‘The Danes captured the town for us, and some of the pagans among them sacked the monastery. They killed the abbot and the monks and looted the church before anything could be done. When King Sweyn found out who was responsible he ordered their right hands cut off and their noses slit as penance, and their leader hanged as a warning.’
And yet Sweyn’s respect for this place hadn’t prevented him from occupying it and using it for his own ends. Oxen had been allowed to graze in what had once been the monks’ cemetery in one corner of the grounds, and there were goats foraging in the herb-garden. Empty ale-cups, flagons and leather flasks lay scattered all about and there was horse dung everywhere, while latrine pits had been dug outside the church, polluting the holy ground. I wondered that Eadgar and his followers, who were Christian, could stomach allying themselves with a people as rapacious and as inconstant in their piety as the Danes.
Nor did it seem as if this was the first time this house had suffered at the hands of the pagans. Most of the buildings looked as though they had been repaired and rebuilt at least once; a few of the walls were in stone but the larger part of the monastery was fashioned either in timber or even in wattle and cob more befitting a peasant’s hovel. There was nothing resembling the arches and columns and sheltered walkways of a cloister, but rather three long halls arranged in a rough square, with the nave of the church forming the fourth side, around a yard in the middle of which rose a yew tree.
From within that yard came voices and the softly flickering glow of lantern-light. So the enemy had left someone after all, which meant there had to be something worth guarding in those halls. Maybe I had been wrong to doubt Runstan. We would soon know. Moving as quickly but as silently as we could, taking care to keep to the shadows, we approached. How many there were I couldn’t say for sure. From the number of voices I guessed no more than ten, but that was still more than I had bargained on us fighting. Most likely they were Danes, since I didn’t recognise their speech.
That was when the barking began: deep-throated and loud enough to fill the night air.
‘Hide!’ I called, but it was too late, for they had found us. First one, then a second and a third of the animals came racing around the side of one of the halls towards us: large and long-muzzled with rows of fearsomely sharp teeth. They were closely followed by their masters, eight mailed and helmeted huscarls bearing shields that had the raven and the cross emblazoned upon them. They whistled and called to the hounds, and shouted out challenges that I did not understand.
I held up my hands to suggest that we meant no harm, hoping that they understood the meaning behind the gesture, as desperately I tried to think of a plan that would see us through this. We had the slight advantage of numbers, being nine against their eight, but they were much better armed, and I knew what fearsome fighters the Danes could be.
‘Call off your dogs,’ I shouted out in English above the barks and snarls, hoping they might be able to understand that tongue. ‘My name is Goscelin, from Saint-Omer in Flanders, adventurer, sea captain and loyal follower of Eadgar ?theling, ally of your King Sweyn. I command the ship Vertu, the fastest twenty-bencher to weather the German Sea,’ I added, as if to make my story seem more credible. The names were invented, being merely the first that came to my mind.
Their leader stepped forward. A giant of a man, he had an axe slung upon his back as well as a sword upon his belt. His face and chin were hidden behind a fair and well-combed beard that clearly marked him out for a Dane. While renowned for their barbarity, as a people they were fastidious in their appearance.
‘I don’t know you and I’ve never heard of your ship,’ he said. There was a slight slur to his speech, as if he had been drinking. ‘What do you want?’
I shouldn’t have given a name to my made-up vessel, I thought. If these were Sweyn’s huscarls then it was probably their duty to know which ships’ crews were here in Beferlic.
I was still trying to think how to answer when Eudo spoke up: ‘The ?theling sent us to speak with the captives.’
Perhaps it was a risk to mention them, since we still didn’t know they were necessarily here. But it was better than no answer at all.
‘Eadgar himself sent you?’ the Dane asked doubtfully, glancing first at myself, then at Eudo. His right eye gave a twitch that might have been comical had it not been for his size. ‘To speak to them about what?’
The warning bells had ceased tolling by then, although beyond the abbey walls I could still hear men shouting as they ran to defend the palisade and gates against their imagined foe. With all that happening, it was no wonder that the huscarl captain was suspicious. He wasn’t as stupid as I might have thought.