Sworn Sword (44 page)

How many men there were I could not judge, though certainly their numbers had swelled since we had left for Wiltune. Two thousand men had accompanied Lord Robert to Northumbria, but it seemed to me that this host was even larger. Naturally not all of those who had gathered would be fighting men, for each of the lords would have their various retainers and servants: men to bring them food and wine, to look after the horses, to polish their mail. And there were craftsmen too, working at fires and at anvils, with hauberks hanging from posts outside their tents: armourers, I thought, working to repair broken mail. But it was, nonetheless, a significant host. I only hoped it would be enough.

I signalled to Eudo, who had been carrying the banner whilst we were on the road, and he passed it to me as I handed the reins of my destrier to him. Carefully I unfurled the cloth; then, holding the shaft in my right hand, I spurred my weary horse into a canter and rode along the ridge, giving the banner flight. The black and gold soared proudly in the wind, the bright threads glittering in the low sun. I waved for the rest to follow, then started along the stony track that led down the hill towards the camp.

Men looked up from their fires as we approached, and some even
called greetings, but most took no notice of us. Indeed they had little reason to, for we could have been any number of things: scouts sent out to explore the country, or a foraging party, or messengers dispatched with the king’s writ to the halls of nearby lords. But I had thought that the sight of the black and gold might inspire some recognition at least, being as they were the colours of the man on whose behalf this whole army had been raised.

We wove in and out of the shadows of tents, past packhorses hitched to carts, along tracks that were already muddy with the passage of hundreds of feet. There were pits dug into the ground behind every tent, and the stench of shit filled my nose.

‘Keep looking for the vicomte’s son,’ I told the others. ‘He should be here.’

We rode past men carrying bundles of spears, and others rolling barrels that might have held ale, or else salted meat of some kind. In the shadow of a lone oak tree, knights practised with cudgels and shields, and a few with swords; their blades flashed in the low sun. Further ahead, a small stream ran through the camp, and men were collecting water in cups and pitchers, or else giving their animals drink.

Eventually we caught sight of the banner we had been looking for: the twin of the one I held. It flew high, not far from the king’s pavilion, which meant that Robert Malet was held in high regard.

Of the king himself there was no sign; the flaps had been drawn across the entrance to his tent and there were two of his retainers posted outside, preventing anyone from entering. No doubt that meant he was in council with one or another of his barons. I’d never faced him in person, though I had often seen him from a distance: at his court in Westmynstre at Pentecost last year; and of course on the field at Hæstinges.

We made our way to the black and gold, beneath which six tents had been set up around a fire. Robert was indeed there, along with his men, who at first glance I guessed numbered around twenty, as well as his manservant: the thin one with the boil on his neck, who had been with him when we had first met.

Robert saw us approach, and he came over to greet us as we
all dismounted. Again I noted he was clad all in black: an affectation that I hoped did not hinder his ability to fight, which was the reason we were here, after all.

‘Your business at Wiltune went well?’ he asked me after we had embraced.

‘Well enough, lord,’ I replied. For a moment I thought that he was about to enquire further, but he did not. How much did he know, I wondered, about the business with Eadgyth and Harold’s body?

He introduced us to his men, and in particular to a burly, broad-shouldered man whose name he gave as Ansculf. He was the captain of Robert’s household knights, and was evidently a man of few words, for he did little more than grunt when he saw us. He smelt of cattle dung and I noticed that he was missing two of the fingers from his shield hand, as well as part of his ear on his other side. But so far as I could tell he seemed experienced; there was a certain confidence about him that I recognised, for it was the kind that came only when a man had seen many hardships, many battles, and weathered all that could be thrown at him.

We left our horses with those of the rest of Robert’s men, driving thick stakes into the earth between the tents and the stream and tying them to those. There was grass enough for the packhorses, but I made sure that mounds of grain were laid out for the destriers, and they stood around those, eating contentedly.

Robert’s men were roasting what looked like a haunch of deer over the fire when we came back. It was a big slab of meat and the fire was yet small, but then one of them arrived with a bundle of sticks and began to build it up, and soon I could feel the warmth upon my face.

