An Endless Exile E-Book

Mary Lancaster

• Herausgeber: Mushroom eBooks
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

An Endless Exile

Leseprobe

An Endless Exile

Mary Lancaster

Published byMushroom eBooks

Copyright © 2004, Mary Lancaster

Mary Lancaster has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the Author of this work.

First published by Mushroom eBooks in 2004.

This edition first published in 2004 by Mushroom eBooks, an imprint of Mushroom Publishing, Bath, BA1 4EB, United Kingdomwww.mushroom-ebooks.com

All rights reserved. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It must not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. If you are reading this book but did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN of full version 978-1-84319-130-8

Contents

Present: March 1076

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Past: Into Exile: April 1056 — January 1057

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Present: March 1076

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Past: Home: April — July 1066

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Present: March 1076

Chapter 24

Past: Journeys: 1068-1070

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Present: March 1076

Chapter 33

Past: Refuge: 1070-1072

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Present: March 1076

Chapter 43

Past: New Roads: 1075

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Present: March 1076

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Mary Lancaster

Historical Fiction by Mary Lancaster

Present: March 1076

CHAPTER 1

“Hereward is dead.”

Whatever I had expected of my husband’s nephew, rousing my household in the middle of the night to throw his dripping person and its accompanying blast of cold air at my feet, it was not that. Even though there can have been few men more likely to die.

Just for a moment, I could only stare at the bent, agitated head, watching the rivulets of water run down his hair to join the thousand others on his sodden cloak. By the trembling, almost sinister flame of my porter’s lamp, I could even see the little pool of water forming between us. Just for a moment, that fascinated me too.

Hereward is dead. Was this news, then, already galloping and spreading under the night-stars? Northwards, perhaps, to York and beyond, to his sister and to his erstwhile Danish friends of Northumbria. West too, to the old rebels of the Welsh marches — would Edric the Wild weep for the ally he had never met? South, probably, to the King in London or Winchester or wherever he was, and whatever pity was in his heart today. And eastward — was it eastward? — among the fens which had always been his. Were his people, the lost and despairing, loud in lament for their last great hero? Wildly — or silently — inconsolable? Or did they close their eyes in peace, breathe a mighty sigh of collective relief and say, “Thank God it is over at last: Hereward is dead.”

Perhaps, in the end, it would even be the Normans who mourned most for their new and prestigious friend. Or were the present masters of this land too full of such an unexpected triumph over their one-time enemy? An enemy who could never, after all, have become one of them; only a dangerous rival. Perhaps they would be unable to believe their luck, passing on the news in superstitious whispers through the great estates and courts of England and Normandy, that Hereward the Exile, the Outlaw, was dead.

There is a dreadful finality about that word. Even through the detached ramblings of my mind, I was aware of it. Gradually too, I became aware of the pain in my hand where Siward, my husband’s nephew, was pressing it into his face. He was kneeling still at my bare, icy feet as though begging forgiveness for the news he bore, and in his own torment of grief — or his completely misplaced fear for mine — gentleness was forgotten.

Still distractedly, I began to draw my fingers free. They were wet. Releasing me, Siward dashed his hands across his eyes, and rose slowly to his feet, sword clanking dully at his belt and brushing against the fur cloak I had dragged around my chemise to receive him. In the dimly flickering light of the lamp that my porter held unsteadily above us, the skin of his still young face looked taut and sickly, the hollows around his exhausted eyes black. The tangled mass of fair hair, palely imitating his uncle’s, fell damply forward over one cheek; then, impatiently, he pushed it back, the better to peer at me, I think, for signs of emotional disintegration. Baffled, I gazed silently back at him until in pity he lifted both arms for me.

Instinctively, I stepped backwards out of his reach, and as his arms fell again, a frown of puzzlement creased his low brow.

“Torfrida, he is dead,” he repeated deliberately, as if to a child, or to an imbecile who could not understand simple words. “Hereward, your husband, is dead.”

And at last the breath seemed to seep back into my body.

“Good,” I said with satisfaction. “Then I can go home to Bourne.”

* * * *

In the first light of a grey, wintry morning, I prepared with some care for my ride from Lincoln to Bourne. I dressed in a warm woollen gown of bright, sky blue, over a fine yellow under-dress. Beneath my veil, which was circled with a braided ribbon of the same blue and yellow, my hair was as neatly and becomingly pinned as I could make it. I had no intention of being surprised by anyone at any time.

That done, I drew the sable travelling cloak about me and regarded my reflection in the sheet of polished bronze which was the one extravagance of my solitary, sterile bed-chamber. My face was too thin now, marked by life like the grey streaks in my once jet-black hair. I looked, in fact, disconcertingly frail. My eyes, too large and bright for that face, stared back at me, half-frightened, half-excited; and in my breast my heart beat and beat and beat.

“Stop it, Torfrida,” I whispered. “Stop it...”

Then, taking a deep breath, I rose and went to collect my children. I was thirty-two years old, and felt as if I were waking up after a long, expectant sleep.

* * * *

The journey was accomplished mostly in uncomfortable silence, at least after we had drawn away from the children. Siward the White, torn between his own grief and an increasingly desperate, if covert, search for signs of mine, began to withdraw even further into his own private misery. I could not help that. It was not the time to try. For my own part, I think I sang a little, snatches of a merry French song that brought Siward’s eyes round to me with an astonishment that was far from admiring.

I smiled at him, beatifically, and twisted back in the saddle to give one last wave to the children. They were riding two ponies — Frida on one, the two little boys together on the other — in company with their nurse and most of the men-at-arms. We had agreed that they would go directly to Folkingham, to Gilbert of Ghent, their father’s godfather, while I insisted on riding ahead with Siward the White, to visit Bourne on the way. Siward said it was not fit for me. It was where Hereward had been killed.

“Do they know?” Siward asked abruptly.

“Know what?” I asked vaguely, straightening in my saddle, and adjusting the warm, soft cloak at my throat.

