Knights of the Hawk

Twenty-two

Whether I truly believed that was the last we would see of our pursuers, and that we had shaken them off our trail for good, I can no longer remember. If I did, however, then I was not only foolish but also gravely mistaken.

In those hours after our flight from Dyflin, though, I found no place in my thoughts for worry or doubt. The seas were calm that night, which meant that for once my gut was not churning, and so instead of sickness swelling in my stomach, there was hunger. My heart was filled with delight, my head giddy not just with the salt air but with the prospect of adventure and the feeling of freedom: a feeling I hadn’t experienced in a long time. Tancred a Dinant, the Breton, the lord of Earnford, was once more going to war, but this time it was different, for this was a war of my own choosing.

Under the cover of night, we ran north for a couple of hours or more, taking advantage of the stiff breeze that blew athwart our course, until the clouds began to veil the stars, when Magnus at last took us in towards shore, where a wide beach stretched between two high cliffs. We pushed Nihtegesa high up the sand, then took down her mast and made a tent over her deck with an oilskin sheet to keep out the thin rain which by then was beginning to fall, and bedded down under it for shelter, with our cloaks rolled up as pillows. By morning the skies had cleared, and with the sun glistening off the wave-tips and a favourable wind filling our sail, we set off again, following the whale-road north.

The sun was past its highest when first we glimpsed the ship on the horizon. It lay some way off our stern, and a little out to sea, on our steerboard side. The keenest eyes among us could not make out whether she was trader or longship, however, and we soon lost sight of her. Still, it served to put me on edge all that afternoon and the evening too, which was probably why I was in such a foul mood as we sat around the campfire, where Ælfhelm and his comrades were cooking some kind of stew made from fish and beans that was apparently a favourite dish in Defnascir, the place many of them hailed from.

‘What was it that Haakon stole from you?’ Magnus asked me later that evening, when the last light of day was all but gone. I was sitting upon a boulder high up on the beach, above the tideline, running a whetstone up the edge of my sword, the one I’d brought from Earnford. It was not as well balanced as I would have liked, and I was still getting used to its weight, but the least I could do was keep it sharp and free of rust.

‘Why?’ I asked. ‘What business is it of yours?’

‘It’s my business because it’s my ship.’

I didn’t answer straightaway, but simply took an oilcloth from my pack and worked at polishing the flat of the blade until the coiling, smoke-like pattern ingrained in the steel glimmered in the moon’s wan light.

‘Well?’ Magnus asked.

‘He took my woman.’

At first he must have thought I was joking, for he gave me a strange look. ‘Your woman?’ he asked with a snort. ‘Is that all?’

‘If you had ever seen her,’ I said, ‘you wouldn’t be laughing.’

‘It’s not my place to judge, I suppose,’ said Magnus. ‘All I can say is that she must be a precious jewel indeed if you’re travelling to the ends of Britain just to find her.’

‘She is,’ I answered, closing my eyes, recalling her face, just as I had many times during the dark, lonely nights since she’d been taken from me. I remembered the wild gleam in her eyes that spoke of her mischievous, restless spirit, the feel of her skin upon my fingertips, her round, firm breasts that I had caressed so many times in those short months that we had been together.

How I missed her.

It was often said that only for the sake of reputation will a man risk everything, but now I realised that wasn’t true. For here I was. What fame I’d earned myself was all but squandered, and my name tarnished, perhaps for ever. But if it wasn’t riches or land or duty or honour that had set me on this path, then what? Love? That was one name for it, I supposed, although this didn’t feel to me like the love that the poets often sang of: overpowering, obsessive and jealous. No, this was different. Even though we had not been together long, somehow with Oswynn I had sensed a kinship of souls, a closeness that I had never been able to forge with any other. Not even with Leofrun, for all that she had been dear to me. That closeness was what I yearned for above everything. All my striving for fame and glory had not made me happy. Now I went in search of the one thing that would.

