Knights of the Hawk

Six

He’s Morcar’s nephew?’ Robert asked later that morning, once we’d brought Godric to his hall and told him everything that had happened that night.

‘So he claims,’ I replied.

Already it all seemed an age ago. The thrill of the fight had long faded, and tiredness was beginning at last to catch up with me. My limbs felt like lead, fatigue clawed at my eyes, and I wanted nothing more than to find some quiet spot in which to lay myself down and sleep.

Robert fixed his gaze upon the Englishman, who sat on a stool beside the smoking hearth-fire, his hands bound with rope in front of him, his flaxen hair plastered to his skull. Since leaving Litelport behind us he’d uttered barely a word, except occasionally to murmur what sounded like a prayer, but he spoke now.

‘It is the truth, lords,’ he protested. ‘Upon my life, with God and all the saints as my witnesses, I swear it!’

To some men lying came naturally, while others learnt the art through years of practice. Nonetheless, to spew falsehoods when one’s very life was at stake was a skill that few possessed, and required no small amount of nerve, too. Perhaps I was wrong about the Englishman, but I doubted he was so daring, and for that reason alone I was inclined to believe him.

‘If you want to change your mind, you’d be wise to do so now, before you meet the king,’ Wace warned him.

‘Yes,’ Eudo added. ‘If he finds out you’ve lied to him, he won’t be best pleased.’

That silenced Godric, who no doubt had heard of King Guillaume’s unpredictable temper, and knew all about the fits of rage to which he was rumoured to be prone. It was often said that no man ever crossed him twice and lived, for while the king was sometimes prepared to overlook a first offence, he was rarely so forgiving the second time. By taking up arms in rebellion, Godric had committed his first transgression. Already, then, his fate rested on a knife’s edge.

The drapes across the hall’s entrance parted, allowing in a sudden burst of sunlight: something we had seen little of in recent days. Through the parting stepped a pale-faced, dung-reeking lad of perhaps twelve or thirteen, whom Robert had sent to the royal hall with news of our prisoner. He stood, panting heavily as if he had just run all the way to Cantebrigia and back.

‘You bring news?’ Robert asked him.

The boy nodded. ‘Yes, lord,’ he said in between breaths. ‘I returned as quickly as I could.’

‘Well, what is it? Did you give the message as I instructed?’

‘I did, lord.’

‘And?’

‘He is on his way, lord. The king’s steward told me himself.’

Robert nodded and dismissed the boy, who looked relieved that his questioning was finished, and that he wasn’t about to be sent with any more messages for the royal household. The officials of the palace were powerful men, useful to have as allies but dangerous to have as enemies, not just because they had the king’s ear but also because their orders carried his authority. They were respected by lords both petty and distinguished, and the boy had shown determination to have secured the attention of the royal steward.

In honesty, I wasn’t much looking forward to facing the king either. For much as I admired the will that had brought us here to England, and as great as his achievement was in winning this kingdom, nevertheless I feared him, as did many men in those days, both French and English alike. Although few had seen it with their own eyes, we had all heard the stories of how he and his raiding-bands had gone into the north last winter. We had heard how they’d harried the land and its people and despoiled both town and country, burnt storehouses newly filled with the autumn’s harvest, slaughtered sheep and cattle in the fields where they grazed, put entire families to the sword, from hobbling greybeards to the youngest babes in arms, and left the meadows to run with blood as they spread fire and ruin, all in the name of retribution for the Northumbrian uprisings. It was, of course, a long-spoken truth that wars were fought with rape and pillage as much as they were with sword and shield, but the ferocity of his vengeance on this occasion sowed great alarm among his followers, and I was glad to have had no part of it. That one act revealed an aspect to King Guillaume that had rarely shown itself before, but which with each passing day became clearer as this campaign dragged on, as his desperation deepened and his mood grew ever more foul.

