Hereward 03 - End of Days (17 page)

Swefred came to a halt. After a moment, he raised his arm and pointed towards the hut. ‘There is your husband.’

Rowena followed the line of the roof and came to a pole at one end. On the top of it, Elwin looked down at her, his empty eye-sockets staring.

Swefred swallowed. ‘They took his head.’

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

THE CAMPFIRE ROARED
. Shadows danced across the tent as William the Bastard stood in the entrance, looking out across the mud of the castle ward. From the dark by the gate, Deda watched the monarch lit by the red glare. He looked like a bear waiting for prey, and just as savage when roused, the knight thought. After his long, lonely trek across the wetlands, Deda’s hair was lank with grease and mud streaked his face. His tunic was still sodden from the rain and his legs felt as if they were made of lead. But he lived yet. Not too long ago that had seemed a thin hope.

Over the tent, the king’s standard fluttered, two rampant golden lions against a red field. The new tower was not yet ready for living in, Deda guessed. As William turned to go back inside the tent, the knight took a deep breath, lifted his head and set off across the ward. He could hear the king’s deep voice rumbling out, even above the din from the camp. Several other men seemed to be with him, giving their counsel.

‘These English,’ the monarch was shouting, ‘what is wrong with them? Half the time they are drunk, the other half asleep. Yet they fight like wolves, even now, seasons after I took the crown. Must this be the story for all of my rule? War and
bloodshed? What victory did I not win that day on Senlac Ridge, that I cannot enjoy my prize?’

Deda grinned as he heard the familiar sounds of lackeys fawning and dissembling to drain the king’s anger before they suggested unpalatable truths. Soon he would be putting forward one of his own, and he expected the edge of the monarch’s tongue in return. But Hereward had been right; these words had to be spoken if they were to avoid death on a grand scale. And England had seen more than enough of that in recent times.

He stepped into the tent’s entrance. Before he could utter a word, every man inside reeled back in horror, the king included. Hands clutched at mouths and prayers were muttered. After a moment’s bafflement, Deda realized they were seeing some terrible apparition. Bedraggled and streaked with mud as if he had climbed from the grave, haloed by the fire at his back like a vision from hell. After the slaughter at the causeway, they must all have thought him dead.

‘My lord,’ he said with a bow. ‘I am in better health than I may appear.’

The king narrowed his eyes. ‘Deda? You have the reek of the shroud about you.’

‘The English spared my life at the causeway, but they seized me and took me back to Ely.’

‘And you escaped?’

‘I have word from Hereward.’

Excited murmurs ran through the tent. Deda looked around and saw Odo of Bayeux, Ivo Taillebois, William de Warenne and two other men he did not recognize, one aged but still potent, leaning upon a staff, and a younger man with apple cheeks and an innocent face.

‘The English dog is afraid, eh?’ the king roared. ‘He wishes to bow his head before me and plead for his miserable life.’ The monarch beckoned Deda into the tent. ‘Give him wine,’ he barked at Taillebois as if the latter were a slave. The Butcher flashed one unguarded venomous look before he turned to the pitcher.

Deda took the cup he was offered and said, ‘The English are ready for war. Their army is larger than we thought. I have seen it with my own eyes. They have no shortage of food to see them through the cold season. And God is with them.’ He eyed the king. ‘They have the arm of St Oswald.’

The monarch showed no surprise. Nor did the Butcher or William de Warenne.

‘If our men do not know it, they soon will. What then?’

William the Bastard took a cup of wine and swilled it back in one draught. After a moment’s reflection, he said, ‘They will accept peace?’

Deda was surprised by the response, and recognized the same reaction on the faces of the other men there. The king looked around, showing barely concealed contempt at what he saw.

‘This is not weakness,’ he snapped. ‘I fought hard for this crown. It will mean naught if I have to kill every man in England to keep it.’ He prowled to the trestle at the back of the tent and snatched up a chunk of salt pork. ‘We have enemies everywhere. We cannot afford to waste time putting down the English. With our eyes here in the east, we are not looking to the Danes … or Malcolm in the north … If our men are dying here, who then will fight to protect what we have?’ He chewed on the meat and spat out a chunk of gristle. ‘A long fight across the years will drain our coffers. Think on that. We will be beggared. What say you, Deda?’