Siward said sharply, “That their father is dead, of course!”

“Oh no. I see no point in spoiling their treat. They are going to see their grandmother and Aunt Lucy, and stay at Uncle Gilbert’s hall; and Aunt Matilda will spoil them mercilessly. Now, Siward, add to my personal well-being: who had the ultimate honour of killing Hereward?”

This time he did not even try to keep the accusation out of his face or voice.

“The honour of killing your husband? Some treacherous Norman knights, purporting to be his friends! They were dining with him — it was the lady Aediva’s birthday feast — when their servants, who had hidden weapons under their clothes, fell on his men and...”

“Yes, so you told me last night,” I interrupted, waving that aside. “But who were they?”

“I don’t know,” Siward said bitterly. “I was not there. The assassins had fled by the time we came to his rescue. But it was Deda who escorted Aediva and Lucy to safety at Folkingham.”

My lip twitched as I regarded his averted face. “Deda,” I said with blatant mockery. “Deda killed Hereward?”

“Hardly!” said Siward sharply, displeased all over again by the flippancy of my tone. Well, what did he expect? “From all I can gather, Deda did everything possible to try and stop the fight. But I doubt the same could be said for that swaggering fool, Asselin!”

I had no quarrel with that description, but glancing up at him from under my lashes, I pointed out, “You told me they fled before you got to them.”

Siward’s pale skin flushed, but his eyes met mine squarely. “I heard from those who survived.”

“Yes,” I agreed evenly. “I expect you did.”

“Torfrida!”

I lifted my brows at him, watched him take a deep breath. Then: “Torfrida, I know this is hard to take in; after all he has done, God knows I never thought he would die like that, foully, in his own home...”

“That’s just it, Siward,” I murmured. “It wasn’t his home.”

Siward blinked his pale eyes once. “Wasn’t his...?”

“No. He gave Bourne to me, in trust for Frida.”

Siward was staring at me. In truth, the contempt in his eyes hurt me far more than it should. What in the world did he imagine I still owed to a troublesome and adulterous husband I had cast off four years ago? Bourne was all I had had of him, and that I had looked after mainly for his mother and widowed sister who still lived there! My own efforts, my own reviving of my father’s trading ventures, had fed and clothed my children and me...

But Siward was angry now. I tried to make allowances for his grief.

“Are you really counting property while he lies cut to pieces not twenty-four hours since?” he said harshly. “He may have behaved ill to you once, Torfrida, but before God, he was still your husband!”

There was a short pause. Then: “Was he?” I actually sounded amused. Mind you, I had not been, although I had tried quite hard, when I first heard the song linking Hereward’s name to Aelfryth’s, and calling her his wife. It had been yelled out joyously by a couple of drunks in imperfect harmony one market day in Lincoln. Well, being young and fair and Saxon, she made a better heroine for the story than I — well past my first flush of youth, Flemish, and endowed with rather dubious knowledge for a Christian.

“There seems,” I remarked judiciously, “to be some doubt.”

Hereward is dead. What would she do when the news got to her? Was someone else — one of the twins perhaps, or Leofric the Deacon — even now riding across the country to tell her what Siward had already told me? Would she come crashing into Bourne, claiming to be his widow? Well, Bourne was one place she would have no such rights. Bourne, as I had just reminded Siward, was mine. Mine and Frida’s.

* * * *

Avoiding the village and the monastery, and the wide, stricken eyes of the few frightened people we encountered on the road, I came home to Bourne. His presence there, unexpected and uninvited, had prevented me returning at all for the last month, even for Aediva’s birthday, and I had missed it. I acknowledged that as my tired horse picked its way daintily across the stream which flowed from St. Peter’s Pool, the natural fountain close by. Above the stream rose the earth mound and stockade that protected my hall.

Whatever occurred here yesterday, Hereward’s people had not deserted his ancestral home. The gates were closed and guarded by a man I knew well: he had a sword-scar on his left buttock. I tried to bear that in mind as he greeted me, disconcertingly with tears rolling unchecked down his rough, pitted cheeks.

While I stared carefully between my horse’s ears and urged it through the gates, I heard Siward quickly questioning the man.

“Where is he?”

“In the hall...”

“Is he fit...?”

“As he can be.”

I rode carefully on, and my heart beat and beat and beat.

* * * *

There had certainly been a battle here. The whole yard and the burned and damaged buildings around it bore unmistakable witness to that. For the first time, foolishly, I wanted to weep, because in all the years of war, for all the halls and towns and castles I had seen destroyed by one side or another, Bourne had never before been one of them.

But they were there, Hereward’s ‘gang’. Just as in the old days, they would have had word this last half hour and more of my approach. And as my horse picked its way slowly into the devastated yard, they emerged from the hall and the outbuildings, pausing in their tasks of clearing and burying and putting to rights, to stand and move silently towards me, united as one in their enormous loss, in their pity, and in the great grief they assumed, despite everything, that I would share.

“Fools!” I thought, with a sudden fury that could never be free of affection. “Fools, fools!”

Forcing myself, I picked out with my eyes those of them I had known and loved best, marked with my mind those who were notably absent.

“In the hall,” the soldier had said. And since I had no words to offer the men I had laughed with and suffered with for so long, I half-turned, till I could see the hall door. It lay open, half ripped off its hinges, and the twins, Hereward’s cousins Outi and Duti, stood on either side of it, shoulders sagging with fatigue, mouths drooping with misery. And yet they tried to smile at me.

I did not know what was going on.

My limbs were trembling slightly, and not just with the cold. Lifting my head, I drew the sable close around my throat and moved forward to the hall. Men moved respectfully to let me pass. Behind me, I was aware of Siward saying urgently, “Torfrida, wait a little. At least let me ensure...” But I heard no more. At the door, Outi embraced me, briefly, and because I could not stop it, I let him. And then I was past them, in the hall itself.

