‘Is that all?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Think, man. How did he bring the news?’
Gilbert lashed his memory. ‘He looked excited, sir, as I said. He – he waved his arms about.’
Baldwin scratched his chin. Making up his mind, he picked up a large cloak, fastened it round his shoulders, and beckoned. ‘Come with me.’ He paused at the doorway, turned, and growled to his secretary. ‘Finish those returns from the Bretons and the Angevins before you kneel down for your Vespers or Compline or whatever it is.’
Crispin sniffed.
Baldwin paused again outside the tent, and looked up at the night sky. He pulled his cloak tighter. ‘We shall have some frost, I should not wonder.’
The previous three days had been mild, but Gilbert decided it was better not to remind him of it.
Baldwin gestured. ‘Is that your horse?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘See to him. See the Magyar. Then meet me outside the Duke’s tent.’
The Duke’s tent! Gilbert was so excited that he did not trouble to try and hide his limp.
‘Welcome.’
Despite the fading light, Gilbert could see Sandor’s face shining with pleasure at seeing him. Sandor was one of those cherished people who always smiled when he met a friend.
Together they saw to the horse. Gilbert knew that there would be no more words until Sandor was satisfied that it was clean, dry, and comfortable.
He told as much of his story as he dared, following the little Magyar as he ambled to and fro in that rolling gait of his. Even when he was on foot, Gilbert thought, Sandor looked as if he ought to have a horse between his legs. Sailors were supposed to have a roll in their stride from their many hours on swaying decks as they crossed the sea. Did Sandor roll also because of his countless hours in the saddle when traversing the plains of his native Hungary?
Gilbert had heard many tales, and not only from Taillefer, about those monsters on horseback from the mists of time – the Huns. Their awful leader, Attila, was a fit companion for Satan and his devils in the fires of Hell. Whole cities, it was said, were consumed in the fires he lit on earth. Not even the mighty Romans could stand against them. They had swept into the Empire like a human pestilence, destroying all before them. And then, like a pestilence, they had raged, and they had gone. Just as God in His mercy saved enough of His people from the fury of a pestilence to enable life to stagger on, so He had in His inscrutable wisdom saved enough of Christendom to rebuild itself when He had sent the Huns back into their distant plains of eastern darkness.
As he watched Sandor muttering soothing nothings to his horse, Gilbert wondered whether this grubby little goblin of a man were descended from those Hunnish warriors of the deep past. He was the right size. His clothes stuck out wildly. His skin was dark with dirt. He reeked of horses. He had a magic touch with them. He was never tired after the longest ride. He spoke an outlandish tongue, not one word of which Gilbert could understand.
Yet he was no devil. Imp maybe, but no devil; he laughed too readily. He had a great skill with language too. He conversed easily in French, though his natural eagerness with words led him sometimes into hilarious error. Gilbert had also seen him round campfires with Bretons and Germans. He had a gift for fellowship. He made even the flat-faced Flemings laugh.
His skill with horses was wonderful to behold. Gilbert, conscious of his own gift with dogs and other animals, could appreciate it more than most. Indeed, he had fancied he himself knew about horses, until he met Sandor.
Now, as he watched Sandor run his hands over his own mount, he stopped talking. It was as if Sandor could read, from the skin and the mane and hooves and harness, what had happened during the last two days, without any words of confession.
The little Magyar looked up. ‘You have had the good luck,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Gilbert. ‘I have had the good luck.’
Sandor squinted up at him, causing spider-webs of wrinkles to form round his dark eyes. Then he shrugged. ‘I get some hay. You make your report.’
‘Mark my words,’ said Gorm. ‘No good will come of it.’
Edwin sighed at Gorm’s ability to look on the black side of everything. Gilbert had shaken hands. He was genuinely friendly. Of that Edwin was sure. Why else would he have carved that doll for Edith?
Rowena agreed with him. ‘Father, he was grateful. And he took nothing.’
Gorm staggered towards the door, and looked back for a moment. ‘He took knowledge. That will bring him back. And others too.’
