Robert nodded and dismissed the boy, who looked relieved that his questioning was finished, and that he wasn’t about to be sent with any more messages for the royal household. The officials of the palace were powerful men, useful to have as allies but dangerous to have as enemies, not just because they had the king’s ear but also because their orders carried his authority. They were respected by lords both petty and distinguished, and the boy had shown determination to have secured the attention of the royal steward.
In honesty, I wasn’t much looking forward to facing the king either. For much as I admired the will that had brought us here to England, and as great as his achievement was in winning this kingdom, nevertheless I feared him, as did many men in those days, both French and English alike. Although few had seen it with their own eyes, we had all heard the stories of how he and his raiding-bands had gone into the north last winter. We had heard how they’d harried the land and its people and despoiled both town and country, burnt storehouses newly filled with the autumn’s harvest, slaughtered sheep and cattle in the fields where they grazed, put entire families to the sword, from hobbling greybeards to the youngest babes in arms, and left the meadows to run with blood as they spread fire and ruin, all in the name of retribution for the Northumbrian uprisings. It was, of course, a long-spoken truth that wars were fought with rape and pillage as much as they were with sword and shield, but the ferocity of his vengeance on this occasion sowed great alarm among his followers, and I was glad to have had no part of it. That one act revealed an aspect to King Guillaume that had rarely shown itself before, but which with each passing day became clearer as this campaign dragged on, as his desperation deepened and his mood grew ever more foul.
And so it wasn’t just Godric who was nervous as we awaited the king. Fortunately it wasn’t long before he arrived. I had barely enough time to slake my thirst from the ale-barrel Robert kept in the hall and give a yawn before I made out the sound of hoofbeats in the yard outside, shortly followed by someone bellowing: ‘Make way! Make way for your king!’
He was here.
‘Get up,’ Wace said to Godric, but the Englishman seemed frozen to the stool, for he did not move, and my friend had to take his arms and bodily haul him up before he would stand. Even then the boy’s feet seemed hardly able to support his weight, and at any moment I thought he would spew.
Wace shoved him in the back to start him moving, and we followed Robert out, pushing aside the linen drapes and ducking beneath the low lintel of the doorway before emerging into the heat of the mid-morning sun. For a moment I was blinded by the brightness, although I noticed dark clouds approaching, threatening rain. As if we hadn’t had enough of it in recent weeks. Raising a hand to shield my eyes, I made out a conroi of some fifteen horsemen, most decked out in hauberks freshly polished, their features masked beneath helmets inlaid with swirling designs in gold and silver, their shoulders draped with the blood-red ceremonial cloaks, embroidered at the hems with golden thread, which marked them out as knights of the royal household.
At the head of them was the king himself. I had met him only once before, but his was not a face that one forgot easily, for it was drawn and entirely lacking in humour, with heavy brows above keen eyes that missed nothing: eyes that seemed to look into one’s very soul. He was around forty-four in years if I recalled rightly, only a handful of summers younger than Malet, but had lost none of his youthful vigour or his passion for the pursuit of war. Tall and set like an ox, he possessed stout arms that were the mark of long hours spent in the training yard, where he was said to practise daily at both stake and quintain, and in mock combat with his trusted hearth-troops.
‘Kneel,’ I hissed at the Englishman. Thankfully he needed no second telling, but did as he was bid without hesitation, and the rest of us did the same as the king jumped down from the saddle, handed his destrier’s reins to a retainer and strode towards us. Where earlier the yard had been filled with the sounds of timber being chopped and the clash of oak cudgels as men trained at arms, now a hush had fallen, broken only by the lowing of cattle in the fields and the calls of sheep in their pens, the clang of steel from the smith’s workshop some way off and the thumping of my own heart. I breathed deeply, trying to still it.
The king’s shadow fell across me. To begin with he said nothing, and I wondered whether he was expecting one of us to speak first.
Robert must have thought the same, for he began: ‘My lord king—’
‘I gave clear instruction that there were to be no more expeditions against the enemy without my permission,’ the king said, cutting him off. ‘Is that not so?’
‘It is so,’ Robert replied, not daring to meet the king’s eyes, probably wisely.
‘You know full well that we need every man we can muster for this next assault on the Isle, and that we cannot afford to waste good warriors on such reckless adventures. And yet I am told that you saw fit last night to send a raiding-party out into the marshes, almost within arrowshot of the Isle itself. This, too, is true, isn’t it?’