The Last Conquest (12 page)

Gilbert obeyed. He came closer to the light and could make out faces.

Bishop Odo of Bayeux, as usual, sat near the Duke. The candle flames scattered black smudges of shadow across his pockmarked face. His clerical tonsure made his undersized head look ridiculously
small above the wide-shouldered episcopal robes.

Odo’s face and head were the butt of endless camp jokes – ‘His mother never knew she had dropped him; trod on his face when she stood up’ – but he was a man to be
wary of. He was intelligent, mean-minded, and he never forgot a grudge.

Gilbert also recognised the Duke’s other half-brother, Robert, Count of Mortain. He had only half Odo’s brains, but he was solid and reliable, and good at following orders. His men
liked him; nothing he did ever took them by surprise.

Sir Roger of Montgomery was there, and Fitzosbern, and Count Alan, leader of the Breton infantry. Gilbert’s old master, Bishop Geoffrey of Coutances, caught his eye and nodded faintly. A
large man lounged in deep shadow at the back. No one sat near him. Oddly, he was the only one besides the Duke not drinking.

‘Sir Baldwin de Clair tells us you have news,’ said the Duke.

Gilbert swallowed. ‘I – I dare to hope so, my lord Duke.’

There was a pause.

‘Well, have you or not?’

The terse, impatient voice from the end of the table belonged to Sir Walter Giffard. Gilbert had good cause to remember it. He had once, at the gateway of Rouen castle, been rash enough to
challenge Sir Walter as if he were a stranger. He smarted for days at the memory of the lashing he had received from Sir Walter’s tongue.

There was a good chance that Sir Walter could not recognise him in the bad light, so Gilbert stood his ground and tried to explain what he meant.

The Duke questioned him on it. As Gilbert replied, William’s restless eyes flashed to left and right, weighing and testing the effect the answers had on the men around him. Odo and
Fitzosbern added their own enquiries. Gilbert surprised himself with his own nerve. Perhaps Sir Baldwin’s grilling had stiffened his back just a little. He held to his story about a group of
refugees, and to the one word – ‘north’.

A general muttering followed, and the cider pot was passed round. The Duke did not take any. Neither did the big man in the shadows.

The Duke nodded to Bishop Odo, who banged on the table with the handle of his dagger. The company continued to lounge and drink, but all voices ceased at once, and all eyes turned to the Duke.
Gilbert was impressed; it was a curious mixture of informality and absolute control.

William sat back, totally still save for the darting eyes. ‘Fitz,’ he said. ‘Sum it up.’

Sir William Fitzosbern leaned forward, and put his hands together like a judge. Gilbert, not sure whether to withdraw or to stay, looked for help to his old master, Geoffrey de Montbrai, and
asked a question with his eyebrows. Geoffrey frowned and nodded for him to remain.

‘Our scouts bring us mere threads,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘We can not yet weave them into a clear tapestry. Indeed we can make only outline patterns, and several possible patterns
at that.

‘First, nobody has seen Harold. Nobody has seen an army. When we crossed, nobody saw a fleet. Yet we know they exist.’

‘The fleet does not matter now,’ said Walter Giffard. ‘We are here.’

‘It will matter if they return to blockade us,’ said a voice at the back. ‘How do we get home?’

‘We are here to discuss means of victory, not of retreat,’ snapped the Duke. ‘Fitz, continue.’

‘Wherever the fleet has gone,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘it will not trouble us for the time being. At best Harold has disbanded it. If the weather broke it up, that suits our purpose
too. If, as we suspect, they have moved to London, they will find it difficult to beat back to Hastings against the wind. It is most unlikely that they took the army on board with them. So we can
discount the English fleet.’

‘Harold and the army remain,’ said Montgomery.

‘And the northern earls,’ said Robert of Mortain.

‘Edwin and Morcar will not trouble us,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘At any rate not yet. Their charge is to watch the northern coast against Hardrada. It must be. Harold would not strip
the north of all defences. The winds in September were from the north. Harold must have expected Hardrada’s invasion first.’

‘You mean he stripped the south of all defences?’ said Giffard. ‘Sounds just as stupid to me.’

‘No,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘I think that is equally unlikely. Harold is too good a general for that. You all saw him in Brittany in ’sixty-four. Did he seem a
fool?’

