‘The king is marching,’ I said, addressing them all. ‘If we are to reclaim the lands that belong to us, he will need every man he can find. Are you with me?’
The priest translated my words for those who did not speak French. One by one they gave their assent, perhaps strengthened by my resolve. A few hesitated, and perhaps their minds were upon the struggles to come, but eventually they too agreed.
Even Galfrid gave his support, though I sensed a certain reluctance in his voice, which I put down to a lack of experience. It did not surprise me. Often the men who spoke the loudest turned out to be those who had the most to prove, their words a mere veil with which they attempted to disguise their shortcomings.
I knew, for not so long ago that had been me.
Twenty-five
WE DIDN’T HAVE long to wait before our first prey presented itself. The sun was not long up, although we had been travelling for the better part of an hour that morning; there was dampness in the air and dew upon the grass. Summer was passing into autumn and all about the leaves were beginning to turn from green to gold, in some places already falling.
Falling, just as shortly the foemen before us would be. I counted four of them, riding from the north and the west. All were mounted upon sturdy ponies and all bore long spears with points that shone beneath the low sun. They came across the pastures and the fields, scattering sheep and tearing up the earth, sending clods of dirt and shredded vegetable leaves flying as they descended upon the small cluster of some five crumbling cottages that stood on the low ground by the water-meadows.
At once the cry was raised amongst the inhabitants, who abandoned their tools and their animals, taking flight in all directions as they made for whatever cover they could find. One long cob and straw house, larger than the rest, stood beside the pig-pens, and the Welshmen made for this first. Outside geese honked a belated warning to their owners, scurrying away with outstretched wings. Two of the enemy burst into the cottage, dragging out a screaming woman by the hair and shoving her to the ground, while the others pulled a large chest they had found into the yard, where one of them proceeded to hack at it with an axe that had been slung across his back.
All this we saw happen from the edge of a copse on the other side of the stream from the houses. The sun was behind us, and perhaps that was why the enemy had failed to notice us approaching, for a party of some four dozen ought to have been enough to frighten them off.
‘Wait here,’ I said to Father Erchembald, in whose care I had placed the women and the children, then to the menfolk: ‘With me. Stay quiet; don’t say a word unless you have to.’
We moved slowly so as not to attract attention, making for the rickety-looking bridge that crossed the stream, keeping low to the ground where the long grass would conceal us. The last thing I wanted was to charge upon the enemy only to watch them take to their ponies and escape before we had the chance to kill them. Fortune had seen our paths cross this day, at this hour, but I was determined to make the most of that fortune and ensure that these Devil-sons did not live to return here.
Wisely none of the villagers had dared offer a fight, and so the Welshmen went from house to house, searching for anything of worth that they could find, even breaking into the shabby, moss-covered building that passed for a church, ignoring the protestations of the priest, whom they carried out and cast into a dung-heap piled against a barn. There they left him, though only after kicking him in the side to see that he did not get up.