thinly, the time was ripe for him to try again.
‘If you have somewhere better in mind, name it now,’ Robert said, clearly growing frustrated.
His tone took me aback, but I had nothing more to add or any other refuges to suggest. And so Eoferwic it would be. As a place where Beatrice might safely weather the storm to come, it was certainly no worse than Scrobbesburh. When last I was there the second castle was still being completed, under the eye of Guillaume fitz Osbern, no less. That was over a year ago: not since Wace, Eudo and I had given our oaths to Robert in the weeks following the great battle had I walked its streets. Only a month or so before that, we had been escorting his sister and their mother from Eoferwic to the safety of Lundene. Thus it was ironic that for the same reason, our paths now led us back there.
It is strange how sometimes we find our lives unfolding in circles, each step taking us not forward but merely around and around, until at last we end up where we began.
Eoferwic was where I had first sworn my allegiance to the Malet house and the banner of the black and gold. It was where this reputation I had unwittingly won for myself had been forged. If God were a poet and my life a song, then Eoferwic would be the refrain.
That night I slept better than I had done in some while. The wind was changing direction, turning to the east, and the air felt cooler, less stifling than it had been of late. I was long due some proper rest after days on campaign, bedding down on stony ground that dug into my back and my side. Indeed the first time I woke was when the tent-flap was pulled aside and I heard Robert’s voice telling me to wake.
Bleary-eyed, my mind still clouded with sleep, I raised myself from the blankets and crawled out. He and his conroi were already waiting. One of his knights carried the familiar black-and-gold banner, furled around the staff so as to attract less attention, while another carried a torch that hurt my eyes to look at.
‘I’m going to meet Beatrice,’ Robert said. ‘Join us by the town’s northern gates as soon as you can.’
He left some of his manservants to help us; I sent them to fetch our destriers and rounceys. Our saddlebags were already packed, and we had filled our wineskins the night before in readiness. While Snocca and Cnebba loaded them on to the sumpter ponies that we shared, the rest of us set about striking camp. The quicker we could be gone, the less attention we would draw. And the fewer people knew we were leaving, the fewer questions there would be.
We were tying our bedrolls to the ponies’ harnesses when Pons gave a shout. I turned quickly, thinking that something was wrong. Swearing violently, he dragged his foot out from one of the latrine pits; in the dark they weren’t easy to spot and he must have lost his footing. His shoe and the hem of his trews were soaked in piss.
‘Quiet!’ I told him as I buckled my sword-belt on to my waist. The last thing I wanted was too much noise. ‘Be more careful.’
He glared at me but thankfully after that he kept his curses quiet, muttering under his breath.
Mailed and mounted, we rode out. There was neither honour nor pride to be had in running from a battle, and even though I knew it was for the right reasons, still the thought made me feel uneasy, as if somehow I were a traitor to my countrymen. I tried to put it from my mind. My allegiance was to my lord and his kin, and to their protection; nothing else ought to matter.
By then a few men, probably woken by Pons’s curses, had emerged from their tents. They called to us, asking who we were and what we were doing about so early.
‘Ignore them,’ I muttered. ‘Don’t say a word to anyone.’
From the amount of baggage we carried they would soon realise that we weren’t headed out on any scouting expedition, and it was but a short leap from there for them to guess we were deserting. Even so, I preferred to let them work that out for themselves. By the time word got around the camp and made its way to Fitz Osbern that the son of Malet and his followers had gone, I hoped the town would be many miles behind us.
Robert was waiting for us at the town’s north gates when we reached them. Beatrice was with him, huddled in her cloak so that she seemed somehow smaller, her face pale in the moonlight. She would not meet my eyes. Her brother gave a nod to the sentries posted at the gate; I wondered how much he had paid them to let us through at this hour, and to hold their tongues too. The gates swung open with a great grinding noise, loud enough to wake the whole town. I winced at the sound as I took up position at the rear of the column alongside Pons and Serlo. In silence we filed through the gates under the watchful eyes of the sentries. Open country lay before us, the hills and woods lit dimly by the cloud-veiled moon. There was no sign yet of the approaching dawn.
