Hereward 03 - End of Days (42 page)

Hereward pressed a silver coin into Hunlaf’s palm, to show the Normans if they doubted he had met the English, and then the four made their way back through the forest, saying little.

That night, Hereward called his men to huddle round the fire and discuss what had been said. While the owls shrieked, they argued back and forth, through mouthfuls of venison.

‘Why does he want to meet you if it is not to take your head?’ Kraki growled, punching one fist into his palm. ‘I say again: can he be trusted? Never!’

Hengist stared into the flames, his eyes dull with sanity. ‘The king will not let us carry on. Our time is done.’

‘Coward,’ the Viking roared.

Deda held up his hand to silence them. ‘I know William well. He is as slippery as an eel, but he is a God-fearing man. If he has made his vow, he will see it to the end.’

Hereward paced around the circle of men, peering into the dark. ‘I will not see any more good English folk suffer on our behalf. Too many in Ely paid the price for our failure. All those long months of want … misery …’ He shook his head. ‘We do not have enough men to fight, and may not for long months to come.’

‘What are you saying?’ Sighard protested. ‘That we give up now, after all our struggle?’

The Mercian stepped into the dark beyond the circle of firelight. ‘We hear what the king has to say, first. Then we make our choice.’

Guthrinc wiped his greasy hands on his tunic. ‘Whichever way we turn, we need to make plans. This peace we have known since the snows melted will soon be long behind us. We
must find another stronghold, like Ely. Perhaps …’ His voice tailed away. No one could find a way to finish his words.

Hereward looked around the faces of his loyal men. They had already given so much, and he knew that if he asked they would follow him to their deaths.

After a while, most of the men drifted away to sleep in their shelters of branch and turf, but Hereward knew he would find no rest that night. As he wandered the camp, turning over his thoughts, he caught sight of Kraki brooding alone beside a great oak. Not long after, he heard the echoes of angry voices. Back at the dying fire, he found the Viking arguing with Acha, Guthrinc, Alric and Deda.

‘I will not go,’ Acha snapped, her eyes flashing.

Kraki looked up at his leader from under heavy brows. ‘Tell her she cannot stay. It is too dangerous.’

Seeing the Mercian’s confusion, Acha said, ‘He would send me back to my folk because he thinks me some frail flower. As if I have not lived with death ever since I was stolen from the Cymri.’

Hereward was puzzled. As long as he had known her she had wanted nothing more than to return to her home in the west. ‘You will meet again—’

‘No,’ she shouted. ‘If I leave here we will never meet again. I am no child. Do not treat me like one. You think you are to die, all of you. And you would see me spared.’ Tears brightened her eyes and her face softened. ‘I beg you. Do not send me away. If you are to die, I would end my days at your side.’

Hereward looked to Kraki. The Viking’s face was like stone, but his eyes were fixed: frightened, the Mercian thought, in a way that he had never seen even in the fiercest battle. He crouched so he could look Acha in the eye, and said as gently as he could, ‘I will not let these good men die if it is in my power to prevent it. That is my oath to you here. But if you stay among us, these warriors, your friends, will sacrifice themselves to keep you safe. You know this is true.’

Acha looked away, her eyes glimmering in the firelight.

‘If you would aid them, leave here, as Kraki has requested,’ he murmured. ‘If it is God’s will, he will find his way to you again.’

Jumping to her feet, Acha marched away into the dark. She would not let them see her cry.

‘I will take her home,’ Deda said. ‘The road west is hard and fraught with thieves and murderers.’

‘Done,’ Kraki barked. He softened, adding, ‘My thanks.’

Deda bowed.

Beckoning to the Viking, Hereward strode into the shadows beneath the oak. ‘You have shown courage this night,’ he said quietly, ‘though I know it causes you great pain.’

‘I did what I must,’ Kraki growled.

‘Go to her,’ Hereward said. ‘Make it right with her this night, or as right as can be, so there are no regrets.’

The scarred warrior hesitated for only a moment, and then gave a curt nod and strode after Acha into the dark.

Hereward stirred at first light, stiff from the spring chill. Low voices droned. He crawled out of his shelter to see Deda leading Acha into the trees. By the ashes of the cold fire, Kraki stood like a statue, watching them leave. He did not move, even when his woman glanced back, and held his gaze for a long moment. She forced a smile, her eyes glistening.

