recognised Herfast, the Duke's own chaplain. 'Can you stand?'
Groggily Rolf tried, but his legs seemed to be made of wet rope. 'No,' he said.
A litter was fetched, and as he was being laid upon it, he realised that the Duke himself was standing over him. 'You are the luckiest of men, Rolf de Brize,' William said. He had changed his mail for an embroidered tunic and rich cloak, but in the torchlight, Rolf could see the dried blood caked beneath the spatulate fingernails.
Rolf was not sure that he agreed with his liege lord. He was lucky not to be dead, he supposed, but he would not count a broken wrist and split skull as good fortune, nor the loss of his horses.
'Did we conquer?' he asked faintly. 'The last I remember is striking the wall of Harold's bodyguard.'
'The oath-breaker is dead.' William's mouth tightened into its familiar harsh line. 'He took an arrow in the face during the final assault and was ridden over and cut down in the last charge. Now we have to find his body from among all the others who died with him.' There was a hint of weariness, of distaste in William's voice.
Rolf noticed that his Duke was accompanied not only by his senior officers and priests, but by two women in Saxon dress. One of them had pure, strong features and copper-red hair that fringed her brow before being covered by her wimple. From the tales Rolf had heard, she could only be Edith Swan-neck, King Harold's handfasted wife, the woman of his heart, although for political purposes he had been married to Edith, King Edward's sister. If they needed Harold's mate to identify her lover, then God alone knew what she was going to find.
'I have tied that grey stallion of yours at FitzOsbern's horse lines,' William recalled Rolf's concussed attention as two priests made to bear him away from the battlefield. 'Never have I ridden such a fine animal'
Dizzy although he was, Rolf was not about to admit to the Duke that Sleipnir did not belong to Brize-sur- Risle, and he held to a prudent silence.
William's narrow lips curved the merest fraction. 'Breed from him for me, Rolf. I will give you English lands to sow a crop of destriers to be the envy of all the world. My pledge on it.' Tugging a ring from his finger, he placed it in Rolf's good left hand.
Through his pain and exhaustion, Rolf felt a spark of exultation, and it showed in the gleam of his eyes, even if the words of gratitude he spoke to the Duke were somewhat garbled.
William's eyebrows lifted as he saw the battle axe which lay at Rolf's side on the deerhide litter. 'What's this,' he mused, 'a souvenir?'
'A talisman, my lord,' Rolf answered. His eyes began to close, and his voice sank to an incoherent mumble. 'A reminder of how this day was won.'
CHAPTER 13
'Ailith, Ailith, where are you?'
Goldwin's voice reached Ailith in the garth where she was feeding scraps to the hens. A bitter frost the night before had silvered everything with rime. The sun had risen, but it wore a misty halo and was much too weak to pierce the December cold.
'Aili, where's my cloak?'
She scattered the last handful of corn and chopped pork fat and sighing heavily returned to the house. There was a dragging ache in the small of her back. It had started last night just as she retired, and this morning it was worse. She tried to ignore it. If it was the baby coming, she would know soon enough. The pain which Goldwin still endured made her feel guilty for her own minor twinges.
'Are you going out?' Taking his cloak from the mending pile, she handed it to him.
'I thought I would go into the city and see if I could glean any news.'
'Can you walk so far?' Ailith eyed him with concern. He was still very thin, and his health was precarious. Although his injured ankle had healed rapidly, the main wound was still troublesome. Along the line of the scar, swellings would develop, becoming hard, red, and extremely painful before they burst in a welter of pus and blood. A low fever accompanied these bouts and left Goldwin querulous and weak. The last attack had been only eight days ago and Ailith knew he was not yet fully recovered.
'Alfhelm's taking his cart that way; I'll ride with him.' Goldwin set the cloak around his shoulders, wincing as the movement aggravated his wound.
Ailith winced with him, but did not offer to help. She knew how touchy he was on the matter of his independence. 'Be careful,' was all she said with anxious eyes.
'How can I be any other with this damned hole in my side?' he answered testily. 'Would to God that Norwegian axe had cleft me in twain!'
'You do not mean that!'
He sighed and walked slowly to the door. 'I wish I did not,' he said wearily.
When he had gone, Ailith sat down before the fire to spin a pile of carded fleece into yarn for making winter socks. She twirled her spindle and drew out the fleece to make an evenly textured greyish-white thread. Her back continued to ache and now and then she shifted position, trying to ease herself. Spinning wool did not require much mental effort, it was a knowledge of the hands, and once learned was very much an unconscious process. Her mind was free to probe the misery of the last two months, like a knife searching a wound for splinters.
On the day of the great battle between King Harold and the Norman Duke, Goldwin had been so sick with the wound fever that Ailith had despaired of his life. Father Leofric had been sent for, and Goldwin had been shriven — although the good father had been somewhat disapproving of the way Goldwin kept muttering about Odin's ravens. For three days his life had hung in the balance and Ailith had known nothing but her own fight to save him. When she remembered, she prayed for the safety of her brothers and an English victory, but these moments were perforce snatched from chaos.
At first, when she heard the church bells ringing out in the city, she thought that they were celebrating a victory, but her ears had quickly become attuned to the single, dolorous notes of the death knell, and soon after that, she had learned of the disaster that had befallen them on Hastings field. When she heard that King Harold had been killed, she knew that her brothers would not be among the defeated, demoralised warriors trickling into London. Aldred and Lyulph had been members of the elite royal bodyguard and fiercely loyal. Harold's lifeblood was their lifeblood, and she had no doubt that it mingled with his in the battlefield soil.
Somehow she had managed to keep the news from Goldwin for an entire week while he grew stronger. When the urge to cry became too great, she would go out into the garth, to the privy, or down the path to the cold forge. Once, she and Wulfhild and Sigrid had all stood there, among the equipment for fashioning weapons, weeping together in mutual grief and fear.
Ailith felt tears prickling behind her lids now and had to cease twirling the spindle to wipe her eyes. It had been horrible telling Goldwin the news, seeing his thin, fever-wasted face slacken with despair and his' eyes dull to the colour of mud. She had cried in front of him then, long and hard, the tears hot and empty of healing.
Since that time their future had been filled with uncertainty and fear. Rumours abounded – King Harold's sons by Edith Swan-neck were planning to avenge their father. Edgar Atheling of the old West Saxon royal house was going to be declared king and take up arms against the Norman Duke. And at dawn this morning they had heard that the Norman army, having ravaged the villages and countryside surrounding the city, was within striking distance of London itself. The gossip was that Edgar Atheling, the Mercian earls Edwin and Morcar and Archbishop Aldred had ridden to intercept William to tender their submission and offer him England's crown. It was this that Goldwin had gone to investigate.
Felice had told her that Duke William was a harsh master to serve, that he expected implicit obedience from his men, and that he was scornful of anyone without the stamina, endurance or ambition to match up to his own. He would destroy anything that stood in the path of his desire.
'But once you accept his yoke, he is fair,' Felice added judiciously. 'Aubert says that he has known him execute one of his own soldiers for looting a house after peace had been agreed, and the same for rape. He has a strong regard for keeping his word, and he demands the same from others.'
