Gradually the crowd began to return to their own campfires, and I turned back to Eudo. ‘How much do you trust these merchants?’
‘Not a lot,’ he admitted. ‘But some are more reliable than others, and we’ve been hearing much the same stories for weeks now, so there’s likely to be some truth in them.’
First the Northumbrians, then the Welsh, and now it sounded like the Danes as well. If what Eudo was saying turned out to be true, I didn’t see how we could fight them all. A shiver passed through me in spite of the warmth of the morning, and I had a hollow feeling in my stomach.
‘Not that any of this is likely to happen for some months yet,’ Eudo went on, more brightly. ‘If it happens at all. And anyway, in the meantime we have other battles to fight first.’
Other battles, other enemies. I glanced around us at the sea of tents, at the banners in all their colours fluttering as the wind rose, at the sheep and the cattle in their pens, at the chickens that some lords had brought to help feed their retinues, darting about in pursuit of the seed being thrown to them. At the many scores of men who had gathered with their swords and their shields, their spears and their helmets and their hauberks of mail, ready to test their sword-arms against the enemy.
Already it was a formidable host, and of course hundreds more would come in the days to follow as Hugues the Wolf and others responded to Fitz Osbern’s call to arms. Yet even as I gazed across the camp, I could not stop doubt from creeping into my mind. For the first time I began to wonder if it would be enough.
Nine
The days grew hotter and tempers became ever more frayed as we waited for the rest of Fitz Osbern’s barons to respond to the summons, for the Wolf to arrive from Ceastre and Wace with him. Men always grow restive when they have nothing to do, and never was that more true than when speaking of men of the sword. Over the week that followed I could sense a growing agitation amongst our army. Almost every day fights broke out: by the wharves, on the streets, in the alehouses and even at times in the middle of the camp itself; sometimes between English and Norman but more often between Frenchmen themselves.
I often likened the March to a patchwork made from scraps of land from hundreds of different lordships, stitched together by grants made in charters and writs, by oaths and by a common desire to keep out the Welsh who threatened their lands. Such a patchwork, however, was only as strong as the threads that joined its various pieces, and since those threads were woven from words alone, they were easily broken. While many of the holdings belonged to newly endowed men like myself, who had won their lordships in the years since the invasion, by and large those who held greatest influence on the borderlands belonged to the old families of Normandy: lineages which in more than a few cases harked back as far as the days of Charlemagne, who had been king of the Franks some two and a half centuries before. They saw the newcomers as troublesome and ambitious upstarts, hungry for wealth and adventure and power, and as such not to be trusted. In return they were greeted with, if not hostility, then at the very least frosty indifference.
Now that both sides were brought together in one place, though, their petty squabbles and jealousies boiled over into open confrontation. A dozen men were killed in that week alone; on one particular morning three bodies were found floating face-down in the river, so bloated with water that their features were unrecognisable and no one was able to say who they were. Still more were injured: one man lost his hand when a brawl over a game of dice ended in swords being drawn; another was badly burnt when he was pushed into a brazier for lying with someone else’s woman; and others I had witnessed and heard of were missing ears and fingers in retribution for slights both real and imagined.
Amongst my own men, too, tension was growing. At first it was nothing more than the usual exchange of snide remarks and lewd jokes at each other’s expense: the sort of thing that I had long since grown used to. But all too soon the thrill of at last being on campaign and amongst fellow warriors wore off, and it became ever harder for them to hold their tongues. Even I had to fight hard to restrain the resentment simmering within me: resentment towards Robert, towards Guillaume fitz Osbern, but most of all towards the Welsh, whose fault it was that we had been dragged here. We had left Earnford in such a rush, yet until Fitz Osbern decided what should be done, we could only sit on our backsides and wait. Altogether it only served to put me more on edge, and over those few days I confess I was not an easy man to be around.
To that Eudo would also attest, after I nearly took his head off in a training fight. We were using oak cudgels rather than swords, but even so a blow from one of those could hurt if it struck home; I knew from experience. When Eudo followed too far through a stroke, instinct took over. While he struggled to recover, I saw my chance, backhanding a swing towards his head with all the strength I could muster. He saw it coming just in time to twist and duck beneath it, losing his balance and landing on his face in the mud, prompting sniggers from those who happened to be watching.
Cursing, he got to his feet, ignoring the hand I extended to help him up, and stood red-faced before me. ‘God’s teeth, Tancred. Are you trying to kill me?’
‘Are you hurt?’
‘I’ll live, though no thanks to you.’ He spat on the ground, his face twisted into an expression of distaste, and he wiped some of the dirt from his cheek, rubbing it on his tunic and his trews.
‘I don’t know what I was thinking.’
‘Well, next time think harder. The way you came at me, anyone would think it was Eadgar?theling you were fighting.’
The sun was almost upon the horizon by then and Eudo wasn’t in the mood to fight any more, so we left the practice yard, making our way past paddocks where the horses grazed contentedly, towards the black and gold. Carts drawn by teams of oxen trundled past, laden with hay or barrels of ale and bundles of straw. The smell of stewed vegetables and roasting meat drifted on the breeze. From down by the river floated the soft notes of a flute, soon joined by drunken voices singing a song of distant lands.
‘I’m frustrated, that’s all,’ I said as we walked. ‘The longer we stay here, the worse it gets. Sometimes I wish the Welsh would attack now, if they’re going to come at all.’
‘What you need is to feel the warmth of a good woman,’ said Eudo. ‘That’ll soon see to your frustration. Fitz Osbern might have ordered the stews closed but if you go with good silver to some of the alehouses they’ll see that your needs are satisfied. There’s one not far from the town gates where the girls are pretty and none too expensive either.’
‘The cost isn’t what worries me,’ I said. ‘It’s more your idea of pretty. Last time I remember ending up with a great sow of a girl who smelt as if she hadn’t washed in about ten years.’
He laughed. ‘You always did have an eye for the slim ones. I’ll keep a lookout next time I’m there and see if there are any you might like.’
‘In any case,’ I said, ‘what happened to Censwith?’
Of all the girls Eudo had known, she was the only one he had kept going back to; the very fact that he had often spoken of her by name marked her out. As long as I had known him he had never cared much for matters of the heart, and I had thought nothing about it at the time, but since Eoferwic last year he had often spoken of buying her freedom from the man in Sudwerca who owned her, and even of taking her for his wife.
‘She died is what happened,’ Eudo said. ‘Caught a fever last spring and never recovered. I saw her for the last time as she lay on her deathbed. I’ll never forget how weak she looked and how fragile, though I’m not sure she even recognised who I was.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I could not think of anything else to say.
Eudo sighed. ‘I never did get the chance to free her. Still, if there are whorehouses in heaven then I hope to find her there someday.’