The Last Conquest (50 page)

Perhaps it was all of those things, the sum total that by its very agglomeration created a fresh element, a new dimension that Baldwin could not put into words, could barely conceive in his own
mind.

Perhaps it was simpler. Perhaps it was Fulk’s ease, not his effort; his casual strength, his lazy talent, his obvious education, his lack of interest in so many things that his betters
thought important; the fear that, should Fulk ever put out all his force and all his powers, very little could stand in his way. Only William showed no wariness of him.

Baldwin, in short, felt threatened. This caused him, for the first time in his life, to bend his mind to, to concentrate on, the means of destruction of a single human being . . .

The sound of crunching broke into his thoughts. He looked at the young soldier, now halfway through his carrot.

‘What is your name, son?’

The young man swallowed quickly.

‘Brian, sir.’

‘Breton, eh?’

‘Yes, sir, from Dol. In the north it is, not far from the River Couesnon, just where—’

‘I know where it is.’

‘Sorry, sir.’

He fell silent. Baldwin, having found a friendly spirit to take his mind off disturbing matters, did not wish to kill the conversation through a misunderstanding.

‘In action tomorrow, then?’

‘Yes, sir. Swordsman, me. We go in after the archers.’

‘On the left?’

‘Yes, sir. Count Alan commanding. We have the Angevins with us, and the Poitou lot. Some Manceaux as well.’ He laughed nervously. ‘So we shall not be lonely.’

In the firelight his face looked pinched and tight.

‘First time, is it?’ said Baldwin.

‘Beg pardon, sir?’

‘This is your first major enga— your first big battle?’

‘Yes, sir.’ He pulled a face. ‘Always a first time, eh, sir?’

For some odd reason, a phrase from two or three days ago drifted into Baldwin’s mind: ‘All right for learning on’. He pushed it away, forcing himself to concentrate on the
youth beside him.

‘Going to kill plenty of Saxons then?’

Brian fished another carrot out of his pocket and began peeling it.

‘Hard to say, sir. One at a time, I dare say. To be honest, all I have thought about so far is staying alive.’

Baldwin harrumphed. ‘Not a bad idea at that.’

Brian took another bite and chewed thoughtfully.

‘Well, you see, sir, a lot of these men here have nothing on their minds except victory and loot and honour and glory and trampling the faces of the dead. Me, I want more than that.’
He waved the stub of carrot. ‘Oh, I want to win, of course. And I want to – well, I do not want to let down the men beside me. But I have someone waiting for me at home. Most of this
lot –’ again the carrot stub waved airily ‘– most of them think of nothing but killing and winning. I think about afterwards. It is good to have something to think about
afterwards. Do you not agree, sir?’

Baldwin found himself smiling. ‘Yes. I do.’

He stood up. Perhaps he would have that doze after all.

‘Good night, sir,’ said Brian. ‘And good luck tomorrow.’

Baldwin patted him on the shoulder, a familiarity that he rarely had the confidence to display.

On an impulse, he turned away from his tent door and went to a store shed near the castle kitchens.

‘Open up,’ he said to a startled guard.

It took him a few minutes of groping in the dark before he found the sack he wanted. He ordered the mystified guard to lock up again.

As he passed the fire on the way back to the tent, he tossed the carrots into Brian’s lap.

‘For tomorrow,’ he said. ‘One at a time, eh?’

Brian gaped for a moment, then exclaimed in delight.

‘Thank you very much, sir. Good night, sir, God bless.’

‘Have you seen a big man, a big man with a crutch?’

If Gorm asked the question once, he asked it a hundred times.

For a mile or two he had tried to follow Godric’s trail, but lost it in leaf-strewn woods. He knew that if he kept in a rough north-easterly direction he would cross the track of the army,
though before or after they passed he could not be sure.

When he had been travelling for two hours, he began to realise how many years it had been since he had settled down after his journeyings. He was bathed in sweat; his legs ached; his breath was
short and laboured. One or two steep hills brought him almost to his knees.

Driven as he was, he would take no rest.

Find Godric. Find Godric and tell him. Then rest. Find Godric before it was too late.

