CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

ICY BLACK WATER SWILLED AROUND ALRIC’S NECK. PANIC surged through him. He thrashed his arms to find the narrow causeway, but it was lost in the impenetrable night and his activity only dragged him down further. Kicking his leather shoes in the muddy depths, he fought to stay afloat. The swamp water sluiced into his mouth, stinking of rotting leaves. He gulped, choked, threw his head back, and cried out, although he knew there was no one within miles to hear. The weight of his habit dragged him down. Alric passed from the black of the moonless night to a deeper black as the water closed over his head. Silent prayers gave way to sheer terror. Pressure filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs burned, and down he went, and down.

I am a fool, he thought, his last thought.

And then, through the mad whirl in his head, he felt his descent arrested. Water tore at his face and hair as he was dragged rapidly up and out into the chill night. Vomiting swamp juice, he sucked in a huge gulp of breath. The dark enveloped him. He couldn’t see what was happening, or where he was, but then he became aware of hands grabbing the shoulders of his tunic. Roughly thrown to one side, he crashed on to a hard surface. The flint shards of the causeway ground into his cheek. He lay there for a moment, recovering, and then rolled onto his back. A dark figure loomed over him.

“You are a fool, monk.” It was Hereward’s voice, as if he had read Alric’s mind. “Why would you try to make your way through the bog with no torch to light your way and no fenlander to guide you?”

“Because you abandoned me,” Alric spluttered, realizing how pathetic his response sounded. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, drinking in the joy of living. He had let his desperation get the better of him, he understood that now. But when Hereward had raced off into the night after leaving his father’s house, the worst had seemed a distinct possibility. Alric had overheard the bitter conversation between the two men and now understood his friend’s inner darkness in a way he could never have grasped before. The pain was still raw. But was it a pain so acute that Hereward would take his own life?

Though Alric had raced in pursuit, Hereward had outpaced him, and soon he had been left alone on the old straight track. He was filthy and exhausted, and there were no friends to offer him a bed. A cold night passed in fitful sleep under a willow, waking repeatedly, afraid of wolves. By dawn, his bones ached and his stomach growled. He had retraced his steps to the boatwright, but the snowy-haired man only treated him with suspicion, and, if he knew where Hereward might have gone, he wasn’t saying. And so the monk had spent the day searching and calling. At some point he had wandered off the track and found himself lost in the unforgiving waterlands, surrounded by endless pools and bogs and copses and scattered islands with no landmarks or clear path to find his way back to the village. And then night had fallen, and he had started to believe that Hereward had killed himself. His despair had turned to panic and he had foolishly started to jog, then to run as fast as his weary legs could carry him. Halfway along the narrow causeway, he had wrong-footed himself and pitched into the water.

“Here is a rule for you,” Hereward said. Alric could see the silhouette of his friend squatting further along the causeway. “No man born outside the fens can find his way across these treacherous bogs and keep his life. This time God watched over you, or I did. Next time you may not be so fortunate. Do not attempt such a risky journey again. Do you understand?”

“Oh, yes. I plan to dance across this stinking hell every night,” the monk snapped. “How long have you been watching me? Could you have spared me this misery? If you tell me you could have, I will not be responsible for my actions.”

Hereward laughed softly. Alric found it a strange sound, devoid of humor. Something had changed in his friend.

“I thought you had returned to Flanders. Or worse, lost your life,” the monk explained.

“There is work to do here first.”

It was an unsettling reply, mainly because Alric didn’t know to which part of his statement Hereward was responding.

The warrior hauled the sodden monk to his feet. “Come. There is a warm campfire waiting. Once you are dry and full, your spirits will rise.”

He led the way back along the causeway, on a winding path beside a bog, and across a second causeway to a thickly wooded island. Pushing through the dense vegetation, Alric realized they were following a path that only Hereward could see. The monk could smell smoke on the breeze, but could see no light ahead.

When he had struggled up the steep incline until the breath burned his chest, his friend suddenly disappeared from view. Baffled, Alric caught an ash branch to pull himself up and found himself standing on the lip of a broad hollow lit by a flickering campfire. The meaty aroma of cooked fowl hung in the air. White willow and ash continued across the dip, but some saplings had been newly cleared, by Hereward, Alric guessed, and the hill continued up to the tree-shrouded summit on the far side.

Skidding down the bank, Alric followed Hereward toward the campfire, only to come up sharp when he saw another man hunched on a fallen branch, gnawing on a bone. Big as an ox, with shaggy brown hair and beard, the man let his flickering gaze drift over the new arrival and then returned to his meal. “We feast on fowl, but now you bring me a drowned rat,” he muttered. By his size and his wry tone, Alric was reminded of a younger Vadir.

“Guthrinc,” Hereward said by way of introduction. “This is the monk I told you about.”

“Monk,” Guthrinc said with a nod.

“Who are you?” Alric asked, his eyes flickering toward the carcass resting on a flat stone in the ashes. Hereward tore off a leg and tossed it to him.

The large man shrugged. “This and that.” He eyed Alric up and down. “God has not looked kindly on you. What have you done to offend him?”

“Leave him be,” Hereward said. “He has had a fright in Dedman’s bog.”

Tossing his bone to one side, Guthrinc wiped his hands on his tunic and said, “I’ll keep watch.” He hauled himself to his feet and disappeared into the dark toward the lip of the hollow.

Shaking from the cold and the shock of his brush with death, Alric almost leaped onto the branch next to the fire. “You trust him?” he said, warming his hands.

“We ran together when we were youths. He likes his ale and his meat and his women, but in any fight he is like a wolf at your side.”

Alric chewed on his bone for a moment, then said, “You plan to fight?”

“The Normans are a blight on all England. They must be driven out, like rats from the grain store.” The warrior’s voice hardened, his face becoming thunderous. “Their blood must turn the rivers red and their bodies pile up like stones on the beach as they flee to their ships.”

The monk considered the newfound vehemence in his friend’s tone, trying to make sense of this sudden rebellion. “And this great victory will be accomplished by two of you?”

Hereward’s eyes narrowed. “Three, I would hope.”

“Three, then. But what can three men do against an army? The Normans have crushed any resistance. Destroyed whole villages.”

“Three is only the start. As word spreads of the resistance we mount here in the fens, Englishmen will rush to take up arms alongside us.” The warrior stared into the middle distance, imagining the picture his words conjured up. “They will come in their tens, their hundreds, their thousands, and we shall rise up, with one voice, one weapon, and smite our enemy. We will crush the ones who make our lives a misery, who steal our freedom, our dreams, our hope. And then, when we are one family once more, peace will reign in England and our future will be assured.”

The passion he heard in the warrior’s voice frightened Alric. Yet in the fire flickering in Hereward’s eyes, the monk saw hints of a deeper truth. Though terrifying in number and strength, the Normans were an enemy the warrior felt he could defeat, whereas a gray-haired, beaten man remained invincible. “Take care,” he whispered, “that you do not win the battle but lose your soul in the process.”

Hereward laughed. “Always you worry. We have all the time we need to raise our forces and to plan. William the Bastard’s men still slumber, unaware that we are here. The battle in the fens will be over before the Normans know what hit them. And then we will take it to all England.”