The Splintered Kingdom (14 page)

‘Who are you?’ the man managed, his voice barely more than a croak. He was not long for this life.

I crouched down beside him. ‘My name is Tancred,’ I said. ‘And I am your death.’

He stared back at me, his eyes moist as he saw the last moments of his life slipping by and knew that he would never wield a sword,
never feel a woman’s touch, never so much as eat or drink or breathe again.

‘Do it,’ he whispered. ‘Make it quick.’

I nodded, lifting my sword in both hands so that I held it like a dagger over his chest, then in one clean blow drove it between his ribs, thrusting it deeper until it found his heart. One final gasp escaped his lips, and then his eyes closed and his head rolled to one side. I wrested my blade free, rising without another glance at him, leaving him there as I bolted back in the direction of the church, to Beatrice and Papia. Those shouts were louder now, closer than before, and if we delayed any further then all this would have been for nothing.

‘This way,’ I said, sheathing my sword at last, gesturing towards one of the side streets that led back towards the river. ‘Quickly!’

Beatrice did not move. She was staring at the bodies which now lay strewn across the way, and I thought she was about to vomit, but I grabbed her hand, tugging her away from there, and then at last she seemed to wake from her thoughts.

‘Come on,’ I told her. ‘Now!’

She did not need telling again, and as I broke into a run, so did she, with Papia not far behind us: the three of us darting through the narrow alleyways, past inns and pig-sheds and crumbling hovels, slipping into the shadows.

Eight

TWICE I GLANCED
behind to see if we were being pursued. I saw no one, but nonetheless we kept running until I saw the river ahead, glittering faintly under the light of the stars. By then the cries of panic and the sound of hooves had faded almost to nothing. Now there was only the sound of rats scurrying along the wharfside and on to the boats moored there, the calls of a moorhen disturbed from its sleep, and our own breathing.

We ducked into a narrow alley which ran behind a large storehouse, where we could not be easily spotted from the river. Shipmasters usually left some of their crew behind to guard whatever cargo was left on board, or even defend the boat itself against those who might try to steal it, and I decided it was better that they did not see us.

Even now I could scarcely believe that I was still alive, that we had all three of us managed to escape unharmed. Unharmed, that was, except for the cut to my shoulder. Now that the rush of battle was gone, it had begun to throb: like tiny arrows of fire shooting through my flesh. A trickle of blood ran down my arm and I clutched at it, at the same time glancing out into the street, looking back the way we came. The belfry of St Ealhmund’s church stood on top of the hill, rising above the houses, with faint lantern-light flickering across its stonework, and when I stilled my breathing and listened carefully I could make out voices. Mercifully, though, there was no sign of anyone following us.

Relief came over me and I closed my eyes as I leant back against the wall of the storehouse, letting the night’s cool air fill my chest,
doing my best to ignore the pain. The stink of putrid fish, offal and ox dung filled my nose.

‘Here,’ said Beatrice, and she pressed a bundle of dark cloth against my shoulder in an effort to stem the flow of blood. I grimaced at the sting but did not pull away. She rolled up my sleeve and began to wipe some of the blood from around the wound. ‘Can I use your knife?’

I nodded wordlessly.

‘Hold this,’ she said and placed my hand on top of the bundle of cloth. I kept it pressed to the wound while she reached down to the sheath on my belt and carefully drew out the blade, which was still covered with blood. Taking her cloak from me, she used the knife to hack a long strip from it to serve as a bandage. Now that I could see the wound better, it did not look nearly as bad as I had imagined, though knowing that did nothing to ease the pain. First folding it so that it formed a double layer, Beatrice passed the bandage under my arm and then tied the two ends together, tightly enough that it would bind the gash and, at the very least, keep it from bleeding further.

‘Thank you,’ I said when she had finished.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, grimacing in spite of myself as another bolt of agony stabbed through my shoulder.

‘I can’t afford to stay out any longer,’ she said. ‘We have to get back before we’re missed. If anyone were to notice that I’m gone . . .’

She did not finish, but I knew what she was thinking. At the very least there would be talk: about what she was doing out so late and by herself, with only her maidservant to help protect her.

