The Retreat (medieval historical fiction)

Chapter 21 He that is Greedy of Gain ...

Five days later, the army was camped beside the river Kee. This was a truly formidable obstacle, one that made the Reiber seem like a mere stream. So wide that a bowshot could not reach the far shore, the river was fierce too. Here, the water plunged down white-foamed cascades from hills to our south and I could hear the leonine roar of the river from over an hour away. No one could hope to swim the Kee until it had lost its violence, far, far downstream.

On coming to and leaving from the Kee, the Romans had altered the direct line of their road; it angled through the forest to come to a place where a rocky island rose from the swift-flowing water. This was because the Roman solution to crossing the Kee was the same as that in our times. Despite the efforts of the surging brown water to snatch it from its guide ropes, a ferry took the passenger to the island from this, the east bank, then there was a bridge from the island across a shorter stretch of water to the west bank. The original Roman bridge had been constructed from stone and the foundation pillars still remained. But the body now was a wooden affair, albeit sturdy enough.

The main problem that we faced was not the dirty, constantly heaving waters of the river, but a man: Bishop Wernher. The bishop had built a castle – of sorts – on the island. Supposedly, this square grey bastion existed to protect the eastern frontier of the duchy. Maybe it served that purpose, but it also served for him to take a fee from every person crossing the Kee and every boat travelling on the river. And there was nothing anyone could do about this, because Wernher was brother to King Henry.

When our army had travelled eastwards, it had taken Shalk's threat to dismantle the castle stone by stone before Wernher had relented and let our army cross without payment. Coming back, however, I knew we would not escape a heavy toll.

A small delegation – Gerard, Melinde, Count Stephen, Rainulf and myself – were waiting on the bishop in the solar of his castle, having been escorted in the ferry by Wernher's emissary (a tall, slender man with strikingly bright, long yellow hair – like that of Jacques, but thicker and worn loosely – and a flattened, misshapen nose). None of us had been allowed to carry arms and all of us were wet, not only from the spray of the river but from a sudden fall of rain that had rushed upon us when we were halfway across.

'Gentlemen ... and lady,' the bishop came into the room, wiping his hands on a piece of cloth, which he threw to the ground behind him for a servant to pick up and take away. 'Welcome, I did not expect to see anyone from Shalk's army so soon. What happened?' Wernher took his seat: a modest-sized throne. But then, Wernher was a small man, so small in fact that he might have looked absurd in a great episcopal seat. What he lost in stature, he made up for with the intensity of his pale gaze.

'Shalk was betrayed by King Bratislav,' answered Count Stephen.

Gerard took a step forward, 'Were they not all massacred so? And us the only survivors.'

'And how did you escape?'

'We refused to give up our weapons and were left behind when the rest were led away to be slaughtered.' As I'd observed before, without his armour Count Stephen appeared very frail. His bent-over posture was that of an old man. Yet his voice was firm enough.

'Shalk?'

This time I answered, with a bitterness in my words that was audible even to me. 'Taken prisoner and suffocated in the chimney of Bratislav's kitchen.'

'Odd.' A suppressed smile and a glance towards his emissary. 'Was King Bratislav provoked? I have not met with any difficulty in my dealings with him.'

No one responded.

Outside, it was raining again. Here, we did not feel it: the windows of the solar were like those of a wealthy church, with crisscrossed Xs of lead holding small panes of glass.