Hereward 02 - The Devil's Army (33 page)

For what seemed like an age, he choked in the stink of the soil, hearing only the rasp of his laboured breathing. Time held no meaning there. He found his thoughts drifting to his childhood, miles away in Barholme, and his mother singing to him gently at twilight. The peace of those evenings settled on him once more. But it was fleeting. Again he felt the blows from his father’s fist on his cheek, the ringing in his head, the pain in his belly from where the shoe had thumped. Still no anger came from those distant memories, only a terrible regret as if his suffering had been all his own fault.

More footsteps thudded in the dim distance. He jerked from his lucid dream, his chest tightening. This time he heard another sound too, a faint scrabbling not far from where his head lay. Rats, scavenging for any crumbs of bread dropped during the day’s work. The scurrying circled his hiding place. Those hungry vermin would not be frightened away by anything. Once he had seen a rat as long as his forearm attack a baby while the parents were sitting close by at the hearth.

The footsteps drew closer. He swallowed. Now he could not risk driving the rats away. The weight of one of the squirming creatures pressed down upon his face. He worked his mouth, hoping the movement would shift the thing, but his actions only seemed to make the rat more frenzied. Claws began to tear at the earth. Eager snuffling reached his ears. It smelled him there, fresh meat on which to gnaw.

His body was as rigid as an iron rod, his breath burning in his chest. The feet shook the ground next to where he lay. After a moment, he heard the sound of splashing, a bladder being emptied. Unperturbed, the rat raked the soil away from his face. Sharp nails tore at his skin. The vermin’s rough nose darted in, pressing next to his eye. He could feel the vibrations of its jaw. Any moment it would start to rend with its fangs.

The splashing slowed and then gushed down once more.

The rat lunged. Before the fangs tore his flesh, Hereward wrenched up in a shower of black soil. The writhing vermin spun through the night. The pissing man, a guard, reeled in
horror at the terrifying apparition rising from the cold earth beside him. So shocked was he, his cry caught in his throat. He stumbled back, soaking his shoes, his hands clawing at the air.

Hereward pounced, driving the man down on to the towering pile of earth. He clamped a hand across the guard’s mouth and ripped the head to one side. The snapping of the neck sounded like a dry branch breaking. Leaving the limp body for the rats, he crawled around the heap and crouched, listening. All was still. The brief struggle could not have been heard.

A single torch burned beside the door of the keep. A sea of darkness washed up against the small island of light. On previous evenings, he had watched two bored men guarding the gate. With the walls of the high-town so secure, no more were needed, and they had seemed to pay little attention to the world around them. Even so, he knew he would only have a little time before the remaining guard began to search for his missing companion.

Keeping low, he loped around the edge of the bailey. The night was warm, still scented with the meaty aromas of that night’s meal. The row of six stores loomed up out of the dark, and he found the one he had seen the witchfinder enter the previous day. For a moment, he listened at the door. No sound came from within. Easing the door open a crack, he slipped inside.

A fat candle guttered by a flight of earthen steps leading down into the pitch black of the undercroft. His throat constricted. It was too quiet. Apprehension shifted to fear for his wife’s safety and he quickly turned it to cold anger. All the Normans would pay for the torment they had inflicted on his wife – the witch-finder, Ivo Taillebois, William de Warenne, yes, and the king himself. Blood would follow blood. He steadied himself, then picked up the candle and edged down to the lower level. At the foot of the steps, his nostrils wrinkled. He could smell loam, but behind it other scents lurked: charred wood, sweat, iron.

Shadows swooped away from the candle flame. Letting his eyes adjust to the gloom, Hereward looked around the
undercroft. At another time it would have stored supplies for the castle. The floor was packed earth. Halfway along lay a circle of grey ashes and charred wood, and within it thin rods of iron. He wrenched his head away quickly, sickened by the visions that burned through his mind. Tilting the candle, he made out a bundle of rags heaped in one corner. In another stood a pitcher and a cup, some strips of hide, a pail, a broken spear, an adze, a whetstone.

His attention flickered back to the rags.

