Sworn Sword (15 page)

We made our way through the lines of horsemen, the press of bodies, towards the front, and then Gilbert saw us. At first he must have wondered who we were, for he came riding to challenge us, but then, as he approached, a look of recognition came across his face, followed by one of anger. He slowed before us and his mount whickered, plumes of mist erupting from its nostrils.

‘You,’ Gilbert said, his small eyes narrowing as he looked down at me. ‘You’re Earl Robert’s man. The Breton, Tancred a Dinant.’

‘Lord Gilbert,’ I replied, just as flatly.

He glanced at the others, standing beside me. ‘Wace de Douvres and Eudo de Ryes.’ He spoke their names slowly, and it was not hard to make out the contempt in his voice. ‘Have you come just to run from this fight, as you did at Dunholm?’

‘We want to help, lord,’ said Wace, with far greater respect than I might have expected from him. Usually he was never one to hide his contempt of those he didn’t like; his bluntness had often got him into trouble over the years. But this was no time for petty quarrels.

‘I don’t need help from you,’ Gilbert answered, his cheeks flushing red. He spat upon the ground. ‘I don’t need help from any of Robert’s men. Take your swords elsewhere.’

A great cry rose up from the English, and Gilbert’s head whipped around. ‘Stand firm,’ he called to the men in front of us. ‘Don’t let them through!’ He glared at us again but did not say anything more before galloping back to the rest of his knights.

Through the ranks of horsemen I could see little of the enemy, but I didn’t have to, to know that they were coming. In front of us some of the knights, over-eager for battle, raised their lances aloft and spurred their horses forward.

‘Hold the line!’ I heard Gilbert shout. But it was already too late,
as all about him his knights broke ranks, and what just moments before had been an ordered battle-line descended into confusion. The screams of the dying filled the morning as English and Normans ran amongst each other.

Some of the townsmen had broken through, their weapons raised high. One came my way, his seax drawn as he screamed some battle-cry. I lifted my knife and parried his thrust, forcing the blade down as I clenched my free hand into a fist and smashed it into his jaw. His head wrenched back, his lower lip streaming with crimson, and as he struggled to regain his balance I followed through, stabbing my knife into his chest. He went down, the blood from his wound pooling and mixing with the dirt at my feet.

A spear belonging to one of the corpses lay in the mud. I snatched it up, passing my knife into my left hand as another Englishman came forward. He was as wide as he was tall, or so it seemed, but despite his size he was fast, deftly stepping to one side as I drove the spear towards his belly, before ramming his shield into my chest.

I stumbled backwards, but the weight was on my injured leg and suddenly I found myself falling. My back slammed into the hard earth and the taste of blood was in my mouth as the Englishman towered above me, raising his axe, and I knew I had to get away, but my limbs would not move. He lifted the blade above his head and I froze—

There was a flash of steel from behind him. Suddenly his eyes glazed over and the axe tumbled from his grasp as he collapsed forward. I came to my senses, rolling to the side as his large frame crashed on to the ground beside me. A bright gash decorated the back of his head where his skull had been shattered. I looked up, saw the sinewy frame of Eudo, who was grinning with the joy of battle. I did my best to smile back as I scrambled to my feet, spitting the dirt from my mouth. I knew how close that blade had come.

‘Hold the line!’ Gilbert yelled again, and this time his knights heard him, wheeling away from the slaughter to rally beneath the fox banner. We had lost perhaps a dozen men, I judged, though the enemy had lost far more. Those who faced us now had to make their way over the bodies of their fallen kinsmen first, but
their anger appeared undiminished, for still they came. I gripped the hilt of my knife tightly.

From the direction of the minster I glimpsed a glint of golden thread in the noonday sun, and suddenly above the cries of all those fighting and dying came a single long note, deep but piercing, like the cry of some monstrous animal. The sound of a war-horn. A conroi came into sight, two dozen knights or perhaps even more: through the midst of so many men it was difficult to see.

‘For Normandy!’ they cried.

