Ten, when there ought to have been nearly thirty. I spotted Eudo and the other two, who had seen the hawk banner and were riding back towards us. The three of them brought our number to fourteen – myself included – but even so that was only half of my conroi.
‘Where are the rest?’ I demanded.
The men bowed their heads and refused to meet my eyes. I knew what that meant. A lump rose up in my throat, but I knew I couldn’t think of such things now; that would have to come later, after we had secured victory.
For now the English remained where they were, standing, taunting, no more inclined to attack than we were, it seemed. They were waiting for us to come to them, just as we waited for them to come to us, both sides separated by little more than fifty paces.
Lord Robert returned to us, untying his chin-strap and removing his helmet. His face was weathered from the years we had spent in Italy; his hair, while not as long and loose as the Englishmen were accustomed to wearing it, was certainly not cut in the short style fashionable in France. And unlike the Norman lords who usually went clean-shaven, Robert was possessed of a full but well-trimmed beard, which he often stroked when deep in thought. This he did now while he surveyed his men.
Including those who had this moment arrived from the fastness, I guessed that we had fewer than four hundred in that square – too few given that we had come to Dunholm with a thousand and a half. Most of those men were spearmen and horsemen, but there were some archers too, busily loosing volley after volley into the English ranks, though it seemed to me they were only wasting their arrows; most of the enemy had shields and few of the missiles got through.
Lord Robert rode towards me. His hauberk was spattered with English blood, his eyes were bloodshot and he bore a bright cut across his cheek.
‘Tancred,’ he said.
He extended a hand and I clasped it in my own. ‘My lord,’ I replied.
‘They were waiting for us,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘As I said they would be.’
‘They were.’ I would have liked to know how they had managed to break into the town, where so many men had come from, but it seemed to me pointless to be asking then, when they were standing but fifty paces from us. It looked as if the whole of Northumbria had gathered to drive us out from Dunholm. I glanced back at our small host arrayed below the church, their anxiety almost palpable in the air. My spirits fell, for I knew that we could not hope to drive the enemy off.
‘We have to fall back to the fastness while we still can,’ I said to Robert.
He came closer, lowering his voice so that the others around us could not hear. ‘If we do that, we hand them the town,’ he said. ‘We don’t have supplies to withstand a siege. We must fight them now.’
‘We don’t have the numbers, lord,’ I said. ‘If we retreat we can gather our strength, sally out on our own terms.’
‘No,’ Robert said, and his dark eyes bored into me. ‘They fear us, Tancred. See how reluctant they are to attack! We will defeat them tonight and we will defeat them here.’
‘They haven’t attacked because all they need do is hold us here,’ I pointed out. ‘The rest will come around the side streets.’ And I told him how we had come upon a group of them close by the bridge. ‘They’ll return, and when they do it will be in greater numbers than before. When that happens, we’ll be trapped here with no hope of retreat.’
He remained silent. The English continued to bang their shields; some of the Norman lords were doing the same as they tried to encourage their men.
‘Take thirty knights, then,’ he said at last. ‘Try to head the enemy off.’ He began to marshal a dozen or so of his men to go with me as he retied his helmet-strap under his chin.
I swallowed, for I knew if we became cut off from the main army, then we were all dead men. But the order had been given and I could not refuse.
‘Give me forty,’ I called after him.
He looked back at me. For a moment he hesitated, as if uncertain what to do, but then he nodded and gave the signal for ten more of his men to follow me.
‘If you can’t head them off, then we’ll have to retreat,’ he said. His lips were solemn and his eyes had the look of one who was beginning to see only failure ahead of him; a look that, in twelve years of campaigning, I had never seen him wear. This was the man who had led us at Varaville and at Hæstinges, who had rallied us when all had seemed lost, whose temperament never wavered, whose prowess at arms was bettered by none – and yet I saw his despair. A sudden chill came over me.
He rode back to the head of his men. Breathing deeply, I raised my lance and waved the pennon so that the whole of my conroi could see me. There were men of all ages: some young and fresh-faced, who had only recently sworn their oaths to Robert; others
who had served him since before the invasion, who were nearly as old as myself.
