‘Because he is a priest,’ I called out as I drew my knife and rushed to ?lfwold’s side. ‘You kill him and your soul will be damned for ever.’
‘He’s one of them!’ The knight spoke through gritted teeth, the lance quivering in his hand, and I thought that he was about to strike, but then the tears overcame him. His fingers loosened and the lance fell to the ground, into a puddle. The blue-and-green cloth lay crumpled and wet.
A shout came from close by the gates, quickly followed by a cry from one of the kitchen-girls. I looked up, and then I saw the last two men to have arrived. They were bearing a body between them. It took me but a moment to realise whose it was.
Beside me the chaplain made the sign of the cross. He was still white in colour: not yet recovered, it seemed, from his fright. He closed his eyes, uttering a prayer in Latin.
First it had been Robert, murdered at Dunholm. Now too the castellan of Eoferwic, Lord Richard, lay dead.
Nine
THE NEWS OF the castellan’s death cast a shadow over Malet’s house in the days that followed. I could see it in the anxious looks of the servants I met; I could hear it in the hushed tones they used in the corridors. Indeed I could almost feel a chill in the air when I walked between the hall and my chamber, as if there were a draught blowing in from somewhere, though that could well have been my imagination. Even ?lfwold, when he came to see me, seemed more subdued than he had been before.
For the first few hours after the castellan’s men had returned there had been much confusion. A messenger was sent to the minster church to bear the news to Malet, who returned in due haste. That same afternoon he summoned all the Norman lords who were in Eoferwic to his hall, where they remained in private council for some hours. All I knew of it was what the chaplain later told me: that Malet was to assume the responsibilities of the castellan, taking all of Lord Richard’s remaining men under his command.
The enemy were advancing; of that there could be little doubt. Some of their raiding parties had crossed the Use upstream of the city, and by night the horizon shone bright with the fires of the villages they had torched. But though they were growing bolder, still they did not march on Eoferwic itself.
Perhaps they were hoping to draw us out, or perhaps they were waiting for something, although what that might be, no one knew. For their full host to gather, some said, in which case it made sense to try to attack them now. But Malet had forbidden any more expeditions, probably rightly, since we could not afford to lose any more men. We had no more than six or seven hundred in Eoferwic, and while word had been sent to the king in Lundene, there was no knowing how long it would take for reinforcements to reach us. And according to the reports that came back from our scouts, the enemy numbered between three and four thousand, which if true made theirs a larger host than any we had faced since H?stinges itself.
And so we waited for the English to come to us. All the while my leg was growing stronger, and I was spending less time indoors, and ever more in the yard outside, trading blows with Eudo and Wace as we trained at arms. My nights were filled with dreams of battle: of riding out to face the enemy, of killing those who had murdered my lord, had murdered Oswynn. If the enemy were coming, I wanted to be ready to fight them.
The chaplain didn’t approve, but by then I was well enough that I didn’t need his permission. In any case, it was over a fortnight since I had so much as held a sword in my hand – a fortnight in which my limbs had lost much of their strength. I knew that I could get better again only with practice, and so each afternoon I spent hour after hour with whoever would join me: perfecting my strokes, my parries and cuts, repeating the movements until they became instinctive once more.
It was close to sunset on one of those afternoons, when I was practising with two of Malet’s kitchen-boys, that I caught sight of Beatrice standing by the hall – watching me, or so it seemed. I was about to call to her, but at that moment the boys rushed at me, shouting and laughing as together they swung their wooden blades. One strike bounced off my shield; the other I fended off with my own cudgel, and then I was turning away, dancing out of reach so that their thrusts found only air.
What they might have lacked in skill, however, they made up for in enthusiasm. Again they came at me, and this time I stepped back, trying to give my sword-arm room, when the back of my legs struck against something hard. Thrown off balance, I staggered backwards, and I was still struggling to stay on my feet as the next onslaught came. I blocked the first blow, and the second, but the third struck me on the shoulder, sending me sprawling, and suddenly I found myself on my back facing the sky.