The Firedrake (24 page)

Jehan came to him later, when Laeghaire was in the tent and Hilde was hanging up his wet leggings. Jehan said, “You should not have done that.”

“I did him no violence. He did me violence.”

“You are no different. The rules are the rules.”

“I have my reputation to consider. If I told you, and you had him punished, what would it do to my reputation? And now no man will bother Hilde.”

“I still think it was wrong.”

“Then it was wrong.”

Jehan blew out through his nose. “You’re going to get in trouble someday.”

“I am always in trouble.”

The next day, Laeghaire showed Rolf how to clean his mail and left him to do it while he went up to check his horses. At noon Hilde came to where he was combing out the stallion’s tail. She had dinner for him. They sat down and ate.

“Are you really going to marry me, Laeghaire?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think it’s right.”

“Why?”

“Rolf treats me as your lady. But that man tried to—to take me like a common camp-follower. I’m not fit for you.”

“Sometimes I think it’s the other way.”

“Why? It’s not true.”

“Because I am not worth what you will give me.”

“That’s not so. That’s what that man said, that priest, that Lanfranc. That’s wrong. You’re fine and noble and wonderful.”

“That’s what you wish I were, maybe. I’m not.”

She shook her head. “No. Don’t even talk about it.”

“All right.”

“It’s pretty here, by the sea. Will you have land by the sea?”

“He’ll give me land in the south and the north and the east.”

“Let’s have a place to live in by the sea.”

“All right.”

They talked of this for a while. He got up and untangled the burrs and snarls from the stallion’s tail. She was happy. She got flowers and made a chain for her hair.

Laeghaire went off to Caen again the next day, to take to William a spy who had some special news of the Saxon coast guard. He came back that same night, very late. He rode up to the pasturage and unsaddled the black horse and started down toward the camp. He saw the three men in the little fringe of underbrush just before they jumped. He flung the saddle into one man’s face. The two others pulled him down. He snatched out his dagger and stabbed and that man flinched away, gasping. In the dark he could not see their faces but he knew who they were. He caught the last of them around the waist and wrestled with him in the dirt and brush. The thorns scratched his hands and face. He felt the man’s arms tighten around him. The others were urging him on in low voices. The man he fought wrenched him suddenly and fell on top of him. Laeghaire thrashed around. He felt the man’s thumb grope for his eyes. He forced his hands down under the high collar and around the man’s throat. The thumb jammed into his eye. Fire colors leaped inside his head. He brought his knee up hard into the man’s groin. A hand tore at his arm. The man on top of him winced and his hands drew away. Laeghaire flung him off. The others closed in on him. One stank of blood. He fought to his knees. One of them kicked him in the chest. He caught that foot and yanked. The four bodies all crashed together. Suddenly one of them stood and ran off, bent over under the few trees. Laeghaire reached out blindly and caught a sleeve and staggered to his feet. He hit that man in the face with his fist. He felt bone break under his knuckles. He hit him again. The other man hit him in the small of the back. Laeghaire wheeled. He grappled with the other man and they went down. He heard running footsteps, going away. Only the one, now, His fingers curled around the man’s windpipe. He rolled him over and lay on top of him and pressed his fingers down. The hands clubbed at him and the knees jabbed vainly. The man caught him by the hair and tried to tear him off. Laeghaire let go with his right hand and brought his elbow smashing into the man’s face, once, twice, again. The hand in his hair loosened and fell, limp.

Laeghaire stood up. He took the man by the heels and dragged him out into the moonlight. It was the big dark man. He was still breathing. Laeghaire thought of killing him. He remembered Jehan and decided against it. He went back to where the brush was trampled down and found his dagger, covered with blood. He put it in the sheath, picked up his saddle, and went on down to the tent.

Hilde was asleep. Laeghaire washed his hands and face in the bucket of water. The water turned filmy. His hands were all scratches. His eye hurt. He lay down by Hilde and slept.

He leaped out of sleep and snatched up his sword. He heard Hilde’s soft cry. Guy’s voice said, “It’s me. Calm yourself.”

“You should know better.” Laeghaire took him by the arm and pushed him out of the tent. He went back and dressed, all but his mail and boots.

“Come back soon,” Hilde said. “I’m frightened.”

It was bad to wake in the night. He followed Guy. The knights were almost all sleeping. He heard their unguarded snoring… French knights who snored like that, knights never gone wandering. Guy moved before him and Laeghaire stopped.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up. I forgot.”

“Go get a torch.”

Guy, who ran the fields at night, met his spies at night, who hated sunlight, who slept all the day through like a thief in the ditch by the road.

The torch threw light over him. Guy swore. “What happened to you?”

Laeghaire put a hand to his face. It hurt; it was swollen in places.

“Nothing.”

“He sent me to tell you that he will be here tomorrow.”

“Well, the wind’s bad.”

“It will change when he gets here.”

Laeghaire kicked up a little ridge of sand. The wind knocked off its top and rolled the sand grains down like boulders on the slopes.

“Your woman,” Guy said. “She’s Flemish.”

“German.” He wondered how much of her Guy had seen in the dim tent.

“And speaks no French.”

“No.”

“She must be lonely.”

“I suppose she is.”

They sat down. It was very dark outside the torchlight. The surf whispered, down on the beach.

“You fool, to bring her here.”

“She wanted to come. Anyway, she’s with me. I speak French.”

“You’re a fool anyway.”

Laeghaire shrugged. “Any news of the Norwegians?”

“No. You?”

“Sighted off Skye a while ago.”

“What’s Skye?”

