Hereward 03 - End of Days (9 page)

Soon her flesh would blister and blacken even if his brother did not force her down into the coals, Hereward saw. He put on a smile. ‘You think I care about your woman?’ Yet he knew his hesitation had already answered his question.

‘My woman … all women.’ Redwald grinned. ‘I know you as well as I know myself.’

Edoma’s cries became strangled and then died away. Hereward watched her eyelids flutter as the heat drove her wits from her.

As frustration ate away at him, his brother threw back his head and yelled, ‘Murder! In here! Murder!’

Hereward stiffened, torn by his lust for vengeance and the realization that this day was now certainly lost. For a moment, he held Redwald’s gaze, feeling the rage build inside him, and then he darted to the door. Outside, querying cries were beginning to respond to the shouts. He glanced back. His brother watched him through the smoke, smiling.

‘Count your days,’ Hereward called back. ‘I will not rest until our debt has been cleared.’

‘This was your one chance and you failed,’ Redwald replied. ‘The king is coming, as he did in the north. It is your days that are ending.’

C
HAPTER
N
INE

HEREWARD BOLTED FROM
the smithy. Suspicious folk milled around the anvil and the brown mounds of iron, their faces darkening. If he gave them a moment, they would be on him like wolves.

‘Inside,’ he cried, pointing into the smoky workshop. ‘Save her.’

As the crowd surged into the smithy, Hereward fought his way through the flow. With the clamour at his back, he bowed his head and tried to look inconspicuous as he strode down the road towards the stone wall separating the high-town from the low-town. But the Norman guards at the gate had been alerted by the outcry and were straining to see what was happening. One caught Hereward’s eye. The soldier’s hand fell to the hilt of his sword at whatever he saw in that unguarded moment.

Spinning aside, Hereward plunged into the bustling market. A merchant stepped in front of him, thrusting a leather bridle under his nose. Hereward shoved him aside. At the smithy, a tumult erupted as the mob flooded out, baying for his blood.

He slipped behind a table piled high with beaver furs, and hovered next to two men haggling over the price of a pig,
pretending he was part of the bidding. ‘Twenty pennies,’ the seller demanded. ‘I can take no less.’ The other man grunted and shook his head.

From under his brows, Hereward glanced around. He could see no way out. Soldiers had joined the guards at the lower gate, and from their gesticulations he guessed they were ordering a messenger to fetch more men from the garrison. The rabble from the smithy had started to spill into the market. He could hear Redwald whipping up the crowd to search for the English rebel leader. Gold was promised, if the Mercian warrior was found and dragged to the castle to face justice. He cursed himself for getting caught like a callow youth who had just charged into his first fight.

As he edged towards the stone wall encircling the high-town, the whirl of the market pressed in on all sides. Yelling voices, bickering and bartering. Song from the scop standing on the Speaking Stone in the centre. Lowing, fly-blown cows and a flock of noisy sheep. He stepped around two dogs snapping and snarling over a bone, his nostrils wrinkling at the competing smells of dung, hot stew, spilled beer, sweat and animal musk. Distractions assailed him as he searched for a path.

Eager for the reward, the mob pushed further into the market, spinning folk around and peering into the depths of hoods. A churn upended. Butter spilled across the mud. Pottery crashed from a teetering table. The merchant leapt out, swinging his fists.

Among the rabble, Hereward counted nine Norman guards drawing closer. More gleaming conical helmets were moving down the road from the castle. He stepped behind a fletcher showing off a quiver of newly made arrows, and edged back until he felt the cold stone of the wall.

A roar of recognition cut through the market’s din. A wild-bearded, thickset Northman was pointing at him, someone he had all but knocked flat when he came rushing out of the smithy. The time of hiding had passed.

Seeing one slim chance, Hereward drew his sword and
hacked through the hemp rope tethering an ox to a post. With the point of his blade, he jabbed the beast in the haunches. The ox bellowed and kicked out, blundering across the market. Men and women scrambled out of its path. Trestles upended. Merchants threw themselves on to the mud to reclaim their precious wares.

Taking advantage of the confusion, Hereward hurled himself through the crowd. He kicked over a trestle laden with pitchers of wine and a barrel of good ale. As hands grabbed for him, he leapt on to another table, clattering from one rickety plank to the next until he dived among the pigs. He prodded each of them with his sword. Squealing and snorting, they lumbered into the throng.

