Yet Malet’s passing soured it all. He had lived long enough to know of our triumph over the rebels, but not to savour the fruits of that triumph. He had striven so hard to govern justly, to serve his king and support him in every endeavour since the invasion, and his reward was death. Not a glorious death in battle, either, with sword in hand at the head of the charge. For someone who had prided himself as a war leader, who had once ranked among the kingdom’s leading men, it seemed a wretched way to end one’s life.
We were striking camp when I heard someone calling my name. I looked up to see a man on horseback being pointed in the direction of our still smouldering campfires.
‘Tancred a Dinant?’ he called as he approached. ‘Lord of Earnford?’
‘So they call me,’ I replied, observing the newcomer closely. His face was lined with the scars of battle, and his eyes were hard.
‘One of the prisoners from the battle has been asking to speak with you,’ he said. ‘I’ve spent all morning trying to find you.’
‘Then you can’t have been looking very hard,’ I snapped, and regretted it straightaway. I had nothing against this man, but I was in a strange mood, and the words had left my tongue before I even had time to think.
Thankfully he paid my retort no attention. ‘Come with me,’ he said, and turned. That was when I noticed his scarlet cloak, embroidered at the hem with golden thread, and saw the lion of Normandy on his pennon, and understood that he was one of the royal guardsmen.
I followed him across the camp to one of the large tents close to the king’s pavilion. He pulled the flap aside and gestured for me to go first.
Inside, sitting upon a stool with her hands bound behind her, sat a girl of around fifteen with dirty, straggling hair and eyes as blue as the sky at midday. She glanced up sullenly as we entered, a scowl upon her face.
‘This is the one,’ the guardsman said.
‘Her?’ I asked.
‘You don’t know her? She seemed to know who you were.’
‘I’ve never seen her before.’
‘I was wondering if she might have been a lover of yours, although it would be a brave man who tried to tame her. A vicious one, she is. She sank her teeth into the forearm of the first man who came near her, and didn’t stop struggling until we’d managed to tie her wrists, and even then we had to almost drag her from the field.’
‘I didn’t think the English allowed their women to fight.’
‘She isn’t English, so far as any of us can tell, though she seems to speak their tongue well enough.’
‘Who is she, then?’
Her dress, though smeared with mud, was of fine wool and fastened at the shoulders with a pair of golden brooches inlaid with silver crosses. She was obviously not poor, wherever she came from.
‘The wife of one of the rebel leaders killed in the battle, maybe? Who knows? If she weren’t so richly dressed, and she hadn’t mentioned your name, we might have left her for the men to fight over.’
I stood over her and she dragged her gaze upwards to meet mine. Even if one ignored the bruises and grazes that decorated her cheeks, one would find it difficult to call hers a pretty face, composed as it was all of sharp angles. Still, she was generously endowed and I imagined that, if she smiled rather than scowled, she would not look unattractive.
‘I’m told you wanted to speak with me,’ I said in English.
‘You are Tancred of Earnford?’
‘I am,’ I said. ‘Who are you?’
‘Someone with knowledge that I think you would be interested in.’
‘So I’ve heard. How do you know my name?’
‘Who hasn’t heard of the great Tancred of Earnford?’ she asked with more than a hint of mockery. ‘Across the north men fear you, from the mead-halls of the Northumbrian thegns to the household of Eadgar ?theling and even the court of the Scots’ king, Mael Coluim. All know of your deeds and quiver at the mere mention of your name.’
‘You flatter me,’ I said, without sincerity. I was fairly sure that King Mael Coluim had more pressing things to worry about than me. And while it was true that nothing had been heard recently of the ?theling, I doubted very much whether fear of me had anything to do with his hiding away in the north. ‘What is this knowledge you have for me, then?’
‘I will tell you, but first I want something in return.’
‘If I don’t know what it is I’m paying for, I’m hardly going to waste my silver, am I?’
‘You didn’t seem to mind when you gave your coin to those so-called spies of yours last winter.’
That took me aback. ‘You know about them?’
‘One of them stayed a night at our hall,’ she said. ‘He told us all about what you’d charged him with finding out, and asked us what we knew, but mainly he was interested in bragging about how rich you’d made him.’
My blood boiled in my veins. I wondered which of my informants that had been, and resolved to break his legs if our paths ever crossed again.
‘Besides,’ she said, ‘your silver isn’t what I’m interested in. All I want is your assurance that if I pass on this knowledge to you, you will let me go free.’
‘That isn’t my decision to make.’
‘You could ask.’