The Last Conquest (63 page)

‘It is a long story,’ said Edwin. ‘But I know these men. There is an understanding between us.’

‘He says the truth,’ Sandor said in English. ‘We know him. We are alone. We have no cause to fight now.’ He held his open palms wide.

Wilfrid stared at each in turn, then spat.

‘Talk then. I shall keep watch. But first, get him to the top of the bank, in case they come again.’ He pointed to the higher, northern end of the ravine. ‘They will not get up
there.’

Gilbert barely made a sound as they struggled up the steep slope with him, slipping on leaf mould and dragging whole nets of brambles after them.

At the top, they kneeled and wheezed and wiped the sweat from their faces.

Gilbert’s hands, folded across his stomach, were covered in blood. Ralph pulled them gently away and peered.

‘I am sorry about the hauberk,’ said Gilbert.

‘I am sorry too,’ said Ralph, ‘for what I said.’

‘There is no need. I understand.’

Ralph dared not look Gilbert in the face. The wound gaped. The boy was losing blood fast.

Ralph tried delicately to remove fractured rings of mail. Sandor produced from nowhere a pad of cloth. While Ralph fumbled to stop the flow, Gilbert looked at the little Magyar.

‘I did not have the good luck here then – once again.’

Sandor tried to smile.

‘The dark, you see,’ said Gilbert. ‘I misjudged. I always seem to misjudge.’

A whole flight of significant glances passed between all three.

‘Is battle usually like that?’ said Gilbert at last.

‘It was a very big battle,’ said Ralph.

‘Did I do well?’ said Gilbert.

Ralph looked down at the pale face, the bloodied hands, the leggings torn and muddy from the fall. He tried to push Bruno’s familiar words away.

Sandor nudged him.

‘You did very well,’ said Ralph.

Sandor nudged him again.

‘I – I am proud of you.’

Another nudge.

‘I shall tell the Duke, and Fitzosbern. Even Odo, if you like.’

Gilbert smiled. ‘No more “Master Senlac”, eh?’

‘No more “Master Senlac”.’

‘Will you tell my father?’

‘I shall make your father proud of you too.’

‘Ah! If you could do that . . .’

Gilbert tried to reach inside his hauberk. ‘The cross, Sandor. I want you to have it back.’

Sandor held up his hand. ‘Not now. You keep it for a time. You will rest now.’

Gilbert shook his head. ‘Sandor – this time only, you are a bad liar.’

Sandor looked at Ralph across Gilbert. Ralph leaned down.

‘Do you have a message for Adele?’

‘Yes – but Edwin must take it. Bring him.’

Ralph whispered to Edwin, ‘Whatever he says, pretend you understand.’

Edwin came and crouched down. Gilbert’s voice was weakening.

‘When I came to England I wanted to find you and kill you. But now – it has all come out different.’

Edwin looked up at Ralph, who frowned a fierce message.

‘I am glad of that,’ said Edwin.

‘I called my first son Hugh, after my father. Adele will soon have another son. I want him called after your father. What is his name?’

Edwin looked baffled, but answered. ‘Edward.’

‘A fine name. So be it.’

Edwin blinked. ‘So be it.’

‘I am sorry about Berry,’ murmured Gilbert.

‘Thank you.’

Gilbert squeezed his hand. ‘For us both to love so many of the same things – we must be truly friends, eh?’

Edwin nodded, tight-lipped, then lowered his head.

When he looked up again, Ralph was kissing Gilbert’s brow.

‘What was he talking about?’ said Edwin.

Ralph and Sandor looked at each other. They agreed without speaking.

‘He had fancies,’ said Ralph at last. ‘We never understood them. Now he is at peace. Let us leave it at that.’

Wilfrid struggled up beside them, limping and puffing.

‘Many horsemen,’ he said.

They crouched in silence while they went by. It was impossible now to make out faces in the shadows at the foot of the ravine. Ralph thought he heard the Duke’s voice.

‘God’s Breath,’ he muttered. ‘That man is everywhere.’

The Duke surveyed the carnage.

‘The birds have flown. Come.’ The sound of milling hooves, then the Duke’s voice again. ‘Call off the pursuit. Tomorrow we chase in earnest – and in
safety.’

When they had gone, Wilfrid gestured awkwardly at Gilbert.

‘I remember him now – the one we captured. I am sorry. I did not know.’