Through the mayhem, he thought he glimpsed a path to the gate. He shouldered his way into the mass of folk, only to find two guards barring his way. Hereward flashed his blade into the throat of the first man. Blood gushed. As the guard fell, gurgling, more Normans ran towards the terrified cries ringing on every side.

Hereward raced this way and that. Swords whisked by a finger’s width from his flesh. But soon every way was blocked. Grins leapt to the faces of the Normans as they forced him back into a corner against the stone walls. He looked across the growing numbers of gleaming helms and felt bitter that Turfrida would remain unavenged.

From the edge of the market, Redwald was watching like a hawk. No jubilation, no triumph, no anger marked his face. It was blank, as if his soul had fled his body and only the clay remained. But then his eyes flickered, and he nodded, recognizing the threat was contained, and he turned and pushed his way into the crowd.

Hereward looked back to his enemies. ‘You cannot take me to your masters to be humbled. I will die here,’ he said, his voice so low it was almost lost beneath the creak of leather and the clink of swords on shield rims. ‘But I will not die alone. Who goes first?’

His words hung in the air. He gritted his teeth as he waited for the wave of iron to break.

Beyond the market, a scream shattered the stillness. The Norman soldiers jolted. A second cry rang out, and then another. Within moments, alarmed yells were leaping from throat to throat across what seemed to be all Lincylene. Above the rooftops, a thick cloud of smoke billowed and a roaring like a great wind echoed. A flare of orange and gold burst into view. A cart filled with hay for the castle’s horses streamed flames as it careered across the ruts down the steep street.

Folk threw themselves out of its path. Plunging into the market, the blazing cart upended. Flames leapt to the dirty straw scattered where the cattle and horses had been kept, and then to trestles, and bolts of silk, and furs.

Hereward watched the conflagration, his eyes aglow.

Choking smoke swirled across the market. He could hear the cries of alarm as the folk ran to fetch water to stop the blaze spreading to the half-timbered, thatched houses. Against the danger of the tinder-dry dwellings turning Lincylene into a bonfire, he was no threat at all.

While the Normans’ backs were turned, he darted round the edge of the force and tried to lose himself in the bank of smoke. Fate had given him only a sliver of hope. Soon his enemies’ attention would return to him, he knew, and every bastard in the place would be hunting him down.

He pressed the wool of his cloak against his mouth and nose. The flames glowed through the wall of grey and sparks drifted through the air. The sound of running feet echoed all around. Men with eyes filled with terror lurched past, hauling buckets. He slipped away, following the slope towards the gate to the low-town.

As he neared freedom, a hand grabbed his arm. He whirled, his sword flashing up. A hooded man held him tight. Just before he struck, he peered into the depths of the cowl and saw in the light of the flickering flames a familiar face.

It was Alric.

C
HAPTER
T
EN

THE TWO MEN
raced down the steep slope through the low-town. Outside their homes and workshops, folk lined the street to look up at the pall of smoke hanging over the market. Already Hereward could hear the Norman commanders barking orders as they turned their attention back to the fugitive.

‘I told you to leave me well alone,’ he gasped as he ran.

‘Is that the thanks I get for saving your miserable life?’ Alric pulled his cowl low to hide his face.

The blast of a horn reverberated from the high-town, followed in quick succession by two more. Ivo the Butcher and William de Warenne would send every fighting man in Lincylene on his trail if they thought there was a chance of cutting down their most hated enemy.

Slowing his step, he fumbled for Alric’s arm to hold him back. Haste would only make them easier targets. Yet they had little time before the gates to the town were sealed and they were trapped like rats.

‘Why did you come?’ Hereward whispered through gritted teeth. ‘Now you have put your own life at risk.’

‘I gave you my word that I would leave you to follow your
own path, and I did,’ the monk murmured. ‘But now there is news you must hear, once we are safe.’

‘Safe,’ the warrior repeated with a hollow laugh. ‘Have you looked around you?’

