An Endless Exile

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 5It was a bright, pleasant spring morning to be riding. Maddeningly enough. I would have preferred rain and fog, so that I could, with some justification, wallow in my hatred of the place. With my melancholy betrothed as escort, I was being taken on an expedition to Crowland Abbey, a remote monastery in the midst of the fens, founded, so the lady Emma had informed me, by St. Guthlac.

“Who was he? Some masochistic hermit?” I had demanded rudely.

“Actually,” said Emma coldly, “he was a prince of the Mercian royal house.”

I did not like their fen. It resembled too closely the marshes of home, only it was poorly drained, largely unreclaimed, and stretched as far as the eye could see. It’s sheer size alone made me feel small, which hardly improved my temper.

When our horses had left the old Roman road and began to pick their way through damp marsh paths, skirting hamlets of tiny, sunken huts, I determinedly paid no attention to the big over-hanging willows or to the really quite attractively glinting pools which could be made out in the distance. From the corner of my eye, I did catch some odd, isolated sights, including a man striding over the marshy land on stilts, and another who vaulted over obstacles in his path by means of a long, wooden pole, but those I refused to acknowledge. Instead, I noted with interest that Robert was riding very close to Lucy.

And then, quite abruptly, a group of men seemed to rise threateningly out of the reeds ahead of us.

I heard Lucy gasp.

Then I realized that two of the men, who must have been bending down for some time to have remained hidden from us until now, had reached back to pull a third up to join them, as if from some way down. And almost immediately, this third was enthusiastically clapped on the back by the rest of the group, notwithstanding his almost total covering in mud.

It became clear to me then that none of them even saw us, let alone threatened us.

The third man shook his head like a dog, causing mud to fly in all directions, and through it, I saw the shining gold of his hair — some small patch freakishly saved from the filth — caught in the shaft of sunlight which wriggled through the trees on our left.

I laughed.

Matilda turned sharply in the direction of my gaze. So did the others. Emma muttered something under her breath. At the same time, the fenmen became aware of us. One of them laconically pushed Hereward’s shoulder, and the youth, breaking off from some explanation that involved much gesticulating, looked round and saw us.

Interestingly, I thought he swore. Certainly there was no response to Lucy’s joyful cry of his name. Relief seemed to be flooding out of her very pores now, as if she had been imagining him shivering himself into an ague in the night.

I couldn’t imagine any such thing. The last I had seen of him, he had looked massively healthy and almost outrageously comfortable, lounging back on his bench, feet up on the table and tipping wine haphazardly into a drinking horn with his toes, while he called out irreverent and frequently ribald remarks to the Saxon poet who had entertained us during supper with stirring and melancholy verse. His antics had appeared to inspire annoyance in some quarters, amusement in others. Even the poet himself hadn’t seemed clear as to whether or not to be offended.

Now, Lucy began the surge towards him, Robert at her side; but rather than meet it, he actually turned his back, quite deliberately.

“What are you doing out here so filthily?” Robert demanded amiably, apparently undeterred by the other’s blatant rudeness. I suppose it explained his imperviousness to mine.

“Sewering,” said Hereward shortly over his shoulder. With extreme reluctance he half-turned back towards us, though his eyes were wintry, unwelcoming. Some northern, icy sea.

Closer now, I could make out that the fenmen stood beside a channel dug through the watery land around them, and stretching in both directions as far as I could see.

“It doesn’t work,” I observed flatly, and the hard, disconcertingly different eyes flickered over me without interest.

“It will now,” he said briefly. “We unblocked it.”

“With your head?” Robert asked humorously, and the youth smiled in a cold, perfunctory sort of a way that didn’t get near his eyes. He was irritated by our presence here. Whether because of his company, or his dirt, or his behaviour yesterday, or some other cause, I didn’t know. Or care.

“The lady Matilda of Ghent,” he observed offhandedly to his companions. “Better make your bows to her before she goes.”

And he jumped deliberately back into the ditch, reaching into the murky water to fish out some long, spiky tool on a wooden pole. This time he leapt up again unaided, with the same peculiarly wild grace he seemed to bring to everything physical. Over-developed muscles in his arms rippled through their coating of mud. His legs, bare and brown and wet, were like tree trunks.

