Hereward (42 page)

Abbot Brand breathed in wisps of sweetly aromatic incense and opened his eyes. He was a gaunt man, as hard as a cold flagstone, with piercing black eyes and thin lips that appeared to be sneering at comfort. Rising to his feet, he crossed himself, and only then did he hear the soft click of a closing door and the echo of feet padding along the nave.

Alric watched the man turn, gauging the abbot’s nature from the intensity of his stare and every line in his face. Suspicious at first, the man absorbed the monkish robes of the new arrival and said in an iron voice, ‘What is the meaning of this interruption?’

‘Father, I waited until you had finished your prayers, but there is an important matter which needs your attention.’

‘Who are you to make demands of me?’

‘I am merely a humble servant of God,’ Alric replied. ‘Like yourself.’

The abbot took a moment to consider if there was any insult implied in the comment. The monk continued, ‘My companion and I have travelled long and hard here to Burgh Abbey, and we are weary from the road. Would you deny us a brief moment?’

‘It must wait until morning,’ the abbot snapped. ‘The business of the abbey calls to me.’ He moved to walk past Alric along the nave to the door, but the monk stepped into his path. Anger flashed across the abbot’s face at the disrespect.

‘In truth, Father, I approached you in advance of my companion to be sure the abbey was not swarming with Normans at prayer. I am only just returned from a long stay in Flanders, but I have been told the clergy enjoy a fruitful and warm relationship with our new masters.’

Suspicion once again burned in the abbot’s eyes. ‘And why would you, a monk, have any reason to question the king?’

‘I answer only to one master, Father.’

The abbot’s patience had almost worn through. As he prepared to call out, Alric said quickly, ‘I see you are alone here at this late hour, and this abbey remains a place of tranquillity, so I would usher in my companion. He is of your blood, Father.’

Abbot Brand started. ‘My blood?’

‘All of this business is about blood, in one way or another.’ Hereward’s voice floated from the deep shadows at the rear of the church. He had entered unnoticed while Alric had been speaking. At the sound of the familiar voice the monk saw a flash of unease cross the abbot’s face, perhaps even fear, but it was gone before he could be sure.

From the shadows, Hereward slowly emerged. The candlelight illuminated the blue warrior marks on his bare arms, his fair hair, his strong jaw. The flames danced in his pale eyes. Alric caught his breath. For the first time, he thought that here was a man who could defeat an entire army of invaders if he put his mind to it. When had this warrior emerged from the wild youth who had sprayed blood across frozen Northumbria? In the misery he had witnessed in Eoferwic? During the long march through the bloody battlefields of Flanders? With Turfrida’s kiss, and her love? On the day’s march from the camp to Burgh, the monk had realized how truly changed his companion was. The warrior, it seemed, had developed a strategy shaped by wisdom and patience instead of the raw passions and rage that had once filled him. But, as always, Hereward kept his plans close to his heart, and Alric had been surprised when he saw the church tower rising up against the grey sky from the top of a hill. It was a grand abbey. Behind the enclosure, halls, houses and stores sprawled across an extensive estate. What, he wondered, could his friend possibly want here?

‘Hereward?’ the abbot began. ‘I thought you—’

‘Dead. Outlaw. Yes, Uncle, you are not the first to tell me these things.’ Hereward came to a halt in front of the older man and looked him deep in the eye. ‘I expect my father has had much to say about me.’

Brand’s face remained impassive. ‘I have prayed for you.’

‘Many have died by my hand, Uncle, but not the woman I was accused of murdering. That was a lie, designed to keep small men in great power. But God has dealt out his punishment for their sins.’

Abbot Brand folded his hands behind his back. ‘It has been many years since you were here as a boy. Though your learning improved, we failed to tame you. I always saw that as my failing, and I told your father so.’

‘Then you can make amends now.’

Alric studied the two men. He saw suspicion lying between them, a hint of unease in the abbot, but Hereward’s true thoughts were unreadable.

