I stared back into his close-set eyes, though he stood more than half a head taller than me. ‘You’d do well to show some respect,’ I said, jabbing a finger into his chest. ‘Especially when you clearly don’t know to whom you’re speaking.’
‘Listen to what he says,’ Serlo added, loudly enough so that everyone else could hear too. ‘Or don’t you recognise Lord Tancred?’
That, at least, provoked a murmur, and as the word passed around the circle, one by one their gazes turned towards us.
The one who had challenged me bowed his head, saying: ‘I’m sorry, lord, I didn’t mean-’
I wasn’t about to wait for the rest of his apology. ‘Out of my way,’ I said, barging past.
The rest were more obliging and quickly made way. Berengar stood in the middle of the circle, a knife in one hand and a bundle of frayed cloth in the crook of his other arm. At his feet, prevented from rising by two stout knights who held her shoulders, knelt one of the Welshwomen. Slight of build and fair of complexion, she could have been no more than about sixteen or seventeen in years. Her dress and hood were muddied, her sleeves torn, her auburn hair in disarray. From her lips came a stream of words I could not understand, though there was no mistaking her tone, which was one of desperation. Tears flooded her eyes, streaming down her face, and her hands were clasped together as if she were pleading with him.
Again I heard those infant’s wails, and this time I saw where they were coming from. For almost buried within the cloth held by Berengar was the fragile form of a child: one so small that it could barely have been born.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked Berengar, who had not moved. His naked blade was poised; for what purpose I could not quite make out — or rather I had some inkling, but the thought horrified me and I did not want to believe it.
‘What do you think?’ he retorted. ‘Making sure her son doesn’t live to hold a spear in the enemy’s shield-wall.’
I stared at him in disbelief. For all his foul temper, I had not imagined him the kind of man given to such cruelty.
‘We don’t slaughter children,’ I said.
‘What do you care?’
‘For the love of Christ, Berengar, he’s no more than a baby.’
‘For now, yes. But what happens when he grows up, when in years to come he decides to take up arms against us? How many Frenchmen would you let him kill?’
I didn’t deign to answer, for that would only dignify his question. ‘Give him to me,’ I said instead.
‘Why? So you can let him and his whore of a mother go free?’
I stepped towards him, aware of more than twenty pairs of eyes watching us, and aware too of the silence that had fallen around us. He backed away, bringing the edge of his knife closer to the infant’s chest. The girl screamed, struggling against the grip of the two who held her.
‘So that no one has to die who doesn’t have to,’ I said. ‘This woman and her child are not our enemies.’
‘Maybe you should do as he suggests, lord,’ said one of the two sturdy-looking men restraining the Welshwoman. His face was familiar, for I had seen him in Berengar’s company before, though I could not recall his name — if ever I had learnt it. One of his household knights, I suspected.
‘Maybe you should shut up, Frederic,’ Berengar shot back. ‘Your oath is to me. You owe nothing to this man.’
Affronted, the one called Frederic fell silent.
‘I’m tired of taking orders from him,’ Berengar went on, pointing a grimy finger in my direction. ‘He is no better than any of us; he is only our leader because he has Fitz Osbern’s favour. And yet what has he done to deserve that honour?’
I clenched my fist, trying to restrain my temper. If he had misgivings about my leadership, he should have spoken with me in private. By letting his grievances spill out into the open air, he made it clear that he sought to undermine me.
‘Tancred was at Eoferwic,’ another man called out, though I did not recognise him. ‘If it weren’t for him, we could never have taken the city.’
There was a roar of agreement, and I noticed Frederic exchanging uncertain glances with some of Berengar’s other knights.
But the man himself was not swayed. ‘So we keep hearing,’ he said with a snort. ‘But were any of you there? Did any of you actually see him fight the?theling, as he claims to have done?’
I started forward, speaking almost through gritted teeth: ‘Berengar-’
‘No,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘You will not tell me what to do any longer. These people are our enemies, and this is justice.’ For a second time he withdrew, this time turning so that his back was to me, as if trying to protect the howling child, though I knew that was not what he had in mind. He lifted his blade, the flat side gleaming dully in the grey morning light, the edge wickedly sharp.
Again the Welshwoman shrieked, and suddenly it seemed she had managed to shake off the hold of her captors, or perhaps they had decided after all to let her go. Either way it mattered little as she darted forward, almost tripping over the ragged hem of her skirt, making for Berengar, but he had seen her coming. Turning, he backhanded a slash with his knife, but he was too quick through the stroke. The steel passed inches from her face as instead the back of his hand connected with her cheek and her nose, sending her sprawling to the ground.
Before he could do anything more, however, I was upon him. While his attention was on her I rushed forward, seizing hold of his knife-arm, twisting it back so sharply that he had no choice but to drop the weapon. In the same moment I drew my own blade with my left hand and, grabbing him from behind, held it up to his neck.
‘Give the boy to his mother,’ I said. ‘Do it slowly, or else I swear my knife-edge will meet your throat.’
Dazed, the woman had managed to rise no further than her knees. Blood was running from her nostrils, mixing with her tears. Tenderly she pressed her hand to the place where she had been struck; her palm and fingers came away red.
‘Help her,’ I said to the circle of men who were looking on. ‘Someone help her.’
But they did not move, and I realised that their eyes were not upon the Welshwoman but on me, and on my blade, pressed to the neck of a fellow baron. A man who was lord and master to many of them.
I swallowed, realising what I had just done, but I could not undo it, nor could I waver. ‘Serlo, take the child from him. Turold, Pons, get the girl to her feet.’
The child’s wails rang in my ears. One becomes used to the cries of the dying, but the cries of those at the beginning of their lives are a different thing entirely. To speak truthfully, hearing them there, in that place, unsettled me in a way that I could not have imagined.
This child had been born into slaughter, into a world of hatred and bloodshed and cruelty. Even if he survived plague and famine and the sword, he would grow up hearing tales of what we had done here and elsewhere. Desiring of vengeance, he would most likely end his days in the same place they had begun. This was how it had happened before, and in the same way it would happen again, over and over through my lifetime and for centuries to come until the hour of reckoning itself.
But that was not what most shook my soul. Rather it was the realisation of how fragile were these bodies that kept our souls upon this earth; how but for good fortune an infant’s entire future could be taken away; how finely balanced was the blade-edge that separated death from life.
And there stood I, Tancred a Dinant: the bringer of both. The guardian of the weak and the killer of men. The shield and the scourge. The arbiter of fates. With one hand I gave life and hope, while with the other I took it away and in its place dealt slaughter and pain.
Sweat rolled off my brow, stinging my eyes, blurring my sight, and I blinked to try to clear it. Berengar let out a grunt, and only then did I realise how close my knife was to the vein in his neck: barely a hair’s breadth from his skin. He neither moved nor spoke as he allowed Serlo to gently lift the infant from his grasp, no doubt aware how close he was to spending an eternity in hell.