The Splintered Kingdom (55 page)

‘So you took it upon yourself,’ I said, shaking my head in disbelief. ‘What if you were returning now having led several hundred men to their deaths on a fool’s errand? How would you have explained that?’

‘No man ever won fame without taking any risks,’ he said. ‘You know that as well as I do. I had a chance to do something great, something that the poets would sing of, and I knew I had to take it.’

Despite our past quarrels, I admired Berengar’s audacity. It was exactly the manner of war we waged out on the Marches: a quick raid in main force to wreak as much damage as possible, followed by an equally swift retreat. This time it had worked better than probably even he had imagined.

‘My one regret is that the ætheling still lives,’ said Berengar. ‘I thought I might be the one to kill him once and for all.’

Once more beaten but not yet defeated, Eadgar would no doubt return in time. I doubted this would be the last we’d see of him.

‘We owe you our lives,’ I said. ‘If you hadn’t come when you did, we would all be dead men.’

‘I should be the one thanking you,’ he replied. ‘Without the distraction of the ships, the enemy would have been better prepared, and we might never have broken into the town. That was good thinking, and good work from your comrades.’

I gave him a friendly slap on the shoulder and with that I left him. Others were coming to congratulate Berengar on his victory, whereas my place was with my companions, with Lord Robert and his father.

And Beatrice. She was waiting for my return, and rode to greet me. As well as her cloak, a rough-spun shirt and trews had been found to help keep her warm and preserve her modesty. They were much too big for her slender frame, but she didn’t seem to mind.

‘I still can’t believe you came for us,’ she said. ‘To lead ten men in such circumstances, knowing that if you were caught it would mean death.’

I shrugged. ‘I’d never have forgiven myself had I left you to whatever fates the enemy might have dealt. But it wouldn’t have been possible without my friends as well, and Berengar too.’

‘I know, and I’m grateful to them as well.’

We rode on in silence, raising our hoods up over our heads as cold rain swept in across the hills.

‘I’m sorry about Leofrun,’ she said after a while. ‘Truly I am.’

‘You’ve heard?’

‘Your man Ædda told me what happened. He told me the story of how your manor was sacked; he told me how she died. I know how happy she made you, and I know she’s not the first that you’ve lost either.’

But she was. Hard though it was to believe, Oswynn lived, and I didn’t know quite what to make of that fact. In my heart was a swirl of feelings so tangled that it was impossible to tease them
all out. On the one hand there was joy at the knowledge that she was out there somewhere, but on the other it seemed a hollow sort of revelation, since I didn’t know how I would possibly find her again, only that somehow I had to.

Beatrice of course could know none of this, and yet it was partly because of her that I had gone to Beferlic in the first place. The thought of losing her as well as Leofrun had been too much to bear. While it would have been false to say that I loved her, I did still care for her, even if it wasn’t in quite the way that she might have wished.

‘Beatrice—’ I began, hoping to explain at least some of what was going through my mind.

‘You don’t need to say anything,’ she said, cutting me off. Perhaps she guessed what I was about to say. ‘No matter what once passed between us, I understand that it cannot be. I accept that.’

She smiled gently as if to show that she felt no ill will towards me, but her eyes betrayed her pain. I wished there were some words of solace I could offer, some way of easing the hurt in her heart, but knew that anything I tried to say would only make things more difficult, and so I could only smile back.

At least after all this time we understood one another, and that, I supposed, was something.

Rather than kill Wild Eadric we brought him back with us as our hostage. No sooner had we arrived back at Eoferwic than Berengar as the leader of the expedition, together with Robert as the most senior lord among us, took the Englishman to King Guillaume’s pavilion to present him in person. The man that Byrhtwald had once described to me as the most unrelenting, cunning and dangerous man I would meet now trembled with dread as he was led away. As one of the rebels’ leaders, he had been responsible for the deaths of many Frenchmen in the years since the invasion. I wondered what his fate would be.

At the same time I sought out leech-doctors to tend to Malet and to Wace, whose injury was more serious than at first I’d thought. The same sword that had opened the gash in his side had also
smashed more than one of his ribs, driving fragments of bone into his chest, and every breath he took seemed laboured.

