Hereward 03 - End of Days (7 page)

‘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?

C
HAPTER
S
IX

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.

‘What drives you, then?’ the king demanded.

‘Honour, my lord. At the end of our days that is all a man has.’

William snorted, low and mocking. ‘Ah, honour. Do you think you are better than other men, Deda? Do you think you are better than me?’

‘Honour is the rule by which I live. I stand or fall by it. I do not use it to look down upon others. That would not be … honourable.’

After a moment of silence, William said, ‘I will keep my eye on you, Deda. Perhaps I will learn something. You should do the same of me.’

‘I will, my lord.’

‘Hold out your hand. I would reward you for being an honourable man.’

‘My lord?’

‘Hold out your hand.’

Deda opened his palm. The king had kept his right arm behind his back for all the time they had been talking. He whipped it out and dropped a cold fish into Deda’s open hand. It flapped around in the last of its death throes.

Laughing as he made his way back to his bench, William glanced over his shoulder to see the knight’s reaction. All around, the oarsmen laughed with him, as they always did.

Deda gripped the fish until it stilled and then he bowed. The king’s laughter drained away and a shadow crossed his face.
This was not the reaction he wanted, Deda could see. William slipped back into the shadows and lowered his bulk on to his bench, but as the knight turned back to the sea he could feel eyes heavy upon his back.

C
HAPTER
S
EVEN

THE SHADOW OF
the raised sword stabbed into the chest of the man kneeling on the mud of the castle’s inner ward. Guards yanked his arms back as the Norman soldiers and nobles gathered round. Blinking away tears of fear, the prisoner fought to stop his mouth trembling and raised his chin in defiance.

‘Loose your tongue,’ the Butcher growled, still holding his blade high. Ivo Taillebois was the sheriff, but he still carried himself like the brute who had clawed his way out of the Normandy mud. His English was thick-tongued, his features like clay, his brow low. He knew how to kill, though, and how to run the king’s enemies like rats.

‘Norman bastard,’ the man on the ground snarled. ‘You will not make me break faith with my own.’

Redwald studied the confrontation. There was no doubt the spy would refuse to betray the rebels. Hereward had a skill for choosing the most loyal men to scout for him. But the Butcher would whittle him down. A finger or two here, a hand there, a nose, ears, eyes, then limbs. He would leave the tongue till last, so the screams would stir terror in the hearts of any English who heard them. Redwald had seen this enough times now,
since he had deserted the rebels and his brother to advise the invaders here in Lincylene.

He smiled, his apple cheeks flushing. He had made the right choice. His road to power was clear once again.

‘Where is Hereward?’ Taillebois barked. ‘Our eyes and ears in your camp tell us he has not been seen for many days now.’

The spy hung his head, his dark features sullen.

‘He has fled, afraid of the king’s might.’ William de Warenne waved a dismissive hand towards the prisoner. Redwald eyed the nobleman. Like the Butcher, William was a fighting man who had earned his land in the east with the English blood he had spilled at Senlac Ridge. But he had a good length of bone, and learning, and the purple cloak tossed over one shoulder was of a finer and more expensive cloth than Taillebois’s rough, mud-spattered garment.

‘No,’ Redwald interjected, his voice gentle and unthreatening. ‘Hereward would never flee.’

William weighed the words, but he would not disagree. No one knew Hereward better than his brother, and for that Redwald was, if not trusted, at least respected. ‘Dead, then,’ the nobleman said. ‘Either way, we are close to the end of this thing.’

The spy jerked his head around and searched the crowd of Normans until his gaze fell upon Redwald. His eyes widened. Redwald couldn’t remember ever seeing the man, but clearly the prisoner knew him from the camp at Ely.

‘Help me,’ the spy called. ‘Tell them to let me live, in your brother’s name.’

William de Warenne chuckled. Behind his hand, he whispered, ‘He thinks you are some messenger. He cannot have heard that you cut off the head of your own brother’s wife to buy your way into our trust.’ Redwald ignored the undisguised contempt he heard in the other man’s voice. ‘Still,’ the nobleman continued in a thoughtful tone, ‘if you think we should spare his miserable life, speak now and it shall be done.’

William was setting a trap with words, Redwald knew. Now
that he had secured his position among the Normans, he was not about to show any hint of weakness. ‘Do what you will with him,’ he replied with a shrug.

The prisoner’s face crumpled. ‘You are English,’ he cried.

The Normans only laughed.

The Butcher rested the edge of his sword above the prisoner’s ear. The spy began to whimper. When his scream rang out a moment later as Taillebois began to saw, Redwald walked away; he had no stomach for it. The sickening sounds followed him as he pushed through the crowd in the ward. After a moment, he stopped hearing them.

A firm hand gripped his arm. He turned to see Asketil, Hereward’s father, his own father if not by blood, the man who had taken him in as a boy when his birth parents had died. Redwald was surprised to see the old man looking so vital. For a long time, Asketil had seemed to be fading by the day, as grey and twisted and lifeless as the lightning-blasted oak near their home. But now he stood tall and his eyes were clear and his grip was almost too strong to break.

‘You bend the Normans to your will with ease. That is good,’ the old man said in a low voice.

‘They think themselves the masters now. They see no threat around them and so their guard is down.’

‘You have not told them all you know?’

Redwald shook his head. ‘A little here, a little there. A few grains of salt upon meat to make it taste the better.’

The old man nodded, pleased by what he was hearing. ‘Good. Too much, and they will have no need of you.’

Redwald smiled. He would never let that happen. ‘I will climb up on their shoulders and reach great heights once again. And I will raise Asketil Tokesune up with me. You will have all the gold and power you once enjoyed, Father.’