Knights of the Hawk (41 page)

He hesitated, no doubt weighing up in his mind how much he could trust me.

‘I cannot promise anything,’ he said after a short while, ‘but I’ll send word to my followers in the morning, and see whether they are willing to come with me. If enough of them are eager, then we sail.’

It wasn’t the definite answer I’d been hoping for, nor did I sense much conviction in his tone, but it was something. Of course I would rather have an ally on this expedition, but if the only choice was for myself and my small band to go alone, then that was what we would do. How I thought we could possibly confront Haakon and storm this iron fortress of his, I wasn’t sure. One thing of which I was sure, however, was that we would find a way, as we had always done. We had to.

I bade farewell to Snorri and his crew the next morning. I was surprised they were leaving so soon, but understood there was no sense in delaying while the winds were still favourable, especially given how far he had yet to travel to reach his home, which he told me was in distant Ysland.
Hrithdyr
’s hold was full, except that the quernstones and casks of wine had now been exchanged for bundles of the shaggy woollen cloaks that seemed to be considered fashionable in these parts.

‘The tufts lend them the appearance of fur, see?’ he said, proudly showing off one that he’d kept for himself. ‘For those who are too poor to afford deerskin or sealskin or ermine pelisses, it’s the next best thing. They’re almost as warm, too. In Ysland, these fetch many a penny. Enough for Snorri to feed himself and his kin through the winter, at least.’

I had to admit it didn’t look much like fur to me, but if that was what folk wanted to wear, who was I to argue?

‘Take care,’ I said. ‘Especially with men like Haakon Thorolfsson roaming the seas.’

‘I’ll take care, don’t you worry about that. Besides, once we’re beyond the Suthreyjar, the only thing we have to fear is the ocean.’

One of his crewmen shouted to him then. He bade me safe travels in turn, then stepped down from the quayside as the wide-bellied vessel cast off from her mooring. I called my thanks, and saw him wave in reply, then I watched from the wharves as
Hrithdyr
slipped out downriver, towards the sun-glistening sea, until she was out of sight.

It took several days for word to reach Magnus’s followers, scattered as they were across the lands that lay upriver of Dyflin, and another few for word from them to return. In the meantime Magnus showed us to his ship, which was grounded a half-mile downriver from the city, close to where the shipwrights had their slipways and their boathouses, drawn up on to the shore above a beach of mud and shingle and covered with an oilskin sheet. He called her
Nihtegesa
, which was English for ‘night terror’, the name that his people gave to the fear-dreams that cause a man to wake suddenly, drenched in sweat and with heart pounding. Not that she looked capable of striking dread in anyone’s heart.

‘This is your ship?’ I asked when the tarpaulin was drawn back by Magnus and two of his retainers. I did not know much of ships, but I knew enough to be able to tell when one was seaworthy, and
Nihtegesa
was clearly not. The topmost strakes on both sides were dry and crumbling, while a few others were cracked and darkened with rot; they would need replacing, as would the rigging. ‘How long since she was last out on the water?’

‘A full year, nearly,’ Magnus said.

‘We’d almost do better to buy ourselves a new ship,’ Serlo muttered, a little unkindly perhaps, though I would be lying if I said that the same thought hadn’t briefly crossed my mind.

‘And you have enough coin for that, do you?’ Magnus ran a hand over her timbers, stroking her gently as if she were a horse, at least where barnacles hadn’t encrusted her timbers. This was the first time I had seen him without a wine-jug either in his hand or close by, and he seemed a little brighter of spirit for it. ‘All she needs is a little care, and she’ll float again. Besides, she used to belong to my father. She’s all I have left of his, and I’ll not sail to war in any other vessel.’

At eighteen benches in length, she was fairly small for a warship, but she was sleek and, to judge by the waterline on her hull, would sit high on the waves. I had not measured her, but she looked to be around seven times from prow to stern what she was in beam, which were generally agreed to be the ideal proportions when building a boat with speed in mind. Assuming that Magnus was right and she could be repaired in good time, she ought to be quick enough to outpace any danger we might happen to run into. I had never fought from the deck of a ship, and had no desire to, if I could help it.