The boulder on which I perched was wide enough for two, and Magnus sat down beside me. ‘I got into a fight over a girl once myself,’ he said as he gazed out across the cove at the breakers lapping gently upon the sand. ‘I didn’t know she was married until her husband stumbled upon us while we were tumbling together. I was fortunate to get away without a scratch upon me. He wasn’t.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘It always seems to end badly when there are women involved. And yet we never learn, for we’re always fighting over them, aren’t we?’

I thought back to that summer’s day, long years ago. The day when I had claimed my first kill. That fight had been over a woman, too.

I was nearly twice the age now that I’d been then, but clearly the last twelve years had taught me nothing, nothing at all. For I was back where my journey along the sword-path had begun, as reckless and as dim-witted now as ever, and with barely anything to show for all my struggles.

‘How did Haakon take her from you?’ Magnus asked.

I sighed, and told him about the ambush that night at Dunholm, and how my friends and I had barely managed to escape with our lives, and how that had been the last I’d seen of her for a year and a half, until she had appeared at Beferlic. ‘How she came to end up in his company, I don’t know. Possibly one of Eadgar’s men captured her during the ambush, and later sold her on as a slave.’

‘I can think of a simpler explanation than that,’ Magnus said. ‘Haakon was at Dunholm.’

I shot him a glare. ‘What?’

‘He was there. He was pledged to Eadgar at that time, as were many other sword-Danes from Orkaneya and the Suthreyjar. He was one of those leading the attack. Or at least so he’s now claiming.’

‘Whoever told you that obviously wasn’t there. It was Eadgar and the Northumbrians who led the attack that night. I saw his purple-and-yellow banner.’

‘I’m not denying that Eadgar was there, but he wasn’t the one who broke down the gates of the stronghold and torched the mead-hall. That was Haakon’s doing.’

I stared at him, confused. ‘No,’ I said, surprised that Magnus could have heard it so wrong. ‘It was Eadgar who stormed the gates. He burnt the mead-hall.’

With Robert de Commines, my lord, inside. Had I not, weeks later, stood face to face with the ætheling whilst he bragged of how he had murdered him? Had all that been but a dream?

‘So Eadgar would have everyone believe. He wanted to be the one to kill Earl Robert, but Haakon desired the glory for himself. What I’ve been told is that while the aetheling was occupied elsewhere in the town, he took it upon himself to storm the stronghold.’

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘If that’s true, then why haven’t I learnt of this before now?’

‘Because Eadgar paid Haakon and all his followers to keep their mouths shut, and paid them very generously at that.’

My mind was reeling. None of this was making sense. ‘Why would he do that?’

‘At the time he was seeking the support of a number of the great Northumbrian lords, many of whom still doubted Eadgar’s stomach for a fight, and didn’t believe in his conviction or his ability to mount a full campaign. The ætheling needed them to believe he was the one, and he alone, who burnt Dunholm, who killed Earl Robert and destroyed his army, if he was to bring their spears under his banner.’

‘But why should the truth only come out now?’

The Englishman shrugged. ‘Now that Eadgar’s rebellion has been crushed and he’s fled to the protection of the King of Alba, most of those supporters have deserted him. I suppose Haakon thought there was no need to hide it any longer. Probably he was tired of keeping it a secret and wanted, finally, to boast of his triumph. I only heard this from someone who learnt it from a passing trader, so how much of it’s true, I can’t say. Still, it would explain how your woman came to be with him.’

It was as if a veil had been lifted from my eyes. At a single stroke most of what I thought I knew about what had happened that night was swept away, revealed for the lie it was.

How many times had I played over those events in my mind, trying to think of some way that it could have been different, something I could have done to turn the battle and save my lord? How many times had I dreamt of exacting my revenge upon Eadgar for what he’d done, for all of my sword-brothers he had slain, for all the Norman blood he had spilt?

All this while I had been swearing vengeance upon the wrong man. It wasn’t Eadgar I needed to kill, after all. It was Haakon Thorolfsson.

Until now, though I would never have admitted it to Magnus, I’d been wondering whether it would even be necessary to mount an attack on the Dane’s fortress if I could negotiate with him a price for Oswynn’s release. Now, however, I realised that nothing less than his blood would satisfy me.

