'Not in the name of God, but of Allah the Merciful,' Richard replied between gasps. 'My father bought him off a Moorish trader and found him a little too light compared to the Brabancon stallions he usually rides, so he gave Sleipnir to me.'

'Are you sure there was no other reason?'

'I told you, he's superb to ride,' Richard said defensively. 'He just hates ramps. Stop scowling. Wouldn't you like a Moorish stallion to service your mares?'

'Not if he's going to impart qualities like this!' Rolf snapped. 'First thing I'd do if he were mine is geld him!'

Richard grinned. 'You wouldn't, I promise.'

The blindfold in place, the grey calmed enough to be led onto the ramp. His damp silver shoulders and quarters twitched and trembled. Sweating with the expectation that at any moment the horse would run amok and charge them both off the edge into the freezing sea, Rolf coaxed the destrier on board the ship and after a brief deliberation, tethered him at the end of the line of warhorses in the open hold.

'It will be easier to reach him and cut his throat if he panics once we're at sea,' Rolf said darkly to his friend. 'I mean it, Richard.' He patted his belt. Beside his short meat dagger hung the longer bladed English scramaseax. 'If one runs wild, then the rest will follow and the ship will go in short order to the bottom of the sea.' He gave the quivering grey a jaundiced glance. 'For now, the blindfold remains.'

Accepting Rolf's decision, but looking none too happy, Richard left the ship.

The first vessels sailed out of St Valery in the hour before sunset. Rolf's command was one of the last to leave, since embarking the horses had been left until late to avoid stressing the animals too much. Ships containing men and supplies followed the Mora in ragged procession out of the Somme estuary and into the cold green waters of the Channel. The east wind ruffled their striped sails. Here and there oars were broken out and scuds of white water curled on the surface of the waves. The setting sun was a low slash of orange on the skyline, the tide flowing out fast as Rolf's galley cast off her moorings and to the escort of a dozen wheeling, screaming gulls, set her sails to the wind.

Rolf watched the port of St Valery slowly diminish across the water until it became tiny and unreal. The reality was the creaking deck beneath his boots, the muscular thrust of the sea beneath the caulked timbers, the salt tang of spray exploding against the sheer-strake, and the chill wind searing his ears and face. He fetched a hood and shoulder cape from his baggage and as the sun sank beyond the horizon and Norman soil vanished from sight, he ordered the ship's master to light the lantern on the mast.

In the middle of the night, the invasion fleet hove to so that England would be reached at first light rather than in the pitch-darkness of the hours after midnight. The channel was as smooth as molten jet, with only the gentlest of swells to rock the ships. The crescent moon had set several hours since. In the deep of the night, Rolf watched the twinkles of lantern light which marked the position of the other vessels. Isolated but not alone, he was aware of a feeling of utter tranquillity. A tiny voice warned him that this was literally the calm before the storm, but he paid it no heed except to cast it overboard and commit it to the deep.

On board one of the ships, someone was singing a melancholy tune in the Breton tongue. The sound drifted across the water and filled Rolf's soul with yearning. The moment was as beautiful and eerily mournful as the last drawn-out note of the song. It was with a feeling of deep regret that he left his position on the prow of the transport and stepped down to the open hold to check up on the horses.

CHAPTER 11

Ailith was standing over a cauldron in the garth, poking hanks of homespun wool in a steaming brew of stewed bracken leaves and rusty nails in the hopes of dyeing the wool to soft green, when Aldred and Lyulph brought Goldwin home.

The breeze drove acrid smoke into her face from the fire beneath the cauldron and she was wiping her streaming eyes on her apron when she saw her brothers coming towards her, their arms linked basket-fashion to carry Goldwin. His arms were around their stalwart necks and she saw that his teeth were gritted with pain, the tendons standing out like cords in his throat as they bore him. His left leg was heavily bandaged from ankle to knee, and a naal-knitted sock covered his shoeless foot. Ailith dropped her dyeing stick and ran to meet them.

'Jesu, Jesu!' she cried. 'What has happened?'

Goldwin tried to smile at her. 'Not as bad as it looks,' he gasped. 'I'll be all right by and by.'

'With rest and God's fortune you will,' said Aldred shortly. 'He's a lucky man, Ailith. A fraction deeper and he'd have been gutted by a Norwegian spear.' Aldred bore a long cut on his face that ended in a deep gouge at his helmet line. His blue eyes were red-rimmed with weariness. 'The ankle's nothing, he turned it when he insisted he was fit to mount his horse without aid and promptly fell down.' His tone was slightly patronising, but it also bore approving pride for Goldwin's courage.

'There was a rut in the road,' Goldwin said through his teeth.

Ailith thought that he looked terrible. All the colour had drained from his normally ruddy face and she did not like the way he was trembling. For certain he had a fever.

'Bring him within,' she said brusquely to her brothers, and as they carried him, she ran on ahead, shouting for Wulfhild and Sigrid.

While Ailith attended to Goldwin in their bed in the sleeping loft, she learned from her brothers about the bloody battle that had been fought and won against the Norwegians at a place called Stamford Bridge, about King Harold's rebel brother Tostig being killed by the royal huscarls, and about the grim news that had arrived during Harold's victory feast in York.

'William of Normandy has landed troops in the south,' Aldred said, his lip curling. 'Thousands of them — infantry, archers and cavalry. We are to muster for a few days in London while King Harold gathers fresh troops, and then we are to march out and put an end to the Norman bastard.'