The battle had been in here too. They had made some effort to clear it up, but broken benches and tables lay piled on both sides and hangings had been torn down or shredded. The walls were scarred and pierced by weapons, stained by many liquids, some of which, at least, must have been blood. There was always blood. And at the far end, even the high table had been damaged: one of its legs was propped up now on a broken chair. I could see that, although I could not see what was laid upon it. In front of it stood Leofric the Deacon, a stained, ragged bandage askew about his head, and Siward the Red, friend and cousin of the White Siward who had followed me inside. From the footsteps I heard, so had the twins.

For a moment, we stared at each other. Then my eyes flitted beyond them, and around the hall, and back to Leofric. It was he, inevitably, who moved first, stepping down from the dais, and coming straight towards me, a thousand expressions flitting across his open, gentle face.

I decided to strangle the pity at birth.

“Very well,” I said sardonically. “Where is the body?”

Shock brought him to a standstill. Beside him, I saw Siward the Red’s eyes fly to his cousin’s. I even felt the movement of Siward the White’s tired shrug.

Leofric said, “It is here; but I have to warn you, lady...”

“I have seen dead bodies before,” I interrupted drily. “You must remember that, Leofric — you were generally there.” And I moved forward, brushing past him. At the last moment, he reached out and caught my arm. He was strong enough to force me, but I did not struggle. Instead, slowly, I looked back at him over my shoulder. His dark eyes gazed at me, serious, intense, pleading.

“Torfrida, don’t...”

I laughed. “Don’t what? Don’t look? Why do you think I came?”

I think it was the laughter that shook him off. At any rate I was free, with no inclination, or time, to think about what was in his face. There was only one obstacle left, on the dais: Siward the Red, planted firmly in front of me. On his left, on the table, I could see someone’s up-turned boots.

“Stand aside, Siward,” I said quietly, and reluctantly, slowly, he did.

I took my time. There were the boots, and leggings, and a short tunic worn without armour, save for the red painted shield still slung around his body like his sword-belt. There was a black dragon on the shield, with fierce, jewelled, emerald green eyes. My lips parted.

For the first time, I acknowledged the stale smell of burning that came off the body. His hair and head had been badly burned, beyond recognition. That should not have surprised me. I think it was the isolated clumps of thick, golden hair clinging still to his shoulders and chest that threw me off balance. Siward was right: he had been hacked to pieces. Bits of limbs were missing, there were massive, gory wounds in his legs and body, and his face, dear God, was enough to make seasoned warriors cringe.

I had seen enough. Sickened, I was already beginning to turn away when something on the body caught my eye: something frail and small and stained, but once, unmistakably, yellow. It shone through the singed, filthy, bloody rags of his clothing, somewhere between his chest and his left shoulder. Involuntarily, my hand reached out and touched it.

A braided ribbon, sewn with tiny gems.

My mouth opened, soundless at first, then gasping, and gasping again. Another storm filled my ears, rushing, swelling, endless. “Jesus Christ,” I whispered, twisting with the awful, unbearable thing I had found. “Jesus Christ...”

Leofric said urgently, “What...?”

And Siward the White interrupted him savagely, “She did not know! She would not believe me!” Blindly, I looked at him while he strode up to the dais and seized me by both arms. “You didn’t, did you? That is why you behaved so — said all those things! For God’s sake, Torfrida, what do you take me for?”

A queer, animal noise burst from my throat.

Leofric said sharply, “Leave her!” And as soon as the fingers slackened on my arm, I was away, bolting for the door, away from the tragedy I had not foreseen and would never be able to run from. The dreadful finality of death was upon me at last, and now, now, I was lost.

Hereward is dead.

CHAPTER 2

They let me run, as if they knew it was the only thing I could do, as if they knew I had done much the same thing before, over another, less terminal parting. And I suppose they knew I would come back.

And I did. Not so very much later. And I was calm, with the calm that can only be induced in me by fixed purpose. Yet, mostly, I felt detached from my surroundings, as if I were somebody else entirely.

Walking sedately back across the yard, I was aware of the men watching me with varying degrees of subtlety. Only Wulric the Heron, slumped in the open doorway of what used to be the men’s house, had no such pretensions. His white, ugly face looked wrung dry, his muddy eyes huge as they stared at me unblinkingly. His arm was roughly bandaged, and there was blood all over his coat.

Abruptly, I changed direction and walked over to him. Some habits are hard to break, whatever the circumstances.

“You are hurt, Wulric,” I observed, much as I had on many occasions past.

“I am alive,” he corrected me, without noticeable pleasure.

“I would like you to stay that way. May I see your wounds?”

“If you like. It’s nought to me.”

Taking his less bloody arm, I led him into the house. I said carefully, “You are grieving for him.”

“For him,” Wulric agreed. “Who is not? And for the lesser men.”

The lesser men. I remembered one, notably absent from the crowd in the yard. Why was it, I wondered with detachment, that one all-consuming pain could not dull the many lesser griefs? Instead, it seemed to sharpen them, so that I could not speak again until I had sat him down upon the nearest bed and unwrapped most of his filthy bandages.

“Have I taught you no better than this?” I asked severely, dropping the rags with exaggerated distaste.

“I did not care,” he said without emphasis.

“Wulric the Black is also dead?” I asked calmly, and the dead man’s friend nodded once, dumbly. His Adam’s apple wobbled precariously, making him look so ugly that I wanted to put my arms around him. However, since I didn’t think either of us could bear that, I stood up and went to fetch the water bowl lying on the table under the window. It looked clean.

Wulric the Heron watched me return to him, and when I had begun to wash, he said without flinching, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to add to — to...”

“They will all be added, Wulric.” My voice sounded perfectly calm, a little tight perhaps, but calm. Somewhere, I could still wonder at that, that I could still act and think as before.

Wulric’s eyes had lifted to mine, widening. A faint light even gleamed there, briefly. “God must have spared me to be revenged...”

Ignoring this slightly unlikely interpretation of God’s will, I said only, “What happened here, Wulric?”

