Such was their pride, though, that the brothers were not content with that for long, and so earlier this year they’d fled his court for a second time. Eadwine had ridden north, to seek help, it was thought, from the King of Scots, only to be betrayed by some of his men and overtaken on the road by a conroi of knights, who slew him and all those accompanying him. Morcar, on the other hand, had made for Elyg to join those rebels already gathered there. With him went many of those who had lent their weapons in support of his earlier rebellion, who saw him now as their only hope for a leader who would drive us out of England.
Robert would argue that it was because of Morcar that we were here, and few would disagree with him. Without the former earl’s leadership the rebels’ loose alliance of squabbling thegns would surely have collapsed months ago. Not only that, but his arrival had bolstered the enemy’s numbers by somewhere between, we reckoned, one thousand and twelve hundred men of fighting age: men who could carry swords and spears and shields into battle but who, more importantly, could also dig ditches, raise earthen banks and fell trees from which they could build palisades to surround their stronghold, so that by the time we’d arrived in force, the enemy were already well ensconced upon the Isle and easily able to repulse our attacks.
None of that, though, undermined Hereward’s importance, or made him any less of a threat.
‘Lord,’ I said, ‘if it weren’t for Hereward wreaking his ruin, the rebels would do nothing but sit inside their fastness. Morcar, Siward, Ordgar and the other magnates might possess greater wealth and standing amongst the English, and have larger followings, but Hereward is the one who inspires them and gives them confidence. By his raiding he alone brings them victory and delivers them booty, and so exerts an influence far above his rank. Destroy him and many of the others will quickly lose belief. Only when that happens do we stand a chance of being able to defeat them.’
Robert shook his head sadly. ‘I wish it were so simple.’
‘Do you believe that the king’s strategy is any more elaborate?’
‘You heard, then.’
‘Not all of it, lord, but enough. I understand that the king has been rebuilding the causeway on to the Isle.’
Robert nodded. ‘He’s moving most of his forces back to Alrehetha, where he has recently finished building a guardhouse to watch over the marsh. He is determined to break the enemy once and for all, and wishes to make another assault within the week.’
The manor of Alrehetha lay to the south of Elyg, separated from the Isle by a mile-wide bog that neither horse nor man could easily cross. We had tried to bridge it twice already, and both times without success. The first attempt, built of timber and loose stones supported by sheepskins filled with sand, had collapsed even as our forces streamed across it, brought down by the weight of so many knights and spearmen hungry for blood and for glory. God only knew the number that had drowned; we were lucky not to have been chosen to spearhead that first assault, or we would have been among them. Instead we’d watched from the banks, powerless to do anything as, shouting and screaming for help that would not come, our fellow Frenchmen floundered in the sucking mire, struggling for breath, burdened by their heavy mail, while their panicked mounts thrashed spray everywhere and the enemy hurled javelins and shot arrows into their midst. Even now, two months later, the marsh was still littered with many hundreds of swollen corpses. Together they raised a sickening stench that gripped men’s stomachs and caused them to heave, and when the wind was up could be smelt for miles around.
The second attempt had been barely any better conceived. By then more than a month had passed since the first causeway had collapsed, and the king was beginning to grow desperate, so much so that he had been persuaded by one of his nobles, a certain Ivo surnamed Taillebois, to put his trust in the power of a wizened Englishwoman with a harelip and only one leg, who claimed to be able to work the magic of the old gods. Wooden towers had been constructed by the edge of the bog while some of the marsh folk were put to work repairing and strengthening what remained of the bridge, and upon one of those towers the Devil-witch was set in order to protect them with her charms from the enemy’s depredations, and also to weaken the rebels’ resolve and sow ill feeling among their ranks.