Had I been more awake I might have been able to think of some retort, but instead I simply glared at him. I was not young or foolish enough to think that I loved Oswynn, or that she loved me; she was English and knew hardly a word of French or Breton, and I was French and knew almost none of English. But she was my woman all the same and I prayed to God that she was safe. Perhaps Eudo had been speaking in jest, but on a night such as this, when wine and mead flowed freely, I knew how high men’s spirits could run, how hard it was for them to control their lusts. There were few enough women to be had as it was: only those who had come northwards with the army. Soldiers’ wives and camp-followers. Women like Oswynn.
There was a kind of wild beauty in the way she always wore her hair unbound, in the way her eyes appeared dark and yet inviting, that drew the stares of men wherever we went. More than once before, it had been only the threat of my blade meeting their necks that had kept them away. I did not like to leave her on her own, and for that reason I had paid Ernost and Mauger, another two of the men from my conroi, to stay away from the plunder and to keep guard over the house I had taken for us. Both were fearsome fighters, men who had been at my side at H?stinges, and there were few, I was sure, who would try to defy them. But even so, I would be glad when the morning came, when I could get back to her.
I swallowed my last mouthful of bread, laced up my saddlebag and looped the shield-strap back over my head. ‘Mount up,’ I said to the rest of them as I climbed up on to Rollo’s back and freed the haft of my lance from the earth. ‘We move on.’
The track continued to the west. There had been high winds recently and on several occasions we had to negotiate around trees that had fallen across the way. More than once the path itself seemed to disappear and we had to turn back until we found it again. To venture into the heart of the woods in the dark was to risk getting lost, for we did not know this country.
But the enemy would. They would know to stay away from the paths; they would probably travel in small groups rather than together. They could be less than a hundred paces from us and still we might pass them by.
I felt an angry heat rise up inside me. Our presence out in these woods was as much use as a cart without wheels: Robert had sent us out only so the other lords might see that he was being vigilant. And yet if we returned before dawn without having seen anything of the enemy, then we would have defied his orders and failed in our duty to him.
I gritted my teeth and we rode on in silence. I had been with Robert since my fourteenth year, when he was little older than I was now, and in that time I had come to know him as a generous lord, who afforded his men good treatment and rewarded them well, too, often with gifts of silver or arms or even horses. Indeed it was from him that I had received Rollo, the destrier I rode: a strong mount of constant temper who had seen me through several campaigns and many battles. To his longest-serving and most loyal retainers, moreover, Lord Robert gave land, and I, as one of the men who had led his conrois into battle, as someone who had saved his life on more than one occasion, would soon be one of those. I was patient, as one had to be, and grateful for what he had given me, and rarely in those years had I found cause to resent him. But now, as I imagined him with the rest of the lords, sitting by the hearth in the mead-hall up in the fastness, while we were here—
I was broken from my thoughts by the sound of church bells ringing out from the east.
‘What’s that?’ Eudo said.
There was no pattern to it, no rhythm, just a clash of different notes. It came from across the river, from the direction of the town, and I frowned, for my first thought was that some drunken men had taken to violating the church. And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it stopped.
I pulled on the reins and Rollo slowed to a halt. He whickered, his breath misting in the frigid air. The night was quiet and all I could hear was the soft patter of raindrops upon the earth, and the branches whistling and creaking as the wind began to gust. But then the chiming came again: a long, dull tolling that seemed to resound off the distant hills.
Sickness clawed at my stomach. I had heard bells like those before.
‘We have to get back to the town,’ I said. I turned my mount about, and then, because I was not sure whether the rest had heard me, shouted: ‘We have to get back!’
I dug my heels into Rollo’s flanks. He reared up; I leant forwards as he came back to earth and we took off up the hill, back along the way we had come. Hooves pounded; the ground thundered. I spurred him on, faster, not looking behind to see if the others were following. The rain lashed down harder, driving through my mail, plastering my tunic and braies against my skin. Trees flashed past on either side and still I looked to the east, towards the river, trying to see beyond them to the promontory and to Dunholm, but through the mass of trunks and branches I could see nothing.