The Splintered Kingdom (39 page)

They forced him to bow his head, exposing the back of his neck. The bald man stepped forward, laying the flat of the steel upon it before raising the weapon high. Eyes closed and taking deep breaths, Byrhtwald first muttered a prayer in his own tongue that I could not make out, before reciting the familiar words of the Paternoster.

‘
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem
,’ he said, drawing the words out as he realised that with each one he spoke his end grew nearer, ‘
sed libera nos a malo.
’ Behind his back his fists clenched and he let out one final sigh. ‘
Amen
.’

No sooner had he finished speaking than the blade came down.

It took three blows to remove Byrhtwald’s head from his shoulders. Either the man who did it was unused to wielding a sword or else he was unskilled in such killings. The first stroke missed and sliced into the Englishman’s shoulder instead, causing him to pitch forward, screaming in agony. As he writhed on the ground, his hands clutching the place where he had been wounded, the blade struck again. This time it did find his neck, in an instant slicing through his throat and his spine. That was the stroke that killed him, though it needed one more to sever the head entirely.

Thus it was done, and Byrhtwald my friend was gone.

‘He was nothing to you,’ I yelled at the Welshmen, spitting in the direction of the one who had killed him. ‘He was nothing to you. He didn’t have to die!’

But dead he was. With bloody fingers, the swordsman held Byrhtwald’s head up by the hair, displaying it proudly for all to see, before with a roar and a chorus of laughter and cheers from his comrades he hurled it over the walls of the yard.

And as he wiped the sword on a patch of grass, I recognised the smoke-like pattern of the steel and the two blood-red stones embedded in the hilt, and saw that it was my own blade that had spilt his blood, that had taken his life.

From the position of the sun I reckoned our route took us once more west and south, and that reckoning was proven right when later that day we crossed the dyke. Back into Wales, as if I hadn’t already seen enough of this godforsaken country.

Bleddyn and his raiding-band did not ride with us. Where they were headed I was not sure, though I could make a guess: Scrobbesburh. Instead I was escorted by the same six horsemen who had been at Byrhtwald’s killing.

‘Are you taking me to Eadric?’ I asked them some time later, when that place was long behind us.

‘Eadric?’ snorted the bald-headed one, whose name I had learnt was Dyfnwal. From the way he had assumed charge I guessed he must be their leader. ‘If he wants you, he’ll have to come and fetch you. And when he does he’d better bring with him a cart full of silver. He’s a fool if he thinks he’s getting you for nothing.’

This raised a snigger amongst the others.

‘Where are we going, then?’

But Dyfnwal had grown tired of my questions, and the only answer I got was the customary nudge between the shoulder-blades: the sign to shut up and keep moving. I was confused, since from what I had heard Eadric and the Welsh were firmly aligned, their alliance founded upon a common cause and cemented with mutual oaths. Perhaps their ties were looser than
any of us had suspected. Certainly the way that these men spoke of Eadric suggested they had little liking for him.

Nor did Dyfnwal provide any more answers over the hours that followed. They did at least give me a small amount of bread and ale. In truth it did little to sate my hunger but it was better than nothing at all, and I accepted what was offered without complaint.

We marched on for the better part of two days, across valleys and over thickly wooded hills, never seeing another soul. They had not returned my shoes, which were probably on the feet of some other man by now. My ankles were nettle-stung, my bare soles swollen, in places cut and beginning to bleed, so that with every step came a fresh jolt of pain. I was beginning to wonder how much further we had to travel when I realised that I recognised the shape of these gently sloping hills, that I knew where we were.

And then as we crested one of those hills, in the distance I saw the place they were taking me to: a powerful stronghold ringed with high ramparts, along the top of which ran a sturdy stockade. The river lay on one side and it was girded on its other three flanks by a wide moat. As we grew closer I saw heads mounted on spears above the gatehouse: heads of what from their short hair and clean-shaven faces could only be Frenchmen. Nailed to the timbers were the tattered, blood-stained remains of the serpent flag that had once belonged to the brothers Maredudd and Ithel. Not so long ago they had dreamed of assaulting this fort, the ancient home of the men who had stolen their birthright, of claiming it for themselves and seeing that banner soar proudly in this valley. But no longer. And now I had returned, not at the head of an army but as a prisoner.

