Valognes castle was impressive, if in a different way from the one they had left that morning at Pirou. Where Pirou had been moated and sitting alone in wide countryside, a solitary stronghold, Valognes was larger, but crowded in by the town that had grown up around it, sprawling out across the flat land. Its ramparts were of timber on an earth bank that raised them above the streets, but the gatehouse was a recent formidable stone construction, and even from outside the walls Halfdan could see a massive, squat grey tower that had to form the main block of the complex. That, to Halfdan, spoke of the lord of this place having more power than Hauteville. Such was always the case in the North. A jarl sought to have a better hall than his peers, to prove his superiority.
He looked away from the looming fortress at the end of the street and back along the thoroughfare to the distant greenery with just a hint of concern. They had passed through thick forests for much of the journey, which had made the young jarl wary, watching for potential enemies among the trees, but which William had greeted with a smile, proclaiming it excellent terrain for the hunt. In the coming days, then, they would be in those woods with many armed men and a limited quantity of trust.
Along the walls and above the gates of the fortress stood men in glittering chain byrnies with shields emblazoned with stripes of blue and red, bright in the autumn sunlight. The gates were closed, but as the visitors emerged from among the streets of the town, the locals cowering back into doorways and side streets out of the way of this noble and his procession, the great gates swung open to admit the Duke of Nordmandi.
The first to pass through the gates were a small group of William’s own knights, including the man whom Bjorn had fought in the hall, who had been making uncomfortable groans and squeaks throughout the ride every time his balls slapped against the saddle leather. The vanguard were clearly wary, as was their master, but the men of Valognes were scattered around the place rather than gathered for trouble, and so the van dismounted with increasing ease, as a small party emerged from that stone keep and strode across the grass.
There were four figures, one a blond man of a height almost to challenge Ketil, pale and with a drooping moustache but with short, severe hair, who had to be the lord of this place, if not from his clothing, which was rich velvet but also of blue and red, then from his manner, which was haughty and entitled. Halfdan took an immediate dislike to the man on sight, an impulse supported by the fact that the Loki serpent marking on his arm began to itch at that moment. As he scratched it, he took in the other three: a bulky warrior in the same dress as the men around them, but with additional frippery that suggested some sort of commander; an old greybeard with a staff; and a weaselly looking little fellow in the robes of the White Christ priests.
Behind him, Halfdan could feel some sort of seething discomfort, and he turned to see Gunnhild looking at the lord, her lip curling. Good; if she agreed, then his instincts had been right. He turned to Ketil, Bjorn and Leif.
‘Be on your guard. This place is dangerous,’ he hissed, not loud enough to carry to their hosts.
‘My lord duke,’ the tall, blond man said, wearing a wide smile as he strode over, reaching out a hand.
William looked at it for just a moment, as though expecting to find a dagger in it, then took it and shook.
‘Master Neel. Thank you for your invitation. It comes at the perfect time, for life has been fraught and troublesome, and a little relaxation and enjoyment is to be welcomed. You have excellent hunting grounds hereabouts.’
Halfdan was not fooled by the duke’s easy manner. That momentary pause had been enough to show that the duke was equally ill at ease in this place. Halfdan nodded to himself. Many a man would not have come, knowing the danger such a move held, but it was the lot of a jarl to avoid peril. No man who hoped to command unchallenged could show fear or weakness. Indeed, walking into the bear’s den and laughing all the way was the only choice for a true jarl. The Duke of Nordmandi might only be fifteen summers, but many a jarl in the North could have taken lessons from him.
‘I apologise,’ Neel de Cotentin said with a flourish, ‘for not having met and greeted you with more ceremony. I was otherwise engaged with a small matter of local troubles.’
‘Oh?’
‘Some of the local barons have been reticent in paying their taxes, not clearly stating their intent to rebel, but suggestive of such. I have sent men out to urge them back into line, and one such baron has been captured and brought to Valognes. I was about to pass judgement on him, but perhaps since you have arrived, you would prefer to administer justice directly?’
William nodded. ‘Of course.’ He gestured to the head of his guards. ‘See to it that the horses are stabled and the men quartered well.’ Then, as Cotentin’s men scurried around to organise everything, the duke gestured to one of his soldiers. ‘Ancel, bring your two best men.’ As he and the three Normans gestured for the lord de Cotentin to lead the way, Halfdan used a series of hand signals to Thurstan, telling him to keep the men together, alert, and out in the open, while he and his close companions moved with the duke.