“And to the child-bride,” he added, causing my eyes to fly resentfully to his. They were smiling now, maliciously. Following Matilda’s example, I sniffed, though much more productively than she. In fact, I didn’t mind in the least being the scapegoat for his ill-nature. It made my own simpler.

“What about Emma and me?” Lucy was demanding indignantly. Her brother lifted one arched eyebrow at her.

“Why should they bow to you? You don’t frighten me in the least.”

“I wish someone did,” Matilda retorted. It seemed she was ready for the fight now. “Before you turn the whole of Mercia against your parents!”

“Oh oh,” Hereward mocked insolently. “You are going to beat me — verbally but mercilessly — over yesterday afternoon.”

“Don’t you think someone should? You know perfectly well your behaviour was abominable! What have you got to say for yourself?”

Hereward appeared to think. “It wasn’t my fault?” he suggested, with no pretence whatever of truth. “Or — it was in self-defence?”

“Rubbish!” Matilda said angrily.

“Actually,” I said delicately, for I had spied a new means of annoying her, “it probably was. Self defence.”

Inevitably, all eyes swung on me, with varying degrees of surprise. Gratified, I deigned to explain. “Just before the — er — war, I saw some five or six men fall on him from behind.”

Though I wasn’t looking at him, oddly enough it was of Hereward’s unblinking regard that I was most aware. Robert was frowning. Emma’s mouth had fallen open. Matilda turned sharply towards me.

“I expect,” I said kindly, turning my gaze at last upon the delinquent himself, “I expect they eventually cornered you against the back wall of the hall, forcing you on to the roof for your own safety.”

There was a pause, during which I tried and failed to read the expression in his strange, intensely mismatched eyes. Then he said obligingly, “I expect they did.”

I heard Matilda breathe in deeply. “Is this true?” she demanded.

“I couldn’t dispute the word of the child-bride,” Hereward said apologetically. Having caught my eyes, he seemed reluctant to release them, and I wasn’t going to back down.

Matilda repeated, “Is it true?”

And at that, he let me go to turn to her; but even then, instead of answering her question, he posed another, quite abruptly. “Will you tell Gilbert?”

She stared back at him. “Why didn’t you?”

The ridiculously long lashes swept down over his smooth cheek, then flickered up once more. “A previous quarrel got in the way.”

Matilda’s brief softening was over. “And that’s another thing,” she fumed. “What are you going to do about your father?”

Hereward smiled dazzlingly through his mud. “Send in the child-bride to make my excuses?”

“If,” I said pleasantly, into the sniggers of the fenmen and the servants and the men-at-arms, and the slightly shocked giggles of my companions, “If you call me that once more, I shall cut out your tongue. Through your ears.”

“Torfrida!” cried Matilda, properly shocked this time, but she was drowned out by Hereward’s shout of laughter.

* * * *

Hereward refused to come to Crowland with us — on the presumably reasonable grounds that the Abbot was liable to clap him in chains — though he did come with us part of the way, striding along in the midst of the horses, exerting himself to entertain. In fact, he turned out to be rather funny.

He made no effort to speak to me, though, and I made no effort at all, except to be nasty whenever opportunity offered. Only once, as he swung along beside Robert, did I hear my betrothed exclaim, “Spirit? You try sitting beside her for two hours! The girl is relentless!”

I managed to look away before Hereward’s gaze found me, but I don’t think I had wiped the smile off my face.

Emerging from a thick clump of trees onto much more marshy paths, we finally saw the abbey. It stood on an island — little more than a green hillock, I thought disparagingly — rising out of a murky lake. Some people might have found it picturesque, for there was a sort of still, lonely distinction to the scene; I wasn’t in the mood to appreciate holiness.

“Bourne is that way,” Lucy informed me, pointing vaguely away from the river. “Just on the edge of the fen.” She looked at me expectantly. “So, what do you think?”

I curled my lip.

“I think there will be flies,” I said shortly.

“Optimism,” said Hereward, appearing suddenly between our horses, “is such a blessing in the young.”

Without invitation or instruction, his hands were on my waist, lifting me out of the saddle. He was little more than a boy, yet the strength rippling through those brawny arms made me feel like a piece of straw plucked helplessly out of the air by a mischievous wind. It did not improve my temper.

As my feet landed, I glared at him with quite genuine irritation, and he paused, holding me still while he regarded me, his fair head slightly on one side. I suspected that, young as he was, other people found it hard to withstand that peculiarly forceful gaze. I was glad to be made of sterner stuff.

