‘Hugues,’ he said as his expression grew hard. ‘He has his own battles to fight. All his arrogance and belief in his own self-importance do not disguise the fact that, at only twenty years, he is little more than a child, with a temper to match. He must always do his own thing; he takes neither instruction nor advice from anyone. And always it is to the detriment of others, just as now as he leaves us short of four hundred spears that we might otherwise have usefully employed.’
‘They say that some of the other barons are looking to follow the Wolf’s example,’ I said, remembering the rumours Beatrice had spoken of. ‘They plan to desert and return to their own manors.’
‘Do you think I don’t know that? Do you think that I don’t have my own people within the camp, that I must rely on whatever scraps of news you choose to bring me?’
‘I didn’t mean to presume-’
‘No, of course you didn’t,’ he said, with more than a hint of sarcasm. ‘Fortunately I am well aware who those barons are, and they will know it soon enough, too.’
‘Surely, lord,’ I said, trying to restrain my frustration, ‘punishing them will only give them further cause to abandon us. Instead wouldn’t it be better to assuage them with promises of gold and silver and whatever else is necessary to keep them happy?’
‘I will deal with them how I choose,’ he snapped. ‘I do not need advice from one such as you!’
Why, then, had he called me here, if not to chastise me or ask what I thought? I wondered whether he himself had forgotten.
‘All this could so easily have been avoided,’ he said bitterly. His fingers clenched into a fist, his knuckles turning white. ‘I thought that by sending a raiding-army across the dyke Eadric and the Welsh might be quelled before they could bring their might to bear. Instead we can only wait for them to come to us, and pray to God that when they do we have the strength to fight them off.’
‘We will find a way,’ I said, doing my best to sound confident. ‘When the time comes we will send them running back across the dyke with their tails between their legs. We will show them slaughter such as they have never before seen.’
I might as well have been speaking to myself, since Fitz Osbern wasn’t listening. Instead he seemed lost in his own world as he went on: ‘Our enemies circle around us, taunting us, preparing themselves to descend and strike, and meanwhile we are powerless to do anything at all!’
His eyes were filled with fury as he brought his fist down upon the table beside him with such vehemence that the glass goblet toppled. His jaw clenched, with the back of his hand he swept the drinking vessel and jug from the surface, sending them flying against the wall, where they smashed, scattering shards across the floor, spraying scarlet droplets everywhere.
None of which was enough to satisfy him. He rose sharply, grabbing the edge of the table and upending it with a crash before, swearing, he turned to face once more out the window.
Over the years I’d had dealings with many powerful barons, but never had I known any of them lose control so completely in front of men of lower rank than themselves. And while I’d heard tales of Fitz Osbern’s fierce temper before, this was the first time I had witnessed it. For the second time I found myself wondering how much wine had passed his lips that morning. Naturally he was angry at the situation in which we found ourselves, but I wondered if some of that anger he reserved for himself too, for having misjudged the enemy’s strength so gravely, for having sent us on the expedition in the first place. And yet I couldn’t help but feel that on a different day, that battle in Mechain could so easily have turned the other way. If Ithel had not let his desire for vengeance get the better of him, and if his brother had not gone after him, then their lives and those of their men need not have been wasted in a hopeless cause. That in itself might have been enough to save us from the rout that had ensued. In such moments of folly, courage and desperation rested the fate of entire kingdoms, difficult though it was to see it at the time.
All this I kept to myself as I waited for Fitz Osbern to break the silence. When eventually he did speak, it was in more muted tones, and I wondered whether that meant the storm had passed.
‘Everything is falling into ruin,’ he said. ‘Everything we have toiled these last four years to build is collapsing: the kingdom like a house whose posts are rotten, whose thatch is being torn from the roof-timbers. We strive to repair it, but it is all in vain. The winds only howl more fiercely and the rains lash down more heavily, and there is nothing we can do to keep them out.’
Not for the first time I was unsure what to reply, if indeed he expected me to say anything at all. His back was turned and I wasn’t entirely convinced that he knew I was still there.
Outside I heard knights training in the yard as well as the sounds of sawing and hammering as builders and labourers worked to strengthen the castle’s defences. On my way here I had seen them driving pointed stakes into the ditch to deter any attackers who might try to assault the walls. Nothing was being left to chance. Of course Fitz Osbern would recall what had happened at Eoferwic last year, when Malet had thought the city’s walls sufficient to keep out the besiegers, only for the Northumbrians to storm the gates with the townsmen’s aid and force him back to the castle, in the process killing a large number of the Norman garrison. We could not afford to make the same mistake this time, nor allow ourselves to feel too secure, which was why so much effort was being expended to further fortify the town.
And yet if Fitz Osbern was right, even that might not be enough to stop Eadric and the Welsh, and all the others who threatened the kingdom. In times of crisis men always look to those above them to give them confidence, but I had not gained any from him. Rather, it seemed that he had all but given up hope, not just of defending the March but of holding England altogether. Unlike some other lords I had known over the years, I had always considered him a formidable man, a rival even to the foremost princes of Christendom. A staunch and uncompromising leader, he inspired respect in everyone: from the lowliest knight to King Guillaume himself, who was said to hold his counsel in higher regard than that of any other man. Today, however, I had seen a very different side of him, and all at once I found the admiration that I’d held for him slipping away, as if a veil had fallen from my eyes. I felt strangely embarrassed to be standing there, as if I had witnessed something that I had not been supposed to.
I cleared my throat. ‘My lord, if you have no further need of me, then I ought to return to my men, and see what needs to be done.’
He didn’t deign to offer a reply, but waved a hand absently, and I took that to mean that I was dismissed. Without a further word I left him to gaze despondently out across the yard by himself, closing the door softly behind me. Even as I did so, however, a small voice of doubt rose at the back of my mind, and the thought occurred to me: what if he was right?
Nineteen
Scrobbesburh’s market square was a quieter place now. Probably the merchants who usually came had made instead for safer ports where they could sell their wares without the threat of Welsh steel slicing open their bellies. Still, as I made my way back past the stalls of the wool-sellers and the stacked cages of chickens and wildfowl destined for the spit, my mood lifted when I glimpsed a familiar face amongst the traders.
‘Byrhtwald!’
With his familiar tired grey mule and cart with its green and scarlet streamers, it could be no other. At the sound of his name he looked up. He did not spot me at first, but as I led Nihtfeax around the side of a pair of haywains towards him, a grin spread across his face.
‘Lord Tancred,’ he said, clasping my hand in greeting when I reached him. ‘You’ve been having many adventures, or so I hear. The Welsh haven’t managed to kill you yet, then.’