‘He reckons it’ll be a week’s work to patch her up well enough to ride the waves,’ Magnus told me later that day, after he’d had one of the shipwrights who plied their trade nearby examine her. ‘Possibly as much as ten days’, though he couldn’t be sure.’

We would have to be content with that, I supposed, and hope that the winds didn’t change in that time, because if they did then we might be waiting a while longer still. At least Magnus seemed more favourable towards this expedition than he had the other evening. The very fact that he was seeing to the repair of his ship was a sign of that, although I was wrong to assume his opinion of me had changed for the better.

‘I know what you are,’ he told me that night as we shared a pitcher of ale in one of Dyflin’s many taverns. It was late; the others were already abed in the rooms on the up-floor, and so we sat alone at a table in an otherwise all but empty common room.

‘You do?’ I asked, surprised, and not just because of what he’d said, but because he had said it in the French tongue.

‘I know you’re no Fleming, and that your name isn’t Goscelin.’

‘Snorri told you, did he?’ I ought to have known better than to trust the Dane, for all he had helped me.

There was fire in the young man’s eyes. ‘You’re one of them. One of the Devil-fiends who stole our kingdom from us, who ravaged our land with fire and sword.’

I would be lying if I said that his words didn’t sting. But after all these years I was well used to hearing such things from his kind. I wasn’t going to waste my breath trying to explain to him that England was King Guillaume’s by right, as the Pope had confirmed by giving his blessing to our invasion. Of course that did not by any means excuse the violence he had visited last winter upon the Northumbrians when he had scoured their lands. But whether I agreed with his actions or not, the fact remained that he was the lawfully crowned king.

‘If you’re so sure,’ I asked instead, ‘then why are we still talking? Why don’t you kill me now and be done with it?’

‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

I rose from my stool and nodded in the direction of the door. ‘I’ll fight you right now, if that’s what you want, but not here.’

Out of the corner of my eye I’d spotted the tavern-keeper, a slight, grubby man with hair that was a tangle of red curls, glance in our direction. He sensed trouble and wanted no part of it. Better, if we were to do this, for it to be out in the street.

‘Sit back down,’ Magnus growled. ‘If I had even the slightest chance of besting you, I might be tempted to try my luck. But I’m not as foolish as all that. I’ve grown up in the company of warriors. I know a swordsman when I see one.’

I remained standing. ‘What, then?’ I demanded. I probably shouldn’t have been provoking him, in case he changed his mind and decided he did want a fight after all. Because of one killing I had already been forced to leave England; I didn’t want to have to flee this place because of another. ‘If you’re not looking for a brawl, what do you want with me?’

Magnus rose so that we faced each other, eye to eye. ‘Do you know what you and your bastard duke took from us?’

‘Tell me,’ I said, even though I suspected he was about to do so anyway.

‘Because of you,’ he said, almost spitting, ‘I find myself an outlaw, a wanderer, treading the paths of exile, in flight from my own country, my halls and my home. And now you dare to ask for my help?’

‘I have no quarrel with you,’ I said. ‘We have an enemy in common, and, so far as I am concerned, that makes us friends.’

He didn’t seem to be listening. ‘For years we fought against your kind, and what good has it done us?’

I wasn’t sure if he expected me to answer that or not, and so kept quiet.

‘All that struggle,’ he went on, ‘all that hardship, and all for nothing. Even if I did manage to kill you, what would it change? It wouldn’t help us regain what is rightfully ours. The taking of one Norman life would not undo the slaughter your countrymen have wrought.’

I disliked his tone, but his reasoning at least showed he had a wise head upon those shoulders. Wiser, indeed, than those of many older and, one would have hoped, clearer-thinking Englishmen I had encountered in these last few years.

‘Did you fight for Eadgar Ætheling?’ I asked.

Magnus’s cheeks flushed red, not with ale but with anger. ‘That pretender? What makes you think I would ever march under his banner?’

‘Then who? Wild Eadric, was it?’

‘Eadric?’ he echoed, frowning. ‘Are you trying to insult me?’

‘You tell me, then. King Sweyn? Morcar?’

‘Enough,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘I didn’t fight for any of them. I fought for myself, for my brothers, and for my family.’ He stopped then, frustration writ upon his brow and in the set of his teeth. ‘You still don’t have the slightest notion who I am, do you?’

