Knights of the Hawk

Fifteen

Five days later, Malet was laid to rest beneath the chancel arch in the small stone church at Heia, with all the ceremony befitting a lord of his standing. Rushlights lit the nave and candles stood upon the altar, while a thurifer spread incense to mask the smell and also remind those gathered of the ever-presence of the Holy Spirit. Prayers were said and hymns sung as Malet’s body, embalmed with cinnamon and salt, clad in a fine crimson tunic and shrouded in plain black cloth, was carried in upon a bier by Robert and five of his household knights, all dressed in white, one of the traditional mourning colours. The coffin was lowered into the hollow space beneath the stone floor, Mass was said, and afterwards alms were distributed to the men and women who worked Heia’s lands, while the church’s bell rang for nearly an hour, so that long after the procession had left and made its way across the crumbling stone bridge, beneath the browning leaves of the orchard and up the winding path that led to the castle, we could still hear its plangent notes sounding out across the manor.

I was in the training yard with Pons and Serlo, teaching Godric some simple thrusts and parries, and how and where to move in order to outflank an opponent in single combat, when Robert called me to see him. I found him in his solar, on the up-floor of the hall in the castle, kneeling in prayer in front of the slit of scraped horn that served as a window. Ashes smouldered in the stone hearth, candles stood in the corners of the room, and tapestries covered the walls, though they weren’t enough to keep out the draughts. He was still dressed in the same white tunic and breeches, which was strange to see, given his fondness for black clothing. He looked up as the wan light of late afternoon flooded in, and rose to greet me. His eyes were red from weeping, or tiredness, or a combination of the two, and he looked suddenly much older than his twenty-eight years.

‘It was as my father would have wished it,’ he said.

‘I’m glad, lord.’

‘As am I,’ he said. ‘Glad, that is, that you had the chance to speak with him before he passed away.’

‘I’m not sure that your mother was so pleased. Nor the priest, for that matter.’

‘Dudo has been his most devoted servant these past couple of years. All he wanted was to ensure that my father suffered as little as possible in his final hours. As for my mother’ — Robert gave a deep sigh — ‘she still holds to the belief that you betrayed his faith in you during the business with Ælfwold, as you saw. For that she will not forgive you.’

I stiffened. All that was more than two years in the past. How was it that talk of such things continued to plague me, after so long?

‘Do you hold to the same belief, lord?’ I asked.

‘Of course not,’ he said. ‘And if my father ever truly believed that you’d wronged him, don’t you think he might have discouraged me from accepting you as my man?’

‘You tell me.’

‘Not once. At heart he knew that you did the right thing, hard though that was for him to admit openly. I think in truth he always appreciated what you and your companions did for him.’

I wasn’t entirely convinced by that, remembering all too clearly the venom with which he had spoken to me but a couple of weeks ago. The memory of that still stung, despite the kindness he’d shown on his deathbed. He would not be the first to have felt a desire for reconciliation once he realised his time was short.

‘In any case,’ Robert went on, ‘what has passed, has passed. Regardless of what once happened between you and my father, and regardless of whether or not he recognised your good service, you have more than proven your worth to me, and that is all that matters in my eyes.’

‘Yes, lord.’

He looked troubled for a moment, but I did not press him. A draught blew in and caused the candles on the altar to gutter, and one of them to go out. There was a chill to the air, and a dampness too. Truly summer had departed.

Using a taper, Robert relit the candle that had been extinguished. ‘I realise that I am already in your debt, Tancred. Yet there is something more that I would ask of you.’

‘What might that be?’

‘I have received a message from the king. There is trouble in Flanders.’

‘Trouble?’

‘As you’ll no doubt have heard, the rightful heir to the province was killed in an ambush earlier this year at Cassel. The new count, who has no love for Normandy, is said to be gathering his barons to his banner in readiness for a campaign.’

I knew very well about what had taken place at Cassel. Guillaume fitz Osbern, one of the king’s closest and longest-serving companions and advisers, and by most people’s reckoning the second most powerful man in England, had been sent across the Narrow Sea at the behest of Queen Mathilda, the king’s wife, to aid the young heir, a relation of hers by the name of Arnulf, in his struggles against his enemies. He had been at the boy’s side when the attack came, and he met his end there too, which was hardly surprising given that he’d seen fit to take with him a mere ten of his household knights for protection. I couldn’t say that I was altogether sad to hear of his demise, as embarrassing a fate as it was for one so formidable. I had met him on more than one occasion and felt him to be among the most arrogant of men, with an exaggerated sense of his own importance that perhaps stemmed from his many years of friendship with the king.