‘He could be relying on a quick victory,’ said Giffard, unwilling to surrender a point too easily. ‘A forced march, a sudden attack, another forced march back.’

‘Have you any idea, Walter, how far it is to Northumbria from Sussex? From our best information, it is more than two hundred miles. That makes a round trip of over four hundred miles,
maybe five hundred. Could you march an army over five hundred miles in three weeks?’

Giffard offered no answer.

‘I could not do it,’ admitted Roger of Montgomery. ‘But Harold might.’

‘If he had enough horses,’ said Odo.

‘The English fight on foot,’ said Geoffrey de Montbrai, unable to resist the temptation to correct his brother-bishop.

Odo rose with relish to the apparent challenge. ‘There is nothing to stop them
travelling
on horseback, like anyone else. I should have thought that much was obvious.’

Geoffrey flushed, but kept his temper. ‘We are indebted to my lord of Bayeux, as ever, for pointing out the obvious.’

Before Odo could think of a suitably stinging reply, his brother Mortain came in with another possibility.

‘He could have gone north with a small detachment, just to take command.’

‘No,’ said the Duke. ‘He is a sure leader. He knows how to delegate authority. His plan was sensible. He guards the south, and Edwin and Morcar guard the north. If he trusted
them enough to put them there, he would leave them there.’

The company fell silent, unable or unwilling to challenge the firmness of the Duke’s argument. Gilbert, stiff from much riding, and still in some pain, furtively eased his bad ankle as
much as he dared.

Fitzosbern cleared his throat. ‘Unless – the situation has changed.’

‘You mean Hardrada has landed?’ said Giffard, pouncing.

‘Not only landed, but won a victory,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘Consider our information. Harold’s army can not be located. Yet we know it was here during the summer. All our
reports and interrogations confirm it. So we are driven to assume that he has moved. He can not move south without loading his troops on to his ships, and his ships are not there. He can not move
east without our scouts knowing. He has no reason to move west; the west is under no threat either from us or from Norway. So he must have moved north. What we do not know for sure is, how
far.’

‘Waiting in London, ready to leap either way? Is that what you mean?’ said Odo.

‘That is one explanation,’ said Fitzosbern.

‘Sounds reasonable,’ conceded Giffard.

‘But not likely,’ said Geoffrey, once again disagreeing with Odo.

‘Why not?’

‘If Harold were going to do that, he would have done it earlier.’

‘He might have been driven there by lack of food in Sussex,’ said Montgomery.

‘In harvest time?’ said the Duke. ‘Never. There is food everywhere. You have heard the scouts’ reports. Even we have good supplies, and we are the invaders.’

Baldwin felt it necessary to modify this unwarranted optimism. Like all quartermasters, he had a constitutional inability to admit to ample provisions.

‘I can not say I am entirely happy yet, my lord. Reinforcements, though always welcome, constantly add to our problems.’

‘Supplies or no supplies,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘my guess is that Harold has gone further than London. Look at the news we have. Whispers in Kent of a battle somewhere north. Our
English-speaking scouts testify to this. That merchant ship we captured off Dover – fleeces from East Anglia. They told us of rumours about a Viking host. What was it? A fleet “more
plentiful than the pebbles on the shore”.’ He smiled wryly.

‘Always exaggerate, the English,’ said Alan of Brittany.

Gilbert saw several grins. Count Alan, the commander of the wildest story-stretchers in the army, looked blank. The joke was lost on him.

Fitzosbern continued. ‘Then comes the latest murmur in the wind, from – um – from this man.’ He pointed at Gilbert. ‘It confirms our suspicions about something in
the north. And it may also help to explain Harold’s absence.’

Giffard glanced significantly at Montgomery beside him. ‘He has gone north to do battle with Hardrada. What I said.’

‘True, Walter,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘but not for the reasons you think.’ He paused to give effect to his next remark. ‘I think it possible that Harold has gone north,
not to fight the first battle with Hardrada, but the second.’

Giffard stared. ‘What?’

‘Look,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘We accept that Harold is no fool. I agree with his Grace that Harold would leave the defence of Northumbria to Edwin and Morcar.

‘Now, suppose the Vikings land. Edwin and Morcar must attack, and quickly. They have no choice. Every commander must strike at an enemy beachhead with all speed, before supplies arrive and
positions are consolidated.