He reeled out towards the mill house, and flopped on to a stool.
He had always solved his problems by moving on; it was easier. Now it was different. He was not the travelling jack-of-all-trades that everyone had always patronised and shunned and swindled. Making fun of his Danish accent. Now he was a miller; a man of substance. A freeman, holding land direct from the King himself. Sweyn now had an inheritance. He wiped sweat from his face. Dear God – was all this about to be taken from him?
Gilbert held his hands out to the blaze of the fire outside the great tent, and tried to look casual in front of the Duke’s personal servants as they aired fresh laundry and heated pots of water. Very shortly he would be in front of the Duke, on his own. For a moment he half regretted not having told Ralph beforehand; Ralph would have had some advice to offer. Too late now. He hitched up his belt. He had got himself into this, so had only himself to blame.
He recognised Baldwin’s voice, explaining. There was a short rumble of conversation. Then a pause.
‘Come.’
There was no mistaking the harsh, throaty voice. A tent flap lifted, and a finger beckoned. Gilbert ducked his head and went in.
A row of stubby candles had been stuck askew in flat iron candlesticks along a large trestle table. At one end were piled the remains of a simple meal. There was one giant pot of cider in the middle. Gloves and spurs were strewn here and there.
Gilbert noticed that only the Duke had a proper chair. Most of the others around him were on cheap stools. A few were making do with sawn-off logs. It was obvious that the Duke’s reputation for frugality and hard living on campaign was no legend put about to flatter the army. Baldwin’s tent seemed far more comfortable than this.
‘Step forward.’
Gilbert obeyed. He came closer to the light and could make out faces.
Bishop Odo of Bayeux, as usual, sat near the Duke. The candle flames scattered black smudges of shadow across his pockmarked face. His clerical tonsure made his undersized head look ridiculously small above the wide-shouldered episcopal robes.
Odo’s face and head were the butt of endless camp jokes – ‘His mother never knew she had dropped him; trod on his face when she stood up’ – but he was a man to be wary of. He was intelligent, mean-minded, and he never forgot a grudge.
Gilbert also recognised the Duke’s other half-brother, Robert, Count of Mortain. He had only half Odo’s brains, but he was solid and reliable, and good at following orders. His men liked him; nothing he did ever took them by surprise.
Sir Roger of Montgomery was there, and Fitzosbern, and Count Alan, leader of the Breton infantry. Gilbert’s old master, Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances, caught his eye and nodded faintly. A large man lounged in deep shadow at the back. No one sat near him. Oddly, he was the only one besides the Duke not drinking.
‘Sir Baldwin de Clair tells us you have news,’ said the Duke.
Gilbert swallowed. ‘I – I dare to hope so, my lord Duke.’
There was a pause.
‘Well, have you or not?’
The terse, impatient voice from the end of the table belonged to Sir Walter Giffard. Gilbert had good cause to remember it. He had once, at the gateway of Rouen castle, been rash enough to challenge Sir Walter as if he were a stranger. He smarted for days at the memory of the lashing he had received from Sir Walter’s tongue.
There was a good chance that Sir Walter could not recognise him in
the bad light, so Gilbert stood his ground and tried to explain what he meant.
The Duke questioned him on it. As Gilbert replied, William’s restless eyes flashed to left and right, weighing and testing the effect the answers had on the men around him. Odo and Fitzosbern added their own enquiries. Gilbert surprised himself with his own nerve. Perhaps Sir Baldwin’s grilling had stiffened his back just a little. He held to his story about a group of refugees, and to the one word – ‘north’.
A general muttering followed, and the cider pot was passed round. The Duke did not take any. Neither did the big man in the shadows.
The Duke nodded to Bishop Odo, who banged on the table with the handle of his dagger. The company continued to lounge and drink, but all voices ceased at once, and all eyes turned to the Duke. Gilbert was impressed; it was a curious mixture of informality and absolute control.
William sat back, totally still save for the darting eyes. ‘Fitz,’ he said. ‘Sum it up.’
