One guard on each flank, I was led through the camp. Welshmen and Englishmen alike jeered as I passed, recognising me for a hostage. Some spat at me and others threw clods of earth, though any who tried to come too close were driven away. While he had let his household warriors have their fun earlier, Bleddyn obviously did not want to see me too badly injured before I was delivered to Wild Eadric.
They took me to the hall, halting outside by the entrance to what at one time must have been a wine cellar. While one of my guards forced me to my knees on the damp ground, the other produced a key from a ring at his belt and opened up the trapdoor. Then, hauling me up by the arms, they threw me in. My hands were still tied behind my back, preventing me from breaking my fall. Their laughter rang in my ears as I tumbled down the hard stone steps, eventually landing with a splash in a cold puddle at the bottom. Swearing loudly, I tried to stand, but after so many hours of marching without food or water my feet were clumsy, and before I could do anything the trapdoor came down, shutting out what little light there had been, leaving me in darkness. Outside I could still hear the guards muttering to one another, their voices growing ever fainter as they moved away, until eventually I could hear them no more. I was alone.
Or so I thought. But then I heard what sounded like a low groan, coming from behind me.
‘Is there someone there?’ I called into the darkness. It was as black as pitch down here and I could see nothing, not even the walls or the ceiling or the floor beneath me. For all I knew this chamber could have been five paces across or five hundred. Somewhere, water fell in a steady drip-drip, but otherwise all I could hear was my own heart beating. As I listened more closely, however, I began to make out what sounded like breathing, faint but laboured, like a rasp being drawn slowly over coarse timber. A man rather than a woman, I thought, and plainly in some discomfort.
‘Are you all right?’ I called into the darkness.
He groaned again and then gave a great hacking cough. ‘Who’s there?’
Clearly his captors hadn’t shown him the same level of kindness that mine had. Deciding it could do no harm, I gave him my name.
‘Tancred? Is that truly you, lord?’
That was when I recognised his voice. ‘Byrhtwald?’
‘Yes, lord,’ he said weakly. ‘It’s me.’
‘What are you doing here?’
The Englishman did not answer at first, for at that moment he began to whimper. Not great heaving wails of agony but muffled, wretched sobs. Raising myself to my knees, I made my way in his direction, edging my way across the sodden floor towards him, wishing that my guards had freed my wrists or at least bound them in front of me rather than behind, so that I could feel where I was going. The air was filled with an overbearing putrid odour that made me think an animal had died down here, or possibly more than one.
‘They caught you,’ he said between sobs. His breath came in stutters. ‘Forgive me, lord. I did not mean for this to happen, for you to end up here. I would never of my own will betray you, I swear—’
‘Betray me?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean? What happened, Byrhtwald?’
It took a while before he could recover his composure enough to tell me, and even then events did not come out in their proper order, but gradually from what he said I was able to piece together the story of what had happened. A Welsh scouting-party had intercepted him soon after he’d left Scrobbesburh. Recognising him for a pedlar and one who dealt in secrets, they’d taken him captive, brought him to Bleddyn and forced him to tell everything he knew: the condition of the walls and the gatehouses; how well provisioned was the castle; what the mood was within our camp; how many men we had to defend the town; how many Earl Hugues had taken with him; the names of all the nobles who were left and who still supported Fitz Osbern. How long they had questioned him he could not say, but at some point he had let it slip that Robert Malet and I were planning to leave for Eoferwic the following day. Which was how Bleddyn came to be following us, and how I had ended up here.
‘Forgive me, lord,’ the Englishman said again. ‘They kept beating me until I had nothing more to give. I never meant for this to happen. It is all my fault, all my fault . . .’