chamber and I wished that, like the man standing guard outside, I had thought to fetch my cloak before coming here. The floor of rammed earth had turned to mud, there were holes in the roof through which water had dripped to form wide puddles, while up in the cobwebbed rafters a mouse scuttled. Its droppings were scattered around the bedrolls where Robert’s hearth-knights would sleep tonight. For once I was glad that I had my wind- battered tent to go back to.
Robert looked up as I approached. ‘Tancred,’ he said, with some surprise. ‘I didn’t see you come in. When did you get here? You were expected back from Cantebrigia some hours ago.’
I shot him a look, not only because Atselin had said much the same thing, but also because he was the one who had foisted this escort duty upon me in the first place. The king had made Robert responsible for assembling the parties of knights who were to accompany the supply wagons, and he in turn had passed that responsibility on to me. Whether that was because he trusted me more than his other vassals, or because he thought I would value the time spent away from camp and thus meant it as a favour, I wasn’t sure.
‘We came back by a different route,’ I said, and went on to explain what had happened earlier that day, telling him how we had seen the smoke, how we had come across the burnt vill and found the priest close to death, how we had chased Hereward and his men to their boats and slain one of their number. I left out the last part of the story, about how the fear had gripped me, for even all these hours later I could not make sense of it. My instinct was to bury the memory deep inside my mind where it would not trouble me, but I could not, and still the Englishmen’s taunts rang in my ears. I wished I might have that moment over again so that I could ram my lance-head into Hereward’s throat, silence him and his companions and help bring an end to the rebels’ stand and to this godforsaken campaign.
‘Even if you had killed or captured him, it would have made little difference,’ Robert said, after I’d told of how he had escaped. ‘He is the least of the rebels’ leaders. If anyone holds command over that rabble, it is surely Morcar. He is the one who holds Hereward’s leash.’
At that I couldn’t help but laugh. The notion that anyone could hold the leash of a man such as him seemed to me absurd. But Robert was right in one sense, for Morcar was indeed a formidable figure, and one who had caused us much trouble these last five years. Before the invasion he had held the earldom of Northumbria, and he and his elder brother Earl Eadwine of Mercia had been among the first of the English to see sense and lay down their arms following our victory at Hæstinges. As a reward they were received as esteemed guests at King Guillaume’s court, albeit deprived of their ranks, but a mere two summers later, hungry for greater influence, they had risen against him. Indeed, for a short while they had been successful, winning more than a thousand spears to their cause as they raided far and wide. More than half of those spears, however, were wielded by peasant farmers, who all dispersed to bring in their crops as soon as the harvest season arrived. After that their revolt quickly crumbled and once more they were forced to bend their knees before the king, seeking his pardon. Fortunately for them he was gracious enough to grant it, giving permission for both to return to their positions at court, and allowing them to keep their heads if not their landholdings.
Such was their pride, though, that the brothers were not content with that for long, and so earlier this year they’d fled his court for a second time. Eadwine had ridden north, to seek help, it was thought, from the King of Scots, only to be betrayed by some of his men and overtaken on the road by a conroi of knights, who slew him and all those accompanying him. Morcar, on the other hand, had made for Elyg to join those rebels already gathered there. With him went many of those who had lent their weapons in support of his earlier rebellion, who saw him now as their only hope for a leader who would drive us out of England.
Robert would argue that it was because of Morcar that we were here, and few would disagree with him. Without the former earl’s leadership the rebels’ loose alliance of squabbling thegns would surely have collapsed months ago. Not only that, but his arrival had bolstered the enemy’s numbers by somewhere between, we reckoned, one thousand and twelve hundred men of fighting age: men who could carry swords and spears and shields into battle but who, more importantly, could also dig ditches, raise earthen banks and fell trees from which they could build palisades to surround their stronghold, so that by the time we’d arrived in force, the enemy were already well ensconced upon the Isle and easily able to repulse our attacks.