Sir William Fitzosbern leaned forward, and put his hands together like a judge. Gilbert, not sure whether to withdraw or to stay, looked for help to his old master, Geoffrey de Montbrai, and asked a question with his eyebrows. Geoffrey frowned and nodded for him to remain.
‘Our scouts bring us mere threads,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘We can not yet weave them into a clear tapestry. Indeed we can make only outline patterns, and several possible patterns at that.
‘First, nobody has seen Harold. Nobody has seen an army. When we crossed, nobody saw a fleet. Yet we know they exist.’
‘The fleet does not matter now,’ said Walter Giffard. ‘We are here.’
‘It will matter if they return to blockade us,’ said a voice at the back. ‘How do we get home?’
‘We are here to discuss means of victory, not of retreat,’ snapped the Duke. ‘Fitz, continue.’
‘Wherever the fleet has gone,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘it will not trouble us for the time being. At best Harold has disbanded it. If the weather broke it up, that suits our purpose too. If, as we suspect, they have moved to London, they will find it difficult to beat back to Hastings against the wind. It is most unlikely that they took the army on board with them. So we can discount the English fleet.’
‘Harold and the army remain,’ said Montgomery.
‘And the northern earls,’ said Robert of Mortain.
‘Edwin and Morcar will not trouble us,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘At any rate not yet. Their charge is to watch the northern coast against Hardrada. It must be. Harold would not strip the north of all defences. The winds in September were from the north. Harold must have expected Hardrada’s invasion first.’
‘You mean he stripped the south of all defences?’ said Giffard. ‘Sounds just as stupid to me.’
‘No,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘I think that is equally unlikely. Harold is too good a general for that. You all saw him in Brittany in ’sixty-four. Did he seem a fool?’
‘He could be relying on a quick victory,’ said Giffard, unwilling to surrender a point too easily. ‘A forced march, a sudden attack, another forced march back.’
‘Have you any idea, Walter, how far it is to Northumbria from Sussex? From our best information, it is more than two hundred miles. That makes a round trip of over four hundred miles, maybe five hundred. Could you march an army over five hundred miles in three weeks?’
Giffard offered no answer.
‘I could not do it,’ admitted Roger of Montgomery. ‘But Harold might.’
‘If he had enough horses,’ said Odo.
‘The English fight on foot,’ said Geoffrey de Montbrai, unable to resist the temptation to correct his brother-bishop.
Odo rose with relish to the apparent challenge. ‘There is nothing to stop them travelling on horseback, like anyone else. I should have thought that much was obvious.’
Geoffrey flushed, but kept his temper. ‘We are indebted to my lord of Bayeux, as ever, for pointing out the obvious.’
Before Odo could think of a suitably stinging reply, his brother Mortain came in with another possibility.
‘He could have gone north with a small detachment, just to take command.’
‘No,’ said the Duke. ‘He is a sure leader. He knows how to delegate authority. His plan was sensible. He guards the south, and Edwin and Morcar guard the north. If he trusted them enough to put them there, he would leave them there.’
The company fell silent, unable or unwilling to challenge the firmness of the Duke’s argument. Gilbert, stiff from much riding, and still in some pain, furtively eased his bad ankle as much as he dared.
Fitzosbern cleared his throat. ‘Unless – the situation has changed.’
‘You mean Hardrada has landed?’ said Giffard, pouncing.
‘Not only landed, but won a victory,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘Consider our information. Harold’s army can not be located. Yet we know it was here during the summer. All our reports and interrogations confirm it. So we are driven to assume that he has moved. He can not move south without loading his troops on to his ships, and his ships are not there. He can not move east without our scouts knowing. He has no reason to move west; the west is under no threat either from us or from Norway. So he must have moved north. What we do not know for sure is, how far.’
‘Waiting in London, ready to leap either way? Is that what you mean?’ said Odo.
‘That is one explanation,’ said Fitzosbern.
‘Sounds reasonable,’ conceded Giffard.
‘But not likely,’ said Geoffrey, once again disagreeing with Odo.
‘Why not?’
