‘We’ll be in exactly the same situation as we were before,’ I replied. ‘We lose nothing by trying, and if it works it might well give us the key to victory.’
I sounded more confident than I felt. Wace and Eudo were right. If I were Godric I would think twice about returning to the lion’s den. At the same time we were relying on appealing to Morcar’s ambition, the depth of which we could not possibly know. What if our offer wasn’t enough to overcome his suspicion? What if he judged the risks to be too great for the reward?
There was little point in wondering. The seeds had been cast, and there was nothing more we could do now, save to wait.
And hope.
Godric failed to show himself the next night, or the night after that. Twice we ventured out to the island, and twice we returned with heavy lids and empty hands.
‘I told you he wouldn’t come,’ Wace muttered as we made our way back that second morning under the grey light of dawn. ‘We’re wasting our time.’
‘He’ll come,’ I said, although I was steadily growing less sure of that. ‘If Morcar has any sense at all, he won’t let this chance slip from his grasp.’
Once more, then, we set out for the island of Litelport. Since we didn’t know whether Godric would heed the instruction to come alone, we travelled in force. With me were Serlo and Pons, Eudo and Wace and all their knights, together with Hamo and a few of his bowmen. That way, if Godric’s friends tried to take revenge for our ambush, we would be ready. We were joined this night by Lord Robert, who brought a handful of his household knights, his father’s fever having abated a little, for now at least.
‘He grows weaker by the day,’ he told me. His face was drawn and his eyes hollow. ‘The bouts of sickness come more frequently, and though tonight he enjoys some respite, tomorrow he will grow worse again.’
I didn’t know what to say to that. I confess I wasn’t much used to families, and had never really understood them. Whereas Robert was close to his father, I’d hardly known mine. A Breton lord of no great standing named Baderon, he had been killed in a feud with a rival when I was only five or six summers old. Of my mother, Emma, my memories were even more vague. She had passed from this world a year earlier while giving birth to the girl who would have been my sister. The only kinship I knew, and had ever really known, was that which existed between myself and my sword-brothers: the bond of the conroi.
‘I see such pain in his eyes,’ Robert went on. ‘He is determined to live to see our victory over the rebels, but God only knows when that may be, if indeed it happens at all.’
‘I pray for him,’ I said. ‘We all do.’
He smiled in thanks, but it was a smile that quickly faded. ‘I sent word a few weeks ago both to my mother at Graville, and to Beatrice. I hope they will have a chance to see him before he passes away, although with each day that goes by, it seems ever more unlikely.’
‘We can but hope, lord,’ I said, although to speak truthfully I wasn’t looking forward to meeting Malet’s wife, Elise, again. A stern-faced woman lacking in humour, she hadn’t much taken to me the last time we’d met, and I had little reason to suppose she would be any better inclined now. With Beatrice, Robert’s sister, I was on better terms, and indeed counted her as a friend, one of the few I seemed to have in those days. She was married now, or so Robert had told me, to the vicomte of Archis in Normandy, a baron of moderate wealth and noble parentage, who was both a close friend and a tenant of the Malets. It could easily be a week before word reached them across the Narrow Sea, however, and another before they were able to make the crossing, depending on the wind and the tides, and perhaps another still to reach us here in the fen country. Whether Malet had strength enough to last out until they arrived, none but God could know. Doubtless Robert was making the same reckoning, for he had fallen quiet now, lost in his own thoughts.
In silence, then, we rounded the northern shore of the island until we found the familiar inlet where the water ran shallow and the willows grew. We guided our punts close to the bank, where banks of tall reeds kept us out of sight from the river and the low-hanging branches provided a good mooring place. Leaving a few men behind to guard the boats, we ventured away from the inlet, up a gentle rise through long grasses and thick bramble hedges until we were just within sight of the marker stone that I’d chosen as our meeting place. And there, for the third night, we crouched in the shadows and we waited.