‘I agree, my Prince, so you must declare yourself to both sides as neutral. I’m sure Count Robert will understand and will respect your candour. Perhaps in that way you can prevent bloodshed.’
‘That is wise counsel; I appreciate it. Will you travel with me on those terms? It means you will no longer be in the Count’s service, but serving me directly. As you know, my retinue is but a few men and I have limited funds – especially as I am likely to lose both my current benefactors.’
‘Sire, I could not think of any other place I would rather be than at your side.’
‘Thank you. We are only two – a small band of English exiles – but perhaps we will grow in number.’
‘My Prince, have you given up all hope of claiming the throne?’
‘Yes, that ambition is a millstone around my neck. If I am to find my path in life, I need to cast that dream into the midden where it belongs.’
‘Sire, if this is the beginnings of a band of brothers-in-arms, may I suggest two more recruits?’
‘Of course. But I am ahead of you. I had already thought that two Englishmen were hardly a formidable posse; Sweyn and Adela would be fine additions to our crew. And I’m sure Adela would be happy to be called our “brother”.’
Edwin and I were eager to tell Sweyn and Adela of our intentions, and we were gratified to see that their elation was almost boundless.
For the first time, the near constant expression of sullen anger on Sweyn’s face lifted, while Adela’s feminine emotions nearly got the better of her. At one point, I thought she was going to kiss me! But her sturdy resolve regained control and she kept command of herself.
I pointed out to her that there could be few concessions to her womanhood while on campaign. Her answer, as always, was forthright.
‘My Lord, with Emma and Edgiva, I was the plaything of nine Norman thugs for nearly a week. Nothing that could happen to me, now or in the future, would come close to the horrors and indignities of that.’
Sweyn put his arm around her.
‘Nothing like that will ever happen to you again. I will make sure of it.’
‘We both will,’ she said resolutely.
Edwin was smiling broadly at the pair of them.
‘Does this remind you of anything?’
‘Of course,’ said Sweyn in an almost blasé way, ‘the beginnings of Hereward’s family.’
I often think back to the moment Edwin and I began our band of followers – brothers-in-arms, as he liked to call us. I was in my twenty-ninth year, Edwin was thirty-one, Adela twenty-six and Sweyn about sixteen – or so he claimed. Our pedigrees were so different: Edwin was a second cousin of King Harold of Wessex and England and carried the same Cerdician royal blood as I did, while Adela and Sweyn were the children of peasants. But I had little doubt, even then, that circumstances had made them of sterner stuff than Edwin or myself.
We were hardly an intimidating group, but we had something in common that would lend us great strength: the legacy of Hereward of Bourne. As I steeled myself for my difficult conversation with Robert, I wondered, as I did almost every day, where England’s great hero might lie and what he would think of us now, trying to cast ourselves in his image.
Robert was, as usual, generous when I explained my dilemma. I asked him if he would like me to withdraw from the expedition.
‘I will not hear of it. In the affairs of kings and princes, loyalty often changes like the wind. One day, I am confronting my father on the battlefield, the next day I am reconciled with him and leading his army into battle. But our friendship is one between men and goes deeper than treaties and alliances. Let us keep it that way.’
I then suggested to Robert the role I could play in Scotland.
‘King Malcolm is an opportunist, like all leaders of men. When we cross Scotland’s border, I will go on ahead to Malcolm’s court and talk to him, tell him of our friendship and see if we can reason with him without bloodshed.’
Robert happily agreed to my plan.
‘You have never deceived me and, like the man you are, have chosen not to hide your relationship with Malcolm. Let’s turn it to our advantage and make our journey to Scotland a successful one.’
With a substantial force drawn from Normandy, we set sail for England in late summer 1080. More men would be gathered in England from William’s Norman landlords and his permanent garrisons. Robert was hugely excited about the journey; not only was he to lead his father’s army in a major campaign, but it was his first visit to England, a realm he had heard so much about. He was like a child with a new toy from the moment we made landfall at Dover, gawping at every landmark and building we passed and greeting everyone we met enthusiastically. The Normans were effusive towards him and even the English – or, at least, most of them – were polite and friendly.
We spent more time than was scheduled in London, a place that particularly fascinated Robert. Its buildings were not as grand as those in Normandy’s cities, but it was changing rapidly and the amount of building work being done was astonishing. He was particularly taken by old King Edward’s beautiful cathedral at Westminster, completed just before his death. It was modelled on the great cathedrals of Normandy and France and reminded him of home.
