The Last Conquest (29 page)

Then he acquired a pair of shepherd’s shears from somewhere, and held them with the blades downwards so that the resemblance was obvious. He started teasing the carrot between the blades,
and telling such stories. Everyone jumped when the blades sliced it. Men became hysterical. When he got to the onions, of course they made him cry, and the stories continued relentlessly. Sergeants
were holding their sides and the tears were streaming down their faces. Sir Walter Giffard was begging him to stop.

Taillefer appeared to take notice, and stood still while the gales of laughter subsided. Suddenly he was different. The remains of the onions were missing from his hand. The shears were gone.
The eye was dry. The head was lowered slightly. One hand was spread across his chest; the other rested lightly on his hip.

The laughter died. Men sighed and blew and shook their heads and wiped their eyes, and smiled in reminiscence. Taillefer waited for complete silence. Then he began to recite.

Men grinned at each other, but there was no laughing now. Instead they fidgeted like children about to receive a treat. And Taillefer, like a wise parent, knew how to whet their
appetite. ‘I take you now, far from this foreign camp.

Such were the cadences in Taillefer’s speech that it amounted almost to singing. Gilbert had no idea that the human voice could be so varied, could encompass so many moods
and characters.

A ripple of excitement spread out to the edges of his audience. Men hitched up leggings and adjusted jerkins to make themselves comfortable. They knew exactly what was coming. They thrilled to
every detail of the story. Older sergeants growled in contentment at the description of Charlemagne.

A few glances were cast in the Duke’s direction at the mention of perjury. If Taillefer’s voice put the memory of Harold’s broken oath into William’s
mind he gave no sign.

‘Was he thinking it?’ Gilbert asked Sandor later.

‘He was,’ said Sandor. ‘And he knew other men were. And Taillefer knew. I tell you, my friend, Taillefer is a cunning merchant in words; he delivers what the Duke
wishes.’

Taillefer lingered too over the darkness of Ganelon’s treachery.

‘Bastard!’ muttered someone under his breath. This time nobody glanced at the Duke; everyone knew at once what the soldier meant, and murmured in agreement.

When Taillefer told of the bravery of Roland, of the nobility and good sense of Oliver, of their great friendship, even unto death, young soldiers sat like boys with their arms round their
knees, looking up at him with glowing eyes.

They thrilled to every detail of the battle.

Gilbert’s mouth went dry with excitement.

Taillefer’s voice grew stronger.

The voice swelled and rose.

‘Yes!’ came back the answering roar.

Each time one of Roland’s peerless warriors killed an infidel in single combat, there were outbursts of aggressive approval.

Every champion had spurs of gold, a noble steed, a gilded shield.

Still the Moors came on. Roland, with the flower of French knighthood dropping dead about him, at last sounded his horn to recall Emperor Charlemagne and the main army. Putting his famous
Oliphant to his lips, and gathering all his strength, he took a mighty breath, and blew. The deep tone boomed and echoed through Spanish canyon and Frankish vale for thirty great leagues. On and on
it went till the hillsides rang, till the blood ran from Roland’s mouth and the veins burst in his temples. It reached at last the aged Charlemagne. Even then Ganelon tried to pretend that
the Emperor’s old ears were playing him tricks.

But Charlemagne understood the message, and, pausing only to decree the arrest of Ganelon, gave the order for the army to turn about. They spurred and galloped like madmen to the rescue, hoping
against hope that they would not be too late.

They were.

The hall fell silent as the ranks of champions thinned. First Oliver, then, Archbishop Turpin and finally, Roland himself died, after his despairing and unavailing effort to destroy
Durendal.

Taillefer paused and looked about the hall. The flames burned silently. Red tears gleamed on stubbled cheeks.

Judging the moment to a nicety, Taillefer raised his hands high.

‘What do we desire, my children?’

A great shout made the new beams shiver.

‘Revenge!’

Revenge was what Taillefer gave them in full measure. As the grim-faced host of the Emperor bore down in righteous fury on the fleeing Muslims, some of the younger men cheered. There were grisly
details of separate acts of vengeance, as angry Franks paid out the enemy for their dead friends in Roncesvalles. No Saracen, no Moor, no infidel escaped the wrath of God and His servant Charles;
they died with cowards’ wounds on their backs, or they drowned in their armour trying to swim the swollen River Ebro.

The world of Christendom was made safe again, as Charlemagne himself bestirred his aged bones to split the skull of the Great Emir, and the remaining captive paynims were baptised at point of
sword. The wicked Ganelon had his arms and legs tied to four high-mettled stallions, and four lusty sergeants urged them at full stretch towards distant running mares.

Taillefer lowered his voice to match the spent silence in the hall.

The fire was almost dead. A dog whimpered in its sleep.

Gilbert blinked. Taillefer was gone.

The hall emptied itself in utter silence.

When Gilbert found Sandor, the little Magyar was putting Taillefer to rest as if he were a baby.

‘Sandor – he was magnificent!’

Sandor put a finger to his lips.

