Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (12 page)

At first she jerked her head back in surprise, but then he saw a curious smile spread across her lips. ‘How could so great a man look fondly upon a mouse such as I?’

He hugged her to him and kissed the top of her blonde head. ‘You will not suffer at the hands of these men again. I will speak to the king himself—’

‘And you will tell him I am yours?’

Balthar hesitated. ‘In good time.’ He hid his fear at the momentousness of his commitment, all the things he was putting at risk: his position with the king, his power and growing wealth. He offered a comforting smile. ‘I am the Fox. I will find a way through this, and we will both be well.’

He kissed her on the head once more, dried her eyes, and gabbled arrangements to visit her soon. Out in the stifling night, his head spun with euphoria. This was a beginning, of that there was no doubt, and who knew what wonders lay ahead. His feet all but danced up the path to the palace. Godrun’s beautiful face floated before his eyes. He could feel the smoothness of her skin, and all he wanted to do was press his lips upon hers.

But as he neared the lamps gleaming on the palace gates, he felt his exhilaration ebb away. The tranquillity that had reigned there earlier was gone. From the grounds beyond the wall he could hear a hubbub of low voices, the clank of iron, the sound of many feet hurrying across the hard-packed mud
and the neighing of horses brought from the stables. He stepped through the gates into a whirl of activity. Warriors swarmed in hauberks and helms as if for battle. Commanders barked orders. Scouts dressed only in tunics for light travelling were mounting their steeds and drawing towards the gates.

Baffled, and growing increasingly concerned, Balthar weaved his way through the throng. Once he had stepped into the relative peace of the hall, he realized his heart was pounding.

By the cold hearth, the king strode among his commanders, disseminating orders in a loud voice. He too was dressed for war, his vast belly straining at his long mail shirt. Yet for all his girth, Balthar saw no softness. Only power. Once the monarch had dispatched the final commander, he turned and caught sight of Balthar hovering by the door.

‘The Fox!’ he boomed without any humour. ‘Where were you hiding, you sly dog? I have been calling for you.’

Balthar stepped forward, bowing and scraping. ‘Forgive me, my lord. I—’

‘Enough chatter.’ A grim smile spread across his lips. ‘I have taken your counsel, Fox.’

‘My lord?’

‘To put the spear to the nest of vipers.’

For a moment, Balthar struggled to comprehend the king’s allusion. ‘Ah … the … the uprising in the north?’ he stuttered.

‘The time for brooding has passed. All hell is breaking loose.’ William clenched one gauntleted fist. ‘The long-expected invasion by the Danes has come.’

Balthar grew cold. ‘How many men?’

‘Some two hundred and forty ships sailed past the south and have been raiding the east, each one filled with Sweyn Estrithson’s most seasoned warriors.’ The king prowled around the hearth, his face darkening. ‘A force as large as the one you English faced at Stamford Bridge three summers gone.’

‘Harold defeated them—’

‘And in that victory your army was torn apart. This time the Northmen will be aided by your own kind. Word reaches me
that across Northumbria the folk are rising up in readiness to join Sweyn’s men. Edgar the Aetheling, Gospatric and Waltheof have amassed their own army and are also set to join the Danes.’

Balthar blanched, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth. ‘A force of that size has never been known. What hope do we have?’

The king lashed out with the back of his hand. Balthar saw stars, and when he came round a moment later he was sprawled on the flagstones. The iron taste of blood filled his mouth.

William loomed over him, his face as fierce as that of a ravening wolf. ‘I will not let what I have gained slip through my grasp like that whipped cur, Harold. This land will be mine, though I slaughter every man, woman and child living in it.’

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

BLOOD SPATTERED ON
the boards. The kneeling captive wrenched his head back from the fist slammed into his blue-mottled face. Gore caked his nose and dripped from his split lip. He let his head drop, his sweat-soaked hair falling across his features. Both his arms had been yanked up behind his back, tied at the wrists with hempen rope, with the other end thrown over the rafter and pulled taut. His vinegar-reek filled that hot, dusty house. Fear-sweat, Alric thought, sickened by what he was witnessing. The man’s rasping breath echoed through the stillness. His name was Jurmin, a weaver who had lived in Ely long before the rebel army came. He had always seemed a good man, the monk thought, diligent, courteous, with a quick wit, and he bowed his head in church without any prompting.