And so it wasn’t just Godric who was nervous as we awaited the king. Fortunately it wasn’t long before he arrived. I had barely enough time to slake my thirst from the ale-barrel Robert kept in the hall and give a yawn before I made out the sound of hoofbeats in the yard outside, shortly followed by someone bellowing: ‘Make way! Make way for your king!’

He was here.

‘Get up,’ Wace said to Godric, but the Englishman seemed frozen to the stool, for he did not move, and my friend had to take his arms and bodily haul him up before he would stand. Even then the boy’s feet seemed hardly able to support his weight, and at any moment I thought he would spew.

Wace shoved him in the back to start him moving, and we followed Robert out, pushing aside the linen drapes and ducking beneath the low lintel of the doorway before emerging into the heat of the mid-morning sun. For a moment I was blinded by the brightness, although I noticed dark clouds approaching, threatening rain. As if we hadn’t had enough of it in recent weeks. Raising a hand to shield my eyes, I made out a conroi of some fifteen horsemen, most decked out in hauberks freshly polished, their features masked beneath helmets inlaid with swirling designs in gold and silver, their shoulders draped with the blood-red ceremonial cloaks, embroidered at the hems with golden thread, which marked them out as knights of the royal household.

At the head of them was the king himself. I had met him only once before, but his was not a face that one forgot easily, for it was drawn and entirely lacking in humour, with heavy brows above keen eyes that missed nothing: eyes that seemed to look into one’s very soul. He was around forty-four in years if I recalled rightly, only a handful of summers younger than Malet, but had lost none of his youthful vigour or his passion for the pursuit of war. Tall and set like an ox, he possessed stout arms that were the mark of long hours spent in the training yard, where he was said to practise daily at both stake and quintain, and in mock combat with his trusted hearth-troops.

‘Kneel,’ I hissed at the Englishman. Thankfully he needed no second telling, but did as he was bid without hesitation, and the rest of us did the same as the king jumped down from the saddle, handed his destrier’s reins to a retainer and strode towards us. Where earlier the yard had been filled with the sounds of timber being chopped and the clash of oak cudgels as men trained at arms, now a hush had fallen, broken only by the lowing of cattle in the fields and the calls of sheep in their pens, the clang of steel from the smith’s workshop some way off and the thumping of my own heart. I breathed deeply, trying to still it.

The king’s shadow fell across me. To begin with he said nothing, and I wondered whether he was expecting one of us to speak first.

Robert must have thought the same, for he began: ‘My lord king-’

‘I gave clear instruction that there were to be no more expeditions against the enemy without my permission,’ the king said, cutting him off. ‘Is that not so?’

‘It is so,’ Robert replied, not daring to meet the king’s eyes, probably wisely.

‘You know full well that we need every man we can muster for this next assault on the Isle, and that we cannot afford to waste good warriors on such reckless adventures. And yet I am told that you saw fit last night to send a raiding-party out into the marshes, almost within arrowshot of the Isle itself. This, too, is true, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, lord, but-’

‘I would have thought that you more than anyone, Robert Malet, would take care to heed my instructions, given your family’s current standing. Instead you choose to defy me. By rights I should order you strung up by the nearest tree, or at the very least have you stripped of your landholdings. Perhaps that would be a suitable punishment. What do you think?’

Robert opened his mouth as if to speak and then promptly closed it again.

‘Yes,’ the king continued. ‘You would be wise to think carefully about your next words, lest they be your last.’

Never before had I seen Robert forced to bend his knee for anyone, and I confess the sight was strange, though there was no reason why it should have been. That was the order of the world, after all: every man, from the poorest swineherd to the most powerful baron, was bound by oaths to someone else, and in the same way the king was bound to God’s service, obligated to govern his subjects well and to uphold the virtues of our faith. This I knew, and yet in spite of that I couldn’t help the anger welling inside me as Robert, the lord whom I respected, was forced to humble himself. Anger, and not a little guilt too, since it was because of me that he found himself in such a position.