‘I’ll come with you,’ I said. ‘The streets aren’t safe.’

‘No, it’s better if you don’t. We can’t risk being seen together.’

It was a little late to be worrying about that, I thought. Indeed, if she had made that decision an hour ago, then she would not have sent the girl to me in the first place; I would still be asleep in my tent and two men would not have lost their lives in needless bloodshed.

I was too tired to argue, though. I needed to find water or, better, spirits to put on the gash, and the sooner the better. A slight cut such as it was would heal by itself without any need for stitches, but I had to keep it clean.

She took my hand in hers, squeezing it tenderly, and I realised that with everything that had happened, I’d failed to divest her of this notion that there could exist something between us. Before I could say anything, though, she had let go, turning her attention to Papia, who was sitting huddled on the ground with her back against a stack of barrels, shivering with cold and with fear, her knees drawn up towards her face, which was buried in her hands. There was blood on her fingers, blood staining her dress.

Beatrice crouched down in front of her. ‘We have to go.’

Sobbing, the maidservant shook her head. Her hair fell in disarray over her eyes, and gently Beatrice pushed it aside and hugged the girl tightly to her chest. ‘Come,’ she said.

This time the girl nodded and got to her feet. Not once did she look at me. Beatrice held her hand as the three of us made for the far end of the alleyway, where it opened out on to one of the main streets.

I glanced out into the road to make sure that no one was watching. One way headed up the hill, towards the heart of the town; the other led back in the direction of the camp. Both were deserted.

‘This is where we part, then,’ I said.

‘Be safe, Tancred.’

‘And you, my lady.’

She held my eyes, but only for a moment, before she and the girl were hurrying away up the rutted street. The skies were cloudy and there was little light from either moon or stars. It wasn’t long before they had vanished into the night.

I woke the next day to find the sun shining in through the flaps at the entrance to my tent, confusing me, for in my dreams it had been night and I was in my hall at Earnford, with Ædda and Erchembald and all the rest. But then I recalled where we were: Scrobbesburh.

Blinking at the light, I rolled over on to my side, remembering my wound too late. Sharp heat flashed through my shoulder and I clutched at it, wincing and cursing at the same time, and sat up. Thankfully the cut had long since stopped bleeding; the bandage that Beatrice had tied around it had helped see to that. I loosened the knot she had made, hoping to get a better look at the wound now that it was day, though there was not much to see. A narrow line of dried blood ran down my upper arm, about the length of my little finger: proof that last night had been real and I had not just imagined it. Proof that I had fought those men, that I had met Beatrice in the church. I retied the cloth and rolled my sleeve back down, covering it lest anyone should see.

A fire was already burning when I emerged from the tent. Serlo, Turold and Pons were sitting around it, together with Snocca and Cnebba and several of Robert’s men, as well as his own servants: resting their shields on their knees and using them as tables, passing around bottles filled with water fetched from the river.

But among all those faces was one I hadn’t expected to be there. Someone I hadn’t seen in a long time, but whom I recognised at a glance: rangy and long-limbed, with a thin face, thick eyebrows and dark hair.

‘Eudo!’ I let out a laugh at the sight of my old friend and comrade.

‘Tancred,’ he said, likewise grinning as he leapt to his feet. ‘I was wondering when you’d wake.’

For more than a dozen years we had served the same lord, fought under the same banner in the same conroi. Shoulder to shoulder we had stood in the shield-wall; knee to knee we had ridden alongside each other in the charge. Together we had lived through so many battles that I had long since lost count, and in so doing we had forged a bond stronger even than that of kinship: a bond that could never be broken.

‘It’s been a while,’ he said.

‘It has,’ I agreed. Indeed the last time I’d seen him was the previous summer, when the king had gathered his host to stand against the great Danish fleet that had been supposed to sail. The
fleet that we had been waiting all year for, but which in the end never came. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘The same as you,’ Eudo said. ‘I was in Hereford with Lord Robert when we heard the news about the Welsh. We got here the day before yesterday, although my men and I were all out on sentry duty last night, so I didn’t hear you’d arrived until this morning.’

