Read Needle in the Blood Online
Authors: Sarah Bower
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Historical, #Literary
Needle in the Blood
Copyright
Copyright © 2012 by Sarah Bower
Cover and internal design © 2012 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Karen Horton
Cover image © Ilona Wellmann/Trevillion Images; © The Art Gallery Collection/Alamy
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Landmark, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Originally published in the UK by Snowbooks Ltd. in 2007.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bower, Sarah.
The needle in the blood / Sarah Bower.
p. cm.
(pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Bayeux tapestry—Fiction. I. Title.
PR6102.O944N44 2011
823’.92—dc22
2011032849
An excerpt from
Sins of the House of Borgia
For my mother, who made it all possible
“Has the pen or pencil dipped so deep in the blood of the human race as the needle?”
—Olive Schreiner,
From Man to Man
“What shall I say of Odo, Bishop of Bayeux?…In this man, it seems to me, vices were mingled with virtues, but he was more given to worldly affairs than to spiritual contemplation.”
—Orderic Vitalis,
Ecclesiastical History
,
Book IV
14th October 1066
The voice doesn’t sound like his, though he can feel its vibrations in his throat. It sobs and growls, bellows and screeches like a cacophony of demons.
My
name
is
Legion
for
we
are
many.
Odo is afraid he’s lost his reason, but if the rumours are true, and William is dead, it might be better to be out of his mind. If Godwinson finds him.
“You said this couldn’t happen,” he yells, in this voice like a cracked bell. The air is thick with smoke where fire-tipped arrows have set the grass smouldering. “You were the Wrath of God. How could you die?”
He has let the reins go, one hand trails the borrowed sword, the other is clasped around the amulet he wears, the Tear of the Virgin, William’s gift.
He
has
lost
his
shield. Fool. Lost his shield? What sort of soldier is he? God’s soldier, he is
God’s
soldier.
His horse plunges down the ridge, shouldering its way past crowds of men on foot, stumbling over corpses and hummocks of maram grass, slipping on churned earth, slimy with blood and spilt guts. Disorientated in the pall of dust and smoke, the animal rears to avoid a kneeling peasant trying to prise a severed hand from the hilt of a sword. Norman? Saxon? Which side of the line is he? Doesn’t matter. The main thing is to stay in the saddle, clear of the melee of men on foot hacking and pulping one another. Heels down, weight forward, squeeze with the thighs, at one with the animal.
Perhaps
he
is dead, not William, and the din battering his hearing, the sting of tar and horse sweat and burning fat in his nostrils, the eerie sense of being both in the thick of it yet watching himself from somewhere else, perhaps this is hell. He is a prince of the Church, which is inclined to make a man assume he is immune from hell, but he knows now that he has never truly believed it. Nothing is certain but uncertainty.
His eyes smart, full of tears, or sweat, or blood, he cannot tell. His helmet is a vice, branding the rings of the chain mail hood beneath it into his temples and the tonsured crown of his head. It’s possible he has been wounded, he can’t remember, but there is such a pain in his heart. Yet it is still beating. He can hear it, feel its rhythmic rush and suck. Arrows drumming against leather shields. Silence. Reload. The whistle of quarrels from bowstrings. Instinctively he turns the horse broadside to the archers, to shield himself and ducks behind its neck. Screams of fallen men and horses. Other men and horses. So he is still alive. A voice in his head taunts him:
Which
is
more
than
this
horse
will
be
if
you
don’t move. Horse, shield, what next?
Over to his right he can hear the Saxon war cry:
Goddemite
, God Almighty. The men in the front line on top of the ridge shake their shields in time with the chanting. The sun is out now, burnishing blood and weapons, gilding the smoke pall. The iron rims and bosses of Saxon shields flash in the corner of his eye. To the left the Norman response, William’s motto:
Dex
aie,
God aid us.
Except that God is not helping them. God has taken William from them.
“Why?” he shouts, raising his eyes heavenward. “Tell me, I’m Your anointed priest. Make me understand.”
