I supposed he was right, although that did nothing to stave off my suspicions.
‘You must realise, too, that his anger isn’t reserved for you,’ Robert said as we walked back across the yard, which the recent rains had turned into a quagmire. ‘He’s angry at the circumstances he finds himself in, and the knowledge that he will never accomplish all that he set out to do. He is a proud man, Tancred, and always has been. He hates for others to see him looking so weak. Seeing you reminds him of a time when his fortunes were better, when men did not spit his name but instead held him in esteem.’
‘If you say so, lord,’ I said, though I didn’t entirely believe him.
We trudged on through the mud until we arrived back outside the hall’s great doors.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you suggested,’ Robert said as we were about to bid each other farewell. ‘About how, if we could only find the right passages through the marshes, we might be able to surprise the enemy, or at least inflict some damage in return.’
‘Yes, lord?’
‘I want you to take a boat out into the marshes towards the Isle. See if you can capture one or more of the rebels and bring them back alive.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Tonight,’ he confirmed. ‘Take Eudo and Wace with you, and as many other men as you think you might need, so long as you go unnoticed and you return by first light.’
‘And how do you expect us to be able to do this, lord?’
‘I hoped you might have some plan in mind. You were the one who suggested it, after all. Unless, of course, you think yourself incapable of such a task.’
He gave a mischievous smile as he spoke. He meant to goad me, for he knew that I rarely refused a challenge when one was laid before me.
‘Well?’ he asked. ‘For you this should be simple.’
He hardly needed to ask, for he had already worked out what my answer would be even before the words formed on my tongue.
‘I will do this, lord.’
His smile broadened further. He knew me too well, I thought. Robert had a way of seeing into men’s hearts, of understanding their characters and desires and how he might use that knowledge to his advantage: a skill that his father also possessed. In that respect, if in few others, they were very much alike.
With that we parted ways. Robert returned inside while I went to gather my men. Earlier, as the smell of stew bubbling in cooking-pots had wafted on the breeze, my mind had turned to thoughts of food, but it was hunger of a different kind that gripped me now. For this was the chance I’d been waiting for. At last I would be doing something more useful than guarding cartloads of grain. Perhaps this was how Robert sought to repay me for all those days spent riding back and forth on the road from Cantebrigia, or else he was merely indulging my restless spirit. I didn’t know, and I didn’t care.
What I did know was that we had to make the most of this opportunity, for otherwise it wouldn’t be long before the clash of steel upon steel would ring out across the marshes once again. At one time that prospect would have gladdened me, but not now. For as much as I longed to feel the heat of the mêlée, the rush of blood as I charged into the enemy battle-lines, I could not shake the doubt nagging at the back of my mind. A doubt that grew with every moment that I dwelt upon it, as I thought of Hereward and the rest of the rebels, ensconced in their impregnable fastness upon the Isle, and the king’s single-minded desire to crush them whatever the cost. By anyone’s estimation we faced a fight the likes of which we had not known since H?stinges itself: a desperate struggle from which glory or death were the only two routes out. Even if, at the end of it, we emerged victorious, that victory would surely come at a tremendous price, of blood and limbs and life.
And though I did my best to drive such thoughts away, I couldn’t help but wonder whether this battle would be my last.
Five