‘It doesn’t look as if someone’s just been careless with a cooking fire.’ Brien unstrapped his helm from his saddle.

Joscelin heard the tension in Brien’s voice. The thought of Leicester’s rebellion was uppermost in everyone’s mind but surely it was too soon for that kind of trouble - unless it was concerned with the skirmish on the road yesterday. Perhaps it was by way of revenge. Joscelin shook the reins and urged Whitesocks towards the farmstead. The eddies of smoke strengthened and the stallion pranced and plunged. Joscelin almost lost control of him when they came upon the body of a horse stretched across the track. It was a palfrey this time, a dainty black barb mare. Her foreleg was broken and someone had cut her throat. A thick cloud of flies buzzed around the blackening wound. Of harness there was no sign, although her hide still bore the impression of bridle and saddle.

His spine prickling, Joscelin steadied Whitesocks and rode on. The smell of burning was woven with the crackle of feeding flames. In places, all the flesh of the longhouse had been devoured and the wooden bones were enveloped in greedy tongues of scarlet fire. Beside the track, facedown in the grass, a body sprawled.

Arnaud de Corbette had been stripped of his fine garments and was clad in naught but his linen braies. Three diagonal slashes were carved across his corpse as if he were a fish on a griddle. One eye glared. The other was concealed against the bloodied earth. Joscelin dismounted and, holding the reins fast in one hand, crouched to examine Corbette’s wounds.

Brien’s face twisted. ‘What are you doing?’

Joscelin looked up. ‘Seeking answers. Look at these cuts. Whoever did this had a good sword and some useful weight behind his swing. An axe or a club would have left different marks.’

Brien’s gaze was full of fastidious distaste. ‘So why does it matter how he was killed?’

Joscelin stood up. ‘It matters because only a man of wealth or professional fighting ability would own a sword and only a man who sells his services would strip a body like this. I’ve done it myself in winters past when an extra cloak means the difference between living and freezing.’

‘So you think this is the work of mercenaries?’

‘Very likely.’ Joscelin remounted and rode towards the palisade surrounding the burning farm. A stifled sob close on the left made Whitesocks throw up his head and snort with alarm. Joscelin calmed the horse and stared at the reeds and sedge bordering the muddy ditch at the foot of the palisade slope. ‘Come out where I can see you,’ he commanded in English. ‘You will not be harmed. I am Joscelin de Gael, appointed by the Crown to govern here.’

Two women, one young and very pregnant, the other older but still handsome, emerged from their hiding place in a clump of feather reeds. Their gown hems were mud-stained and heavy with water. The younger woman was sobbing and clutching her gravid belly. Her companion gripped a knife in her right hand and suspiciously eyed Joscelin and his troop.

‘What has happened here?’ he asked. ‘Where are your menfolk?’

The older woman shook her head. ‘Soldiers came with weapons,’ she said. ‘Their tongue was foreign but not French like they speak at the castle. We saw them coming, heard them too, the bastards, because they was chasing the seneschal, and he was screaming like a coney. Our menfolk are at the mill, else they’d be dead, too.’ She put her arm around the younger woman, who continued to snuffle and sob. ‘Me and Alfreda was outside feeding the poultry when we heard the commotion and we saw the seneschal and his family being attacked and robbed by soldiers. I made Alfreda drop everything and we hid in the ditch. We could hear them yelling and boasting.’ She shuddered. ‘The women were screaming and I was sure they’d discover us, they was so close, but we prayed to the blessed Saint Edmund and we was spared.’ The woman’s eyes glittered with angry, unshed tears. ‘Although God knows what for. How are we supposed to live now with the rent due at Michaelmas and our house and half our stores gone?’

‘You need not worry about that. I’ll see to it that you’re not destitute.’ Joscelin tried to keep the impatience out of his voice. Their concerns were obviously vital of this moment to them. ‘How many soldiers did you see?’

‘I don’t know, only got a couple o’ glimpses.’ She counted laboriously on her fingers. ‘’Bout a score, I suppose, but only half of them had horses. They took the seneschal’s destrier and madam’s palfrey. They’d have had our old cob, too, if Rob and Will hadn’t taken him this morning.’ She surveyed the burning building dismally. ‘We’d heard rumours o’ trouble, but we thought it was all ale-talk. King Henry won’t stand for no nonsense from his sons, we said.’ Her chin wobbled and she compressed her lips and glared at Joscelin.

