The Splintered Kingdom (16 page)

Two of them rode forwards from the ranks with their banner-bearer a short way behind them, waving the green and yellow flag high for all to see. From so far away it was hard to make out much, but even so I could see that both men had come dressed for war,
with sword-hilts inlaid with glittering rubies, helmets with nasal-pieces and cheek-plates inlaid with shining gold. Evidently they were men of some wealth, and they were not afraid to flaunt it either.

‘Fitz Osbern,’ one of them called out, cupping his hands around his mouth. ‘We wish to speak with Fitz Osbern!’

His French was halting, as if it were not his natural tongue, and I wondered if they were Englishmen: some of those thegns, perhaps, who had submitted to King Guillaume instead of continuing the struggle in the weeks after Hæstinges. In return for being allowed to keep their lands they were required to fight against their countrymen, and they often joined us on campaign, though as turncoats they were held in little regard, and the oaths they had given were seen by many as less than worthless. But their names and the colours of their banners were commonly known, and the golden snake was not one of them.

Fitz Osbern was not in his pavilion and a message had to be sent to the castle where he was in council with the castellan – a kinsman of his by the name of Roger de Montgommeri, who was also a vicomte in Normandy – as well as some of the other nobles, Lord Robert among them. It was some time before he appeared but eventually I spied him, and I knew it was him because of his balding pate and greying hair. He rode at the head of a score of mailed knights to meet the two men upon the bridge. What was said I could not make out, but they knelt down before him, removing their gilded helms and bowing their heads. After a while Fitz Osbern motioned them to their feet and the two men, each accompanied by a dozen spearmen, followed him on horse to the castle.

‘They’re Welshmen,’ Robert told us when he returned a few hours later.

‘Welshmen?’ I echoed, disbelieving. I could see that I spoke for everyone else warming themselves by the dwindling campfire too. ‘What do they want with Fitz Osbern?’

‘They’ve come to join us, or so they say. Their names are Maredudd and Ithel; they’re the sons of the great King Gruffydd who used to hold sway over all of Wales, until he was overthrown
and slain by the hand of a certain Harold Godwineson some seven years ago.’

‘Harold the usurper?’ asked Turold.

‘The very same,’ Robert replied. ‘Although this was long before he seized the crown, when he was merely earl of Hereford and Wessex, although he was a powerful man even then. They say that the kingdoms of Powys and Gwynedd belong to them by right; that they were deprived of their inheritance by the brothers Bleddyn and Rhiwallon whom Harold set up as rulers in the wake of his campaign.’

‘I don’t like it,’ I said. ‘If they truly wanted to win back their inheritance then why have they waited seven years before finally marching?’

‘Until recently it seems they lacked the support of the other highborn families,’ Robert replied. ‘But since Bleddyn and Rhiwallon made common cause with the exiled English thegns it seems that there has been growing discontent. Many of those families remember Harold’s campaign and the slaughter that the English visited upon their lands. Many lost their homes and their sons to the sword-edges of those same men who now seek help from them.’

‘Any enemy of the usurper is surely a friend of ours,’ put in Turold. ‘As long as they bring men, what does it matter?’

At the very least I supposed they were taking away men who might otherwise have filled out the ranks of the enemy shield-wall. But though I could well believe the extent of their hatred for the English, it was hard to imagine they would simply swear their allegiance to another foreign lord without some design of their own.

‘There must be more to it than that; some other prize on offer,’ I said. ‘Otherwise why would they take up arms against their own countrymen and in doing so risk losing the lands they already hold?’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Robert. ‘In return for them bringing their men to fight under our banners, Gruffydd’s sons want nothing less than our help in regaining their birthright and restoring their titles to them.’

Serlo spluttered; droplets of wine dribbled down his chin and he dried it on his sleeve. ‘For the sake of a few hundred spears they would have us deliver them an entire kingdom?’

‘Two kingdoms,’ Pons said sourly. ‘Powys and Gwynedd both.’

Of course if Maredudd and Ithel succeeded, then those who had sided with them would be generously rewarded. Not only must they have great faith in Gruffydd’s sons, then, but they must be very confident too that we would accept their price, steep though it was.