William turned a frown on them, neither he nor their host having invited the Northmen along, but accepted their presence by simply turning away and not commanding them to stay put. As such, five of the Wolves followed the duke and his men into the keep on the heel of the lord de Cotentin. Like most Norman fortresses Halfdan had seen, like Pirou, Acerenza and Melfi, this keep was one great stone block split into rooms and passages, and the soldiers of Neel were in evidence in alcoves and doorways throughout.
Halfdan mused on the danger of their situation as they walked. He already did not trust this Neel de Cotentin as far as he could spit a rat, and considered the very real possibility of betrayal at any moment. There were enough men in the fortress to overwhelm the force the duke had brought, but the Loki cunning that had kept the jarl alive for so long was at work, and so he reasoned they were safe, at least for now. William was accompanied by five of the Wolves and three of his men. With the duke himself, that made nine, all alert and armed, many with shields. In the castle, any gathering of Neel’s men large enough to overwhelm them would be very visible and would put the duke on the alert in time to react, and any individual archer was unlikely to get past so many prepared shields. No, Neel de Cotentin was not foolish enough to make a move against the duke while William was prepared, at least. Yet there was little doubt in Halfdan’s mind already that this lord was ready to turn on his master. He was just wily enough not to state the fact until he was ready. But when would he move?
The hunt seemed the obvious answer, something he’d already half considered during their approach through the forests. During the hunt they would be in open countryside and dense woodland. There was a good chance that William’s men would be scattered and unable to gather to defend him at short notice, while Neel could already have planned routes and prepared positions to trap him. Yes, the hunt would be the most dangerous time.
Of course, if Halfdan realised this, then probably so did the duke. And knowing these Normans, it was quite possible that Neel knew that William knew, which would put the hunt out of the question and meant there would likely be another, more insidious move coming.
His musings were cut short as they strode into a large hall draped with hangings of red and blue. A huge carved wooden seat on a raised step at one side marked the lord’s throne – worthy of a great jarl, Halfdan noted. He wondered what William thought about it, but as usual the duke’s expression was unreadable. The far side of the room held a number of long tables pushed against the wall, ready to bring out for feasts, while off to the right side a shallow apse held what appeared to be a nailed god chapel, for some sort of altar stood there, bearing a large cross of heavy wood decorated with silver plates. Worth a little pillaging, that. Halfdan noted his friends register the value of the cross at the same time as him, and that made him smile. You could take the warrior out of the North, but you couldn’t take the North out of the warrior.
The open space in the centre of the hall was home to a different tableau. Four of Cotentin’s soldiers stood at the corners, but the centre place was held by a man in rich green and yellow clothes, his face bloodied, two of the prisoner’s green and yellow soldiers standing morose close by, equally battered. All were unarmed. A man of middling height in a near chain byrnie, with salt-and-pepper hair and a neat beard, stood with his sword tip close to the captive noble’s throat. He was some minor lord himself, judging by the fact that he had two of his own guards present in black and white livery.
Halfdan chewed his lip. The duke and his men, Neel and his men, this other noble and his men, the captive lord and his men – this land had so many factions to keep track of, a man could tie his mind in knots trying to stay on the right side of the right people.
‘This is your rebellious lord?’ the duke asked their host, coming to a halt, looking at the prisoner.
Neel de Cotentin nodded as his seneschal, priest and sergeant came to a halt behind them. ‘Yes, and this is Geoffroi, a vassal of mine who brought the man in, at no small cost to his own retinue, I believe.’
Halfdan looked into the eyes of this Geoffroi, the man with the sword held out. In them he saw no immediate deceit, just plain exhaustion. That, at least, was refreshing in this place.
‘You are required,’ William said calmly to the prisoner, ‘to pay taxes to your duke, through his higher nobles. It is one of the conditions of maintaining a fief in this land. I take a tithe of gold, and you supply men when we must make war. It has always been this way, not only under my father, but even back to the days when our ancestors came ravaging along this coast in their longships from the North.’ His eyes slid to Halfdan. ‘In the days of jarls and longships, even then, this was what we did.’
Halfdan did not want to disabuse the duke of this notion, but he could only imagine what the Wolves would say if he tried to tithe their own shares of the loot. He would not stay ‘jarl unchallenged’ for long, he suspected. At the very least, a broken nose and enforced poverty would head his way swiftly – neither Bjorn nor Ketil liked to be short-changed.
Silence fell across the room.
‘What makes you think you are exempt,’ William asked the battered nobleman quietly.
‘I do not recognise a bastard as rightful duke,’ the prisoner said, head high and defiant, even though his eyes darted nervously, betraying his true state.
