‘No, lord-’ I started to protest, but he cut me off.
‘You would have done better to leave me there,’ he said. ‘I would have rotted away as a prisoner of the Danes, rather than live only to rot away here. What difference has it made? What good am I to anyone now?’
His face was ashen, his hair had grown long and was turning the colour of snow, and his deep-set eyes had a weary look about them. Even huddled in his cloak he looked thinner than I had ever known him. Thinner, and also somehow shrunken. It was hard to believe that this was the same man I had witnessed not so long ago leading conrois into battle: a fearless fighter, ambitious and lacking nothing in conviction. All the fire that once he had possessed seemed to have gone out of him, which perhaps was no surprise given that he was then by my reckoning almost fifty in years. Whilst I had come across men of sixty and seventy and even older, they were rare, and fifty was in truth a good age, especially for one whose living and whose reputation were made by the sword, as his had been. War exacted its toll, not just upon the body, as my many battle-marks would attest, but also upon the soul, and Malet had seen more battles in the last few years than many saw in a lifetime. And so in spite of his hostility towards me, I felt sorry for him.
‘Have the physicians been to see you this evening?’ asked Robert, his voice quieter now. He had come not looking for a confrontation but hoping to settle matters. Now those hopes were dashed.
‘I sent them away,’ Malet said. ‘They bleed my veins dry and are continually arguing between themselves, but they do nothing to take away the pain. At least I have Dudo. He reads to me, and prays for me, and sometimes we play chess, which I always seem to win. I suspect he lets me, although he insists that is not the case. I do not want pity, from him or anyone. And besides, my mind still works well enough, even if this husk of flesh is failing me.’
No sooner had he finished speaking than he hunched over and began to cough: a dry, rasping sound that shook his entire body and was painful to hear. A dirty rag hung from his belt and he raised it to cover his mouth. When he lifted it away I saw it was flecked with blood, and even I, who was far from well versed in the healing arts, knew that was never a good thing. Robert passed him the cup from the table; Malet took it in his bony fingers and lifted it to his lips, and after he had taken a few sips his son helped him back to the stool by the fire.
‘We will be leaving soon,’ said Robert as he knelt by his father’s side. ‘The king is preparing for another assault upon the Isle and so he is ordering most of the army back to Alrehetha.’
‘So I am informed,’ Malet said. ‘And I shall come with you.’
‘No, Father. It is better if you stay here and save your strength. Dudo will care for you.’
‘My strength will leave me eventually. I would rather be there to witness our victory over the rebels before I die than simply waste away uselessly in this filthy hovel.’
Robert shot him a reproachful look. ‘You should not speak so.’
‘And why not? There is no sense in denying it. My time is short. We both know it to be true. The physicians think the same, although of course they will not admit it openly, since what then would be the point of us paying them? And so does Dudo, although he is too loyal to say so. No, I have made my decision and will not be swayed from it.’
Robert nodded sadly as he clasped his hands around his father’s, and in the light of the fire I glimpsed the glisten of a tear as it rolled down his cheek. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will return in the morning, shortly before noon. Until then, rest.’
Malet gazed back at him, but it seemed to me that there was no hint of sadness or regret in his eyes, no sense of self-pity in his demeanour, but merely an acceptance of his fate, and despite everything that had happened and his hostility towards me, I admired that courage.
Robert rose, and after bidding a final farewell we left Malet to his fire and stepped outside, where, as I had suspected, Dudo was waiting, standing so close to the door that he must have been eavesdropping. We’d said nothing of any importance, but even so, I gave him a cold stare as we passed. His face betrayed no feeling, and he spoke not a word to us, but afterwards I could feel his eyes on my back. An odd little man, I thought, at the same time wondering where Malet had found him and how he had come to enter his service.
‘I don’t like that priest,’ I confessed to Robert when we were out of earshot. ‘I don’t like him, and I don’t trust him either.’
‘He is harmless. Strange, I will grant you, but entirely harmless. In any case, it doesn’t matter what either of us thinks. My father trusts him and that is all that matters.’
I supposed he was right, although that did nothing to stave off my suspicions.
‘You must realise, too, that his anger isn’t reserved for you,’ Robert said as we walked back across the yard, which the recent rains had turned into a quagmire. ‘He’s angry at the circumstances he finds himself in, and the knowledge that he will never accomplish all that he set out to do. He is a proud man, Tancred, and always has been. He hates for others to see him looking so weak. Seeing you reminds him of a time when his fortunes were better, when men did not spit his name but instead held him in esteem.’
‘If you say so, lord,’ I said, though I didn’t entirely believe him.
We trudged on through the mud until we arrived back outside the hall’s great doors.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you suggested,’ Robert said as we were about to bid each other farewell. ‘About how, if we could only find the right passages through the marshes, we might be able to surprise the enemy, or at least inflict some damage in return.’
‘Yes, lord?’
‘I want you to take a boat out into the marshes towards the Isle. See if you can capture one or more of the rebels and bring them back alive.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight,’ he confirmed. ‘Take Eudo and Wace with you, and as many other men as you think you might need, so long as you go unnoticed and you return by first light.’
‘And how do you expect us to be able to do this, lord?’
‘I hoped you might have some plan in mind. You were the one who suggested it, after all. Unless, of course, you think yourself incapable of such a task.’
He gave a mischievous smile as he spoke. He meant to goad me, for he knew that I rarely refused a challenge when one was laid before me.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘For you this should be simple.’
He hardly needed to ask, for he had already worked out what my answer would be even before the words formed on my tongue.
‘I will do this, lord.’
His smile broadened further. He knew me too well, I thought. Robert had a way of seeing into men’s hearts, of understanding their characters and desires and how he might use that knowledge to his advantage: a skill that his father also possessed. In that respect, if in few others, they were very much alike.
With that we parted ways. Robert returned inside while I went to gather my men. Earlier, as the smell of stew bubbling in cooking-pots had wafted on the breeze, my mind had turned to thoughts of food, but it was hunger of a different kind that gripped me now. For this was the chance I’d been waiting for. At last I would be doing something more useful than guarding cartloads of grain. Perhaps this was how Robert sought to repay me for all those days spent riding back and forth on the road from Cantebrigia, or else he was merely indulging my restless spirit. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.
What I did know was that we had to make the most of this opportunity, for otherwise it wouldn’t be long before the clash of steel upon steel would ring out across the marshes once again. At one time that prospect would have gladdened me, but not now. For as much as I longed to feel the heat of the mêlée, the rush of blood as I charged into the enemy battle-lines, I could not shake the doubt nagging at the back of my mind. A doubt that grew with every moment that I dwelt upon it, as I thought of Hereward and the rest of the rebels, ensconced in their impregnable fastness upon the Isle, and the king’s single-minded desire to crush them whatever the cost. By anyone’s estimation we faced a fight the likes of which we had not known since Hæstinges itself: a desperate struggle from which glory or death were the only two routes out. Even if, at the end of it, we emerged victorious, that victory would surely come at a tremendous price, of blood and limbs and life.
And though I did my best to drive such thoughts away, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this battle would be my last.