‘Have you nothing to say?’ the king asked with a smirk. ‘Well, perhaps that is for the best. Fortunately you find me in good humour this morning, so I am prepared to overlook your misdeed on this occasion, especially since you have brought me this gift.’ He turned his attention upon Godric, whose head was bowed, his whole body trembling. ‘So this is your captive,’ he said. ‘Godric, thegn of Corbei.’

‘He claims to be the son of Morcar’s brother,’ Robert said.

‘I know well who he is,’ the king snapped, his tone as sharp as a butcher’s cleaver. ‘We have met before, although the last time our paths crossed, he was, I believe, still a boy under the fosterage of his uncle, not a man full-grown.’

His voice was thick with scorn, but if he was trying to provoke a response from Godric, he was disappointed.

‘Look at me,’ he said, and when the Englishman did not obey, he repeated more forcefully: ‘Look at me!’

Slowly and with not a little reluctance, Godric raised his head, his gaze eventually coming to rest on his king, and I saw the lump in his throat as he swallowed.

‘Not so long ago you and your uncle gave oaths to be my loyal servants,’ the king said. ‘Now, however, you renounce those oaths and ally yourselves with the rebels upon the Isle. You are a worthless creature, a perjurer and a traitor.’

‘No, lord,’ Godric protested. ‘I will p-pledge my allegiance to you anew, if you will only …’

He didn’t finish, for the king had drawn his sword from its sheath and was turning it over slowly, showing the Englishman the swirling smoke-like pattern embedded in the steel, and the keenness of its point. It was indeed a fine weapon, as one would expect, although clearly meant for display rather than fighting, since there was not a single nick anywhere along the edge, or any other mark to suggest it had ever seen use on the field of battle.

‘By rights I should kill you now and be done with you,’ said King Guillaume, and raised the tip of the blade so that it gently touched against the skin beneath Godric’s chin, not enough to draw blood but enough that a single slip of his hand would spell the Englishman’s death. ‘Perhaps I will send your head back to your uncle Morcar as an example of how I deal with those who dare rise against me.’

‘Please, lord, no,’ said Godric, his eyes closed tight as if expecting the killing cut to come at any moment. ‘Have m-mercy, I beg of you.’

‘If you wish mercy,’ the king said, ‘then first you must earn it.’

‘Whatever you ask, lord, I will do it.’

The king regarded him for long moments. Around us the first few raindrops pattered upon the mud, while the breeze tugged at the scarlet cloaks of the king’s guard and caused the pennons nailed to their lances to flutter. Eventually he withdrew the weapon, returning it to its sheath with a whisper of steel, while with his other hand he gave a signal to one of his retainers. The sun was behind him and so at first I could not make out the man’s features, save that he was dressed in long, black robes, but then he stepped closer and I made out his shining pate and the small, hard eyes squinting out from beneath owlish brows.

Atselin.

I stared at him, and he at me. A quizzical look came across his face as he recognised me, as if he hadn’t been expecting to find me here, but it quickly disappeared as his brows hardened into a frown. In truth I was just as surprised to see him. Although he was chief among the clerks and scribes of the royal household gathered here at Brandune, for some reason I hadn’t thought he would be known to the king himself.

‘Brother Atselin,’ the king said, ‘may I rely on you to bear witness and to write down anything of note that our English friend may say?’

The monk broke off his stare, blinking once as a raindrop struck the end of his prominent nose, and then again as another bounced off his tonsured head.

‘Of course, my king,’ he said stiffly. From somewhere within the folds of his robe he produced a wax writing-tablet, along with a stylus carved from what looked like either bone or ivory. ‘Although perhaps it would be best if we venture inside,’ he added, pointing towards the sky just as the sun disappeared behind the dark cloud. ‘Before we are all drowned.’

