Providing, that was, that I returned. Providing that the Danes and the rebels in Northumbria didn’t overrun the kingdom, slaughtering everything in their path. For while the Welsh might have been defeated, Eadgar and King Sweyn and their men were still fresh and eager for battle and glory.
And for Norman blood.
We finally caught up with King Guillaume’s army by the banks of the fast-flowing river called by some the Yr, which I was told marked the traditional boundary between the old kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria. So far he had been unable to effect a crossing, for the enemy had destroyed all the bridges along that stretch and now held the northern side all the way to the Humbre, into which the river emptied some miles to the east.
Raiding-parties patrolled the opposite bank, taunting us from across the water, marked out as Danes by their banners, which displayed runes and skulls, bloodied daggers and wolves’ heads, ravens and fire-breathing dragons. While their king purported to be a Christian, many of their kind were godless men, and those were for the most part pagan symbols.
Occasionally some of their horsemen would come within bowshot, and a handful of our archers would try their luck, but the wind usually took their arrows, which only invited yet more jeering and made our men waste even more shafts. And a waste it was, for those scouts were no threat to us and even if we killed them it would be but a small victory. All they wanted was to assess our numbers and try to judge the condition of our men, and it was difficult to stop them for the simple reason that an army as large as ours is almost impossible to hide.
It was a very different host to the one that had marched upon Eoferwic last year: fewer in numbers but for the most part better equipped and better trained, with many more knights and archers and fewer men of the fyrd. To that army I added the six men I’d brought with me:?dda; Galfrid the steward; the three lads Ceawlin, D?gric and Odgar from Earnford, all of whom had on occasion trained with me and my knights in the yard and thus knew something of fighting, even if it was not much; and Father Erchembald. Reluctant though he’d been to leave those in Licedfeld, I needed him, not for his fighting skills of course, but for his wisdom and advice, which I valued and trusted more than that of anyone else in the world. Nor was there another priest to whom I would rather confess my sins before battle than he, who had come to know me so well over the past year and more. If I died his were the prayers that I wished sent to intercede on my behalf.
There were some faces that I recognised among that army, either because they had been there the last time we had marched on Eoferwic, or because they were influential noblemen and I remembered them from the few times I had attended the king’s courts. But those men whom I knew personally or who recognised me were few in number. An oddly despondent feeling came over me as I realised I was no longer the one to whom everyone else looked for instructions, the one who inspired confidence and instilled respect. Instead I was once more merely one stranger among many, with nothing to mark me out as a lord and a leader of men: not a banner or pennon to fly; nor a single household knight to command; nor, apart from the six who were with me, any man there I could even call my friend.
Or so I thought, until that evening as we were setting up camp, when I heard my name being called from a distance. Jolted from my thoughts, I turned and saw two familiar faces I had not expected to see.
‘Pons!’ I said. ‘Serlo!’
We embraced like long-lost siblings. It couldn’t have been much more than two months since I had last seen them, but it felt far longer.
‘We didn’t think we’d see you again, lord,’ Pons said. ‘We thought you were dead.’
‘Well, here I am,’ I replied. ‘Alive, if only just.’
They had survived the ambush in which I’d been captured, and made it together with Robert to Eoferwic. But as soon as it was heard that the enemy had entered the Humbre and were headed for the city, Robert and his father the vicomte had sent them south to bear the news to King Guillaume, little knowing that he was already on the way at the head of an army.
‘Only a few days later we heard that the city had fallen,’ Serlo said. ‘It was fortunate that they did send us, or else we would have been there when it happened.’
Sometimes God’s favour wanes and at other times it shines upon us for reasons we cannot always understand, but it was clear He had chosen to spare them. I could but hope that He had extended the same favour to the Malets themselves.
Still, to add to the unexpected sight of Serlo and Pons came another piece of good fortune in the form of the arrival two days later of Eudo and Wace, who had ridden north from Robert’s estates in Suthfolc.
‘We thought you had gone with Lord Robert and his sister to Eoferwic,’ Wace said. ‘When we heard what happened, we feared the worst.’
‘Who are these men?’ Eudo asked, frowning as he gestured at those seated around our campfire.
To that question there was no simple answer, and so I told them the tale, just as I had told Father Erchembald and?dda before. Of course Eudo and Wace knew nothing of what had happened to me, and why should they? They had been on the other side of the kingdom entirely, defending Heia and its surrounding manors against King Sweyn.
‘Or at least we were, until the Danes brought their fleet up the river,’ said Wace. ‘Then your countryman Earl Ralph called us to Noruic where we had to fight them off.’
Ralph Guader was the Earl of East Anglia, a man of an age with myself, known as much for his iron will and his lack of humour as for his skill at arms. He had led a contingent of Bretons in the great battle at H?stinges, and performed his duties admirably from what I’d heard; this battle, however, would have been a sterner test of his abilities for the Danes were determined and unforgiving warriors, who would often rather die than suffer defeat. I had faced them before, and did not much relish the thought of having to do so again.
‘I’ve never known such fighting,’ Eudo said. ‘We battled them street by street all the way from the walls to the quays, until there was not an inch of mud in the city that was not covered in blood. They throw themselves into the fray without care for their lives, and even when they are surrounded they will not stop.’
He shook his head, unable to say any more. Something in their expressions told me they had both seen things in the past month that they could not bring themselves to relate, not even amongst friends. As had I.
In that moment I understood that the close companionship we once had would never be regained, or at least not in the same form. Before, we had always lived as we had fought, sharing the same tales and the same songs of battle across the feasting-table, bedding down on sodden rushes in distant halls, riding shoulder to shoulder in the charge. Everything that had happened had happened to all of us together. Now, however, we had grown too different; our lives had taken us in separate directions and there would forever be a distance between us that could never be crossed.
‘What brought you here?’ I asked.
‘After we had beaten the Danes off, they sailed on up the coast,’ Wace said. ‘Earl Ralph thought they might land elsewhere in East Anglia and kept us in Noruic for a while in case they marched overland, but when reports came that they’d gone into the Humbre, he sent some of us north to join the king. We expected to catch up with him some days ago; he must have ridden quickly if he had time to defeat the Welsh at St?fford first.’
Indeed the word from those close to him was that the king was in a fouler mood than anyone had ever known him. The longer the enemy held us at the Yr and the blacker and thicker grew the smears of smoke on the northern horizon, the worse his temper became. He would lash out at his retainers, one of whom, a manservant by the name of Fulbert, was said to have died after the king had struck him a blow around the head for suggesting that it would be better simply to pay King Sweyn to leave these shores. For the Danes loved gold and silver even more than they did the blood-rush of battle, and nothing pleased them more than obtaining such riches without having to draw steel and risk their lives in its pursuit.