‘Fitz Osbern will never agree to that,’ Serlo muttered. ‘Only a fool makes a bargain with a Welshman. They have no sense of honour; they’re oath-breakers, every one of them.’

Usually I would have sided with Serlo; experience of living on the March this past year had taught me to trust the Welsh even less than the English. But at the same time I understood that this was about far more than just inheritance or power. For if Fitz Osbern could ensure that the rulers across the dyke were friendly to us, sworn to him personally through the giving of hostages and by oaths of fealty, and that they paid tribute to King Guillaume, then we might never need to fear raids by the Welsh again. At a time when the realm was beset with threats on all sides, it would give us the respite we sorely needed to quell our other enemies.

‘If it can buy us peace on the March, maybe that’s a bargain worth making,’ I said. ‘Even if that peace lasts only for a while. And God knows we need the men.’

We had been in Scrobbesburh five days already; in that time we had received no word from Ceastre, and I knew that Fitz Osbern was growing anxious about whether Earl Hugues would come at all. Nor had the spies he had sent to scout the lands beyond the dyke yet returned, which meant we had no way of knowing how soon it would be before the enemy marched in force.

‘I don’t trust them,’ Serlo said. ‘Who’s to say their coming here isn’t part of some ruse designed to trap us?’

‘Why go to so much trouble, though?’ I asked him. ‘Why bring such an army all this way if there’s a chance that Fitz Osbern will just send them away?’

Serlo gave a shrug but didn’t answer. Instead he said: ‘I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. First they’ll try to worm their way into our confidence and then at the first chance they get they’ll turn on us. Far better for Fitz Osbern to kill them now and be done with it.’

‘In that case,’ Robert said sharply, ‘it’s probably as well that the decision rests with him and not with you.’

Indeed, for the time being at least Fitz Osbern seemed willing to trust them, since in spite of the open displeasure of several of the leading barons, Maredudd and Ithel were allowed to stay, setting up their camp at his direction on the other side of the river where there was less chance of their men clashing with our own, most of whom held the Welsh in as little regard as Serlo and were all too ready for a fight.

Still, they did not have too long to wait for better news. It came the next day in the form of Hugues d’Avranches, the Wolf of Ceastre, whose black banner and pennons were first sighted approaching on the northern road around midday. He arrived at the head of a contingent of fifty knights and another one hundred and twenty foot-soldiers, with many more due to follow in the days to come as his vassals and tenants left their feasting-halls and rode out from their strongholds.

Accompanying him was Wace together with his three household knights. It was the first that I had seen of him since the previous summer, although he had not changed much in that time. Indeed he was as I had always known him: broad-shouldered and thickset, with arms like a smith’s. Below his eye was the scar from the blow that he had taken at Hæstinges, which had left him able only to half open it, though he could still see nearly as well as before. Well enough, at least, that he had sent countless foemen to their deaths in the years since.

‘You should see a barber,’ were his first words when he saw me. ‘With all that hair you look like one of them.’

He meant the English, of course, and straightaway I found myself on edge. But then Wace often had a way of doing that to people: it was the sort of remark that was typical of him, and I should have
known better than to expect anything else. His blunt manner had often brought him trouble over the years, not to mention Eudo and myself as well at times. Together the three of us had grown up, trained at arms and learnt the art of horsemanship; together we had fought our first battles and ridden on campaign across the length and the breadth of Christendom. And now of all the knights who had once served beneath the hawk banner of Robert de Commines, the one-time Earl of Northumbria, we three were the only ones left alive.

‘We were wondering when you’d arrive,’ I said. ‘There was talk that the Wolf might ignore the summons altogether.’

‘He’s not here out of any especial loyalty to Guillaume fitz Osbern, that much is for certain,’ Wace replied in his usual flat tone. ‘He made us wait two full days and nights before he eventually came to a decision. I was starting to think he’d never give us an answer and that we’d have no choice but to return without him.’

