Within two miles those suspicions were confirmed when they came across a lame pony grazing among a flock of sheep. It still wore a rope pack-bridle and there were sweaty cinch marks branded on its belly. When it saw the soldiers’ horses, it nickered and limped eagerly to greet them. The pony bore a distinctive star marking on his forehead and Joscelin recognized it as one of the sturdy pack beasts that had carried supplies on the journey between London and Rushcliffe.
The wind ruffled the grass. A small shred of colour fluttered upon the spikes of a young hawthorn bush growing against a crumbled wall. Dismounting, Joscelin went to investigate and discovered a veil of blue silk and nearby a linen bolster stuffed with women’s clothing.
‘They’ve had to lighten their load,’ Joscelin said to Brien with satisfaction. ‘We’re on the right track. Jean, return to the village and fetch Sir Guy.’ Joscelin remounted and strapped the bundle to his crupper.
A mile farther on, a narrow cart track branched off the road to give access to one of the granges beholden to the castle. Thick woodland lay to one side of the track, open fields to the other. Huddled in the sheltered corner of a dip in the undulating wolds stood the farm buildings - a longhouse in the old Saxon style, together with a barn and outbuildings. The longhouse was on fire. As the breeze backed and eddied, the smell of smoke reached the riders. Ripples of heat zigzagged and shimmered, giving the burning building the illusion of being underwater.
‘It doesn’t look as if someone’s just been careless with a cooking fire.’ Brien unstrapped his helm from his saddle.
Joscelin heard the tension in Brien’s voice. The thought of Leicester’s rebellion was uppermost in everyone’s mind but surely it was too soon for that kind of trouble - unless it was concerned with the skirmish on the road yesterday. Perhaps it was by way of revenge. Joscelin shook the reins and urged Whitesocks towards the farmstead. The eddies of smoke strengthened and the stallion pranced and plunged. Joscelin almost lost control of him when they came upon the body of a horse stretched across the track. It was a palfrey this time, a dainty black barb mare. Her foreleg was broken and someone had cut her throat. A thick cloud of flies buzzed around the blackening wound. Of harness there was no sign, although her hide still bore the impression of bridle and saddle.
His spine prickling, Joscelin steadied Whitesocks and rode on. The smell of burning was woven with the crackle of feeding flames. In places, all the flesh of the longhouse had been devoured and the wooden bones were enveloped in greedy tongues of scarlet fire. Beside the track, facedown in the grass, a body sprawled.
Arnaud de Corbette had been stripped of his fine garments and was clad in naught but his linen braies. Three diagonal slashes were carved across his corpse as if he were a fish on a griddle. One eye glared. The other was concealed against the bloodied earth. Joscelin dismounted and, holding the reins fast in one hand, crouched to examine Corbette’s wounds.
Brien’s face twisted. ‘What are you doing?’
Joscelin looked up. ‘Seeking answers. Look at these cuts. Whoever did this had a good sword and some useful weight behind his swing. An axe or a club would have left different marks.’
Brien’s gaze was full of fastidious distaste. ‘So why does it matter how he was killed?’
Joscelin stood up. ‘It matters because only a man of wealth or professional fighting ability would own a sword and only a man who sells his services would strip a body like this. I’ve done it myself in winters past when an extra cloak means the difference between living and freezing.’
‘So you think this is the work of mercenaries?’
‘Very likely.’ Joscelin remounted and rode towards the palisade surrounding the burning farm. A stifled sob close on the left made Whitesocks throw up his head and snort with alarm. Joscelin calmed the horse and stared at the reeds and sedge bordering the muddy ditch at the foot of the palisade slope. ‘Come out where I can see you,’ he commanded in English. ‘You will not be harmed. I am Joscelin de Gael, appointed by the Crown to govern here.’
Two women, one young and very pregnant, the other older but still handsome, emerged from their hiding place in a clump of feather reeds. Their gown hems were mud-stained and heavy with water. The younger woman was sobbing and clutching her gravid belly. Her companion gripped a knife in her right hand and suspiciously eyed Joscelin and his troop.
‘What has happened here?’ he asked. ‘Where are your menfolk?’