And still the Viking stood, watching, even when the forest had swallowed her up.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTY
-F
IVE

IN THE LAST
of the fading light, the two beggars trudged through the gates of Wincestre. Their cloaks were stained with mildew and grass from the ditches they had slept in, their shoes and breeches caked in mud. Over their heads, the Master of the Flame chanted his prayer for safe passage to morn as he lit the torches to keep the dark at bay. Soon, the bar would fall and no other visitor would be allowed into the king’s town until dawn. The smiths and the woodworkers closed up their workshops. The looms stilled. Bats flitted across the rosy sky. Sleep was not far away.

Amid the rattle of carts and the sweet-sharp stink of horse dung, the beggars wound through the narrow streets towards the king’s new palace. At the market cross, the two men paused. Alric raised his head to peer at the tower of the cathedral soaring over the town. He had heard William the Bastard wanted to tear it down and build an even greater monument to God, out of limestone, like the great Norman cathedrals of which Alric had heard so much. How could so cruel a man be so devout, he wondered?

Hereward prowled around the deserted market, deep in thought. Hardly a word had passed his lips on the long journey
south from the Brunneswalde. In the camp, the Mercian had fought hard to be allowed to travel alone. For once, Alric would have none of it. He knew his friend’s mind better than anyone. Hereward was preparing to do a deal with the king that would sacrifice his own life in exchange for those of his men, Alric was sure of it. Every day on the road he had proclaimed how wrong that course would be, how William the Bastard would surely still come after the remaining English warriors once his greatest enemy’s head was on a pole at Wincestre’s gates. And still he had little sense of what his friend planned. He eyed the warrior, feeling anxious, but he would pray that he made the right choice.

‘You are ready?’ the monk said, throwing off his hood.

‘Aye.’

‘There is still time to turn round.’

‘What would we gain?’

‘Hmm,’ Alric mused. ‘Your life?’

Hereward shrugged, as if this was the smallest consideration. ‘I will go to the palace. As I near the gates, keep watch for any of the king’s men who may be waiting to seize me—’

The monk could take no more. ‘Tell me what is on your mind,’ he blurted.

Pulling back his own hood, the Mercian raised his face to the cool evening breeze. ‘Endings.’

Alric felt his heart sink. He forced a chuckle. ‘This is no time for such thoughts. We are on the cusp of new beginnings. The fight goes on.’

‘My father is dead,’ Hereward said. ‘Never did I think I would be free of him. And Redteeth – so long we circled each other with murder in our eyes. Gone, too. Only Redwald remains to drag me back into misery.’

‘If your brother knows what is good for him, he will be far from here.’

Hereward shook his head. ‘Where power rests, that is where you will find Redwald. Standing in the shadows, plotting. Where is the justice for Turfrida, for you …’ He held out a
hand. ‘Your days were almost ended … and yet still he rises.’

‘We talked of the perils of seeking vengeance …’

‘I do not want vengeance. Not any more. I have left that behind me.’ The Mercian looked round at the monk with clear eyes. ‘I only want an end to it. Before we left our camp, I had a dream, of death. My own death. I lay in my grave, looking up at the grey sky.’ He glanced around the darkening town. ‘All things are coming to an end, monk; that is how it seems to me. If I find Redwald I will kill him—’

‘Though it destroy you! You will never escape the guilt of slaying your own brother.’

‘Or he will kill me,’ Hereward continued as if he had not heard Alric’s words. ‘This business cannot be done until one of us is gone. And then—’

‘And then what?’ the monk snapped, his chest heavy with despair.

As the last of the light faded, the Mercian’s face fell into shadow. For a long moment, Hereward seemed on the brink of answering. Instead, he only nodded a farewell, and turned and walked away into the night.

C
HAPTER
S
IXTY
-S
IX

REDWALD STOOD AT
the entrance to the piss-stinking track beside the tavern, listening to the raucous voices and singing that thrummed through the wattle walls. Apprehensive, he glanced back into the main street leading to Wincestre’s palace, a ribbon of silver in the moonlight. All was still. He tried to steady his beating heart, but it throbbed in his head like the hooves of a runaway horse.

When he saw Edoma turn the corner at the far end of the alley and start hurrying towards him, he scrambled quickly along the track and thrust her back into the narrow street with such force that she almost cried out. Grabbing her shoulders, he snapped, ‘Why are you late?’