‘If Hardrada has landed, there must have been a battle. If Edwin and Morcar were successful, Hardrada is either a corpse, a prisoner, or a fugitive. There would be no need for Harold to
move north. On the contrary, he would have every reason to move south with all speed against us. We should have Saxon war cries in our ears by now. The fact that Harold is nowhere near means he has
received bad news. His northern host is broken. He has only one army remaining. He has moved to strike at Hardrada before Hardrada recovers from the first battle.’

Mortain frowned. ‘But you said he would not take such a risk.’

‘Not with two armies at his disposal,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘But with one? What choice does he have? To stay in Sussex and wait for us to land, knowing that Hardrada is spoiling
the northern and middle shires behind his back? It would be intolerable. He is a king. He must defend his people. Why are we wasting so much land round here? Because we know that many estates here
belong to Harold. We want him to strike at us in rage before his army is in full order.’

Fitzosbern sat back. ‘No, as I see it, Harold has taken the only course open to him. To march that two hundred miles and surprise Hardrada. You never know; he might do it. Vikings are
raiders; they are not campaigners. Harold might catch them unprepared.’

‘Then what?’ said Odo.

‘Then,’ said Fitzosbern, ‘he comes south again. He must have heard of our landing by now. He will try to catch us too.’

‘Never!’ said Giffard, bristling.

‘That will not stop him trying,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘He has no means of knowing how far forward our preparations are. His army, by all reports, is bigger than ours. Saints! He
would have every reason for trying.’

Blank faces around the table registered doubt and disbelief. There were one or two mutterings of injured pride. Fitzosbern refused to be put off, and, unlike Odo and Giffard, refused also to
become indignant. He reached out towards one of the iron candlesticks, and began twiddling it. When he spoke, it was as if he were communing with himself.

‘Consider the temptation – not one lightning stroke, but two, and two invaders chased into the sea. It would give him a golden reputation for life.’

‘We have no proof he has achieved the first yet,’ said Giffard.

‘We have one small hint,’ said Fitzosbern. He stopped twiddling and pointed towards Gilbert. ‘This man’s report.’

Giffard looked sharply at Gilbert, as if trying to read some answer on Gilbert’s face, and then back at Fitzosbern.

‘All he said was “north”.’

‘And one other thing,’ said Fitzosbern. ‘He said the man who said it was excited. Excited. Not desolate.’

‘So he knew about your “second battle”?’ said Montgomery.

‘And it was a victory for Harold?’ said Geoffrey de Montbrai, clinching it.

Fitzosbern pushed the candlestick back into the centre of the table. ‘That is the best sense I can make of it.’

There was a general stirring, such as an audience would make after a long story. Pots were raised and lowered noisily on to the table. The Duke, still and watchful, cast his eyes right and left
to note reactions.

‘Feasible, I suppose,’ said Montgomery at last.

Geoffrey de Montbrai smiled to himself. As usual, Fitz had thought all of them right off the table.

There was another silence, broken in the end by Walter Giffard. ‘So where do we go from here?’

‘Nowhere,’ said the Duke. ‘We stay.’

Giffard gaped. ‘With Harold on the march?’

Gilbert was surprised, and not for the first time, at the amount of plain speaking, even argument, that the Duke tolerated. He was too young to appreciate the ties that bound these hard men
together. He had noticed the glitter of greed in their eyes easily enough, and the pride in their bearing; the bravery too, in their very presence in this country. When he stopped sometimes to
contemplate the colossal gamble the Duke was taking, it made his throat dry. But it was the straight talking, the frankness, that took him aback. He could not yet see that they sprang not from
insubordination but from common purpose, from the mutual confidence that arose from long, shared experience.

‘We stay,’ repeated the Duke. ‘If Fitz is right, Harold will come to us in haste and he will come in fatigue. If he attacks in rage to avenge his wasted fields, he may also
come to us in disarray. If he comes slowly, he will come to us in plenty of time. However he comes, we are prepared, and we fight on our own terms.’

‘And we have the fleet in case,’ said the same voice at the back.

The Duke looked round the table, his face a blank.

Nobody chose to speak to that idea.

‘What if he does not come at all?’ suggested Montgomery.