The older woman shook her head. ‘Soldiers came with weapons,’ she said. ‘Their tongue was foreign but not French like they speak at the castle. We saw them coming, heard them too, the bastards, because they was chasing the seneschal, and he was screaming like a coney. Our menfolk are at the mill, else they’d be dead, too.’ She put her arm around the younger woman, who continued to snuffle and sob. ‘Me and Alfreda was outside feeding the poultry when we heard the commotion and we saw the seneschal and his family being attacked and robbed by soldiers. I made Alfreda drop everything and we hid in the ditch. We could hear them yelling and boasting.’ She shuddered. ‘The women were screaming and I was sure they’d discover us, they was so close, but we prayed to the blessed Saint Edmund and we was spared.’ The woman’s eyes glittered with angry, unshed tears. ‘Although God knows what for. How are we supposed to live now with the rent due at Michaelmas and our house and half our stores gone?’
‘You need not worry about that. I’ll see to it that you’re not destitute.’ Joscelin tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. Their concerns were obviously vital of this moment to them. ‘How many soldiers did you see?’
‘I don’t know, only got a couple o’ glimpses.’ She counted laboriously on her fingers. ‘’Bout a score, I suppose, but only half of them had horses. They took the seneschal’s destrier and madam’s palfrey. They’d have had our old cob, too, if Rob and Will hadn’t taken him this morning.’ She surveyed the burning building dismally. ‘We’d heard rumours o’ trouble, but we thought it was all ale-talk. King Henry won’t stand for no nonsense from his sons, we said.’ Her chin wobbled and she compressed her lips and glared at Joscelin.
‘I am responsible for the king’s justice on these lands,’ Joscelin replied. ‘If there are bands of routiers at large of whatever faction, I will deal with them and swiftly.’
‘Yes, my lord.’ She looked sceptical. And then her eyes widened and focused on a point beyond Joscelin. The younger woman shrieked and fell to her knees.
Turning in the saddle, Joscelin saw a motley assortment of horsemen and foot soldiers advancing towards them from the direction of the woods. The leading horse was the seneschal’s handsome piebald stallion and the warrior astride it had the raddled face of a fallen angel. A scar running from left mouth corner to mutilated left ear tilted and creased his grin, transforming it into a leer as he drew rein before Joscelin.
‘Greetings, nephew,’ said Conan de Gael, performing a mocking salute with the hilt of his drawn sword.
‘We heard in Nottingham that the Rushcliffe lands were yours.’ Conan shook his head, the grin still in place, and reclined on one elbow in the grass. ‘Lucky bastard - no offence intended.’
Joscelin was not deceived by his uncle’s air of relaxed affability. The hazel-green eyes were as hard as stones, and although Conan had removed his sword in token of goodwill he would still have a knife in his boot and another up his sleeve. ‘I could be forgiven for disbelieving you,’ he replied, nodding at the smoke still puthering from the longhouse. An ox that had been slaughtered in the earlier mayhem had been carved into chunks and was now roasting over a purpose-built fire pit. The two peasant women had retired to a distance but Joscelin could feel their hatred boring into his spine, together with their belief that he was a worse devil than the two previous lords of Rushcliffe put together.
‘Ah, come now, Josce, that wasn’t my fault.’
‘Wasn’t it?’
Conan drew his meat dagger from his belt and went to the fire pit to test a lump of meat to see if it was cooked. The women glared at him. Conan saluted them, the tip of his knife holding a sizzling, bloody chunk of their plough ox. ‘We bumped into your seneschal and his family on the road. Course, I didn’t know he was yours then and a man has to have the money to eat and clothe himself - you know that. If a fatted calf walks up to you dripping in wealth, it’s just begging to be sacrificed. It was obvious he was on the run with his ill-gotten gains.’ The mercenary tore a shred of meat off the edge of the beef portion and chewed vigorously. ‘The women ran like headless chickens into the longhouse and barred the door against us. One of them must have caught her gown in the hearth because, next thing we knew, the place was on fire and the flames too fierce for any of us to get near enough to rescue anyone.’
Joscelin eyed Conan narrowly. ‘I saw my seneschal’s body,’ he said. ‘In the old days you’d not have mutilated the dead.’
Conan spat out a knurl of gristle. ‘That was Godred’s work.’ He jabbed his head in the direction of a young soldier sitting close to the fire pit, moodily prodding the glowing embers with a stick. ‘He’s not fond of Normans at the best of times and the way we were treated in Nottingham was bound to have repercussions.’
‘What were you doing in Nottingham in the first place? I thought you were in Normandy.’
‘We sailed just before Pentecost. Trouble was brewing and men of our trade have to sell our swords where we can - unless we land ourselves an heiress.’ He flashed Joscelin a mocking glance. ‘We took employment with Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby and Lord of Nottingham.’ He spat another piece of gristle into the grass. ‘Ever worked for him, Josce?’
