hand, leaning on his shoulder and stepping down with grace.
The oak door opened again and a tall, red-faced Englishman appeared; he smiled when he saw the chaplain standing there and the two briefly embraced, speaking in their own tongue.
Aelfwold broke off. ‘The ladies Elise and Beatrice,’ he said, gesturing towards them.
The Englishman knelt on the ground before them, leaning forward to kiss each of them on the back of the hand. ‘My ladies,’ he said. ‘It’s a relief to see you safe. When we heard the news from Eoferwic, we feared the worst.’ Like the chaplain, he spoke French well.
‘Wigod,’ said Aelfwold, ‘this is Tancred a Dinant, to whom Lord Guillaume has entrusted our safety. Tancred, this is Lord Guillaume’s steward, Wigod son of Wiglaf.’
The steward rose, looking me up and down with indifference. He had dark hair, cut fairly short for an Englishman, with a pink patch of scalp showing where he was beginning to bald. His upper lip bore a thick moustache, though he was otherwise clean-shaven. He extended a hand and I clasped it.
‘Wigod, I must know,’ Elise said, interrupting, ‘what news is there from Eoferwic?’
The Englishman stepped back, his expression solemn. ‘Perhaps it is best if you come inside, into the warmth, rather than discuss such matters in the open.’ He gestured towards the door. ‘My ladies, Aelfwold,’ he said, and then to the rest of us: ‘I’ll have the boy show you the stables.’ He put his head around the doorframe into the hall. ‘Osric!’
A boy of about fourteen or fifteen emerged. Tall and wiry, he wore a brown cap on his head and a sullen expression on his face. His tunic and trews were marked with dirt and there was hay in his hair. Wigod placed a hand on his shoulder and said something quietly in English, before following the chaplain and the ladies inside.
‘Whatever news he has, I’m guessing it’s not good,’ Wace murmured.
‘We’ll see,’ I said, although I’d had the same feeling. ‘If it were so bad, wouldn’t he have told us straightaway?’
Wace shrugged. Osric took the reins of the chaplain’s mount while Philippe and Godefroi took those of the two ladies, and we followed him around the side of the hall, alongside the brook and into a wide courtyard bounded by a picket fence.
‘Here we are, then,’ said Eudo. ‘In Lundene again.’
‘Enjoy it while you can,’ I replied. ‘We might not be staying here long.’ The fact that we had been travelling a whole week would likely count for nothing with Aelfwold; I suspected that the priest would want us on the road again before long. So far he hadn’t said anything more regarding the message he carried, or the person for whom it was intended. I had asked him more than once while we had been on the road; each time, however, he had refused to answer. It made me uncomfortable, for it meant that although we were soon to be on our way, I was no wiser as to exactly why.
‘I might ride over to Sudwerca tonight, if I’m to see Censwith before we go,’ Eudo said.
I grinned. ‘You’re nothing if not loyal.’
‘Sudwerca?’ Radulf put in. ‘You know there are far better whorehouses this side of the river, don’t you?’
Eudo turned to face him. ‘And what would you know of whores, whelp? I’d wager you’ve not so much as seen a naked woman in your life.’
Radulf smiled sarcastically. ‘More times than you could count.’
‘He means women other than your sister,’ Godefroi said.
I laughed with the others; Radulf’s eyes narrowed and he sneered at Godefroi, who stared back, impassive.
We were led to the stables, where Osric showed us the stalls, then left us while we removed the packs from our saddles and untacked the animals. They had worked hard these last few days with little by way of reward. I hoped we would be able to obtain fresh horses for the next part of our journey; it seemed that Malet or members of his household owned several, including four fine-looking destriers, of which one, a black, reminded me of Rollo. Two stable-hands were at work, scrubbing down their coats and brushing out their manes.
Osric returned shortly, bearing water-pails and sacks of grain, with bundles of fresh hay under his arms, and as soon as we had finished seeing to the animals, led us back across the courtyard in the fading light, into the hall. He said nothing the whole time: not even to the stable-hands who I presumed shared the same tongue.
It was dark inside; there were no windows and the walls were hung with leather drapes to keep out draughts. The hearth-fire, recently stoked with fresh wood, was crackling, hissing with white smoke. Aelfwold and Wigod sat on stools at a low round table beside it, with a pitcher and cups and the smell of mead thick in the air around them. The ladies were not to be seen and I presumed that they had — for now at least — retired to their rooms.
Wigod looked up as we entered. ‘Welcome,’ he said to us, before muttering some words to Osric in their own tongue.
The boy grunted and slunk away, out of the door we had come in.
‘My apologies for his manners,’ the steward said.
‘He doesn’t say much,’ I observed, sitting down on one of the stools that had been set out for us.
‘He doesn’t say anything, though he understands well enough. Don’t worry about him; he may be dumb and none too bright either, but he works hard and that’s why I keep him on.’ He poured out six cups of mead from the pitcher and then took a sip from his own. ‘I hear your journey was eventful.’
‘Aelfwold has told you what happened out on the river, then.’
‘I only wish I’d been there to witness it.’
I looked at him sternly. ‘If you had, you wouldn’t be saying that.’ Even though in the end we had come through mostly unharmed, I hadn’t forgotten how close it had been. ‘What word has there been?’
The steward leant closer. ‘Little that will be easy to hear, I am afraid,’ he said. ‘About four days ago it became known that an army had gathered outside Eoferwic and was laying siege to it. Shortly thereafter we heard of a rising by the townsmen.’ He sighed. ‘And then yesterday came the news that the rebels had taken the city.’
‘Taken the city?’ I had known it was possible and yet at the same time found it hard to believe. Malet’s doubts had been well founded, it seemed.
‘It is so,’ Wigod said. ‘Close to dawn last Monday a band of townsmen managed to seize control of one of the gates. They killed the knights who were there on guard and opened the city to the rebels, who swept into the town.’
‘Was there no resistance?’ Wace asked.
‘Lord Guillaume rode out from the castle with more than a hundred knights,’ Wigod said. ‘He tried to head them off, and succeeded in killing a good many of them too. But even as he did so, a fleet of more than a dozen ships had appeared from downriver.’
‘The fleet we saw,’ Eudo muttered.
‘Most probably,’ Wigod said. ‘They landed and attacked Lord Guillaume’s conroi in the rear. He was forced to retreat to the castle, along with Lord Gilbert and what remained of their host. It is thought that in all as many as three hundred Normans were killed.’
I cursed under my breath. The loss of three hundred men would be hard for the defenders to bear.
‘There is more,’ the steward said. ‘Already it seems Eadgar’s own men are proclaiming him king — and not just of Northumbria, but of the whole of England.’
I shook my head; events were moving too fast. It was a matter of weeks, after all, since we had ridden victorious into Dunholm. How could things have changed so much since then?
‘What’s happening now?’ I asked.
‘The king is raising a relief force to march north as soon as possible. His writ has gone out to all his vassals around Lundene and along the north road. There is even talk that he may try to muster the
‘The fyrd?’ said Philippe.
‘The English levy,’ Aelfwold explained, ‘raised according to shire by the thegns — the local lords — from the men who dwell on their lands.’
‘A peasant rabble,’ I said. In my experience most of the men who made it up could hardly even hold a spear, let alone kill with one. They were farmers, accustomed only to tilling the soil and sowing their crops.
‘Would they march against their own kinsmen?’ Philippe asked.