The thunder of blood in his head drowned out the sound of his running feet. He dropped to his knees beside the unmoving form. For a moment, he was gripped by the sight of brown hair, now matted with grease and sweat and blood. His thoughts rebelled, refusing to make sense of what he was seeing. A part of him wanted to call his wife’s name, but the word choked in his throat. Then, with trembling hands, he turned Turfrida over on to her back. Her belly swelled beneath her filthy, torn dress. Her too-pale face was smeared with dirt. As his gaze drifted down, he saw her bare arms were a patchwork of wounds and burns. How she must have suffered. He fought back a wave of devastation.

But then her eyes flickered in the candlelight and he stifled the urge to cry out with relief. He snatched up her cold hand and stroked the back of it with his filthy thumb. She frowned as she looked into his face, not sure what she was seeing, or not believing. Her thin smile seemed to take a tremendous effort, for it faded quickly, and when she spoke her voice was barely more than a husk. ‘You should not have come.’

‘And leave you here, the thing that is most valuable in my life?’ he whispered.

‘It is a trap.’

‘I know.’ He shook his head, trying to dispel visions of the witchfinder with his glowing rods and his blades and his mallets, and of Turfrida screaming and pleading for mercy. He felt hollowed out by what he knew had transpired. ‘They will pay,’ he croaked. ‘Pay with their lives.’

Turfrida raised a trembling hand to silence him. ‘No … be still. You must hear me. They took me to lure you here. A choice, that is what they offer … My life for the end of your war. You must stand up and vow in the marketplace here in Lincylene that you believe William is king, that you were wrong to raise your spear against him, and that all English should lay down their weapons and bow their heads to him.’

‘And then they will take my life,’ he said with a grim smile.

‘You cannot do this. Your fight is just, and my life is nothing next to that.’

‘You think I would condemn you to death?’ he whispered.

‘I do not think you would condemn the English to misery and blood under that Bastard’s cruel rule. This is a choice no man should ever have to make.’ She tried to grip his hand, but she was too weak. ‘You must forget me, Hereward. Fight on. The English need you.’

He leaned forward and kissed her forehead. ‘I do not play by the king’s rules. I make my own. One guard waits at the gate, and he will be dead before he can speak. Then I will carry you from here, and we will be away from Lincylene long before William’s dogs can hunt for us.’

She smiled again. ‘My love,’ she whispered.

‘I will return in moments.’ He squeezed her hand and turned, darting back across the undercroft to the steps. Relief filled him. Bounding up the stair, he slipped out of the door into the night.

A figure waited, swathed in the dark. Hereward froze, wondering if he could kill the stranger before a warning was called. ‘Stand your ground,’ a familiar voice growled. The shape stepped forward, and the Mercian saw it was his father.

Hereward gaped. Why would Asketil be there, in a Norman stronghold, so far from his home in Barholme? ‘You are a prisoner too,’ the warrior whispered. As his thoughts raced, he realized his father did not look as aged and feeble as the last time they had met. He seemed taller, his shoulders pushed back, as Hereward remembered him from his youth. A fire burned in the old man’s eyes.

‘I knew it was you I saw skulking with the filthy ceorls earlier this day,’ Asketil snarled. ‘Though I searched the bailey, I had no doubt you would soon appear. You could not ignore the lure of your whore.’

Hereward winced. ‘Come, let me take you from here—’

Asketil shook his fist at his son. ‘I will not rest until I see you cut down, like the wild dog you are.’

‘But … we are blood,’ Hereward replied, incredulous.

‘And you have dishonoured that blood.
I
am loyal to my king.’ He turned and yelled into the dark bailey, ‘He is here. Hereward is here.’

Stunned by his father’s betrayal, Hereward was rooted. In an instant, the waiting guards encircled him. Spears flashed up to his chest on every side.

Asketil turned his back on his son. ‘I have brought honour back to my kin,’ he sighed. With disbelief, Hereward watched his father walk away towards the keep. The old man’s words floated back: ‘You have always had no worth, but now you have failed the poor souls who put their trust in you. Your doomed fight is over. Your army will be broken. And then you will be put to death, so all the English know that you are as nothing.’