By dusk, he was reeling with fatigue, when he came upon the marks left by the army. A few stragglers littered the sides of the churned track.

‘Have you seen a big man, a big man with a crutch?’

Tired beyond words, they shook their lowered heads without even looking at him, as if the mere sound of his voice added to their misery.

Stumbling and slipping on the broken ground, Gorm struggled on, pausing before each broken fyrdman and fighting for breath before he could gasp out his question.

‘Have you seen a big man . . .’

Now and then, he was forced to pause when nausea swept over him. He leaned on his stick, swallowed, and licked his lips, fighting to overcome the fullness in his throat and the tightness in his
chest.

The only comfort was that it was now impossible to lose the trail. He knew he was getting nearer because the number of stragglers grew. Wiping the sweat from his stinging eyes, he accosted each
one.

‘Have you seen . . .’

By nightfall, he knew that he had to stop. He was barely moving at all with each pace. Peering into the growing darkness, he made out a tiny, half-derelict hut on the edge of a copse –
some makeshift shepherd’s windbreak or other.

With his breath rasping and his temples throbbing, he staggered the last few yards and crawled inside.

Weary swearwords met him. For once his extra weight told in his favour. He squeezed further in, and pushed aside the two mud-strewn fyrdmen by the sheer bulk of his body. They swore again, eased
arms and legs into a better position, and went back to sleep.

Gorm had just enough presence of mind to wipe off as much sweat as possible and put on his jerkin, which had been dangling from his shoulder.

In the morning he would be less tired. He would be up early. A quick drink and a bite, then off. It would be easier to find Godric in daylight. With his height, you could pick him out anywhere,
even among the housecarls. Then a few words of explanation and Godric would see.

Funny how you thought more clearly when you were resting. Silly not to have done it before. God’s Face – they smelled, these fyrdmen. But at least they kept you warm.

Robert of Beaumont stared up into the shadows at the top of his tall tent. Grand it all looked during the day. Now that he had dismissed his servants and valets, it was empty,
vast, cold – like the vault of a great cathedral. He had had them take away his favourite dog.

He put his hands behind his head. His thoughts were more than company enough for this night . . .

It was not death he feared on the morrow; it was failure. No success meant no glory; no glory meant no reward; no reward meant no Judith. Waiting for his inheritance was out of the question; his
father was in sound health. The very idea was base, not worthy of a knight. In the chill dark he blushed that the thought had even occurred to him.

To go to Judith’s guardian as a landless suitor – an adventurer – was worse. To have the world think that he did not love her. That he lusted after the fortune and the body of
an underage girl. He took hold of the crucifix she had given him – the crucifix that had once been warm with the clasp of her soft hands.

He would never dishonour her, never! He would go back after the battle, loaded with favours and rewards from the Duke. The King! And he would marry her, make her his lady. No true guardian could
refuse such an offer.

He almost moaned at the memory of their last meeting. Her shining eyes. Her merry, skipping step. Carrying her piggyback, feeling the caress of her forearms under his chin, the glow of her body
against him, the vibration of her laughter.

Please God, on this one day of all days, let him do well!

Five blanketed figures lay in the straw at the bottom of the wagon.

Flat on his back, his long legs stretched out and his toes pointing straight up, Taillefer looked up into the blackness under the awning.

He had yet again played the role that the world demanded of him. He had lounged and slept and snored. He had returned joke for joke. He had drunk more than his share and played the coward and
the sot and the false scholar.

‘Tell us a story, Taillefer.’

‘Blind us with knowledge, Taillefer.’

‘Wake up, Taillefer, you old trembler.’

‘Taillefer is at it again.’

‘Taillefer the “Cleaver of Steel”? Taillefer the “Cutter of Iron”? Ha! More like Taillebeurre, the “Cutter of Butter”.
“Butter-Cutter”!’

They had all roared at that one.

How they had laughed too when they saw him sharpening his sword.

‘Not much butter in the English army, Taillefer.’

‘What is it for, Taillefer? Cutting a dash?’

The weariness of habit with which he replied was taken for the habit of weariness with which they liked to identify him.