At their head, beneath the black and the gold that were his colours, rode the vicomte himself, his red helmet-tail flying behind him. He lowered his lance, couching it under his arm, as his horse started into a gallop and the horn blew again. Some of the enemy, realising the danger at their rear, began to turn to face them, but they were few. The rest saw their attackers coming from both sides and straightaway took to flight, making for the small alleys that branched off from the marketplace.

‘Kill them!’ Gilbert shouted to his knights as he raised his sword aloft. But the townspeople were already running and our men had little enthusiasm for the chase. Had this been the rebel army, I was sure they would not have hesitated, but it was not, and that made all the difference, since these were but peasants, and there was little glory to be had in killing them.

Corpses were strewn across the street, their shields and their weapons beside them. I was reminded of that night at Dunholm, except that this time most of the fallen were their men, not ours. Eudo wiped his blade across the tunic of a dead Englishman, smearing more blood over his back to accompany the wound that ran across his shoulders. I let the spear I had taken drop to the ground and returned my knife to its sheath.

After the rush and the noise of the battle, all was suddenly quiet, save for the bells of the minster church in the distance, their soft chimes carrying clearly to us as they rang for midday.

‘That was some fighting,’ Wace said with a grin as he placed a hand on my shoulder. ‘Especially for a man who’s hardly picked up a blade in two weeks.’

I smiled back, though only weakly. The fight had drained more of my strength than I would have liked, and I could not shake from my mind how easily the fear had overcome me, nor how nearly I had succumbed to it.

On the other side of the marketplace, Malet passed his lance with its black-and-gold pennon to one of his knights. It was the first time that I had seen him equipped for battle, in mail and helmet and with a sword at his belt, though I had heard many tales of his prowess on the field at Hæstinges: how he had rallied the duke’s men when they had all thought him dead; how he had led the counter-charge into the English lines and with his own hand slain one of the usurper’s brothers.

Gilbert shouted at his men to get out of his way as he threaded his way through their lines. He glared at the three of us as he passed, but this time he had no words for us. He rode to greet Malet and, still mounted, the two clasped hands and exchanged a few words, although I could not make out what they were saying. Then Gilbert raised his lance with its red fox pennon, signalled to the rest of his men and rode off, up the street that led to the minster, leaving Malet with his conroi.

‘Should we follow him?’ Eudo asked.

I did not answer, for even as the spearmen were beginning to march I saw Malet riding towards us, keeping his mount to a walk as he made his way over the corpses of those who had fallen. On each flank rode one of his knights: to his left, a stocky man with a bulbous nose that was only part hidden by his nasal-guard, while the one on his right appeared not much more than a boy. If he was a knight proper, as opposed to one still in training, then probably he had only recently sworn his oath.

The vicomte untied his helmet’s chin-strap and passed it to the younger of the two knights. He glanced at the English corpses that lay around us, then at each of us in turn, a grave look upon his face.

‘Eoferwic is growing restless,’ he said. ‘The townspeople are becoming bolder.’

Behind him I heard cries of distress, and saw a woman running
towards one of the bodies, throwing back her hood and clutching at her hair as she fell to her knees beside it. The wind buffeted at her dress as she leant forward, resting her head upon the chest of the dead man. Tears poured down her face.

I turned my eyes away from her, back to Malet. ‘Yes, lord,’ I replied. What had brought him to meet us, I wondered; did he mean to have our answers now?

‘You have fought well,’ he said, not just to me but to all three of us, it seemed, as he looked down at the corpses which lay around us. He turned to Eudo and Wace. ‘Tancred has told you of the task I have in mind?’

‘Yes, lord,’ Wace said.

‘Naturally I’ll see that you are well paid, if you choose to do this for me. Of that you can be certain.’ He turned back to me. ‘I would see you again later this afternoon, Tancred. Come to the chapel in the castle bailey when the monastery bells ring for vespers. I will meet you there.’

He did not give me a chance to reply as he tugged on the reins and pressed his heels into his horse’s flank; it harrumphed and started forward. He called to the rest of his conroi and together they rode away, in the direction of the castle.

I turned back to the others. ‘Will you join me?’

