‘You used to be a warrior yourself, didn’t you?’ I asked. ‘You’re no stranger to the field of battle.’
He did not answer, not straightaway at least, and for a while we rode on in silence. I caught a glimpse of a dog, thin and wretched, wandering the ruins of its former home, plaintively barking for its master who would not come. Apart from birds and the occasional hare darting across the path, it was the only creature we had seen all day.
‘Do you remember that day earlier this summer when the Welsh came, when we pursued them into the lands across the dyke?’?dda asked.
He knew I did, and so I waited for him to go on.
‘That was the first time I had killed a man in fourteen years.’ Anger stirred in his eyes and in his knuckles, which had turned white as his hands balled into fists. ‘I did not like doing it then, and I like it even less now. Yes, it is true that I have seen war, but I am no warrior.’
‘What happened fourteen years ago?’
He snorted, as if the idea that I might be interested were somehow ridiculous, but when he saw my stern expression, he answered: ‘This story I have told to very few others. If I am to tell you, lord, you must swear not to repeat it, not to the priest or anyone else either.’
The rest of the party was a little way behind us, not so far separated from us as to be vulnerable should any attack come, but far enough to be out of earshot.
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘Go on.’
He regarded me for a moment, as if considering whether or not he could trust me, then sighed. ‘Since the beginning of that year the Welsh had been raiding all along the borderlands: plundering, raping and burning much as they are now. In the summer my lord chose me and my two brothers, Brun and Tatel, to go with him when he was summoned to the war-band of Bishop Leofgar of Hereford, whose writ at the time held sway along this part of the March.’
‘The bishop?’ I asked. ‘What would he know of war?’
‘Very little, as we would come to learn,’?dda said bitterly. ‘He was an angry man as I remember, overly fond of his wine and with a high opinion of his own talents. For all his posturing he was no more a war leader than myself or my brothers. I was barely twenty summers old then, and they were some years younger, both of them strong-willed and eager lads. Of the three of us only I knew anything of horsemanship or had any sort of skill at arms, but even I had not seen battle before.’
He inhaled deeply, as if to calm himself. ‘Not until that night at Clastburh. The Welsh came upon our camp while we slept and inflicted a slaughter such as I could never have imagined. I lost my eye when one of the bastards put it out with a spear, although I was among the luckier ones, for I survived. Tatel and Brun fell beside me in the shield-wall, both meeting their ends along with most of our host, my lord, and the bishop himself.’ He shook his head, and there was the slightest moisture in his eye. ‘I was the one who had to take the news back to my sick mother. I was the one who tried to console her, but the grief proved too much for her heart to bear and she too died soon afterwards. After that there was nothing left for me, and though it shames me, I ran away from my old manor, begging in the towns and by the roadsides until my wanderings brought me to Earnford. The steward at the time took pity on me and gave me work in the stables. Until these last few days, that has been my life.’
?dda had ever been a solemn man, who kept to himself and rarely smiled, and I had long suspected that some sort of hardship lay in his past. Unlike the rest of the villagers he had no kin anywhere on the manor or those neighbouring. Now I knew why.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, knowing the words were trite but having no others to use in their stead.
He nodded, wiping a hand across his face to rid his one good eye of the tears that were forming. ‘I am not like you, lord,’ he said, his voice suddenly small. ‘I do not seek adventure; I have no desire for riches or glory. Just as your sword determines your path, so the horses determine mine, and that is all I have ever wanted.’
‘I understand.’
He did not seem to hear me, but went on: ‘Then this year the Welsh came again, and I slew them because they had done the same to men I’d known. In the same way I ride with you now. When the time comes I will be content to fight alongside you and send our enemies to their graves, for it will be justice. But I will not enjoy it.’
He turned to face me, wearing a grim, troubled expression. That was the most the Englishman had ever spoken in my company, and it took me a few moments to take in everything he had said.
Like me he had set foot upon the sword-path. He had tasted battle, had wielded naked steel and sent men to their deaths. But that was as far as our stories could be compared, for he had only ever done so out of duty. Ever since my fourteenth year all I had ever dreamt of was taking up arms, of serving my lord well and seeing my fame spread. Even now, after everything that had happened in my life, after seeing so many of my friends fall and knowing that I might easily have been among them, still I dreamt of those things. Still I craved the bloodlust, the feel of my sword and shield in my hands, the thrill of the kill. I could neither deny nor restrain it, so deeply was that fighting instinct ingrained within my very bones. It was as much a part of myself as my heart or my head or my stomach. Cut it out and I would die.
In pursuing those desires these last few months, however, I had somehow lost myself and forgotten who I was. Exactly when it had happened I could not say, but at some point my reputation had overtaken me. I had grown proud, and deaf to the good advice of my friends and comrades: all the things I despised in others; all the things I’d promised myself I would never become. I had spent too long glorying in my newfound fame, listening to the tales that other men wove around my exploits, until I had started to believe them myself. Until the myth figured in my mind more clearly than the truth. All this I had allowed to happen, and in so doing had nearly lost everything. Leofrun’s death, Earnford’s destruction: these were God’s ways of punishing me, of putting me back in my place, of reminding me who I was.
And yet the Tancred who led this desperate and hungry band of folk was an altogether different man to the one who had first arrived in Earnford over a year ago. I could see the change being wrought in myself, could feel fresh determination rising up and filling me. All the bruises I had suffered and all the ruin and slaughter I had witnessed only served to make me stronger.
We came upon others as we travelled: men and women whose lords and stewards, kinsfolk, children and livestock had been killed before their eyes, whose lives had in one stroke been torn away from them. They tended to be wary of us at first, but when they saw how dirt-stained were our clothes, how weary and ill fed our horses, and how few our weapons, they lost their fear and joined us. Probably they thought they were safer travelling in a group rather than alone, and probably they were right.
Thus over the course of the next few days our numbers grew. Some came laden with scraps of food, pots and whatever other goods that they had managed to salvage from their homes; others brought horses and dogs and even on one occasion two scrawny goats, one of which we later killed for its meat, little though there was.
A very few brought rumours of happenings elsewhere. And so we learnt that a great battle had been fought at Scrobbesburh in which the Norman army under Fitz Osbern and the castellan Roger de Montgommeri had been utterly routed. According to some, the enemy had slain the two commanders before reducing the town to ashes, giving no quarter to man, woman or beast. But others had heard differently; they said the commanders still lived, having managed to fall back to and hold out within the castle, and that Bleddyn had left a small force to besiege the town and lay waste the surrounding country while he took the main part of his host to march upon St?fford to the east.