Knights of the Hawk (46 page)

‘Order your men to lay down their weapons, Magnus, and I promise you there won’t be any blood spilt this day.’

He seemed to consider this for a few moments. He signalled to me and I jostled my way past his sweat-reeking huscarls towards him.

‘When you said you know these people,’ he said, keeping his voice low so that only he and I could hear, ‘does that mean you trust them?’

‘With my life,’ I replied. ‘And I know that they don’t make promises lightly. If they say there’ll be no bloodshed, they mean it.’

His eyes were hard, his expression stony. ‘Before I met you I’d almost begun to believe that I’d never have to lay eyes upon a Frenchman again. Now it seems that wherever I go I find myself plagued by your kind.’

‘Do we have an answer, then?’ Wace called.

Magnus let out an exasperated sigh and returned to the gunwale. ‘Do I have much choice?’ he shouted back with the weariness of one who was well used to defeat.

‘You get to choose whether you want to live or die,’ Eudo said. ‘Is that choice enough for you?’

When the question was put to him that way, there was really only one answer the Englishman could give. Reluctantly he bade his retainers sheathe their swords and put down their spears and axes, while
Nihtegesa
and
Wyvern
steered closer to one another. The crews on both sides threw across coils of rope, which they used to lash them together. Timber thudded and scraped against timber as the two hulls met, and first Wace and then Eudo came aboard, both of them accompanied by their household knights.

‘So,’ I said, not even caring to greet them properly. ‘Now that you’ve travelled the length of Britain to hunt me down, perhaps you’ll tell me what it is you want.’

Twenty-three

AND SO THEY
did, and it was exactly as I’d thought. They wanted me to return to England with them. ‘I thought you said Robert was still angry,’ I said. ‘That he hadn’t yet forgiven me.’

‘He is, and he hasn’t,’ said Wace. ‘You don’t know the storm you’ve stirred up. It’s not just that Robert’s been forced to pay the blood-price to Guibert’s widow; many of his vassals are saying he should have been quicker to act, and more severe in his punishment. They say he should never have allowed you to flee Heia, let alone England.’

‘You think that’s going to encourage me to come back with you?’ I scoffed.

‘All these quarrels can be settled in a single stroke, if you only show a little contrition,’ Eudo said. ‘If you return willingly, do the penance that the Church requires and recompense him for the money he paid out on your behalf, then all those barons can be satisfied that justice has been done in the proper manner. There’s no reason then why Robert shouldn’t accept your submission and restore you to your lands.’

‘Is that what he told you, or just what you believe?’ I asked, and I took the silence that greeted my question to mean that he had made no such assurances. ‘Anyway, if it were as simple as that, don’t you think I would have done it already?’

‘You killed a man,’ Wace said. ‘There is no disputing it. Many witnessed it happen. This matter will not be forgotten easily. Not unless you at least demonstrate some humility, so that people see you feel remorse for what you did.’

I rounded on him. ‘Don’t think for a moment that I don’t regret what happened that night.’ Guibert had been a boor, but he hadn’t deserved to die, not by anyone’s estimation. The knowledge of what I’d done had hung like a shadow over me ever since.

But remorse would not bring him back. Nor did I think that mere gestures would heal these wounds, though they might well restore Earnford to me. For I was tired. Tired of the obligations with which I’d long been burdened. Tired of risking my life time after time under the banner of a lord who could not provide, in the name of a king who was as cold-hearted as he was capricious, for a country that, a few good men and women aside, hated us and whose people would slaughter us in their beds if they had half a chance.

‘Even if I had the silver to pay him,’ I said, ‘I’m not about to prostrate myself before him and beg for the restitution of what by right is already mine.’

‘You have no right to that land,’ Eudo pointed out. ‘Not any more. Robert expelled you from his service, or have you forgotten that?’

‘You should count yourself lucky,’ Wace said. ‘If Guibert had been better liked while he lived, there might have been even more of an outcry. There’d be no hope of you returning in that case, and we wouldn’t have wasted the last two weeks pursuing you all this way across the sea.’

‘Why did you, anyway?’ I asked. ‘I thought Robert was leaving for Flanders, and both of you with him.’

‘He was,’ Eudo said. ‘But when the Flemish count heard rumour that King Guillaume was planning a foray against him, he quickly offered a truce. In return for peace, he agreed not to go raiding.’