“They were here,” he said. “Visiting the lady Aediva, or her daughter, I don’t know. But Hereward asked them to sit down for dinner. Again.”

“Who?” I asked. “Who did he ask?”

Wulric frowned. “That parcel of Normans. Asselin, Ralf of Dol, Hugh of Evermouth, Ivo de Taillebois...”

I glanced down at his face. “Ivo was there?” I asked quickly.

“Yes, and Deda. They all had their retinues of servants and soldiers, and they were all given hospitality.”

“Siward told me the servants carried weapons hidden in their clothes.”

Wulric stared unseeingly at the gory arrow-hole in his shoulder. “They drank with us. I think there was something in the ale. Or in some of it. I think they brought more to Wulric when he was on watch outside the hall, for he fell asleep. Wulric never sleeps on watch. They could have stepped over him to do their work, but they didn’t. They killed him anyway, when he could not fight back.”

I frowned at him. “You know this?”

“No, I’m guessing that part. I was inside the hall, with him. The first I — the first any of us knew, was when the door burst open and the Normans’ servants and soldiers rushed in. As if it was a signal, the others rose to their feet, swords were out, and the fight began. If you can call it a fight. With Hereward there was only Wynter and Martin and Leofric and me — and the two servitors who could not fight off their own grandmothers... Hereward saw at once we were lost and ordered me to bring the others — they were hidden in the old forest camp — but someone saw me opening the door and shot this arrow that pinned me there some time before I could get it out... And when I did, and I got out of the door, I tripped over something. They told me later it was Wulric the Black... I ran till I thought I would burst, giving the whistles as I went — they met me half way, but even so, we were too late...”

I wanted to close my eyes, as if that would shut it all out, make it unreal. I said prosaically, “That will be more comfortable. I’ll bind it for you now. Tomorrow I’ll put some ointment on it that will keep infection away and help it to heal faster.” Binding it with torn linen from the other bed, I said determinedly, “So the Normans’ servants conveniently began it. Did Hereward turn on their masters? Did any of you?”

“Hereward drew his sword,” Wulric said, after a moment’s frowning thought. “It was instinctive, and you know how quick he is... Was. He leapt over the table, to meet those charging into the hall, and they were upon him in a trice.”

“Who were?” I asked patiently.

“The boy who came to Ely once — Ralf. Hugh of Evermouth. Asselin. Chiefly.”

“Not Deda?” I asked, because I had to.

And even like this, Wulric could spare a faint upward tug of his torn lips for Deda. “No, not Deda. He was shouting furiously at the others, trying to push up their swords, but no one paid him any attention. All he could do was hustle the ladies away before they got hurt. Unless he’d been prepared to join us — a gang of Saxons fighting his own people!”

“And Ivo de Taillebois?”

Ivo, who would marry Hereward’s sister, if he could, yet who could not keep his black, sparkling eyes away from me...

Wulric frowned. “He’s a cool bastard. He fought if anyone came near him. Otherwise, he stood, or even sat, and watched. Sometimes, often when Hereward confounded the others, he laughed. I had an idea he disapproved of his countrymen, but he did nothing to interfere. I suppose he wouldn’t. Anyway, all that was at the beginning, before I got away... I wish I had never left him.”

“You could have changed nothing,” I said dully. “And you would be dead as well.”

He looked at me bleakly. “I know.”

* * * *

Leaving Wulric, I resumed my journey to the hall. My feet felt heavy and reluctant. I did not want to go in there. Not because I was afraid of the awful thing on the high table that had once contained the huge life of Hereward, but because I was afraid of his friends, of their effect on me, of their need of me. But I had to go to Folkingham. My children were there.

The door still hung crazily open, so they did not hear me come in. For a moment, I stood in the shadows, more from an inability to act than any desire to hear what they said.

And they were talking about me.

“... don’t care!” Siward the Red was exclaiming, violently punching his own leg as he half-sat on one of the trestle tables. “Why should you lie to her?”

“She didn’t think I had,” said Siward the White tiredly. “She thought I was — mistaken.”

“Why, in God’s holy name?”

“I don’t know. I think — probably — because she did not see it in the stars.”

There was silence.

Then: “But she cannot have imagined he was playing some trick!”

“I think that is exactly what she did imagine.”

“Dear God...” Duti said, sagging into an empty bench. “With what possible purpose?”

“Well think about it!” Siward the White said impatiently. “He arrived here over a month ago, giving no reason and making no attempt either to go to her in Lincoln or to bring her back to Bourne. She must have thought, like the rest of us, that he was seeking reconciliation at last. She must have thought he wanted her back, that he was too proud to beg or to chase, so she played along with his game, as she thought, to get her home. It probably suited her pride as well. White Christ! I don’t know what goes on in the minds of those two...”

This was unbearable. I found my eyes were closed, tightly, till some movement in the hall made me open them again in alarm.

“Well what convinced her you weren’t mistaken?” Outi was demanding, coming down from the dais with his quick, nervous tread. “That none of us were?”

The Siwards exchanged glances. This time, I would have intervened, but my tongue had got stuck, cleaving to the dry roof of my mouth.

“The ribbon,” said Siward the White at last, reluctantly, finally revealing the secret that he and his cousin had kept so long. “The ribbon that’s tied around his shoulder. He always wore it in battle, under his shirt — ever since Flanders. It was the first token she ever gave him.”

I moved forward then, suddenly, because my body could not bear to be still. Almost as one, they swung round to face me, and I saw without surprise that Deda was there too, now, seated at the table and half-hidden still by Siward the Red. He rose, abruptly, coming towards me and then, helplessly, pausing, as if he did not know how he — one of the party of Frenchmen who had killed Hereward — would be received.

“She doesn’t blame you,” Siward the White said quickly.

“Of course I don’t,” I said, just as hastily. “Later, later I will thank you for your care of my mother- and sister-in law. I am ready to go to Folkingham now.”

“Of course,” said the Siwards at once, and the twins too prepared to accompany me.