William nodded slowly. ‘Then you are remorseless?’ No answer was forthcoming, and so the duke continued to nod in the silence. When he stopped, he looked across to the man with the levelled sword. ‘I am inconvenienced in that my taxes have not been paid, but the gold is still there, and that can be rectified. Cotentin here is inconvenienced by having a man in his domain refusing orders, but that fief can always be granted to a man more loyal, so that problem can be resolved. You, though, Geoffroi, lost men in the taking of this rebel?’
The knight bowed his head in acknowledgement.
‘How many?’
The man’s brow creased. ‘Eleven, my lord duke. It was a brutal assault.’
William nodded again. ‘Eleven. And where my gold can be found, and Neel’s man can be replaced, your corpses cannot be brought back. In my opinion, it is you who has truly lost out here, thanks to your valour and your loyalty.’ His gaze swept across to the prisoner. He folded his arms. ‘Hang him for eleven repetitions of the Pater Noster, one for each of his victims. If he lasts his punishment, he can go free with God’s grace. If not, kill his men, too.’
The captive lord stared in horror, and Halfdan pursed his lips. He’d seen men hang for several times, and even the greatest struggle had not lasted that long. A hanging that long was a death sentence anyway, but without the convenience of a snapped neck to speed the process. Still, Halfdan held that the world was always open to possibilities, and just because something had never happened before did not mean it could not happen at all. Had not Odin survived nine nights hanging on the tree, after all? The jarl stepped closer to the duke as the captive lord started to backtrack, offering allegiance and gold for his life, while his men whimpered in panic, looking for a way out.
The three ducal men moved to intercept Halfdan, but William waved them aside. ‘What is it?’
‘This punishment. You are making a mistake.’
At this, the various faces in the room turned to Halfdan in a mix of surprise and shock. It was unexpected enough for a stranger of no apparent rank to even address the duke, let alone argue with him, and with no sign of honouring his position. William, though, just frowned.
‘I had you marked as a hard man of the North, and a bright one, too, Halfdan the Gotlander. I am surprised to hear you suggest a path of mercy.’
The jarl frowned for a moment, wondering what the duke was talking about, then realised that he had been misunderstood, probably something to do with the subtle difference between their natural languages.
‘No. Not mercy. I mean you are making a mistake giving him such a chance.’
The duke chuckled. ‘No man survives a hanging for eleven pater nosters,’ he said, which brought a fresh wave of begging from across the room.
‘Because no man has done so, does not mean that no man cannot,’ Halfdan countered.
William frowned, thinking this over. He turned to Halfdan and gestured to his side. ‘Your sword.’
The jarl looked down at his hip. Despite everything that had happened to him, he had managed to hold on to that excellent eagle-hilted blade he had taken from the Alani warrior in the east – a Roman blade by all accounts. It was a good deal shorter than any other sword on show, but more decorative.
He nodded. ‘Yes?’
‘It is an unusual piece,’ William said. ‘Might I see it?’
To the background babbling and moaning of the desperate men across the hall, Halfdan shrugged and drew the sword, lifting and holding it so that the duke could see it clearly. William held out his hands to receive the sword, but Halfdan held on to it, showing the blade without relinquishing it. William seemed to consider this for a moment, and then gave a strange smile.
‘This, I favour, is an ancient blade, from before the light of Christ graced the world, and suited to your godless leanings. Kill the prisoner for me, my pagan friend.’
Halfdan looked at the blade for a moment, then to William’s eyes, then to the prisoner. The duke said nothing more. A test, Halfdan wondered? The captive lord was still begging for his life, promising anything he had. Christians, Halfdan remembered as he walked across the room, were ordered by their god not to kill. An odd thing, really, since they seemed to kill for the slightest reasons, regardless. Halfdan did not, for Odin imposed no such rule. Sometimes he preferred not to kill, not because he was squeamish or peaceful, but simply because cleaning a used sword was messy and dull, and he would rather not bloody his blade unless there was a reason. Here, though, there was a reason: a way of securing the duke’s trust, and in this land, any ally could be of value.
The captive shrank away as Halfdan stomped over toward him, but Geoffroi’s blade prevented the prisoner from backing out of reach.
‘No,’ William said suddenly. ‘Wait, Gotlander.’
Halfdan stopped a few feet from his victim and looked around. The duke had a very unpleasant smile.
‘Step away. I have had a change of heart.’
Shrugging, Halfdan sheathed his blade once more and moved aside, finding himself in that small chapel apse and wondering when he had become comfortable enough with Christians not to recoil at such a thing. William had folded his arms once more and strolled around the room, arcing a path toward the captive, his pace steady. He finally came to a halt in front of the man.