‘You mean the expedition never went ahead?’

Fate can at times be cruel, and never had it felt crueller than at that moment, as I thought back to my quarrel with Robert, in his solar at Heia all those weeks ago. A quarrel over nothing, as it now turned out.

If only I could have known. For if we had not argued so bitterly that day, then perhaps I wouldn’t have been in such a foul mood that evening. Perhaps I wouldn’t have let my temper get the better of me, and Guibert’s blood wouldn’t be on my hands, and none of this would have happened.

But then I wouldn’t have learnt about Haakon, or discovered the truth about what had happened at Dunholm. Was that knowledge worth the price I’d paid? Had it been worth Guibert’s life?

‘What brought you here to Yrland, then?’ I asked, trying to shake such thoughts from my mind.

‘Robert sent us across the Narrow Sea,’ Eudo said. ‘He wanted us to bear news of Malet’s death to his vassals in Normandy. But we decided to do otherwise.’

‘You seized his ship?’

‘Not exactly. When we told Aubert what we had in mind, he was only too willing to help. As soon as we were out of sight of land, we changed course.’

‘Aubert?’ I asked. ‘He’s here?’

‘Aye,’ I heard the shipmaster call, no doubt having heard his name. I looked up to see him waving from
Wyvern
’s deck, a broad grin upon his face. ‘You’ve been making trouble, or so your friends have been telling me.’

I’d last seen him over two years ago, but he hadn’t changed much in that time, save for being a little greyer around the temples than I remembered, not to mention a little fuller in the stomach, too. He also hailed from Brittany, although, like me, it was some time since he’d been back to the place of his birth.

‘Robert told us you had it in your head to go to Dyflin, though he didn’t know why,’ Wace said. ‘We reckoned that was where we would most likely find you.’

‘And we nearly did,’ Eudo added. ‘But then you left that night.’

‘How did you know we’d be travelling north?’

‘The winds told us,’ Aubert said by way of explanation. ‘We followed where they took us.’

‘That’s our tale, anyway,’ Wace said. ‘Now maybe you’ll tell us yours.’

I was in no mood to recount everything, not again, but I could hardly not tell them, and so I repeated exactly what Eithne had told me about Oswynn and Haakon, and how she’d helped set me on their trail.

‘We both wondered where she’d appeared from,’ Wace said, meaning the girl. ‘You never said anything, though, so I reckoned it was better not to ask.’

Eudo shrugged. ‘I assumed she was helping to warm your bed, although I admit she seemed to me a bit fierce-looking for your tastes.’

I glanced at Eithne, who had emerged from the compartment beneath the bow platform. Her mouth was once more twisted into her usual scowl. She must have guessed from the looks they were giving her that we were talking about her, even if she couldn’t know exactly what we were saying.

Eudo laughed. ‘Even Oswynn never glowered like that one does, and she wasn’t exactly an easy one to tame, from what I remember. And now you’re saying you know where to find her?’

‘I don’t, but he does,’ I said, gesturing at Magnus, and introduced him to them, saying merely that he was a ship’s captain from Dyflin, whom Haakon had wronged in the past, which the Englishman seemed to be content with. I also gave them the names of Ælfhelm and the rest of his huscarls, all of whom continued to regard the newcomers with suspicion. Not that I blamed them.

‘You understand, then, why I can’t go back,’ I said. ‘Not now. Not having come this far already.’

‘How do you expect to be able to mount an assault on this Haakon’s stronghold with a single ship’s crew?’ Wace asked.

‘Do you remember when we stole our way into the enemy camp at Beferlic last autumn? There were only nine of us then, and only six when we took the gates at Eoferwic the year before that.’

‘And both times we nearly got ourselves killed,’ Eudo reminded me.

‘No man ever won himself fame without taking any risks,’ I said, repeating the old proverb that was often spoken amongst warriors. ‘What do I stand to lose?’

‘Everything,’ Wace said, no longer caring to disguise his frustration. ‘And this has nothing to do with winning fame.’

He had every right to be angry, I supposed. They both did. They had ventured all this way, hundreds of leagues from the manors they called home, in hope of talking some sense into me, and all for naught.

‘I’ve made my decision,’ I said, tight-lipped. ‘If Robert expects I’ll happily don a penitent’s robe and bend my knee before him, he’s wrong. Besides, you should be coming with me, not the other way around.’

