And then there was only the fourth.
The ruddy-faced man threw away his sword and pressed his palms together in a prayer for mercy, as if that could turn back time. But in Hereward’s mind, the man was already dead.
Yet the warrior dropped his axe, while still striding forward, and the relief in the fourth man’s face was almost comical. A fist, driven hard, into bone and gristle. A resounding crack. And spatters of blood, a miserable amount.
Hereward caught one hand in his victim’s tunic before the unconscious man hit the boards. Dragging him away from the spreading pool of gore and the dimly heard cries of the dying, the warrior stripped him and bound his wrists and ankles. Then he strung him up by the feet with a rope looped over a beam as he had done many a deer.
Hereward waited patiently, feeling the glow diminish and his wits return. The man came round soon enough, a reedy cry rising from his lips when he realized his predicament. The warrior pricked his knife beneath his victim’s eye and whispered, ‘Quiet.’
The man looked into his captor’s face and fell silent.
‘We will talk like men,’ Hereward continued, ‘and you will tell me all you know.’
‘I cannot,’ the man whimpered. ‘I am sworn to silence, and God will damn me to hell if I break my vow.’
‘You are a godly man. I admire that.’ The warrior turned his knife so it glinted in the firelight. ‘But we have different aims, you and I. We must see whose will is stronger.’
Hereward proceeded to cut the man’s torso. The screams rang out, but the warrior knew they would be drowned by the storm and the revelry in the earl’s hall. Their back and forth continued for a while, but Hereward whittled down his victim’s resistance by degrees. Soon they were both so sticky with blood it was nigh-on impossible to tell them apart.
‘Now.’ Hereward leaned in close and whispered in the man’s ear like a priest hearing the final confession. ‘It is hell in this world or hell in the next. You may find peace, and a quick end, by answering me.’
The man muttered something unintelligible, his eyes rolling.
‘What do you know of Edwin’s plot against the king?’ the warrior asked one final time.
‘Edwin?’ Blood bubbled over the dying man’s lips. ‘Not… not Edwin. I was sent by Harold Godwinson, who would have you dead and the memory of you defamed so that all who speak your name will curse you to hell.’
Hereward felt as if he had been speared through the stomach.
Harold Godwinson, the great protector, the brave warrior, admired by all Englishmen, who prayed he would take the throne once Edward was gone and lead them to an age of prosperity and peace.
Leader, protector… betrayer.
The warrior’s blood burned. He had been betrayed once again, first by his father, now by the man who had the ear of Edward, the man who would be king. Betrayed and despised by all the powers above him. He was alone, as he always had been, and he would no longer bow down to any man. ‘Then warn the Devil that I am on my way,’ he growled, ‘for you will be in hell afore me.’
CHAPTER TWENTY — ONE
Far from Eoferwic’s streets, in the south-west, the night was just as cold, and just as bloody. The torches roared in the bitter wind. Song floated out from the king’s hall where the Christmas court had gathered, yet beyond the palisade the dark over Gloucester was deeper and more threatening than it ever had been in London, Redwald thought.
Pressing his hand against his mouth in horror, he watched Harold Godwinson grab the Mercian’s hair from behind and yank the head back. With one fluid move, the Earl of Wessex ripped the tip of his knife across the exposed neck. Drunken laughter from the hall drowned out the victim’s bubbling cry. As the terrified man’s hands went to stem the flood of blood, Harold rammed the head down to the ground and held the face against the frozen earth until the snow was stained crimson and the body had stopped convulsing.
‘A lesson for you. This is how you survive, and grasp hold of power: by not being afraid to do the dirty tasks with your own hands,’ the older man said with an unsettling calmness. In that one moment when Harold had held life in his hands, Redwald had seen his employer’s face alter; the humour, the nobility, the wisdom, all of it fell away as if it were a mask. The young man felt chilled by what he saw rise up to replace it in the cold face and glittering black eyes. ‘Do you see?’ Harold’s voice cracked with anger. ‘ Do you see? ’
Redwald nodded furiously.
‘Good. Learn. Now help me.’ Harold rolled the bloody body on to its back and wrapped it in its grey woollen cloak. For a moment, Redwald froze. The man’s death might as well have been by his hand. At the Palace of Westminster, he had observed this Mercian, one of Edwin’s men, following Harold as he rode out into London with his attendants. The young man had feared an attempt would be made upon his master’s life and had informed the earl of his concerns. Nothing more of the matter had been mentioned on the long journey from London to the palace at Kingsholm. But earlier this night, while Edward was at prayer and the earls and thegns were in the middle of their feast, Harold had summoned Redwald out into the bitter night. Together the two of them had lured the Mercian away from the hall to this isolated place on the edge of the marsh beside the stream, and then Harold had struck.
When he saw his master glaring at him, the young man ducked down and grabbed the corpse’s shoulders. Together they carried the remains to a small copse. Harold threw the Mercian down as if he were a sack of barley.
‘What… what will you say when the body is found tomorrow?’ Redwald ventured. ‘Edwin will suspect-’
‘Let Edwin suspect. He knows nothing and can make no accusations,’ the earl snapped. ‘But look…’ He pointed to a mess of pawprints in the snow. ‘In this cold weather, the wolves come out of the woods in search of food. They will smell the blood, and there will be no body here tomorrow, or none that is recognizable.’
When Redwald stared at the crumpled form in the snow, he flashed back to the sight of Tidhild sprawled amid the thickening pool of her blood. She had always been kind to him. He knew she felt sorry for him for losing his father and mother so young and she had stolen honey cakes for him when he had first arrived at the Palace of Westminster with Asketil and Hereward. So much misery, so much pain.
‘That night,’ Harold grunted, giving the body a kick, ‘the night Hereward ran, you made a good choice. You could have gone to Asketil, or Edwin, or one of the thegns. But you came to me.’
Redwald’s stomach churned. He saw the dead Mercian at his feet. He saw Tidhild.
‘You recognized that only I had the strength to deal with the storm of weapons blowing up around England.’ A whisper of a smile graced the earl’s lips. ‘And you knew only I could raise you up to the levels you dreamed of, out of the mud and into the world of gold.’
And even when I realized you were the true murderer of Edward Aetheling, I continued down this road, Redwald thought. Because, God help me, I wanted what I saw within reach.
Harold looked towards the hall, where the light from the torches around the enclosure formed a halo in the dark. ‘Think no more of Hereward. You are a man now, not a boy, and men make hard decisions to grasp hold of the things in life that have value. Your brother could not be allowed to pass on what the dying man had told him. It would have left England in the hands of men who care little for the way we live our lives.’