My patience, too, was running thin. ‘Should I?’

He sat back down upon his stool and buried his head in his hands. An anguished groan escaped his lips that spoke at one and the same time of grief and fury, loss and pain. His shoulders trembled as he spoke.

‘I am Magnus,’ he said, so quietly that I could barely hear him, ‘son of Harold.’

It took me a moment to comprehend what he was saying, a moment that stretched into an eternity as, dumbfounded, I stared at him.

‘Harold?’ I asked. Only one man by that name came immediately to mind, but surely it couldn’t be true. ‘You mean the—?’

The oath-breaker and usurper, was what I’d been about to say, but stopped myself in time. Even I was not so stupid as to deliver such an insult to the man’s own son, even if both charges were true.

‘Harold Godwineson, by God’s grace king of the English people,’ Magnus said, his voice rising. ‘I am his eldest surviving son, and the heir to his realm. The realm that your bastard duke, Guillaume, stole from us!’

He was almost in tears as he said this last. That was when I remembered where I had seen the design on his signet ring, so long ago that it could have been another life entirely, and yet it was not that long ago at all. That same dragon mark, or rather its reverse, I had seen imprinted in red sealing wax on a letter written by Magnus’s mother, Eadgyth, who had taken holy orders after the death of her husband, and retreated to an abbey in Wessex.

‘By rights you should call me king,’ Magnus said. ‘By rights Eadgar and all those who flock to his banner should be swearing themselves to my service and bending their knees before me. By rights England belongs to me, and yet here I am, king of nothing. Nothing!’

How many men had falsely laid claim to England’s crown in recent times? First there had been the oath-breaker Harold and his namesake, the King of Norway, and then, after each had perished to the sword, there had been young Eadgar. There was talk, as well, that Sweyn, the Danish king who last year led his raiding-fleet to Northumbria in support of the ætheling, had secretly been plotting to turn on his English ally and seize the kingdom for himself.

And now Magnus added himself to their number. Five false claimants in as many years, and those were just the ones of whom I’d heard. But where was his retinue? What host did he command?

The tavern-keeper was glancing nervously towards the door, I noticed, probably contemplating whether or not to go and fetch help. His look of confusion suggested he wasn’t familiar with the French tongue, and no doubt that ignorance was only adding to his alarm. It was as well that there was no one else in the alehouse at this hour to hear Magnus’s ravings, or surely our arguing would have spilt over into a brawl by now, and then the tavern-keeper would indeed have reason to be worried.

But the storm had passed. Magnus was weeping now, his hands covering his eyes and hiding his tears. ‘“
Hu seo thrag gewat
,”’ he said between sobs, ‘“
genap under nihthelm, swa heo no wære
.”’

How that time has faded away, dark under night’s curtain, as if it had never been.
I recognised the phrase from an old poem, one of many that Ædda, who was almost as fond of words and verses as he was of the horses in his care, had once recited to me. But I didn’t know what to say to it, and so for a long time we sat in silence.

Magnus Haroldson. Hard to believe that the usurper’s own flesh and blood was sitting here before me. I recalled having heard in passing about the raids that he and his two elder brothers had launched upon the coast of Wessex, whilst we were occupied fighting the king’s wars in Northumbria last summer. Nothing much had come of those raids, and they had been repelled with little difficulty and with great injury inflicted upon the invaders’ small band. Indeed, on one of those occasions the brothers’ own countrymen, the folk who lived in those parts, had stood against them and helped drive them out. If the object of those expeditions had been to reclaim the crown that their father had for a brief few months worn, then they served as an example of the low regard in which the English folk held the house of Godwine. Little wonder, then, that such bitterness lingered.

Eventually, I signalled to the tavern-keeper to bring us another jug of ale, which after a moment’s hesitation he did. It was thin and a little too bitter for my taste, but it was better than nothing.

‘Not so long ago I happened to cross paths with your mother, Eadgyth,’ I said, remembering that visit we had paid to the nunnery in Wessex a couple of years before.

To have any chance of confronting Haakon and claiming Oswynn back, I needed Magnus as an ally, and for us to set our differences aside, yet at this moment I was close to losing him. Somehow, I had to try to win back his confidence.