But I had seen Deda’s face, and when my enquiring gaze did not leave it, he said slowly, “Ivo de Taillebois is at Folkingham.”

A snarl that was only half pain writhed across the twins’ identical faces.

I said calmly, “Then Gilbert had better keep him away from my cousins. Shall we go?”

* * * *

I had done this before, ridden this path up to Folkingham Hall, just before dusk, with fear of the future in my heart. We had come into this very yard, and someone had helped me to dismount. Just as then, I did not look at the man who was setting me on my feet, for I was busy trying not to remember.

The yard was full of men, soldiers, gathering and drilling in expectation of the trouble Hereward’s murder was bound to inspire. Somewhere inside, in the hall probably, were my children, waiting to be told that their father was dead.

And coming out of the hall door, Gilbert of Ghent, Hereward’s god-father, wearing a breastplate over his rich tunic, and a sword at his belt. Gilbert in martial mood, though with what purpose I had yet to find out. At his heels came his son and heir, a worried frown creasing his serious brow, and beside them, the lady Matilda, who had been weeping.

Weep, Matilda, weep...

I think I would have coped if she had not smiled. But though the tears still glistened wetly on her puffy face, she tried to pull herself together when she saw me. Her hand lifted in sorrowful welcome, and yet she tried to smile, a quite inappropriate, almost grotesque effort in all its false brightness. Just so, flanked by her husband and a son, had she smiled at me when I had first come here twenty years ago, a furious but determined child of twelve, sent from Flanders by my own parents with the incomprehensible purpose of marrying me to Matilda’s eldest son.

Inevitably, the memories burst on me, overwhelming me until my breath rasped in my throat, and I gave up the fight, and let them come.

Past: Into Exile: April 1056 — January 1057

CHAPTER 3

My betrothed was not a handsome man. Gangly to the point of gawkiness, his mousy hair already thinning, although I knew for a fact he was only nineteen years old, he stood hunched between his fixedly smiling parents. The unpleasing contours of his face were only emphasized by the general mottled redness of his complexion — to say nothing of the even less becoming hue of his puce, bulbous nose, above which rather weak, sullen eyes regarded me with a depressing mixture of desperation, dejection and straightforward dislike.

I didn’t blame him for that. I was not much of a bargain myself from a physical point of view. Besides being only twelve years old, plain and short, with the odd sort of pre-adolescent body that humorously manages to combine skinniness and lumpiness, I showed little promise of improvement.

On top of which, I had a cold.

“This,” beamed Gilbert de Ghent, the sleeves of his long, heavily embroidered tunic rustling expensively as he cast one arm around my intended, “is my son, Robert. Robert, make your bow to the fair lady Torfrida who has come to us all the way from my good friends in Flanders.”

Robert obediently bowed, a jerky, graceless motion that held neither courtesy nor respect. Even his dress, muddied and plain and short, and quite unadorned save for a rather grotesque, wrought silver buckle at his belt, spoke of neglect that amounted to insult. Obviously he had been among English Saxons too long.

He still was, for the yard in which I was met by this daunting threesome seemed to be teeming with young men engaged in wrestling or contests of arms or other manly sports, while several ladies watched from the edges, or from the great doorway of the low, sprawling house facing me.

The fair lady Torfrida, seeing nothing worthy of comment, sniffed with watery disdain.

Robert, surreptitiously pinched by his still smiling mother, forced himself to speak, muttering ungraciously, “I trust I find you well?”

Inevitably, I sneezed. I made it loud and enthusiastic, although I glared balefully at him over the top of my handkerchief.

“Do I look well?” I demanded.

There was a short silence while they all stared at me in blank dismay. Even without the cold, it must have been apparent that I didn’t look too well.

I sniffed again. Some of the young men, grubby and panting still with their exertions, and most of the observing women, were gazing in our direction. I expect it was the sneeze. I am good at sneezes.

The lady Matilda said smoothly, “You will be exhausted after your long journey.”

I did not answer at first, for a wink of startling golden hair, gleaming among the many paler heads around it, had caught my attention — probably because it was the brightest thing I had yet seen in this grey, dreary place. It belonged to a fair youth in a rough, sleeveless leather tunic with a sword belt slung over his broad shoulder. Wild, beardless and dirty-looking, with the barbarically long, tangled hair favoured by Saxons of a certain type, he was strolling among the combatants in the yard as if they were so many flowers in a field; and though it was hard to tell — for his eyes seemed to dart constantly and his whole body was somehow unstill — I thought he was looking mainly at us.

Then, abruptly, he dropped out of my view — felled, I perceived, by several other young men at once. The one at the top looked as dark as the victim was fair, but indescribably neater and cleaner. It crossed my mind that the golden youth was probably the sort who invited such unequal attacks. Or perhaps it was all part of their silly games. I didn’t care. I already disliked the entire country.

Looking away, I realized that the lady Matilda, still determinedly smiling, was holding out her arm, dripping at the wrists with fine, English lace, in the direction of the house. The invitation was obvious, but I made her say it.

“May I give you some refreshment in the hall? Or would you prefer to retire and rest before supper? Come, I shall take you myself.”

I glanced coldly at the men of the family. Robert, my betrothed, bowed again, jerkily. I ignored him. His father, a powerful, handsome man not yet forty, idly fingered the fine gold filigree brooch at his shoulder, and smiled. It was a distracted smile, as if he were thinking about something — or someone — else entirely. Why then was I so sure he disliked me? Apart, of course, from the fact that I had done nothing so far to be liked.

“I hope you don’t mind this rabble, by the way,” the lady said brightly, guiding me safely round a pair of worryingly inept young archers. “My husband encourages all the young men of the neighbourhood to practice sports and arms here — a sort of informal tourney. We do it several times a year, but I assure you it is not constant!”

“I have just been fortunate,” I said sardonically, stepping over a fallen wrestler in my path. “Again.”