Eudo and Wace weren’t to be found among Robert’s retinue. They and their knights had left the afternoon before, Robert having sent them back to his manor at Heia to help defend it against the Danes in case they landed in Suthfolc. Since the battle both had tried to avoid me whenever possible — as if they, like the Wolf and so many others, held me responsible for the deaths of their men — and at the very least I should have liked to wish them well before they went.
We had ridden perhaps a hundred paces along the track out of Scrobbesburh when behind us I heard the sounds of hooves and a man’s voice, calling out what sounded like my name. Over the jangle of harnesses and the wind rustling the stalks in the nearby wheatfields it was hard to make out, and at first I thought myself mistaken. But as I glanced at Serlo and Pons I saw that they had heard too. We hadn’t left anyone behind so far as I could tell, and so it couldn’t be a straggler. And apart perhaps from Byrhtwald, who had already fled the town, who knew that we were leaving?
‘Tancred,’ the cry came again. ‘Tancred a Dinant!’
Wondering who this could be, I turned to see a lone horseman waiting beneath the arch of the gatehouse, silhouetted by the flickering light of the sentries’ torches. As soon as he saw that he had my attention, his shouts ended.
‘Who are you?’ I called back. ‘What business do you have with me?’
He did not answer. Instead he seemed to be conversing with the sentries, although what they were saying I had no hope of telling from such a distance. It was hard to make out his features, though if I had to describe him I would have said that he was stouter of build than most men.
‘Is that you, Berengar?’
He looked up once more. If indeed it was him and he wished to say something, he would do so to my face, not like a coward from one hundred paces. I spurred Nihtfeax into a gallop, back towards the gates. No sooner had I done so, however, than he turned tail and was gone, leaving the sentries and slipping beyond the torch-lit gatehouse into the shadows of the town.
‘Get back here, Berengar,’ I shouted. ‘Don’t run from me, you worthless Devil-turd!’
I had no way of knowing whether he had heard me or not, but I hoped that he had. This feud that he had begun was one thing I wouldn’t miss. Even so, I would have preferred to have settled things one way or another. Instead he’d had the satisfaction of watching me ride away, which he would turn to his own gain. Among his comrades he would call me a coward and worse; he would brag about how, too frightened to face him properly, I had slunk away under the cover of darkness, in so doing admitting defeat. He would spread his lies and I could do nothing to refute them. I clenched my teeth. I was no coward, as anyone who knew me would testify. In time I would return and prove it, at the same time making sure that everyone saw him truly for the cur he was. But not now.
I returned to join the others, who had not waited. Robert did not hide his fury when he saw me.
‘If word wasn’t already out about our leave-taking, it surely will be now,’ he said. ‘Whoever that was-’
‘It was Berengar,’ I said.
‘Enough of you and him,’ Robert snapped. ‘Do you think I care? Whoever that was, he knows now that you’re with us. It won’t be long before he makes the connection with myself and takes that knowledge to the castle. If Fitz Osbern hasn’t sent someone after us within the hour I’ll be surprised.’
We pushed our horses hard until daybreak, trying to put as much distance between us and the town while the blanket of night still wrapped itself around us. All too soon, though, the eastern skies were growing light and then suddenly the new day was upon us. I kept glancing over my shoulder to see if there was anyone behind us on the road, perhaps a glint of steel helmets and spearpoints in the early light. There never was, however, and so as the sun began to climb we dismounted from our destriers, our beasts of war, leaving them in the care of the grooms and stable-hands who travelled with us, and exchanged them for our rounceys, which were our riding horses, less fleet of foot but more suited for enduring the long miles that lay ahead of us.
Rather than taking the better-known tracks by way of Deorbi and Snotingeham and thus skirting the southernmost of the high peaks, we headed north. It would be the shortest route, Robert told us, a little more than