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY
-S
EVEN

3 September 1070

THE RAVEN BANNER
of the Danish king fluttered in the sea breeze. Beneath it, wind boomed in the striped sail of the Long Serpent as the royal flagship prepared to leave England behind. Sweyn Estrithson looked up from the prow and saw the weather was good. On their sea-chests his men sat, wrapped in furs against the chill of the long crossing as they gripped the oars. With a nod, the king signalled all was well.

Alric shielded his eyes against the dazzling sun and watched the
langskip
pull away. It was the first, but it would not be the last. With mounting anxiety, he looked across the rest of the vast fleet. The decks bustled with activity. Along the water’s edge, by the salt marsh, warriors pulled down tents and kicked out the embers of the night’s fires. Others hauled chests and sacks into the surf to stow on their vessels. The scout had been right. The Danes were going home.

‘This cannot be,’ Aethelwold proclaimed, throwing his arms into the air. ‘They take the saint’s bone and our church’s treasures.’ Alric lunged to restrain the distressed prior, but the
churchman threw himself down the slope towards the stony beach. The monks of Burgh surged after him.

‘Did we expect any less when we allowed them to load the gold on their ships?’ Redwald muttered as he strode up, Kraki and ten other warriors massed behind him.

‘You think we stood a chance to stop them?’ the Viking snapped.

Alric grimaced. He had sensed the tension between the two men from the moment he had returned to Ely with Hereward’s message. Kraki clearly did not believe Redwald was up to the task of leading the army and had made that point vociferously. Only Redwald’s refusal to accept the command prevented a confrontation. The younger man was no fool. He preferred to whisper in a small voice and let others reap the consequences of his actions. Yet since that day the English had been leaderless and Alric had found all sides looking to him to keep the peace.

‘We lose our leader, we lose our army and now we have lost our gold and God’s power,’ Madulf bemoaned with a shake of his head. ‘We have nothing to protect us from the king’s wrath.’

‘We have what we always had,’ Kraki growled, shaking his axe.

‘If only Hereward were here. He would know what to do.’ Dismayed, Sighard leaned upon his spear.

‘But he is not. We must make our own way until he returns.’ Alric watched the Burgh monks rushing through the remnants of the camp, trying to find someone who would listen to their pleas. ‘Let us see if there is aught we can do.’

He strode down the slope and crunched across the pebbles, hoping he appeared more confident than he felt. When he approached a red-headed Dane folding a sapphire-coloured tent, the warrior thrust him aside with such force he fell upon his arse, flushing as the man laughed. Undeterred, however, Alric moved on until he caught sight of Nasi. The commander of the Danes at Ely was ordering two men to drag a stuffed sack towards the ships.

Alric hailed him with a wave. Nasi shook his head wearily,
but turned to face the monk. ‘Save your breath,’ he sighed. ‘We return home.’

‘With all the gold and the arm of St Oswald? Where is the honour in that?’

Nasi’s eyes darted furtively and then he beckoned the monk to one side where they would not be overheard. ‘Our king has given his order. It is not for us to question it,’ he whispered. He glanced around, adding, ‘William the Bastard has paid him off. All the gold and silver we have taken is ours to keep, and more with it, some say. And the bone of Oswald too.’

Alric frowned. The king was clever. A little gold was a small price to pay to kick the legs out from under the rebellion. ‘You leave us with nothing.’

The Dane held out his hands and gave an apologetic shrug. ‘Another day will dawn and another feast will come.’

For you perhaps
, the monk thought bitterly. ‘We have set our trap to lure the king’s army in and now we have no one left to fight them. We will be slaughtered.’

Nasi could not reply.

Alric looked towards the fleet and gaped as the monks of Burgh splashed through the surf towards the nearest vessels. Nasi followed his gaze and grinned slyly. ‘Better they sail with us than fight for their treasures here on the beach. They think the king will hear their pleas once he is drunk on mead in his own hall.’ He shrugged. ‘The faith of a churchman, a wonder to behold.’

When the Dane returned to his work, Alric bowed his head and made his way back up the beach. The journey had been futile, but he had expected no other. For Hereward’s sake, he had at least tried. As he strode through the long grass on the dunes, he heard the English warriors bickering away in the trees. Tempers frayed on all sides. How long could they hold the army together without Hereward to lead them?