‘He’ll survive,’ said Father Erchembald, who was the first to see to him. He sounded confident, and I took that for a good sign. ‘He may not be able to fight quite as well as before, but he will live.’

Indeed over the next few days Wace began to recover. He remained in considerable pain, however, and weaker than I had ever known him; while he could walk and even with some difficulty manage to ride a horse, anything more strenuous was beyond him.

‘I shouldn’t have expected you to come with me,’ I said when next I saw him. ‘I should never have asked that of you.’

‘I knew it would be dangerous,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘If you were going, though, then so were we. Eudo and I would never have let you go alone. Not after everything we’ve been through. I only hoped that if anyone was to fall along the way, it wouldn’t be me.’

As did we all. No man ever knows whether any given fight will be his last. All he can do is pray, and trust in his resolve and his skill at arms to see him through.

‘I don’t blame you for what happened, Tancred,’ he said. ‘And I promise you’ll see me wielding a sword and shield again before long.’

So it proved over the weeks to follow as his strength returned, although not entirely. He was slower on his feet than he had been, and more tentative in his sword-strokes, but that was only to be expected and in spite of that he kept in good spirits as October passed into November, and bright autumn faded into biting winter.

All that time we remained with the royal army, ready in case the enemy broke out of Heldernesse or marched upon us. In truth neither they nor King Guillaume wished to give battle and risk ruin unless it was on their own terms, on ground that favoured them. Nevertheless, we held the advantage, for the burning of Beferlic had left much of their livestock dead and destroyed many storehouses’ worth of grain and other foodstuffs that they had pillaged from the surrounding country, depriving a large part of their army of the provisions they’d been relying on to help them spend the winter on these shores. Forced to find supplies elsewhere, our foes had little choice but to venture out from their hiding places and seek plunder
inland, although by then there was precious little left, as they shortly discovered for themselves. Reinforcements had begun to reach us from the south where the rebellions had been put down, and now King Guillaume sent out ever more bands of knights, both into the north towards Dunholm and also into Lindisse on the southern shore of the Humbre, giving them rein to do whatever they wished. They ravaged the land and seized chattels and everything else they could lay their hands on, defiling the land with fire, rape and the sword and leaving in their wake nothing except blood and ashes.

All of that wasn’t enough to incite the ætheling into defending the people of Northumbria, who had lent him their support in all his endeavours and beneath whose purple and yellow banner he fought. The rumour was that he had grown impatient with Sweyn’s unwillingness to fight us in open battle, and so he together with his huscarls had gone back into the north, abandoning his allies. By then it was too late in the year and the German Sea too treacherous for the Danes to make the voyage back home, and so they were forced to remain on these shores, albeit half starving and succumbing to sickness and flux. Not that we were faring much better. After several months in the field, our own provisions were running short. Some of the barons had been away from their manors for close to half the year; there was little enthusiasm amongst them for a long-drawn campaign through the cold months to come, and gradually dissent began to grow. And so as November drew to a close our king and theirs saw fit to come to terms at last. Sweyn still held hostage the castellan Gilbert de Gand and his mistress Richildis; he promised both to hand them over and to depart without further trouble in the spring, providing that a generous ransom was paid in silver and gold, that his fleet be allowed to overwinter unmolested on the shores of the Humbre, and that they might in the meantime forage for supplies along the Northumbrian coast, all of which conditions King Guillaume readily agreed to.

Thus with a mutual giving of oaths it was settled, and finally two days before Advent Sunday we were able to take our leave. I bade farewell to both Eudo and Wace, who were due to accompany the Malets south to Suthfolc that same day, and the three of us
together made an oath not to let it be long before our paths crossed again. Before we left I also found time to speak to Robert, who had been in despondent mood in the weeks since we had returned from Beferlic. His hearth-knights – oath-sworn and loyal retainers, sword-brothers and friends – had all perished in the last few months, most of them in the fight for Eoferwic during which he, his sister and father had fallen into the enemy’s hands. Now he alone was left.