Eudo frowned. ‘What are you talking about?’

And that was when I told them what Magnus had related to me only a few evenings ago. That it was Haakon who burnt the mead-hall that night at Dunholm. That he was to blame, not Eadgar Ætheling, for the death of our former lord, Robert de Commines, the man who had in so many ways been like a father to me, to us, who had provided for us and inspired us and trained us in the ways of war.

I didn’t expect them to believe me to begin with, just I had refused to believe the Englishman when he first told me, and so it proved. But I called Magnus over and had him confirm everything I’d said.

‘So Earl Robert was your lord?’ he asked when he’d finished, glancing at us all.

‘He was,’ I answered. ‘A good lord, and a good man, too. He didn’t deserve to die.’ I turned to Wace and Eudo. ‘Unless you’re going to throw me in chains and forcibly drag me back to England, that’s where I’m going. Are you with me?’

The two of them exchanged uncertain glances. They knew as well as I did that this was far from the first time I’d tried to persuade them to follow me on one of my reckless adventures, and knew, too, how that same recklessness had almost been their deaths. And the truth was that, in all the years we had known each other and trained and sparred and ridden and feasted and laughed together, this was one of the most desperate endeavours I’d ever asked them to join me in.

Even if we were to succeed, I couldn’t promise that the poets would write songs of these deeds of ours, songs that would be sung across Christendom for years to come, for this was no glorious battle on the outcome of which rested the fate of kingdoms. Nor could I swear that victory would bring us much by way of riches. But we didn’t even have to succeed. The mere willingness to fight was enough to win ourselves something immeasurably more precious than reputation or glory, silver or jewels, horses or ships, halls or castles, and that thing was honour. Even if this road only led to failure or, worse, death, at least we would have tried. More noble, in my eyes, to meet our ends fighting for a cause we believed in than to refuse the challenge because it was too arduous. Nothing worth having ever came easily.

‘Well?’ I asked, growing impatient, for the longer I waited, the less sure I was what their answer would be. Neither of them would so much as meet my gaze.

I don’t doubt that it was a more difficult decision for them than it was for me. Although I was no longer oath-bound to Robert, they still were. Already in coming here they had defied his wishes. What would he say if he discovered not only that they had taken his ship away into the north for their own ends, but then that they had joined forces with me, the murderer he had so recently cast out from his service, to pursue our own feud, our own private war?

Whether by choice or by necessity, we had taken different paths. Our loyalties, our obligations, which for so long had been the same, were now opposed. I might have nothing more to lose, but they did.

Wace gave a shrug of resignation as he glanced at Eudo, who sighed through clenched teeth. Suddenly I felt a stirring of hope.

‘We’ll do this. For Robert,’ Eudo said, by which he meant, of course, not Malet’s son but our former lord: he who had led us on so many campaigns across the length and breadth of Christendom. And now, one final time, we would fight in his name.

‘For Robert,’ Wace agreed, albeit not without some reluctance. Stern-faced, he came to clasp my hand at last. ‘You owe us. You realise that, don’t you?’

That was a phrase I’d grown all too used to hearing. ‘I know.’

I did not for a heartbeat think our task would be easy, but with the two of them by my side, we stood a far better chance than if Magnus and I were to do this by ourselves. Not for the first time it struck me how fortunate I was to have friends as faithful as they.

‘What about you?’ I called to Aubert, who had been watching on. ‘Will you join us?’

The shipmaster looked apprehensive, and I didn’t blame him. This wasn’t his battle. He had done Eudo and Wace a favour out of friendship, but the prospect of risking his lord’s prized longship on a voyage far beyond familiar shores was another thing entirely.

‘I’ll have to ask my men,’ he said. ‘They’re honour-bound to follow my orders, but I also have a responsibility towards them. Bear in mind as well that many of them didn’t even want to come this far.’

‘I understand,’ I said, and waited while he went and spoke with the members of his crew, some of whom I recognised from the last time I’d set foot on
Wyvern
’s deck, and several more that I didn’t. I saw lots of shaking heads and heard snorts that I took for disapproval, until one, older and more weather-worn than the others, whose name, if I remembered correctly, was Oylard, stepped forward. He began remonstrating with them, calling them cowards, saying they were unfit to call themselves Normans, and that their fathers and their grandfathers would be ashamed to see them shrink from such a challenge.