Despite Hugues’s youth he was evidently far from guileless. He knew that the tale would spread, and in refusing to respond to the summons immediately he was making a clear assertion of his power. I suspected that Fitz Osbern would not be best pleased when it reached his ears, though in truth there was little he could do about it. He was wise and experienced enough to understand that they did not have to like each other as individuals, so long as their men could be trusted to stand shoulder to shoulder in the shield-wall and protect each other’s flanks in the charge; that was all that mattered. Kingdoms had been won and lost before on little more than the strength of the bond between those fighting on one side or the other, and there was no sense in further kindling the flames of their quarrel if that led to ruin on the field of battle.

‘I’m surprised he came at all,’ Eudo said. ‘There’s no love lost between those two.’

Wace’s face was grim. ‘To tell the truth, I don’t think it was an easy decision for Earl Hugues to make. The same rumours about the Welsh have been heard in Ceastre; they fear an attack by the men of Gwynedd along the coast. Earl Hugues has had to leave several hundred men to garrison the city.’

That was a setback, certainly, though I supposed he had little choice when his own earldom was at risk. No one could say yet what the enemy planned, and I supposed that by gathering all his forces in one place Fitz Osbern hoped to be prepared for whatever happened, since he could not hope to defend the entire length of the March at once.

After a while talk moved on from news of the Welsh. I asked Wace about his manor in Suthfolc and he introduced me to his men, who were busying themselves setting up tents and building a fire close by the black and gold. But all the while my thoughts kept returning to Earl Hugues and his fears of attack upon his lands. For as concerned as the Wolf was for Ceastre, so I was for Earnford. I wondered how Father Erchembald was managing in my absence, and how Ædda was faring under his care. I supposed that if anything had happened that was worth hearing about, news of it would already have reached us. But then again, if the enemy moved quickly enough, we might not know until it was too late. All I could do was pray that no harm would come to them, and pray too that I would be able to keep the promise I had made.

Ten

IT RAINED THAT
night, rained so hard that the gutters outside the houses overflowed and the winding streets of Scrobbesburh ran like rivers, carrying dirt and fragments of straw mixed with cattle shit. The drops bounced off the cobbles in the market square; they pooled in the cart-tracks along the shambles, in one place forming a vast lake that we had no choice but to ride on through, our horses’ hooves kicking up mud and the putrid remains of whatever animals had been slaughtered there that day. All the while the wind lashed at the town with furious gusts, threatening to tear the thatch from the roofs, to lift trees from their very roots. Branches creaked as Wace and Eudo and I passed beneath them, the three of us riding in single file through the narrow ways towards the castle and the timber hall huddled within the protection of its walls.

Almost one hundred barons had already gathered there by the time we had seen to our horses and entered, our cloaks and tunics sodden, our trews clinging to our legs and our hair plastered against our heads. The musty smell of damp cloth mixed with sweat hung in the air. A peat fire was smouldering in the hearth while in the middle of the floor stood a charcoal brazier. Several men were gathered around them, trying to dry themselves. Others sat on benches around the edge with wine-cups in hand, making subdued conversation, no doubt sharing the latest rumours they had heard while they waited for Fitz Osbern and Earl Hugues to appear.

Some of those faces I recognised from previous campaigns or else from times when our paths had crossed at the king’s court, even if I did not know them by name. But there were many more
I hadn’t seen before, and that was no wonder, since by then it seemed that almost the entire March was in Scrobbesburh. Certainly all its foremost men were in that hall: young and old, seasoned warriors and richly dressed nobles, sword-brothers and rivals alike. A low murmur filled the air, lifting to the rafters along which mice scuttled, flickers of grey in the gloom, disturbed by the rain and by the presence of so many men. Though not much larger than my own hall at Earnford, in decoration it was far grander, with tapestries and hangings upon the wall in stripes of white and pear green: the colours of the castellan.

I looked for Robert, but perhaps he had been called upon to confer privately with Fitz Osbern and Earl Hugues, for I could not see him. Servants hustled through the throng, bringing hot food out on wooden platters from the kitchens and laying it down on the long tables in front of the hearth, to a chorus of cheers from the men who were standing nearby.