I wondered how long Oswynn had been able to fight. Before our march to Dunholm I had gifted her with a knife, and had spent many hours showing her how to use it: how to thrust and how to slice; the places to aim for; how to twist it in a man’s belly to kill him quickly. I hoped she had remembered. I hoped she had sent many Northumbrians to their deaths that night.
We walked on in silence, up towards Malet’s hall. The only parts still standing were the posts which supported the roof, and those only up to waist height. The roof-beams themselves, along with the walls, had all collapsed, and in most places there was nothing more than a thick pile of grey ash. Beneath some of the broken timbers, huddled together in the middle of the hall, lay several blackened corpses, burnt away so that only their bones and teeth were left.
‘A hall-burning,’ Radulf muttered.
I nodded grimly. ‘They would have trapped them in here before setting the torch to the whole building.’ It would have taken mere heartbeats for the flames to sweep through the thatch, and hardly much longer to spread downwards and engulf the rest of the hall. The terror those inside must have felt as the blaze surrounded them, growing ever closer, ever hotter—
‘Just as they killed Lord Robert,’ Eudo said. He glanced first at Wace, then at me, long enough that I could see the anger building within him.
I lowered my head and shut my eyes, trying to push the image of the fire, of Lord Robert from my mind. This was not the time to be thinking of such things.
‘They did the same here,’ I heard Godefroi call.
I opened my eyes; the sunlight flooded back. Godefroi was beckoning us over to what I realised must have been the stables, for under a fallen roof-beam lay a horse’s head. The hair and skin had burnt away to expose the yellow-white of the skull, its jaw set wide as it would have been at the moment of death. As we rounded the smouldering remains, I saw the charred corpses of two more animals.
‘The enemy couldn’t have been interested in plunder, or else they would have taken them,’ I said.
‘Or they might not have been able to carry them away easily,’ Wace said. ‘If they came by ship, they probably didn’t have space.’
‘But if they approached by river, why did no one in the village spot them coming?’ Eudo asked. ‘In the time it’d have taken them to cross the flats, the villagers could all have fled. Instead they held their ground and died.’
‘Unless the enemy landed somewhere further downriver and marched overland,’ I said. ‘Any retreat into the country would have been cut off, and if the tide was out at the time, the villagers would have been trapped by the marshes.’
‘That would make sense, given the punts still moored by the jetty,’ Wace said.
Aubert gave a cry. I turned quickly, my hand darting towards the sword-hilt at my waist, imagining hordes of Northumbrian warriors rushing upon us from the south. But there was no enemy; instead the shipmaster was kneeling beside one of the bodies, not far from the eastern end of the hall.
‘His name was Henri,’ he said as we approached. ‘He was Lord Guillaume’s steward here.’
The man’s face was crusted with blood and crossed with sword cuts, but it seemed to me that it would have been a handsome face, strong-featured and youthful too. Henri could not have been much older than I when he died. There was a gaping wound at his breast, across which lay one of his hands; his fingers, like his tunic beneath, were stained a dark red. His other arm was stretched out by his side, palm facing the sky, fingers curled as if he meant to be clutching something in them. If there had been anything there, however, then the enemy had already taken it.
‘Did you know him well?’ I asked.
Aubert got to his feet, still gazing down upon Henri’s body. ‘Hardly at all,’ he said. ‘I met him only once, a few months ago when we put in here on our way up to Eoferwic. He was a generous man, as I knew him. He arranged a feast for the whole crew.’ The shipmaster sighed. ‘Have you found anything?’
‘Nothing,’ I replied. ‘The enemy left nothing.’
‘There’s the church,’ Philippe said. ‘They didn’t take the torch to that.’
I glanced up towards its stone tower and nave, overlooking the village. It was built on the highest point along the ridge, its yard marked out by a narrow ditch which ran in a continuous circuit, broken only at its eastern end. If the villagers had taken refuge anywhere, it was likely to be there, for that was the only place that seemed in any way defensible. Even so, I didn’t have much hope of finding anyone alive inside.