“One of those islands up there. Up at the north end of the Irish Sea. You know.”

“Did you know Tosti?”

“Yes.”

“He was here a while. The lord gave him money. The lord thinks he went to Norway.”

“He hates his brother.”

“Yes.”

“What did he do with the money?”

Guy scratched his head. His long hair hung over his eyes. “He attacked that island, the big one, just off the south coast in the—”

“Wight.”

“Yes.” Guy grinned. His dog teeth were crooked. “He didn’t take it.”

“He’s a strange man.”

“Doesn’t it make you feel important, to be working so close to things that move the whole world? We are changing things, you and I.”

“Important? No.”

Guy scowled. “But why not?”

“Because whatever changes we make aren’t changes. And we aren’t the men who would make changes. Only great ones make changes. And nothing important ever really changes anyway.”

“I’m a change. I was a serf and now I’m a servant of the Duke of Normandy, who is going to be the King of England.”

“And you’re still a serf. To them, you’re a serf. To me, a serf.”

“I am no man’s man.”

“You are William’s man.”

Guy frowned. He turned his head from side to side. “I’m going.” He got to his feet, “I’ll be in tomorrow, with him”

“Don’t get angry, Guy.”

“Why not?” Guy said. He turned and was gone. Laeghaire watched him go. He flung the torch into the sand and covered it up. He listened to the men and the sea. His face hurt. Why not? He looked up. The great star was long gone. It had stayed only eight days. He felt his ribs burning. He turned away from the swarm of the camp. He thought, Big star, take me with you. He put his hand against his side. His heart was throbbing too hard. He hated those knights. He hated the fires and the sea. His heart pounded and he heard the sea break in conflicting rhythms on the shore. His heart leaped under his fingers. He heard the sea break and saw in his mind the waves curling in their foaming glowing break, a long progression down the shore into the dark.

“Laeghaire?”

She was beside him; she put her hand on his arm. “Laeghaire, what are you staring at?”

“Nothing. Come on.”

* * *

The knights knew when William had come and they calmed down for a while, but one night there was a great fight over some of the women, and William rode down on his gray gelding and flogged them with his voice until they quailed and drew off. The camp was too big to control, and the men fought despite William; but when William came they stopped and stood, watching him. He prowled around them like a wolf, waiting for one of them to do something wrong, and as soon as he was gone the turmoil and the fighting and drinking broke out again. There was never any silence, even at night. The summer was hot and the days full of sun. Hilde grew brown as a farmer and her hair hung dead- white down her back. No man touched her.

The boats lined the shore, hundreds of them, and the horses they led on
and off to accustom them to riding on the sea. The men joked about it, but it was hard work. The horses were frightened of the boats and would rear and try to leap off when they saw the land going away from them. One of Fitz-Osbern’s horses climbed over the rail of one boat and swam all the way back, dragging his boy through the waves.

Guy taught Hilde a little French, more by his persistence than her learning, and she talked haltingly with him and with Laeghaire and listened when they talked. Laeghaire went to the councils, where the Duke gave out orders to stop the fighting and drunkenness and the women, orders that never had effect, and every day knights paid their fines to him. They said his treasury had doubled since the knights came.

The archers swaggered in bands and practiced on the hillside. Laeghaire went to watch them and heard them joking and saw them shooting their bolts over long distances straight to the mark, easily as if they shot quail. He heard them talking, and he answered questions that they asked him. They knew him; they all knew him. He shot a little with his long German bow, but the range of his bow was less than that of the crossbows.

By midsummer they knew they should have sailed. The winds blew contrary. The winds were north or west, never right. The wind blew steadily out of the north and there was a week of rain, and that only made them fight harder, while William rode along the shore in his fur cloak and cursed the wind and the rain and the boats that could not sail into the wind. The blue banner that flew by his tent hung sodden in the rain, or stood on the wind that blew from the north or the west. Every day the Duke came out of his tent and looked at that banner, blessed by the Pope, and swore up and down against it and the wind.

They said—the Saxon spies, fewer now, with the Saxon coast guard and Harold Godwinson the usurper and the breaker of oaths watching every day for the Normans to come—they said that the Norwegians had been seen off the coast of the Scots. The wind blew contrary, and William swore and said he would fight Harold, either Harold, the Saxon or the Norwegian, whichever held England. There was rebellion in the north of England, which did William little good, and William fretted that the Norwegians would use that to win England.

The King of Norway was Harold Hardraada, the great warrior, the fabled victor of the Bosporus. They told stories about him by the fires. Laeghaire heard them and half wished that Hardraada would win England, so that he, Laeghaire, could fight him. He wondered if Hardraada knew his name.

The summer ended in a fit of west winds. After the equinox, Laeghaire met a little wizened man from Wessex, and sat for a few moments with him in the tent. He went out of the tent, stopped only to call Guy, and rode to William’s tent. He spat at the base of the banner staff and went into the tent without a word. The guards said nothing to him.

“What now?” William said.

“Harold has summoned out the fyrd again. The Norwegians have landed in Northumbria “

William flung back his head. “By the glorious, the almighty, the magnificent splendor of the one true God. How is the wind?”

“Due west.”

“I am sinned against.”

Guy came in. Laeghaire told him of the landing. Guy looked at William. His eyes were hot and sharp.

“We sail,” William said.

“The wind,” Guy said.

“Nonetheless, we are sailing. We can go with a west wind up to the mouth of the Somme. To Saint-Valéry. It’s closer.”

“Do we hold the Somme?”

The Duke went by him. Guy looked at Laeghaire again.