She did not take me into the hall — the main house, long, large, single-storied, flimsily wooden — but as we skirted it, a sudden commotion above my head startled me into glancing up at the roof with extreme apprehension. Somebody was pulling himself up the thatch from the other side, throwing one bare, brown leg over the ridge of the roof, and perching there like a weather vane.

It was the same golden-haired youth I had last noticed vanishing under an apparently irresistible onslaught of fellow brutes.

The lady Matilda stopped. So did I. The boy on the roof, a little battered about the face, drew one deep, reviving breath, and grinned. It was an insolent, provoking sort of a grin, though there seemed to be genuine laughter there too, and it was aimed at someone below him on the far side of the hall.

“Oh no,” the lady uttered — involuntarily, I thought.

Then the youth said something I didn’t catch. It sounded deep and sharp, like a command, and immediately two dark boys near us — whom I hadn’t even noticed before — started throwing things at the roof. Or no, not at the roof, but to the youth astride it. Sticks, stones, tree-branches, hats, buckets, old bits of broken armour — it seemed they were not choosy — and all tossed up with blood-curdling, martial yells.

And the golden youth, catching most of them, at once began hurling them at some unseen foe, or foes, on the other side of the building. Sometimes he called out a name before he threw, as if giving an impudent warning. Once I heard him laugh, quick and clear and incongruously joyous.

All around us now, like some noisy nightmare, I could hear people cheering and laughing and shouting out advice. One or two others moved disgustedly away, some calling warnings to friends or to the agitated women on the fringes, but in the main, all over the yard, men were dropping their weapons and their opponents and running over to watch the fun. Or to join in.

And they said this was a civilized country. I didn’t understand how the lady Matilda could tolerate such behaviour.

Apparently she couldn’t. When I looked at her, her face was still turned upwards; but her eyes were closed, as though praying for strength. It made her human for the first time.

Ineffectual, but human.

“Where,” uttered the lady, opening her eyes at last, “is Gilbert?”

Looking about me, I saw no sign of him. Instead, I found two young women beside us, the smaller open-mouthed and scared looking, though her eyes still sparkled with some sort of delighted anticipation. Stupid, I judged. It was to the other maiden, tall, spotlessly clean, that Matilda spoke.

“Emma,” she said, and I remembered that Emma was the name of her eldest daughter. “Emma, fetch your father or we’ll have blood before supper...”

“You’ll have it any way now,” the tall girl returned, managing to convey both resignation and annoyance. “If you will invite him, you must expect trouble.”

“Well I could do without it today!” Matilda snapped. She wasn’t smiling any more. She hadn’t been for some time. “Will you fetch your father when I tell you? You shall meet Torfrida at supper. Come, my dear...”

I cast another glance at the roof. The opposition appeared to be fighting back to some purpose, for the golden youth now sat among a positive hail of missiles hurled from the far side of the hall, many of which struck their target. On the other hand, more men were climbing up to join him from our side, while others again ran in with fresh ammunition. Even as I watched, I saw the boy’s far leg jerk violently. The thud and the scream from the other side of the building, told me the rest — that he had just kicked some would-be interloper off the roof.

“Two in one blow!” he yelled triumphantly, confirming my prognosis. “One slitherer, one flyer!”

A rousing cheer went up from his own side. Behind me, I heard the smaller, sillier girl gurgling with laughter. “Isn’t he splendid?” she demanded, followed by a decided slap and an aggrieved, “Ouch!”

By quick thinking, I managed to turn my hysterical laughter into a sneeze. Hastily following the lady, I observed, “You appear to be hosting a battle.”

“Oh no, my dear, nothing less than a war,” Matilda said with suppressed savagery as a rock fell alarmingly close to us. I stepped over it, and paused.

“Do you want him down?” I offered. “This stone, scientifically aimed...”

“By whom?” she interrupted bitterly. “My husband or my son?”

I stared at her. “By me, of course.”

Matilda closed her mouth. Swiftly, before she could recover, I bent and took hold of the rock in both hands, lifting it and walking away almost in the same breath. It wasn’t easy, for the stone was heavy, and now that I had it, I was no longer quite so sure of my ability to bring the golden barbarian down. However, since that was of purely secondary importance to me, I kept going, ignoring her alarmed, “Torfrida! In God’s name, come out of there!”

By the time I was in among those who were trying to dislodge the boys on the roof — there were three of them up there now — I had planned my angles and my distance. Stolidly, I was ignoring the blunt objects that whizzed past my ears and flew over my head. Once in place, slightly aggrieved that no one but the lady Matilda seemed to be paying me any attention, I hefted the stone to my shoulder, and took aim.

Only then did the golden youth perceive me. Laughing aloud, he said something to the boys behind him, while still hurling sticks and a particularly nasty looking stone — fortunately not in my direction. At the same time, he appeared to be impudently offering me his yellow head as a target. Accepting with alacrity, I altered my aim slightly, and let my hand fall back to throw, but then, before I could, I was suddenly pulled unceremoniously aside and only just managed to avoid dropping the stone on my own foot.

* * * *

There was an ante-chamber with sweet-smelling rushes on the floor; small but furnished with several stools and a chest in the French style. Beyond it was a large chamber, full of beds. My step faltered. Was I to have no privacy, even at night? I didn’t know whether to scream or weep or wrestle my mother-in-law to the ground in what seemed to be the fashion of her adopted country.

In the end, I did none of these things, which was just as well, for my fate was really not quite so bad. She had given me a corner of my own, curtained off from the others by bright, heavy hangings. I even had a window.

“You will not mind the others,” the lady told me in a way that made me want to mind them very much. It was the first thing she had managed to bring herself to say to me since dragging me away from the battlefield. She was smiling again. “They are all young, like yourself, and well-born. Now I shall leave you — but I’ll send someone with a posset to make you feel better.”

“Please don’t trouble,” I said coldly, but she was already half way across the main chamber. I don’t think she even heard me.