‘Do you think you could survive eleven pater nosters?’
The man stared. He shook his head.
‘Would you prefer to die now, or to try?’
Panic gripped the man and he began to babble again, this time largely incoherently. William moved then, so fast that Halfdan had not been prepared for it. Indeed, the move seemed to take the whole room by surprise. The duke’s arms unfolded, and the gathering only realised there had been a small, sharp knife concealed in the fold when it whipped through the air, coated with a watery crimson and spraying droplets across the hall.
Halfdan was impressed. The blow had been half a heartbeat in the action, and from folded arms, but the small blade had caught the prisoner’s neck at the side and cut through the blood vessel there. It was not a deep wound, and not enough to spray wildly, like some Halfdan had seen on the battlefield. Instead, it was a wound that issued a steady flow of blood that quickly ran down into the man’s rich clothes, soaking them. The noble shrieked and clapped a hand to his neck, trying to staunch the flow. Definitely impressive. Many a fifteen-year-old would baulk at doing such a thing, even if they were capable.
‘Hang him,’ William said, turning away. ‘Eleven minutes. No more, no less.’
Though the noble was clearly done for – for even had he managed eleven minutes without breathing, he would be bloodless by then – the other two captives lurched into action, knowing that their fate would be quicker, but no better.
One tried to run, but two of Geoffroi’s men got there first, slamming him to the ground and pinning him there. The other, though, had a different plan in mind. He leapt for the duke, whose back was turned as he began to walk away. Perhaps he planned to wrestle the knife away and kill William. Perhaps he meant to take him hostage and use him to escape the castle. Whatever the case, the duke was his target.
Halfdan reached for the only thing within easy reach and threw it. The heavy cross whirled through the air and struck the escaping Norman on the shoulder, sending him staggering sideways and to his knees, where Geoffroi’s men swiftly surrounded him. The duke turned in surprise, first to the downed man who had almost been on him, then to the Northman in the chapel.
Halfdan looked at his hand, then at the cross lying close to the prisoner. Worth every silver penny.
‘Brought down by the cross of the Lord in the hand of a pagan.’ William laughed and gestured to the leader of his guards. ‘See, Ancel? This day is full of surprises. The Lord appears to work even through your dreaded pagans.’
He gestured to Geoffroi with a thumb across his neck, and the knight’s men cut the throats of the two captive soldiers, while another brought a rope and threw it up to a beam, over and then down, positioning it so that the noose at the end hung some five feet from the ground. The noble let go of his wound, fresh panic taking over as he turned this way and that, trying to find a way to get out, blood pumping from his neck, until Geoffroi’s men grabbed him and dragged him toward the rope.
‘Where was this man’s fief?’ William asked.
Neel de Cotentin was close again, and cleared his throat. He looked disgusted. Perhaps it was all the blood staining his hall floor, Halfdan mused.
‘Close to the north coast, my duke.’
‘Then I bestow the dead man’s lands upon this Geoffroi. May he prove more reliable than his predecessor.’
While he spoke, three men were busy trying to force the condemned man’s struggling head into the noose. Cotentin bowed his head in acknowledgement of the appointment.
‘I should like to relax for a time,’ the duke told him, rolling his shoulders and holding out the bloodied knife so that one of his men could take it away and clean it. ‘I presume you have appropriate quarters for us until the evening meal?’
Behind them, there was a rhythmic slithering sound as the rope was pulled tight over the beam. Halfdan turned only long enough to see the captive noble hoisted three feet from the floor by his neck. It was faintly possible, he acknowledged, that the rope around his neck had staunched the wound and prevented further blood loss, in which case it would come down to whether he could last eleven minutes. Halfdan didn’t particularly care, but as he turned and walked away with the others, he did decided that, had it been him, he would just have killed the man there and then to be sure.
‘I shall make all arrangements, my lord duke. The hunt is planned three days hence, for there are other noble guests invited, and we await their arrival. In the meantime, my house is yours. I will have your men quartered in the inner bailey. There is an empty bunkhouse there. You and your noble friends, of course, shall be in the keep.’
As Cotentin gestured for them to leave the hall, William’s man handed back the clean knife, and the duke sheathed it as they climbed a set of stairs in the tower and entered a long corridor with windows along one side. The other interior wall was hung with a tapestry of great length, formed of several sections. William’s brow rose when he saw it. Cotentin smiled.
‘A history, begun in the time of my grandfather. It tells the tale of our family.’
The duke nodded, smiling. ‘These works fascinate me. The very idea that a story can be told in the warp and weft of cloth is astounding, is it not?’
