‘Friends,’ I assured him. ‘My name is Tancred. We came as soon as we saw the smoke.’
‘You came too late.’ His face contorted in pain as once more he groaned and clutched at the shaft protruding from his gut. ‘Too late.’
I tried to lift his hands away so as to get a better look at the wound. If we could only remove the arrow, I thought, it might be possible to staunch the flow and close up the hole. But no sooner had I prised his trembling fingers from the sticky cloth than I knew it would be no use. In my time I’d seen men recover from all manner of injuries, some worse than this, but not many. I’d learnt a little about wounds and how to treat them from the infirmarian in the monastery where I grew up, and over the years since had often watched leech-doctors at work. That small amount of knowledge was enough to tell me that he was too far gone, even for someone skilled in the healing arts, which none of us were.
Serlo crouched beside me, holding a leather flask. ‘Ale,’ he said. ‘There’s not much left.’
‘It’ll be enough,’ I replied as I took it and removed the stopper. From the weight and the sound it made as I swirled the liquid about I reckoned it was probably about a quarter full. I turned back to the priest. ‘Can you sit up?’
He shook his head, teeth clenched in pain. His breath came in stutters, making it hard for him to speak. ‘I am beyond the help of ale. Besides, soon there will be no more pain. I shall be with God, and all will be well. There is only one thing you can do for me.’
‘What is it, father?’
He gave a great hacking cough, and as he did so his whole body shuddered. Thankfully the fit did not last long and, sighing wearily, he lay back once more, at the same time motioning with his fingers for me to come closer. I leant towards him. There were tears in the old man’s eyes, running down his cheeks.
‘Bring to justice the ones who did this,’ he said. ‘Their leader too, that spawn of the Devil. The one they call Hereward. Promise me that.’
‘Hereward?’ I repeated, wanting to make sure I had heard him rightly. ‘He did this?’
‘So they called him, yes.’
That name was well known to me, as it was to everyone in our army, but I hadn’t expected to hear it today, in this place. Hereward was one of the leaders of the rebels; it was he who had instigated this particular rising here in the fens. Some said he was a prominent thegn who had held land in these parts under the old king, Eadward. Others claimed he was a creature of the forest, abandoned at birth by his mother and raised by wolves, which explained his ruthless nature and his lack of Christian mercy. In truth no one knew where he had come from; his name had been first spoken only last autumn. While we had been campaigning with the king in the north, Hereward had raided the abbey at Burh, slain several of the monks and carried away all their treasures, including shrines and gilded crucifixes, richly bound and decorated gospel books and even, it was said, the golden crown that had rested upon Christ’s head on the rood beneath the chancel arch. With the help of some Danish swords-for-hire he’d torched the town and monastery, and afterwards had fled by ship across the marshlands to the Isle of Elyg, where he now chose to make his stand against us, bolstered by the hundreds of other English outlaws who had flocked to his banner.
It was because of him that we were here in this godforsaken corner of the kingdom. It was because of him that, barely half a year after we had defeated the Northumbrians and their Danish allies at Beferlic and sent the pretender Eadgar scurrying back to the protection of the King of Alba, we’d found ourselves once more summoned by the king to join him on another of his campaigns.
Yet if the old priest was right, and it was indeed Hereward who had done this, and if we could kill or capture him-
A new sense of purpose stirred within me. ‘How many of them were there?’ I asked.
The priest’s eyes were closed again, and his skin was as pale as snow. His time was near. But if I was to do what he had asked of me, he had to give me answers. I clasped his wrinkled, bloodstained hand, squeezing it firmly to try to keep him with us a little longer. At once he blinked and came to, a look of confusion upon his face, as if he did not quite know where he was.
‘How many, father?’ I said again.
He groaned as if with the effort of remembering, and after a moment managed to answer, ‘A dozen, perhaps fifteen. No more.’
Roughly two men to every one of us, then. Fewer than I had been expecting, but still more than I would have liked to face, especially when one of them was Hereward himself, whose sword-edge had already claimed countless victims, if the stories told about him were true. No warrior ever won himself great fame without some measure of risk along the way, however. The difficulty came in learning which risks to embrace and which to avoid, and this seemed to me one worth taking.
‘When did they leave?’ I asked the priest.
‘Not an hour ago,’ he said, his eyelids drooping. ‘They went …’
‘Where?’
At first I thought he was slipping away and that we wouldn’t get an answer, but then I spotted the faintest movement of his lips. I leant closer, having to put my ear almost to his mouth in order to hear him.
‘Promise me,’ he said, barely managing a whisper. ‘Promise me.’
‘I will bring them to justice, father,’ I said. ‘I swear it upon the cross. But you have to tell me where they went.’
‘North.’ The words came slowly now. ‘They went north. That much I know. Now, let me rest.’
I nodded and squeezed the priest’s hand one last time, then rested it carefully back upon his chest, which still rose and fell, though so slightly as to be almost imperceptible. Between breaths he whispered something that I could not entirely make out, but which from a couple of Latin words I guessed was probably a prayer for the safekeeping of his soul. Not that he had the chance to finish it, for he was still in the middle of whatever he was uttering when a pained expression came across his face and a long groan left his lips. His eyes closed once more; moments later his chest ceased moving, and that was when I knew he had left this world and that he was, at last, with God.
I made the sign of the cross across my breast as I got to my feet, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Serlo and Pons do the same. Around us the houses still burnt. The wind was rising, tugging at my tunic, blowing the smoke towards us and causing tongues of vibrant flame to flare up amongst what remained of the smoking timbers, wattle and thatch.
‘What now?’ asked the archer with the gaunt face, his expression now devoid of humour.
‘We ride,’ I answered.
Hereward and his band couldn’t have got far in an hour. No doubt they would be making for wherever they had moored their boats. Since few vessels large and sturdy enough to carry a horse could navigate the marshes, I guessed they would most likely be on foot, which meant that we still had a chance of catching up with them.
Without delay we mounted up. I would have liked to bury the priest if only to save his body from the crows, but there was no time. Instead we left him by the haywain where he lay, his expression serene as if he were simply sleeping.
Only later, when the wreckage of the village was far behind us, did I realise that I hadn’t even learnt his name.
Two
The rebels had left few clear tracks, but there was only one path leading out of the village to the north, and so that was the one we followed. We rode swiftly, past stunted trees and the fallen-in roofs of cottages that were now abandoned, across rain-sodden earth and through shallow streams, our mounts’ hooves kicking up mud and stones and water. We were close, I knew, to the southern edge of the marshes, where the land ended and gave way to a broad expanse of sedges and reed-banks, of myriad channels and meres, which stretched all the way from here to the German Sea. It seemed a different world entirely from the March at the other end of the kingdom where my manor lay, with its high hills and moors, and its valleys rich and green. No one but fisherfolk and eel-catchers lived here in this desolate place, and even then they did not live well. Only the higher ground upon the Isle of Elyg had anything much worth defending, which was one of the reasons why the rebels had made it their stronghold, the other being the fens on all sides that rendered any approach impassable to horses and treacherous for anyone on foot who was unfamiliar with the safe passages.