Hereward 03 - End of Days (24 page)

The monarch threw back his head and laughed once more. Redwald frowned. He could see no reason for his master’s uncommon high spirits. Keeping to the shadows, he edged around the tent so he could more easily overhear the king’s conversation in the cacophony of voices.

‘Never would I have thought the English would take so long to break,’ William was saying. ‘They have fought like starving rats at every turn.’

‘Aye,’ Turold slurred as he beckoned for more wine. ‘We thought that day at Senlac Ridge was hard-fought. It was as nothing to the battle we have fought every day since then.’

William nodded. ‘The sword is sharp, but it takes a keen wit to win this war.’ He smiled, almost to himself, Redwald thought. ‘But we are close now, God willing.’

Redwald prowled around the fringes of the tent, listening where he could. No one seemed to notice his presence. The nobles were all caught up in their drink, and filling their bellies to bursting, as if they could not get enough each day of their lives. Hereward would have been contemptuous of them, these conquerors growing fat off the labours of the broken-backed English. Redwald felt nothing. They were of use to him, or they were not. No other measurement was necessary.

As the night drew on, the king drank more than Redwald had ever seen him consume. He swilled wine, and ale, and mead, calling for oaths as if all was right with the world, and he was not on the brink of a bloody battle that would tear apart the armies of both sides. But then some nobleman rose on shaky legs and held his cup high, promising that after the English the Normans would vanquish all their enemies: the Danes who brooded in the cold lands, biding their time, with their fleets of dragon-ships; and Malcolm in the north with his army of wild men.

Everyone there roared. Some stood and threw back their cups. Others clambered on the tables and stamped their feet.
But Redwald watched the king’s face. The humour flooded away and for one moment he looked like an old man. He caught himself soon enough, laughing too loud as he demanded more wine, but his eyes shifted uneasily now.

Redwald smiled to himself. Here, then, was something of value. The king, so strong and forthright in everything he did, felt the weight of his crown. Did William regret invading England, he wondered? He shrugged. The Bastard could have taken no other course. It was in his nature, and every man was driven by that beast inside him.

He took a few steps back until the cloth of the tent brushed his back. He guessed the monarch’s temper would be quicker now, and sure enough he was glowering at the drunken men around him. They were oblivious of the change in his mood, still roaring with laughter and yelling across the tent at each other.

When William hurled his cup at one man’s head, the din ebbed away. Heads lowered, eyes darted around. Redwald watched him scan the ranks for someone he could taunt. His gaze settled on Ivo Taillebois, the only one there who refused to avert his gaze.

‘Come, Butcher,’ the king called, ‘show us your fangs.’

Hesitating for only a moment, Taillebois pushed himself up. No man could refuse the king and live. But Redwald watched the sheriff’s glower and knew that he would rather be turning his sword upon the monarch himself. The king looked along the tables until his gaze alighted on another commander, a slender man with greying hair. Redwald didn’t know his name, but he had heard whispers of the warrior’s reputation as an adept swordsman.

‘Swords,’ the king said with a lazy wave of his hand. ‘Let us see who has true skill with the blade.’

As he rounded the table, Taillebois lowered his eyes. He knew he had been set up to fail. Another humiliation. Redwald wondered how much more the Butcher could take.

The two men faced each other in the centre of the tent. The
grey-haired man bowed. Taillebois showed no such courtesy. With a roar, he hacked with his sword as if it were an axe. Caught off guard, the other man reeled back, swinging up his own blade to block by instinct alone. His eyes flickered with unease. The Butcher knew he could not compete on skill alone. Ferocity was his only path to victory, even if it meant lopping off his opponent’s head.

For a while, the two men danced around each other. Redwald watched the grey-haired man try time and again to turn this into a display of swordsmanship. But Taillebois had no qualms at all about his tactics. Redwald smiled to himself with new-found admiration for the man.

As he swept by a table, the Butcher snatched up a pitcher of wine and hurled it into his foe’s face. The grey-haired man staggered back, blinded. Taillebois saw his opening and hacked down.

