Hereward 03 - End of Days, page 5
‘You were saved by God,’ Thurstan insisted.
When Alric looked over the man’s ruined face, he could not believe that was an act of mercy.
‘Those who did not come south, but hid out in the hills, fared worse,’ Cuthwin croaked. ‘In the bitter cold of the winter, they ate the horses, then they ate the dogs. And then, God help them, they fed on themselves.’
Thurstan recoiled, crossing himself. ‘This cannot be. No man would stoop to such a foul act. Whoever told you these things was lying.’
Alric watched the wounded man’s hand tremble. He had not been told these tales.
Kraki seemed to understand too. ‘Go on,’ he said with an unfamiliar note of gentleness in his voice.
‘The sickness came soon after, taking the women who had been left to suffer. There is God’s charity,’ he said with bitterness. ‘Now there is nothing left beyond Eoferwic.’
‘Nothing?’ Alric repeated, hoping he had misheard.
Cuthwin shook his head. ‘Only a wasteland remains. More died in one season than in any battles I have heard tell of. This was not war, it was slaughter. This was cruelty beyond any we have ever known.’ He grabbed Kraki’s arm with a burst of passion. ‘What man could do such a thing? A man who calls himself king! He is the Devil; he can be no other.’ He pulled Kraki in closer and hissed, ‘The English must never forget. Hereward must avenge us.’
He slumped back, so still once more that Alric thought he had died until he saw the barely perceptible rise and fall of his chest.
Kraki led them out into the chill afternoon. Their breath had begun to steam. ‘Why do you show us this?’ Alric enquired.
‘So you know what awaits us in the days to come.’ Kraki held the monk’s gaze for a long moment, his eyes like deep water, and then he marched off towards the church on the top of the hill.
When they caught up with him, he was already seated at the table in the refectory, swilling beer. At the head of the table, Guthrinc gnawed on a goose leg. He wiped the grease from his mouth with the back of his hand and nodded as the two churchmen entered. Hengist limped around the room. His madness came and went these days – the wound left by the slaughter of his kin would never heal completely – but at that moment he was kneading his hands and muttering to himself, his filthy blond hair hanging across his face. Sighard was there too.
‘Sit your arse down, monk. We have much to discuss,’ Kraki growled. He called to one of the girls to bring stew to warm the bellies of the travellers, and beer. Once he was seated, Alric searched the faces of those around the table. Worry gnawed at them, as it had eaten its way into Alric’s bones on the journey south.
‘Close the door,’ Kraki barked, yelling to the guard outside. ‘Let no one come in while we talk.’
The door groaned shut.
‘No news of Hereward?’ Thurstan asked as he took his seat. ‘Hereward is not here.’ Kraki slammed down his cup. ‘He has left us to fight this cursed war on our own. And fight it we shall.’
Hengist stopped his pacing and leaned on the table with both hands. ‘I had a dream last night, that I walked under a hot sun and there was sand as far as the eye could see. And though I cried out for water, there was none. What does this mean? Is it a portent?’ He looked to Thurstan.
‘God speaks to us in dreams,’ the abbot replied. ‘This we are told. But I would ponder upon your vision for a while before I give you the answer you need.’
‘Dreams!’ Kraki said, clenching his fist. ‘Let us speak of the here and now, before Ely is swamped in a tide of blood.’
Alric leaned forward and held out his hands. ‘I do not understand this talk of portents and blood. When I set off for Bottisham, we searched for Hereward, yes, but we also made plans to take this war beyond the fens, to the king’s door, if necessary.’
‘All that has changed.’ Kraki wagged a finger at Sighard and ordered him to speak. In a clear voice, the red-headed man told of the Norman force sweeping in from the west and the message of the murdered scout. When he was done, Kraki boomed his own account of the king’s army venturing further into the fens than it ever had before, and in greater numbers. But when he spoke of the siege machines floating across what they had perceived to be the impassable waters of the east, Alric felt his heart sink.