Two men stood in the shadows, spears at the ready in case Jurmin showed any resistance. Hengist prowled in front of the prisoner, his knuckles split. ‘Answer me,’ Hengist demanded. ‘Who else works for the king?’

‘I am true,’ Jurmin mumbled through his ragged lips. ‘I would never risk the lives of my own by helping the Bastard’s men.’

‘Lies.’ Another punch cracked through the dry air.

The captive threw his head back, his eyes filled with tears of
pain, or rage, or frustration. ‘You take our food to fill the bellies of your men, when we can barely feed our own,’ he shouted. ‘Is it any wonder some here whisper behind your backs?’

Hengist levelled another blow.

Was this what it had come to? Alric wondered. They had arrived in Ely as saviours, but now stayed on as tormentors. How long before the folk of Ely became sickened by the undercurrents of fear and threat that now rippled among the houses? Since the store had been burned and the threat of starvation loomed larger, Hereward had grown colder than at any time since Alric had known him. At least he had insisted no lives should be taken. But he sat in the church every morning and listened to the tales of his spies, the rumours and the gossip that took on more weight with each telling. Neighbours pointed fingers at neighbours, perhaps in all honesty or perhaps in fear that they themselves would be accused. And Hereward’s warriors hauled in men and women to face harsh questions – and worse, if the accusations were great.

Jurmin spat another gobbet of blood on to the boards. The monk winced as he searched the man’s battered features. He saw no guilt there, though he knew he could be mistaken. But he had never felt the accusations against the weaver were true. They reeked of petty jealousies against a man who had always caught a woman’s eye. No more, he thought, as he studied the man’s pulped face.

Unable to bear witness to the brutality any longer, he slipped out into the hot day. No one noticed him go. Shielding his eyes against the glare, he looked out over Ely boiling under the merciless sun. The baked mud tracks among the houses were deserted, the sound of the looms and the hammers barely a whisper in the stillness. It had been this way for days now, this feeling of the world holding its breath. Fearful eyes turned towards the gleaming landscape, watching for an attack they all knew must soon come, waiting, sweating, hungry and tired. Anxious eyes turned to their neighbours, suspecting ones they had once called friend. The relentless heat only made tempers
simmer more. The entire settlement felt as though it was on the brink of catching alight. Would that the rains would come to dampen passions.

He glanced up towards the food stores where men in dented helms and rusted hauberks squatted by the doors. These guards were all Northmen, former huscarls and axes-for-hire, the fiercest warriors that Hereward had at his disposal. Though they had lost only a little of their supplies with the burning of the store, every morsel was precious. No one would now dare venture near the provisions with those cold Viking gazes levelled at them.

Alric shivered, despite the heat. His neck prickled at the mounting sensation that this terrible waiting was about to end. What came after would undoubtedly be worse still.

Wiping the sweat from his brow, he hurried down the winding path, through the gates, and under the cool shade of the ash trees to the edge of the vast expanse of marsh. Fat flies buzzed over the brown pools of water. The air reeked of rotting vegetation. A few men gathered around the small jetty of iron-hard timbers reaching out from the isle’s bank. They were laughing, a surprising sound in the grim mood of the last few days.

As he neared, he glimpsed a boat moored at the end of the short pier. It was one of those strange craft that he had seen only the fenlanders use, a seemingly unstable circular design with cured hide stretched over a willow frame. But the local folk skimmed across the surface of the marsh upon them, propelled by a long ash pole.

Hereward stood at the centre of the group of men, more at ease than Alric had seen him since the night of the feast. When the group broke up, two of the men heaved a bale between them and set off up the path. Hereward strolled over, cracking his knuckles.

‘The Normans swagger, showing off their strength with ships to stop supplies reaching us,’ the Mercian said, grinning. ‘But these smaller vessels can speed through William’s sail-wall, under the noses of his men, without being noticed.’

The monk pointed at the boat. ‘How much can they carry? One ham-hock?’