His horse stumbles to a halt among a group of young knights whose armour is as pristine as their white, beardless cheeks. He can measure their inexperience by the shock in their eyes as they look at him. Look to him, identifying him by the hauberk of woven leather he wears over his mail. Courting disaster, William had snorted. Being myself, he had thought.
“Is it true, my lord?” asks one, scarcely audible above the din. “That the Saxons have broken through and Duke William is dead?”
He blinks away the tears, the blood, whatever it is, brings his gaze into focus on the boy’s pleading face. He removes his helmet, pushes back his hood, and runs his hand through his hair, matted with sweat. He finds the odour of his own body reassuring as he raises his arms, familiar, human. Not the perfume of a soul mounting to heaven nor the reedy scent of a ghost. He smiles, he hopes, his parched lips cracking, his jaw aching. He only knows he has succeeded when he registers the effect of his smile on the young knights. It is a well-rehearsed smile, companionable, disarming. It usually serves him well. The young knights look relieved. They can trust him; he is the duke’s brother, his confidant: he will know what to do.
He looks around the battlefield, seeing it suddenly as though he were a bird flying overhead, mapped out below him like a diagram in a text on military strategy. He sees foot soldiers from Harold Godwinson’s right flank pouring down the ridge like water from a broken dam. They are in pursuit of the panicking Bretons who were supposed to hold the Norman left. Fucking Bretons, maids and milksops the lot of them; they’ll pay for this. A low hillock rises some way to the west. Gathering the reins and coaxing his horse into the center of the group of boys, he beckons them closer, so they will be able to hear him above the noise of the battle. The horses stamp and snort and jostle one another, fighting for space. One thing they never tell you is how crowded a battlefield is.
“Look.” He points at the Bretons and the pursuing Saxon
fyrd
, hoping the boys cannot see their faces from here. “See the Bretons over there, the ones who look as though they’re retreating. They’re not. They don’t listen to rumours. They’re leading Godwinson’s men right into a trap. They’re going to drive them up that rise and surround them. You men go to their aid. Quick as you can.”
The young knights look where he points. They pause, nerving themselves for the fray, then one of them shouts, “Bishop Odo,” his voice lurching up the scale from adolescent croak to childish falsetto, “it’s the duke!”
Odo looks. The sun glances off swords, shields, armour, harness, arrowheads. Blinded by gold and iron, he raises one hand to shield his eyes. The gesture seems to take forever, as though the gulf between will and action is unbridgeable.
Then he sees a knight on a black war horse, bareheaded, his hair glowing like a firebrand as the wind catches it. William. And behind him, the Frenchman, Eustace of Boulogne, flamboyantly moustached, bearing the Papal standard. Odo catches his breath, realising as he does so that he has been holding it for several seconds. The sudden rush of air makes him dizzy.
William laughs as he draws rein and leans forward in the saddle to punch his brother’s shoulder. Odo prays he will not feel him shaking. He clenches his hands, one over the other around the pommel of his saddle, to steady them, afraid he might revive the demons if he tries to speak. That if he does not cling to his saddle, he will find himself on his knees in the mud, clutching at William’s stirrup, whimpering like a child unable to throw off a nightmare.
“You’ve a face like curds, little brother. Did you think I was dead too? They shot my horse out from under me, that’s all. They can’t touch me. I told you, God won’t allow it.” William pauses. The smile vanishes, and his mouth forms an obstinate line. The gaze he fixes on Odo is as blue and unstoppable as a glacier. “I am His Vengeance. Never forget it.”
“No, Your Grace. I thank God you are unhurt.”
“Time enough for that later, Odo. Shall we get on? I should like to put an end to this business before nightfall.”
And he is the no-nonsense general again, a bulky, reassuring figure on his tall horse, trusting God but reliant on no one but himself.
The young knights ride after the Saxon
fyrd
, whose pursuit of the Bretons is already unravelling as Odo has predicted.
Dex
aie
, they chant,
Dex
aie, Dex aie, Dex aie
. Watching them, Odo has an idea. To begin with it seems too simple so he says nothing, but tests it in his mind for weaknesses. And finds none.