Unexpectedly, he lifted his hand from my waist and touched my one eyebrow with a large, unclean thumb, unhurriedly tracing its long, thick line from one side to the other, and then returning to its middle across the bridge of my nose, where the thumb stopped, and lightly pressed.

“What is it,” he wondered, “that pulls down this frown of yours so constantly? The weight of the splendid eyebrow?”

My mother had tried to pluck it before I left. I had only got away by swearing I would do it myself on the journey. I think that was what brought the blood seeping up to my cheeks. That, or the fact I did not care to be laughed at.

Hereward’s finger fell away, but his other hand did not release me.

He said lazily, “There is no need to be so frightened, you know. You might even find that your parents have not made such a bad bargain for you.”

Stricken. So much armour, so much effort, and all it took was the careless, mismatched eyes of a delinquent boy.

I closed my mouth, still bereft of words, still bombarded by a mass of confused emotions, the chief of which seemed to be that he had no right to say I was frightened, no right at all.

Still he was not finished with me. Leaning forward so that his breath actually tickled my cheek, he whispered, “Besides, they won’t send you home, however ill you behave. They are too honourable. I should know.”

“Torfrida?” It was Lucy, pushing my pony out of the way to get to us. “Hereward, leave her alone; she’s not used to you.”

“Oh, I think she is,” Hereward said, stepping back. A smile danced across his face. He closed one eye — the blue one — so quickly that if I had blinked myself, I would have missed it, and then he had turned away, saying regretfully, “On the other hand, I think it’s time I stopped teasing all of you. I’m off, back to my lair. See you next week, Rob? In Lincoln...”

“Lair?” said Lucy revolted, while I let out my breath and wondered in panic what had just happened to me. “Wait, Hereward!” she shouted after his grimy, retreating back. “Hereward? You’re not — you’re not going to rob someone?”

He didn’t even turn, though his laughter came back to us clearly enough. So did his carelessly called reply: “Not unless I come upon a fat abbot, or a sleek Norman. Or, even better, a fat, sleek Norman abbot!” And then he was striding back the way we had come, leaving me to wonder distractedly what peculiar grudge he could possibly hold against fat abbots.

But I was glad at his going. I felt quite strongly that I never wanted to set eyes — or ears — on him again.

* * * *

Bourne, the hall from which Lucy’s family held together innumerable scattered properties, was a pleasant place, comparable in size if not in comfort with Folkingham. But here were no Flemish tapestries. All the decoration was quite fiercely English — crude hangings, animal-like carvings and rough wall-paintings of brilliant reds and blues and yellows. But at least the feast to which we were bidden was unstinting in both quantity and quality. And to my relief, there was no sign of the errant elder son, invited or otherwise, so I felt able to relax, just a little.

In the interests of a peaceful meal, no doubt, the lady Aediva had separated me from my betrothed, placing me between the youthful Alfred and a plump clergyman of uncertain years who was introduced with casual disrespect simply as Brand. I wondered if I were being punished. The clergyman, however, persisted through all my monosyllables and silences and curt replies of undisguised boredom, until, pushing my bread away, I turned my head to look at him.

He smiled peacefully, and a small piece of fish tumbled off his lip to join a considerable proportion of the previous courses on his chest. He had a round, smooth moon-face beneath a shiny tonsure, and large, amiable eyes, blinking sleepily at me. I may be slow, but I am not stupid.

“You are not, I think, the family chaplain,” I observed. His disordered eyebrows heaved themselves up in surprise, then collapsed again with the effort.

“Oh no.”

I waited, but the old buffoon was determined to make me ask. Nothing loathe, I said bluntly, “Who are you then?”

Brand wiped his fingers on his habit. Some breadcrumbs leapt up in alarm and resettled themselves more comfortably about his person, or on the table or the floor nearby.

“Brand,” he said, holding out his hand to me. We had done this already. I wasn’t sure whether or not he was joking, but I chose to take the hand — gingerly, for I had no idea what lurked there.

“Torfrida,” I said gravely. For a moment I thought I would have to ask again, but he had obviously tired of the game.

Dropping my fingers, he said, “I have the honour to be Aediva’s brother. Aediva,” he added kindly, “is your hostess.”

“Thank you,” I said politely. “It is more comfortable to know.”