A gasp of horror ran through the guests. As the grey-haired man half skidded on the pool of wine, the blade missed splitting open his skull by a whisker and ripped down the side of his head. His ear flew off on to the mud. Howling, he reeled on to his back, clutching at his wound.

The Butcher lunged forward and pressed his blade against his opponent’s throat. For a moment, Redwald thought he was going to follow through, even then, with his enemy disabled. He seemed to catch himself at the last, and glanced over to where the monarch sipped from his cup.

The king flapped a hand to end the contest, bored now that his desire to humiliate Taillebois had been thwarted. As the Butcher swaggered back to his seat, the servants helped the wounded man to his feet. He staggered out in search of a leech, and with him went all the exuberance of the feast. Voices remained hushed, the mood as damp as a fenlands autumn. But the king didn’t seem to care. Redwald stayed to watch him drinking and laughing for a while longer, and then he crept out into the night.

A little later he glanced around and saw the monarch
lurching from the tent. William stood by the entrance, swaying as he pissed.

‘My lord, the feast goes well,’ Redwald called, painting a beaming smile on to his face.

The king looked over and grinned. ‘You are a sly one. If you truly thought the feast went well, you would be in there feasting instead of warming yourself by the fire.’ He winked. ‘But that is where a wise man would be. Out here you do not have to listen to the whining of dogs and the hissing of snakes.’ He glared into the tent and then clapped an arm across Redwald’s shoulders and urged him towards the campfire. The reek of the tavern floor floated off him.

‘The minds of the English are a mystery to me,’ William slurred. ‘Here you have riches that are the envy of every man in Europe. Treasure … trade … the jewellery and the statues and the … fine cloth … and those laws that keep your folk on the right path. They are a monument in themselves. All those things you have made across the seasons, great things. And yet …’ He peered into the flames, his brow creasing. ‘It seems that you English are only interested in ale, and fucking, and music. This makes little sense to me.’ He shook his head in incomprehension.

‘We are a strange breed.’

‘Strange, yes, and treacherous too.’ William bowed his head, his thoughts seemingly miles away. ‘Long ago now, Harold Godwinson came to me in Normandy. We went hunting together,’ he said in disbelief. ‘And he told me that the English crown would be mine once Edward died.’

‘Harold could not be trusted,’ Redwald replied. Since Senlac Ridge, he had barely thought of the man who had first raised him up.

‘And then my messengers told me Harold had taken the crown himself in Edward’s new abbey,’ the king continued as if
the other man had not spoken. His lips curled back from his discoloured teeth. The wound was still raw. He glanced at Redwald and demanded, ‘Tell me about Hereward. Not as the man he is now, but as the brother who shared your father’s hall.’

‘Hereward is a good man,’ Redwald replied. ‘He is a loyal friend. He is brave. He has more honour than any other Englishman I know. I hold him in the highest regard. I could never reach his heights.’

The king frowned, baffled by this glowing account. ‘And yet you aid me in bringing him to his doom?’

Redwald shrugged. ‘He is all those things, and he is wrong.’

The king looked back to the fire, still struggling to comprehend. ‘What do you want, above all else?’ he demanded. ‘Speak truly. I will know if your tongue lies.’

‘Power,’ Redwald answered without guile. ‘And … to feel safe in this harsh world.’

William grinned. This he understood. ‘Power,’ he mused. ‘When this war is done, I will grant you that, and more.’

Redwald was surprised.

It must have shown on his face, for the king continued, ‘I know your heart better than any man on this hill. Trust we will never have, but I do not need to trust you if I know you. Unlike all those who lay claim to moral purpose and godly ways, I can foresee every move you will make.’

He laughed, then, and clapped Redwald on the shoulders. As he made his way towards the tent, he glanced back and said, ‘Men always think they have the measure of me. But I did not become king and conqueror by being so easily understood. I have plans in place that even those dogs in there do not know.’ He grinned. ‘This war is all but done, and before long we will be on our way to Wincestre.’

‘Plans?’ Redwald said.

The king shook his head, taunting. ‘The English do not realize that doom is stalking them even as we speak. And soon the end will come.’

