The Book of Dreams(69)

‘Leave my brother’s place at the table as it is,’ I said, ‘in case he joins us later.’

Without asking, I stretched myself out on the bench, with my satchel as a pillow and allowed myself to drift off to sleep, confident that neither of them would dare harm someone who bore the Devil’s mark and was the twin brother of a fetch.

*

A low growling awoke me, followed by a thud as a heavy boot kicked the front door, making it rattle in its frame.

‘Wake up you tub of lard,’ shouted a voice.

I sat up. I was still on the bench and had spent a quiet night. My brother’s wooden plate and tankard sat on the table untouched.

The boot thumped into the door again. Gallmau was climbing to his feet from where he had been sleeping on the floor. The two dogs were barking furiously and dancing round the door, which shook to another heavy blow. The fat man was nowhere to be seen.

I put on my eye patch and went across to the door and pulled it open. Outside stood a thick-set, scowling man with a short, neatly trimmed beard and the weather-beaten skin of someone who spent his days in the open air. Behind him I saw two men-at-arms with spears. Further down the street, the faces of villagers were peering out from their front doors.

‘Who are you?’ demanded the bearded man aggressively. He spoke in good Frankish.

‘Sigwulf, a royal servant,’ I answered.

The man narrowed his eyes.

‘Royal? Don’t waste my time!’ he growled.

I knew that I made an unimpressive spectacle, with a patch on one eye, travel-stained and unwashed.

‘I am on my way to see Margrave Hroudland,’ I said.

‘And is the margrave expecting you?’ jeered my interrogator.

I was feeling grouchy and hungover, and lost my temper.

‘No, he is not,’ I snapped, ‘but he will be very pleased to see me, and I shall make it my business to report on your conduct.’

My sharp manner penetrated the man’s disbelief. He gave me a calculating look.

‘What do you want to see the margrave about?’ he asked, a little less derisively.

‘I’m bringing him a book.’ Once again I slid the Book of Dreams out of the satchel.

The display had its effect. The man might have never seen a book before, but he knew that they were rare and valuable.

‘Very well, you come with me and tell your story to the head steward,’ he said.

He looked past me at Gallmau who had both hands full, holding back the two dogs that were eager to attack the stranger.

‘Where’s Maonirn?’ he asked.

Gullmau stared back stonily without replying.

‘He doesn’t speak Frankish,’ I said. ‘He’s a fisherman from the coast.’

‘Smuggler, too, if he keeps company with Maonirn. I expect that grease bucket slipped off to the moors when he heard us coming. No chance to find him now.’

He turned on his heel and I followed him out of the cottage and past the waiting men at arms.

*

I had encountered a bailiff, as it turned out. He had planned to arrest Maonirn, a known rogue, for the theft of some cattle. Instead he brought me before the head steward of the local landowner. He, in turn, was persuaded as to my honest character and provided me with a pony and directions to the town Hroudland had chosen for his headquarters as Margrave of the Breton March.

It was not much of a place.

A few hundred modest houses clustered on the floor of a shallow valley where the river made a loop around a low hill. The dwellings were a depressing sight under a dull winter sky, with their drab walls of mud and wattle, and roof thatch of grey reeds. There was a watermill on the river bank, a scattering of leafless orchards and vegetable patches, and a log palisade to enclose the hilltop. Just visible above this palisade was the roof of a great hall. The miserable weather was keeping the townsfolk indoors, and the only activity was in what looked like a soldiers’ camp on the water meadows. Tents had been set up in orderly lines, smoke was rising from cooking fires, and numbers of armed men were moving about.

It had taken me two full days to ride there and I guided my tired pony through the town’s muddy, deserted streets and headed straight for the gate in the palisade. It stood open and I rode in without being challenged. There I halted, overcome by a reminder of the past.

Hroudland’s great hall recalled my memories of my father’s house, the home I had grown up in, except that it was much, much larger and intended to impress the visitor. The ridge of its enormous roof stood two-storeys high. The roof itself was covered with thousands upon thousands of wooden shakes and sloped down to side walls of heavy planks set upright and closely fitted. Every vertical surface had been brightly painted. Red and white squares alternated with diamond shapes in green and blue. There were stripes and whorls. Flowers, animal shapes, and human grotesques had been carved into the projecting ends of the beams and cross timbers and the door surrounds. These carvings, too, were picked out in vivid colours: orange, purple and yellow. Flags flew from poles at each corner of the building, and a long banner with a picture of a bull’s head hung down above the double entrance doors. It was a spectacle of unrestrained and gaudy ostentation.