‘A campaign against Normandy?’ I asked. ‘At this time of year? The leaves are already falling. In a couple more months it will be winter. What does the Flemish count think he can possibly achieve in so short a space of time?’

‘I don’t know. Nevertheless he presents enough of a threat that the king has felt the need to act. He is determined to strike against the Flemings before they have a chance to do the same to us. He wishes to remind them of their place, and to avenge Fitz Osbern’s death.’

‘Why should that be of any concern to us?’ I asked, though I was starting to suspect what the answer would be, and didn’t like it. ‘That is the king’s business, surely, not ours.’

‘He plans to sail as soon as possible, and has requested that I join him. I have sent a letter to him this afternoon with affirmation of my intention to do so.’

‘We’ve just spent close to three months in the field,’ I said. ‘You have fulfilled your duties to him, and more besides.’

‘Would that were so. But there is the small matter of the relief that I owe him, if I am to succeed to my father’s barony.’

‘I thought that had already been agreed, lord, when he came to pay his respects.’

‘It has,’ he said. ‘And, given the emptiness of our house’s treasury, and in recognition of the good service I have given him so far this year, the king has generously agreed to waive the requirement for a monetary payment, or renders in kind, if I will join him on this latest campaign.’

‘Lord, the outlay required for yet another expedition-’

‘Will still be lower than the cost of paying the relief,’ he finished for me. ‘I have considered this carefully, and weighed up the various expenses involved, and this is the conclusion I have reached. But the cost is not my only reason for doing this.’ He took a deep breath. ‘If I am to forge my own reputation and build upon the foundations that my father has laid, then I must continue to make every effort to win the king’s favour. And I cannot spend all autumn and winter in mourning. My father would not have wanted that.’

I had the feeling that I already knew what it was he wished to ask of me. As usual, though, he refused to come out with it and tell me frankly. Instead he always sought to explain everything first, as if he’d already guessed what my response would be and felt the need to try to persuade me.

‘You want me to go with you,’ I said. ‘That’s what you’ve called me here for, isn’t it?’

‘I have need of your sword, Tancred.’

It was as I’d thought. Hardly had we had the chance to rinse the bloodstains from our mail and our blades than another foe reared his head. Except that the most the Flemish count probably had in mind was stealing a few herd of cattle and burning some storehouses, before retreating to his own lands just as the first snow began to fall: a quick victory to win renown and support from his nobles and to cement his rule. Such raids happened all the time, even when our realm and his were supposedly at peace with one another. They hardly warranted our attention. Moreover, King Guillaume had left his half-brother, Bishop Odo, and his eldest son, another Robert, to govern and defend Normandy in his absence. If there was any fighting to be done to fend off the incursions of the Flemings, they would surely see to it as vigorously as the king himself would. In short, I could think of no reason for us to go.

‘No,’ I said.

Robert stared at me. ‘No?’

‘I’m going to Dyflin,’ I said.

‘Dyflin?’ he echoed, with a look on his face as if I’d just told him the sky was green, and the grass pink. ‘Of all the places in Christendom, why do you want to go there?’

I’d never told him about Oswynn — there had never been any reason to — and I wasn’t about to try to explain now. In all the time I’d known him, he had shown little interest in concerns of the heart, and whilst I didn’t doubt he had his share of mistresses, he never spoke of them to me. He wouldn’t understand.

‘I have my reasons,’ I said simply.

‘You have your oath to me to consider.’

‘Have I not already given you my service, lord?’ In return for the lands he had granted me at Earnford, I was obliged to follow him on campaign for forty days each year. I didn’t know how long exactly we had spent in the marsh country besieging the Isle, but it was probably closer to twice that. ‘Have I not done enough?’

‘You have done a great deal for me, and you should know that I am grateful for your loyalty, I truly am. As soon as our foes are defeated, I promise that I will repay you most handsomely. The king will grant me lands in return for aiding him in his victories, and by the time we are back here for the Christmas feast, I will have riches aplenty to bestow. Gold, silver, horses, land. Whatever it is you seek, I will be able to give you. You have my word. I ask only for your patience.’

