Hereward 03 - End of Days (11 page)

Bands of Norman soldiers roamed with increasing regularity the closer they got to Ely. The two companions would hide
among the fern, or in the branches of ash trees, then run, and then hide again. When they found the secret path, they had to wait in the fading light for the tide to go out. The way was as wild and dangerous as Hereward remembered and the night was heavy upon them by the time they reached the isle of eels, hungry and exhausted. But Hereward felt his worries ebb when he saw the church tower silhouetted against the starry sky.

As the gates trundled open, they stared into a row of warriors bristling with spears. Warnings were barked. But then torches flared, and the dark swept away. Hereward saw a corresponding light spring to life in the faces of the night watch. Disbelief turned to amazement and then jubilation. Full-throated cheers rose up. Shields and weapons were thrown aside, and the men ran forward to surround the two travellers, clapping shoulders and babbling questions.

‘You doubted me?’ Alric said, with a wry smile. ‘Here is all the proof you need.’

Hereward looked around in stunned silence, humbled by the greeting. As the circle of men herded him inside the gates, he heard the cry ‘Hereward is here!’ leap from mouth to mouth, rising up into the dark of Ely’s streets.

‘Where have you been these past days?’ someone yelled as the gates rumbled shut behind him.

‘Tweaking the king’s nose,’ he called back. Laughter rose up.

‘And is it true the Bastard has come to the east?’ At this, the voices quietened and an uneasy silence hung in the air.

‘Aye,’ Hereward said, looking around at the worried faces. ‘Now we have him where we want him.’

The silence broke as another cheer rang out.

On the street to the minster, Kraki waited, his heavy gaze weighing, judging. ‘You came back, then,’ the Northman growled.

‘Aye. I would not leave you to face the Bastard alone.’

Kraki grunted. He looked over the crowd and bellowed, ‘Would you wake the dead with this noise? Back to your homes, all of you. Hereward scouted and now he is home. That
is no reason for a feast. Back to your hearths, and leave us to make our plans.’

The crowd broke up. But Hereward heard the jubilation continue as he strode up the hill, and it was not until he reached the minster enclosure that silence finally fell. Thurstan waited in a knot of monks, alongside Guthrinc, Hengist and a few more of his most trusted men, eyes still heavy with sleep. Guthrinc lumbered forward and wrapped his enormous arms round Hereward, almost crushing the breath from him.

‘We thought you dead,’ the big man said with a grin.

‘Many have wished that. Now put me down before you end my days yourself.’

Guthrinc laughed as he released his arms.

‘We have news to tell and plans to make,’ Hereward called to his men. ‘Let us—’

‘It is true, then. You are here.’

Hereward turned at the woman’s voice. He half expected to see Turfrida there, waiting to greet him with a kiss as she always had when he returned from fighting.

‘Her name is Rowena,’ Alric whispered. ‘’Twas her village where the Normans took all the menfolk.’ In the torchlight, the woman’s dark eyes were bright with hope and her cheeks were flushed.

‘I have come to Ely to plead for your help,’ she said, the words loud and clear.

‘And I will hear you, after I have—’

‘No, you will hear me now.’ Her voice cracked with desperation. Seeing she did not mean to give offence, Hereward held up a hand to stop Kraki guiding her away. ‘Aid me,’ she continued, defiant. ‘Help me find my husband, and all the other men the Normans took from their beds.’

‘I will aid you,’ the Mercian replied. ‘But we have a crown to claim, and that must come first.’

‘Not for me, or any of the goodwives in my village.’ As he turned to leave, she continued, ‘I call on you in the name of your wife Turfrida.’

He glanced back, his eyes blazing. ‘Watch what you say.’

‘Would your wife have held her tongue if you were lost?’ she said, undeterred. ‘I have heard tales of Turfrida. A woman with a fighting heart as great as any man’s. She aided the sick, and gave food to the hungry. And she never turned away from anyone in need. Do I speak true?’

‘You do,’ he replied in a low voice.

‘All the wives here have heard those tales, and they have taken strength from her. The memory of her gives us courage in these dark days.’ Kraki approached her again, but she threw him off. ‘Do not forget the women, for they are fearsome when roused,’ she said with passion.

