Man With a Sword Read online

  He stumbled forward and reached into his purse.

  ‘Here are sixty shillings, friend,’ he said. ‘It is all I have. Now will you let your Duke lie in peace, his sins forgiven?’

  Ascelin took the money and said, ‘This is the first payment I have ever received from the Duke.’

  Hereward answered slowly, ‘And it is the last. Go your ways now, for the next time my hand reaches towards you there will be a sword, and not money, in it.’

  So William the King was buried at last, with broken rites, between the choir and the altar of St Stephen’s, as he had wished.

  And after the last monk had gone away Hereward walked out, almost blind with grief, into a little walled garden which the Abbot used for contemplation. It was dusk now and the scent of rose-bushes filled the enclosed space.

  Hereward walked round the grassy paths for a while, his hood pulled over his head as a sign of mourning. Then all at once a bird rose, twittering with fear, from the ivy that grew along the high wall. Hereward turned at the sound and then saw three men, black-cloaked and armed, standing in the shadows watching him.

  He stood still and made no attempt to draw his sword. In his mind he thought that this would be as good as any other place to die, now that the King had gone into the ground. So he did not move, but only waited for death to come to him, too.

  As the bell of St Stephen’s began to ring for Vespers the three men stepped forward and flung back their dark hoods.

  The first of them suddenly fell to his knees on the damp grass and uncovered his face. Hereward saw that it was his son, Cnut, whom he had not seen for so long, and he was powerless to say a word, his heart was thumping so.

  Cnut took his hand and held it for a while. ‘Father and lord,’ he said, ‘all life has changed in the last hour. I have learned sense. I have come to beg your forgiveness and your blessing.’

  Hereward gazed down at him dumbly, but said at last, ‘My son, who am I to bless or forgive? I am not God. I am your father, who still loves you as he always did. Rise, Cnut, and let us thank God for bringing us together again. Who are your friends?’

  A shaft of moonlight came down across the high wall of the garden, and Cnut did not need to answer the question. Behind him stood Duke Robert Curthose of Normandy, his face strained and white with grief, and Edgar the Atheling, a grown man now and having the stern yet gentle face of a priest or scholar. All wore mail and the weapons proper to great barons.

  Duke Robert bowed his head before Hereward and said, ‘Baron, you stood by my father when all the world deserted him. Now I see that I owe you something for that. You are no longer young, and the journey to England is a trying one. I offer you lands and offices here in Normandy greater than anything you held under my father. Will you take them from me, Baron?’

  Hereward looked at him wearily and said, ‘Duke Robert, it has taken me a lifetime to learn that I belong to England, and to no other place in the world. It is my wish to go back to my manor in Lincolnshire and to tend my land, against the time when my son will become the baron there. I thank you, Duke Robert.’

  Cnut was about to say something then, but Robert cut him short and said hastily, ‘Baron, land is but land, wherever it is. Life is more than land. Life is meat and drink and travel and exploits of arms. I have a great debt to pay you, my friend; for you held to my father when I, in my blindness, seemed to neglect him. You did for him what I should have done. It was you who showed my father the love I wished to show him at the bottom of my heart. So, for that reason, accept my offer, Baron. Keep your lands in Lincolnshire and set a steward there to hold them for you. But also take from me a barony in this land, so that we shall be close to each other. Would that not be well?’

  Hereward shook his head and said, ‘I am too old now for the travel and the exploits of arms you speak of. I am too weary to hold two fiefs, separated by the sea. As for what I did for my lord, your father, that was between him and me. Your quarrel with him is your own affair. You must make your own peace with his spirit on your knees in your own chamber, Duke Robert. I shall return to my own country and bend the knee before your brother, William Redhead, though in doing so I shall mean you no harm. As for my son, he may do as he pleases. He may go with you wherever you go, as long as I know that, one day, he will come back to me and hold the lands your father gave to me. He has my blessing.’

  Suddenly Cnut stepped forward and placed his hand on his father’s shoulder. ‘Baron,’ he said, ‘I love you as dearly as Duke Robert loved his father. My pride has kept me from showing that love, just as his pride did. But I have my fame still to gain. You cannot help me in this. It is something I must do alone, if I am to be called a man. I must go with my lord Robert.’

