And so I sought refuge in my dreams, where the faces of my friends and companions could return to me and for a while at least I could believe that I was elsewhere.
I woke to the sound of raised voices outside. Men called to one another in urgent tones, though I had no way of knowing what they were saying. Mail chinked as heavy footsteps made their way around the side of the storehouse. Through the crack between the door and the frame shone the orange glow of a torch or lantern. I must have been asleep for some while, for the last I could remember it had still been day, but now it was full dark. What hour was it?
I sat up, too fast as it turned out, since straightaway I felt light-headed. Until now Mathrafal had remained quiet. This was the first time that there had been any sign of anything happening. Had Bleddyn returned from Scrobbesburh, and if he had, did that mean he was victorious or defeated?
These thoughts were running through my head when the door was flung open and a cold breeze flooded into the room. Dyfnwal stood in the doorway, his bald pate flickering with reflected torchlight. Buckled upon his waist as before was my sword-belt.
‘Time for you to go,’ he said. ‘Eadric has arrived.’
‘He’s here?’
The Welshman grunted. ‘Sooner than expected, too. He’s waiting for you.’
Wild Eadric. The man I had heard so much about in recent weeks.
Dyfnwal made way for two other men. The taller of them had in his hand a ring of keys, from which he selected one and used it to release me from my chains. For the first time in what seemed like an age both my wrists and ankles were free, though they no longer had to worry about me struggling or being able to escape. My feet had by then recovered from their march across the dyke but were not nearly as steady as they should have been. A sharp ache ran through my neck, which felt barely able to support my head.
Out in the yard were gathered close to two dozen warriors, I reckoned, each with a spear in one hand and a round painted shield in the other. At their head were the men of Bleddyn’s teulu — the ones who had brought me here — mounted and armed as if ready for war. Dogs were barking; somewhere a cockerel had been woken by the commotion and was crowing, though there was no sign yet of the approaching dawn. Nor was there any sign of Eadric, though the gates to the fort lay open. Blackness lay beyond; cloud veiled the stars and the moon so that not even the river could be seen.
Dyfnwal called to one of the watchmen upon the walls, who replied in what I took for a negative tone.
‘He waits for us outside,’ he told me in halting French. ‘He is afraid, you see. For all his posturing the Wild One knows that if he sets foot within Mathrafal he is relying on our kindness and placing himself at our mercy.’ His expression twisted in distaste, he gazed out beyond the gates into the country beyond, where tiny pinpricks of lantern-light now shone, glinting off spearpoints and mail hauberks. ‘King Bleddyn might have forgotten his past misdeeds, but many of us have not, nor have we forgiven him for the blood that he shed.’
That was the most that I had ever heard the sour-faced Welshman speak; the most, indeed, that anyone had said to me in many days. I wondered what he meant by it. Of course if Eadric had held land out on the Marches under the old king then probably he had once fought many of the men with whom he was now allied. That was some years ago now, but clearly there were some among the Welsh who still bore a grudge against him.
‘Dilynwch fi,’ Dyfnwal shouted to his men, and to me said simply: ‘Move.’
We passed beneath the gates, along the rutted track that followed the river to a marker stone perhaps two hundred paces from the fort. The furthest that an arrow-shot from the top of the gatehouse could reliably find its target, I supposed: there as a warning to any who approached that they were within the killing range. Eadric and his retinue had drawn to a halt a little way beyond it, although whether that was by mere happenstance or whether that was borne out of fear, as Dyfnwal had insinuated, I was not sure. With him were some thirty or more warriors, all with horses, together with a single cart drawn by a team of oxen, a man in dark robes who could have been a priest or a monk, and a huntsman with a pack of dogs. A sizeable company, all told: less a war-party than a noble entourage, but then perhaps that was the point, since Eadric had come here not looking to fight but to bargain.
Though he had been there at Mechain, I had never seen the man at close hand before, and so at first I was taken by surprise. He was not as men had described him to me, nor how I had imagined him either. Despite his byname he seemed to me far from wild, either in appearance or in manner. In my mind he had been a hulking brute of impulsive nature, built like a blacksmith, stinking and unkempt, with a long, straggling beard and hair growing out of his nostrils. A young man, indeed, whereas the one stood here was in his middle years, well groomed, with a stiff bearing and small, hard eyes that possessed a gaze sharp enough to pierce the best mail. Surrounding him were his armed retainers, his hearth-troops, his huscarls: stout fighters with whom I would have thought twice before crossing swords, even were I fully awake and fit.
The Welshmen dismounted, leaving their ponies by the marker stone and approaching on foot so as to meet the Englishmen on equal terms. The hunting dogs growled and strained at their leashes, but Dyfnwal ignored them.
‘Lord Eadric,’ he said. He spoke in the English tongue, presumably in mock deference, for his words were not respectful. ‘It is a while since I last laid eyes upon your ugly face. Should I assume that-’
‘Assume nothing,’ Eadric cut him off cleanly and sharply, like a butcher’s knife cleaving through a haunch of meat. He nodded towards me. ‘Is this him?’
‘It is.’
He strode towards me, eyeing me closely, as if suspicious that I were not who Dyfnwal claimed. ‘Tancred a Dinant?’
‘So they call me,’ I answered, doing my best to sound defiant, though I wasn’t sure that I succeeded.
‘You’re shorter than I expected,’ he said to me in French, though he was only slightly the taller of the two of us. ‘And thinner too. Hardly the famed warrior whose feats and prowess I have heard so much about.’ He turned to Dyfnwal. ‘I sincerely hope you have been feeding him, Welshman. If he dies of starvation or ill health before the?theling sees him, I shall hold you to account and he will have your head.’
‘We have kept him fed.’
Not very well, I would have added, but decided it was probably better that I kept my mouth shut, for now at least.
‘As for the price,’ Dyfnwal went on, ‘it has now increased. Twenty pounds in silver, or goods to the same worth.’
‘Twenty pounds?’ Eadric snorted with some indignation. ‘You think I carry twenty pounds of silver with me? No, the price remains as I agreed with your king. Twelve pounds is what I bring, and that is what you will receive.’
The Welshman considered for a moment, and exchanged some words with his comrades. Either way it was a large sum. I supposed it was a tribute of sorts to the regard in which the enemy clearly held me, and perhaps in other circumstances I might have taken it as a compliment.
Dyfnwal shrugged. ‘If that is all you offer, then you will not have him.’
‘Do not test my patience, Welshman. Believe me when I say it would be better if you took advantage of my beneficence, lest my humour should blacken further.’
‘You will not intimidate me, Eadric. I fear neither you nor your master the?theling.’