From another man’s lips that might have sounded insolent, but it was the fact that he spoke with such sincerity that made me laugh. Straightaway I tried to stifle it. The noise that came out was somewhere between a cough and a choke. The king glared at me, and I glimpsed the fire that lay behind his cold demeanour.
‘Has your uncle not spoken to you of such things?’ Atselin suggested. ‘Perhaps you can recall something of what he might have mentioned about their numbers and disposition.’
‘He tells me little,’ Godric answered. There was a look in his eyes that might have been anger or hurt, and perhaps it was a mixture of the two. ‘He says I am still young, that he values my loyalty but I am not a warrior yet, that I should worry about honing my sword-skills first before troubling myself with such details. I had to beg to be allowed to lead the scouting-band last night.’ He shook his head and sniffed. ‘I failed even at that.’
Atselin narrowed his eyes. ‘How old are you?’
‘Fifteen summers this year.’
He was barely out of boyhood. Were he not my enemy I might have felt sorry for him. Eager to impress and to win respect, he was nonetheless a long way from fulfilling his ambitions. Doubtless I’d been much the same at his age, although he held one advantage over me, for he was only too aware of his shortcomings, whereas I had never been able to see them. That youthful arrogance had nearly proven my undoing on more occasions than one.
The king, however, was unmoved. ‘Tell us something you do know.’
After swallowing to clear his throat, Godric began to speak of the enemy’s defences, while Atselin scrawled upon his tablet, although in truth we learnt little that was new. Once in a while the king would interrupt to press the Englishman further, but otherwise he seemed content to let him talk. And so we learnt that nothing resembling a castle had yet been erected — not that we had expected any among the English to have the expertise to do so — but that Morcar and the other leading thegns had thrown up all manner of walls and earthen banks around the monastery, dug ditches and arrayed sharpened stakes in them to deter against attack, and behind those defences they waited for us to come to them. They had food enough to last until winter and even beyond, Godric assured us, although how he could possibly say that when he had no real notion of how many mouths they had to feed, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps that fact had come from his uncle, since it didn’t sound like the kind of judgement he was likely to have made on his own. Indeed he seemed almost as ignorant as the eel-catchers and other marsh folk, upon whose sparse knowledge and occasional observations of the enemy positions we had thus far come to rely.
Still, everything he told us confirmed our worry, which was that the rebels were secure in their fastness and unlikely to be prised from it in the foreseeable future. Indeed, if their defences were as formidable as young Godric made them sound, we had only one choice: to lay siege to that stronghold, bombard them with our mangonels and try to starve them into submission, but that might take months: months that we didn’t have, and I suspected the king was coming to the same realisation. He paced in front of us, every once in a while tapping a finger against his chin as if in thought, no doubt wondering, as I was, what we should do with the Englishman now, and whether he might make a reliable guide through the marsh-passages that led to the Isle. I could not speak for the king, but certainly I wouldn’t want to entrust my life to him.
Godric went on to describe the rich halls of the monastery at Elyg, which the abbot and monks had surrendered to Hereward and Morcar to use for their councils of war and as private chambers for themselves and their households. Had he any sense, he would have shut his mouth before going on any further, but desperation was loosening his tongue, and he could not stop himself. Oblivious to the king’s darkening expression, he told of the lavish feast his uncle had held there three nights before, of the various dishes of hare and boar that had been laid out, of the wine, ale and mead that had flowed and how men had fallen about insensible with drink, of how a poet had sung of the great victory that would soon be theirs.
‘I have heard enough,’ the king said eventually, cutting Godric off as he was telling of his uncle’s great hoard of gold, and the largesse he had bestowed upon the abbot of Elyg in gratitude for his generosity. ‘Unless you have anything worthwhile to offer, I have no more time for you.’
He signalled to two of his scarlet-clad knights, who stepped forward from the shadows where they had been waiting, took hold of the Englishman’s shoulders in spite of his protests and hauled him to his feet.
‘Take him outside and kill him,’ the king said. ‘Then hang his corpse somewhere by the marsh’s edge where his countrymen might come across him. He will serve as an example.’
Godric tried to struggle, but his arms were pinned. ‘No, lord!’
‘You are of no use to us, and I have wasted my breath speaking to you. I do not wish to look upon your loathsome face any longer.’
‘Wait,’ I said, as the king’s knights dragged him towards the entrance. They stopped, glancing first at me, and then at the king. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert cast a warning glare my way, but I was not to be discouraged.
I could have held my tongue and left the Englishman to his fate without risking incurring King Guillaume’s wrath, but an idea was beginning to stir within my mind: an idea that just might help bring a swift end to this war. In all the weeks we’d been fighting, the rebels had never once sent us an envoy, nor us them, since showing one’s enemy that you were willing to talk was often taken as a sign of weakness, and neither side wished to admit to that. In Godric, however, I realised we had been gifted an opportunity, and one that we had to take.
The king rounded upon me. ‘What is it?’
‘My lord king,’ I said. ‘If I may speak, I have a suggestion to make.’
He stared long and hard at me, then at Eudo and Wace, who were standing beside me. ‘I recognise you,’ he said. ‘Your faces are familiar, though I cannot say from where. Our paths have crossed before, haven’t they?’
They had, though I hadn’t expected him to remember. It had been the briefest of encounters, and more than two years ago besides.
‘They were among the men who opened the city gates to your army on the night of the battle at Eoferwic,’ Robert said. ‘It was Tancred who led the charge on to the bridge, who faced Eadgar Ætheling in single combat and almost killed him.’
The account as he gave it was more or less true, although others had embellished those feats in their retellings of the battle. Robert, Wace and Eudo all knew well that if anyone had nearly met his death that day, it was I and not Eadgar, but I had rarely admitted this to anyone else, and thought it wise not to say anything now.
‘Of course,’ the king said, studying me with narrowed eyes. ‘Tancred of Earnford. The Breton. I’ve heard tell of your exploits.’
I did my best not to flinch beneath his gaze, and to quell my anger at the note of scorn in his voice. ‘Only good things, I trust, lord king,’ I replied as evenly as I could.
He ignored that remark. ‘Should I understand that you three are responsible for capturing the Englishman?’
‘There were others as well, lord, but yes, it was we who led the expedition,’ I said.
The king nodded as if in contemplation. ‘Very well, Breton. What is this suggestion of yours?’
I swallowed to moisten my throat. ‘I was thinking, lord, that we should send Godric back to Elyg.’
There was silence for a moment, in which only the sound of the rain and the geese in their pen outside could be heard. The king’s eyes narrowed but he did not speak.
‘Send him back?’ Eudo asked. ‘After all this, you would let him go?’
‘Think for a moment,’ I said. ‘Why does Morcar persist in stirring up trouble? Why does he ally himself to filth-ridden wretches like Hereward? What is he looking to gain?’
I turned to Godric. The colour had drained entirely from his face but there was renewed brightness in his eyes. If he wanted to leave this place alive, though, he would have to help me.
‘I–I don’t know,’ he mumbled, his voice quiet.
‘I think you do,’ I said. ‘You might be a poor excuse for a warrior but you know him well enough. If Morcar truly wanted to drive us from these shores, his best opportunity was to raise his banner in support of Eadgar Ætheling last year, but he didn’t. He doesn’t care whether an Englishman or a Frenchman wears the crown, so long as he profits. Am I right?’
Godric did not reply, but his silence told me all that I needed to know.
‘I think I understand what Morcar has in mind,’ I went on. ‘As much as he might act the war leader, the truth is that he is barely more experienced a fighter than his nephew. Remember that in two months not once has