Was he really somebody else, or had he become the person they expected him to be? Had the mask become the man?

Suppose they could have seen him as he was.

If they could have gone back thirty-odd years and seen him as a lusty young shepherd, as a lover, as a mourner, as a bitter, failed novice, as a soldier of fortune, as a pilgrim. Such stories
could he tell them! Real stories!

He raised his eyebrows and pulled down the corners of his mouth. They would not believe those either. It was hard to believe them himself. Now.

Did his heart really leap with such love in those brilliant mountain dawns? Were the reds and blues and greens so vivid that no artist would dare to paint them for fear of being called a liar?
In the agony of his loss, did the colour really drain from the world? Was he dead to everything save to the bleating of a newborn lamb? Did he really perform such prodigies of piety and self-denial
in his search for purpose and peace? Did he really commit the whole range of deeds, from the heroic to the obscene, that all soldiers do in time of war? Did he really weep and tremble, at the end
of his long journey, and feel such fullness that he expected his heart to burst?

He sighed.

The past existed only in the minds of those who remembered. It began to trickle away the minute it had happened, and, no matter how hard you tried, it continued to drain away from the vessel of
the memory until nothing was left but a scum round the edge and a stain on the bottom. That was all you had to remind you of the richness and depth of it.

All he did nowadays was to make up a false brew to put in its place.

His hand felt the pommel of Edwin’s dagger. He wished now that he had not stolen it; it was a smallness that he regretted. He should have given it back when they parted yesterday. But then
he had been in no fit state to remember such things.

He hoped the two prisoners got back to their home, that the big one was able to save his woman. It would be only just; they were good folk, whose only crime was to be in the way of war.

How many times had he seen innocent people – struggling to be happy with their life in the tiny world in which God had imprisoned them, the tiny world that they had made rich with their
love and their work – turned into shocked cripples or baffled scarecrows by the blind irruption of war? Small wonder they hoped for mercy from God; they rarely received it from the men who
broke in.

And many of the men who broke in were just as lost in their way – lonely, far from their own tiny world, frightened of dying, afraid of fear itself. Taillefer knew; he had seen their faces
gazing up at his in the light of a thousand fires. His own craft existed to try to take away some of that fear and loneliness. When they teased him with cowardice they were only hiding the fear of
showing their own.

When they drank and talked to each other, they boasted of past exploits. They relived the glory. If it did not exist, they created it. When they listened to Taillefer in the firelight, their
faces told a different story – silent, intent, wistful, eager, sad, exultant by turns. They became what they really were – worried, diffident, homesick young men.

Perhaps this truth was the mainspring of Taillefer’s devotion to his craft. Men teased him with being a word-wizard, a teller of tall tales, a spinner of stories. Such a man, who could
never say a straight sentence – how could he be relied upon? What did he know of real life, of the world of truth?

Taillefer smiled sadly to himself. He knew the truth. He saw it every time he told a story. God had given him this gift of word magic. He poured fable into men’s ears, but he saw truth
come out of men’s eyes.

No written book could ever reproduce such a spell as he wove. No wonder Jesus had been a talker, not a writer.

Taillefer’s eyes gleamed – to share with Our Lord such a gift for moving men.

He sighed. How awful then that such men should, on the morrow, be turned by war into paralysed, self-soiled cowards, or screaming lumps of writhing flesh, or slavering monsters of demonic
energy.

It would be his fate to witness it yet again. Later he would have to spin his story about
this
battle, and tell it before the next battle. He would have to grovel in the mud of reality
to find brightly coloured threads to weave into a tapestry of epic and glory. And why? To induce men to leap with joy into the mud of reality once more when the trumpets blared again.

He coughed, wiped his mouth, and replaced his damp kerchief.

Or perhaps not.

Further along the wagon, curled tensely in his blanket, and trying to command sleep, Gilbert resolved that tomorrow – tomorrow of all days – he would be a model of
caution and correctness. He would be sensible, he would follow orders, he would remember all that Ralph had taught him. He would push his private miseries to the back of his mind; only the most
observant would notice the occasional flicker of pain that would pass across his impassive face.