Hereward 03 - End of Days (21 page)

The knight did not follow, for which she was thankful. For a while, she searched among the huts until she saw Acha beckoning from the rear of one of the makeshift workshops. When she hurried over, she found Hereward crouching beside a barrel of stagnant water.

Rowena waited for the edge of his tongue, but he only said, ‘I am in your debt.’

‘Is Kraki with you?’ Acha whispered.

The Mercian shook his head. ‘I am alone. There is less danger that way.’

As he looked from one woman to the other, Rowena blurted, ‘I am here to kill the king.’ She expected shock, or anger, or ridicule, but the warrior only nodded his head. He seemed to understand her. She found that strange. She barely understood herself.

He stood up, still keeping his head down. ‘It is not my place to tell you your business,’ he said in a gentle tone, ‘but take care. And do not throw your life away needlessly.’

She stuck out her chin. ‘You risk your own neck.’

‘So that others may live without the yoke of the Normans around theirs.’ He hesitated, choosing words that did not seem to come easily to him. ‘I know what is in your heart,’ he began. ‘There are days when I would throw my life away in an instant to find vengeance for the murder of my wife. But I have been shown there is no gain in that, and, if I could, I would show you the same.’

She looked into his face. Turbulent emotions moved just beneath the surface. In days gone by, she had been angry with him, and scared of him, but now she felt sorry for him. Whatever he was fighting seemed great indeed.

‘Would Elwin wish you to die to avenge him?’ he asked.

She winced. Tears flecked her eyes at the memory of her husband.

‘Even if you would live …’ he held out a hand to her, ‘there is a danger in allowing yourself to be consumed by such a desire. The prize you seek may be more painful than the hurt you now feel. And success may not be the salve you hope.’

She nodded. ‘You are kind.’

‘I know my words will not turn you from your path here and now.’ He smiled. ‘I have lived through this. But I would hope you will think on what I have said, and in days to come see the truths of it. I would not see you harmed,’ he added, then turned to Acha. ‘Nor you. Kraki needs you.’

The other woman looked down, chastened. ‘I cannot return to Ely until I am sure Rowena is safe,’ she said quietly.

Hereward frowned, puzzled by what he was hearing. ‘That is a noble cause. But again, take care. You are in a nest of vipers here.’ He glanced around to be sure they were not being watched. Then he pulled up his hood, nodded his thanks once again, and slipped away.

Dusk came too fast.

Once Acha had found work with a noble newly arrived from Normandy, Rowena said farewell. Her friend’s new master was an ascetic man, not given to grand displays, and Rowena walked away in confidence that Acha would be safe with him. Yet she felt unprepared for the pang of loneliness she felt as she trudged up the track to Belsar’s Hill, or her apprehension at the enormity of what lay ahead. At times, she paused by the side of the road, afraid she might lose her stomach. Hereward’s words haunted her, but she forced herself to carry on.

As night fell, the whores waited under the torches by the gate. They were a poor band. Some missed eyes, or hands. Others bore the scars of the pox on their faces. Their dresses were filthy and threadbare. Most were drunk. As Rowena drew near, two women rolled in the dirt, biting and scratching and tearing at their hair. Their curses were worse than any she had heard the Norman soldiers utter.

On the edge of the group, she stood with her head lowered. She hoped she would not draw attention to herself, but she could feel eyes upon her, and when she glanced up the stares were murderous. As she heard the guards drawing the bar on the gates, she turned away and muttered a prayer. What she was about to do was a sin and she would pay with her soul; the churchmen had said that time and again. Endure a man’s affections only to quicken with child, they said. Most of the wives she had spoken to laughed at such things. They rolled with their husbands by choice. They did not lie there and cry, as the Norman women did, or so it was said. But still she feared God’s wrath for her whoring. Yet doomed though
she felt herself to be, still she believed it a price worth paying.

As the gates trundled open, she turned back and put on a smile that promised much. She noticed the other women doing the same. The two whores who had been fighting jumped up and brushed themselves down. Dragging fingers through their tangled hair, they darted into the camp.