But it was what was being built on the eastern side of London that made us all gaze in wonder. Close to the edge of the Thames and bound on two sides by the old Roman city walls, William was building a huge tower, the scale of which I had never seen before.
Robert had heard his father talk about it and showed it to us with a sense of self-satisfaction which said, ‘See what miracles we Normans can work!’
It was almost complete; its walls, dazzling white limestone, were forty paces long and it was almost as tall. It could be seen from every part of the burgh and for miles around, a reminder – visible at every turn and each minute of the day – of who ruled this land, and a statement, etched permanently into the skyline, which said that they intended to do so for a very long time. If I had not realized it before, the sight of this mighty fortress was confirmation that abandoning any hope of regaining my kingdom was a wise judgement.
Inside the great tower was an elegant chapel which had been completed and consecrated to St John the Evangelist only a few weeks earlier. We stayed for a while and prayed for our safe return from Scotland.
With the great oak door closed and the din of the masons’ mallets and chisels all but stifled, it was a place of immense charm and serenity. The chapel’s sturdy columns, plain Roman arches and solid, unadorned stonework spoke volumes about its builders: powerful, determined and austere, this was indeed a Norman place of worship. Our footsteps echoed and we hushed our voices to a whisper, making the place resonate with its symbolic power.
I watched Edwin, Adela and Sweyn, English kinsmen and now brothers-in-arms, to see if they too admired the handiwork of their Norman lords. If they did, they did not show it. Edwin was too chivalrous to disclose any disdain, Adela, as always, was impassive, while Sweyn looked stern, as a young knight should.
There we were, four progeny of England, in the company of Normandy’s military elite, admiring their icon of the oppression of our homeland. It was a perplexing experience.
Sweyn spoke to me as we left the great tower.
‘Sire, they do things on a massive scale. No army, no matter how big, could breach these walls.’
‘Never underestimate them, Sweyn. You don’t have to like them, but you must respect them and learn from them.’
‘Should we not also fear them, my Lord Prince?’
‘Yes, we should fear them; they are capable of inflicting terrible retribution on those who cross them.’
‘I can’t see how we can ever loosen their grip on England.’
‘Neither can I. They are here to stay, and we have to come to terms with that.’
Adela had been listening and reacted angrily. ‘I will never accept that.’
I tried to mollify her forceful stance. ‘One day you will. Eventual
ly, the whole of these islands will belong to them. There is no one to stop them.’
‘That’s not true. I, for one, will never give up!’
‘Adela, it’s now more than ten years since Senlac Ridge; there are tens of thousands of Normans here. Look at this fortress, this beautiful chapel. We can’t make the sand in an hourglass fall upwards.’
‘But what will become of us, if we don’t fight?’
‘England will evolve. It is already changing, and what was fought for at Ely is vital. Everyone deserves to be treated according to the law and with respect; that is something I hope the four of us can strive for.’
‘But the rule of law, and respect for all people, must be just as difficult to achieve as freeing England from the Normans.’
‘Perhaps… but, like those who died at Ely, we can each find our own destiny in fighting for a cause – even if the cause seems impossible to achieve. Because nothing is truly impossible.’
‘Do you really believe that?’
‘Yes, I do. Hereward taught me that when I watched him lead a few hundred men against William and the entire Norman army.’
8. Atrocity at Gateshead
As we travelled north our welcome was less enthusiastic, but still courteous. Beyond Peterborough, the population was far more Anglo-Dane than Saxon and their loyalty to England had always been meagre, so it was hardly surprising that they should be lukewarm in their greeting to the Normans.
In the north and west, the Norman marcher barons ruled largely hostile territory from the safety of their redoubtable donjons, many of which were having their original timber structures replaced by massive stone keeps, deep ditches and high curtain walls. There was still unease in those parts of the country; the people looked cowed, their Norman lords apprehensive.
Almost no one recognized me, which was a relief. I had been a clean-shaven boy when I left England, now I sported cropped whiskers, fashionable in Europe, rather than the full beard of Britain and Scandinavia, and wore the garb of a Norman lord; to all intents and purposes, I appeared to be one of them.
For Adela and Sweyn, the journey through Northumbria was a trying time. Although they had witnessed the brutality at the end of the Siege of Ely, the enormous scale of the horrors of the Harrying of the North was almost too much to comprehend. Each devastated village, with its hideous corpses and decaying fragments of buildings, was a glaring reminder of the massacre at Bourne and what they had suffered there. I watched them carefully, fearing that at any moment they might leap on to the nearest of our Norman comrades and slit his throat!
