The lord raised his thick eyebrows but did not enquire further, regarding me without emotion. ‘You fight well,’ he said, and gestured towards the boy. ‘Eudo has been training with me for a year and more, and still you managed to best him.’
I glanced at the one he had called Eudo, who was standing hunched over, feeling his nose, cursing and then cursing some more. He drew a grimy sleeve across his face and it came away scarlet. He did not meet my eyes.
‘How old are you?’ the lord asked.
‘This is my fourteenth summer,’ I replied, trying to work out why he was so interested in whether I had a family, or how well I could fight, or how many I was in years.
‘Enough of these questions,’ one of the other men said. He was perhaps the shortest of them, and had a large chin and eyes that seemed set too close together. ‘He was in my tent. He’s a thief and he should be punished.’
‘Were you stealing, Tancred?’ the lord asked.
‘I was hungry,’ I said, turning my head down towards the ground. ‘I was looking only for food, and something to drink.’ Then I remembered the coins I had taken, and slowly removed them from my pocket, holding them out in an open palm. ‘And these,’ I added.
One of the others laughed. ‘He has nerve, I’ll grant him that.’
‘You son of a whore,’ the short one said. His face had gone a bright red. He advanced out of the ring they had formed around me, grabbing me by the wrist and snatching the silver from my hand.
‘Temper, Folcard,’ the lord warned him.
‘I should slit your throat right now, you little bastard,’ Folcard said. I stepped back quickly as his free hand went to his sword-belt; his other held fast to my wrist.
‘No one will be slitting any throats,’ the lord called out to him. ‘Least of all the boy’s.’
Folcard snarled at me, baring two uneven rows of yellowed teeth, then drew back, watching me closely. ‘Then what are we going to do with him?’ he demanded.
The lord stroked his beard as if in consideration, then approached slowly, his mail chinking with each step. ‘Have you ever used a knife before?’ he asked me. ‘For fighting with, I mean, not for eating,’ he added sternly, when he saw what I was about to answer.
‘No, lord,’ I said.
He unbuckled a sheath from his belt. It was about the same length as my forearm, or a little longer. He held it out to me. ‘Take this,’ he said.
There was a murmur from the rest of his men, of discontent perhaps, or simply surprise. I was not paying them any attention, however, as I took the sheath in both hands, feeling its weight, turning it over. It was wrapped around with thin copper bands, off which the sun glinted.
I looked questioningly up at the lord. Did he mean to give it to me, or was this part of some test?
He nodded and gestured towards the hilt. Tentatively I curled my fingers around it and pulled. It slid out smoothly. Even to me, who knew nothing of weapons, it seemed a beautiful thing. Its edge was so thin I could barely make it out, the steel polished so clear I could see my own face in its reflection.
‘It is yours, Tancred, if you wish to join me,’ the lord said. He extended his hand. ‘My name is Robert de Commines.’
Six
THAT SUMMER’S EVENING by the river was the first time I had ever heard that name. And it was there, the next day, in the year one thousand and fifty-seven, that for the first time I left Brittany behind. For as I was later to understand, Lord Robert had recently sworn his allegiance to the young Guillaume, Duke of Normandy, with whom lay our fate.
Of course I had no idea then that I would still be serving the same lord another dozen years later, or that our path would bring us here to England. At the time I could think only that I had been offered a chance to flee the life I had known: a chance to make myself anew. I knew almost nothing of those men or what they did, but I saw that they were if not rich then certainly comfortable. And apart from all else, I had nowhere else to go.
But there was another reason too, for that fight with Eudo had stirred within me something unexpected: a thrill that I did not understand but suddenly craved. I saw those men making their living by the sword, and the longer I travelled with them in Lord Robert’s company, the more I realised that I wanted to be one of them. It was foolish thinking for one who had hardly ever seen a blade before that day, let alone wielded one, but like all youths I was easily led. My head had become filled with visions of glory and plunder: that was the life that I saw ahead of me.