I stood still, counting silently to twenty. Then, in the heavy silence — someone must have stopped the battle in the yard — I let my shoulders slump. Slowly, I unfastened my sable-lined cloak and dropped it on the bed. I hoped no one had seen me shaking. Now, remembering vividly the recent tedious hours at sea, spent mainly with my stuffed and runny nose pressed into my knees, and a few brief glimpses thereafter of endless grey skies and vast, dreary marshes beyond the river’s shores — to say nothing of the bumpy, lonely ride here after my people had abandoned me to the servants of my betrothed — I just felt cold.

I sat down on top of the cloak, and tried to think.

I hadn’t got very far when the hanging moved and a bright voice in the gap said, “Hallo! You must be Torfrida.”

I looked round to see a pretty girl just a year or so older than myself; she was smiling at me. Her hair was long, loose and gleamingly fair, confined only by a braided circlet of blue and red ribbon around her forehead. She wore a simple gown of fine, sky-blue wool — woven in Flanders, I rather thought, by the new processes which were making my father so wealthy — fastened with small, old-fashioned snake-shaped brooches at either shoulder. Between, she wore a string of pretty but inexpensive glass beads.

In her hands she held an ornate, silver cup. Without enthusiasm, I looked from it up to the girl’s open, merry face.

“So I must,” I agreed. “Who are you?”

“Lucy,” she said amiably. “Lucy of Bourne. One of the lady’s ladies — if you see what I mean!”

“I expect I can work it out. Given time and a sharp pen.” I sneezed again, accusingly. “Lucy is hardly an English name.”

“I was named after my lord’s — that is, the Earl of Mercia’s — grand-daughter, but the lady Matilda always calls me by the French form. I don’t mind — it distinguishes us! And anyway, my sister in Northumbria is English enough for both of us — Aethelthryth, after the saint of Ely. And her son is Siward, to please the Norsemen, I suppose, though I can’t see that any of that stuff matters. And I must say,” she added, coming further into my corner, “I am very glad that you speak Saxon, for my French is atrocious and I don’t have a word of Flemish. This is for you,” said the girl, as if she had suddenly remembered the cup in her hands. “To help your poor cold.”

“Thank you,” I said distantly, turning back towards the window. “Please leave it on the side.”

She did as I bade her, but the unspoken command — namely to take herself off and leave me alone — was obviously too subtle for her. Dropping familiarly on to the bed beside me, she said cosily, “So! How do you like your betrothed?”

“At a distance,” I said shortly. With luck it would get back to him, suitably embellished. However, instead of looking shocked, the girl only smiled.

“You must not mind Robert. He will have been nervous of meeting you. Really, he is very amiable and very gentle. You are lucky.”

I stared at her. “Then you marry him.”

She only grinned again, impishly, but in a way that disturbed her angelic beauty not at all. She reminded me of someone.

“I could do worse,” she acknowledged regretfully. “But I have other plans. So do my parents, more to the point! The lady said, by the way, that I should let you rest before supper — old people are always saying things like that. Do you want to rest?”

“Would you go away if I said I did?”

Rudeness, like subtlety, seemed to float right over her head. She said distractedly, “Of course, if you asked me to,” quickly followed by, “Are you missing your home? Or perhaps, like me, you’re just glad to escape parental restrictions!”

I turned away from her again, quickly, saying coldly, “I was never much restricted.” Until now...

“Lucky you! I was, quite horribly, I assure you! Life is much better now — although at times my parents are still too close for comfort. When we are here at Folkingham, the lady can complain of me too easily! Bourne, my father’s favourite hall, is only eight miles from here.”

Eight miles. What would I give for a mere eight miles? And eight years...

“Still, at least I need seldom be home-sick,” the strange girl comforted herself, belying her previous joy in her escape. “Nor, more importantly, need I listen to the perpetual quarrels of my father and brother!”

At that I did regard her with only slightly distracted fascination. “Your family can quarrel?” I had more or less given up trying to provoke one with her.

“Oh yes,” she said blithely. “Hereward, you see, is my brother.”

Lost but not yet despairing, I enquired, “Is that a matter for congratulation?”

And she laughed. “I hardly know! Certainly, it gets one noticed, but as for congratulation — well, you will have your own opinion by now. You must have seen him on your way across the yard.”

I looked at her. “One of the wrestling young men?” I hazarded, without much hope; there was a certain inevitability about all this.

“No,” she said apologetically. “The one on the roof. The first one on the roof.”

CHAPTER 4

The main hall at Folkingham, as befitted the home of so close a kinsman of the Count of Flanders, was a large, well-proportioned chamber, hung with rich, Flemish tapestries. The wood panels and beams, high tables and chairs and benches, were all decorated with wonderfully detailed, yet fantastically ugly animal carvings, and the high-backed chairs on the dais seemed to be studded with gold. Already, the high table had been set with fine plate and coloured glass beakers lying at every place. To me, it was a very alien mixture of luxury and grotesque barbarity; but I took a perverse pleasure in the knowledge that my mother would not approve of it. I would describe it vividly in my first letter. Tomorrow.

Now, for supper, the hall was laid out with lots of trestle tables and benches, and it seemed the entire floor was covered with people waiting to take their seats. I could no longer, with justice, accuse the company of dullness. My eyes were quite dazzled by the sea of brilliantly coloured silks and wools adorning the ladies. Much gold and silver winked in the fading sunlight that still peeped in the many windows.

I would not have been surprised to see the men sitting down to supper with swords and scramasaxes at their belts, shields and bows slung at their backs and spears propped against the tables. I hardly knew whether or not to be disappointed by their restraint. Some of the assembled noblemen certainly wore swords, but almost as decoration, and the hilts on display were all of fine wrought metal; some were even jewelled. Otherwise, the only weapons in evidence were the painted and bossed shields on the walls, much as you would expect.

No one could say our entrance upon this surprisingly glittering scene was not effective. I chose to stand for some time just inside the door, in the full glory of my violent red gown, ridiculously festooned with every item of clashing jewellery I could find; and Lucy, perforce, had to wait nervously with me, while heads turned in our direction, one after the other, more and more of them in rapid succession — including the lady Matilda’s, gratifyingly appalled before the smile managed to resurface. The babble of voices and cheerful laughter sank, paused in near silence for what seemed to be several seconds, and then rose again with renewed vigour.