Rowena shuffled in behind them, feeling her panic rise with each step. As the other women dashed along the narrow tracks, trilling and calling, she walked slowly, sizing up the men who watched her with lascivious eyes. She ignored the brutish and the low-born. Though her cheeks flushed at their cruel insults when she spurned their advances, she walked on, searching for the commanders or the noblemen who might bring her closer to the king’s gyre.

In the end, she smiled at a high-ranking soldier who had a tent close to the castle enclosure. He was gentle and he had an easy nature, but as he lay atop her thrusting and grunting she closed her eyes and ran with visions of stabbing her knife into his neck until she was drenched with his blood. Afterwards, they talked for a while, and she learned how the king would sometimes wander through the lower camp, booming encouragement to his men. She felt better for that, for it was something she thought she might be able to use. But after she had taken his coin, she stumbled out to the dark near the walls, where she sat and heaved silent, juddering sobs long into the night.

When she had dried her eyes, she stood up and wandered back through the camp. The coin she had earned would buy her a berth in one of the tents the other whores used, and some warm food for her belly the next day.

Choking smoke swirled across the camp. The fires glowed in the dark wherever she looked. But now that most of the men were sleeping or drunk or both, an uneasy stillness had fallen across the hilltop. At least the din that rang out during the day had distracted her. Now she had only her thoughts for company, and they were the last thing she needed.

As she wandered towards the torches over the gates, a tremendous exhaustion settled on her. She glanced up at the vast vault of heaven and felt an aching loneliness. The hopelessness of it all was near too much to bear.

‘You are far from home.’

Her heart pattered as she whirled around, looking for the source of the voice. ‘Who goes?’

A figure was silhouetted against one of the fires. ‘There is no need to be afraid. It is only I.’

She clenched her fingers around the knife in her cloak. When he turned slightly and the orange flames lit his face, she saw it was Deda. ‘I do not know you,’ she said.

‘I think you do.’ He took a step forward.

‘Stay back,’ she snapped. The knife felt hard in her hand. ‘I have never seen you before.’

He laughed, though gently. ‘I never forget any woman who spits in my face. That seems only courteous.’

‘I fled Ely,’ she said, changing course. ‘There was nothing for me there.’

‘You are looking for your husband. Did you find him?’

‘Yes,’ she lied. ‘He works on the causeway.’

He nodded, but she could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe her. Glancing around the camp, he said, ‘And you are here to … spit at me again?’

Rowena couldn’t think what to say. He stepped forward another pace and she saw his nose wrinkle. He could smell the musk of fornication upon her. He frowned, puzzling over some thought or other.

‘Please, I must go,’ she said, attempting to push by him.

He did not move. ‘You have nothing to fear from me.’ She was surprised to hear a note of compassion in his voice. ‘Many women in these parts have had their menfolk taken from them. It is a harsh treatment. You … all you English … deserve better.’ He stepped aside and bowed, sweeping out one arm to guide her way. ‘Go in peace.’

Rowena hurried by. She did not look back until she reached
the gates, and by then Deda was nowhere to be seen. And yet his words echoed in her head, and they troubled her in a way she did not understand.

She did not want his pity. It was his kind that had slain all the joy in her life. And if she had to, she would kill him as well.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-E
IGHT

‘
THE KING HAS
signed a pact with the Devil,’ the white-haired tanner hissed. He looked around the sullen faces gathered by the campfire in the dawn chill of the causeway settlement. The men jeered, their breath steaming. He had a reputation for tall stories, this one. Scowling, the leatherworker shook his fist. ‘The Bastard’s men stopped by my workshop at first light and paid good coin for new scabbards,’ he insisted. ‘A witch has come forth to aid the king, they said. Her spells will win the war for the Normans.’

‘You are frit of an old wise woman?’ Hereward held his hands to the flames, warming the chill from his bones after a sleepless night in the reed-beds. He had expected Harald Redteeth to turn the settlement upside down searching for him. But the Viking must have believed any sane man would have fled this nest of vipers, and so he should have, but there was still too much to learn.

‘I am frit of the Devil.’ The tanner circled his finger and thumb to ward off evil.

‘The English have the arm of St Oswald,’ the Mercian murmured as he felt the life come back to his numb fingers. ‘God is on their side. What is a witch next to that?’