Turning the corner on the final stretch of the road, he saw the Hungate ahead of them. Beyond lay the Witham with its busy quay, packed with ships laden with goods and lined with the camps of sailors from all corners of the world. He hoped they could lose themselves there. But as he scanned the walls he spied at least eight Normans, all of them looking with unease towards the smoke.

‘We may make a fighting man of you yet,’ he continued, distracted. ‘Only a hardened warrior would have sent a burning cart into a crowded market. Watch yourself, monk, or you might wake up and find you are me.’

With a dismissive snort, Alric looked around until his eye fell upon a dirty-faced boy jabbing a stick into a smaller lad as if he were spearing a deer. He grabbed the child by the back of his tunic and hauled him up so his toes barely scraped the mud. ‘Run to the guards,’ he urged. ‘The sheriff has sent word that they are needed in the high-town. The fire is spreading. And in the market, thieves rob merchants under cover of the smoke.’

The boy seemed suspicious until Alric pressed a coin into his palm. He grinned, and spat, and ran to the walls. Hereward and Alric stepped back into the shadows in the rat-run between two workshops. Once the guards had pounded by on their way to the high-town, they slipped out and ran through the gate.

‘You are as cunning as a fox, monk,’ Hereward said.

‘Where you have your sword, I have only my wits,’ Alric replied. ‘I must use them as best I can.’

The quayside smelled of freshly caught fish and strange spices. Hulls creaked as they flexed in the river currents. Ropes cracked and sails snapped. Swarthy-skinned men in flowing white robes called to each other in a strange tongue as they heaved barrels on to dry land. Wild-haired Northmen glowered at anyone who ventured near their ship. Other seamen, with
sallow skin and heads bound with cloth, squatted on the quay, chewing vigorously before spitting wads of brown-green mush on to the timbers. In the summer, the sailors slept aboard their vessels, under the stars. But now the nights had grown colder they had erected brightly coloured tents along the harbour. Around campfires, they gathered, keeping warm. Some hunched over merel boards. Others drank or sang or argued, eyes glinting like the knives they kept tucked in their tunics.

‘We must take the road south, and quickly,’ Hereward insisted as Alric urged him among the tents. ‘I have coin. We can buy a ride on a cart, at least to the woods where we can hide.’

The monk shook his head. ‘The Normans will have ridden us down long before we reach the trees. Hark.’

Hereward could hear the calls of the Butcher’s men as they searched the low-town. In no time, they would be out of the Hungate. ‘Now I have damned us both,’ he spat. He looked around the tents, but could see no hiding place that would survive more than a moment’s inspection.

‘Show faith and God will reward you.’ Keeping his head down, Alric grabbed his friend’s arm and steered him among the camps to the very edge of the quay.

At their backs, the sound of hooves thundered.

‘Your plan had better be more than
Put your faith in God
, monk,’ Hereward said under his breath. ‘I see angels coming to carry us away.’

‘There is one angel here, and one devil,’ Alric snapped, ‘and if you want to avoid the fires of hell, keep your tongue still.’

Behind them, Hereward could hear the Normans questioning the sailors along the quay. He kept his gaze fixed on the timbers under his feet. Every instinct told him to fight, or run, but the monk kept his pace steady, unrushed, and the Mercian forced himself to do the same.

The churchman came to a halt beside a plank leading up to a skiff. On board, a man with dark features and a thick mass
of curly black hair cleaned the scales off a fish with his knife. Alric whistled under his breath. The sailor looked up and nodded. Satisfied the Normans could not see them, the monk urged Hereward up the creaking plank.

‘Hardred the Black,’ the churchman said by way of introduction.

Satisfied Hereward could be trusted aboard his vessel, the sailor grunted a greeting and proceeded to haul aside a pile of filthy fleeces on the bottom of the skiff.

‘A friend?’ Hereward enquired, squatting.

‘Gold buys friends easily.’ Dropping to his haunches, the monk peered along the dock. In their black cloaks, the Normans were like a storm cloud sweeping among the colourful tents. The sailors eyed them with suspicion, barely responding to their sharp questions.

‘Now would be good,’ Hereward insisted. Over the rim of the boat, he watched the Normans begin to board and search some of the larger ships. ‘Now, monk. Now.’

‘Hush,’ Alric snapped. ‘Do you think I wish to be marched in front of the Butcher on the tip of a sword?’