None of that, though, undermined Hereward’s importance, or made him any less of a threat.
‘Lord,’ I said, ‘if it weren’t for Hereward wreaking his ruin, the rebels would do nothing but sit inside their fastness. Morcar, Siward, Ordgar and the other magnates might possess greater wealth and standing amongst the English, and have larger followings, but Hereward is the one who inspires them and gives them confidence. By his raiding he alone brings them victory and delivers them booty, and so exerts an influence far above his rank. Destroy him and many of the others will quickly lose belief. Only when that happens do we stand a chance of being able to defeat them.’
Robert shook his head sadly. ‘I wish it were so simple.’
‘Do you believe that the king’s strategy is any more elaborate?’
‘You heard, then.’
‘Not all of it, lord, but enough. I understand that the king has been rebuilding the causeway on to the Isle.’
Robert nodded. ‘He’s moving most of his forces back to Alrehetha, where he has recently finished building a guardhouse to watch over the marsh. He is determined to break the enemy once and for all, and wishes to make another assault within the week.’
The manor of Alrehetha lay to the south of Elyg, separated from the Isle by a mile-wide bog that neither horse nor man could easily cross. We had tried to bridge it twice already, and both times without success. The first attempt, built of timber and loose stones supported by sheepskins filled with sand, had collapsed even as our forces streamed across it, brought down by the weight of so many knights and spearmen hungry for blood and for glory. God only knew the number that had drowned; we were lucky not to have been chosen to spearhead that first assault, or we would have been among them. Instead we’d watched from the banks, powerless to do anything as, shouting and screaming for help that would not come, our fellow Frenchmen floundered in the sucking mire, struggling for breath, burdened by their heavy mail, while their panicked mounts thrashed spray everywhere and the enemy hurled javelins and shot arrows into their midst. Even now, two months later, the marsh was still littered with many hundreds of swollen corpses. Together they raised a sickening stench that gripped men’s stomachs and caused them to heave, and when the wind was up could be smelt for miles around.
The second attempt had been barely any better conceived. By then more than a month had passed since the first causeway had collapsed, and the king was beginning to grow desperate, so much so that he had been persuaded by one of his nobles, a certain Ivo surnamed Taillebois, to put his trust in the power of a wizened Englishwoman with a harelip and only one leg, who claimed to be able to work the magic of the old gods. Wooden towers had been constructed by the edge of the bog while some of the marsh folk were put to work repairing and strengthening what remained of the bridge, and upon one of those towers the Devil-witch was set in order to protect them with her charms from the enemy’s depredations, and also to weaken the rebels’ resolve and sow ill feeling among their ranks.
Needless to say, the plan had failed. Before the causeway was even half repaired, a band of rebels, some said led by Hereward himself, had sallied from the Isle one night. Making their way by secret routes, they had set fire to the reeds and the briar patches that surrounded its main platforms and the bases of the towers, so that they and the crone were all consumed by writhing flame that some claimed had been seen from as far away as Cantebrigia. What became of Ivo Taillebois after that no one knew. Probably he had fled the moment word reached him, although it was also rumoured that the king had killed him and disposed of his body in the marsh.
Angered by this second setback and losing the faith of his barons, the king had gathered most of his forces at his main camp here at Brandune while he contemplated what to do next. For a while he had tried to cut Elyg off by land and water and so starve the enemy into submitting, but there was no sign yet of that happening. Indeed if the few reports we received were correct, their storehouses were sufficiently full to keep them fed for several months to come. And now it seemed he had no more ideas left.
‘Tell me what’s in your mind,’ Robert said.
‘Lord, if I may say, Eudo and the others are right. The king has taken leave of his senses. We will not take the Isle by sheer force, not by such a crude strategy, at least. The causeway didn’t work before. Why should it work this time?’
Robert had no reply to that and so I continued: ‘This attack will fail, just as the last attempt failed. Even if
