Knights of the Hawk

‘I know them,’ I answered, but he didn’t look much reassured, and understandably so, as the other ship, easily within range of a javelin’s throw now, moved alongside us and it became clear just how much larger she was than Nihtegesa, and how many more men she carried. But still none of them were rushing to arms, as I might have expected.

‘God’s teeth, but you’re persistent, aren’t you?’ Eudo shouted across the water, laughing. ‘We were beginning to think we’d never catch up with you.’

‘I was hoping you wouldn’t,’ I replied.

‘Are you going to let us come aboard, then?’ Wace asked. ‘Or are you and your new friends going to keep waving your weapons at us until we all perish of old age?’

‘That depends,’ I said, although what I meant by that exactly, I wasn’t sure.

‘On what?’

They were my two oldest and most loyal friends in all the world, and I wasn’t about to take up arms against them. Unable to flee and unwilling to fight. What choices did that leave us with?

‘Is Robert with you?’ I asked, glancing along the length of their ship, looking for him. If he was there, however, he wasn’t showing his face, which was probably as well. As hard as I’d tried to bury my anger in the past few weeks, I still hadn’t forgiven him for driving me from Earnford, from the lands that I had striven hard first to earn and then to defend.

‘No,’ Eudo said. ‘We came alone.’

‘He sent you, did he?’

‘All this way? What makes you think he would do that?’

Little more than a couple of oar’s lengths separated Nihtegesa and Wyvern now. ‘To take me back to Heia, so that he can further humiliate me,’ I said bitterly. ‘Has he not inflicted enough punishment on me already?’

‘Robert hasn’t forgiven you for what you did,’ said Wace. ‘He’s angrier now than he was then, too, since with you being gone, he’s the one who’s had to pay the blood-price to Guibert’s kin. But no, he didn’t send us.’

‘If he didn’t,’ I asked, ‘then what are you doing here, and in his ship?’

‘If you’ll tell your friends to sheathe their blades and let us come across, then we’ll tell you. We don’t want a fight any more than you do.’

‘If you want to come aboard, you talk to me, not him,’ Magnus called out in French. ‘I understand well enough what you’re saying, so don’t think that I don’t. This is my ship. I alone decide who’s allowed to tread her decks. No one else.’

‘And who are you?’ Eudo asked.

‘Magnus,’ he replied, not daring to give his full name to them as he had to me, and then, for want of anything else to say, added, ‘This is Nihtegesa.’

‘Order your men to lay down their weapons, Magnus, and I promise you there won’t be any blood spilt this day.’

He seemed to consider this for a few moments. He signalled to me and I jostled my way past his sweat- reeking huscarls towards him.

‘When you said you know these people,’ he said, keeping his voice low so that only he and I could hear, ‘does that mean you trust them?’

‘With my life,’ I replied. ‘And I know that they don’t make promises lightly. If they say there’ll be no bloodshed, they mean it.’

His eyes were hard, his expression stony. ‘Before I met you I’d almost begun to believe that I’d never have to lay eyes upon a Frenchman again. Now it seems that wherever I go I find myself plagued by your kind.’

‘Do we have an answer, then?’ Wace called.

Magnus let out an exasperated sigh and returned to the gunwale. ‘Do I have much choice?’ he shouted back with the weariness of one who was well used to defeat.

‘You get to choose whether you want to live or die,’ Eudo said. ‘Is that choice enough for you?’

When the question was put to him that way, there was really only one answer the Englishman could give. Reluctantly he bade his retainers sheathe their swords and put down their spears and axes, while Nihtegesa and Wyvern steered closer to one another. The crews on both sides threw across coils of rope, which they used to lash them together. Timber thudded and scraped against timber as the two hulls met, and first Wace and then Eudo came aboard, both of them accompanied by their household knights.

‘So,’ I said, not even caring to greet them properly. ‘Now that you’ve travelled the length of Britain to hunt me down, perhaps you’ll tell me what it is you want.’

Twenty-three

And so they did, and it was exactly as I’d thought. They wanted me to return to England with them. ‘I thought you said Robert was still angry,’ I said. ‘That he hadn’t yet forgiven me.’

‘He is, and he hasn’t,’ said Wace. ‘You don’t know the storm you’ve stirred up. It’s not just that Robert’s been forced to pay the blood-price to Guibert’s widow; many of his vassals are saying he should have been quicker to act, and more severe in his punishment. They say he should never have allowed you to flee Heia, let alone England.’

‘You think that’s going to encourage me to come back with you?’ I scoffed.

‘All these quarrels can be settled in a single stroke, if you only show a little contrition,’ Eudo said. ‘If you return willingly, do the penance that the Church requires and recompense him for the money he paid out on your behalf, then all those barons can be satisfied that justice has been done in the proper manner. There’s no reason then why Robert shouldn’t accept your submission and restore you to your lands.’

‘Is that what he told you, or just what you believe?’ I asked, and I took the silence that greeted my question to mean that he had made no such assurances. ‘Anyway, if it were as simple as that, don’t you think I would have done it already?’

‘You killed a man,’ Wace said. ‘There is no disputing it. Many witnessed it happen. This matter will not be forgotten easily. Not unless you at least demonstrate some humility, so that people see you feel remorse for what you did.’

I rounded on him. ‘Don’t think for a moment that I don’t regret what happened that night.’ Guibert had been a boor, but he hadn’t deserved to die, not by anyone’s estimation. The knowledge of what I’d done had hung like a shadow over me ever since.

But remorse would not bring him back. Nor did I think that mere gestures would heal these wounds, though they might well restore Earnford to me. For I was tired. Tired of the obligations with which I’d long been burdened. Tired of risking my life time after time under the banner of a lord who could not provide, in the name of a king who was as cold-hearted as he was capricious, for a country that, a few good men and women aside, hated us and whose people would slaughter us in their beds if they had half a chance.

‘Even if I had the silver to pay him,’ I said, ‘I’m not about to prostrate myself before him and beg for the restitution of what by right is already mine.’

‘You have no right to that land,’ Eudo pointed out. ‘Not any more. Robert expelled you from his service, or have you forgotten that?’

‘You should count yourself lucky,’ Wace said. ‘If Guibert had been better liked while he lived, there might have been even more of an outcry. There’d be no hope of you returning in that case, and we wouldn’t have wasted the last two weeks pursuing you all this way across the sea.’

‘Why did you, anyway?’ I asked. ‘I thought Robert was leaving for Flanders, and both of you with him.’

‘He was,’ Eudo said. ‘But when the Flemish count heard rumour that King Guillaume was planning a foray against him, he quickly offered a truce. In return for peace, he agreed not to go raiding.’

‘You mean the expedition never went ahead?’

Fate can at times be cruel, and never had it felt crueller than at that moment, as I thought back to my