To Mathrafal.

Twenty-two

THEY LED ME
through a wide yard ringed with wattle and cob huts to an empty storehouse close by what I guessed from the smoke and the pungent smell of fish were the kitchens. There they left me, though not before manacling my wrists and shackling my ankles by means of a gyve and chain to an iron rung set into the stonework so that I could not escape.

By now Robert and the others would be somewhere up in the high hills, I reckoned, with several days’ hard going ahead of them before they reached Eoferwic, unless they’d heard that the Northumbrians were marching and had decided to make for elsewhere. They must have thought me dead, and I supposed I might as well have been, since it would not be long before Eadric came for me and I was delivered to the ætheling.

Nor were Robert and the others the only people who came to mind over the dark days that followed. With not a little guilt I thought of Leofrun back in Earnford, and dreamt of holding her, of lying with her in our chamber upon our feather-filled mattress. I pictured her face in my mind: her soft pinkish cheeks that dimpled when she laughed, her ears that she thought too big, her auburn hair that tumbled in great waves across her shoulders when she unbound it from her braids. Already at only seventeen summers old she was as good and gentle a woman as I had ever known, devoted to me from the moment I had laid eyes upon her and purchased her freedom from the slave-seller who had previously owned her, and taken her away with me to Earnford.

Earnford, my home. It wasn’t just the manor itself that I’d grown fond of but the folk who lived there too: wise Father Erchembald,
who together with Leofrun had taught me the little English I knew; Ædda, who despite his initial distrust of me had grown to become one of my staunchest allies and closest friends among the English. With each day that went by it looked ever more unlikely that I would see either of them again.

My biggest regret was that I would not live to hold my child in my arms. Often over the past few months I had wondered what he or she might look like, how much of myself I would recognise in that face. Were it a boy, I would have looked forward to watching him grow up, until he was old enough that I might begin to train him in the skills of swordcraft, the art of horsemanship and the pleasures of the hunt. Indeed, were it a girl, I might well have done much the same, except that Leofrun would never have allowed me to teach her the sword. Instead I’d have found someone teach her how to use the bow, and enjoyed watching her practise at the butts until she was as good a shot as any man.

These delights I would never know. All my hopes, my ambitions and my desires – everything I had striven for – had come to naught.

Once in a while my captors would bring me something to eat and drink. Sometimes it would be a bowl of half-warm beans mixed with some kind of smoked fish, but on the whole I considered myself lucky to receive anything more than a miserly half-cup of ale and a scrap of mouldy bread. A pair of guards would release my hands so I could eat, and they would stand over me as I did so, waiting until I’d finished before snapping the manacles back around my wrists and leaving me alone once more. Occasionally I was asleep when they came, whereupon they would kick me hard in the ribs or spit in my face to rouse me, and when they found me awake they would often taunt me by passing the dishes beneath my nose repeatedly, torturing me with the smell and the promise of food until, after what seemed like hours, they would at last unchain my hands. Such were the games that they played.

By night I bedded down upon piles of damp straw and huddled beneath the rough linen blanket they had given me. Clearly they had no wish for me to perish through cold any more than they
wanted me to starve, although at the same time they weren’t going to make it comfortable for me either. The only time they freed me from my chains was when I needed to relieve myself, when they took me to the privy across the yard. Even then they kept me closely guarded, with an escort of two or sometimes three guards. Once I managed to evade them, making it as far as the stables before a pair of well-set men wrestled me to the ground. And in truth there was nowhere I could have gone. Most of the time the gates were kept closed and, so far as I could see, there was no other way in or out of the fort. Perhaps they were being over-cautious, since they did not take me to the privy after that. Instead they made me relieve myself in my small prison, so that when I lay down to sleep it was with the stench of my own piss and shit around me.

