaring the horse even further.

  ‘Idiot,’ she whispered. Alice could see that the gelding felt trapped, swinging his head and circling nervously below the cliff face as he searched for a way to flee from Raymond. The horse must have been bought in the Ostman town to the north, Alice thought, and had broken free of Raymond’s men when brought to shore.

  Raymond, she saw, had slowed down and now walked slowly towards the gelding with his hands in the air, singing a tune which she recognised as one her mother had sung when trying to get her brother to go to sleep in their youth. He had a long length of rope over his shoulder and shoved a long stick into the sand close to the surf, tying the rope to the top and then slowly pulled the length taut as it stretched to the cliff face. The horse watched him nervously, twenty metres away at the furthest point from the sea and the Norman where the rocks formed an impassable barrier. Raymond next unbuckled his sword belt and threw his colourful surcoat across the centre of the makeshift fence. This only made the gelding toss his mane and stamp his hooves more furiously.

  Alice watched intently. She had seen many warriors attempt to tame young horses when her father had ruled Abergavenny. They had always preferred to intimidate the animals with whips until they were too terrified to flee any further and finally relented to whatever their new masters required. Raymond had no whip as he ducked under the rope fence. Instead, Alice watched him do something particularly strange: he sat down on the sand with his back to the gelding and placed an apple on top of his head.

  The gelding shifted uneasily in the furthest corner from Raymond, the constantly shifting sea and the terrifying fence, eying the strange behaviour of the warrior with suspicion. Alice was equally puzzled by his peculiar inactivity and for many minutes reflected on what he was doing. The gelding soon provided her with an answer as his curiosity won over his fear and, making sure to keep an eye on the Norman, he slowly circled closer. The red apple was a huge inducement while the waves tumbling onto the shore and the fence draped with his surcoat remained a major concern. However, the gelding slowly neared Raymond and then, after another long pause and flic
kering of ears, he reached out with grasping lips to peck the apple from his head. Retreating a few steps for fear of a trap, the gelding stopped suddenly to chew the tasty treat and continue to observe the human who acted so differently to those who had hurt him and imprisoned him on the terrifying ship. A burst of noise from Waverider, a little down the beach, sent the horse’s ears into crazed twitches, but another apple appeared immediately on Raymond’s head and without thinking the horse plodded forward to take the tasty fruit. This time, rather than bouncing away, he stood over the sitting man to eat the apple.

  Alice watched as Raymond placed another apple on his head, letting his hand linger so that when the gelding inevitably reached for the fruit he was able to pat the side of the horse’s face and soothe him with a few words. It was only when he started to get to his feet that the gelding spooked and shied away from him. Raymond didn’t stop smiling as he quickly walked towards the horse, away from the beach to the point furthest from the sea and fence. Once there he placed another apple on his head and began waiting while the gelding began to trot anxiously around the centre of the enclosure. For many minutes the horse pondered the twin terrors of ocean and fence before moving tentatively towards the Norman warlord.

  As soon as the gelding was within three paces Raymond walked away, holding the apple on his head. From her hiding place, Alice giggled as the gelding trotted after Raymond and for the next ten minutes Strongbow’s captain led the horse in a merry dance around the small enclosure. Even when Raymond walked into the surf, kicking a shower of water high in the air as he ploughed through, the horse followed behind him and, when the Norman kicked over the fence, the horse followed, stepping over the surcoat that had scared him so badly moments before. Alice watched Raymond give the horse a fourth apple, amazed at the change in the gelding’s demeanour after such a short space of time. Raymond was even able to slip a leather bridle over the young horse’s muzzle and then give him a large hug around the neck.