And I, not Harold’s son, would take his life. My hand would deal the telling blow. I would do it slowly, and make him suffer as he had made my lord suffer. I’d do to him all the things that, long ago, I’d sworn to do to Eadgar. I would put out his eyes and sever his balls, cut out his tongue so that he could not scream, and only then would I kill him, slicing open his belly and burying my sword-point deep in his chest, in his heart, and when I was done I would leave his broken corpse for the carrion birds to feast upon.

Even then it wouldn’t be justice. Not after what he had done. Nothing could be.

But it would be enough.

The following day we saw the ship again, only this time she was a little closer than before. Close enough, at least, that we could make out the black and yellow stripes of her sail.

Wyvern.

She must have seen us, for she stayed on our tail for more than an hour that afternoon, gradually overhauling us, until a sudden squall blew in, lashing us with rain and hail and churning the waves into a foaming tumult that harried Nihtegesa’s hull and splintered into trails of froth that cascaded up and over the gunwale and soaked us to our skin. The timbers creaked and shudders ran along the whole length of the ship. We shipped the oars so that they did not shear, and had to bail water out of the bilges just to stay afloat, but one good thing came of it, for amidst the low clouds and the heaving waves we managed to lose Wyvern. When finally the rain ceased and the clouds passed over and we saw the evening sun disappearing over the thickly wooded lands that lay to larboard, there was no sign of her.

‘Your friends are certainly determined,’ Magnus said that night when we lay at anchor. He’d brought us into a narrow cove, which was difficult for anyone who wasn’t familiar with the land and its rivers to spot from out at sea, but which offered good shelter from the wind. ‘It’s lucky for you I know these coasts, or else there’s a good chance they’d have caught us already.’

I couldn’t argue with him on that, although admittedly there’d been a moment earlier that day, before the squall, when I had doubted him. In an effort to maintain some distance between us and our pursuers, he had ordered Uhtferth to steer us hard by a headland, too close for my liking to the looming crags and sharp rock stacks that jutted proud of the waves. The wind had gusted in Nihtegesa’s sail and more than once I’d murmured a prayer to God, thinking it was about take her and dash us against those cliffs in a tangle of broken timbers, but fortunately Uhtferth and his crew had a good feeling for the currents and the swell, and we’d raced swiftly past without coming to harm.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said.

‘About what?’

‘About how much easier it would be next time not to try to evade these friends of yours, but to hand you over to them instead. How much do you think they’ll offer in return?’

‘They won’t give you anything,’ I said. ‘You’ll be fortunate if you manage to escape with your life, once they learn who you are. And you can be sure that I’ll tell them, if you dare betray me.’

He contemplated that for a moment, unspeaking, as Nihtegesa bobbed on the tide.

‘That’s why you wanted to flee Dyflin that night, isn’t it?’ I asked. ‘Not for my sake, but because, even now, you fear what they would do to you if they ever caught up with you.’

Again he didn’t answer me, and I took that as a sign I was right. Water slapped against the hull and the anchor chain grazed the timbers. Some of the crew were still awake, but most had fallen asleep, huddled beneath blankets next to their sea chests, while Godric, Eithne, Serlo and Pons had bedded down on the bow platform. Even after spending two days at sea in close quarters, my band and Magnus’s tended to keep themselves apart as much as possible, with at least one man from each party staying awake at all times to keep lookout during the night. Tonight, partly to ease the lingering hostility between English and Normans, among whom Magnus’s men counted Godric for having thrown in his lot with me, we had each nominated ourselves to take the first watch.

‘I should have left you there,’ Magnus said ruefully after a while.

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘Because …’ he began, and then hesitated. ‘Because I have few enough allies left these days. I knew that if I was to do this, I’d need all the men I could muster, and another four swords could prove useful. You seemed every bit as desperate as myself, and for that reason I felt I could trust you.’

