The next day he did the same.
And on the third day, not long after sunrise, he glimpsed a lone figure riding towards Saint-Omer at a funereal pace. The monk waited, his heart pattering.
When the figure neared, Alric saw that it was Hereward. Yet his friend looked quite different, as if worn down by a terrible weight upon his shoulders. Even when the warrior saw the monk waiting, he didn’t increase the pace of his mount.
Finally, he reined the horse to a halt. A bloody strip of linen had been tied across his bare chest, and there was dirt under his fingernails from, although the monk didn’t know it then, the grave he had dug with his bare hands. He was filthy and he smelled of the road, but Alric was shocked when he saw the fire burning in his friend’s glowering eyes.
‘Say your goodbyes among the children and the churchmen, monk,’ Hereward said in a cold, flat voice. ‘Our time here is done. We sail for England.’
CHAPTER FORTY — THREE
5 October 1067
The gulls shrieked in an iron sky. Spray salted the wind, and the morning throbbed with the roar of the grey ocean, the creak of timber and the splash of dipping oars. At the prow of the Flemish warship Turfrida’s father had arranged to transport them home, Hereward and Alric felt the first lick of autumn in the air.
Unable to hide his anxiety, the monk gripped the bowpost until his knuckles grew white. Memories of icy water closing over his head still haunted him. ‘Let me soon feel dry land under my feet,’ he muttered.
‘Were yesterday’s constant prayers not enough?’ Hereward enquired, distracted. He had not taken his eyes off the swell since daybreak. Such a grim mood afflicted the warrior that it seemed he would never know joy again.
Suddenly a shaft of sunlight punched through the dense cloud cover, illuminating a hazy band of green across the horizon. Pointing at the sunbeam, Alric forced his first smile of the day. ‘God looks down upon England.’
‘And what does he see awaiting us in William the Bastard’s newly forged realm?’ Hereward’s eyes narrowed. He let his lamb-fat-lined furs fall open, already thinking of setting foot upon the quay.
‘You always fear the worst,’ Alric said. He thought of making light of it until he saw Hereward’s darkening expression. Following the warrior’s gaze, he glimpsed columns of smoke rising here and there across the coast. ‘Burning off the crop stubble,’ the monk said without conviction.
No more words passed between them for the remainder of the sea journey.
As his relief rose with the proximity to land, Alric thought back over the last few days. When Hereward returned from the expedition to the islands in the Scheldt estuary, he had seemed a broken man. For two days he slept, and for two days after that he barely spoke, apart from demanding food and ale and sending Alric away to make arrangements for the coming crossing. Turfrida had been so overjoyed to see her husband alive, she made no attempt to question him. ‘He will speak in his own time,’ she had whispered on the third morn. But she had disappeared to the woods where the alfar walked, and she had listened to the tongues of the birds and the foxes, and communed with the trees, and when she had returned her mood had darkened once more. ‘The shadow is rising within him again,’ she said. ‘We must work together or we could lose him.’
Alric chewed a nail. He had tried to maintain a calm disposition, but it was not within his nature. He feared for his friend. One night beside the hearth, the words had tumbled out of him as he pleaded to know what was wrong. Hereward had glared at him in such a way that at first he thought his friend might strike him dead. But then he said simply, ‘Vadir is dead,’ and returned his attention to the fire. The monk recalled waking with a start the next morning and finding the warrior looming over him. Hereward’s face was like the statues the Normans carved on their churches, but his eyes swam with grief. In flat, halting words, the warrior had described the older man’s death, and Harald Redteeth’s triumph, and how Hereward believed it to have been a plot long in the making; revenge for what transpired on that frozen night all those winters ago when they had first met.
Once again the monk felt the guilt that had consumed him that morning. If not for him, Hereward would never have encountered the mad Viking, or attracted his wild attention, and Vadir would still be alive. Hereward had pressed a cup of ale in Alric’s hand, and ordered him to drink up — it felt like an oath, though no words had been spoken — and then told the monk not to blame himself. Turfrida had spoken to him of the wyrd; who was to know the schemes of God, he had said. But as he walked back to the fire, he had added something like, ‘That does not mean I cannot make amends,’ but what he meant by that he would not say. Turfrida had pleaded with her husband to stay. He had earned himself a new life of peace and love. Why would he risk all that for the uncertainty of a journey to England? But he would speak no more on the matter.
The ship ploughed a white-rimmed furrow through the waves. Alric knew they had skirted the south because of William’s strength around London, and the vessel had been making its way up the whale road to the east coast. Hereward had set his sights on the place he knew best: Mercia.
When the ship put in to Yernemuth, Hereward leapt to the quay before the ruddy-faced sailors had even tied up. Urging Alric to follow, the warrior threw off his sea-furs and flapped his grey hooded cloak around him. Alric found his black woollen habit disguise enough. No one gave monks a second glance at the best of times. Along the quay, merchants haggled over boxes and barrels and sailors argued with shipwrights. Men with arms as hard as iron hauled bales from the seagoing ships to the smaller vessels that would carry the goods along the rivers inland. All appeared as it should at the port; bustling, focused upon the day-to-day activity of trade. But Alric thought he could already see signs of the Norman occupation. Faces everywhere looked beaten, eyes downcast or suspicious. Children ran from trader to trader begging for food or coin.
Pushing through the crowd at the waterside, the two companions forged into the narrow streets amid the sound of hammers and the whirr and rattle of looms. Hens scratched in the mud. Donkeys trudged under piles of wood for the workshop fires. Women carried baskets of fresh-baked bread covered with a sheet of white linen. Alric let his attention drift over the scene, searching for whatever was causing the knot deep in his belly. Then he had it.
‘Look at them,’ he whispered to Hereward. ‘Everyone carries an amulet, a token, to ward off misfortune.’ A woman grasped a roughly made wooden cross. Rabbit’s feet hung from leather wristbands and bracelets. Others wore small, flat stones hanging round their necks, each one bearing a symbol. The monk noted the runes that the Northmen still used, and the horned circle that he knew represented the old heathen god Woden. Fingers fumbled for the amulets every moment or two, fluttering, unconscious actions once inspired by prayer, Alric guessed, but which had become second nature by constant use. ‘They are scared,’ he said. ‘All of them.’
Hereward said nothing. The monk realized his companion had long since noticed the signs.
Asking around, the two men took directions to a merchant who had horses to sell, and some bread, blankets and a bow for hunting. Soon they were riding west along the narrow paths through the flat, green land.
‘When do you plan to tell me where we are going?’ the monk asked.
‘I did not ask you to come with me.’
‘You did not ask me to stay behind with your wife,’ Alric snapped.
His words must have touched something in his companion, for after a moment Hereward pointed to one of the columns of smoke and said, ‘First, we go there.’