The Last Conquest (44 page)

‘What are you going to do?’

Godric ignored him.

‘Where are you going?’

Godric behaved as if he were simply not there. He packed the satchel and slung it over his shoulder, along with a rolled blanket and a sheepskin. Fixing a thong near the head of the axe, he hung
it from his belt, and put the knife in a scabbard on the other side. The whetstone went into a pocket. He tied some material round the crosspiece at the top of the crutch, and tested it under his
armpit.

Satisfied, he moved towards the door without a glance in Gorm’s direction. Gorm looked up in alarm.

‘Where are you going?’

Godric paused, but not because of the question. It was as if something had just occurred to him. He turned and looked very hard at the miller. Gorm swallowed nervously. His lower lip hung
loose.

‘Why are you not dead?’ said Godric at last.

‘What?’ Gorm played feebly for time.

‘Your son is dead. Your daughters are dead. Yet you are alive. You are not even hurt; the blood on your hands is Sweyn’s.’

Gorm’s whole body seemed to sag.

‘I – I was only one. There were many.’

‘Did you not try, man?’

Gorm grimaced piteously. ‘I – we needed help. Yes. I tried to get help.’

Godric stared. ‘You ran?’

Gorm slid off the stool and onto his knees. Godric hobbled across the floor.

‘Look at me!’ he roared.

Gorm raised his head by inches. Godric spaced the words with terrible clarity.

‘You – ran – away?’

Gorm put up his arm as if to ward off a blow. Instead, he heard Godric kneeling down. Huge hands grasped his shoulders. He found himself looking into the dark eyes that had baffled him so many
times over the years. Now they no longer glowed or smouldered; they blazed. Gorm was struck with fear to his very soul.

‘Old man, you have befouled your name, broken trust with your kin, blotted out your flesh and blood. You had no wife. Now you have no son, no daughters, no reason for living. What is left
to you is the memory of how you helped to lose it all.’

Gorm’s face practically crumbled. The chins hung like half-filled bags on a hook. What made it more terrible was that Godric did not raise his voice. It was not temper but truth that Gorm
was hearing.

‘You do not need my curse upon you,’ said Godric. ‘You could fly from it. But the great burden you have fashioned for yourself – your own memory – you will never
fly from that. Never.’

Godric fought his way to his feet and readjusted the crutch.

Gorm collapsed to all fours, grovelling and whimpering.

Godric paused at the door.

‘I have no life now, only strength. Enough to fight, and maybe find the man who did this. You are the only father I remember. I am the only child you have left. Yet I tell you this: I
strike you from my memory, I strike you from my mind, I strike you from my heart. Gorm Haraldsson, you do not exist! You are a
nithing
!’

Gorm cried aloud in torment, but Godric did not hear him . . .

When the tears would no longer flow, Gorm sat up. He picked bits of straw off the front of his shirt. Then he looked around the house. Nothing moved. Outside, the only sounds were the rippling
of the stream and the steady creaking of the wheel. No animal made a noise, no chicken scratched at the straw, no gate rattled.

Gorm clawed his way to a sitting position on the stool. The pot of beer lay smashed in front of him, but for once it did not matter.

He gazed for a long while into nothing, his chest still heaving with emotion, his eyes wide . . . What did it matter whether it was deceit or cowardice that had brought him to this?

At last, levering himself to his feet, he went searching. Tools, pots, bags, clothes were swept or kicked aside. He paused when he pulled out an old leather strap that looked as if might serve
his purpose. It was grey with dirt and stiff with age, but he recognised it. How often had he used it on Godric’s young back! How suitable, therefore. He continued searching, and found what
else he wanted in the end.

He knotted together the few scraps of frayed rope, and attached one end to the leather strap, which he fashioned into a noose. He could not control the trembling of his hands.

He looked up at the beam in the house, and placed a stool underneath it. There was not enough space.

Lumbering into the mill, he found a beam high enough, but could not get the rope over it. Every time he swung it up, he overbalanced. He tried putting the noose round his neck first and then
throwing up the other end, but he fell, and grazed his chin painfully.