Hardly had he finished speaking than the deluge began, so suddenly and with such force that it seemed all the heavens were crashing down upon us. Hard drops bounced upon the yard and lashed my back, plastering my hair against my head and my tunic to my skin. Without delay, the king made for the hall, leaving his retainers to see to their horses, and the rest of us followed him.

Godric alone was reluctant to move, but Eudo and I hauled him to his feet and dragged him inside, where his fate would be decided.

The rain pummelled upon the thatch. From one dark corner of the hall came a steady drip-drip as it seeped through a hole and fell upon the floor, where it formed a pool, in which fragments of rushes floated.

‘Speak, then,’ the king said when we were once more gathered around the hearth-fire. ‘Tell me everything you know about your army.’

Godric sat with hands tied on the stool before the fire, his face lit by its flickering glow. ‘Everything?’

‘Everything,’ the king repeated, his expression hardening. ‘I want you to tell me how many men you have, how well they’re armed, how they’re divided and who commands them. How well is Elyg defended? Are there walls, a stockade and a castle mound? What is the mood within your camp?’

‘What do you wish to know first?’

‘Give me numbers. How many men of fighting age do you have?’

‘A thousand?’ Godric hazarded. ‘Possibly more than that.’

The king snorted, as well he might. ‘A thousand? You expect me to believe that?’

The real number, we suspected, was probably three times that. In the absence of any reliable information, however, it was admittedly something of a guess.

‘How should I know, lord?’ Godric said, a note of despair in his voice. ‘I haven’t counted them myself.’

From another man’s lips that might have sounded insolent, but it was the fact that he spoke with such sincerity that made me laugh. Straightaway I tried to stifle it. The noise that came out was somewhere between a cough and a choke. The king glared at me, and I glimpsed the fire that lay behind his cold demeanour.

‘Has your uncle not spoken to you of such things?’ Atselin suggested. ‘Perhaps you can recall something of what he might have mentioned about their numbers and disposition.’

‘He tells me little,’ Godric answered. There was a look in his eyes that might have been anger or hurt, and perhaps it was a mixture of the two. ‘He says I am still young, that he values my loyalty but I am not a warrior yet, that I should worry about honing my sword-skills first before troubling myself with such details. I had to beg to be allowed to lead the scouting-band last night.’ He shook his head and sniffed. ‘I failed even at that.’

Atselin narrowed his eyes. ‘How old are you?’

‘Fifteen summers this year.’

He was barely out of boyhood. Were he not my enemy I might have felt sorry for him. Eager to impress and to win respect, he was nonetheless a long way from fulfilling his ambitions. Doubtless I’d been much the same at his age, although he held one advantage over me, for he was only too aware of his shortcomings, whereas I had never been able to see them. That youthful arrogance had nearly proven my undoing on more occasions than one.

The king, however, was unmoved. ‘Tell us something you do know.’

After swallowing to clear his throat, Godric began to speak of the enemy’s defences, while Atselin scrawled upon his tablet, although in truth we learnt little that was new. Once in a while the king would interrupt to press the Englishman further, but otherwise he seemed content to let him talk. And so we learnt that nothing resembling a castle had yet been erected — not that we had expected any among the English to have the expertise to do so — but that Morcar and the other leading thegns had thrown up all manner of walls and earthen banks around the monastery, dug ditches and arrayed sharpened stakes in them to deter against attack, and behind those defences they waited for us to come to them. They had food enough to last until winter and even beyond, Godric assured us, although how he could possibly say that when he had no real notion of how many mouths they had to feed, I wasn’t sure. Perhaps that fact had come from his uncle, since it didn’t sound like the kind of judgement he was likely to have made on his own. Indeed he seemed almost as ignorant as the eel-catchers and other marsh folk, upon whose sparse knowledge and occasional observations of the enemy positions we had thus far come to rely.