I could hardly look at him then as I shook my head, disbelieving. He had said that to me before. But Christmas was two and a half months hence. How patient did he expect me to be?

In any case, it would take more than a few chests of coin or precious jewels to convince me that it was worth abandoning my pursuit of Oswynn to spend almost a quarter of the year following the king on yet another of his expeditions. Another two and a half months and I might never find her again. Even now it might be too late.

‘Would that we could linger by our hearth-fires and regale others with the tales of our hard-won success,’ Robert said in a tone that was no doubt intended to soothe, but which did anything but. ‘In time we will have that chance, I promise. But not yet.’

I clenched my teeth to curb my tongue, feeling my ire rising. ‘Lord, I cannot.’

‘One more campaign before the year is out,’ Robert said. ‘That is all I ask.’

‘And after the Flemings, who will it be next?’ I countered, almost spitting the words. ‘The Scots, perhaps, or else the French king?’

If Robert wanted to go to such lengths to worm his way into King Guillaume’s confidence, then that was his choice. He hardly needed my help in that, and he was mistaken if he thought I would follow him blindly wherever he chose to go, like some dutiful puppy. I was sworn to Robert, trusted him and counted him among my friends, but that did not mean I had to obey his every whim.

‘God’s teeth, it’s hardly as if I’m asking-’

I’d heard enough. ‘I have given you my answer,’ I said before he could finish. ‘And the answer is no.’

I turned and marched towards the door.

‘Tancred,’ he called after me. ‘Tancred!’

I did not stop or so much as look back, but ignored him as I threw the door open and strode away along the passage and down the stairs, out into the yard, my mood as black as the gathering clouds.

Robert did not come after me, nor had I expected him to, but nevertheless I took pains to avoid him the rest of that afternoon. I needed some time alone while I tried to tease out the various skeins of thought that had become tangled in my mind.

As soon as the showers had passed, I went where I thought no one would think to look for me, to a place by the edge of the orchards that I remembered from my previous visit here, at Easter when Robert had welcomed all his vassals to a great outdoor feast beneath the blossoming branches. I sat on the rain-soaked ground, beneath the yellowing leaves of a gnarled pear tree, drew out my whetstone and ran it up the edge of my knife, as I often did when I wanted to clear my mind, pausing occasionally to gaze out across Heia. For all that I had grown to love Earnford’s green pastures and golden wheatfields, its woods and its ploughlands nestled in the steep river valley, this was far grander, a place of true beauty, and I could easily see how one might grow comfortable here.

The castle, a fine building of timber and dressed stone, stood on a hill in the triangle of land where two rivers met, commanding the crossing-places. Around it in every direction, bounded by the ancient trackway to the west and the woods to the east, lay broad expanses of hay-meadows and common lands where the villagers grazed their sheep and their goats, with cottages and vegetable gardens, barns and pig-pens and crofts dotted in between. A millwheel turned lazily in the distance; there was another further upstream that we had seen as we rode in. In spring, when I had last been here, it had seemed a place of wonder, with the winding river sparkling in the sun’s light and green barley-shoots bursting forth from the earth. In autumn, however, it was even more enchanting. The evening mist clung thickly to the land, forming a white ocean out of which the castle alone rose proud, its tower and encircling stockade standing sentinel across that wide land, under skies as clear and pale as they were vast.

All was quiet, save for the tumbling of water over the fish-weirs and the lowing of cattle and the flapping and honking of a skein of geese as they rose from the water-meadows, taking up arrowhead formation as they flew towards the setting sun.

West, I noted. Not south, to Normandy and Flanders, but west, to Dyflin.

The churchmen and scholars who studied the holy texts all shared the opinion that any attempt to divine the future was sacrilege, whether it involved studying the flights of birds, or examining entrails, or scattering runesticks as the Danes were known to do. God’s design, as complex as it was mysterious, could not be determined by such crude methods, they said, and I was inclined to agree. I didn’t believe in portents, although if I did, those geese were probably the clearest sign I was likely to receive.

‘Here you are,’ came a voice from behind me. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’

Surprised, I fumbled the whetstone as, instinctively, my other hand clutched tight at the knife-hilt, and somehow in it all I managed to nick my finger, which began streaming with blood. Cursing at the pain, I shoved it in my mouth and began to suck hard, at the same time glancing up to see who this newcomer was.

