I swore aloud. I’d hoped that we might find some of the enemy still here, but in fact they were probably several miles away by now, which left us nothing more that we could usefully do except return to Hamo and the carts. All we had accomplished was to waste an hour or more on our journey. Back at the king’s camp in Brandune the clerks would be waiting: pale, weasel-eyed men who recorded with quill and parchment every last crumb of bread and drop of ale that entered the storehouses and was distributed among the men. They wouldn’t thank us if we arrived late and they had to complete their work by candlelight. While I always took a certain enjoyment from annoying them — one of the few pleasures afforded by this escort work — it would mean that I’d have to put up with even more of their carping, and I wasn’t convinced it was worth it.
Fyrheard pawed restlessly at the ground. I shared his sentiment. I was about to give the order to turn back when amidst the calls of the crows, which had descended to pick at the bodies, came what sounded like a voice, not far off but weak and indistinct.
‘Did anyone else hear that?’ I asked.
‘All I heard was my stomach rumbling,’ muttered one of the archers, whose name I had forgotten but whose gaunt face and large ears I recognised. ‘The sooner we return, the sooner we can eat.’
‘You’ll be going hungry unless you keep quiet,’ I snapped. That prompted a snigger from the archer’s comrades, but they fell quiet the instant I glared at them, and it was as well that I did, or else I might have missed the voice when it came again: a low moaning, like someone in pain.
‘Over there,’ said Serlo.
I looked in the direction of his pointed finger. Through clouds of smoke and ash I glimpsed a broken haywain and, lying beside it, what at first I took for a dead body; yet the corpse was moving its head, just slightly but enough that I could be sure that my eyes weren’t deceiving me.
I strode across the muddy churchyard towards the figure. He lay on his back, coughing up crimson gobs. His tunic and trews were torn, while his face was streaked with mud. An arrow had buried itself in his torso, just above his groin. Around the place where the shaft was lodged his tunic was congealed with so much blood that it was a wonder he still lived. He looked about fifty or so in years; his grey hair was flecked with strands of white and cut short at the back in the French style, which suggested he was a Norman. On a leather thong around his neck hung a wooden cross that suggested he had either been Mass-priest here, or possibly chaplain to the local lord.
I knelt down by his side. The others gathered around me and I called for one of them to fetch something for the priest to drink. No sooner had I done so than his eyes opened, only by a fraction but enough that he could see me looking down on him.
‘Who …’ he began, but faltered over the words. His voice was weak, no more than a croak. ‘Who are you?’
‘Friends,’ I assured him. ‘My name is Tancred. We came as soon as we saw the smoke.’
‘You came too late.’ His face contorted in pain as once more he groaned and clutched at the shaft protruding from his gut. ‘Too late.’
I tried to lift his hands away so as to get a better look at the wound. If we could only remove the arrow, I thought, it might be possible to staunch the flow and close up the hole. But no sooner had I prised his trembling fingers from the sticky cloth than I knew it would be no use. In my time I’d seen men recover from all manner of injuries, some worse than this, but not many. I’d learnt a little about wounds and how to treat them from the infirmarian in the monastery where I grew up, and over the years since had often watched leech-doctors at work. That small amount of knowledge was enough to tell me that he was too far gone, even for someone skilled in the healing arts, which none of us were.
Serlo crouched beside me, holding a leather flask. ‘Ale,’ he said. ‘There’s not much left.’
‘It’ll be enough,’ I replied as I took it and removed the stopper. From the weight and the sound it made as I swirled the liquid about I reckoned it was probably about a quarter full. I turned back to the priest. ‘Can you sit up?’
He shook his head, teeth clenched in pain. His breath came in stutters, making it hard for him to speak. ‘I am beyond the help of ale. Besides, soon there will be no more pain. I shall be with God, and all will be well. There is only one thing you can do for me.’
‘What is it, father?’
He gave a great hacking cough, and as he did so his whole body shuddered. Thankfully the fit did not last long and, sighing wearily, he lay back once more, at the same time motioning with his fingers for me to come closer. I leant towards him. There were tears in the old man’s eyes, running down his cheeks.
‘Bring to justice the ones who did this,’ he said. ‘Their leader too, that spawn of the Devil. The one they call Hereward. Promise me that.’
‘Hereward?’ I repeated, wanting to make sure I had heard him rightly. ‘He did this?’
‘So they called him, yes.’
That name was well known to me, as it was to everyone in our army, but I hadn’t expected to hear it today, in this place. Hereward was one of the leaders of the rebels; it was he who had instigated this particular rising here in the fens. Some said he was a prominent thegn who had held land in these parts under the old king, Eadward. Others claimed he was a creature of the forest, abandoned at birth by his mother and raised by wolves, which explained his ruthless nature and his lack of Christian mercy. In truth no one knew where he had come from; his name had been first spoken only last autumn. While we had been campaigning with the king in the north, Hereward had raided the abbey at Burh, slain several of the monks and carried away all their treasures, including shrines and gilded crucifixes, richly bound and decorated gospel books and even, it was said, the golden crown that had rested upon Christ’s head on the rood beneath the chancel arch. With the help of some Danish swords- for-hire he’d torched the town and monastery, and afterwards had fled by ship across the marshlands to the Isle of Elyg, where he now chose to make his stand against us, bolstered by the hundreds of other English outlaws who had flocked to his banner.
It was because of him that we were here in this godforsaken corner of the kingdom. It was because of him that, barely half a year after we had defeated the Northumbrians and their Danish allies at Beferlic and sent the pretender Eadgar scurrying back to the protection of the King of Alba, we’d found ourselves once more summoned by the king to join him on another of his campaigns.
Yet if the old priest was right, and it was indeed Hereward who had done this, and if we could kill or capture him-
A new sense of purpose stirred within me. ‘How many of them were there?’ I asked.
The priest’s eyes were closed again, and his skin was as pale as snow. His time was near. But if I was to do what he had asked of me, he had to give me answers. I clasped his wrinkled, bloodstained hand, squeezing it firmly to try to keep him with us a little longer. At once he blinked and came to, a look of confusion upon his face, as if he did not quite know where he was.
‘How many, father?’ I said again.
He groaned as if with the effort of remembering, and after a moment managed to answer, ‘A dozen, perhaps fifteen. No more.’
Roughly two men to every one of us, then. Fewer than I had been expecting, but still more than I would have liked to face, especially when one of them was Hereward himself, whose sword-edge had already claimed countless victims, if the stories told about him were true. No warrior ever won himself great fame without some measure of risk along the way, however. The difficulty came in learning which risks to embrace and which to avoid, and this seemed to me one worth taking.
‘When did they leave?’ I asked the priest.
‘Not an hour ago,’ he said, his eyelids drooping. ‘They went …’
‘Where?’
At first I thought he was slipping away and that we wouldn’t get an answer, but then I spotted the faintest movement of his lips. I leant closer, having to put my ear almost to his mouth in order to hear him.
‘Promise me,’ he said, barely managing a whisper. ‘Promise me.’
‘I will bring them to justice, father,’ I said. ‘I swear it upon the cross. But you have to tell me where they went.’
‘North.’ The words came slowly now. ‘They went north. That much I know. Now, let me rest.’
I nodded and squeezed the priest’s hand one last time, then rested it carefully back upon his chest, which