Halfdan looked around at Gunnhild, who was rolling her eyes, given her own opinion on that. William examined the tale as they walked. Halfdan, too, found himself immersed in the history of Neel’s forebears, how they had come here in their longships like good men of ice and stone, of the building of the castle, the subduing of the lands, and their bowing of heads to a man that he suspected was William’s father, the former duke. The whole work was made up of many separate panels woven throughout the years and then stitched together to form a whole, their patterns kept close enough to blend when combined. A masterful piece of work, to be sure. The duke came to a halt suddenly toward the end.
‘What is this? The tapestry hangs unfinished, and not at the present day, either, but some years ago, I gather.’
They noted the figure of a youth, who had to be Neel, which meant that nothing had been added for at least a decade.
Cotentin shrugged. ‘It is said that my grandfather and my father encountered a dreadful sea monster off the coast near the Mont Tombe island. My grandfather was injured during the voyage and died shortly thereafter, and my father never spoke of the voyage again, and so no description of the monster remains. The weaver of this work faltered at the depiction, and superstition has grown around the absent creature, so the tapestry has never been restarted.’
‘I could tell your weaver of the monsters in the deeps around Iceland,’ Ketil said knowledgeably, but Bjorn was leaning in a moment later.
‘Did I ever tell you of the beast I fought in the waters off Hróarskelda?’ he said. ‘I thought it only had three heads at first, but—’
He never got any further through his story, for Ketil and Gunnhild between them pulled him back away from the duke, amid some deep-voiced swearing and complaints.
‘I used to wonder,’ Neel said distantly, looking down the length of the hall’s tapestry, ‘what the future would hold for me. I used to look at this and wish that the weaver had gone on ahead and told me what was to come.’ He seemed to pull his distant musings back to the present and straightened. ‘It would certainly make the difficult decisions of adulthood easier.’
The duke nodded his agreement, despite his own tender years, and Halfdan found himself wondering what difficult decisions Cotentin was dealing with at the moment that were causing him trouble. A glance at Gunnhild made it abundantly clear that she thought such prognostication was at best a double-edged sword.
As they walked on, Halfdan noted their host’s hand occasionally hovering near the hilt of the knife sheathed at his belt; once when he did so, Neel’s eyes fell upon the little blade at the duke’s belt with which he had so efficiently dispatched the prisoner. Halfdan suspected even now that their host might have made an attempt on William’s life in the corridor, had he been more sure he could do so without the duke’s own blade finding its way to somewhere fleshy in the process.
They were shown to rooms, that fellow with the staff apparently some sort of house thrall leading the way. At one door, the duke was escorted inside, one of his men heading back down to bring a couple more friends. The room was sumptuous, as befitted a jarl of power, with its own antechamber lying between the main chamber and the outer door, with room for several servants or guards. The Wolves were led further, along another corridor and to a separate room. This was a simple chamber, done out with a number of bunks, which went some way to illustrating the differing opinions Cotentin had about his visitors. There were eight bunks in the room, which were clearly not going to be enough, for in their entirety the Wolves who had come with the duke numbered a grand seventeen.
Leif looked about.
‘Not much room. Do you think the others are being kept out in the outbuildings?’
Halfdan nodded. ‘That will be the plan. They assume we are just the duke’s men, I think.’
He stepped out into the corridor once more, where the staff man was busy striding away. On a whim, Halfdan moved to the next door and tried it. It came open and revealed a room very similar to the one they were in. He waved to the retreating figures.
‘There are more than eight of us,’ he called. ‘Have this room made up for the rest of my men.’
The thrall gave him a surprised look, folded it into a frown, and finally left with a curt nod. The jarl returned to the room.
‘I do not like having our men divided. I do find myself wondering whether the duke’s room is so far from ours by design.’
Gunnhild nodded. ‘This Cotentin is a wolverine.’
‘You mean he stinks out of his arse?’ Bjorn grinned.
She rolled her eyes at him and focused on Halfdan. ‘He cannot be trusted. He is vicious and malicious, but he is also careful and a user of others. I think he means harm to the Bastard, and also to those who travel with him, but I do not think he will openly declare war. Like the wolverine, he wants to feed off the Bastard’s corpse, but he would like a bear or wolf to come along and do the dangerous killing first. That, I think, is why for now he remains polite and apparently friendly. I think he is waiting for something – perhaps for the hunt, or these other guests. But that does not mean we are safe. Though he will not move until things are ready, the time is close. I think we need to be on our guard day and night until we leave this place.’
Halfdan nodded. He’d intended as much anyway.