‘You could not help it,’ said Edwin, wiping his cheek with a thumb.

Everyone stood up. Wilfrid, with his bruised head, his bad arm, his weak ankle, and blood, it seemed, everywhere – Wilfrid dominated by his sheer presence.

‘Tell him,’ said Ralph. ‘Tell him he fought a good fight. I am proud to have had such an enemy.’

While Edwin translated, Ralph held out his hand.

Wilfrid bowed with great dignity, and apologetically put out his left hand, which Ralph gripped firmly.

‘Tell him,’ said Wilfrid, ‘I am sorry about his young brother.’

Edwin translated again.

Ralph looked down at Gilbert, and heaved a great sigh. ‘My brother is dead.’

Sandor turned to Wilfrid. ‘Hide here until the Duke goes back and makes his camp. The women will come soon and so will darkness. Then it will be safe to move.’

‘We shall make our way well enough,’ said Wilfrid gruffly.

‘I can not go with you,’ said Edwin. ‘I have another errand first.’

‘Then I shall make my own way,’ said Wilfrid. ‘Goodbye, boy. You fought well. Might have made a housecarl out of you. Still – no need of them now. I was right, you see.
You should have left me to die.’

He stumped off.

When he had gone, Sandor put a hand on Ralph’s shoulder.

‘May I make an idea?’ He pointed at Gilbert. ‘This is pain for you. On the other side of the hill a duty waits which is pain for me.’

‘Taillefer.’

Sandor nodded.

‘Thank you, little man,’ said Ralph. ‘It shall be done.’

‘The hauberk,’ said Sandor. ‘Do you want it?’

Ralph thought of the dead Breton from whom he had cut it so long before. The rings had been driven into the flesh in exactly the same way.

‘No. It belongs to him. He has earned it.’

Sandor coughed awkwardly. ‘I am sorry about Bruno. There are no clever words to—’

Ralph waved a hand. ‘Please. No more. I understand.’

He said a prayer, crossed himself, and was gone.

Sandor looked about him.

‘There are many stones, and we have knives. Will you help?’

‘I have no knife,’ said Edwin.

‘Ah – I nearly forget.’ Sandor pulled a knife from inside his jerkin.

Edwin stared. ‘That is mine! How—’

Sandor gestured vaguely. ‘There is a saying, I believe – “fortunes of war”.’

Roger of Montgomery winced.

‘Noises get on a man’s nerves.’

Walter Giffard unbuckled his sword and handed it to a servant.

‘What do you mean?’

‘All day,’ said Montgomery, ‘we have had one or the other – terrible noise, or unnatural silence. All day I have looked forward to the time when we should have no more of
either. Just ordinary sounds. Now listen to that.’ He waved a hand in front of them.

Crippled horses were uttering ghastly cries. Men in their dying agony were shrieking for comfort, a friend, a mother, an ease to pain, a death-wound, a priest – anything. Saxon or Norman,
English or French – it mattered nothing. Men were crying for help, torn between two worlds.

As the shadows lengthened, more dark figures flitted from one pile of dead to another, bending and peering. The air was constantly shivered by screams of anguish as an anonymous corpse received,
for the last time, its name – from a wife, a mother, a sister, a lover.

Other shadows, more furtive and cat-like, crept and pounced. Each time they moved, their arms were fuller with swords and hauberks and finely wrought spurs, and their pouches fatter with coins
and jewelled crosses and silver rings. Where two figures jumped together on the same body, more noises arose – the rasp of knives, the snarls of greed and hate.

William Capra and Ralph Pomeroy, and some of the younger Normans, with blood in their heads instead of brains, were cavorting about the field, forcing their tired horses to strut and rear while
they whooped and roared.

Montgomery shook his head. ‘I could not say which I hate more – the awful noise all day, or those noises now.’

Florens of Arras heard another one that chilled him, inured as he was to the horrors of war.

He had been looking for Fulk’s body for some time, and his stomach was already tightening with the knowledge of what would meet his eyes when he found it. He was so prepared for hideous
sights that he was shaken into trembling by an unexpected sound.

It was not exactly a crying, because there were no tears in the voice. It was clearly a dirge, yet unlike any sound of mourning he had ever heard. It rose and fell in cadences totally foreign to
his ear. For all its strangeness, the message of unutterable loss was obvious to anyone. If Florens had not been on a battlefield, he would have been tempted to derive it from the animal
kingdom.