Days slipped by, each one the same, so that I quickly lost count of them. Weeks must have passed since I’d first arrived, I thought, although how many I could no longer say. I wondered if the enemy had begun their siege of Scrobbesburh, whether Fitz Osbern still held out in the castle, whether the Danish fleet had yet arrived upon these shores. From time to time I prayed, hoping that God had not forsaken me altogether, that He would still hear me and bring me some hope. In all that time, however, I never received an answer.

And so I sought refuge in my dreams, where the faces of my friends and companions could return to me and for a while at least I could believe that I was elsewhere.

I woke to the sound of raised voices outside. Men called to one another in urgent tones, though I had no way of knowing what they were saying. Mail chinked as heavy footsteps made their way around the side of the storehouse. Through the crack between the door and the frame shone the orange glow of a torch or lantern. I must have been asleep for some while, for the last I could remember it had still been day, but now it was full dark. What hour was it?

I sat up, too fast as it turned out, since straightaway I felt light-headed. Until now Mathrafal had remained quiet. This was the first time that there had been any sign of anything happening. Had
Bleddyn returned from Scrobbesburh, and if he had, did that mean he was victorious or defeated?

These thoughts were running through my head when the door was flung open and a cold breeze flooded into the room. Dyfnwal stood in the doorway, his bald pate flickering with reflected torchlight. Buckled upon his waist as before was my sword-belt.

‘Time for you to go,’ he said. ‘Eadric has arrived.’

‘He’s here?’

The Welshman grunted. ‘Sooner than expected, too. He’s waiting for you.’

Wild Eadric. The man I had heard so much about in recent weeks.

Dyfnwal made way for two other men. The taller of them had in his hand a ring of keys, from which he selected one and used it to release me from my chains. For the first time in what seemed like an age both my wrists and ankles were free, though they no longer had to worry about me struggling or being able to escape. My feet had by then recovered from their march across the dyke but were not nearly as steady as they should have been. A sharp ache ran through my neck, which felt barely able to support my head.

Out in the yard were gathered close to two dozen warriors, I reckoned, each with a spear in one hand and a round painted shield in the other. At their head were the men of Bleddyn’s teulu – the ones who had brought me here – mounted and armed as if ready for war. Dogs were barking; somewhere a cockerel had been woken by the commotion and was crowing, though there was no sign yet of the approaching dawn. Nor was there any sign of Eadric, though the gates to the fort lay open. Blackness lay beyond; cloud veiled the stars and the moon so that not even the river could be seen.

Dyfnwal called to one of the watchmen upon the walls, who replied in what I took for a negative tone.

‘He waits for us outside,’ he told me in halting French. ‘He is afraid, you see. For all his posturing the Wild One knows that if he sets foot within Mathrafal he is relying on our kindness and
placing himself at our mercy.’ His expression twisted in distaste, he gazed out beyond the gates into the country beyond, where tiny pinpricks of lantern-light now shone, glinting off spearpoints and mail hauberks. ‘King Bleddyn might have forgotten his past misdeeds, but many of us have not, nor have we forgiven him for the blood that he shed.’

That was the most that I had ever heard the sour-faced Welshman speak; the most, indeed, that anyone had said to me in many days. I wondered what he meant by it. Of course if Eadric had held land out on the Marches under the old king then probably he had once fought many of the men with whom he was now allied. That was some years ago now, but clearly there were some among the Welsh who still bore a grudge against him.

‘
Dilynwch fi
,’ Dyfnwal shouted to his men, and to me said simply: ‘Move.’

We passed beneath the gates, along the rutted track that followed the river to a marker stone perhaps two hundred paces from the fort. The furthest that an arrow-shot from the top of the gatehouse could reliably find its target, I supposed: there as a warning to any who approached that they were within the killing range. Eadric and his retinue had drawn to a halt a little way beyond it, although whether that was by mere happenstance or whether that was borne out of fear, as Dyfnwal had insinuated, I was not sure. With him were some thirty or more warriors, all with horses, together with a single cart drawn by a team of oxen, a man in dark robes who could have been a priest or a monk, and a huntsman with a pack of dogs. A sizeable company, all told: less a war-party than a noble entourage, but then perhaps that was the point, since Eadric had come here not looking to fight but to bargain.