‘What news is there from Eoferwic?’ I asked Robert.

‘Not much,’ he said grimly. ‘The castle still holds, so far as we know, but the rebels continue to press at its gates.’

‘Any word on the enemy’s numbers?’ Wace put in.

Robert shrugged. ‘Four, five thousand. Maybe even more. No one knows for sure. More are joining them every day, or so we hear. Men from all over the north: English, Scots, even some Danes as well.’

‘Danes?’ I repeated. I remembered what Malet had told me, about the invasion he believed was to come this summer. Was it possible they had arrived already, and we hadn’t heard about it? ‘You mean King Sweyn is with them?’

‘Not him,’ Robert said. ‘Not yet, at least. These ones are adventurers, swords-for-hire, though there are certainly enough of them. We hear that half a dozen ships’ crews have gathered beneath Eadgar’s banner, some of them from as far afield as Orkaneya and Haltland.’

The Danes were fearsome fighters, wherever they came from. And even a mere six ships could mean anything between two and three hundred men.

‘All the northern lords have allied with him, as far as we’ve heard,’ Robert went on. ‘Gospatric of Bebbanburh, his cousin Waltheof Sigurdsson, and many more besides. The old families are uniting under Eadgar’s banner, all of them proclaiming him king.’

Another usurper, I thought. As if the English had already forgotten the end that had befallen Harold. But this was not a thing to be taken lightly; since Hæstinges we had not faced a host of this size. Until now the risings we had encountered had all been local ones, and easily put down, the enemy weak and disorganised.

This was different. As I looked at Robert, I saw the unease in his eyes. He was thinking about his father, about whether we could save him. But I was uneasy for a different reason, for I had seen how well defended Eoferwic was, surrounded by its high walls and easily supplied both by land and by ship. Even if we laid counter-siege on one side of the river, the city as a whole could not be cut off. And so the only way we could break the English siege and save Malet was if we forced the enemy to do battle with us: for our host, led by King Guillaume, to face that of Eadgar, until only one remained.

And on that, I feared, hung not just our own fates, but that of England itself.

For the next few days progress was slow – at least for those of us riding close to the vanguard, since every few hours we had to stop
to allow the baggage train in the rear to catch up. Still, the country was easy and we must have made more than fifteen miles each day.

More of the king’s vassals joined us as we marched, and each of them brought men: not just knights, but spearmen and archers too. They were not large bands – often as small as five men, sometimes as large as fifty – but they were all welcome. And so slowly the army grew, and I found my confidence returning, my anxieties subsiding. Not completely, for the fact was that most of these men had come fresh from their halls, from the comfort of their feasting-tables and the leisure of the hunt, ill prepared for the rigours of campaign. But as we came closer to Eoferwic, ever more of their time in camp was spent in training, and each evening the sound of steel upon steel rang out across the hills.

The land was slowly shaking off the grip of winter, and the days were noticeably warmer than they had been of late. The wind no longer held the same chill, and when we rose in the mornings there seemed to be less frost upon the ground: all of which helped to lift the mood while we were on the march. Even within our small group I found I was speaking more easily with Philippe and with Godefroi, the business at Wiltune almost forgotten, the tension that had once been there diminishing. Radulf alone remained distant, but at least he was no longer as hostile as before, and I was content with that. For in truth this was the first time in a long while that I found myself happy. I was at last where I belonged: not mired in suspicions of conspiracy, in talk of promises made and then broken. Not amidst men and women of the cloth, but here, among warriors, men of the sword. This had been my life since I was thirteen years old, and it was my life still. My lord might be dead, but I was not, and as long as I lived I knew it was my purpose to fight.