‘Aye, all well and good,’ the tanner replied. ‘In days gone any Norman would have been afrit of that.’ He lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘But they are scared of this witch more. I could see it in their faces. Each warrior wore a new wooden cross round his neck, and they touched it whenever they spoke of her. And if the Normans are frit of her … the Normans …’ He let his words tail off, knowing that every man there could complete the sentence.

‘I will believe this when I see it with my own eyes,’ Hereward said. He pulled his cloak tighter around him. The wind was raw that morning.

Beyond the crackle of the campfire, footsteps were pounding down the track from the camp atop Belsar’s Hill. Clutching their ale-cups, the men rose, squinting through the twirling smoke. A group of the king’s men swept by.

‘Trouble,’ someone muttered.

Hereward watched the warriors race to the waterside. Bleary-eyed sailors, their faces leathered by the wind, stirred from their morning bowls as a line of long shields locked into a wall along the quay. Under the sullen gaze of the fishermen, a gang of the soldiers began to search all the vessels moored along the wharf.

‘What are they looking for?’ another man grunted.

High up on the hill, a steady beat like a war-drum thumped. The Mercian stiffened. He recognized that sound. The Normans were clashing their swords upon their shields, ready for battle and blood.

He had been too confident, he knew that now. The king’s men surely were coming for him.

Darting on to the track beyond the workshops, he peered up to the camp. Sure enough, a war-band was heading his way. Only ten of them, but it was enough. The soldiers plunged into the edge of the settlement, tearing open tents and dragging men, women and children from the warmth of their huts. Any who complained were hauled to the side of the rutted track and beaten until they could not stand. One man shook his fist. Four
soldiers grabbed him and pinned him down, arm outstretched. A fifth took his blade and hacked through the wrist. The man’s screams silenced the growing outcry.

Hereward turned away, trembling with fury. To stand by and do nothing in the face of such cruelty was almost more than he could bear.

More clashing shields echoed from the camp gates. He wrenched around and saw soldiers gathering across the north road. The noose was slowly tightening about his neck.

He loped to the edge of the huts and peered across beds of reeds and patches of long, yellowing grass stretching out to the willows in the distance. The ground was swampy. Even if he could make his way across it, a lone figure in that desolate waste would be easily visible. Like a wolf at bay, the Mercian felt his savage nature call to him. If his devil rose there, with no way to turn, it would only make things worse for him, of that there could be no doubt.

Behind him he could hear the sound of the raid drawing ever nearer.

A screech rang out across the settlement, like an owl at hunt. He jerked around. Another shriek echoed, and then another, until a constant shrill stream silenced every other voice. In that discordant sound, he began to hear a chilling music.

Folk began to creep towards the track and he slipped in among them.

A wild-haired woman was making her way out of a large blue tent towards the causeway surrounded by a band of warriors. Every now and then she would throw her head back and make that throat-rending screech. The crowd watched her, rapt. After a moment, men and women crossed themselves, or made the sign to ward off evil.

At the nearest wooden tower, the woman clawed her way up the rickety ladder. Once she reached the summit, she raised her arms to the heavens. The icy wind tore at her hair and plucked at her filthy dress. Hereward looked from her to the horizon.
Black clouds were roiling and lightning flickered over the wetlands. After a few moments, thunder boomed, and every man and woman in the crowd below cried out as if the Devil had called out their name and theirs alone. Hands clutched for crosses, or rabbit’s feet, or charms in the shape of a hammer. Even the Norman soldiers stared up at the spectacle with unease.

Along the horizon the storm surged, looking for all the world as if the witch directed it with every sweep of her hand. Hereward brooded. Here was a weapon deadlier than any Norman sword, for it struck straight into a man’s soul. He could not let it stand.

Pulling his hood low, he pushed his way to the back of the crowd and edged among the huts and tents. Thunder cracked in the distance. The cold wind stripped the leaves from the trees. Yet the storm would not come this way, he could see that. Soon the witch would be forced to leave her high perch, pretending that she had sped the tempest on its way. And then he had no doubt that she would seek to hide away from curious eyes so that the spectacle of her display was all that lingered in the mind.