Still, everything he told us confirmed our worry, which was that the rebels were secure in their fastness and unlikely to be prised from it in the foreseeable future. Indeed, if their defences were as formidable as young Godric made them sound, we had only one choice: to lay siege to that stronghold, bombard them with our mangonels and try to starve them into submission, but that might take months: months that we didn’t have, and I suspected the king was coming to the same realisation. He paced in front of us, every once in a while tapping a finger against his chin as if in thought, no doubt wondering, as I was, what we should do with the Englishman now, and whether he might make a reliable guide through the marsh-passages that led to the Isle. I could not speak for the king, but certainly I wouldn’t want to entrust my life to him.

Godric went on to describe the rich halls of the monastery at Elyg, which the abbot and monks had surrendered to Hereward and Morcar to use for their councils of war and as private chambers for themselves and their households. Had he any sense, he would have shut his mouth before going on any further, but desperation was loosening his tongue, and he could not stop himself. Oblivious to the king’s darkening expression, he told of the lavish feast his uncle had held there three nights before, of the various dishes of hare and boar that had been laid out, of the wine, ale and mead that had flowed and how men had fallen about insensible with drink, of how a poet had sung of the great victory that would soon be theirs.

‘I have heard enough,’ the king said eventually, cutting Godric off as he was telling of his uncle’s great hoard of gold, and the largesse he had bestowed upon the abbot of Elyg in gratitude for his generosity. ‘Unless you have anything worthwhile to offer, I have no more time for you.’

He signalled to two of his scarlet-clad knights, who stepped forward from the shadows where they had been waiting, took hold of the Englishman’s shoulders in spite of his protests and hauled him to his feet.

‘Take him outside and kill him,’ the king said. ‘Then hang his corpse somewhere by the marsh’s edge where his countrymen might come across him. He will serve as an example.’

Godric tried to struggle, but his arms were pinned. ‘No, lord!’

‘You are of no use to us, and I have wasted my breath speaking to you. I do not wish to look upon your loathsome face any longer.’

‘Wait,’ I said, as the king’s knights dragged him towards the entrance. They stopped, glancing first at me, and then at the king. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Robert cast a warning glare my way, but I was not to be discouraged.

I could have held my tongue and left the Englishman to his fate without risking incurring King Guillaume’s wrath, but an idea was beginning to stir within my mind: an idea that just might help bring a swift end to this war. In all the weeks we’d been fighting, the rebels had never once sent us an envoy, nor us them, since showing one’s enemy that you were willing to talk was often taken as a sign of weakness, and neither side wished to admit to that. In Godric, however, I realised we had been gifted an opportunity, and one that we had to take.

The king rounded upon me. ‘What is it?’

‘My lord king,’ I said. ‘If I may speak, I have a suggestion to make.’

He stared long and hard at me, then at Eudo and Wace, who were standing beside me. ‘I recognise you,’ he said. ‘Your faces are familiar, though I cannot say from where. Our paths have crossed before, haven’t they?’

They had, though I hadn’t expected him to remember. It had been the briefest of encounters, and more than two years ago besides.

‘They were among the men who opened the city gates to your army on the night of the battle at Eoferwic,’ Robert said. ‘It was Tancred who led the charge on to the bridge, who faced Eadgar Ætheling in single combat and almost killed him.’

The account as he gave it was more or less true, although others had embellished those feats in their retellings of the battle. Robert, Wace and Eudo all knew well that if anyone had nearly met his death that day, it was I and not Eadgar, but I had rarely admitted this to anyone else, and thought it wise not to say anything now.

‘Of course,’ the king said, studying me with narrowed eyes. ‘Tancred of Earnford. The Breton. I’ve heard tell of your exploits.’

I did my best not to flinch beneath his gaze, and to quell my anger at the note of scorn in his voice. ‘Only good things, I trust, lord king,’ I replied as evenly as I could.

He ignored that remark. ‘Should I understand that you three are responsible for capturing the Englishman?’

‘There were others as well, lord, but yes, it was we who led the expedition,’ I said.

The king nodded as if in contemplation. ‘Very well, Breton. What is this suggestion of yours?’