How flimsy were the bonds that held us together. Perhaps that had always been so. Alliances were rarely forged through mere friendship, after all, but out of convenience, in the hope of mutual gain, and because both parties shared a common interest. He owed me nothing; he didn’t even like me, not really, despite the many ways in which we were similar. For the time being we were useful to each other, and that was all that mattered.

For two more days we ran north with a swift following breeze, and saw no more sign of Wyvern, but on the third day the wind dropped and there was barely enough to make the sailcloth flap, which meant we were forced to go under oar alone. Each of us, even Magnus, took our turn to sit upon the sea chests and bend our backs to the waves. It was hard work, even for one like myself who was well used to long days of exertion, spending almost every day practising at arms or in the saddle. When my stint had finished and it was time for someone else to take my place, my hands were raw, my forearms glistening with sweat, my bones aching and my throat parched. I was searching for some water with which to moisten my lips and tongue, for they had grown dry with the salt air, when Ælfhelm, who was keeping watch on the steering platform, gave a sharp shout.

‘It’s them,’ he said. ‘The Frenchmen!’

I glanced up and saw him pointing towards the southern horizon, where once more the black speck of a ship was visible. Her sail was furled, and so it was hard to be sure, but there was little doubt in either my mind — or Magnus’s — that Wyvern had returned. At once he began barking orders to his crew and beating a quicker time upon the drum. He realised, and so did I, that we couldn’t rely on another squall blowing in to help us escape, not this time, and so if we were to have any chance of outrunning them, it would have to be through our own toil.

‘Row,’ Magnus roared. ‘Harder, you bastards, you sons of whores, you lice-ridden dogs!’

Quickly, though, it became clear that it wouldn’t be enough. Before, with the wind behind us, we just about been able to keep pace with Wyvern, for we were lighter and narrower and shallower of draught, and therefore easily able to skip across the waves. But when it came to a battle of oars alone we could not compete, for she had almost as many rowers on one bank as we had on both larboard and steerboard together.

‘Faster!’ Ælfhelm bellowed, adding his exhortations to those of his lord. ‘Faster, you wretches!’

But it was no use, and they both realised it, too, as Wyvern continued to bear down on us. We were steering as close to the rocky shore as Uhtferth dared, yet still she was closing. The other ship’s thirty pairs of oars rose and fell in steady rhythm, like the beating of wings, as she soared across the blue-grey waters, gliding through the spume and the spray, while desperately we floundered. She was little more than an arrow’s flight away now, close enough that I could hear their shouts, though not close enough to hear what it was they were saying. They had chased us across the kingdom of England, from the fenlands to the Marches, across the sea to foreign shores, and now finally their doggedness was to be rewarded, for they had caught us.

‘To arms,’ I shouted, not just to my knights but to those of Magnus’s huscarls who weren’t at oar. I’d already donned my helmet and buckled my sword-belt upon my waist, and now snatched up one of the round shields that I’d purchased in Dyflin, gripping the leather brases firmly in my hand.

I’d never had to fight aboard ship before, although I had come close to doing so on occasion, and didn’t much relish the prospect, especially when it meant coming to blows with fellow Frenchmen and even, possibly, the man who had been my lord. But if a battle was what he wanted, a battle was what he would get. He wouldn’t take me without a struggle.

‘Scyld,’ Magnus shouted to one of his men, cursing violently. ‘Bring me scyld!’

My eyes met his. I saw the grim look upon his face, and wondered if he remembered our conversation the other night, and whether he still had half a mind to turn me over. His huscarls closed ranks around him, beating their sword-hilts, the flats of their blades and their spear-hafts against their shields, raising the battle-thunder.

‘Acwellath hi!’ Magnus roared in his own tongue, and the cry was taken up by the rest of his men. Kill them. He wasn’t about to forsake me, then. Not yet, anyway.

By then the remaining rowers had realised they faced a struggle they could not win, and had hauled in their oars, abandoning them in favour of knives and axes and whatever other weapons were to hand. They rushed to form a line along Nihtegesa’s broadside, making ready to face the onslaught as the ship heaved and rolled in the swell. The deck was slippery and I almost fell, but managed to recover my balance in time.

