already see signs of the Norman occupation. Faces everywhere looked beaten, eyes downcast or suspicious. Children ran from trader to trader begging for food or coin.
Pushing through the crowd at the waterside, the two companions forged into the narrow streets amid the sound of hammers and the whirr and rattle of looms. Hens scratched in the mud. Donkeys trudged under piles of wood for the workshop fires. Women carried baskets of fresh-baked bread covered with a sheet of white linen. Alric let his attention drift over the scene, searching for whatever was causing the knot deep in his belly. Then he had it.
‘Look at them,’ he whispered to Hereward. ‘Everyone carries an amulet, a token, to ward off misfortune.’ A woman grasped a roughly made wooden cross. Rabbit’s feet hung from leather wristbands and bracelets. Others wore small, flat stones hanging round their necks, each one bearing a symbol. The monk noted the runes that the Northmen still used, and the horned circle that he knew represented the old heathen god Woden. Fingers fumbled for the amulets every moment or two, fluttering, unconscious actions once inspired by prayer, Alric guessed, but which had become second nature by constant use. ‘They are scared,’ he said. ‘All of them.’
Hereward said nothing. The monk realized his companion had long since noticed the signs.
Asking around, the two men took directions to a merchant who had horses to sell, and some bread, blankets and a bow for hunting. Soon they were riding west along the narrow paths through the flat, green land.
‘When do you plan to tell me where we are going?’ the monk asked.
‘I did not ask you to come with me.’
‘You did not ask me to stay behind with your wife,’ Alric snapped.
His words must have touched something in his companion, for after a moment Hereward pointed to one of the columns of smoke and said, ‘First, we go there.’
When they neared their destination, Alric could smell that it was not crop stubble burning. The smoke caught the back of his throat with a bitter edge, and underneath the odour lay something sourer still.
Emerging from the wood into a clearing, the two men fought to control their skittish horses. In a vast circle of blackened grass and burnt mud, grey-white clouds drifted up from blackened stumps of timber punching up from the ground like the carcass of a long-dead beast.
‘An entire village, burned to the ground,’ Alric gasped. ‘What wretched fate.’
‘Not fate,’ Hereward replied, his voice free of all emotion. ‘This is the work of men.’
Raising one arm, the warrior gestured through the folds of smoke. Alric squinted, trying to see what had caught his companion’s eye, but all he could make out was the dark line of trees on the far side of the clearing. When Hereward urged his mount to skirt the blackened area to get a clearer look, the monk felt his chest tighten with apprehension. On the other side of the destroyed village, he understood what he had sensed, and recognized the source of the sour smell caught on the wind.
A makeshift gibbet stretched between two elms. From the line hung not foxes and crows, but human remains. Six men and a woman swung in the gentle breeze, their skin grey-green, their bellies bloated, their eyes already food for the birds; poor souls left as a warning.
Hereward stared at the faces of the corpses for a long moment, and then said under his breath, ‘The Norman bastards.’
CHAPTER FORTY — FOUR
‘Say nothing. Do not even breathe.’ Hereward unclamped his hand from Alric’s mouth and peered into the monk’s brown eyes to ensure the message was understood. Satisfied, the warrior pulled his companion back behind the spreading willow where Alric had been waiting for his friend to return with food for his empty belly. A cloth of red and gold leaves had been unfurled across the floor of the wood. Grey mist drifted among the trees, and the air was heavy with the brackish odour of the meandering watercourses. Rooks cawed in their tangled roosts high overhead.
The monk questioned with his eyes, then saw with bafflement that his friend was soaking wet.
Hereward mimed cupping a hand to his ears. Muffled, the insistent thud of hooves on soft ground emerged from the autumnal stillness, drawing nearer. When Alric continued to make questioning faces, the warrior slapped the man on the chest to stop him and then crawled away through the rustling leaves. The dry ground rose up a slight incline to a ridge marked by a long exposed net of roots.
Peering over the top, Hereward studied the group of three riders, easily identified as Norman knights from their dress: a conical helmet with a long nose-shield, a woollen cloak over a tunic and a linen shirt, baggy breeches, and bindings round the lower legs. Each man carried the long shields which tapered to a point at the bottom and offered more protection to the legs and flanks than the English shields. With envy, the warrior noted the double- edged, sharp-pointed swords that were so much more effective at ending a life than anything his own people wielded.
The knights reined in their mounts and conferred in quiet voices, all the time scanning among the trees. Hereward silently cursed himself for being overconfident. A winding journey from the coast through the wildest parts of East Anglia kept the two companions well away from villages and farms during daylight. But at each nightly camp, he had crept away to spy on the small communities. Steeling through the dark streets, he had listened at doors or to the men muttering as they lurched out of the taverns. It seemed that everything he had heard from the merchants arriving in Flanders had been correct: in all of England, only East Anglia had not yet wholly fallen to William the Bastard. Disturbing stories of terror had started to leak out of the north, but in the windswept, watery east the Normans had only started to exert their control over the larger trading centres. The hinterland remained as harsh and unwelcoming to invaders as it had for generations.
Hereward dug his fingers into the leaf mould and sensed the deep power of this inhospitable land. Alric had called it ‘the Devil’s land of mist and bogs’, and it was. Fed by a network of rivers and streams, water flooded along hidden courses to create an inland sea dotted with islands that could only be reached by the shell-shaped craft that the local people used, or by narrow causeways that became lethal traps after night had fallen. Even what appeared to be dry land was deceptively perilous. Swamps lurked everywhere beneath seemingly solid meadows, threatening the unwary traveller. One wrong step could see them sucked down to their deaths. With the bleak hills of West Mercia on one side, the swamps and sea to the north, and wild forests to the south and south-east, the fenland remained isolated behind its own natural defences.
Knowing the land as he did, he had allowed his guard to fall while he had been hunting waterfowl in the reed beds for that day’s meal. Crouching on the bank with his small bow and arrow, he had been listening to the voices made by the east wind moaning through the reeds and had not heard the knights ride up the track behind him. With a contemptuous demeanour, they had questioned him in faltering English and then attempted to take his bow and his sword. It might have been easier to give them what they wanted, he knew, but his instincts had taken control and he had resisted. The knights had drawn their swords, and he knew from the familiar look in their eyes that they had decided to kill him, dump his body in the icy water and take their loot anyway.
And so he had dived into the reed beds, sending the waterfowl flapping and screeching. Swimming through the shallows, he had stayed out of reach of the men on the bank and then had picked up the secret paths through the marshes that only someone raised in the fens would recognize. He thought he had lost them. But here the Normans were, as relentless as the stories about them always said.
Hereward weighed the option of stalking the knights and trying to kill them one by one, but his plan had been predicated on remaining invisible. If these three went missing, more would come searching for them, and more after that. That was the nature of the Normans.
From nearby, the baying of hounds pierced the folding mists. The three knights laughed.
The warrior cursed quietly once more. Another error of judgement. He had presumed the Normans were scouts exploring the deepest reaches of their last unclaimed land, but it seemed they were not alone. Were they outriders for a corps of reinforcements? Part of a hunting band of nobles? How many rode out there in the fog?
As the dogs drew nearer, he crawled back down the slope and ran to the monk. Grabbing him by his robes, the warrior hauled his companion in the direction of the camp they had made the previous night.
‘What have you done now?’ Alric wanted to know.
‘If you value your life, be quiet. Follow my lead.’