I swallowed to moisten my throat. ‘I was thinking, lord, that we should send Godric back to Elyg.’

There was silence for a moment, in which only the sound of the rain and the geese in their pen outside could be heard. The king’s eyes narrowed but he did not speak.

‘Send him back?’ Eudo asked. ‘After all this, you would let him go?’

‘Think for a moment,’ I said. ‘Why does Morcar persist in stirring up trouble? Why does he ally himself to filth-ridden wretches like Hereward? What is he looking to gain?’

I turned to Godric. The colour had drained entirely from his face but there was renewed brightness in his eyes. If he wanted to leave this place alive, though, he would have to help me.

‘I–I don’t know,’ he mumbled, his voice quiet.

‘I think you do,’ I said. ‘You might be a poor excuse for a warrior but you know him well enough. If Morcar truly wanted to drive us from these shores, his best opportunity was to raise his banner in support of Eadgar Ætheling last year, but he didn’t. He doesn’t care whether an Englishman or a Frenchman wears the crown, so long as he profits. Am I right?’

Godric did not reply, but his silence told me all that I needed to know.

‘I think I understand what Morcar has in mind,’ I went on. ‘As much as he might act the war leader, the truth is that he is barely more experienced a fighter than his nephew. Remember that in two months not once has he dared meet us in open battle or so much as send a single raiding-band against our camp.’

Wace shrugged. ‘He is a coward. What other explanation is there?’

‘Maybe he is, but that doesn’t mean he is stupid. I’d wager he knows exactly what he’s doing. He’s content to let others harry us and wreak destruction, while he shuts himself up inside the rebels’ fastness at Elyg and, week by week, wears us down. Hereward and his band might have made it their cause to shed Norman blood until the marshes run red, but for Morcar this rebellion is merely a way of furthering his own ambitions. He doesn’t want to dirty his hands if he can help it. In the end he’s not looking to fight us, but to bargain.’

All eyes turned to the king, who was looking into the hearth, his hands clasped together and his forefingers steepled in front of his pursed lips. The fire-glow reflected in the whites of his eyes.

‘If you’re right, that means that he can be bought,’ he murmured.

I nodded. ‘Every man has his price. But the longer this campaign continues and the more desperate we grow, the greater the advantage he and the rebels hold, and so the greater their demands will be if we find ourselves forced to sue for peace.’

I said if, but truthfully I knew that it was a matter of when. As I’d said to Robert yesterday, we could not keep fighting this war for ever.

‘You would try to come to an arrangement with Morcar,’ said the king. ‘You would pay a small price to him now, to avoid having to pay a larger one later. Is that it?’

‘That is it, lord king.’

‘You have no confidence, then, in our prospects of taking Elyg by force?’

‘I don’t doubt that it can be done,’ I lied, having to choose my words with care. ‘But it will be costly, and will mean the deaths of many hundreds if not thousands of our own men. Whether victory is worth that cost is not for me to say.’

The king turned to Godric. ‘For the right price, can your uncle be persuaded to renew his oath to me and abandon the rest of the rebels?’

‘I don’t know,’ the Englishman answered. ‘It is possible, I suppose. There has never has been any friendship between him and Hereward. They hate one another, and there are often fights between their followers.’

That was news to my ear. We’d long known that the rebels were an unruly and disparate lot, but that their disagreements were spilling over into open violence surprised me. I was about to press him further, but the king spoke before I could open my mouth.

‘You know Morcar better than most. What does he want? Does he wish me to furnish him with chests filled with silver and precious stones? Or does he want ships to take him far across the sea so that he may never trouble these shores again?’

‘His earldom,’ Robert put in: the first he had spoken in a long while. ‘He seeks the restitution of his old province of Northumbria, as it was granted to him by your predecessor, King Eadward.’ He glanced at our prisoner. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’

‘It is all he has ever wanted, lords,’ Godric said. ‘He wishes for his rank, title and landholdings to be returned, and for his honour to be restored.’