‘To arms,’ I yelled at Serlo and Pons and Godric, thinking that perhaps they hadn’t heard me, then in English to Eithne: ‘Get below deck.’

‘I can fight,’ she protested. ‘Give me a knife and I’ll fight.’

Having heard the tale of how she had resisted her captors in the battle for the Isle, I didn’t doubt her, but whatever others might believe, I held to the opinion that a battle was no place for a woman.

‘Do as I say,’ I roared. ‘Now!’

Beneath the platforms at either end of the ship there were compartments where supplies were usually stored so as to keep them dry, each of them large enough for a person, or several people, to hide in. She scowled, but thankfully didn’t need telling again, which was as well, since I had no more time for her then.

‘What are you standing there for?’ I asked the others, who still hadn’t moved.

‘You want us to fight them, lord?’ Serlo asked, and his misgivings were clear in his tone. ‘Our own countrymen?’

‘Do you have something else in mind?’

‘We can’t win,’ Pons shouted as spray crashed over the prow. ‘There are too many of them.’

‘We’ve faced worse odds than these, haven’t we?’ I shot back. ‘We can hold them off, I know it.’

‘They’ve caught us, lord,’ Serlo said. ‘It’s over. There’s no shame in yielding.’

‘We don’t have any choice, lord,’ Pons added.

My blood boiled. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My own knights, oath-sworn to my service, were turning against me.

‘Lord-’ Godric started, but I was in no mood to listen to their protests any longer, least of all from him, the runt on whose behalf I had fought and killed Guibert. He, ultimately, was the reason why we were here, and yet, in spite of everything I’d done for him and the protection I’d given him, he still had the nerve to question me.

‘No,’ I said, interrupting him. ‘I haven’t come this far to give up now. So tell me, are you with me, or against me?’

It must have seemed to them as if a kind of madness had taken hold of me, that I’d taken leave of my senses, although it did not feel that way at the time. Rather, it seemed to me that everything had suddenly become clear. I could not let Robert and his men take me. I had come too far now to be steered from this course, to let this undertaking come to naught.

‘Lord!’

‘What?’ I demanded, as I turned to Godric, who was pointing eagerly out across the wide blue-grey expanse, his eyes bright, his voice filled not with alarm but with joy. For while we had been arguing, I realised, he had been watching Wyvern, and now I saw what he had spotted.

For she wasn’t closing as if to attack us, as I’d expected. Her oarsmen had slackened their rhythm, and rather than drawing directly alongside us, as they would have done if they’d wanted to grapple and board us, they seemed to be keeping their distance. Instead of presenting a wall of painted leather and a forest of steel, the men aboard her were waving towards us, hailing us, although their cries were all but drowned out by Magnus and his men. They were still beating out the battle-thunder upon their shields, roaring insults and taunts at our pursuers, swearing death upon them. I could barely hear my own thoughts, let alone make out what those on the other ship were trying to say.

But then, through the din of steel and limewood and jeers and curses, I heard what sounded like my name. The sun was behind the other ship, casting her crew in shadow, and the sea all around was flashing bright, so that for an instant I was blinded. With my free hand I shielded my eyes from the glare, and that was when I saw two figures standing at Wyvern’s prow. They were both waving, trying to catch our attention, one a little taller than the other, both with scabbards hanging from their waists.

The taller of the two cupped his hands around his lips. ‘Tancred!’ he yelled, and this time he was close enough that I recognised his voice.

‘Eudo!’ I said, and no sooner had I done so than I realised who the second figure must be. ‘Wace!’

The other ship drew closer still. The sun disappeared for a moment behind a wisp of cloud, and suddenly I was able to see them clearly.

At first I thought my eyes had to be deceiving me. How long was it since I’d last seen them? Not since that night at Heia, more than a month ago, I reckoned, although I’d lost count of the days. All at once the battle-anger that until then had been coursing through my veins vanished. But surprised as I was to see them both here, to say I was overjoyed would be false. They were still sworn to Robert, after all. Wasn’t that why they had followed me?

