Bernard Cornwell: Vagabond

‘When the fog lifts, father, I’ll tell you.’

‘They’ll respect the truce?’

‘They’re holy men in Durham, father,’ Sir William answered wryly, ‘but better still, they’re frightened men.’ It had been the monks of the city who had negotiated the ransom and Sir William had advised against acceptance. If monks offered a thousand pounds, he reckoned, then it would have been better to have killed the monks and taken two thousand, but King David had overruled him. David the Bruce had spent much of his youth in France and so considered himself cultured, but Sir William was not thus hampered by scruples. ‘You’ll be safe if you can talk your way into the city,’ Sir William reassured the priest.

The horsemen had reached the hilltop and Sir William turned south along the ridge, still following a track that was edged with stone walls and which led, after a mile or so, to a deserted hamlet where four cottages, so low that their shaggy thatched roofs seemed to swell out of the straggling turf, clustered by a crossroads. In the centre of the crossroads, where the muddy ruts surrounded a patch of nettles and grass, a stone cross leaned southwards. Sir William curbed his horse beside the monument and stared at the carved dragon encircling the shaft. The cross was missing one arm. A dozen of his men dismounted and ducked into the low cottages, but they found no one and nothing, though in one cottage the embers of a fire still glowed and so they used the smouldering wood to fire the four thatched roofs. The thatch was reluctant to catch the fire for it was so damp that mushrooms grew on the mossy straw.

Sir William took his foot from the stirrup and tried to kick the broken cross over, but it would not shift. He grunted with the effort, saw Bernard de Taillebourg’s disapproving expression and scowled. ‘It’s not holy ground, father. It’s only bloody England.’ He peered at the carved dragon, its mouth agape as it stretched up the stone shaft. ‘Ugly bastard thing, isn’t it?’

‘Dragons are creatures of sin, things of the devil,’ Bernard de Taillebourg said, ‘so of course it is ugly.’

‘A thing of the devil, eh?’ Sir William kicked the cross again. ‘My mother,’ he explained as he gave the cross a third futile kick, ‘always told me that the bloody English buried their stolen gold beneath dragons’ crosses.’

Two minutes later the cross had been heaved aside and a half-dozen men were peering disappointedly into the hole it had left. Smoke from the burning roofs thickened the fog, swirled over the road and vanished into the greyness of the morning air. ‘No gold,’ Sir William grunted, then he summoned his men and led them southwards out of the choking smoke. He was looking for any livestock that could be driven back to the Scottish army, but the fields were empty. The fire of the burning cottages was a hazed gold and red in the fog behind the raiders, a glow that slowly faded until only the smell of the fire was left and then, suddenly, hugely, filling the whole world with the alarm of its noise, a peal of bells clanged about the sky. Sir William, presuming the sound came from the east, turned through a gap in the wall into a pasture where he checked his horse and stood in the stirrups. He was listening to the sound, but in the fog it was impossible to tell where the bells were or how far away they were being tolled and then the sound stopped as suddenly as it had began. The fog was thinning now, shredding away through the orange leaves of a stand of elms. White mushrooms dotted the empty pasture where Bernard de Taillebourg dropped to his knees and began to pray aloud. ‘Quiet, father!’ Sir William snapped.

The priest made the sign of the cross as though imploring heaven to forgive Sir William’s impiety in interrupting a prayer. ‘You said there was no enemy,’ he complained.

‘I’m not listening for any bloody enemy,’ Sir William said, ‘but for animals. I’m listening for cattle bells or sheep bells.’ Yet Sir William seemed strangely nervous for a man who sought only livestock. He kept twisting in his saddle, peering into the fog and scowling at the small noises of curb chains or hooves stamping on damp earth. He snarled at the men-at-arms closest to him to be silent. He had been a soldier before some of these men had even been born and he had not stayed alive by ignoring his instincts and now, in this damp fog, he smelt danger. Sense told him there was nothing to fear, that the English army was far away across the sea, but he smelt death all the same and, quite unaware of what he was doing, he pulled the shield off his shoulder and pushed his left arm through its carrying loops. It was a big shield, one made before men began adding plates of armour to their mail, a shield wide enough to screen a man’s whole body.

A soldier called out from the pasture’s edge and Sir William grasped his sword’s hilt, then he saw that the man had only exclaimed at the sudden appearance of towers in the fog which was now little more than a mist on the ridge’s top, though in the deep valleys either side the fog flowed like a white river. And across the eastern river, way off to the north where they emerged from the spectral whiteness of another hill crest, was a great cathedral and a castle. They towered through the mist, vast and dark, like buildings from some doom-laden wizard’s imagination, and Bernard de Taillebourg’s servant, who felt he had not seen civilization in weeks, stared entranced at the two buildings. Black-robed monks crowded the tallest of the cathedral’s two towers and the servant saw them pointing at the Scottish horsemen.

‘Durham,’ Sir William grunted. The bells, he reckoned, must have been summoning the faithful to their morning prayers.

‘I have to go there!’ The Dominican climbed from his knees and, seizing his staff, set off towards the mist-shrouded city.

Sir William spurred his horse in front of the Frenchman. ‘What’s your hurry, father?’ he demanded, and de Taillebourg tried to dodge past the Scotsman, but there was a scraping sound and suddenly a blade, cold and heavy and grey, was in the Dominican’s face. ‘I asked you, father, what the hurry was?’ Sir William’s voice was as cold as his sword; then, alerted by one of his men, he glanced over and saw that the priest’s servant had half drawn his own weapon. ‘If your bastard man doesn’t sheathe his blade, father’ – Sir William spoke softly, but there was a terrible menace in his voice – ‘I’ll have his collops for my supper.’

De Taillebourg said something in French and the servant reluctantly pushed the blade fully home. The priest looked up at Sir William. ‘Have you no fear for your mortal soul?’ he asked.

Sir William smiled, paused and looked about the hilltop, but he saw nothing untoward in the shredding fog and decided his earlier nervousness had been the result of imagination. The result, perhaps, of too much beef, pork and wine the previous night. The Scots had feasted in the captured home of Durham’s prior and the prior lived well, judging by his larder and cellar, but rich suppers gave men premonitions. ‘I keep my own priest to worry about my soul,’ Sir William said, then raised the tip of his sword to force de Taillebourg’s face upwards. ‘Why does a Frenchman have business with our enemies in Durham?’ he demanded.

‘It is Church business,’ de Taillebourg said firmly.

‘I don’t give a damn whose business it is,’ Sir William said, ‘I still wish to know.’

‘Obstruct me,’ de Taillebourg said, pushing the sword blade away, ‘and I shall have the King punish you and the Church condemn you and the Holy Father send your soul to eternal perdition. I shall summon—’

‘Shut your goddamned bloody face!’ Sir William said. ‘Do you think, priest, that you can frighten me? Our King is a puppy and the Church does what its paymasters tell it to do.’ He moved the blade back, this time resting it against the Dominican’s neck. ‘Now tell me your business. Tell me why a Frenchman stays with us instead of going home with his countrymen. Tell me what you want in Durham.’