‘The king has sent out men from Grentabrige to close the roads from the south,’ the monk added. ‘He tries to throttle us … cut off our trade and keep out the men who come to join our army.’
‘And he has tried to throttle us before,’ Guthrinc mused. ‘Why should this time be any different?’
Kraki poured himself another beer and hugged it between his palms as he stared into the brown depths. ‘The king is cunning,’ he reiterated. ‘Some plan will be burning in the dark of his head.’
‘The danger,’ Thurstan suggested, ‘is that you find out what that plan is too late to stop it.’ His words might have sounded harsh, but Alric knew every man there was thinking the same thing.
Guthrinc cracked his knuckles. ‘Now Earl Morcar has brought his men to Ely to stand with us, we have an army that could make the king quake. Our fangs are as sharp as the Bastard’s, and we have a fortress better than any he can claim. I say we keep strong, and hold fast to the plans we have made. Soon we will be ready to strike out beyond the fens.’ He looked from one man to the next. ‘When we rout the king’s men at our first battle, the English will race to our standard. William will be outnumbered, surrounded and driven back across the whale road to Normandy. Or he will stand and fight and his head will sit atop the gate at the palace at Wincestre. His choice.’
‘I know I do not have a wise head like all others here,’ Sighard interrupted, ‘but we know the king cannot bring his army within a day’s march of Ely. We are safe. Safe to plan. Safe to strike when we are ready.’
‘The king is cunning,’ Kraki insisted. ‘We do not know his mind. But we must fathom it, and soon.’
The mood in the refectory had grown almost unbearable. All seemed happy to draw the discussion to a close so they could be alone with their thoughts. The council reached agreement to send out more scouts, though three had already been killed by the Normans that week. Risks would have to be taken if they were to learn the king’s plans.
Before they could rise from their benches, the door crashed open and a red-faced monk raced in. ‘Murder,’ he gasped. ‘Another murder.’
Kraki bellowed a curse. ‘Take us there.’
The monk led the men beyond the gates and down the slopes to where the waters lapped against the isle. In the trees, not far from the narrow wooden jetty where the small fishing boats were moored, the shaking cleric stopped and pointed.
Kraki grabbed him by the shoulders and growled, ‘You will speak of this to no one, do you hear me?’
Abbot Thurstan nodded his support for the implied threat in those words. Relieved to be released from his burden, the monk hurried back up the hill.
In the fading light, the men gathered around the pale remains. It was a man, though at first barely recognizable from his wounds. An axe had been taken to him, Alric noted with disgust.
‘No God-fearing soul could have committed such a crime. This is the work of the Devil,’ the abbot gasped, horrified by the extent of the injuries.
‘Aye, or a madman,’ Kraki snapped, whirling around and bearing down upon Hengist. ‘What have you done?’ he roared.
Hengist threw himself back, waving his arms impotently in front of him. ‘It was not me,’ he protested.
‘You lie.’ Lost to his rage, the Viking grabbed the smaller man’s tunic and swung up his axe.
Guthrinc and Sighard snatched Kraki’s arms and wrestled him back. ‘You destroy all we have built here,’ the Viking spat.
‘I did not do this thing, I swear,’ Hengist proclaimed. He was shaking.
‘There is naught to be gained by tearing ourselves apart,’ Guthrinc said, his quiet voice bringing calm.
Kraki let his weapon fall. ‘If not Hengist, then who?’ he growled. He looked around the circle of grim faces, but no one had any answers.
Alric knelt beside the corpse. ‘I … I think I know him. A fisherman. I read the scripture to his son.’
Thurstan crossed himself. ‘Another innocent. We must pray for him—’
‘No,’ Kraki said. ‘Tie rocks to him and throw him into Dedman’s Bog.’
Aghast, Alric jumped to his feet. ‘We cannot do that.’
‘His kin must be told, so they can mourn for him,’ Sighard protested.