‘Stay close to me,’ I said to them. ‘Keep in mind always that the strength of the charge is in weight of numbers. Watch your flanks; don’t lose sight of the men beside you.’
I checked to see who was behind me, and was relieved to find Eudo and Fulcher and Gérard, though none of them were looking at me then; their eyes were either closed or fixed on the ground. Perhaps they were thinking over the instructions I had just given, or perhaps they were imagining the charge and what they would do when we met the English line.
I glanced once more towards Robert, who was speaking now with one of the other lords, his face red as he gestured wildly at some of the men further along our line. I swallowed once more, but as I lifted the hawk pennon high above my head, all my doubts fell away. For I knew that in twelve years of fighting I had faced worse circumstances than this, and had made it through. As long as we kept faith in our sword-arms, we would yet prevail.
‘For Normandy,’ I shouted.
My heart pounded as hard as Rollo’s hooves as we climbed back past the church and on around the bend, towards the western side of the town. That was where the enemy would be coming from, if they were coming at all, for the approach to the promontory was less steep there than it was on the eastern side. We passed the place where we had fought our skirmish earlier, though the road was now empty.
‘This way!’ I said, as I cut to the right, down a street so narrow that three of us could barely ride abreast, between houses on one side and wattle-work fencing on the other. I caught a glimpse of the river to our left, a ribbon of deepest black weaving beneath the trees.
Then the houses came to an end and we came out on to a field of furrowed earth, some thirty paces in width and perhaps two or three times as long. And there, at the far end, from out of the midst of the houses, were Normans fleeing towards us, scores of them on horseback and on foot. Behind them, roaring, running forward with torches bobbing and weapons drawn, came the enemy.
Three
I LOWERED MY
lance, gripping it firmly in my right hand just as I clutched at the brases of my shield in my left.
‘On!’ I called to my conroi. ‘For St Ouen, Lord Robert and King Guillaume!’
‘For King Guillaume!’ they returned the cry, and we were racing across the field, scores of hooves trampling down the furrows, kicking up mud and stones. Beside me rode Eudo and Fulcher and Gérard, knee to knee, with three more on either flank, so that there were ten of us in that first line, leading the charge. A few on our right were beginning to draw ahead, and I shouted to them to keep formation, though how many could have heard, above the thunder of hooves and wind buffeting in their faces, I did not know.
The fleeing Normans scattered from our path. The enemy were behind them still, a tide of men rushing forth to meet us, but we drove on, and then we were among them, crashing our lances into their shields and their faces, riding over their bodies as they fell. The rest of the conroi were behind us as we tore into their ranks, beating down with our swords, and the screams of the dying filled the air.
‘
Godemite
,’ one of the enemy shouted, raising his spearpoint with its scarlet pennon high into the air. ‘
Godemite!
’
Unlike the rest who went without armour, or at best with only a leather jerkin, he wore mail. His sword-hilt was inlaid with gold, and I took him for a thegn – one of the English leaders – for he was rallying his men to him, until seemingly without any signal being given they began running at us, their spears levelled forwards. So eager were they to die, however, that they came not all at once with shields overlapping, but rather in ragged fashion.
I charged on with Eudo and Gérard and the rest beside me, cleaving, battering the enemy down, until the thegn himself stood before me. His teeth were gritted and his face was red as he aimed his spearpoint at Rollo’s neck, but I swerved right and it hammered into my shield instead, sending a shudder up through my shoulder and knocking me backwards against the cantle. I gripped Rollo tight with my legs, determined not to fall.
He drew his gilded sword and made to attack again, but before he could, Eudo had come around by his flank and was slashing across the man’s unprotected forearm, through the bone, severing the hand which remained still gripped around the sword-hilt. The man screamed and stumbled back, clutching at the bloody stump, but in doing so he brought his shield out of position, and his head was exposed.