‘Do you know these people?’ Magnus asked me as he made a sign to his huscarls, who ceased clattering their weapons against their shield-rims, although they continued to regard Wyvern and those aboard her warily.

‘I know them,’ I answered, but he didn’t look much reassured, and understandably so, as the other ship, easily within range of a javelin’s throw now, moved alongside us and it became clear just how much larger she was than Nihtegesa, and how many more men she carried. But still none of them were rushing to arms, as I might have expected.

‘God’s teeth, but you’re persistent, aren’t you?’ Eudo shouted across the water, laughing. ‘We were beginning to think we’d never catch up with you.’

‘I was hoping you wouldn’t,’ I replied.

‘Are you going to let us come aboard, then?’ Wace asked. ‘Or are you and your new friends going to keep waving your weapons at us until we all perish of old age?’

‘That depends,’ I said, although what I meant by that exactly, I wasn’t sure.

‘On what?’

They were my two oldest and most loyal friends in all the world, and I wasn’t about to take up arms against them. Unable to flee and unwilling to fight. What choices did that leave us with?

‘Is Robert with you?’ I asked, glancing along the length of their ship, looking for him. If he was there, however, he wasn’t showing his face, which was probably as well. As hard as I’d tried to bury my anger in the past few weeks, I still hadn’t forgiven him for driving me from Earnford, from the lands that I had striven hard first to earn and then to defend.

‘No,’ Eudo said. ‘We came alone.’

‘He sent you, did he?’

‘All this way? What makes you think he would do that?’

Little more than a couple of oar’s lengths separated Nihtegesa and Wyvern now. ‘To take me back to Heia, so that he can further humiliate me,’ I said bitterly. ‘Has he not inflicted enough punishment on me already?’

‘Robert hasn’t forgiven you for what you did,’ said Wace. ‘He’s angrier now than he was then, too, since with you being gone, he’s the one who’s had to pay the blood-price to Guibert’s kin. But no, he didn’t send us.’

‘If he didn’t,’ I asked, ‘then what are you doing here, and in his ship?’

‘If you’ll tell your friends to sheathe their blades and let us come across, then we’ll tell you. We don’t want a fight any more than you do.’

‘If you want to come aboard, you talk to me, not him,’ Magnus called out in French. ‘I understand well enough what you’re saying, so don’t think that I don’t. This is my ship. I alone decide who’s allowed to tread her decks. No one else.’

‘And who are you?’ Eudo asked.

‘Magnus,’ he replied, not daring to give his full name to them as he had to me, and then, for want of anything else to say, added, ‘This is Nihtegesa.’

‘Order your men to lay down their weapons, Magnus, and I promise you there won’t be any blood spilt this day.’

He seemed to consider this for a few moments. He signalled to me and I jostled my way past his sweat-reeking huscarls towards him.

‘When you said you know these people,’ he said, keeping his voice low so that only he and I could hear, ‘does that mean you trust them?’

‘With my life,’ I replied. ‘And I know that they don’t make promises lightly. If they say there’ll be no bloodshed, they mean it.’

His eyes were hard, his expression stony. ‘Before I met you I’d almost begun to believe that I’d never have to lay eyes upon a Frenchman again. Now it seems that wherever I go I find myself plagued by your kind.’

‘Do we have an answer, then?’ Wace called.

Magnus let out an exasperated sigh and returned to the gunwale. ‘Do I have much choice?’ he shouted back with the weariness of one who was well used to defeat.

‘You get to choose whether you want to live or die,’ Eudo said. ‘Is that choice enough for you?’

When the question was put to him that way, there was really only one answer the Englishman could give. Reluctantly he bade his retainers sheathe their swords and put down their spears and axes, while Nihtegesa and Wyvern steered closer to one another. The crews on both sides threw across coils of rope, which they used to lash them together. Timber thudded and scraped against timber as the two hulls met, and first Wace and then Eudo came aboard, both of them accompanied by their household knights.

‘So,’ I said, not even caring to greet them properly. ‘Now that you’ve travelled the length of Britain to hunt me down, perhaps you’ll tell me what it is you want.’