He crawled to the doorway, trailing the rope from the noose still round his neck. Using the door jamb for support, he struggled once more to an upright stance, and tottered back to the
house.

He took the table apart, and began lugging it, plank by plank, to a position under the beam in the mill. He could think of no other way except to hold one end of each plank and drag it
backwards. Several times he caught his heel and fell down. By the time he had dragged the two trestles as well, there was a large patch of mud over the seat of his sacking breeches.

He reassembled the table under the beam, then tried several times to climb on to it. He simply could not get his knee high enough to provide leverage for his body. Sweating and whimpering, he
went to get the stool.

He placed it beside the table, put one foot on it, and paused. There was no going back now. He was shaking all over. He looked up at the beam, gathering the rope over one arm.

Grunting with the effort, he got onto the stool, then, very carefully, onto the table. He waved his arms to keep his balance. The mill wheel swished and creaked.

He would make absolutely sure the first time – no halfhearted efforts. He coiled the rope in loops in his right hand, and looked up once more at the beam above him. Sweat poured down his
face. He blinked as it ran into his eyes.

He swallowed, licked his lips, took a huge breath, swung his right arm, and heaved. The effort took him off balance. As he saw the rope flop over the beam, he knew he was falling. The rope
slipped back. He crashed on to the table, the planks broke, and the trestles collapsed. The old leather noose grazed his neck again.

Sprawled in the ruins, weeping and panting, he thumped with his fist on the ground.

Once more he crawled to the doorway. The sound of the stream came more clearly to his ears.

Still on hands and knees, still with the rope trailing behind him, he set out towards the water. When he reached the gravel at the edge, he stopped. It was not very deep here. The mill pool was
really the best place.

He struggled up, turned, and caught sight of Sweyn’s body. With damp patches now on his knees as well as on his buttocks, he came back to look on his son. Already the flies were clustering
round the edges of the wounds.

A frown appeared on Gorm’s face. He pulled off the noose and went to get a spade . . .

He stuck the rough wooden cross into the earth and stood up. His wife would have liked the cross. At least he had done something right.

Only Godric was left now.

Aud was taken. He could do nothing for her. If she were not dead already, she soon would be, and he had no idea where she was.

Rowena and Edith were away, and there was nothing he could do about that either.

Only Godric remained. He must tell Godric. Godric must come back and they must carry on with the mill – together. He always had Godric. And a freeman always had his land.

All he had to do was to stop Godric fighting in that stupid battle. What use was a dead miller? Even if the Normans won, they would need millers just like everyone else. He and Godric had dealt
with Saxons; they could deal with Normans. It was only exchanging one set of foreigners for another.

Godric was no soldier; he would be cut down in the first charge. He had to be made to see sense. It was unlike him to go charging off like that.

Gorm looked for his travelling stick. It was gone. A curse formed on his lips, but he remembered the wooden cross.

He rescued a leather jerkin from the tumbled pile on the floor of the house, and stuffed some food into a bag. He undid his clothes, rearranged his shirt and breeches, and refastened his belt.
Outside, he went to the stream and threw some water into his face. He filled a leather flask and fixed it to a strap over his shoulder. He cut a makeshift walking stick and stuck the knife into his
belt.

Godric would not get far on his crutch. Catching him up would not take long. And then he would tell him everything. Everything. Godric would understand. Godric always did.

‘How much further, Sir Baldwin?’

‘Not far now. Just the other side of this hill.’

‘Praise be,’ muttered Brother Crispin.

‘I found you an easier horse,’ said Baldwin. ‘I thought you would be grateful.’

‘As the martyr is whose scourge of nails is exchanged for a scourge of thorns.’

They came up over the crest.

Baldwin pointed. ‘There it is. No sign of fire.’

‘There is down there,’ said Crispin, pointing down the valley, where the wagon still smouldered.

Baldwin had not heard him. He was urging his horse impatiently down the track towards the mill.

Crispin made his best possible speed. His master’s ways were becoming as inscrutable as those of the Almighty. There was clearly something pulling Sir Baldwin to this mill, and it was
connected with the conversation he had witnessed with Fulk Bloodeye that morning. Sir Baldwin had been agitated ever since, alternating between fits of savage swearing and moods of total
abstraction.