‘They were good men,’ Robert said. ‘Ansculf, Urse, Tescelin, Adso and all the others. Even now I see their faces in my mind and struggle to believe that they’re gone. A better band of fighters I have never known.’

I didn’t know what to add, and so said nothing. I knew all too well what it meant to live when so many had died. Together we gazed upon the remnants of Eoferwic: upon the houses and churches and the blackened earth of the ramparts and the twin mounds, one on either side of the Use, which were all that survived of the castles.

‘How is your father faring?’ I asked, feeling that I should break the silence.

‘Not well,’ Robert replied. ‘His sickness keeps returning, and each time it seems worse than before. I worry he might not see through the winter.’

‘We can but pray that he does, lord.’

The king had stripped the elder Malet of his role as vicomte of the shire of Eoferwic as punishment for having allowed the city to fall to the enemy a second time. To me it seemed an unnecessary humiliation to inflict upon a man who was already suffering both in body and in spirit. From my dealings with him, I knew Malet as someone to whom honour and respect mattered greatly. The defeat at the hands of the enemy would already weigh heavy upon his heart without this latest insult from the king, although from what Robert was saying it sounded as though that was probably the least of his concerns.

‘They say King Guillaume has sent to Wincestre for his crown,’ Robert said, and there was a stiffness to his tone that I hadn’t heard before. ‘He plans to hold a coronation here in the city on Christmas morning.’

‘In Eoferwic?’ I asked, gesturing at the wreckage of the once-proud city. The perversity of the very idea took me aback. ‘Why?’

He looked away, so that I could not see his face, although I could well imagine his expression. ‘I have never pretended to understand the king’s mind. He wishes it, and so it will be.’

There was clearly much resentment there, and so I decided not to press the matter further. The king’s capricious nature was well known. A formidable and awe-inspiring man, he was also bullheaded, determined to have his way by whatever means necessary, and unaccustomed to having his will questioned. I myself had faced him only once in person, but that one brief meeting was enough to know that he was not a man to be crossed.

‘Once again you have my sincerest thanks,’ said Robert, turning back to face me. ‘And I promise that you and all your comrades will be well rewarded. Be safe on your travels. I hope it’s not too long before we meet again.’

‘I trust that it won’t be, lord.’

We embraced, and thus we parted ways. My companions were waiting and I knew it was time to go. The days were growing ever shorter as midwinter approached, and many leagues lay between this place and Licedfeld, where the survivors of Earnford awaited my return, and between there and the Marches. Mounting Fyrheard, I glanced at Serlo and Pons, who were riding alongside me, then over my shoulder at the lads Ceawlin, Dægric and Odgar, at Father Erchembald and Ædda, making sure that they were all ready.

Thus at last we left Eoferwic, and started out on the long road south.

‘Do you think the Danes will hold true to their promises?’ Ædda asked me later that morning when Eoferwic was some miles behind us. ‘Will they leave peacefully in the spring as they agreed?’

We rode through country white with frost. Beneath our mounts’ hooves the ground was hard; the puddles on the track had all turned to ice and mist formed before my face with every breath.

‘God alone has any idea what King Sweyn is planning,’ I said. ‘When he and Eadgar made common cause they probably intended
to divide England between them. But now that the ætheling’s taken his ships back north and we no longer have the Welsh to worry about, I don’t see how the Danes think they can defeat us.’

‘In which case with any luck they’ll see reason and sail back across the sea,’ Pons muttered.

‘Reason?’ Serlo gave a snort. ‘When did the Danes ever see reason?’

I smiled at that. Desire for silver and spoils was what drove them above all else. It had brought them to these shores, and if there was one thing we could rely on, it was that they would go wherever they reckoned they had the best chance of obtaining those things. From what I understood of their customs, they saw it as better to die in pursuit of glory and riches than to do the prudent thing and return home alive but empty-handed.

That was why, despite the oaths they’d sworn to King Guillaume and regardless of what good sense suggested was the best course of action, the likelihood was that they would do the opposite. And so we would surely find ourselves fighting them again before too long.