C
HAPTER
T
HIRTY
-T
HREE

A THIN CRACK
of light glowed under the door. A beacon, it seemed, compared to the swimming darkness of the hut. Acha huddled against the timber wall, her arms around her knees. She shivered. No blanket had she, no straw, and the mud floor felt like ice beneath her bare feet. Winter was coming in hard, but she would never see the snows, she knew that now. Her belly rumbled. Her Norman captors had not brought her food for a full day, and that told her all she needed to know. She watched the door like a hawk, knowing that when it was flung open and the dawn flooded in, it would signal the end of her.

Her thoughts flew away, across the fens, and the forests of Mercia, to Gwynedd and the great snow-capped mountains of the west, the desolate uplands and the deep river valleys, as wild in their own way as the wetlands that were now her home. She remembered sitting by the hearth of her mother’s hall, listening to the rain rattling on the thatch and the sound of the men singing as they quaffed their ale. She recalled the smell of damp fern, and the smoke. It reminded her of peace. There was no want in their hall. Meat when they needed it, and clothes and coin. Slaves to service their every need.

Acha flinched. Her head filled with a vision of her giving the edge of her tongue to the young girl who was sewing by the fire. From the hot lands across the whale road she had come, bought in the markets to the south and sent to their hall. Acha had made the girl cry. And two days later Harold Godwinson had come with his war-band, and the hall had been burned, and her mother raped, and she had been carried away, to Mercia first, and then to Eoferwic, where she had been made slave to Harold’s brother Tostig. Hot tears of shame burned in her eyes. A slave! They knew full well that royal blood flowed through her veins, she was sure. Her father was Gruffyd ap Llywelyn, a prince, the greatest prince that her folk had ever known. No man had done more to unite the Cymri.

She bowed her head. Aye, royal blood, and little good it had done her, in Northumbria, or even in Gwynedd. The English had always gossiped behind her back about her lineage, but she had never spoken of it to anyone, not even Kraki, and for good reason. In part, she had feared the knowledge of her high-born status would bring more suffering upon her head. But in truth, it was the shame. For she was a bastard. Her father had always cared for her and her mother, but she could never claim his heritage, or take the hand of a son of another great family. She was everything yet she was nothing, always happy yet always miserable, bound to days gone by, but with no days to come unless she made them herself.

She raised her head until it bumped against the wood. And there it was. She had royal blood, and she would never forget that. For a while she had done so, through all the sour days, when it was a struggle to reach the night. But now she had been forced to remember that she was the daughter of Gruffyd ap Llywelyn, and if she died this day, it would be with head held high.

Footsteps approached the door. She stiffened. The time had come. She had always known it would end this way, from the moment she had cried out to save Hereward’s life. Her legs
shaking, she pushed herself up the wall. She would meet her fate eye to eye, not cowed.

The door rattled open and once more the knight was framed in the rosy light. Deda was his name. She showed a cold face to him.

‘You will come with me,’ he said. His voice was not unkind, but she thought she saw doubt in his eyes, or worry, or unease. The confidence she had seen there before was gone, aye, and the compassion too. Norman bastards, they were all alike.

She lifted her chin and strode forward, trying not to tremble. When she stepped out into the chill dawn, her breath steamed. Under the pink sky, the camp was dark and still. Beyond the palisade, the wetlands lowered, the meres blushing amid acres of shadow.

‘You are not to make a show of it, then?’ she said. She felt grateful for that, although she would not reveal it.

Deda leaned in. She could feel his warm breath on her ear. ‘Heed my words,’ he whispered. ‘If you would keep your head on your shoulders, do as I say. Do you understand?’

She nodded, puzzled.

‘I will take you out of the camp and past the causeway to the edge of the lake. And there I will set you free. You will go back to your home, and if anyone asks, you will tell them you escaped from my grip. You were fast and clever. I was slow and stupid, like all Normans. Do you hear me?’

She flinched, thinking this was some cruel trick. The Normans were skilled at drawing out agonies. She looked into his eyes. His gaze was clear and honest. ‘Why do you do this?’ she asked.

He looked away across the lonely landscape for a moment as if trying to find the answer for himself. Then he only shook his head. ‘Come,’ he whispered. ‘We must not be seen.’