We were led to the stables, where Osric showed us the stalls, then left us while we removed the packs from our saddles and untacked the animals. They had worked hard these last few days with little by way of reward. I hoped we would be able to obtain fresh horses for the next part of our journey; it seemed that Malet or members of his household owned several, including four fine-looking destriers, of which one, a black, reminded me of Rollo. Two stable-hands were at work, scrubbing down their coats and brushing out their manes.
Osric returned shortly, bearing water-pails and sacks of grain, with bundles of fresh hay under his arms, and as soon as we had finished seeing to the animals, led us back across the courtyard in the fading light, into the hall. He said nothing the whole time: not even to the stable-hands who I presumed shared the same tongue.
It was dark inside; there were no windows and the walls were hung with leather drapes to keep out draughts. The hearth-fire, recently stoked with fresh wood, was crackling, hissing with white smoke. ?lfwold and Wigod sat on stools at a low round table beside it, with a pitcher and cups and the smell of mead thick in the air around them. The ladies were not to be seen and I presumed that they had – for now at least – retired to their rooms.
Wigod looked up as we entered. ‘Welcome,’ he said to us, before muttering some words to Osric in their own tongue.
The boy grunted and slunk away, out of the door we had come in.
‘My apologies for his manners,’ the steward said.
‘He doesn’t say much,’ I observed, sitting down on one of the stools that had been set out for us.
‘He doesn’t say anything, though he understands well enough. Don’t worry about him; he may be dumb and none too bright either, but he works hard and that’s why I keep him on.’ He poured out six cups of mead from the pitcher and then took a sip from his own. ‘I hear your journey was eventful.’
‘?lfwold has told you what happened out on the river, then.’
‘I only wish I’d been there to witness it.’
I looked at him sternly. ‘If you had, you wouldn’t be saying that.’ Even though in the end we had come through mostly unharmed, I hadn’t forgotten how close it had been. ‘What word has there been?’
The steward leant closer. ‘Little that will be easy to hear, I am afraid,’ he said. ‘About four days ago it became known that an army had gathered outside Eoferwic and was laying siege to it. Shortly thereafter we heard of a rising by the townsmen.’ He sighed. ‘And then yesterday came the news that the rebels had taken the city.’
‘Taken the city?’ I had known it was possible and yet at the same time found it hard to believe. Malet’s doubts had been well founded, it seemed.
‘It is so,’ Wigod said. ‘Close to dawn last Monday a band of townsmen managed to seize control of one of the gates. They killed the knights who were there on guard and opened the city to the rebels, who swept into the town.’
‘Was there no resistance?’ Wace asked.
‘Lord Guillaume rode out from the castle with more than a hundred knights,’ Wigod said. ‘He tried to head them off, and succeeded in killing a good many of them too. But even as he did so, a fleet of more than a dozen ships had appeared from downriver.’
‘The fleet we saw,’ Eudo muttered.
‘Most probably,’ Wigod said. ‘They landed and attacked Lord Guillaume’s conroi in the rear. He was forced to retreat to the castle, along with Lord Gilbert and what remained of their host. It is thought that in all as many as three hundred Normans were killed.’
I cursed under my breath. The loss of three hundred men would be hard for the defenders to bear.
‘There is more,’ the steward said. ‘Already it seems Eadgar’s own men are proclaiming him king – and not just of Northumbria, but of the whole of England.’
I shook my head; events were moving too fast. It was a matter of weeks, after all, since we had ridden victorious into Dunholm. How could things have changed so much since then?
‘What’s happening now?’ I asked.
‘The king is raising a relief force to march north as soon as possible. His writ has gone out to all his vassals around Lundene and along the north road. There is even talk that he may try to muster the fyrd, as he did last year when he marched upon Execestre.’
‘The fyrd?’ said Philippe.
‘The English levy,’ ?lfwold explained, ‘raised according to shire by the thegns – the local lords – from the men who dwell on their lands.’
‘A peasant rabble,’ I said. In my experience most of the men who made it up could hardly even hold a spear, let alone kill with one. They were farmers, accustomed only to tilling the soil and sowing their crops.
‘Would they march against their own kinsmen?’ Philippe asked.
‘They did at Execestre,’ Eudo answered.
‘The town submitted shortly after we laid it siege,’ Wace pointed out. ‘They didn’t have to fight.’
‘But they would have, had they been called to,’ the steward said. ‘As they will fight any who rise against their lawfully crowned king.’