‘The English are folk of honour,’ the knight said, choosing his words carefully. ‘The north … what they now call the Harrowing … weighs heavily on them. Many who accepted your rule have been sent spinning towards Hereward.’

‘But they needed to be taught a lesson, eh, Deda? You agree with me.’ The monarch glanced with cold eyes.

‘They were taught a hard lesson, my lord. And the north will not rise again.’

William the Bastard threw the meat aside. ‘If we offer them peace … if we forgive them their sins against us and spare their
lives … we can talk until the fight is drained from them.’ He noticed Taillebois’s sour expression and scowled. ‘There is more than one path to victory, Butcher. Winning does not need a drenching of blood to make it grow. If you had the wits to match that sword arm, you would know that.’

The young man shifted, keen to speak.

The king beckoned. ‘You … the brother of Hereward. You know the mind of this dog. Will he talk peace?’

‘My lord,’ the younger man said, ‘Hereward cannot be trusted. He will smile and nod and speak of peace, and once your guard is down, he will attack. A dog, you say. A wolf more like. Can a wolf be tamed? Can it be trusted? It is what it is, a savage beast filled only with hunger.’

The old man bowed his head in deference and added, ‘Whatever you say, my lord, the English will see talk of peace as a sign of weakness. As one, they will rise and follow Hereward’s standard. That few have yet done so is down to one thing – their fear of your wrath.’

The monarch beckoned to Taillebois for more wine. ‘Speak, Deda. Give me the benefit of your wisdom.’

‘Show mercy, my lord. The English have been worn down by their suffering. They yearn for peace and a return to the lives they knew. They will thank you for giving it to them. Blood will only lead to blood. If we fight on, this war may never end.’

William the Bastard laughed. ‘The world has been turned on its head. The English call for war, against their own, no less. The Norman wants only peace.’

Deda watched the sideways glances the king cast in his direction, the shadow that formed at the edge of his mouth. The monarch loathed him. He did not know why. But in that moment he could see he had lost the argument. ‘Let me think on this,’ William the Bastard said, sipping his wine. Without gratifying the knight with a look, he flicked his hand to dismiss him. Deda bowed and stepped out. But he would not go far. However loyal he was to the king, he felt it wise to listen and learn what he could.

‘This relic troubles me,’ the monarch was saying. ‘Even seasoned fighting men will not take up arms against God. How do we give them the strength to stand against such a thing?’

After a long moment’s silence, Deda heard the Butcher reply. ‘There is a witch who lives in the woods near here. The English monks drove her out and burned her hovel, so my men told me. I saw even hardened warriors pale when they spoke of her.’

William the Bastard roared with laughter. ‘A witch! Aye, what better way! We will fight God with the Devil and see who wins.’ An uncomfortable silence settled on his audience at the blasphemy, but the king went on, ‘Have her brought here. We will feed her well and she will work her magic against the English, or at least make a show of it. That will put some fire into our men’s hearts.’

The Butcher muttered his assent.

‘Two years we have danced around this English dog,’ the Bastard continued, his voice hardening. ‘Two years, and all the Norman might here in the east has failed me.’ Deda imagined Taillebois and William de Warenne squirming under the king’s accusatory gaze, and smiled. ‘Now it is left to me to put things right. We have tested the English strength with that feeble causeway we built to draw the curs out. I expected them to slaughter every man there. But now we know that foot-soldiers alone are no use. It taught us much.’

Deda nodded. So the king had sent him there to die. He had half thought that might be the case when the English had taken the causeway so easily. His heart grew heavier at the other lives thrown away, good men all of them, so that William could learn more about his enemy.

‘Our sacrifice there will have lulled the English into thinking they are on an easy road to victory,’ the monarch was saying. ‘If they attack us, their chests will be swelled and their heads turned, and they will not be ready for our fury. You need to be cunning, like a fox,’ he all but shouted, ‘but you have been running in circles like frightened rabbits.’

The Butcher and William de Warenne must be regretting the
moment they entered the king’s tent, Deda thought, not least because their humiliation was taking place before the eyes of two English.

‘Now leave my sight,’ the Bastard snapped.