‘I will do what I can,’ Hereward replied after a moment. ‘We will talk. After I have met with my war-band.’ He put iron in his voice so she knew he would brook no further dissent. Acha, Kraki’s woman, stood nearby, her skin as pale as snow and her black hair gleaming in the torchlight. Her brow was furrowed as she sized up Rowena. Hereward called to her. ‘Take her,’ he commanded. ‘Keep her well. Hear her tales. I will come when I am done here.’

As Acha led Rowena away, Hereward turned back to the grave-faced men gathered in the flickering torchlight. ‘Let us talk now of these dark times and the worries you have,’ he said. ‘And then I will tell you how we can kill a king.’

Before he had taken a step towards the refectory, he heard running feet at the enclosure gate and turned to see a boy waiting there. The lad looked both frightened and eager, dancing from foot to foot and kneading his hands in front of him.

‘What does he want?’ Hereward asked, suspicious. Children troubled him, weak, whining things.

‘It is Wardric,’ Alric murmured, puzzled. ‘Away with you, boy,’ he called. ‘Hereward has important business.’

‘I must speak to you.’ The lad held out one pleading hand. He seemed on the verge of tears, the Mercian thought.

‘Tell me,’ Alric said.

‘My words are for Hereward’s ears alone.’ Swallowing,
Wardric glanced over his shoulder fearfully. ‘Only Hereward can save us from the devil … the devil that walks in Ely.’

The Mercian frowned. He held the monk back when Alric would have ushered the boy away. ‘Bring him to me,’ he said, curious. ‘I would hear about this devil.’

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

THE GHOST WATCHED
from the shadows. As he staggered out of the tavern, Harald Redteeth looked across the deserted street and into that dead, grey face, those black, unblinking eyes. Ivar, his friend, long gone from the world, but always there, always reminding him of his vow. The Viking swayed, his breath steaming in the cold morning air. He held that gaze as long as he could. There would be no peace for either of them until Ivar was avenged and the gates of Valhalla swung open to admit him at last.

The wan sun glowed over the glistening rooftops of Grentabrige. Soon the town would be waking. Finally breaking the stare, Redteeth lurched a few paces, opened his breeches and pissed into the ruts. The stream seemed to go on for ever. A night of ale would do that to a man. Even through the drunken haze, his head still throbbed from the blow Hereward’s right-hand man had dealt him after the attack on Abbot Turold and his monks. He snorted in disgust. The English dogs had taken him as if he were a child. But he could afford to wait to sate his desire for vengeance. They had burned him and stabbed him and cut him. His face and body was a mass of blackened dead skin and pink scars. Yet still he came
back. And he would do so time and again, until he got what he wanted – Hereward’s death. The English could not kill him; the
alfar
had told him that when he had journeyed to the shore of the great black sea.

He stumbled along the street, hot under his chain mail and his furs and his helm. Sweat trickled down his back. The bitter mushrooms he had chewed in the hour before sunrise always made him sticky. Only a few had passed his lips, not enough to take him to the black sea, and certainly not enough to keep him there. He treated the mushrooms with respect. They gave him the heart of a bull in battle, and the wisdom of the world beyond.

From the thatched rooftops, he could feel the eyes of the
alfar
watching him. In the wind rustling under the doors of the workshops, he could hear them calling to him:
angr
,
angr
. Trouble, trouble. A warning. He wandered down to the banks of the grey Grenta. His stomach pitched and yawed, another sign of the power of the mushrooms settling upon him. At the waterside, his thoughts flew on a raven’s wings, and once again he was standing before Ivo Taillebois and William de Warenne by the roaring fire in the castle in Lincylene. The Butcher was peering at him from under his heavy brow, slow in his thoughts but as hard as stone. The nobleman was pacing around the hearth. Only now did Redteeth realize how unsettled they both had looked, as if he was watching a storm approaching at sea. They were commanding him to travel south to Grentabrige, that very day, and waste no time. But they would not tell him what he was to do when he got there, or why he was needed.

‘You are Harald Redteeth?’

The Viking jerked from his vision. Turning from the river, he looked into the face of a knight standing at the top of the bank. He was tall, with dark features, the kind of looks that could turn a maid’s heart, the Northman decided. ‘What do you want, Norman?’ he said with a gap-toothed grin that held no humour.