Gilbert caught sight of a dark stain on a cloth that Sandor hurriedly stuffed under a saddle.

Sandor changed the subject.

‘I have taken food to your Saxons,’ he said.

‘They are not my Saxons,’ protested Gilbert. Sandor brushed it aside.

‘I have taken food also to their guards. Drink too. I take drink to these two bad men. I help them to guard when we take prisoners to the privy pit. I tell them you are no friend of the
Saxons – just a foolish boy who has a fancy for the fair-skinned one. A long time in camp, away from women – you understand.’

‘Sandor!’

Gilbert was spluttering in rage. Sandor was unmoved.

‘They think it very funny. Already they make jokes about you.’

Gilbert felt himself blushing in the cold darkness.

Sandor patted him on the arm. ‘Now they think you weak. That is good. Now we can surprise them. I told you I was a good liar.’

‘But Sandor, how could you?’

‘To be a good liar, you must choose your lie. All men will not believe all things. With dirty minds, you choose a dirty lie. Now, they believe me. Tomorrow they will trust me.’ He
grinned. ‘You see? A smile and a pot of beer and a good story – together they make a good trap.’

Gilbert spat. ‘Animals!’

‘Patience, my friend. Patience, and no pride. If you want to catch your fly, you use not vinegar, but honey.’

Gilbert was far from convinced.

‘What is the rest of this . . . plan of yours?’

Sandor glanced down at Taillefer. ‘For that we need a minstrel, a teller of stories. Tomorrow maybe, after a good rest.’ He pulled the blanket tenderly up under Taillefer’s
chin.

Gilbert sighed and stretched out near him. Sandor wriggled in between them.

Gilbert turned up his nose and rolled over. If only Sandor would wash just now and then. It was not merely the smell of horses either.

Gilbert hunched his shoulders against the cold.

Why was Sandor so kind to Taillefer? There was another story somewhere. One day he would find it out.

Sandor was already snoring.

As Gilbert closed his eyes, he thought of Adele and her unborn son. At least that was his. It had to be. The thought of Adele being unfaithful again was impossible, intolerable. Besides, having
scoured England for one ravisher, he could hardly go back and scour Normandy for another.

Great Jesus! – and they said it was a man’s world.

Ralph sighed, shivered, and wriggled deeper into his blanket. They dared not light a fire, for fear of Saxon patrols. The cold, the lack of cheer from a fire, the absence of
any chink of uncertainty in Bruno’s armour – all added to Ralph’s gloom.

‘You miss him, then?’ The question came out of the blue.

Ralph was stunned. He had forgotten how good Bruno was at reading his thoughts. He was also angry that his thoughts showed.

He had tried to hide them – God’s Breath, he really had tried. Just as he had tried with Michael. For months after Michael had died, he had put his heart and soul into his
father’s holding. If anything, he had tried too hard; the effort sapped his patience, and left him with no reserve of control. His elder brother, Aubrey, was a fault-finder, a tale-bearer, a
goad, a tease, a bully. Sooner or later, Ralph was forced to tell his father, they would come to blows. He had too much love for his family to burden them with the pain and shame of such an
encounter.

His father listened in sad silence, and agreed. He knew, without Ralph telling him, that the ache of Michael’s death could be assuaged only by doing something that freed the spirit. Aubrey
was a cage. Ralph would have to go.

He had taken service first with Fulk the Angevin, of all people. A much younger Fulk, unscarred either outwardly or inwardly, but possessed even then of the capacity to inspire fear, and of the
curious detachment that looked so much like boredom. A born leader of men, but without scruple or conscience. When they had taken the contract to ambush a party of travellers, it was Fulk who had
pushed the knife into Ralph’s hand and told him to show his commitment by killing the chief captive.

He had found himself looking into the face of Geoffrey de Montbrai, Bishop of Coutances – the man who had given the last rites to his dying brother, Michael, who had sat with him and
helped him out of his agony and into Paradise.

Ralph could not do it. It cost him his employment, almost his life. Geoffrey had saved himself in the end. Fulk laughed at the irony, and, almost as an afterthought, had stabbed Ralph in the
stomach by way of payment for his disloyalty. Had it not been for Bishop Geoffrey, he would have died.

So he took service with a bishop, and soon found a partner in one of Fulk’s ex-soldiers, the portly and talkative Aimery. Aimery made no demands, he spoke enough for both of them, and he
was totally loyal. Then Aimery died after a skirmish on a lonely road in Burgundy, and the agony for Ralph began again. Its only cure, as before, was in flight. Lord Geoffrey was sad, but he
understood.

Ralph went on his travels again. He took his ghosts with him – two of them this time – and spent the next few years seeking a way of burying them.

Then Bruno had appeared. He helped towards the burying. The ghosts haunted only on bad days. And this was one of them. He shivered again.

‘You miss him then?’

And now Gilbert. It was Michael all over again – and curiously without the pain. Of course he missed him. It was because of Bruno’s relentless common sense that he was now deprived
of him.

‘Oh, shut up.’

Bruno continued collecting dry ferns and packed them down beside his saddle.