The Viking snatched a handful of Sighard’s tunic and all but dragged him forward. ‘If you weaken here, we will lose everything. Do you hear me?’ He hurled the younger man to one side and strode around the others. ‘One more innocent death will turn all Ely against us. They will drive us out. And once we are away from this fortress, the king will hunt us down like rabbits.’
Guthrinc nodded. ‘What choice do we have?’
‘This,’ Alric began, ‘is worthy of William the Bastard. Are we not better?’
‘What do you suggest, monk?’ Kraki snarled. ‘Turn the other cheek and die, and have all that we fought for die with us? This war has dragged us all down into the mud. Now you have to ask yourself, do you want to win? And if you do, how far along the road to hell are you ready to walk to snatch victory?’
Alric stared down at the mutilated body, fighting with himself. How easy everything had seemed when they first rose up against the Norman invaders. But when he looked around at the others, he realized there was a bigger price to pay than he had foreseen. Thurstan frowned. Sighard looked away, disgusted. Hengist cowered. Guthrinc bowed his head, torn. The shield wall was breaking. How long before they could no longer stand together as spear-brothers?
‘Do it,’ he said, ‘and may God forgive us.’
While Sighard, Guthrinc and Hengist hauled away the remains, Kraki pulled Alric to one side in the lee of Ely’s walls. ‘You are as slippery as an eel, monk,’ he hissed, leaning in so close that Alric could see the bloody lines in the whites of his eyes. ‘The others here may take you as a holy man, but I know the truth.’
The monk pulled his arm free. ‘And what truth is that?’
‘That you would lie like any thieving dog given the right moment.’
‘I do not lie.’
‘No? Not even to protect your friend? I do not believe your claims of ignorance. You have barely left Hereward’s side in all the years since you first met him on the winter road to Eoferwic. You guide him. You hear him confess his sins. You share secrets that no other man will ever know. And now you say you know nothing of him?’ Kraki adopted a mocking tone. ‘One night he was in his hall, and the next morn he was gone, and none the wiser.’
‘That is what happened.’ Alric kept his tone gentle, knowing full well how easily the warrior was inflamed.
‘Whatever lay between the two of you may have been your business once, but now it affects all of us in Ely,’ the Northman growled. ‘Without Hereward the fire in the hearts of the fighting men here is dying. If you know where he is, speak now, or let this always rest upon your soul.’
‘If I could help, I would.’ Pretending the conversation was done, Alric turned and walked through the gates. Bats flitted from the church tower in the dying light. The darkening sky was clear, the stars beginning to appear, and a chill was settling upon the isle of eels. He could feel Kraki’s eyes upon his back. The workshops were all closed for the day, the hammers and looms stilled. Chatter drifted from open doors. Alric sensed peace there, and he was happy for them. But he could not feel it himself.
He wandered back to the walls as the golden strip along the western horizon started to become rosy. On the walkway along the palisade, the master of the flame lit the torches above the gates. They sizzled and spat. The smell of pitch hung in the air. Night fell fast at that time of year. Wanting to see the last of the day, Alric climbed the shaky ladder and looked out over the walls. His heart was heavy. He let his gaze drift across the woodlands where the shadows now deepened, and over the shimmering waters of the fens. The season was turning, the light was dying. And he found himself returning to the questions that had haunted him for too long: where was Hereward now? And was he still alive?
CHAPTER SIX
THE SUN SLIPPED below the horizon. Darkness folded around the ship and the sea and sky became as one. Aft, the fire-pot blazed as it swung on its creaking iron hook, casting a thin ruddy light over the oarsmen hunched at their benches. Each sailor was poised for the order to guide the vessel into harbour. The sail cracked in the gathering night-wind, the boards flexed and groaned underfoot, and the waves boomed against the hull in a hymn of discord.
Deda felt that same discord as he stood at the prow, watching the torches around the quay at Hastinges flicker in the gloom. He was a knight of the great William, duke of Normandy and king of England, and he accepted this service with pride. No greater honour was there, his father had told him on the day when he had knelt in the cold church and accepted the touch of the sword on both shoulders. The spray had slicked his black hair into ringlets, and his eyes too seemed as black as coals. Taller than most, he could command with a single stare of his dark gaze.
