I saw what the big man was getting at. While undoubtedly a few of them would argue on my behalf, most were no friends of mine and would probably take great pleasure in bringing about my demise, not least Elise.
‘In your absence they’ll all be clamouring for your head, lord, and not just Guibert’s companions and hearth-knights, but also his kin, once news of what happened reaches them.’
Pons nodded. ‘By letting you walk free, Robert has denied them justice. Unless he’s willing to recompense them by paying the blood-price from his own treasure chests, he’ll come under ever more pressure in the coming days to seek you out and bring you before the shire court.’
I groaned and buried my face in my palms. I’d almost come to terms with the idea of prostrating myself before Robert and begging his forgiveness, much though it grated with me. But Pons and Serlo were right. Were I to return to Heia, I would be delivering myself into the hands of those who sought to destroy me.
‘I’m not saying that Lord Robert can’t be won round, but it will take some time, if it happens at all,’ Pons said. ‘Weeks, perhaps.’
Patience had never been one of my virtues, and I wasn’t prepared to stay here that long while we waited for news to arrive, even if funds would allow it. For my coin-pouch was growing lighter by the day. Altogether the stabling, lodgings and broth had cost me five of the little silver pennies – far more than it should have done, but this seemed to be the only alehouse in this mud-ridden town, and so it had been a choice between meeting the innkeeper’s price or else sleeping in a ditch. I had barely a fistful of silver left, some in ingots and small pieces broken off from arm-rings, and the rest in the form of coins, although many of those had already been clipped to pay for food and horseshoes and other small items over the past few months.
Fortunately Godric had had enough wit about him to gather, as well as his own pack, the saddlebags that contained most of my belongings, including the drinking horn that Malet had gifted me, so I was not quite reduced to the clothes on my back. Not yet, at least. But in the rush to leave Heia we’d been forced to leave behind our tents and our sumpter ponies and anything else we could not gather quickly. That included my sword, which I’d left in the safekeeping of the door-ward at Robert’s hall, although Godric had managed to bring my mail and helmet as well as his own, as had the others. Still, once divested of our hauberks and chausses, we didn’t much look like a noble lord and his retinue but more like a band of ragged pilgrims. My clothes were torn from the fight, my trews and boots, themselves desperately in need of repair, were caked in mud and filth, while a bright bruise had blossomed high on my cheek, or so the others told me, although I had no idea how that had happened.
‘In the meantime I suppose there’s only one place we can go,’ I said, and both Serlo and Pons nodded. I sighed. ‘With any luck all this uproar will have died down by the time we get there.’
‘We can but pray, lord,’ said Pons.
‘Where are we going?’ Godric asked.
‘Home,’ I replied, by which, of course, I meant Earnford. We’d been away so long. The barley was still green in the fields when we’d ridden out to answer the king’s summons more than three months ago. Now the harvest would be in. I yearned to be back there, to see its hills and the river winding between the wide pastures, to sleep under my own roof, in my own hall.
I only hoped that Robert’s men didn’t get there first.
That worry continued to plague me over the following days, as we made the long journey from East Anglia to the Marches. Assuming that Robert didn’t go back on his decision to expel me from his service, then sooner or later he would come to take back possession of his lands. For the truth was that, for all that I’d come to think of Earnford as my own, I only held it as his tenant. My hall, my home, belonged by right to him. Without his lordship, I had nothing.