Ulfrith was listening to the discussion with growing horror. He gazed at Bale with wide eyes. ‘Are you saying King Harold murdered the villagers while we were fighting pirates?’
Ulfrith’s sword was stained, indicating he had inflicted some sort of harm on his opponent. The same could not be said of Juhel and Lucian, who came to join them, cool and unmarked. Geoffrey was not surprised Lucian had declined to fight — he was supposed to be in holy orders, after all — but he was disappointed in Juhel.
‘Well, Harold’s sword is bloody,’ Bale was saying, pointing at the stained weapon that lay in the grass next to the body. ‘Of course, he was not the only one who went inside the place where the slaughter took place. Others did, too.’ His accusing gaze encompassed the vomiting Magnus, Juhel and Lucian.
‘I do not kill,’ said Lucian indignantly. ‘I am a monk. Besides, I am not ashamed to admit that such situations terrify the wits out of me. I fled when I saw Donan coming, and, although one sailor pursued me, I ran fast enough to lose him.’
‘Well, I certainly did not kill anyone,’ said Magnus, white-faced and shaking as he approached. ‘I do not even own a weapon. I am afraid I hid behind the church when you were skirmishing.’
‘And where were you?’ Roger demanded of Juhel.
The parchmenter held up the cage containing Delilah. ‘I was making sure the sounds of battle did not distress her, but I did not succeed. What should I do to calm her, do you think?’
‘Cover the cage and leave her to settle,’ advised Ulfrith. ‘She will soon forget it.’
‘I wish that would work for me,’ said Magnus miserably. ‘I shall remember this day for the rest of my life. Did Harold really kill all these poor people?’
‘They were dead when we arrived,’ said Geoffrey, recalling the eerie silence.
‘And Harold could not have killed them before that, because he was with us,’ added Roger. Then he frowned. ‘He could have killed them before he went to the mud shelter, I suppose.’
Bale disagreed. ‘These villagers are fresh dead; the blood is still wet and bright.’
Geoffrey supposed he should not be surprised that such a gruesome detail had stuck in Bale’s mind.
‘Then how did he do it?’ asked Ulfrith. ‘If they were dead when we arrived, and he did not have the chance to do it before. .’
Geoffrey felt blood oozing from his own cut and was aware of a sense of unreality. It was a reaction he often experienced after fierce fighting, but he knew he could not afford to give in to it — at least, not until they were safe in the abbey. Wincing, he knelt to inspect the corpse more closely.
‘This is not Harold,’ he said. ‘He is wearing different clothes and his face is thinner. And he does not have scars on his wrists. Unless I am mistaken, this must be Ulf. Harold’s twin.’
‘But why would he want to kill villagers?’ asked Roger. ‘Because he asked them to side with his revolt, and they refused? Magnus and Harold said this was a place loyal to Normans.’
‘But Magnus also said Ulf was violent,’ said Juhel. ‘So he must have killed these people.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Magnus. ‘This must be Ulf, although I have not seen him in years. I was not exaggerating when I described his evil character, though: destroying an entire village is exactly the kind of thing he would enjoy. Yet even so, he had no cause to attack Werlinges. Ergo, I do not believe he had anything to do with this.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Geoffrey. ‘Of course, pirates are hardened killers, too. It is possible they dispatched these people, so that they would not warn us against walking into an ambush.’
Magnus wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. ‘I agree. One man could not have done this. It is the work of a violent horde.’
Reluctantly, Geoffrey supposed he had better inspect the church for himself. It contained at least thirty people, all lying in twisted heaps or sprawled in a chaotic jumble of limbs. There was not a weapon in sight, and injuries to their arms suggested they had tried to defend themselves with their bare hands. A child near the altar was huddled with his knees drawn up to his chin, as if he had hoped he might not be noticed. It was a massacre, and although Geoffrey had seen its like many times on the Crusade, he had never thought to do so in England.
He forced himself to move among the bodies, to see whether any had survived, but he knew none had. The killers had done their work too well, and most corpses had multiple injuries.
‘Christ God!’ breathed Roger, appalled. ‘They sliced the priest’s head clean from his body.’
He pointed to the altar, where an old man with a tonsure had evidently been praying as he had been struck down. There was a tiny room to one side, which had served as a vestry. Harold was in it, sitting on a bench. His head was bowed, his eyes glazed with shock.
‘I cannot find Father Wennec,’ he said dazedly, looking up when Geoffrey entered. ‘Perhaps he escaped. He is an elderly fellow with a tonsure. .’
‘Come outside,’ said Geoffrey gently. ‘There is nothing you can do here.’
‘What evil, wicked monster could do such a thing?’ asked Harold, stumbling slightly as Geoffrey pulled him to his feet. ‘There are children. .’
‘I do not know. But I do not think we should wait here to find out.’
‘They process salt here,’ said Harold as Geoffrey escorted him from the chapel. He was burbling irrelevancies, and Geoffrey supposed it was his way of dealing with what he had seen. ‘Werlinges is famous for its lovely salt, and it made the place wealthy. I suppose that is why it was attacked.’
‘No doubt,’ said Geoffrey. There was no point saying more: Harold was incapable of listening.
‘I saw them all alive before I went to meet Magnus,’ Harold went on. ‘And they told me all about their salt. They were proud of it, you see. And Wennec promised to hire me two good horses.’
Geoffrey stood with him while Roger led the squires in a search of the village’s outbuildings, hoping to find someone who had escaped and might be able to tell de Laigle what had happened. The brutal execution of an entire village was sure to trigger an official enquiry, and it was important to secure eye-witnesses before they disappeared.
‘I am sorry I did not help you fight the pirates,’ said Harold dully. ‘But I did not have a sword. I ran to the chapel to see whether someone might have left a weapon in the porch that I might use — a pike or something. But when I saw. . I must have swooned. . And then you came. .’
‘You were quite right not to have joined the skirmish, Harold,’ said Magnus, coming to stand with them. ‘And so was I. What would happen to England if we were killed or injured?’
‘Ulf would not have acted like a stupid coward,’ said Harold, full of self-loathing. ‘But I am not him. To tell you the truth, I prefer playing the horn to fighting and the like.’
‘You play like an angel,’ said Magnus comfortingly. ‘Do you think Donan did this alone, Sir Geoffrey, or did Fingar help?’
Geoffrey shrugged, thinking that Fingar and his men would have needed a place to stay when the storms struck and might well have imposed themselves on Werlinges. And then, to ensure no one reported pirates at large, they had killed any witnesses. He frowned. But would they really resort to such extremes? Or was it the work of Ulf, the violent marauder? Geoffrey knew that one man with a sword could do a lot of damage to unarmed people in a confined space.
‘The massacre was recent, just as Bale says,’ said Roger, coming to report. Ulfrith was white-faced at his side and making a valiant but futile attempt to conceal his shock, whereas Bale seemed energized. ‘This morning, probably.’
‘Then it must have been the pirates,’ said Magnus. ‘When I am king, I will see them chopped into pieces for this outrage! That evil Donan-’