‘I am responsible for the king’s justice on these lands,’ Joscelin replied. ‘If there are bands of routiers at large of whatever faction, I will deal with them and swiftly.’

‘Yes, my lord.’ She looked sceptical. And then her eyes widened and focused on a point beyond Joscelin. The younger woman shrieked and fell to her knees.

Turning in the saddle, Joscelin saw a motley assortment of horsemen and foot soldiers advancing towards them from the direction of the woods. The leading horse was the seneschal’s handsome piebald stallion and the warrior astride it had the raddled face of a fallen angel. A scar running from left mouth corner to mutilated left ear tilted and creased his grin, transforming it into a leer as he drew rein before Joscelin.

‘Greetings, nephew,’ said Conan de Gael, performing a mocking salute with the hilt of his drawn sword.


‘We heard in Nottingham that the Rushcliffe lands were yours.’ Conan shook his head, the grin still in place, and reclined on one elbow in the grass. ‘Lucky bastard - no offence intended.’

Joscelin was not deceived by his uncle’s air of relaxed affability. The hazel-green eyes were as hard as stones, and although Conan had removed his sword in token of goodwill he would still have a knife in his boot and another up his sleeve. ‘I could be forgiven for disbelieving you,’ he replied, nodding at the smoke still puthering from the longhouse. An ox that had been slaughtered in the earlier mayhem had been carved into chunks and was now roasting over a purpose-built fire pit. The two peasant women had retired to a distance but Joscelin could feel their hatred boring into his spine, together with their belief that he was a worse devil than the two previous lords of Rushcliffe put together.

‘Ah, come now, Josce, that wasn’t my fault.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

Conan drew his meat dagger from his belt and went to the fire pit to test a lump of meat to see if it was cooked. The women glared at him. Conan saluted them, the tip of his knife holding a sizzling, bloody chunk of their plough ox. ‘We bumped into your seneschal and his family on the road. Course, I didn’t know he was yours then and a man has to have the money to eat and clothe himself - you know that. If a fatted calf walks up to you dripping in wealth, it’s just begging to be sacrificed. It was obvious he was on the run with his ill-gotten gains.’ The mercenary tore a shred of meat off the edge of the beef portion and chewed vigorously. ‘The women ran like headless chickens into the longhouse and barred the door against us. One of them must have caught her gown in the hearth because, next thing we knew, the place was on fire and the flames too fierce for any of us to get near enough to rescue anyone.’

Joscelin eyed Conan narrowly. ‘I saw my seneschal’s body,’ he said. ‘In the old days you’d not have mutilated the dead.’

Conan spat out a knurl of gristle. ‘That was Godred’s work.’ He jabbed his head in the direction of a young soldier sitting close to the fire pit, moodily prodding the glowing embers with a stick. ‘He’s not fond of Normans at the best of times and the way we were treated in Nottingham was bound to have repercussions.’

‘What were you doing in Nottingham in the first place? I thought you were in Normandy.’

‘We sailed just before Pentecost. Trouble was brewing and men of our trade have to sell our swords where we can - unless we land ourselves an heiress.’ He flashed Joscelin a mocking glance. ‘We took employment with Robert Ferrers, Earl of Derby and Lord of Nottingham.’ He spat another piece of gristle into the grass. ‘Ever worked for him, Josce?’

‘No. He might have several fiefs in Nottingham but the castle itself belongs to the Crown. My employer has always been the king.’

Brien, who had been looking at Conan from the corner of his eye as if he did not quite believe in his existence, said, ‘I have heard that Ferrers is a haphazard paymaster.’

‘Haphazard? Hah! If we saw four shillings a week between us, we were fortunate. When I tackled him about it he threw us out, said that he could get Flemings for half as much as he was paying us and that we were lucky he hadn’t slung us in his dungeon for presumption. Arrogant, soft-cocked wind-bladder! He’s lucky I didn’t slit his throat to silence him.’ Conan wiped his bloody knife-blade on the grass.

‘Instead you slit my seneschal’s,’ Joscelin said frostily.

‘You didn’t want him, did you? You ought to be grateful.’

Joscelin made a disgusted sound and shook his head.

‘Did Ferrers hire you for any particular purpose?’ Brien asked.

‘No, just building up his troops in the area. When we were in Nottingham, we were billeted in some ramshackle houses of his near a stinking marsh with tanneries right next door. I’ve shat in better cesspits.’

‘But he said he was going to replace you with Flemings?’