James Aitcheson
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An extract from Tancred
The first drops of rain began to fall, as hard as hammers and as cold as steel against my cheek. My mail hung heavy over my shoulders, and my back and arse were aching; we had risen at first light and spent much of the day in the saddle, and now once more night lay like a blanket across the wooded hills.
Our mounts’ hooves made hardly a sound against the damp earth as we pressed on up the slope. The path we followed was narrow, little more than a deer track, and we rode in single file with the trees close on either side. Leafless branches brushed against my arm; some I had to fend away from my face. The slender crescent of the moon struggled to make itself shown, casting its cold light upon us; the clouds were rolling in and the rain began to come down heavier. I pulled the hood of my cloak up over my head.
There were five of us that night: all of us men who had served our lord for several years; oath-sworn and loyal knights of his own household. These were men I knew well, alongside whom I had fought more times than I cared to remember. These were men who had been there in the great battle at Hæstinges, and who had survived.
And I was the one who led them. I, Tancred a Dinant.
It was the twenty-eighth day of the month of January, in the one thousand and sixty-ninth year since our Lord’s Incarnation. And this was the third winter to have passed since the invasion, since we had boarded ships and made the crossing on the autumn tide. The third winter since Duke Guillaume had led our army to victory over the oath-breaker and usurper, Harold son of Godwine, and was crowned as rightful king of the English. And now we were at Dunholm, and further north than any of us had been before: in Northumbria, of all the provinces of the kingdom of England the only one that still refused to submit.
I glanced back over my shoulder to make sure that none were lagging behind, casting my gaze over each one of them in turn. In my tracks rode Fulcher fitz Jean, heavyset and broad of shoulder. Following him was Ivo de Sartilly, a man who was as quick with his tongue as he was with his sword, then Gérard de Tillières, reticent but always reliable. And bringing up the very end of the line, almost lost in the shadow of the night, was the tall yet slight form of Eudo de Ryes, who I had known longer and trusted more than any other in Lord Robert’s household.
Beneath their cloaks their shoulders hung low. They all held lances, but rather than pointing to the sky as they should have been, ready to couch under the arm for the charge, they were turned down towards the ground. None of them, I knew, wanted to be out on such a night. Each would rather have been indoors by the blazing hearth-fire with his pitcher of ale or wine, or down in the town with the rest of the army, joining in the plunder. As so too would I.
“Tancred,” Eudo called.
I turned my mount slowly around to face him, bringing the rest of the knights to a halt. “What is it?” I asked.
“We’ve been searching since nightfall and seen no one. How long are we to stay out?”
“Until our balls freeze,” Fulcher muttered behind me.
I ignored him. “Until daybreak if we have to,” I replied.
“You know as well as I that they will not come,” Eudo said. “The Northumbrians are cowards. They have not fought us yet and they will not fight us now.”