As he grew near to the lands around the great firth that divided Scotland from England, he stopped to disguise his appearance. He was deep in the northern forest, the autumn was well advanced and he had not seen a living soul for over a day and a half. He darkened his blond hair with a mixture of mud and ash, drawing it back off his face and fastening it with a length of twine. Stubble grew long on his chin, and he darkened it to match his hair. Then he took from his pack the stained and torn tunic that constituted his poor traveller’s disguise, covering it with an equally ancient and travel-stained cloak.
As he began his exploration of the district, he set up a series of refuges. Working almost exclusively alone, as he did, he only had himself to rely on and, if he encountered danger, he had to be sure there was somewhere to hide. In a modest-sized town some distance from Carlisle, he paid out rent in advance for a tiny room in a busy inn, speaking briefly to the proprietor — in truth, far too busy a man to be very curious — and describing himself as having family business in the area which would often take him away for several days at a time. It was not likely he would ever need it, but there was no way of knowing. Better to have a room he never used than to need such a bolt hole and not have one. Then he set off into the wilds of that sparsely-populated border country and found an abandoned farmstead, where he made a shelter in an old barn. He discovered a scatter of ancient ruins and spotted a place where he would be protected from the weather. In each place, he left supplies of basic foodstuffs and containers of fresh water. Elsewhere, he sought out tracts of woodland where the trees grew close together and the pine needles lay in a deep carpet. In an emergency, he knew he could survive in such places, even with winter coming on; he had done so before. He memorized each location, making quite sure he could find the places again if he needed them.
When he was satisfied that he had done all he could, he set off for the populated areas and, for the first time in weeks, re-entered the world of men.
Through the deep quiet of the winter months, Rollo set about discovering everything he could of the area which the king wished to fortify and make his own. He found a land fed by one broad river and many tributaries, creating a boggy terrain that would be difficult to negotiate unless you knew the safe paths. As he stood one December morning, gazing out over a wide expanse of waterlogged ground, frost and patches of ice slowly melting in the weak sun, he thought of Lassair. She had found the firm ground across the fens from Ely to the mainland, and in so doing had saved their lives. In a sudden stab of loneliness, he thought he would have given almost anything, just then, to have her by his side.
Ruthlessly, he pushed her to the back of his mind. She wasn’t there, and he was incapable of summoning her.
The ancient town of Carlisle was the focal point of the region. William’s plan was sound, for a fortification there would enable his soldiers to guard the major road out of western Scotland. But Carlisle was, Rollo discovered, in ruins. Destroyed by the Danes two hundred years ago, it was still a place of half-collapsed walls and devastated dwellings open to the elements. The biting wind howled through the many open spaces like a demon, and a man more susceptible to the power of the spirits would have been fearful.
Rollo, in the guise of a poor merchant, put up in a dirty, tumbledown inn beside the road leading out of the town to the north. He feigned an injury to his leg, an excuse that enabled him to remain there for two weeks, hobbling around and asking discreet, careful questions. There were rumours of a powerful, brutal lord who had designs on the town, and the few inhabitants were very afraid that his arrival would turn an existence that was barely tolerable into something far worse. If the lord deemed you unimportant to his schemes, they said, you would be lucky to escape with your life.
The lord, as Rollo had already guessed, was referred to by everyone as Hawksclaw. Nobody knew much about him, other than that he lived in the wild lands to the north-east, in what some said was a ruined castle. They whispered, wide-eyed, that he had no wife but kept seven women captive, one for each night of the week, and by them had a gang of bastard sons as cruel and ruthless as he was.
Listening to the tales, believing perhaps a third of what he was told, Rollo recognized what he must do. He knew that many of the English did not like their new Norman masters, and he could well appreciate why not. But here in the north-west, if the alternative to William’s rule was a ruthless, lawless brigand who made up the rules as he went along, then surely the choice was obvious. Rollo’s own attitude, had anyone asked him, was that at least William’s firm hand kept the country peaceful. William did not care what men believed, what they thought, which god they worshipped; as long as you worked hard, kept the peace and paid your taxes, in all likelihood the king would leave you alone. Moreover, he would fight off the country’s enemies, as a king should.
Such were Rollo’s thoughts as, step by careful step, he made his plans to kill the man known as Hawksclaw and so leave Carlisle and the north-west safe and ready for the king’s arrival.
It should have been foolproof. So thorough had Rollo’s preparations been that he believed he knew his enemy’s routine down to every instant of the day. Hawksclaw was not a hard man to read: he was a bully and a braggart, and he kept his men obedient to him through brutal cruelty. Rollo had formed the opinion, after having watched the man’s stronghold for a week or more, that the removal of their charismatic but vicious leader would be the end of the threat posed by this particular private army. Hawksclaw’s men, he believed, would creep away once he was dead. It did not seem likely that any of his sons would assume their father’s mantle. They numbered not the ‘gang’ that the people of Carlisle had claimed but in fact only three, one of whom was a boy and one crippled. The remaining son looked as if he had suffered too much from his father’s casual brutality and appeared to be a weak, indecisive man.
Rollo slipped into the stronghold for the final time late one night. It did indeed look like a ruined castle, but the days of its strength and power were long gone. The outer walls were breached in several places, and the wooden gates had been repaired many times, latterly in what appeared to have been a half-hearted fashion. Rollo’s previous forays had enabled him to memorize the interior layout, which consisted of a central yard — foul with mud, ordure, puddles of yellowish water and dozens of animals, from scrawny hens to skinny, disease-ridden wolfhounds — surrounded on three sides by rows of two-storey buildings made mostly of wood. These structures were, in general, crudely made, filthy dirty inside and slowly falling apart. On the lower level there were stables, a small forge and several storerooms, most of them half-empty. Above were a series of dilapidated alcoves that stood open on the side facing the yard, the only privacy for those within provided by flimsy wooden shutters or badly-cured animal skins. One corner of the stronghold was built of stone, and it was here that the lord had his private chambers. They were on the upper floor, reached by a wooden staircase that led up from the yard. There was a wide hall, in the centre of which a fire burned in a circular hearth, and, off to one side, a bed chamber. The whole place stank like a midden built over a latrine.
There were usually a handful of dispirited men hanging around and sometimes more; Rollo had once counted fifty. It appeared that not all of Hawksclaw’s fighting force were permanently billeted with him, which made sense because, for one thing, the lord would not have to feed them all if they did not live with him, and, for another, if they were spread out, there was less danger that every one of them would be wiped out in a single attack. Sometimes Rollo had seen a group of woman, huddled together, one of them looking fearfully over her shoulder and another sporting a swollen, weeping black eye.