I turned to Eudo, who was fixing me with a stare as cold as I had ever seen from him. Only too well did I understand his exasperation, and feel for his tiredness. Didn’t he see, though, that the longer we delayed, the less chance we had of catching up with the enemy?
‘What more do you want from me?’ I asked.
His lips were set firm in disapproval, or disgust; I could not tell which. ‘This is unwise, Tancred,’ he said, keeping his voice low as he glanced towards the Welsh brothers, although they were far enough away by then that I doubted they would hear. ‘With every day we’re venturing further into unknown country. More and more we depend on what they tell us, and yet I trust them less and less.’
‘Fitz Osbern trusts them,’ I said, though I knew it wasn’t much of an answer.
Eudo knew it too, for he gave me a sardonic look. ‘They have as many spears under their banner on this expedition as we do. If they turn on us—’
‘They won’t.’ I tried to sound confident, as much to convince myself as him, for I was only too aware of how vulnerable we all were, and how much we needed the Welshmen. As, I hoped, they needed us too.
‘You can’t know that,’ he said. ‘They have something in mind, I’m sure of it.’
‘If they’d wanted to lead us into a trap, they could have done so long ago,’ I replied. ‘Why wait until now?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘And the not knowing is what I like least about it.’
Eudo was not the kind of man usually prone to such suspicions, and the fact that he would express his sentiments so openly suggested to me that I ought to take him seriously. Yet the time to voice those kinds of doubts had long passed. Whether we liked it or not, we had to trust Maredudd and Ithel. Not only that, but somehow I would have to repair the damage that had been wrought this night, to make sure that they would trust me in turn.
‘What else can we do but follow them?’ I asked. ‘If they’re leading us to our deaths, then we’ll know it soon enough. But if we start sowing mistrust between us and them, they’ll only turn on us all the sooner.’
It was scant consolation, and Eudo did not look satisfied by it, but I could offer him nothing better. If our years of friendship counted for anything then he would accept my judgement on this, as he had on countless occasions before.
Shaking his head, he said, ‘Fitz Osbern might have placed you in charge, but that doesn’t mean you have all the answers, Tancred. Remember that.’
‘Eudo—’
He didn’t give me the chance to reply as he swung up into the saddle and rode off.
A group of foot-warriors had stopped to see what was going on. ‘What are you looking at?’ I snapped at them. ‘Fetch your belongings and ready your horses. We ride as soon as we can.’
I made my way to the other side of the hill fort where the French tents stood. Already my thoughts were turning to other things: to the battle that lay ahead; to Rhiwallon and Bleddyn, whose men had raided my lands so many times this past year; and to Eadric and all the Englishmen who had joined them. To the conquest of the Marches, of the Welsh kingdoms, and to glory.
Fourteen
WE CAME UPON Mathrafal around mid-morning, skirting the fields to its west, keeping our distance in case Eudo and his patrol had been mistaken and there were more of them lying in wait than they had been able to see. The place was just as he and Haerarddur had described: a cluster of halls and storehouses within a square enclosure around one hundred paces on each side, with stout ramparts and a moat surrounding it, and a scattering of houses beyond that.
Hearth-smoke rose from the buildings; from our vantage on the hillside I spied flashes of movement within the fort as men rushed back and forth, climbing the ladders on to the catwalk behind the palisade. They had seen us, though they needn’t have feared, for I had no intention of approaching them. Their spearpoints and shield-bosses gleamed dully under overcast skies: I counted three dozen men at least, and those were just the ones I could see. Enough, probably, to hold the walls for hours, especially if they also had bows with arrows, and javelins that they could throw down at us. Even though we’d overwhelm them eventually, it would cost the lives of more men than we could spare.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ithel and Maredudd exchange a look, though they knew better than to try to challenge me again. My mind was set and they would not change it.