The earldom of Northumbria. It had once belonged to my former lord, Robert de Commines, until he was murdered that night at Dunholm. Now it was held by the corpulent and grasping Gospatric, an Englishman who hailed from one of the ancient northern families and who commanded a great deal of influence in those parts. His loyalty to us had always been vacillating at best, and openly treacherous on occasion, and all he seemed to care about was adding to his already considerable treasure hoard and acquiring ever more slave-girls to help warm his bed. I knew the king had long been looking for someone to install in his place, although no Norman wanted to venture into that cold, wet province and risk meeting their end at the hands of the wild men who lived there.

‘Northumbria,’ the king said mockingly. ‘What would he want with such a miserable corner of land? Has he not heard what happened last winter?’

‘He has,’ Godric said. ‘But he believes he would be a better man to govern it than Gospatric.’

Despite the ruin the king had wrought there, he hadn’t managed to lay waste the entire province, and I imagined there were parts that had escaped the slaughter and the flames, where a man could easily prosper. Whether Morcar would prove any more dependable than Gospatric, or whether he could subdue the seditious folk who lived there any more successfully, remained doubtful, but none of that mattered at the present moment.

Atselin cleared his throat as if he wished to say something, but promptly fell quiet when the king held up a hand in warning. A stillness hung in the air. I hardly dared move, or even swallow to moisten my throat. Not until the king spoke.

After what seemed like an eternity, he told Godric, ‘If that is what your uncle wishes, I will give it to him gladly. You may go back and tell him that.’ He turned to Atselin. ‘Draw up a writ immediately confirming Morcar as earl as proof of my word. I will put my seal to it.’

The monk blinked in surprise. ‘Are you …’ he began, but then faltered, his brow furrowing. ‘My lord, are you certain of this?’

‘Do you question my judgement, Atselin?’

‘No, lord, but-’

‘Then simply see that it is done.’

The monk bowed. ‘Of course, my king.’

‘Now, in return for this generous gift, Godric of Corbei, your uncle must be willing to renounce whatever oaths he may have sworn to his countrymen, and to swear allegiance to me, and me alone.’

‘I will tell him.’

‘Good.’ The king smiled. ‘If your uncle agrees to these terms, he must send word within three days. Do you understand?’

‘Yes, lord.’

He turned to me. ‘You, Breton, are responsible for escorting our friend back to the place where you captured him, or as close as you can manage if the enemy are afield. There you will let him go, and he will make his own way back to Elyg.’

‘When would you have us do this?’ I asked.

‘Tonight, under the cover of darkness. The sooner he is reunited with his countrymen, the less reason they’ll have to be suspicious. He has been gone long enough as it is. I will send further instructions this afternoon, along with the writ for him to deliver.’ He pointed a thick finger at Robert. ‘I entrust the Englishman to your care until then. He is your responsibility. If anything should happen to him, you will be answerable to me. You will receive your reward for his capture only if he returns, and does so in possession of favourable news from his uncle.’

‘Yes, lord king,’ Robert replied, more than a little stiffly, but if King Guillaume noticed then he said nothing of it.

‘Make sure that you remain true to your word, Englishman,’ he said as he gestured for his knights to unhand Godric. ‘Consider yourself fortunate and remember that I have been generous on this occasion, but remember, too, that even my generosity is not without limit. Should you cross me and find yourself at my mercy again, I will take great pleasure in seeing that your death is both slow and terrible.’

He did not wait for Godric to reply, but stalked out of the hall, closely followed by his two guardsmen, their scarlet cloaks swirling behind them. Atselin paused long enough to fix me with his customary hard stare, but then he too was gone, leaving us alone with the Englishman. A part of me wanted to breathe a sigh of relief, although I knew that our work was barely begun.

For in a few hours we would send the boy to ply his uncle with promises of rich reward. In his hands rested our fates.