‘The same as you,’ Eudo said. ‘I was in Hereford with Lord Robert when we heard the news about the Welsh. We got here the day before yesterday, although my men and I were all out on sentry duty last night, so I didn’t hear you’d arrived until this morning.’
He had come with Robert all the way from the other end of the kingdom, then. While I had been given Earnford, both Eudo and Wace had been granted demesnes from Robert’s holdings in distant Suthfolc, close to where the land ended and the marshes that bordered the sea began: a region that was no less troubled than these parts, since that coast was often plagued by pirates and raiders from across the German Sea.
‘Robert didn’t say you were with him,’ I said.
Eudo shrugged. ‘With everything that’s been happening he probably forgot. His mind has been on other things lately: first the arrangements for his sister’s marriage, and now the threat from across the dyke. Did you know that Lady Beatrice is to be married again?’
‘I had heard,’ I said, and it came out more stiffly than I had meant.
Not that Eudo seemed to notice. Even if he had, I doubted he would have made anything of it. ‘It’s strange to think it’s already more than a year since we were all fleeing Eoferwic together,’ he said. ‘You, me, Wace, the ladies. Malet’s chaplain.’
Indeed it was more than a year since the business with ?lfwold: since we had fought him and his hired swords beside the Temes; since he had tried to kill me upon the cliff-top and had fallen to his death. A breaker of oaths, he had remained a treacherous man to the end. Eudo would not speak of any of this openly, of course, yet I knew he was thinking it.
‘More than a year since the battle, too,’ I added. ‘Since Dunholm.’
At once I regretted having said it as Eudo fell quiet. I hadn’t meant to darken the mood, though it was difficult to think upon the events of last year and not to remember what had taken place there that cold winter’s night.
Eudo was the one to break the silence. ‘Still,’ he said, sighing, ‘after all that, here we are. Soon to ride together once more.’
‘Is Wace with you?’
‘He was, at least until yesterday. Fitz Osbern sent him ahead to Cestre to bear the summons to Earl Hugues there.’
‘He must be worried if he’s looking for help from the Wolf,’ I said.
‘The Wolf?’
‘Hugues Lupus,’ I explained. ‘That’s how he’s known, here on the March at least. It’s Latin.’
It was fitting, too. Hugues d’Avranches, the Earl of Ceastre, was known for his wild nature and his fierce temper, as well as for the brutality with which he dealt with anyone who crossed him: all in all a man to be feared and respected, though it was said he was only twenty in years. As with most bynames, he had first been called the Wolf in jest, but after learning of it he had grown to like it, so much so that he soon adopted the animal as his symbol, much to the anger of Fitz Osbern, whose own banner bore the same device. The two had been at odds ever since, and I took the fact that Fitz Osbern was now calling upon Hugues for aid as a clear sign of how serious he considered the threat posed by the Welsh.
‘Did you hear what happened last night?’ Eudo asked.
‘No,’ I said. ‘What?’
‘Two men were murdered in the town. They were out whoring with three others of their company when they were set upon in the streets. Cut down in cold blood, they were.’
I froze. To hear the tale from someone else’s lips was strange to say the least.
‘The word is it was the doing of one man alone,’ Pons put in. ‘Or that’s what I’ve heard anyway.’
‘One against five?’ asked Turold.
‘That’s what those who survived say,’ Pons replied as he stuffed more bread into his mouth. ‘They claim their attacker was lying in wait for them; that he came on them like a shadow out of the night, slew their comrades before they could even draw their swords.’
Serlo snorted in disdain. ‘You’d choose to believe the words of cowards? They clearly abandoned their friends to save their own skin. It’s exactly the kind of yarn you would expect them to spin.’
‘It sounds unlikely, doesn’t it?’ Eudo agreed. ‘Probably they’d been drinking and managed to get into a brawl, and were just unlucky to be on the wrong side.’
My throat was dry. I realised I hadn’t yet said anything, and forced myself to speak. ‘Did they see their attacker’s face?’
‘They say not,’ Pons replied. ‘It all happened too quickly, their heads and bellies were filled with ale, and it was dark besides.’
‘Another reason to think they’re lying,’ Serlo muttered. ‘Probably they got into some fight between themselves over a girl, and ended up killing each other.’
‘There could be a hundred different explanations,’ said Turold. ‘Maybe there was money involved, or else the killings were part of some feud that none of them wish to speak about.’