Wace shrugged and glanced at Eudo. ‘You said it yourself,’ he said. ‘What else is there for us here?’

Eudo nodded in agreement. ‘We’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘And maybe after we’ve done everything for Malet, then we can go back to Normandy, or Italy, and take service there.’

‘Maybe,’ I said, smiling at the thought. It was nearly three years since we had last set foot in Normandy, and five since we were in Italy, though I was sure there would be many there who would yet remember the name of Robert de Commines, and who would happily receive us into their households.

But all that lay far in the future, for first we had to do this for Malet. And before everything else there was one task more difficult still: one that filled me with unease. I would have to give my oath to him.

Eleven

THE BELLS HAD
just finished pealing, and the low edge of the sun was almost touching the rooftops to the west by the time I rode into the bailey. The heavens blazed with golden light, but there were dark clouds overhead and I felt a few drops of rain as I arrived at the chapel.

Men sat around their fires, sharing flasks of ale or wine, or else honing their blades. A few I thought I recognised from the fight in the marketplace, although I could not be sure. From beyond the walls came the calls of geese, moments before I saw them lifting above the palisade, their wings beating hard as they swooped around the bailey’s southern gate then headed towards the sun.

The stable-hands were nowhere to be found, and so I tethered the mare to a wooden post just outside the chapel, where there was a trough for her to drink from and a small patch of grass to graze upon. I gave her a pat on the neck, and went inside.

Malet was already there, no longer wearing his mail, but instead a simple brown tunic and braies. He was kneeling in front of the altar, upon which stood a single candle. Its flickering light played across a silver cross, in the centre of which was a gemstone the colour of blood. There was little other decoration: no scenes from the Passion painted upon the walls, nor any tapestries depicting Christ with his apostles, such as I might have expected; even the altar-cloth was a plain white in colour.

I pulled the door closed and made my way across the stone floor, my footsteps loud in the empty darkness. Malet rose as I approached the altar. His scabbard swung from the sword-belt at his waist, which
I was sure Ælfwold would have disapproved of, but then the priest was not here.

‘Tancred,’ the vicomte said. His face lay in the shadow of the candlelight, making his long nose and angular chin seem even more prominent. ‘It is good to see you again.’

‘And you, my lord.’

‘Events are moving quickly. Today was not the first time that the townsmen have risen against us.’

I recalled what Eudo had said only a few days before: about the fight that had broken out down by the wharves. ‘No, lord.’

‘They realise that our forces are weakened after the castellan’s death. They await the arrival of their kinsmen.’

‘Yet the rebels still haven’t marched on the city,’ I said. Exactly why, no one I had spoken to had been able to understand – not even Ælfwold, who of all men was closest to the vicomte and so, I thought, best placed to hear such information.

‘They will, though,’ Malet said, and his gaze fell upon the cross that stood on the altar. ‘They will, and when they do, I do not know how Eoferwic can be defended.’

His frankness took me aback. Even though I had known him but a short while, I had not thought the vicomte the kind of man who would admit such a thing so readily, even in confidence.

‘There is the castle,’ I said. ‘Even if the city falls, we would still hold that, surely?’

‘Against a large enough army, even that may be difficult,’ Malet said, and still he did not meet my eyes. ‘I will be honest with you, Tancred. In all the time that has passed since the invasion, never have we faced a worse state of affairs than this.’

It was not warm in the chapel, but it felt suddenly much colder. For if Malet himself doubted whether he could hold Eoferwic, then what hope was there? From outside came the faint shouts of men, the whinnying of horses, the trundling of carts across the bailey.

‘We will prevail, lord,’ I said, although even as I said it I found that I was far from certain.

‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But it is important that you understand the
circumstances under which I have asked you to undertake this task for me.’

‘You assume that I’ll accept.’ At last we were coming to the matter that he had called me here for.

He smiled, and I sensed that he was enjoying this exchange. He clasped his hands before him. His silver rings glinted in the light of the candle, and his countenance became serious once again. ‘I believe that you will do what you perceive to be right,’ he said. ‘Should you decline, I will simply seek repayment some other way.’