The long sleeves of their habits were rolled up to their elbows and their hands and forearms were covered with blood and dirt. Most of them were young, but there was one who was older than the rest, and who had obviously not been involving in the lifting of corpses, for her hands were unbloodied. She came to greet me, introducing herself as Abbess S?thryth and asking my business.
I did not answer her question directly, but gave her my name in return. ‘What happened here?’
‘A terrible battle, lord.’
‘I can see that,’ I replied stiffly. I had never much cared for men and women of the cloister, nor had much patience around them. ‘Which side had the field?’
‘King Guillaume, of course. He came upon the Welshmen in the middle of the night while they were sleeping. A vicious ruin he wrought amongst them until they fled. I’m afraid you have arrived too late.’
I ignored that last remark. ‘What about the Welsh king, Bleddyn? Did they slay him?’
‘Unfortunately he escaped. It’s said he retreated back across the dyke, although at what point he abandoned the struggle or which way he fled no one knows.’
It was because of Bleddyn that Byrhtwald was dead and I had spent countless days chained amidst my own piss at that place they called Mathrafal. I cursed loudly. The abbess flinched at my outburst. Normally I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but this time I quickly apologised, knowing that I would get better answers from her if she were well disposed towards me.
‘And Eadric?’ I asked. ‘Did he escape too?’
‘Eadric, lord?’
‘Called by some the Wild,’ I said, thinking that perhaps she hadn’t heard of him. ‘He was a thegn under the old king; he ravaged these parts some years ago, and this summer joined his cause to the brothers Bleddyn and Rhiwallon.’
‘I know who he is,’ the abbess answered, her face flushed red with indignance. ‘Don’t suppose that because we spend most of our days within the cloister that we are entirely ignorant of the world beyond.’
I sighed, trying to hold on to what small patience I had left. ‘Then tell me where he went.’
‘He was never here,’ S?thryth said, and when she saw my confusion went on: ‘They say there was a disagreement between him and the Welsh king. The exact details are a mystery, but what is known is that afterwards he went away into the north, taking his troops with him.’
Of course. When Eadric had come to Mathrafal he had been only too happy to kill Bleddyn’s household troops in order to get to me. I ought to have guessed from that, if from nothing else, that some rift had opened between them. And I supposed it was fortunate that it had, or else King Guillaume would have faced an army perhaps half as large again, and the outcome could have been very different.
‘You say he went into the north,’ I said. ‘Where exactly did he go? Does he mean to join the?theling?’
On that matter S?thryth was uncertain, although it seemed the most plausible explanation. I asked, too, where King Guillaume had taken his host after the battle. By then the abbess was growing tired of my questions, but I persisted until she answered. She told me that no sooner had the Welsh been routed than the king left for Eoferwic, where he planned to do battle with Eadgar and the Danes.
‘How long ago was this?’ I asked.
‘Six days ago,’ she replied. ‘My fellow sisters have been working by sun and by lantern-light since then to bury the dead.’
The wind gusted, bringing with it the reek of shit mixed with decaying flesh. S?thryth lifted a small pouch to her nostrils, no doubt trying to mask the odour with herbs and so stave off the vaporous poisons that some said were carried upon the air. Whether that was true or not I was not knowledgeable enough to be able to judge, but a dozen years and more of breathing in such battle-smells had brought little ill effect upon me. As far as I was aware, at any rate.
With that the abbess left me, having clearly had enough of indulging my questions. Perhaps she thought that by ignoring me I would grow tired and leave her and the rest of the nuns to their work; if so she was wrong. From speaking to a few of the younger nuns I learnt that the king had left behind a small contingent commanded by his half-brother, the Bishop Odo, whom he had tasked with pursuing the Welshmen to the dyke and with relieving Fitz Osbern, who despite some of the rumours we’d heard still held out in the castle at Scrobbesburh. I asked whether any word of Earl Hugues had come from Ceastre, but none had heard anything.
‘Are you still here?’
I turned to see Abbess S?thryth looking sternly upon me, plainly unimpressed by my questioning of her sisters. By then I had all the information I needed, however, and as the sun fell beneath the hills to the west and the light began to fade, I let them be.
Before returning to Fyrheard, I searched the field for anything that might be of use to us that had not already been taken by the victors, and managed to find two sturdy round shields that with a little repair to the leather upon their faces would serve well, together with a pair of fine hunting knives and a mail hauberk that had once belonged to a fellow Frenchman. His body lay part hidden beneath a thorny bush, which was how I supposed such spoils had gone unnoticed. He was a stouter man than I, which meant the hauberk was a little larger than I would have liked, but it was better than no protection at all, and so I pulled it on and tightened the buckles as far as they would go.
With the skies darkening, then, I rode back to the others, eventually making it back some hours later. Father Erchembald chastised me for having been gone so long; he and the others had worried that some ill fate had befallen me, but when I showed them what goods I’d recovered from the place of battle, their moods soon lightened.
‘Where now, then?’?dda asked me after I had related the news of what had taken place close to St?fford.
That same question had been on my mind as I was riding back, so I had no hesitation in answering it. To my mind there was nothing to be had in joining Bishop Odo’s forces in trying to pursue Bleddyn; the Welsh king could be anywhere, and was probably many leagues from here already. No, the main fighting would be in the north, against the?theling and most likely Eadric too. If I was to have any chance of bringing my sword to bear upon them, that was where I had to be.
Twenty-six
We set out by way of Licedfeld. I didn’t want to take the survivors from Earnford into the wilds of Northumbria, only those who could fight, and so I left behind the older ones, including Nothmund the miller and Beorn the brewer, along with the women and the children, entrusting them into Wigheard’s care. He promised he would find shelter for them at the monastery in the town until I returned.
We parted ways outside the gates of the town, where I handed the monk one of the two saddlebags filled with silver from my hoard.
‘Give this to your abbot,’ I told him.
I hadn’t had a chance to weigh or count how much was there exactly, but reckoned it was enough to ensure the monks stayed friendly and provided my people with adequate food and drink for as long as was necessary. As well it should, for it was fully half of all the wealth I had left in the world.
‘If he raises any objections, mention my name and tell him whatever you must,’ I said. ‘Say that I’ll build him a new church, or give my eldest child into the service of the Lord, and that if I return he may hold me to those promises.’
‘Yes, lord,’ Wigheard replied solemnly.
I did not make such oaths lightly, although I sincerely hoped it would not come to such measures. Even before Earnford had been sacked I’d hardly been a rich man, and I was far poorer now. Not only that, but having lost one son before I had even known him, the last thing I wanted was to have to give up my next into holy orders. But having protected these people thus far, I couldn’t abandon them now, not while armies ravaged and plundered and burnt their way across this kingdom, and I was resolved to do whatever it took to ensure their safety.