He had come with Robert all the way from the other end of the kingdom, then. While I had been given Earnford, both Eudo and Wace had been granted demesnes from Robert’s holdings in distant Suthfolc, close to where the land ended and the marshes that bordered the sea began: a region that was no less troubled than these parts, since that coast was often plagued by pirates and raiders from across the German Sea.

‘Robert didn’t say you were with him,’ I said.

Eudo shrugged. ‘With everything that’s been happening he probably forgot. His mind has been on other things lately: first the arrangements for his sister’s marriage, and now the threat from across the dyke. Did you know that Lady Beatrice is to be married again?’

‘I had heard,’ I said, and it came out more stiffly than I had meant.

Not that Eudo seemed to notice. Even if he had, I doubted he would have made anything of it. ‘It’s strange to think it’s already more than a year since we were all fleeing Eoferwic together,’ he said. ‘You, me, Wace, the ladies. Malet’s chaplain.’

Indeed it was more than a year since the business with Ælfwold: since we had fought him and his hired swords beside the Temes; since he had tried to kill me upon the cliff-top and had fallen to his death. A breaker of oaths, he had remained a treacherous man to the end. Eudo would not speak of any of this openly, of course, yet I knew he was thinking it.

‘More than a year since the battle, too,’ I added. ‘Since Dunholm.’

At once I regretted having said it as Eudo fell quiet. I hadn’t meant to darken the mood, though it was difficult to think upon the events of last year and not to remember what had taken place there that cold winter’s night.

Eudo was the one to break the silence. ‘Still,’ he said, sighing, ‘after all that, here we are. Soon to ride together once more.’

‘Is Wace with you?’

‘He was, at least until yesterday. Fitz Osbern sent him ahead to Cestre to bear the summons to Earl Hugues there.’

‘He must be worried if he’s looking for help from the Wolf,’ I said.

‘The Wolf?’

‘Hugues Lupus,’ I explained. ‘That’s how he’s known, here on the March at least. It’s Latin.’

It was fitting, too. Hugues d’Avranches, the Earl of Ceastre, was known for his wild nature and his fierce temper, as well as for the brutality with which he dealt with anyone who crossed him: all in all a man to be feared and respected, though it was said he was only twenty in years. As with most bynames, he had first been called the Wolf in jest, but after learning of it he had grown to like it, so much so that he soon adopted the animal as his symbol, much to the anger of Fitz Osbern, whose own banner bore the same device. The two had been at odds ever since, and I took the fact that Fitz Osbern was now calling upon Hugues for aid as a clear sign of how serious he considered the threat posed by the Welsh.

‘Did you hear what happened last night?’ Eudo asked.

‘No,’ I said. ‘What?’

‘Two men were murdered in the town. They were out whoring with three others of their company when they were set upon in the streets. Cut down in cold blood, they were.’

I froze. To hear the tale from someone else’s lips was strange to say the least.

‘The word is it was the doing of one man alone,’ Pons put in. ‘Or that’s what I’ve heard anyway.’

‘One against five?’ asked Turold.

‘That’s what those who survived say,’ Pons replied as he stuffed more bread into his mouth. ‘They claim their attacker was lying in wait for them; that he came on them like a shadow out of the night, slew their comrades before they could even draw their swords.’

Serlo snorted in disdain. ‘You’d choose to believe the words of cowards? They clearly abandoned their friends to save their own skin. It’s exactly the kind of yarn you would expect them to spin.’

‘It sounds unlikely, doesn’t it?’ Eudo agreed. ‘Probably they’d been drinking and managed to get into a brawl, and were just unlucky to be on the wrong side.’

My throat was dry. I realised I hadn’t yet said anything, and forced myself to speak. ‘Did they see their attacker’s face?’

‘They say not,’ Pons replied. ‘It all happened too quickly, their heads and bellies were filled with ale, and it was dark besides.’

‘Another reason to think they’re lying,’ Serlo muttered. ‘Probably they got into some fight between themselves over a girl, and ended up killing each other.’

‘There could be a hundred different explanations,’ said Turold. ‘Maybe there was money involved, or else the killings were part of some feud that none of them wish to speak about.’