‘We take what we can get.’

‘It is good. Forgive me. My mood is dark. Any food helps ease the worries of the folk here, and if we must send out a fleet of those strange boats to fill bellies, so be it.’

‘This battle will be long and hard, and like all battles there will be times when the tide turns—’

‘And we fear we might drown?’ Alric felt all his worries rush up through him, and he could not contain them any more. He reached out his arms, pleading to his friend. ‘Turn back from this madness. We are making our allies into our enemies. When the folk of Ely start to fear us as much as they fear William’s men, then we are in a deal of trouble.’

‘We are a long way off being feared as much as the Bastard’s invaders,’ Hereward snapped, his eyes narrowing. ‘Have we slaughtered women and children? Have we burned villages to the ground? No, we cuff ears, as we would with unruly children.’

‘Cuff ears?’ Alric exclaimed. ‘I have just watched the weaver kneeling in a pool of his own blood.’

Hereward glowered, but only for a moment. He sucked in a deep breath, softening, and said, ‘You are a godly man, a good man, and you see only heaven and hell around you. But there is a long road we must all travel between the two. Would I wish harm upon these folk who have taken us in and shown us kindness? No, never. Nor would I wish to see them harmed by their own failings. I know some grow to hate me. I care little. My work here is to give them back what has been stolen from them by the Normans – all the riches of England from the years gone by, still there for days yet to come.’

‘There must be an easier way.’

‘There is no easy way for anything in this life. It is a hard road with death at the end, but we do what we can. Come, let us break some bread.’ He held out an arm to guide Alric back up the slope.

The monk shook his head. ‘I am not hungry.’

Hereward held his gaze for a moment, perhaps seeing the gulf that had appeared between them. Then he nodded and repeated, ‘You are a good man, monk,’ before climbing up the track after the others.

Alric sat on the end of the jetty and dangled his legs over the edge. He muttered a prayer for his friend and asked God to guide that lost soul to better days. He worried about the Mercian, as he had for so long now. Hereward’s demons were fierce, his suffering great. He deserved some respite from his struggles.

Once he had found some peace in his own soul, Alric wandered back up the track towards Ely. Hereward needed his counsel, he saw that now, and he had been remiss in allowing less level-headed advisors to whisper in his friend’s ear. As he neared the ramparts, he glanced along the wooden palisade and felt surprised to see no sentries on duty. He shrugged. Who would wish to stand out there in the midday heat? he thought. Though he would not care to be one of those guards if Hereward discovered their absence.

The gate stood ajar and he eased inside the fence.

The steady
chok
of someone cutting wood echoed from the direction of the minster. A dog barked. The smell of bread baking in a clay oven drifted through the open door of one of the houses. Ely sweltered under summer’s blanket, but the monk felt no peace in the stillness. Unable to decide what troubled him, he wrinkled his brow and looked around. Two men, barely more than shadows in the glaring light, moved past a gap between two dwellings. The hairs at the nape of his neck prickled, though he was still unsure what it was he had seen.

He wiped the sweat from his brow, and, leaving the path, made his way through the jumble of houses. Easing past heaps of rotting waste and piles of shavings from the wood-workers, he stepped on to the back track. The two men were entering a small hut near the palisade. Only glimpsing their backs, Alric felt unsure of their names. They were not guards, though, or
Hereward’s men, he knew that, and so the spears they gripped as they slipped through the door troubled him.

For an instant, he frowned. He should warn Hereward, or Guthrinc, or one of the other leaders, but then he might be consigning more innocent souls to a savage beating. Setting his jaw, he strode down the track with determination to investigate this matter for himself. At the hut door, he paused and listened. Low voices murmured within, the words unclear. Alric pressed his ear to the crack. The rough wood grated against his cheek.

The blow came from nowhere. As fire flared through his head, he crashed on to the hard-baked track. Groaning, he rolled on to his back. Two figures loomed over him, silhouetted against the silver sun. Hands grabbed his tunic. Before he could call out he was dragged into the smoky, dark hut.

A ruddy glow from the embers in the hearth lit the faces of the four men clustered around him.

‘It is the monk, Hereward’s man,’ one of them growled.