'I'll be all right by then,' Goldwin said from the bed. He strove to sit up, then desisted with a groan.

'Not with a gut wound like yours you won't,' Aldred snorted.

Ailith lifted her husband's tunic and looked with dismay at the dirty bandages wound around his midriff and half-concealing a thicker wad of linen. Her stomach turned over and over as in her mind's eye she saw him upon a battlefield facing a berserker.

'Lie still,' she said as he started to protest again that there was very little wrong with him. 'Let me have a look at your injury. Certainly it needs clean bandages, these rags are disgusting. Aldred, Lyulph, why don't you go below and let Wulfhild give you something to eat?'

Aldred was all for staying at the bedside, but Lyulph, possessing slightly more tact, managed to drag him away.

'So you rode all the way from York with this wound?' Ailith asked as she unwrapped the bandages.

'It was important… if you had seen the King's face when the messenger interrupted the feasting with the news that the Normans had landed… ah!' He stiffened as she began to peel the linen wadding away from the site of the injury.

'So you were well enough to sit and feast?' she asked neutrally, her tone displaying none of her fear and anger. Goldwin had a mulish streak in his nature. Probably in the presence of her brothers he had been determined to show no weakness, to prove that he was as tough a warrior as they.

'There were others in far worse case than I. Some of them had to be borne into the hall on litters. I walked.'

The note of pride in Goldwin's voice caused Ailith to tighten her lips.

'In truth, the wound did not pain me at first,' he added. 'I rode the first three days from York without it troubling me. All I need is a short rest.'

Ailith gently lifted away the last of the wadding and looked at the wound with which Goldwin had walked and ridden for the better part of two weeks. A nasty red gash had opened him up from navel to hip-bone, slicing through layers of fat and muscle. The gash had been stitched in a rough and ready manner. Pus oozed between the threads, some of which had broken apart, and the entire area was puffy and inflamed.

'God have mercy!' Her hand went to her mouth; her belly heaved. 'Goldwin, you cannot think of marching anywhere with this!'

'Harold needs every man. He lost too many in the north,' Soldwin gasped.

Ailith opened her mouth to remonstrate with him, but closed it again, the words unsaid. It was obvious from his condition that no matter how he pushed his will, his body would be incapable. All she had to do was keep him lulled and quiet, giving his flesh the chance to knit.

'So be it,' she murmured, 'but tonight you must sleep. May I ask Sigrid's aunt Hulda to look at your wound and give you a potion to help the healing?'

Goldwin nodded and closed his eyes with a sigh. 'Indeed I am very tired,' he mumbled. 'I've hardly slept since the battle. It is the ravens pecking at the corpses. They won't leave me alone.'

Rolf slid wearily from Alezan's back to stand in the ankle-deep sludge of the wooden fort that one of Duke William's adjutants had pretentiously dared to call Hastings Castle. A bitter wind drove his sodden cloak against his back and whipped the stallion's tail between his mired hocks. The rain which had held off briefly as they rode through the marshy, deserted countryside began to whisper down again, fine in the wind as wet mist, a rain to penetrate the bones until they would never be warm again. Rolf removed his helm and absently touched a sore patch at his temple where the leather lining had chaffed.

Across the bailey the stable quarters were frantic with activity as patrols returned from a day of foraging the hinterland for provender. An outlying scouting party had galloped into the camp with the news that the English army had been sighted in the great forest known as the Andredesweald not seven miles' distance. Riders had been sent out forthwith to summon in all the outlying Norman troops, and the command had gone out to stand to arms.

Rolf led Alezan to the stables and dismissed the harassed groom who came to take the bridle. 'Go to,' Rolf said, stroking the chestnut's whiskery soft muzzle. 'Attend elsewhere before the Duke has a battle right here among his own knights.'

The man hurried gratefully away towards a swearing Breton count whose stallion had just stepped on his toe.

Alezan snuffed Rolf's hair and face, his breath moistly warm as the man rubbed him down with a wisp of balled up hay. 'Give over, you brute,' Rolf muttered as the horse lovingly nipped the back of his neck. The chestnut's coat was thickening up for winter, the golden blaze of his hide muting to red. Rolf lifted each one of the stallion's hooves in turn to check that the shoes were still securely nailed and that the frogs were clean. As he straightened from his examination, his eye was caught by Richard's grey destrier in the horse line opposite, and he paused to admire the animal.

To look at him now, it was impossible to believe how difficult he had proved on the beach at St Valery, and again at Hastings. It was as Richard said; the stallion hated ramps, but in every other way was a beast of exceptional quality. He did not have the bulk of some of the north Norman destriers with their strong influx of Flemish blood, but he was fast, could turn on a penny, and his endurance was phenomenal. Even now, after Richard had been out on him all day, he still looked fresh, his ears pricked, his liquid eyes curious. Rolf admitted ruefully that he would have to eat his pride and go cap in hand to Richard to beg him for the use of the horse at stud. In his mind's eye he saw his friend's smug grin and winced.

By the time he left the stables, the daylight was almost quenched. Torches glimmered in the wooden huts and tents of the vast Norman encampment of seven thousand men. Rolf went to one of the ramshackle cooking sheds that had been set up within the bailey. A bulky Fleming with forearms the size of hams was tending a huge iron cooking pot suspended over the flames. He stirred the contents with a large, shallow ladle, wiped his forehead on his rolled-back sleeve, and looked at Rolf.

'What you brung this time?' he demanded in heavily accented French.