Of events ahead of us we heard little more, until on the fifth day after we had joined the army the king sent out his scouts to see what they could learn. They returned that evening with the news that Malet still held out, for they had seen the black and gold flying from the castle tower. But it was small relief, for the rebels’ numbers were swelling still; it was said that more than five hundred from the fyrd of Lincoliascir had gone to join them. But if that was right,
then they were the only Englishmen from south of the Humbre who had chosen to do so. The rest had refused to ride out for either side, unprepared on the one hand to march against men who were their kin, but on the other unwilling to defy a king who was their lawfully crowned liege-lord, chosen by God. Most of all I suspected they feared reprisal if they happened to choose the wrong side, and so by joining neither they hoped that they would escape punishment altogether. At the very least they were denying Eadgar men he might usefully employ, and that could only be a good thing.

The enemy had their own scouts, of course, and every so often we would spy the dark forms of horsemen upon the hills in the distance, watching us, though they quickly fled into the woods whenever a party was sent out to intercept them. The ætheling knew, then, that we were coming.

It was late on the sixth day when the order was passed down from the front to halt and to set up camp. I recognised the country here, for this was the same road we had taken on our way to Dunholm not two months before, and I knew we couldn’t be far from Eoferwic – no more, I thought, than half a day’s march.

Towards sunset the king called all the leading nobles to his pavilion, no doubt to discuss with them how best to attack the city. Robert, as the son of the vicomte, was among them, and he took Ansculf and two other men with him. In their absence we sat on the ground outside our tents, sharpening our swords, cleaning our mail. A few ate; most drank. All knew that the fighting would soon be upon us: whether tomorrow or the day after, or the day after that, it would come, and so we had to enjoy this time while we could. Robert’s men told stories of past battles they had fought, of foes they had killed, and in turn Eudo and Wace and I told them of Mayenne and of Varaville, and others we could think of.

By then the sun had set, and all across the camp fires burnt brightly in the gloom. Soon silence fell upon us; all that could be heard was the scraping of stone against steel and the crackling of the flames, when Eudo took up his flute and started to play.

His fingers stepped deftly along the length of the pipe as the song swept from soft to loud and back to soft, at first slow and
almost mournful, before rushing into a furious cascade – like the clash of blades in the battle that was to come, I thought. And then just as suddenly it was falling away again, the rhythm slowing as it settled on one last sweet note which Eudo held, letting it draw out the last of his breath, until all about us was quiet once more.

‘Where did you learn that?’ I asked. Even though he had finished, still it seemed that note was there, hanging in the air.

‘It was passed on to me when I was a boy,’ Eudo said. ‘There was a wandering poet who came to play at our Easter feast. He always liked me, even gave me one of his whistles to practise with. Each year when he came back he’d teach me to play a different song, until my twelfth birthday when I left to serve Lord Robert. He was old then; I suppose he must be long dead now. That’s the only one of his songs I remember.’

From somewhere not far off the sound of a harp floated on the breeze, following Eudo’s example, perhaps. Men were singing drunkenly along to the tune, though it was not one that I recognised, at times even breaking out into laughter.

‘We should be marching upon them now,’ snarled one of Robert’s knights, Urse by name. He was solidly built, with a stub of a nose and wide nostrils that gave him a piggish appearance. ‘Why are we delaying here?’

‘You’d prefer to attack now, after a day’s march, rather than be fully rested?’ Wace asked, rubbing at his injured eye.

‘We’d have the advantage of surprise. We attack now and we can be upon them, inside the city before they even know it. The longer we wait, the longer the enemy will have to strengthen their defences.’

He was yet young, I saw, and like all youths he was impatient, eager for the bloodlust, for the joy of the kill. ‘Have you ever been in an assault on a city?’

‘No—’

I did not need to hear any more. ‘Then you know nothing.’

He rose suddenly, cheeks flushed red with anger and with ale, and pointed a finger towards me. ‘You dare to insult me?’

‘Sit down, Urse,’ one of his comrades said.

‘No,’ Urse barked as he stepped forward, almost stumbling over
his shield, which lay at his feet. I didn’t know how much he’d had to drink, but it was clearly too much. ‘Who are these people, anyway? They join us from out of nowhere, and then think they can tell us what to do, what to think. We don’t even know them, and we’re expected to fight alongside them!’