‘I was delayed—’

‘Never mind.’ He looked her up and down. She was wearing a new dress, of finest blue silk, one he had not seen before. Her face had been freshly scrubbed and a new ribbon gleamed in her hair. Pampering herself, when there was so much at stake. He raised his hand to strike her. Edoma recoiled, glaring at him. For that she needed to be punished, but there was no time. ‘Let us not fight,’ he whispered, feigning a warm smile. ‘This night everything will change. I will be raised up to the highest position.’

‘You have said those words so many times, I can scarce believe you,’ she sighed.

‘This time ’tis true,’ he said, annoyed by her response. ‘And I need your help to make it so.’ He peered back down the dark track to the moonlit street beyond. ‘I have heard that Hereward has sent word he will meet the king this night. I need you to keep watch by the palace, and when you see him, rush here to tell me so I can make ready.’

‘To kill him?’

He nodded. ‘The king has taken a vow not to slay my brother. I am not bound by such an oath.’

Edoma frowned. ‘This is the wrong course.’

‘Who are you to question me?’

‘I have thought long and hard about it,’ she continued, looking around. ‘You are going against the king’s wishes—’

‘He wants Hereward dead. Of that there can be no doubt.’ He formed the words as if he were speaking to a child. ‘And if I deliver the head to him, all the better. I will be well rewarded.’

‘Can you not see?’ she pressed. ‘Has your lust for power deluded you? The king does not need your aid to end your brother’s days. You clutch at straws because now it is all you have to offer—’

He swiped the back of his hand across her face, harder than he intended. He trembled, stunned that she had dared speak to him that way, and shocked that he could not control his anger. The reason was clear, if he could admit it to himself. He was afraid of losing everything that he had worked so hard for, of once again becoming nothing.

Edoma wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. A bloody smear trailed across her skin. Like a hunted animal, she eyed him.

‘No more words from you. You will do as I say,’ he snapped. ‘You have brought my knife, as I asked?’

She unfurled the fingers of her other hand to reveal the knife with the whalebone handle carved into the shape of an angel, Hereward’s knife, which his father had given to him when he
was a boy and Redwald had stolen in the days when he had nothing. As he reached out to take it, she folded her fingers around the blade again. ‘No,’ she said.

‘Give it to me.’

‘If you bring the king’s wrath down upon you with this rash action, I will suffer too. I will not have that.’ Her eyes flashed. ‘Do you think you are the only one who has struggled and sacrificed to be raised up?’

Redwald smiled, seeing her in a new light. How cunning she had been. She had bent men to her will from the moment she had appeared at Ely’s gates, a lost soul whose kin had been killed by Normans, or so she said. First the brothers Madulf and Sighard, and then him. He could not fault her for using the arts God had granted her. He had only done the same. ‘We will work well together, you and I,’ he said with an approving nod.

Looking back along the dark and lonely track, she sighed and shook her head. ‘You are of no use to me now. I have found someone else, a Norman nobleman who will see me well cared for. He wants to make me his wife.’

Redwald recoiled as if she had slapped him. ‘I will not allow it,’ he blustered. ‘Once he has heard the truth about you, he will not sully his hands.’

‘As I expected.’ She lashed out faster than a striking viper. Only when she stepped back did he realize that his own knife protruded from his stomach. She gasped, her fingers fluttering to her mouth. ‘Oh,’ she said, flushed, ‘I have never killed a man before.’ Her eyes gleamed with excitement.

Redwald staggered backwards along the track in shock, clutching at the whalebone handle. He felt numb, even as his blood flowed out to stain his tunic.

As he slumped against the tavern wall, Edoma came to lean over him. ‘Die slowly,’ she whispered. ‘There is gain for me here. I will tell the guards I have slain a traitor to the crown, one who opposed the king’s will and threatened my own life too.’ She blew him a kiss and then all but skipped along the track into the moonlight.

Pressing his head back against the wall, Redwald closed his eyes – but only for a moment. He felt a seething anger rise inside him. He would not die this way, like a rat on a filthy track. Death had not yet claimed him, and he had survived a worse wound in days gone by. Gritting his teeth, he yanked the knife out. He had his life and he had a blade, and he could still end Hereward’s days before the alarm was raised.