‘What? Why?’
It was hard to explain. I was stubborn in those days, and rarely cared what others thought of me, and yet for some reason it felt important that I should have Malet’s forgiveness before he left this life behind him. Whether that was simply because he had once been my lord and I had been oath-sworn to him, or because he had given me new purpose and offered me a chance for redemption at a time in my life when all seemed dark, I couldn’t say exactly.
I only hoped I was not too late.
The sun was growing low in the sky by the time I arrived at Alrehetha and rode through the gates of the guardhouse, which was where Malet was quartered. A handful of sentries were posted on the gate, but when I told them why I’d come they let me pass and directed me to a large timber-built hall, a fine place which had existed before the ditches and banks and palisades had been built, and which had been appropriated for the comfort of the king and his household. Certainly it was a more fitting place for a baron of Malet’s standing to live out his final hours than the hovel at Brandune in which he’d spent all those weeks. I took that as a sign that the king’s feelings towards the family were at last softening. It was about time, too, considering everything we and Robert had done for him of late.
At the hall I gave my weapons to the steward, who directed me along a narrow passage. At its end, guarding the door, stood a man whom I recognised for one of Robert’s hearth-knights.
‘Is he—?’ I asked.
‘Still with us, if only barely,’ the man replied. ‘I can’t let you go in, though. Not unless Lord Robert says so.’
‘Then why don’t you ask him?’ I suggested.
I waited while he went inside. After a few moments he returned and with a nod of his head motioned me through.
The chamber was windowless and filled with a powerful, sharp stench of burning tallow, which came from stout candles placed all about. I remembered Father Erchembald, the priest at Earnford and a dear friend, once telling me how the smell helped guard against pestilential vapours, and that was why he recommended keeping one burning whenever someone was laid low with fever or other sickness. But no amount of tallow smoke would save Malet from whatever malady it was that afflicted him. Not now. He looked so thin, and so frail, not at all like a man of fifty, but one twenty years older. He lay upon a bed beneath a bundle of woollen blankets, with his head resting upon a pillow, so still that at first I thought Robert’s man had been mistaken, and that I was too late, but then his eyelids trembled, and I saw his chest rise and fall. He was not gone quite yet, then.
A host of familiar faces were crowded into that small space. On one side of the bed were Robert and the chaplain, Dudo, who knelt by Malet’s right hand with a bowl of what looked like pottage. On the other were Malet’s wife, Elise, her usually stern expression broken by the tears flooding down her cheeks, and Beatrice, her fair hair glimmering in the flickering candlelight. She smiled sadly when she saw me. At her side stood a dark, thin-lipped man I didn’t recognise but guessed must be her new husband. They must have all arrived earlier today, even while, on the other side of the bridge, the battle for the Isle and for Elyg was under way.
Robert rose and came to greet me, clasping my hand. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said, keeping his voice low. ‘Where did you go? One moment you were with us, and then you and your men had disappeared. What happened? Is Wace with you?’
This was no time to give a full account, and so I told him simply, ‘Hereward is dead.’
‘Dead?’ he asked. ‘You know this for sure? How?’
‘I know because we pursued him and his band across the marshes and met them in battle. I saw his corpse with my own eyes.’
He blinked, as if the news were too incredible to take in, then turned back towards the bed where the elder Malet lay. ‘Did you hear that, Father? Hereward is dead.’
His father stirred and gave a rasping cough.
‘Here,’ said Dudo, and offered him an ale-cup. ‘Drink.’
Malet shook his head as the cough subsided, and drew the blankets closer around him. No fire was lit, but it was nevertheless far from cold in that room. Beneath my hauberk my arms were running with sweat. I wished I’d thought to return to my tent first and leave it there, and at the same time to exchange my tunic for the spare one I kept in my pack. Although I had dried in the hours since the fight with Hereward, the damp marsh-smell still clung to my clothes.
‘Who is it, Robert?’ Malet croaked as his eyes flicked open. ‘Who comes here?’
‘It’s Tancred, Father.’