‘What would you have? Food? Clothing?’ The older man paused, his eyes narrowing. ‘Sanctuary?’

Hereward laughed. ‘I need no protection. No, Uncle, I need you to make me a knight.’

Taken aback, the abbot’s studied aloofness fell away.

‘You seem shocked. Am I not suitable? My father is a thegn. I hold land – or did before the bastard William came. I have my sword and mail, and I am well versed in all the knightly ways. And was I not a good protector of this very church for many years?’ From a leather pouch at his side, Hereward removed a smaller pouch tied at the neck. The coin in it jangled. The warrior held out the payment for Brand to take.

After a moment’s hesitation, the abbot took the pouch with a sigh. ‘What gain is there in this for you? It will not clear the stain upon your name.’

‘England needs a defender, Uncle. It needs an honourable man who will inspire hope in the hearts of our neighbours and fear in the hearts of our enemies. When I am knight, men will flock to my banner more readily. All will look to what I am now, not what I was before.’ Hereward’s eyes twinkled. Alric thought he saw mischief there.

‘You would rebel against the Normans?’ Brand said with horror.

‘Why would I not? The invaders crush the life from us.’

The monk felt impressed by his friend’s cunning. In the eyes of others, the title would transform the warrior from savage killer and outlaw to a man who fought for the highest principle, a warrior blessed by God.

‘Consider the consequences. If you stand against the Normans, you will bring all of William’s wrath down upon the fens,’ the cleric pressed. ‘We have kept our peace here as best we could. It has not been perfect but we have survived. William will brutally crush you, and all who stand with you, and he will not care what innocents get in the way. Do you wish that fate upon your neighbours?’

‘I would not wish upon my neighbours the life they now have.’

The abbot wrung his hands together, pleading. ‘There is only a small force here now. Just fourteen knights of high rank commanding barely five times that number.’

Hereward nodded. ‘And those fourteen slaughtered my brother? A good number. They will be the first.’

Brand looked sickened. ‘William will burn the whole fenland if he has to. He will go to any extremes if he feels his word is challenged.’

‘I will do the same. We will see who has the stomach for this battle.’

Seeing his nephew would not be deterred, the abbot relented. ‘Give me your sword and kneel. I cannot deny this request from my own blood, but my concerns are great.’

Hereward smiled. He knelt on the cold flags in front of his uncle, and bowed his head.

‘Then repeat the knight-oath.’ The abbot laid the tip of the sword upon Hereward’s right shoulder. ‘In the eyes of God, swear now to be just and honourable at all times.’

‘I so swear.’ Hereward’s clear voice echoed along the nave.

‘Swear now that you will defend the weak and uphold the virtues of compassion, loyalty, generosity and truth.’

‘I so swear.’

‘Swear now, by all that you hold sacred, that you will honour and defend the Crown and Church.’

‘I so swear … that I will defend the Crown, but not the invader who now wears it.’

Brand hesitated, still struggling with his reluctance, and then said, ‘Rise. In the eyes of God, you are now a knight.’ He balanced the sword on the palms of his hands and offered it to Hereward.

Alric saw a change in his friend, as if a mask had suddenly slipped away. His eyes afire, Hereward took the sword and slipped it into its sheath. ‘So be it.’

The abbot frowned. ‘When this reaches the ears of the Normans—’

‘Why would it?’ Hereward interrupted, his smile sardonic. ‘There are only we three present.’ He laughed. ‘I expect this to reach the ears of the Normans, Uncle. That is why I came here. I want them to dwell on the nature of the enemy they face. I want this night to ripple out across the fens, across all England, to wash up to the very feet of William the Bastard as he sits upon his stolen throne.’

Abbot Brand looked white in the pale candlelight. ‘What will you do?’

Without answering, Hereward showed the cleric his back and strode to the edge of the shadow at the end of the nave. As if as an afterthought, he turned back and said in a cold voice, ‘I will bring terror. I will bring blood. And England will be made free once more.’