The first voice I heard clearly came from a woman standing near me at the door. With a tinkling, very feminine little laugh it said to her companion, “Oh my dear, is that the bride? Well, what can one expect from the biggest swamp in Europe? Poor Robert! But what a charming couple they will make!”

I did not mind the opinion; it was the one I was seeking after all. It was the calculated malice behind it that threw me, so that although I turned my head boldly to look directly at her, I could think of no words. She was young, tall and graceful, slender and plump in all the right places, with bright, sparkling blue eyes that were used, I thought, to laughing, even if only at other people, and a charmingly full-lipped mouth. She wore amber silk, finely embroidered with green and gold leaves, and fastened with rather beautiful gold inlaid brooches. Necklaces of gold and pearls hung between her breasts. And though the veil of the matron was apparent, it hung loosely on her head to reveal the luxuriant chestnut locks beneath.

And at her side, surely, the husband: tall, dark, short-haired, good-looking. He had the grace to blush for his wife, whose smirk had become slightly fixed under my continuous stare.

Lucy whispered breathlessly, “The lady Edith. Ignore her. Her husband, Godric of Lincoln, is an important man, so the lady tolerates her. No more.”

Here she pulled me physically forward to greet with enthusiastic affection two people whom I took to be her parents — a still pretty but tired looking lady with a permanent frown, called Aediva; and Leofric, a tall, fierce man in the Saxon-Danish style, whom I thought not incapable of causing and maintaining that frown of his wife’s.

From old habit, I accepted Lucy’s introduction courteously enough. Then Aediva’s polite, “Let me present my son...” made me glance hastily at the figure beside her.

Not the golden youth from the roof, but a much younger lad, barely my own age, with hair as fair as Lucy’s — and his tongue protruding charmingly in the direction of his sister. Under my gaze, it vanished sharply, and the lips around it grinned.

“Alfred,” said Lucy with resignation, as if she had long ago accepted that she was not to be fortunate in brothers.

“Is Hereward here?” Alfred demanded by way of greeting. “Is it true he started a battle from the hall roof and split open Roger FitzGeoffrey’s head?”

Lucy cast a quick, nervous glance at her father, who muttered something under his breath and glared ferociously back at the heads that had turned sharply at the sound of his delinquent son’s name. Or perhaps at the injured man’s.

Alfred said impatiently, “Well? Did he roll Roger off the roof?”

Lucy hissed, “Alfred, be silent!”

I said helpfully, “I understand he flew off. Or perhaps he was the slitherer?” And Alfred let out a crack of delighted laughter. Aediva closed her eyes. Leofric muttered something enraged that sounded like, “White Christ!”

I was seated beside my betrothed at the high table. More surprisingly, on our hosts’ other side sat Lucy’s parents, clearly special and honoured friends. I was still digesting this when Robert sat down clumsily at my side.

“Did you win all the contests?” I enquired amiably. “Or just the archery?” In the pregnant silence, I at last spared him a glance. His weak eyes had narrowed, and there was a spark of irritation there that convinced me that this time his reply would be blistering. My breath caught.

And then, infuriatingly, the outer door burst open and someone erupted into the hall, and at once, by his very presence, caused a violent stir: the golden youth, Lucy’s brother, Hereward.

I had the feeling that this wretched boy would always draw attention to himself, even without such nefarious exploits as this afternoon’s. It was something in the powerful urgency of his step — like some unpredictable beast whose ferocity is only temporarily contained — combined with the careless pride of his tilted head. And the weird, irregular beauty, for that was there too. I had noticed no such thing this afternoon, but it was certainly glaring at me now, beneath the bruises and the half-scrubbed grime.

He had not even bothered to change his dress for the occasion. Only his slightly discoloured face and grazed, powerfully muscled bare arms appeared to have been anywhere near water, and he still wore the battered leather tunic, spattered with mud and blood and God knew what else.

Everyone looked, and everyone saw. And heard, for after a sudden upsurge in noise as he strode in, the chatter all dropped away to an expectant silence, into which we could hear his shoes thud across the floor, scattering rushes, and his sword and barbaric knives clank at his hip as he brushed past the tables. He could only have been sixteen years old.

Suddenly, Robert’s chair scraped back. I thought he rose involuntarily, appalled by the late and unwanted guest. But Hereward saw him immediately, and swung round in our direction.

It was only as I watched it vanish from his face that I realized he had been angry. Then he grinned, the same radiant, impudent grin I remembered from the roof.

In his own language, he called out, “Where is she then, Rob? Is she hideous? Does she squint like a bag of nails? Does she screech like a shrew with toothache?”

This time, the silence was definitely appalled — not least, I suspected, because there was more than a grain of truth in Hereward’s unflattering description. Only I was unperturbed, for the spite was not inspired by me but by whatever hidden anger was churning him up; I understood that perfectly.

Somewhere, somebody giggled. The lady Edith again? Robert’s hand lifted and floundered helplessly. The youth Hereward, coming to a halt before us, continued to gaze up at him innocently, the laughter slowly dying in his stormy eyes — strange, mismatched eyes, I could see now that he was close enough. One was a sharp, wintry blue, the other a definite, boiling grey; like two shades of the same violent sea.

An embarrassing scene beckoned. Deliberately, I stood up.

I said, “I believe I don’t squint. I do, however, have a facility for languages.”

The strange, intense eyes shifted quickly to me, and rested without blinking — or apology.

He said mildly, “Do you, by God?”

He had, I saw, very long, almost womanly lashes, darker than his hair and slightly incongruous in that hard, curiously asymmetrical young face. I had no way of telling if he recognized me from the afternoon.

Robert made an odd, strangled sound in his throat. On his other side, I could hear the lady Matilda furiously whispering.