‘No,’ Robert said, and his dark eyes bored into me. ‘They fear us, Tancred. See how reluctant they are to attack! We will defeat them tonight and we will defeat them here.’
‘They haven’t attacked because all they need do is hold us here,’ I pointed out. ‘The rest will come around the side streets.’ And I told him how we had come upon a group of them close by the bridge. ‘They’ll return, and when they do it will be in greater numbers than before. When that happens, we’ll be trapped here with no hope of retreat.’
He remained silent. The English continued to bang their shields; some of the Norman lords were doing the same as they tried to encourage their men.
‘Take thirty knights, then,’ he said at last. ‘Try to head the enemy off.’ He began to marshal a dozen or so of his men to go with me as he retied his helmet-strap under his chin.
I swallowed, for I knew if we became cut off from the main army, then we were all dead men. But the order had been given and I could not refuse.
‘Give me forty,’ I called after him.
He looked back at me. For a moment he hesitated, as if uncertain what to do, but then he nodded and gave the signal for ten more of his men to follow me.
‘If you can’t head them off, then we’ll have to retreat,’ he said. His lips were solemn and his eyes had the look of one who was beginning to see only failure ahead of him; a look that, in twelve years of campaigning, I had never seen him wear. This was the man who had led us at Varaville and at H?stinges, who had rallied us when all had seemed lost, whose temperament never wavered, whose prowess at arms was bettered by none – and yet I saw his despair. A sudden chill came over me.
He rode back to the head of his men. Breathing deeply, I raised my lance and waved the pennon so that the whole of my conroi could see me. There were men of all ages: some young and fresh-faced, who had only recently sworn their oaths to Robert; others who had served him since before the invasion, who were nearly as old as myself.
‘Stay close to me,’ I said to them. ‘Keep in mind always that the strength of the charge is in weight of numbers. Watch your flanks; don’t lose sight of the men beside you.’
I checked to see who was behind me, and was relieved to find Eudo and Fulcher and Gérard, though none of them were looking at me then; their eyes were either closed or fixed on the ground. Perhaps they were thinking over the instructions I had just given, or perhaps they were imagining the charge and what they would do when we met the English line.
I glanced once more towards Robert, who was speaking now with one of the other lords, his face red as he gestured wildly at some of the men further along our line. I swallowed once more, but as I lifted the hawk pennon high above my head, all my doubts fell away. For I knew that in twelve years of fighting I had faced worse circumstances than this, and had made it through. As long as we kept faith in our sword-arms, we would yet prevail.
‘For Normandy,’ I shouted.
My heart pounded as hard as Rollo’s hooves as we climbed back past the church and on around the bend, towards the western side of the town. That was where the enemy would be coming from, if they were coming at all, for the approach to the promontory was less steep there than it was on the eastern side. We passed the place where we had fought our skirmish earlier, though the road was now empty.
‘This way!’ I said, as I cut to the right, down a street so narrow that three of us could barely ride abreast, between houses on one side and wattle-work fencing on the other. I caught a glimpse of the river to our left, a ribbon of deepest black weaving beneath the trees.
Then the houses came to an end and we came out on to a field of furrowed earth, some thirty paces in width and perhaps two or three times as long. And there, at the far end, from out of the midst of the houses, were Normans fleeing towards us, scores of them on horseback and on foot. Behind them, roaring, running forward with torches bobbing and weapons drawn, came the enemy.
Three
I LOWERED MY lance, gripping it firmly in my right hand just as I clutched at the brases of my shield in my left.
‘On!’ I called to my conroi. ‘For St Ouen, Lord Robert and King Guillaume!’