In the instant before the dark folded around his friend, Alric glimpsed something in his friend’s face that turned him cold. It was as if another peered out through the eyes of the man he knew, something inhuman that had been hiding away but was now set free. Frightened, the monk hesitated for a long moment before following his companion.

When he slipped through the door and called after his friend, a cowled figure that had been spying upon the meeting separated from the shadows and followed him.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY

THE TORCHES GUTTERED and spat in the breeze. Smoke stinking of pitch swirled in the thin light breaking through the branches where a few gold and copper leaves still clung. Holding aloft the burning brands, the Norman knights waited on the edge of the green. They were dressed for war, in helmets and hauberks, double-edged swords hanging at their sides. In front of them, the village men knelt on the turf, their heads bowed. They still wore the thin tunics they had been dressed in when they rose from their beds at first light, before the Normans had hauled them from their homes. Whimpering, the women huddled against the wall of one house, casting fearful glances at their menfolk as they wrapped their arms around their sobbing children.

Aldous Wyvill felt only contempt for the cowardly English. They had brought this upon themselves. ‘One final time,’ he said, his eyes moving over the sullen peasants. ‘What do you know of the outlaw Hereward?’

Only the wind answered him.

Grim-faced, the Norman commander nodded to his knights. He would brook no resistance. In response to his silent order, each knight raised a sizzling torch towards the thatch roofing the eight dwellings ringing the green. The village men looked up, their faces drained of blood, but still they remained defiant. The commander sighed inwardly.

‘Wait.’ A young, thin-faced man with straggly blond hair and unsettlingly pale eyes lurched to his feet. The men about him cursed him, insisting he hold his tongue. A woman, the man’s wife, Aldous guessed, begged him to stay strong.

Aldous held up his hand to stay the burning. He looked the man in the face with as respectful a stare as he could muster. ‘You know something of this Hereward?’

The man nodded.

‘Then speak, and know that you do an honourable thing in trying to save your village.’

‘We have all heard talk of him, in the market and the inn. He has returned to defend us in our time of need.’

The commander snorted. ‘He will be the death of you all. What do you know of him?’

‘That he is more than man. That he is filled with the spirit of a bear, which he killed with his bare hands in the north, or so the stories say.’

‘He is a man, be sure of that, and a weak one too.’

‘You say. But that is not what the English hear. Already the stories are reaching out beyond the fens, and a steady stream of men and women draws towards this place.’

‘To join the rebellion?’

‘Some. Others to seek protection from the grip of your king.’ Burning insolence flared in the man’s eyes.

Aldous struck him across the face with the back of his hand, splitting his lip and raising blood. ‘He is
your
king,’ he hissed. ‘Show respect or you will lose your head, here, in front of your woman, and your neighbours.’

The man flashed an affectionate look towards his tearful wife.

‘One more thing I would know,’ the commander continued. ‘Where does this Hereward make camp?’

With one voice, the village men roared their opposition, shouting threats of violence to their young neighbour.

‘For your village,’ Aldous whispered. ‘For your women and children.’

Looking down, the man swallowed. In a quiet voice almost drowned out by the clamour, he described the location of the outlaw’s camp.

Once he was done, Aldous allowed himself a triumphant grin. He would begin making his plans immediately to attack the rebel. This Hereward would not know he was doomed until it was too late. Striding back to his men, he nodded curtly. ‘Burn it down. Then kill the men.’

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY
-O
NE

‘KEEP YOUR EYES ahead,’ Hereward whispered.

Alric barely heard the warrior above the music of the fens. Wind whistled through the high branches of the willows. Dry wood cracked under the monk’s shoes. Leaves rustled. Rooks cawed. Since they had left Burgh Abbey, Alric had concentrated on the burning in his thighs as they waded through black mud, skirted silent lakes shimmering with a brassy glow as morning broke, stumbled along flinty causeways and splashed across white-foamed rushing streams. He felt tired and hungry and he feared what was happening to his friend. All the good work of years appeared to be draining away by the moment.