‘No. He might have several fiefs in Nottingham but the castle itself belongs to the Crown. My employer has always been the king.’
Brien, who had been looking at Conan from the corner of his eye as if he did not quite believe in his existence, said, ‘I have heard that Ferrers is a haphazard paymaster.’
‘Haphazard? Hah! If we saw four shillings a week between us, we were fortunate. When I tackled him about it he threw us out, said that he could get Flemings for half as much as he was paying us and that we were lucky he hadn’t slung us in his dungeon for presumption. Arrogant, soft-cocked wind-bladder! He’s lucky I didn’t slit his throat to silence him.’ Conan wiped his bloody knife-blade on the grass.
‘Instead you slit my seneschal’s,’ Joscelin said frostily.
‘You didn’t want him, did you? You ought to be grateful.’
Joscelin made a disgusted sound and shook his head.
‘Did Ferrers hire you for any particular purpose?’ Brien asked.
‘No, just building up his troops in the area. When we were in Nottingham, we were billeted in some ramshackle houses of his near a stinking marsh with tanneries right next door. I’ve shat in better cesspits.’
‘But he said he was going to replace you with Flemings?’
‘Flemings, Brabanters, whoever he could get the cheapest,’ Conan said with a shrug. ‘Of course, like us, they’ll have to cross the Narrow Sea. Be quite an invasion, eh? If you ask me, they’ll come piecemeal, rounded up by those rebellious earls of yours and sent over here with promises of riches beyond their greediest imaginings. Most of ’em won’t be professional soldiers - jobless weavers and dyers for the most part. Won’t know the business end of a sword from the holes in their arses.’
‘But you are not part of the vanguard?’ queried Brien, persisting like a dog with a bone.
Conan half-closed his eyes. ‘You want to know a mortal great deal, my lord.’
‘Brien works for the justiciar,’ Joscelin explained and was amused by the look of consternation that briefly flickered in Conan’s eyes. ‘It is his duty to discover as much as he can about the doings of the rebellious barons.’
‘Well, don’t look to me,’ Conan growled. ‘I can tell you more about the latrine habits of Nottingham tanners than I can about the doings of Robert Ferrers. All he said was that he was going to replace us with Flemings, and we’re not part of anyone’s vanguard, although there’s hiring aplenty going on across the Narrow Sea.’
Joscelin regarded Conan with a mixture of exasperation and curiosity. ‘Well, what are you really doing in England when Normandy is your true field?’
Conan sucked his teeth and eased a fingernail between the front two to loosen a tag of meat. ‘I’m not getting any younger - eight and forty next Christmastide, although I know I don’t look it,’ he added with a sour grin. ‘One day, experience won’t be enough to save me from some youngster’s sword and I’ll be glad to die. But before that happens, I’ve to attend to some personal family business.’ He looked pointedly at Brien, who was swift to take a hint by rising to his feet to go and cut himself a portion of ox.
When he was out of earshot, Conan said, ‘I’m here to make my peace with your father - and Morwenna. When I heard you’d got yourself lands in the area, I thought I’d muster your support first.’
‘You might find making peace difficult,’ Joscelin said wryly. ‘My father never mentions her. If I bring up the subject, he looks at me as if I have deliberately stabbed him.’
Conan grunted. ‘Tore him asunder when your mother died. He begot on her the child that killed her. He wasn’t there to catch her when she tripped on her gown and fell down the stairs. You’ll never reason it away from him. God knows I tried in the months after her death, and in the end he kicked me out because he wanted to wear his guilt like shackles for the rest of his life.’
‘He has made a shrine of his guilt now,’ Joscelin said. ‘Near his hunting lodge in Arnsby woods he’s had a chapel built to house her remains. He has masses said for her every day and candles to burn in perpetuity.’
Conan shook his head and stared numbly at Joscelin, as if unsure whether to be pleased or appalled.
‘The first time I saw the white chapel, I wept,’ Joscelin confessed. ‘He had it built after I ran away to join you. In part I think it was a shrine for me, too. He never thought to see me again.’ He looked at the ground and stirred the grass with the toe of his boot.
‘He probably wouldn’t have done either, if not for me!’ Conan declared, his voice loud and overhearty. ‘You were greener than the grass stains on a whore’s gown when you arrived in my camp!’