Of course if Maredudd and Ithel succeeded, then those who had sided with them would be generously rewarded. Not only must they have great faith in Gruffydd’s sons, then, but they must be very confident too that we would accept their price, steep though it was.
‘Fitz Osbern will never agree to that,’ Serlo muttered. ‘Only a fool makes a bargain with a Welshman. They have no sense of honour; they’re oath-breakers, every one of them.’
Usually I would have sided with Serlo; experience of living on the March this past year had taught me to trust the Welsh even less than the English. But at the same time I understood that this was about far more than just inheritance or power. For if Fitz Osbern could ensure that the rulers across the dyke were friendly to us, sworn to him personally through the giving of hostages and by oaths of fealty, and that they paid tribute to King Guillaume, then we might never need to fear raids by the Welsh again. At a time when the realm was beset with threats on all sides, it would give us the respite we sorely needed to quell our other enemies.
‘If it can buy us peace on the March, maybe that’s a bargain worth making,’ I said. ‘Even if that peace lasts only for a while. And God knows we need the men.’
We had been in Scrobbesburh five days already; in that time we had received no word from Ceastre, and I knew that Fitz Osbern was growing anxious about whether Earl Hugues would come at all. Nor had the spies he had sent to scout the lands beyond the dyke yet returned, which meant we had no way of knowing how soon it would be before the enemy marched in force.
‘I don’t trust them,’ Serlo said. ‘Who’s to say their coming here isn’t part of some ruse designed to trap us?’
‘Why go to so much trouble, though?’ I asked him. ‘Why bring such an army all this way if there’s a chance that Fitz Osbern will just send them away?’
Serlo gave a shrug but didn’t answer. Instead he said: ‘I’ll tell you what’s going to happen. First they’ll try to worm their way into our confidence and then at the first chance they get they’ll turn on us. Far better for Fitz Osbern to kill them now and be done with it.’
‘In that case,’ Robert said sharply, ‘it’s probably as well that the decision rests with him and not with you.’
Indeed, for the time being at least Fitz Osbern seemed willing to trust them, since in spite of the open displeasure of several of the leading barons, Maredudd and Ithel were allowed to stay, setting up their camp at his direction on the other side of the river where there was less chance of their men clashing with our own, most of whom held the Welsh in as little regard as Serlo and were all too ready for a fight.
Still, they did not have too long to wait for better news. It came the next day in the form of Hugues d’Avranches, the Wolf of Ceastre, whose black banner and pennons were first sighted approaching on the northern road around midday. He arrived at the head of a contingent of fifty knights and another one hundred and twenty foot-soldiers, with many more due to follow in the days to come as his vassals and tenants left their feasting-halls and rode out from their strongholds.
Accompanying him was Wace together with his three household knights. It was the first that I had seen of him since the previous summer, although he had not changed much in that time. Indeed he was as I had always known him: broad-shouldered and thickset, with arms like a smith’s. Below his eye was the scar from the blow that he had taken at H?stinges, which had left him able only to half open it, though he could still see nearly as well as before. Well enough, at least, that he had sent countless foemen to their deaths in the years since.
‘You should see a barber,’ were his first words when he saw me. ‘With all that hair you look like one of them.’
He meant the English, of course, and straightaway I found myself on edge. But then Wace often had a way of doing that to people: it was the sort of remark that was typical of him, and I should have known better than to expect anything else. His blunt manner had often brought him trouble over the years, not to mention Eudo and myself as well at times. Together the three of us had grown up, trained at arms and learnt the art of horsemanship; together we had fought our first battles and ridden on campaign across the length and the breadth of Christendom. And now of all the knights who had once served beneath the hawk banner of Robert de Commines, the one-time Earl of Northumbria, we three were the only ones left alive.
‘We were wondering when you’d arrive,’ I said. ‘There was talk that the Wolf might ignore the summons altogether.’