It was Beatrice.

‘I didn’t mean to startle you,’ she said. ‘Is it bad?’

‘I’ll live, I suppose,’ I muttered. ‘I’ve suffered worse injuries in my time.’

She smiled at that. When first we met she had not much liked me, I remembered, and it was a while before I ever saw such warmth from her. She sat down on the damp ground beside me, amidst the leaves and the windfalls. She wasn’t wearing a cloak, and I wondered that she wasn’t cold.

‘Your brother sent you, didn’t he?’ I asked.

‘Why do you think that?’

‘He means to convince me to join him on this expedition to Flanders.’

‘He tells me you have it in your head to go to Dyflin.’

That was neither a confirmation nor a denial, although, I thought, if he had told her that much, it meant that at least he had been listening.

‘Where’s your husband?’ I asked. ‘Isn’t he concerned about you seeking out the company of strange men?’

She gave me a wry look. ‘He went hawking in the woods with some of my father’s other vassals. He’s a keen falconer. Robert lent him his swiftest bird, Ligetsleht. He said they wouldn’t be back until dusk.’

‘All the same,’ I said, teasing her, ‘if he hears that you’ve been arranging secret meetings in the orchard while he’s away, he won’t be pleased.’

Guillaume d’Archis, for I’d learnt that was his name, seemed a humourless sort, although perhaps that was unfair, given that I had only met him properly for the first time that morning, after the funeral. To my mind he was rather cold, not easily approachable, and taciturn, too, with hard eyes that betrayed no feeling. Not the sort of husband I imagined being well suited to Beatrice, who was warm in heart and gentle in spirit.

Was there a touch of jealousy there? Perhaps, but only because it had been so long since I myself had last felt a woman’s touch. Whatever feelings Beatrice and I might once have shared, they were long buried.

‘My being here isn’t any secret,’ she said. ‘Robert asked if I would come and speak with you.’

There, finally, was my answer. ‘You mean he asked you to talk some sense into me.’

‘That’s not why I came, though.’

‘Then why?’

Beatrice picked up one of the dappled pears that lay beside her, looked it over for signs of worms before, satisfied, she took a bite out of it. ‘If Robert wants to follow the king on another expedition, that’s his business, and his alone. He doesn’t need you to always be there to defend him from the evils of the world.’

But what if he did? I remembered only too well what had happened to Fitz Osbern. Robert was a competent swordsman, but no more than that, and at times he could be, in his own way, every bit as reckless and headstrong as myself. If I and Eudo and Wace and all his other vassals allowed him to venture across the sea alone, with only a contingent of his hearth-troops for accompanying him, what was to say that he wouldn’t suffer the same fate?

‘Before I ever gave my oath to your brother,’ I said, ‘you made me pledge myself to his protection. I still remember that promise, even if you’ve forgotten.’

‘I remember,’ she said quietly. No doubt she remembered the kiss we’d shared then, too. ‘But Robert is a better knight now than he was then; older and wiser, too. He can take care of himself.’

‘I hope you’re right. For his sake.’

‘Why do you want to go to Dyflin, in any case?’

I inhaled deeply. Until now, I had kept everything Eithne had told me to myself.

‘Oswynn,’ I said simply.

‘Oswynn?’ Beatrice repeated, frowning. ‘Your woman? I don’t understand. I thought-’

She didn’t say it, but I knew what she meant. ‘So did I. But then at Beferlic last year I saw her. She was there, alive and as well as I’ve ever seen her, in the company of one of the Danish jarls, who goes by the name of Haakon, or so I’ve recently learnt. Dyflin is where he was last seen.’

‘So you mean to go after her?’

‘And to bring her back.’

‘What if you can’t find her? What if she’s no longer with this Haakon, or if he’s gone so far away that you can never catch up with him?’

Such doubts had been plaguing my mind ever since my meeting with Eithne, but I didn’t want to hear them from someone else’s lips as well.

‘I’ll find her,’ I said.

A magpie hopped close in front of us and nibbled for a brief moment at a fallen pear, before a crow descended, screeching, its jet-black wings outspread, and chased it off.

‘What about you?’ I asked. ‘Are you happy? With him, I mean.’

