‘So that no one has to die who doesn’t have to,’ I said. ‘This woman and her child are not our enemies.’
‘Maybe you should do as he suggests, lord,’ said one of the two sturdy-looking men restraining the Welshwoman. His face was familiar, for I had seen him in Berengar’s company before, though I could not recall his name – if ever I had learnt it. One of his household knights, I suspected.
‘Maybe you should shut up, Frederic,’ Berengar shot back. ‘Your oath is to me. You owe nothing to this man.’
Affronted, the one called Frederic fell silent.
‘I’m tired of taking orders from him,’ Berengar went on, pointing a grimy finger in my direction. ‘He is no better than any of us; he is only our leader because he has Fitz Osbern’s favour. And yet what has he done to deserve that honour?’
I clenched my fist, trying to restrain my temper. If he had misgivings about my leadership, he should have spoken with me in private. By letting his grievances spill out into the open air, he made it clear that he sought to undermine me.
‘Tancred was at Eoferwic,’ another man called out, though I did not recognise him. ‘If it weren’t for him, we could never have taken the city.’
There was a roar of agreement, and I noticed Frederic exchanging uncertain glances with some of Berengar’s other knights.
But the man himself was not swayed. ‘So we keep hearing,’ he said with a snort. ‘But were any of you there? Did any of you actually see him fight the ?theling, as he claims to have done?’
I started forward, speaking almost through gritted teeth: ‘Berengar—’
‘No,’ he said, cutting me off. ‘You will not tell me what to do any longer. These people are our enemies, and this is justice.’ For a second time he withdrew, this time turning so that his back was to me, as if trying to protect the howling child, though I knew that was not what he had in mind. He lifted his blade, the flat side gleaming dully in the grey morning light, the edge wickedly sharp.
Again the Welshwoman shrieked, and suddenly it seemed she had managed to shake off the hold of her captors, or perhaps they had decided after all to let her go. Either way it mattered little as she darted forward, almost tripping over the ragged hem of her skirt, making for Berengar, but he had seen her coming. Turning, he backhanded a slash with his knife, but he was too quick through the stroke. The steel passed inches from her face as instead the back of his hand connected with her cheek and her nose, sending her sprawling to the ground.
Before he could do anything more, however, I was upon him. While his attention was on her I rushed forward, seizing hold of his knife-arm, twisting it back so sharply that he had no choice but to drop the weapon. In the same moment I drew my own blade with my left hand and, grabbing him from behind, held it up to his neck.
‘Give the boy to his mother,’ I said. ‘Do it slowly, or else I swear my knife-edge will meet your throat.’
Dazed, the woman had managed to rise no further than her knees. Blood was running from her nostrils, mixing with her tears. Tenderly she pressed her hand to the place where she had been struck; her palm and fingers came away red.
‘Help her,’ I said to the circle of men who were looking on. ‘Someone help her.’
But they did not move, and I realised that their eyes were not upon the Welshwoman but on me, and on my blade, pressed to the neck of a fellow baron. A man who was lord and master to many of them.
I swallowed, realising what I had just done, but I could not undo it, nor could I waver. ‘Serlo, take the child from him. Turold, Pons, get the girl to her feet.’
The child’s wails rang in my ears. One becomes used to the cries of the dying, but the cries of those at the beginning of their lives are a different thing entirely. To speak truthfully, hearing them there, in that place, unsettled me in a way that I could not have imagined.
This child had been born into slaughter, into a world of hatred and bloodshed and cruelty. Even if he survived plague and famine and the sword, he would grow up hearing tales of what we had done here and elsewhere. Desiring of vengeance, he would most likely end his days in the same place they had begun. This was how it had happened before, and in the same way it would happen again, over and over through my lifetime and for centuries to come until the hour of reckoning itself.
But that was not what most shook my soul. Rather it was the realisation of how fragile were these bodies that kept our souls upon this earth; how but for good fortune an infant’s entire future could be taken away; how finely balanced was the blade-edge that separated death from life.