‘Who is your earl?’
‘The Earl of Wantage. Jocelin de Hautfort.’
Perhaps I should have anticipated it. Perhaps I have crossed into a different realm — a world where my past comes to life and piles on top of me. Scar tissue accumulated over years falls away in an instant. My wounds are as raw as the day Ada died.
‘Who?’
‘Jocelin de Hautfort. His estate was in Normandy, but he lost it when the Angevins invaded. King Stephen compensated him with English lands that belonged to his stepmother, and an invented title.’
The headman’s eyes sidle to our pack horses. We’ve removed the points from our spears, but it doesn’t do much to disguise them. One of the sacks has pulled open, showing the dull metal of chain mail inside.
‘Are you knights?’
‘Travellers,’ says Hugh shortly. ‘And you’re blocking our way.’
A shiver goes through the peasants. They press closer around Hugh. Up on his horse, he’s an island in a sea of desperate faces. The headman takes the horse’s bridle and leans in. Hugh has to bend his head to listen.
‘These lands are exhausted — you can see for yourself. Jocelin gets nothing from them. The only fertile ground he has left is this road. He harrows it like he harrows us.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He watches the road. He’ll be waiting for you. Half a mile up this road, where it passes through a thick stand of trees, you’ll find a burned-out cart blocking the way. You’ll get down to clear it, but it’s loaded with river stones. More of you will dismount. The next thing you’ll know, you’ll have a dozen spears at your throats.’
‘Why are you telling us this?’
‘Look at us. There isn’t an ear of corn here that Jocelin hasn’t taken. There’s nothing left.’
Hugh tugs his bridle out of the headman’s hands. ‘If we stopped to right every wrong we passed on the road, we’d never have got out of London. We’ll find another way round.’
‘Please.’ The headman drops to his knees in the mud and flings his arms around the horse’s leg like a child hobbling its mother. It’s a piteous sight. He’s lucky the horse is too weary to kick him. ‘If you avoid his trap, Jocelin will know that we warned you. He’ll destroy us — and our women. There are worse things he can do than make them spin cloth.’
‘He doesn’t know we’re coming. Unless you told him?’
The headman bares his teeth, though half of them have fallen out from hunger.
‘He watches the road — I told you. He’s seen you. He rode through here fifteen minutes ago.’
We lace on our hauberks and devise a plan. I haven’t worn armour since I tore off my old coat on the Île de Pêche. A shudder convulses me as it slips over my head, swallowing me. A moment later it feels like my own skin.
We make our preparations. While Hugh and the others withdraw a little way down the road, Abelard and I clamber into the rafters of houses where the thatch has been stripped back. I’m trembling all over. All I can see is Ada tied to the tree, the blood running down the shaft of the spear. An angel sings inside me, the seductive bliss of revenge. Jocelin was never patient: I wonder how long it’ll be before he comes to see what happened to his quarry.
And suddenly there he is.
It doesn’t take much to be an earl these days. His retinue is two knights, and a dozen serjeants who don’t look much better than brigands. At least he’s been enjoying the fruits of his estates. His face has grown jowls; his body bulges under the armour, which has a stripe down the back where new links have been added to enlarge the mail shirt.
I clench my fists. Blood beads on my palms where my nails break the skin.
He rides up to the headman and puts his spear against the man’s throat. I almost choke on the memory of Ada.
‘Where are they?’
Even his voice sounds fat. A slow, uninflected drawl, none of his father’s subtlety. A man content to stuff himself on easy pickings.
‘They took a different path.’ The headman keeps his eyes downcast. A wide scar, crusted black, runs down his cheek. The mark of Jocelin’s lordship.
‘Liar!’ Jocelin wheels his horse round. ‘There is no other path. Did you warn them?’
‘We told them nothing.’
Jocelin tickles the man’s neck with his spear. ‘You betrayed me. I warned you, but you disobeyed. Now —’
A shriek tears through the village. A piglet comes out of one of the houses and gallops up the road. Smoke trails behind it: someone’s tied a burning bundle of straw to its tail.
With whoops of delight, the serjeants break ranks and race after it. Some of them even drop their spears. Jocelin laughs and doesn’t try to stop them. He reverses his spear and strikes the headman hard against his skull.
‘How is a lord supposed to live if his serfs betray him?’
The smile withers on his face. Suddenly the street is full of men pouring out of the houses and surrounding the serjeants. The weapons they carry are primitive — knives and sickles, billhooks and mallets, even roof-timbers from their own houses — but their attack is lethal. They surround the serjeants. Some men act as living shields, soaking up the blows with their bodies, so that the men behind can get through. They beat and bite the weapons out of the soldiers’ hands; they drag them to the ground; they tear them to pieces.
Jocelin and his knights spur forward. Gornemant once said: it’s not birth that makes a man a knight, or training or skill — it’s his horse. A mob of brutalised villagers can take down a whole host of foot-soldiers, but even three knights can put them to flight.
A pile of rubbish and rubble sits in the middle of the street — carefully laid there an hour earlier. The knights split around it like water round a rock, so close to the houses they almost brush shoulders with the thatch-poles. Praise be — Jocelin comes my way.
I count off the paces. Too soon, I’ll be trampled underfoot; too late, I’ll just bounce off the horse’s rear. I time it to perfection. Just like we used to do in the orchard at Hautfort, I hurl myself off the roof, hug my arms around the rider and let my momentum carry us both. Jocelin comes off the horse; I tuck my head against his chest to protect myself as we both crash to the ground. Something snaps as he lands on a loose rock, though it isn’t me. I’m winded, but unhurt.
Across the road, Anselm’s unhorsed his opponent: they’re wrestling on the ground. Further on, Hugh and the others have the third knight surrounded. I pick up the shield Jocelin dropped and pull my spear out from the thatch where I hid it earlier. Behind me, I hear a clang. Jocelin’s ripped off his helmet. He staggers to his feet.
So many years I dreamed of revenge, but now that it comes it happens almost too easily. I’ve lost some muscle since I gave up fighting, but I’m lean and strong. Jocelin probably hasn’t used his sword in years. The boy who delighted in physical courage has grown fat and slow, a bully throwing his weight around in a badly fitting coat of armour. And he hurt himself in the fall.
He draws his sword. I sidestep his lunge and punch him in the face with the boss of my shield. Blood trickles from his nose. I see Ada again, the blood flowing out of her. I grab his sword arm, twist it around and chop it with my shield rim. The bone cracks. He steps back — but his spur catches in the ground. He sprawls flat in the mud, flapping like a fish stranded above the tidemark.
I put my foot on his throat and raise my spear. It hovers over Jocelin’s face. He goes cross-eyed trying to look at it.
‘Look at me.’