The hair on the back of his neck rose when he saw Matthew. The little hunchback was on his knees, rocking to and fro. His head was raised and his voice called to the open, darkening sky. Florens
knew, beyond any doubt, that he had found Fulk’s body.

He could not bring himself to approach until Matthew had gone.

When at last he stood over his old commander, he averted his eyes from the staring, twisted mask of a face. The spear was still where the big Saxon had plunged it, pinning him to the ground like
a spitted carcass on a slaughterer’s slab.

Grimacing with fear and revulsion, Florens crouched and reached for the waist wallet. It was empty.

Gorm did not notice the gaping flesh, the stiff stumps, the staring eyes. Pulling and heaving, mostly with one arm, he dragged piles of bodies apart.

Godric could not be far; Gorm felt he could almost have touched him when he shouted the warning. Gorm could still picture the expression on the Norman’s face as he swung his mace against
Godric’s splintered pitchfork handle. Somewhere in the background a pennon had fluttered.

Somewhere, somewhere here, Godric lay. If he still breathed, if a flicker of life remained . . . Had he really recognised Gorm in that instant with the stake? Gorm had to be sure. He wrenched at
bodies, terrified of what he might find underneath.

He saw the handle first, with great gouges in the wood from where Godric had tried to take the main force of the blow from the mace.

Flinging it aside, Gorm fell upon the nearest corpse, or what was left of it, and pulled it away by its remaining leg.

There he was, face down.

Whimpering and trembling, Gorm pulled him over. The face, for all the blood down one side of it, looked at peace.

Gorm’s cry of pain was as much for himself as for Godric. Now he could never tell him, never lift the burden of the lie from his mind, never wash away the ‘
nithing
’
curse from his soul.

Gorm kneeled forward and clasped one hand in his own two. He bent over it and wept.

Suddenly he tensed. The hand he was holding was still warm.

He bent down and put an ear to the deep chest. He felt the brow. He looked at the ugly spear gash in the arm; the blood was barely congealed.

Crawling on all fours to a nearby body that had been stripped of mail, he tore off some undershirt and made a rough bandage. He made another for the gash and bruise on the head. The mace had
struck, but the ugly spikes had not broken the skull. The handle of the pitchfork had probably taken most of the force. Perhaps something else had knocked him unconscious after the fall. A hoof
maybe.

At any rate he was alive.

Working now with purpose rather than with desperation, Gorm cleared more dead around Godric’s large body. Then, gritting his teeth with the pain of his own wound, he put his hands under
Godric’s armpits and began dragging him. At first uphill towards where the shield wall had been; he did not think.

The slope stopped him. It was too steep, and there were too many bodies to stumble over. As he paused to regain breath, he heard Norman voices. Of course! There was no shield wall – not
now.

Panting again with a fresh urgency, he turned about and began dragging his burden down the hill, away from the voices. The slope made it easier now, and gradually the bodies became fewer. On the
low ground he felt safer in the long evening shadows.

The next obstacle was the stream.

He knew he could not afford to drag Godric through that. The shock of the cold water could kill a wounded man. If it did not, he would still have to face the coming night with soaking
clothes.

There was nothing else for it.

Gorm, even in recent years, had carried more sacks of corn than he cared to admit. How many times had he railed at Godric for not having enough consideration for his ageing bones? How often had
Godric looked right through him with his dark, bottomless eyes? He knew – they both knew – that Gorm was not weak, but lazy.

True, he had not lifted a huge load like this, and he had not had to do it with a gashed arm and a thumping heart. But then he had not been cast into ‘
nithing
’ outer
darkness before; he had never before been hammering on the doors of humanity from the outside.

Grunting, sweating, slipping, staggering, he kept going until he was past every shallow pool and every clump of rushes.

Afterwards he lay on his back and panted until he thought his lungs would burst. They did not. Eventually he sat up, and wiped the sweat from his face.

Godric was too heavy to be carried any distance, and being dragged would be the death of him.

Gorm looked out across the valley between the two hills. Wagons were creaking down from the right, surrounded by a host of servants and grooms. So the Bastard was going to camp on Caldbec Hill
itself. Amid all the carnage! Gorm shuddered.

But it gave him an idea. Nobody would notice another civilian in the throng and in the fading light.