She would not meet my eyes. ‘I am content,’ she said, but the set of her lips betrayed her.

‘Are you sure?’

‘Does it matter whether I am or not? The fate of women is not to be happy but merely to serve the wishes of our menfolk and to spit out children. My father made the arrangements earlier this year. It was hardly as if I had a voice in the matter.’

There was resentment there, clearly. ‘I shouldn’t have asked. I’m sorry.’

She was quiet for a moment. ‘I am content,’ she repeated. ‘That is enough for me. Of course I wish that things were different, but if we spend our lives forever craving that which we don’t and can never have, then we condemn ourselves to years of misery, and we will never find happiness.’

There was good sense in that, I supposed. Father Erchembald was forever offering me similar pieces of wisdom, and he was usually right.

‘Besides,’ she said, ‘in another few months I will have reason to be joyful again, for I will have a new life to take care of, to hold in my arms.’

‘You’re with child?’ I asked, surprised. It didn’t show — not yet, at any rate.

‘I think so,’ Beatrice said. ‘Don’t mention it to my husband, should you see him before I do. I want him to hear it from me first.’

‘You’re with his child but you haven’t told him?’

‘Not yet. He’ll be pleased with the news, won’t he?’

From the little I’d seen of him, I reckoned it would take more than news of his impending fatherhood to please that man, but it would be unkind of me to say so.

‘What husband wouldn’t be?’ I said instead. ‘Especially if the child turns out to be a son to whom he can teach the skills for battle and the pleasures of the hunt.’

We sat in silence for a while as the mist closed in. The sun’s rim was almost upon the horizon and the cold of dusk surrounded us.

‘It seems to me that an oath is much like a marriage,’ Beatrice mused after a while. A smile crossed her face and her golden hair glimmered in the evening light. ‘I am sworn to my husband, while you’re married to my brother.’

I laughed at the comparison, which had never before crossed my mind.

‘It’s true, though, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘In their own way they bind us both, and prevent us from pursuing our own ambitions and desires.’

‘Only if we allow them to do so,’ I replied, although the words seemed hollow. For the purpose of oaths was to maintain order in the world. If men and women were free to do as they would and go wherever they pleased, all would quickly become ungovernable. Oaths help ensure that people follow the laws of the land; they offer protection and security to both parties. For just as a knight swears to defend his lord’s life with his own, so the lord in return pledges to furnish him with the arms and equipment to do so, a roof to sleep beneath and a stipend by which he may live, or else with lands and their rents sufficient to support him. Or so, at least, it went in principle.

‘When we first met you told me that you were married only to your sword,’ Beatrice said. ‘You should follow where it takes you.’

Indeed I remembered saying that, and I’d meant it too. In those weeks and months of despair after losing Oswynn and my former lord and so many of my brothers-in-arms in the ambush at Dunholm, I’d had no one to fight for, nothing to lose.

‘Things are different now,’ I said. ‘I have responsibilities. To Robert, to my own knights, to the people of Earnford. They depend on me.’

Beatrice was silent for a while, as if lost in thought.

‘Do what you think is right, not what Robert expects of you,’ she said eventually. ‘That is my advice. He’ll respect you all the more for it; if not at first, then in time.’

I nodded, though in truth I wasn’t entirely persuaded. ‘You came to give me comfort on the day that we buried your father,’ I said, and managed a smile. ‘I should be offering you words of consolation, not the other way around.’

‘We all knew his time was coming.’ She spoke softly, looking down at the ground. ‘He was so weak, and in such pain by the end. When he finally passed away I was as much relieved as I was saddened, because I knew then that he wouldn’t have to suffer any longer, but instead would be with God. Does that sound strange?’

‘Not at all.’

Beatrice nodded, and I hoped she was reassured. ‘There’s to be a feast tonight in his memory,’ she said after a while. ‘You’ll come, won’t you?’

‘Perhaps,’ I replied, although it wasn’t as if I had much choice. To refuse the invitation would seem disrespectful. Despite our many differences and all the frustrations I’d felt in recent months, I still admired Robert as a lord and valued him as a friend, one of the few that it seemed I had in those days. The last thing I wanted was for that friendship to sour. Yet he could not forever ask these things of me and expect me to remain content.

Beatrice understood that. Why couldn’t he understand it, too?