Of the king himself there was no sign; the flaps had been drawn across the entrance to his tent and there were two of his retainers posted outside, preventing anyone from entering. No doubt that meant he was in council with one or another of his barons. I’d never faced him in person, though I had often seen him from a distance: at his court in Westmynstre at Pentecost last year; and of course on the field at HAestinges.
We made our way to the black and gold, beneath which six tents had been set up around a fire. Robert was indeed there, along with his men, who at first glance I guessed numbered around twenty, as well as his manservant: the thin one with the boil on his neck, who had been with him when we had first met.
Robert saw us approach, and he came over to greet us as we all dismounted. Again I noted he was clad all in black: an affectation that I hoped did not hinder his ability to fight, which was the reason we were here, after all.
‘Your business at Wiltune went well?’ he asked me after we had embraced.
‘Well enough, lord,’ I replied. For a moment I thought that he was about to enquire further, but he did not. How much did he know, I wondered, about the business with Eadgyth and Harold’s body?
He introduced us to his men, and in particular to a burly, broad-shouldered man whose name he gave as Ansculf. He was the captain of Robert’s household knights, and was evidently a man of few words, for he did little more than grunt when he saw us. He smelt of cattle dung and I noticed that he was missing two of the fingers from his shield hand, as well as part of his ear on his other side. But so far as I could tell he seemed experienced; there was a certain confidence about him that I recognised, for it was the kind that came only when a man had seen many hardships, many battles, and weathered all that could be thrown at him.
We left our horses with those of the rest of Robert’s men, driving thick stakes into the earth between the tents and the stream and tying them to those. There was grass enough for the packhorses, but I made sure that mounds of grain were laid out for the destriers, and they stood around those, eating contentedly.
Robert’s men were roasting what looked like a haunch of deer over the fire when we came back. It was a big slab of meat and the fire was yet small, but then one of them arrived with a bundle of sticks and began to build it up, and soon I could feel the warmth upon my face.
‘What news is there from Eoferwic?’ I asked Robert.
‘Not much,’ he said grimly. ‘The castle still holds, so far as we know, but the rebels continue to press at its gates.’
‘Any word on the enemy’s numbers?’ Wace put in.
Robert shrugged. ‘Four, five thousand. Maybe even more. No one knows for sure. More are joining them every day, or so we hear. Men from all over the north: English, Scots, even some Danes as well.’
‘Danes?’ I repeated. I remembered what Malet had told me, about the invasion he believed was to come this summer. Was it possible they had arrived already, and we hadn’t heard about it? ‘You mean King Sweyn is with them?’
‘Not him,’ Robert said. ‘Not yet, at least. These ones are adventurers, swords-for-hire, though there are certainly enough of them. We hear that half a dozen ships’ crews have gathered beneath Eadgar’s banner, some of them from as far afield as Orkaneya and Haltland.’
The Danes were fearsome fighters, wherever they came from. And even a mere six ships could mean anything between two and three hundred men.
‘All the northern lords have allied with him, as far as we’ve heard,’ Robert went on. ‘Gospatric of Bebbanburh, his cousin Waltheof Sigurdsson, and many more besides. The old families are uniting under Eadgar’s banner, all of them proclaiming him king.’
Another usurper, I thought. As if the English had already forgotten the end that had befallen Harold. But this was not a thing to be taken lightly; since HAestinges we had not faced a host of this size. Until now the risings we had encountered had all been local ones, and easily put down, the enemy weak and disorganised.
This was different. As I looked at Robert, I saw the unease in his eyes. He was thinking about his father, about whether we could save him. But I was uneasy for a different reason, for I had seen how well defended Eoferwic was, surrounded by its high walls and easily supplied both by land and by ship. Even if we laid counter- siege on one side of the river, the city as a whole could not be cut off. And so the only way we could break the English siege and save Malet was if we forced the enemy to do battle with us: for our host, led by King Guillaume, to face that of Eadgar, until only one remained.
And on that, I feared, hung not just our own fates, but that of England itself.
For the next few days progress was slow — at least for those of us riding close to the vanguard, since every few hours we had to stop to allow the baggage train in the rear to catch up. Still, the country was easy and we must have made more than fifteen miles each day.
More of the king’s vassals joined us as we marched, and each of them brought men: not just knights, but spearmen and archers too. They were not large bands — often as small as five men, sometimes as large as fifty — but they were all welcome. And so slowly the army grew, and I found my confidence returning, my anxieties subsiding. Not completely, for the fact was that most of these men had come fresh from their halls, from the comfort of their feasting-tables and the leisure of the hunt, ill prepared for the rigours of campaign. But as we came closer to Eoferwic, ever more of their time in camp was spent in training, and each evening the sound of steel upon steel rang out across the hills.
The land was slowly shaking off the grip of winter, and the days were noticeably warmer than they had been of late. The wind no longer held the same chill, and when we rose in the mornings there seemed to be less frost upon the ground: all of which helped to lift the mood while we were on the march. Even within our small group I found I was speaking more easily with Philippe and with Godefroi, the business at Wiltune almost forgotten, the tension that had once been there diminishing. Radulf alone remained distant, but at least he was no longer as hostile as before, and I was content with that. For in truth this was the first time in a long while that I found myself happy. I was at last where I belonged: not mired in suspicions of conspiracy, in talk of promises made and then broken. Not amidst men and women of the cloth, but here, among warriors, men of the sword. This had been my life since I was thirteen years old, and it was my life still. My lord might be dead, but I was not, and as long as I lived I knew it was my purpose to fight.
Of events ahead of us we heard little more, until on the fifth day after we had joined the army the king sent out his scouts to see what they could learn. They returned that evening with the news that Malet still held out, for they had seen the black and gold flying from the castle tower. But it was small relief, for the rebels’ numbers were swelling still; it was said that more than five hundred from the fyrd of Lincoliascir had gone to join them. But if that was right, then they were the only Englishmen from south of the Humbre who had chosen to do so. The rest had refused to ride out for either side, unprepared on the one hand to march against men who were their kin, but on the other unwilling to defy a king who was their lawfully crowned liege-lord, chosen by God. Most of all I suspected they feared reprisal if they happened to choose the wrong side, and so by joining neither they hoped that they would escape punishment altogether. At the very least they were denying Eadgar men he might usefully employ, and that could only be a good thing.
The enemy had their own scouts, of course, and every so often we would spy the dark forms of horsemen upon the hills in the distance, watching us, though they quickly fled into the woods whenever a party was sent out to intercept them. The Aetheling knew, then, that we were coming.
It was late on the sixth day when the order was passed down from the front to halt and to set up camp. I recognised the country here, for this was the same road we had taken on our way to Dunholm not two months before, and I knew we couldn’t be far from Eoferwic — no more, I thought, than half a day’s march.
Towards sunset the king called all the leading nobles to his pavilion, no doubt to discuss with them how best to attack the city. Robert, as the son of the vicomte, was among them, and he took Ansculf and two other men with him. In their absence we sat on the ground outside our tents, sharpening our swords, cleaning our mail. A few ate; most drank. All knew that the fighting would soon be upon us: whether tomorrow or the day after, or the day after that, it would come, and so we had to enjoy this time while we could. Robert’s men told stories of past battles they had fought, of foes they had killed, and in turn Eudo and Wace and I told them of Mayenne and of Varaville, and others we could think of.
By then the sun had set, and all across the camp fires burnt brightly in the gloom. Soon silence fell upon us; all that could be heard was the scraping of stone against steel and the crackling of the flames, when Eudo took up his flute and started to play.
His fingers stepped deftly along the length of the pipe as the song swept from soft to loud and back to soft,