When the last supplies had been checked, moved, and put under lock and key, Baldwin started to make excuses as to why it would be a good idea to come on this journey. It started with the
expressed desire to ‘get away for once from camp smells’, to be followed with the need for ‘checking the avenues of clear ground’. Out of the blue, he said he thought it
would be a change to ‘do a turn of scouting’, which he had ‘not done for years’. Finally he declared that as everything possible had been done and Harold had still not shown
himself, he had time on his hands, and he had to do something. Crispin knew better than to ask questions.

The real surprise came when Sir Baldwin ordered Crispin to accompany him. Again, Crispin kept silent. He noticed that they took no outriders with them, and that they left camp by way of the
archers’ lines, well away from any knight’s quarters or senior commander’s establishments. On the journey, Baldwin made no comment except bad-tempered remarks when Crispin failed
to maintain the required smart pace.

Now that they had arrived, Crispin was none the wiser. He kept as close behind Sir Baldwin as he could.

By the time he crossed the stream, Baldwin had been through all the buildings, and was kneeling by a freshly dug grave.

He scrambled to his feet and beckoned Crispin over to him.

‘There is no one else here. Only this. I have to find out. Use this spade. Tell me who it is.’

Crispin dismounted painfully, and stared at the grave and its humble little cross. Then he stared at Baldwin.

‘Open a grave marked with the cross of Our Lord? Disturb a soul at peace?’

Baldwin burst out. ‘Jesus of Nazareth, man. I have to know, or
my
soul can never be at peace.’

‘You may find it – not pleasant,’ said Crispin.

Baldwin flung the spade.

‘Damn you – dig!’

It did not take Crispin long.

‘It is a boy, sir.’

Baldwin ceased his frenzied pacing.

‘You are sure?’

‘The face is unmarked. Would you like to see?’

Baldwin came and peered.

‘So – he kills boys too.’

‘The Devil and his minions know no mercy,’ said Crispin.

Baldwin stormed off.

Crispin remade the grave and gently replaced the cross. He kneeled and said a prayer, crossed himself, and rose to follow Baldwin, who was halfway towards the smoking ruins of the wagon and the
cottars’ huts.

Crispin saw him suddenly tense, and stop. Then he burst into a run. He dashed past the wagon and kneeled beside a figure sprawled on the track. Crispin hitched up his skirts and ran too.

When he arrived, Baldwin was wringing his hands.

‘Look at her back. See what they have done to her back.’

Crispin crouched. ‘These marks were not made by the whip; they are burn marks. They tied her to the wagon, set fire to it, and let it run down the slope. She must have freed herself. Look
at the blood on her wrists. She must have had great strength. Then she flung herself down from—’ Crispin stopped, bent low, and examined her more closely.

‘She lives!’

‘What?’

‘She lives. She is warm. She breathes.’ Crispin ran a hand over her. ‘There do not appear to be any broken bones. Nor any wounds.’

Dear God!

Baldwin cleared his throat.

‘Is she – did they . . .?’

Crispin glanced uneasily. ‘The clothing does not appear disordered.’

‘Is there not a better way of making sure?’

‘I am not a doctor, sir.’

‘You come from Bec; my house is famous for its learning.’

‘We can not all aspire to Lanfranc’s eminence, sir.’

‘You must have taken your turn in the infirmary. You picked up enough to – well – you know. ‘Baldwin gestured vaguely.

Crispin looked troubled. ‘Our vow of chastity, sir.’

Baldwin lost his temper.

‘To the midden with your vow of chastity. What about your vows of mercy and charity? Find out.’

Crispin lifted the material. Baldwin turned away and waited, drumming with a fist on the pommel of his sword.

Crispin gently replaced the skirt.

‘I should say that she has not been dishonoured.’

Baldwin raised his eyes and sighed hugely. ‘We must get her to shelter and safety.’

Crispin stared. ‘Sir Baldwin, you know the wasting parties. There must be a hundred women in this condition, spread all over Sussex.’

‘Not like this one. I want her . . . saved.’

Crispin noticed the odd spacing of the words. He tried to choose his own words carefully.