“Exactly. I have also,” he continued ponderously, “the almost as grave responsibility of being Provost of Peterborough Abbey. Which is why I am here today, visiting our cell by the village.”

I blinked. I said curiously, “Do you get on with your elder nephew?”

Again the eyebrows lumbered up and fell with a silent crash.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said the Provost of Peterborough mildly. “No one gets on with Hereward. Why do you ask?”

“Fat abbots,” said Alfred, unexpectedly and succinctly on my other side.

“I am getting on in years,” Brand said peaceably. “I am allowed to be fat. I may even be allowed to be an abbot one day. But still, in my current, lowly position, I am allowed — nay, positively encouraged — to beat boys for impudence.”

Alfred cast me a careless, Lucy-like grin, though I noticed he ducked rather swiftly back to Emma.

“Ah,” said Brand with satisfaction. “Roast duck. Excellent. Now then, young lady — tell me the gossip from Flanders. What is the opinion there about the English succession?”

“Indifference, I should think,” I said dryly, and watched his eyebrows struggle briefly. Apparently deciding it was not worth the effort this time, he only twitched them.

“Really?” he marvelled. “Yet surely there would be untold advantages for your people if William of Normandy became king here?”

“Maybe,” I allowed. “But I doubt it keeps them awake at night worrying. King Edward is hardly on his last legs, is he? The next ruler...”

“Next?” Alfred interrupted again. “King Edward doesn’t rule now! He prays and builds abbeys. Harold of Wessex rules.”

“Hold your tongue, ignorant boy. The King,” Brand added to me, “is advised by his chief nobles...”

“Harold of Wessex!” Alfred repeated triumphantly.

“And our own Earl,” Brand said mildly. “Only a silly boy would write off Leofric of Mercia.”

“Leofric is old,” Alfred said stubbornly.

“He has Aelfgar to succeed him.”

“Aye, with boat loads of Irish or Welsh at his back! Or even, God forgive him, Norwegians!”

Half-heartedly, Brand swiped some unsuspecting crumbs off his chest and reached for his duck. “You have been listening to Hereward,” he observed.

“No I haven’t!” Alfred protested, and when his uncle looked at him speakingly over a duck leg, he added defensively, “It is my father’s opinion that Mercia is no longer capable of balancing the ambitions of Wessex. It is my opinion too!”

“Oh well, if it’s yours,” Brand said sarcastically. “But we were not discussing over-powerful subjects. We were discussing kings.”

I said quickly, “What is there to discuss? If King Edward has no children...”

“He won’t,” said Alfred irrepressibly. “It would involve lying with his wife.”

“Well,” Brand confessed, distracted, “I’d as soon lie with a snake myself as with one of Godwin’s brood.”

I looked at him. “But then you,” I reminded him, “are a monk.”

A smile flickered through his round face. “So I am.”

“And Edward might as well be,” said Alfred. “So — no children.”

I said, “Then there is only William to succeed, his nearest full-grown relation of any standing. And he is promised it, is he not?”

“So, they say, was Eustace of Boulogne,” Brand said apologetically. “And I don’t see the King of Norway sitting still when the throne of Canute’s kingdom is vacant again. And then there is the Aethling...”

“Who won’t leave his comfortable home in Hungary,” I said wryly. “Forget your Aethling. Actually, you would be wise to. William the Bastard is an ill man to cross. But what is the point of guessing? Who knows what will happen in ten or twenty years or whenever King Edward dies?”

“God and the astrologers,” said Brand flippantly. He slapped his lips over a minutely clean bone and dropped it on the table. “I can’t speak for the All Mighty, of course, but the astrologers seem to be in favour of William the Bastard.”

I looked at him sideways. “How many astrologers do you know?”

“Oh, two or three,” he said vaguely.

I laid down my duck wing carefully, gazing at it as if I expected it to fly off at any moment. I said, “Can they really predict the future that way?”

“Some of it. If they ask the right questions.”

I looked up at him thoughtfully through my lashes. It was an idea I had had before. Something told me it could not be mere chance that brought it to my attention again here. At any rate, I saw no harm in testing it.

I said shrewdly, “Do you ask the right questions?”

He smiled faintly. “My studies involve the prediction of nothing more or less momentous than Easter or the matins bell.”

He was not, of course, being strictly honest. Even then I knew that no one of intelligence could cut such studies off there. Smiling back, I pursued him.