I saw the opening and smashed my sword down into the thegn’s face. His head jerked back, his long moustache soaked in blood; the nasal-guard of his helmet had taken the brunt of the blow and still he lived, though not for long. Eudo sliced across his chest, penetrating the links of his hauberk to the flesh beneath. Gasping, the man took another step back, looking down at his breast as he pressed his one remaining hand tight against the mail. Blood spilt through his fingers; his eyes glazed over and his lips moved, but no sound came out; and then he collapsed.
No sooner had he done so than he was forgotten, for I was moving on: parrying, thrusting, carving a path through the enemy until there was space around me. I checked to see that the rest of my conroi were with me still, and most were, but not all. Several horses lay dead on the ground, their riders beside them, and among those who had fallen I saw the face of my countryman, Rualon.
I had no time for reflection, however. Over the enemy’s heads, to my left and close to the river, I glimpsed a white shield with a black hawk upon its face. Its owner, robust and barrel-chested, was fighting on foot and his free hand wielded a long spear: a spear which carried a pennon the same as mine. He had his helmet on and his ventail up, but I could just see the scar below his eye
which he had borne ever since Hæstinges, and I recognised him straightaway.
‘Wace!’ I called, hoping to catch his attention, but above the noise of swords clashing upon shields and mail he could not have heard me. I raised my sword aloft. ‘With me,’ I said to my men. ‘With me!’
Apart from Lord Robert himself, I knew of few men more skilled with a sword than Wace. He’d been in Robert’s employ even longer than I, had fought in the same battles, and, like me, was in charge of a full conroi of his household knights. Except that now there were but six or seven men with him. Three were knights, for they wore mail and helmets. One had lost his shield and was fighting with a spear in either hand, another with two swords. Together they were being pressed back into a tight ring as the English closed on them from all sides.
‘On! On!’
Northumbrians fled before me, and my sword felt light in my hand as I brought it down, again, again, again. I no longer knew how many I had killed, for all I could see were those ahead, and I knew I had to get to Wace. He stabbed his spear up under the shield of the man in front of him, into his groin, but no sooner had that corpse fallen to the ground than another man had stepped over it to fill the gap, eager for blood. On the other side, the Norman with the two swords pressed his advantage, coming out of the ring against his comrades’ warnings, raining blows on the shields before him, hacking so hard that the hide fell away from the wood. He forced his way through their wall, striking out left and right, and several of them died before a spear pierced his chest.
Wace looked up and saw me. He shouted something that I could not hear, but it did not matter, because the enemy were beneath me and my blade was singing with the joy of battle, gleaming in the torchlight as it struck and struck again. And I was reminded of the end of the day at Hæstinges, when the last of the English tried to hold us off, even though the battle was by then already won, and the man they called their king lay dead on the field. I recalled how we had pursued them as they fled the mêlée, and suddenly I
was there again, riding the enemy down, losing myself to the will of my sword, arcing it down, slicing it across their throats.
‘For Lord Robert!’ I cried. ‘For Lord Robert!’
I looked about for my next kill, but the enemy were running back to their ranks, where hundreds more, it seemed, were slowly advancing, shouting as they came: ‘
Ut! Ut! Ut!
’
Wace stood, breathing hard, while the three men that remained of his group rallied around him. The shaft of his spear had cracked, lodged in the chest of one of several Northumbrian bodies littering the earth in front of him. The pennon, soaked with blood, was torn to shreds. He looked, half squinting, up at me. The same blow that had given him his scar at Hæstinges had also crippled his eye, and though he could still see almost as well as before, he had never been able to open it fully since.
‘You took your time,’ he said, which was exactly the kind of remark I would have expected from him. He had a voice like gravel: rough and sharp.
‘We have to get back,’ I told him, ignoring his lack of gratitude. ‘We must get back to the fastness.’
I glanced about at the rest of my conroi, who were staring at the massed ranks of English spears bearing down on them. Some of them were already turning, breaking off, riding back the way we had come.
Sheathing my sword, I waved towards the promontory and the palisade wall ringing its crest. ‘Retreat!’