By then the sun had set, and all across the camp fires burnt brightly in the gloom. Soon silence fell upon us; all that could be heard was the scraping of stone against steel and the crackling of the flames, when Eudo took up his flute and started to play.
His fingers stepped deftly along the length of the pipe as the song swept from soft to loud and back to soft, at first slow and almost mournful, before rushing into a furious cascade – like the clash of blades in the battle that was to come, I thought. And then just as suddenly it was falling away again, the rhythm slowing as it settled on one last sweet note which Eudo held, letting it draw out the last of his breath, until all about us was quiet once more.
‘Where did you learn that?’ I asked. Even though he had finished, still it seemed that note was there, hanging in the air.
‘It was passed on to me when I was a boy,’ Eudo said. ‘There was a wandering poet who came to play at our Easter feast. He always liked me, even gave me one of his whistles to practise with. Each year when he came back he’d teach me to play a different song, until my twelfth birthday when I left to serve Lord Robert. He was old then; I suppose he must be long dead now. That’s the only one of his songs I remember.’
From somewhere not far off the sound of a harp floated on the breeze, following Eudo’s example, perhaps. Men were singing drunkenly along to the tune, though it was not one that I recognised, at times even breaking out into laughter.
‘We should be marching upon them now,’ snarled one of Robert’s knights, Urse by name. He was solidly built, with a stub of a nose and wide nostrils that gave him a piggish appearance. ‘Why are we delaying here?’
‘You’d prefer to attack now, after a day’s march, rather than be fully rested?’ Wace asked, rubbing at his injured eye.
‘We’d have the advantage of surprise. We attack now and we can be upon them, inside the city before they even know it. The longer we wait, the longer the enemy will have to strengthen their defences.’
He was yet young, I saw, and like all youths he was impatient, eager for the bloodlust, for the joy of the kill. ‘Have you ever been in an assault on a city?’
‘No—’
I did not need to hear any more. ‘Then you know nothing.’
He rose suddenly, cheeks flushed red with anger and with ale, and pointed a finger towards me. ‘You dare to insult me?’
‘Sit down, Urse,’ one of his comrades said.
‘No,’ Urse barked as he stepped forward, almost stumbling over his shield, which lay at his feet. I didn’t know how much he’d had to drink, but it was clearly too much. ‘Who are these people, anyway? They join us from out of nowhere, and then think they can tell us what to do, what to think. We don’t even know them, and we’re expected to fight alongside them!’
‘It’s only the truth,’ I said, not even troubling to get to my feet. The fire lay between us, preventing him from coming any closer, and he was more likely to hurt himself than me if he tried to do anything.
‘Tancred is right,’ Wace said. ‘There’s no sense rushing into an attack. Better to wait, to send out scouts and work out the enemy’s weaknesses.’
‘The king is not a stupid man,’ I added. ‘If he thought it was wise to attack now, then we would be doing so. But he doesn’t, and so we wait. If you disagree with him, maybe you should tell him yourself.’
Urse looked at me, then at Wace, scowled at us and sat back down. Perhaps he saw the reason in what we were saying, though I doubted it. More probably he’d decided that two of us were more than he could handle on his own.
‘Besides,’ I said, ‘more men are joining us by the day. By tomorrow we could have another two hundred swords.’
‘Though so could the enemy,’ Eudo put in.
I glared at him; he was not helping. At that moment, though, I saw Robert returning, and alongside him Ansculf and the other two knights who had accompanied him. They all bore solemn expressions, and I understood what that meant. The plans had been decided, and all of a sudden the prospect of battle had become real to them. I knew the feeling well. It didn’t matter how many years one had been campaigning, nor how many foes one had killed, for the fear was the same for every man: the fear that this fight might be his last.
‘We attack tomorrow, before dawn,’ Robert said. ‘Rest now, gather your strength. You’ll need it for the battle. We march when the moon reaches its highest.’
A murmur went up amongst the men. I glanced towards the west, where a glimmer of light was still visible above the line of the trees. I was relieved to see that the moon had not yet risen; we had a few hours, then, in which to sleep, and to ready ourselves. A chill came over me. It was happening, and it was happening tonight.
‘Tancred,’ Robert said.
‘Yes, lord?’ I replied.