Deda edged further round the tent as he heard the two men leaving. When he stepped out into the light of the campfire, Taillebois’s face boiled with a cold fury. William de Warenne was shaking, knowing how close they had both come to feeling the monarch’s full wrath. The Bastard had no friends there, the knight noted, but he needed none. He ruled by fear, and that had served him well.

As the two Normans trudged across the ward and into the night, muttering under their breath, Deda crept back until he found a place where he could see into the tent. If the king cared so little for his life, Deda felt he ought to pay even closer attention to the monarch from now on. He squatted in the deep shadows, watching the king prowl. William the Bastard poured himself more wine, then studied the two Englishmen over the lip of his cup. ‘There is no love lost between you and your kin, this dog Hereward,’ he said.

‘He is no longer any son of mine,’ the old man replied. ‘He has turned against all those who have stood by him. He cares for naught but himself.’

‘And yet the English flock to his banner.’

The younger man stepped forward and held out his hands. ‘He has the Devil’s skill at lying. We know him better than any. And we know he can be beaten.’

‘Do you know how he can be beaten?’

Deda glimpsed a gleam in the young man’s eyes. He had seen his opening. ‘No man knows better. No Norman, of that we can be sure.’

The monarch raised one eyebrow, waiting for his guest to explain himself.

‘The English are a folk like no other. You know this to be true.’ He smiled – too quickly, Deda thought – when he saw the king agreed. ‘I know their minds, in a way that Ivo Taillebois
or William de Warenne never could. I know the weaknesses in their hearts, all the doubts and the fears, and I know how to prise them open into gaping wounds.’ Growing in confidence, he continued, ‘I know the plans Hereward and his men made to attack you. I know the merchants who give them food, under the noses of your men. I know their secret paths. I know everything you would ever need to crush them.’

William the Bastard drained his wine and tossed the cup aside. ‘And what do you want in return? Land? Gold?’

‘Only to serve you, my lord.’ The young man bowed his head, humble, unthreatening. He was good at this game, Deda thought.

‘In Wincestre, a loyal Englishman gave me good advice about your folk. Balthar the Fox was his name,’ the king murmured reflectively. ‘He is dead now, and I need a new man who can tell me of the English and their strange ways. And who can speak for me. Your folk will better listen to one of their own.’ He thought for another moment, and then added, ‘Let us see if you are as good as you say. If you are, you will be well rewarded. If you are not …’ William smiled without humour. No words were needed.

Yet the younger man seemed untroubled by the implicit threat. He bowed deeply and said, ‘I will not fail, my lord.’

Deda could see the audience was coming to the end. He slipped away into the dark, sickened by what he had seen. Hereward was his enemy, but he deserved better than this council of rats. To die in battle on the end of a sharp sword was one thing. But the English leader was likely to be brought down by a knife in the back, wielded by his own.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY
-O
NE

HIGH ABOVE THE
camp at Belsar’s Hill, Harald Redteeth flew. His wings were gleaming black and the cold wind rushed beneath them. He looked down, his eyes carving through the suffocating night, and saw the fires that burned all across that part of the fens. He saw the Men of Iron walking among them, like hot coals in the glare. He saw the vast army that would crush all before it, coiled like Fafnir around his mound of gold, spewing flames and smoke. He saw the siege machines and the towers. He saw the new axes forged in the workshops, and the javelins and the crossbows. The king was going to war. He almost felt sorry for the English.

In his head, where the blood throbbed, he could hear the voice of his father, who now walked in the Halls of the Fallen, and of his father’s father, and others before him whose names he did not know, but whose words came to him like a prayer from the beginning of the world.
Defend the old ways to the death
, they said.
Without them you are nothing
. And he answered them in his raven-shriek. He was a Northman, fashioned from fire and ice and blood. The weight of days gone by made him stronger. Honour made him stronger. He was not like those hollowed-out Norman bastards.

Down he flew, low over the city of tents. Warriors stuffed their charms and keepsakes in their sacks. Some paced. Others looked to the stars and the moon for portents. The swords were sharp, the horses well fed and watered. Soon, now. And up into the camp on the hill he whirled. He squatted on a post, watching the Butcher and William de Warenne brooding and plotting, their faces like slabs of granite. And on, and on, over Hereward’s kin, a spring in their steps and smiles on their faces and a light shining in their hearts. All had wagered. All now awaited the outcome.