‘If Harold were going to do that, he would have done it earlier.’
‘He might have been driven there by lack of food in Sussex,’ said Montgomery.
‘In harvest time?’ said the Duke. ‘Never. There is food everywhere. You have heard the scouts’ reports. Even we have good supplies, and we are the invaders.’
Baldwin felt it necessary to modify this unwarranted optimism. Like all quartermasters, he had a constitutional inability to admit to ample provisions.
‘I can not say I am entirely happy yet, my lord. Reinforcements, though always welcome, constantly add to our problems.’
‘Supplies or no supplies,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘my guess is that Harold has gone further than London. Look at the news we have. Whispers in Kent of a battle somewhere north. Our English-speaking scouts testify to this. That merchant ship we captured off Dover – fleeces from East Anglia. They told us of rumours about a Viking host. What was it? A fleet “more plentiful than the pebbles on the shore”.’ He smiled wryly.
‘Always exaggerate, the English,’ said Alan of Brittany.
Gilbert saw several grins. Count Alan, the commander of the wildest story-stretchers in the army, looked blank. The joke was lost on him.
Fitzosbern continued. ‘Then comes the latest murmur in the wind, from – um – from this man.’ He pointed at Gilbert. ‘It confirms our suspicions about something in the north. And it may also help to explain Harold’s absence.’
Giffard glanced significantly at Montgomery beside him. ‘He has gone north to do battle with Hardrada. What I said.’
‘True, Walter,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘but not for the reasons you think.’ He paused to give effect to his next remark. ‘I think it possible that Harold has gone north, not to fight the first battle with Hardrada, but the second.’
Giffard stared. ‘What?’
‘Look,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘We accept that Harold is no fool. I agree with his Grace that Harold would leave the defence of Northumbria to Edwin and Morcar.
‘Now, suppose the Vikings land. Edwin and Morcar must attack, and quickly. They have no choice. Every commander must strike at an enemy beachhead with all speed, before supplies arrive and positions are consolidated.
‘If Hardrada has landed, there must have been a battle. If Edwin and Morcar were successful, Hardrada is either a corpse, a prisoner, or a fugitive. There would be no need for Harold to move north. On the contrary
, he would have every reason to move south with all speed against us. We should have Saxon war cries in our ears by now. The fact that Harold is nowhere near means he has received bad news. His northern host is broken. He has only one army remaining. He has moved to strike at Hardrada before Hardrada recovers from the first battle.’
Mortain frowned. ‘But you said he would not take such a risk.’
‘Not with two armies at his disposal,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘But with one? What choice does he have? To stay in Sussex and wait for us to land, knowing that Hardrada is spoiling the northern and middle shires behind his back? It would be intolerable. He is a king. He must defend his people. Why are we wasting so much land round here? Because we know that many estates here belong to Harold. We want him to strike at us in rage before his army is in full order.’
Fitzosbern sat back. ‘No, as I see it, Harold has taken the only course open to him. To march that two hundred miles and surprise Hardrada. You never know; he might do it. Vikings are raiders; they are not campaigners. Harold might catch them unprepared.’
‘Then what?’ said Odo.
‘Then,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘he comes south again. He must have heard of our landing by now. He will try to catch us too.’
‘Never!’ said Giffard, bristling.
‘That will not stop him trying,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘He has no means of knowing how far forward our preparations are. His army, by all reports, is bigger than ours. Saints! He would have every reason for trying.’
Blank faces around the table registered doubt and disbelief. There were one or two mutterings of injured pride. Fitzosbern refused to be put off, and, unlike Odo and Giffard, refused also to become indignant. He reached out towards one of the iron candlesticks, and began twiddling it. When he spoke, it was as if he were communing with himself.
‘Consider the temptation – not one lightning stroke, but two, and two invaders chased into the sea. It would give him a golden reputation for life.’
‘We have no proof he has achieved the first yet,’ said Giffard.
‘We have one small hint,’ said Fitzosbern. He stopped twiddling and pointed towards Gilbert. ‘This man’s report.’
The Last Conquest Page 9