  Hereward waited a while, then said, ‘Where will you go, my son?’

  Cnut replied, ‘We shall sail for the Holy Land, father. There are estates to be got there, among the hills of Syria. There are castles and vineyards and orchards such as we do not know in England and Normandy.’

  Hereward smiled sadly, thinking of the past, and said, ‘I have seen some of them. Many years ago I sailed with Hardrada to Miklagard to set eyes on a melon - a fruit that attracted me by its magic, just as these vineyards and orchards seem to attract you. In Miklagard I found your mother, and - so I came to have you. If you go back there, you will, in a way that only God can understand, be giving back something of what I took from the East.’

  Cnut said, ‘So you do not forbid me to go, father?’

  Hereward shook his head and said, ‘I am a tired man, my son. The best of my days are gone, and the best of my strength. I have no power to forbid you anything. Go, if you wish, and may God guide you to the end of your journey. Come back to Lincolnshire if it is his wish. That is all I have to say.’

  He sat down on a stone urn that was set near the ivy-clad wall; his heart was beating slowly now, as though all the force had gone from it. It went as an old and broken-winded horse trots, sometimes with a jolt, then dreadfully slow, as though it might stop at any moment and fall in the roadway. Hereward reached up and loosened the collar of his tunic so that he might breathe more easily.

  Then Edgar the Atheling stood close to him and said in his quiet scholar’s voice, ‘Baron, the world you know will change very shortly. I, who have known many changes in my life, can see this. England will soon be torn again with strife, for now there are two princely dogs to fight over the one bone the Conqueror has left. If you return to your manor, things may not always be as peaceful as you wish. That will grieve you, trying to hold together a few acres of land against the ravages of young dogs, hungry for fame. I ask you, Baron, will you sail with us for the Holy Land? Will you forget manors and kings and the sowing of seed and the harvesting of grain? These are empty things. Come with us and make your pilgrimage. Come with us to Jerusalem and stand up before God’s altar with only what you carry on your body, as a true knight should. Come with us.’

  Then Cnut and Duke Robert knelt before Hereward and said, ‘Yes, come with us on this pilgrimage.’

  Hereward was so moved by these words that the blood seemed to leave his heart altogether and a mist swept before his eyes and cut out the sight of the garden and the ivy-clad wall and the tall square tower of the Abbey Church. He felt himself falling backwards, as though the wall had gone from his back, and as though a great hand was lifting him into the air. The moonlight shone strongly through his closed eyelids, and coming quickly nearer and nearer he heard the sound of many voices singing, rising in a high chant to the praise of God. It was as though all Jerusalem had come into the little garden of St Stephen to sing of the Creation. Hereward remembered the choir in the great palace of the Emperor at Miklagard, and for a moment he almost thought Euphemia was there beside him, smiling with him at the music the choir-boys made.

  He reached out with both hands, to touch his son, and Duke Robert, and even the cold, remote, sad Atheling.

  He said at last, ‘I would like to come with you, my sons. Yes, I would
dearly like to come and explain to God how I came to sack the Golden Borough. Then he might understand, hearing me speak the words. When do you set off? Is it tomorrow, lads, with the dawn, the cool and golden dawn?’

  But the three men in the garden did not hear these words, for they were spoken only in Here ward’s head. True, they saw his pale lips move, as though he gasped for air. And they saw his hands come out suddenly, as though he grasped for support.

  Then the Atheling sprang to him and kept his body from falling to the ground.

  At last the Prince said, ‘My grandfather, Edmund Ironside, was such a man as this. Hereward is the stuff of which the Gods make kings, when it pleases them.’

  Cnut was kneeling on the grass now, his face in his hands. At last Duke Robert said gently, ‘I will go inside and tell the Abbot what has happened. If it is his will, then Hereward shall lie beside his lord, my father, between the altar and the choir. There is room for the two of them, and it is meet that warriors should be together in their last sleep.’

  So he turned and went into the shadows, towards where a little light burned in the sacristy. Then the Atheling let Hereward’s cold body sink back against the ivy-clad wall, and went to console Cnut, whose pride was forgotten at last.