He had seen twenty-seven summers, and was the veteran of many a campaign. His sword had carved a path to victory at Varaville, in Maine, and Brittany, and at Senlac Ridge. And yet, for all his service, he felt a weight of unease, though he was not certain why.
‘Do not be so eager to reach that shore, Deda. Soon enough the women will be spitting at your back and the tavern keepers will be pissing in your beer.’
The knight turned at the familiar booming voice. The king had risen from his bench and was striding towards him along the surf-slick deck, seemingly oblivious of the rolling ship. William looked as broad as the old oak on the green at Wincestre. Some there were who thought he had grown fat, but Deda had seen him bare-chested as he donned his hauberk before battle, and nearly all of that bulk was muscle. Fifty summers had not dulled him.
Deda did not feel frightened by William as the king terrified so many of his fellow knights. True, the royal temper glowed like an iron in a forge, and more than one man had met his end for a word spoken out of turn. But Deda did not fear death and that made him free of the king’s unspoken threat. If he died, he died. The next world would be better than this one.
‘There is no peace for the likes of us,’ the king growled. ‘We have enemies everywhere we look. The Danish bastards sit in their halls and say they have no desire to attack. But you and I know they would sail the moment we turned our gaze elsewhere. Malcolm, king of the Scots, wants our blood and will not back down. And now I am forced to spend long weeks to keep my own home safe from Maine, listening to the bleating of Philip of France.’
‘The talks went well. Normandy is safe.’
‘This country torments me, also,’ William muttered, glowering towards the nearing lights. ‘The war was won five autumns gone. And yet still they fight on.’
‘Not too many now, my lord,’ Deda ventured, trying to keep his voice flat. ‘A few in the east. Your campaign in the north crushed the heart of the English. No man lives there now, I hear. It is a kingdom of women. And rats.’
Deda tasted the tang of the salt on the spray. William’s cruelty in the north had plumbed depths he had not thought imaginable. And that was not the end of it, he had heard. The king kept his plans close, but whispers had reached Deda’s ears of a coming storm of iron in the east, where the rebel leader Hereward had become a threat to the king’s rule.
In a lull in the rumble of the waves, he sensed the monarch’s gaze upon him. He turned and saw William watching him with narrowed eyes. The king seemed to have heard some tone that he did not like. ‘You do not approve of my war in the north, Deda? Too brutal? Too cruel? I am told some think this way, although rivers of blood have drowned all but those last few angry voices.’
Deda smiled. ‘My lord, you are wise. There is no other who knows better how to hold a crown and tame the newly conquered folk.’
The king smiled too, but like a wolf. He turned his attention back to the lights. Folding his arms behind his back, he said, ‘You are not like my other knights, Deda. You do not flinch when I near.’
‘I am a loyal subject, my lord.’
‘You are a clever one, Deda. Too clever, some would say. I have spoken to many about you, but few seem to know your heart. They say you have no love for gold. The others scrabble like hungry dogs for my attention, but not you. Would you not wish to be raised up high? To earn new land … power?’
‘I am a simple man.’
Deda could sense the king shifting beside him, a hint of irritation. William liked to get the measure of every man in his court, the better to make them dance to his tune. But he had prowled around Deda time and again without ever getting his scent.
The king hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat it into the waves. ‘And women? No lusts there? I hear you have no woman to warm your bed.’
‘My wife is dead, my lord.’
The glow from the fire-pot lit William’s furrowed brow. ‘That was three winters gone, was it not?’
‘She was taken by the sickness.’ Deda winced as his thoughts flew back to his wife’s bedside as he mopped the sweat from her brow and listened to her fading moans, when even the leech had fled at the sight of her blackened fingers. Deep into the watches of the night he had sat beside her, until the light in her eyes finally winked out. It was not the first time he had cried since he was a boy, but it was the only time that stayed with him.