‘My name is Deda. I have been ordered to meet a mad
Viking.’ He looked around at the empty streets, a wry smile on his lips. ‘I see no other who fits that description.’

Redteeth looked the knight up and down. The Normans were bastards, all of them. They either swaggered like kings or slaughtered like butchers. This knight looked like one of the peacocks, he thought. They expected all to fall before them, yet most had no spine or were slippery as eels. ‘They say all Norman men use sheep like women,’ he ventured.

Deda smiled, refusing to rise to his taunting. ‘You have no place in your heart for Normans?’

‘I never met one I liked.’

‘And yet you take our coin.’

‘If we only took coin from folk we liked, our bellies and our mead-cups would always be empty.’ Redteeth climbed the bank, sizing the other man up with each step.

‘Ah, yes. Axes-for-hire know the price of everything, but the true worth of nothing at all, so they say. When everything is measured in coin, how else would it be?’ Deda’s smile remained lazy, but his dark eyes had a sharp intelligence. The Viking thought that perhaps this man was not a peacock at all. Yet nor did he look like one of the Men of Iron who seemed made for nothing but killing in the king’s name.

‘Knights with land, and great halls, and slaves, always say there is more than coin, I have found. Tell me, then. What is missing from my poor life?’

Deda held out a hand. ‘I never judge a man. That is God’s business. And we have only just met. Only a fool would speak so boldly at this time.’ As Harald prowled closer, the knight eased back his cloak and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘And I am no fool,’ he added.

‘I have fought beside your kind time and again,’ the Viking said. He cracked his knuckles as he regarded the knight. ‘I have seen into your heart, and it is a cold place. You build castles out of stone, and great churches that are chill and empty. And you kneel and you pray and you listen to the echoes come back and you shiver. You count your coin in your counting houses,
and make marks upon your ledgers. You put women in their place. Not shoulder to shoulder as is their right, but lower. They should bow their heads to their husbands now, eh? ’Tis no surprise you find comfort in sheep.’

‘So, we have yet to find some common ground between us.’ The knight stood his ground as Redteeth prowled around him, eyeing him as a wolf might eye a lamb. ‘Yet we must have trust if we are to be brothers in battle.’

The Viking ground to a halt. ‘Brothers?’

‘Ivo Taillebois has told the king that of all the warriors under his command, you know the enemy leader Hereward best. You know his mind, and his heart, and from that, one would think, his plans. I have been charged to ride with you in the fens. King William is about to make his move, and we have work to prepare the way.’

Redteeth nodded to himself. He liked the sound of that. Closer to Hereward, closer to taking his head and meeting the vow he had made all those years ago over Ivar’s burned body.

‘And yet there is this matter of trust,’ the knight continued. ‘Can we ride together if the only thing that binds us is the coin the king pays you?’

Harald furrowed his brow. This did not sound like any Norman he had encountered before. He shrugged, then gave a lupine grin. ‘Beat me in battle, and I will bow my head to you, coin or not. You have my word on that.’

Deda cocked his head, amused. ‘A fight?’

Redteeth raised the axe that hung at his side on a leather thong. ‘This is Grim. It was given to me by my father, and to him by his father. When it drinks blood, it honours all who have held it before. Only through days gone by can we see the way to days yet to come. And it is this,’ he shook the axe, ‘that binds us to all the things that made us who we are. You Normans do not understand such things.’ He snorted. ‘I would not taint the blade with your blood.’ He tossed the axe aside. ‘Use your sword. I will defeat you still.’

Deda drew his weapon, turning it over in his hand as if it
were the first time he had seen it. ‘A sword against an unarmed man? That would not be honourable.’ He set the sword aside, and then drew off his mail shirt, and put his helm atop it.

The Viking was puzzled. He had heard the Norman bastards speak of honour before, but he had never met one who would risk his neck for it.

Defenceless, the knight stretched, rubbed his hands together and smiled. ‘Let us fight, then. With the strength of the arms that God gave us.’

‘I will not go easy on you.’

‘I would expect no less.’

With a roar like a bear, Harald Redteeth threw himself forward. But his arms closed only on thin air. Deda was light on his feet, strong and agile, with the skill of a master swordsman. He stepped aside and jabbed his elbow into the Viking’s back as he sped by. The Northman crashed on to the mud.