Alric came to a halt, gaping. A stocky, ruddy-faced man floated through the air, his head and torso just visible above the treetops. ‘What is this place you have brought me to?’ the monk hissed.
Hereward roared with laughter at his friend’s expression, bending from the waist to steady himself with his hands on his thighs. When Alric backed away, still gripped by the frightening sight, the warrior grabbed his companion and dragged him along the track past the willows. The monk stopped, marvelling. The ‘floating’ man towered above them on a pair of stilts, which he was using to move across the watercourse and the treacherous pools that lay beyond.
Enjoying the respite from his brooding, Hereward watched the stilt-man’s familiar looping gait as he spun across the water with such skill that he appeared to be flying. ‘We are a people of the wetlands,’ the warrior explained to his entranced friend. ‘Our entire lives are lived on and around the water, learning ways to enjoy the bounties it offers and to navigate its hidden dangers.’
‘This is a wonder indeed,’ Alric muttered.
‘The Normans may have their fine swords and their maces and their archers, but they will struggle to thrive here. Only people who know the safe, secret routes through the fens can escape death by drowning. The water here is a living thing. It breathes and waits and hunts for prey, and claims the lives of many strangers. Land can be dry one day and a marsh or a lake the next.’
Half distracted by the stilt-man, Hereward felt the first stirrings of an idea, as yet unrealized. Before he could examine it further, a snowy-haired man burst from the long grass on the bank and stabbed a spear towards the two wanderers.
‘What do you want?’ the man barked. He wore a coat of rabbit pelts smeared with lamb-fat to keep the elements at bay.
‘Holbert?’ Hereward could see the man was scared.
‘Who are you?’ The man leaned forward, squinting. The warrior grasped what a sight he and Alric looked, filthy with dried black mud from feet to neck and more of it splattered across their faces. Stepping closer but not lowering his spear, the white-haired man peered for a moment and then ventured, ‘Hereward Asketilson?’
The warrior nodded, remembering the time he stole a line of fish that Holbert had spent two days smoking. He felt a pang of guilt.
‘Are you here to steal from me again? Because I have little and I will fight till I die to keep it.’ Sensing danger, the stilt-man strode towards them, glowering.
‘I am not the man who tormented you, Holbert.’
‘You tormented everyone, you and your wild friends,’ the elderly man grumbled, the feelings still raw after so many years. ‘We heard you were outlaw.’
‘We heard you were dead.’ The ruddy-faced man leaned forward on his stilts and just at the point when he seemed on the brink of falling he dropped like a cat to his feet.
‘Then I am a ghost.’ Hereward smiled.
‘And what a time you picked to haunt your home grounds.’ Holbert lowered his spear. ‘There are worse things abroad in the fens these days. There must be, if I look on a bastard like Hereward Asketilson with something like fondness.’ He shrugged and turned to the stilt-man. ‘Sawin, get some ale. Let us welcome home this son of the fens with a moment of joy before he realizes what hell he has returned to.’
Sawin pushed through the waist-high, yellowing grass and skidded down the bank. Holbert, Hereward and Alric followed. Hidden among the undergrowth beside the willows and above the spring flood-line was a small shack with wattle walls and a roof of branches covered with turf. Scattered along the water’s edge lay the detritus of Holbert’s business. Wooden tubs of reeking fat. Hides drying over willow frames. Creamy curls of wood shavings. Mallets, bow-saws, adzes, wedges, planes and awls. Hereward remembered lying in the long grass, watching Holbert’s meticulous labour as he built the shell-like boats that the fenlanders used to traverse the watercourses, shaping the willow frames, stretching the hides and waterproofing them with the fat, cutting the short-handled paddles.
Cup in hand, Holbert looked Alric up and down as if he had only just noticed him. ‘Who are you? Monk? Your kind are as bad as the bastard Normans.’
Alric recoiled. ‘My kind?’
‘The clergy. They were the ones pushing for William the Bastard to be made king.’ The white-haired man threw back his ale and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘They watch us. They pass on what they see to our new masters.’ He spat. ‘And they get their rewards. They’re living fat while we pay our taxes. But you’ll see. William will bring his own kind in sooner or later. And when there’s Norman bishops giving out the orders, then there won’t be so much chest-puffing and strutting.’
Hereward sat on the bank and warmed himself against a smouldering fire made from the off-cut timber. ‘And the Normans, here?’
Holbert shook his head, frowning. ‘The bastards won’t be happy until there’s nothing of England left. They don’t care for us, for our families or our wives or our children. They raise our taxes, and put us to work building their castles and garrisons. Speak out, you’ll find your house burned. Two speak out, the village gets burned. Look at one of their knights the wrong way, you’ll be hanging from a tree the next morning with the rooks feasting on your eyes. William the Bastard won’t be happy till he’s crushed the life from us. Till we’re nothing but cattle in the field, keeping the Norman bellies full.’ He looked into his empty cup, his mood dismal. ‘You should have stayed away. There’s nothing for you here.’
Hereward set his jaw. ‘Fight back.’
‘Me? On my own? Or me and him?’ Holbert nodded towards Sawin, laughing without humour.
‘We are English. We fought against the Vikings in our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ time. We fought against each other until we were all raw head and bloody bones, God knows. And now we lie down and do nothing?’
‘You haven’t seen what it’s like,’ Holbert muttered. He didn’t meet Hereward’s eyes and shuffled away in search of more ale. The warrior thought how broken-backed the boatwright looked. Was all England like this?
‘There is no place anywhere like the fens,’ the warrior pressed, waving his cup at Sawin. ‘It is a fortress, protected on all sides, and riddled with traps and dangers that the Normans would never be able to navigate. Why, a few good men here could start a rebellion that would bring all William’s plans crashing to the ground.’
‘There have been rebellions aplenty,’ the ruddy-faced man murmured, ‘and they all ended the same way.’ He saw the look in Hereward’s face and snapped, ‘Do not call us cowards! You have been away from the worst of it. If you had been here you would be like the rest of us.’
His nose turning pink from the ale, Holbert returned with another full cup. ‘Entire villages are starving because the Normans have taken the food for their own garrisons. The sickness has returned, some say. People are dying in their own blood, puke and shit all over England. These are the End-Times, just like all the prophecies said, and there’s not a thing you can do about it.’
Anger flashed across Hereward’s face, but he controlled himself. ‘I am not here to wage war with the Normans. I am outlaw. You, Holbert, all the men and women here, none of you wanted any part of me. England wanted no part of me. I was driven away from my home, and saw my woman murdered by others who sought to use me for their own ends.’
‘Then why have you come back?’
‘To see my father one final time, and find some peace between us for what has gone before. To talk to my young brother Beric and make amends for the blight I must have placed upon his life. And to speak to Redwald, if I can, about a matter that may interest him.’
Hereward could feel Alric’s sympathetic gaze upon him, but it was Holbert who caught his attention. The elderly man blanched almost as white as his beard.