We reached York in time for the celebration of a very singular day for the burgh. Although the north-west was still a wasteland, a few people were returning to the major eastern burghs of the past, such as York and Durham, where a modicum of normality was beginning to return.
Not only were the Normans building mighty fortresses in praise of their military prowess, they were also erecting great cathedrals in homage to God. Thomas of Bayeux, who had been appointed Archbishop of York by the King, had taken ten years to gather the resources to begin a new cathedral to replace the derelict Saxon minster. When he heard of our journey to the North, he decided that it was a perfect opportunity for Robert to lay the foundation stone. So, amidst great panoply, yet another Norman monument began on the site of a place of worship that was centuries old.
Thomas of Bayeux was that other type of Norman – not the marauding warlord intent on building a military empire, but the builder of cultural empires, a man devoted to creating places of learning and for the worship of God. He had a kindly demeanour, but still had the gleam of the zealot in his eyes.
He greeted Robert like a prodigal son, overjoyed that such a prominent Norman would anoint his new project. A man of at least forty years of age, Thomas would of course never see his homage to God completed, but it mattered little to him; it would be his legacy to future generations and his gift to God. Those were the only things that were important. This was the power of the Normans – their desire to create a lasting legacy based on their immense martial prowess and their unshakeable faith in themselves and in God.
As we watched the masons and churchwrights busy themselves in preparation for laying the foundation stone, I tried to explain to Adela and Sweyn why I respected our Norman conquerors.
‘Look at them – like ants, relentless. It’s little wonder that Normans are sought after everywhere as soldiers and builders.’
Adela seized on my analogy.
‘More like pigs, to my mind – and it is our trough they’re feeding from. This church will be built with the sweat of thousands of English peasants, and thousands more will be made to pay unfair tithes to support it.’
‘I concede that it will not be built without sacrifice, but I wager that when the common people of Northumbria see their church rise to the heavens, they will be proud of it and claim it as their own.’
Sweyn added his own voice to Adela’s argument.
‘But they won’t have a choice.’
‘I agree, and that is to be regretted. But one day people will have choices – even the lowliest villein. I am committed to that.’
‘Indeed, sire, we know you are. That is why Adela and I have sworn our allegiance to you and Edwin.’
‘I am delighted that you have. This is only the beginning of a long road together; let us hope our path is not too arduous and that at the end of it we will feel that the journey has been worth it.’
When it came to the time for the ceremony, Thomas of Bayeux blessed the huge cornerstone as it hung over its position in the south-east corner of what would be the nave of the new church. The remains of the old Saxon minster had been cleared away and a deep trench for the footings of the new nave had been dug. The trench seemed to go on for ever, suggesting a building of huge proportions. The cornerstone was a cube, half the height and width of a man, and had to be lowered into position by block and tackle and a team of oxen. Before it was set down, Robert placed a pouch of silver and a small crucifix in the trench beneath the stone. When it was in place, the masons backfilled the trench with rubble and the first of the thousands of pieces of finely dressed limestone that would be fashioned into the new church was laid.
Robert turned to us and smiled.
‘The silver is from my own mint in Rouen; the coins have my head on them. When they were clearing the site, they found coins minted with the head of Alfred the Great. I had them melted down; I think my image will last a lot longer.’
We all smiled at Robert. He was not being arrogant; he meant what he said. Such was the bravado of the Normans, he knew that the churches his countrymen were building would be substantial enough to stand much longer than those of the Saxons.
York also brought the final additions to our army. The contingents from William’s northern magnates joined us there, giving us a formidable force over 5,000 strong. As usual it was a highly disciplined, well-provisioned professional army capable of putting the fear of God into its enemies and able to deliver a mighty blow should the intimidation not work.
Like his father, Robert had created four conroi of elite cavalry, 100 horsemen in total, as his own hearthtroop. I had the honour of commanding the second of those, composed largely of men from my own retinue. It was named the Cerdician Conroi in honour of my royal lineage – a great irony, under the circumstances, but only one of many anomalies, oddities and absurdities in England in those early days of Norman rule.
Edwin continued to be my standard-bearer, and Sweyn and Adela rode behind me as page knights-in-waiting.
As soon as we left York, I unfurled my war banner and the Wyvern of Wessex flew over English soil once more, another incongruity in bewildering times. Robert did not mind in the slightest. In fact, he said he was proud to have King Harold’s famous ensign in his ranks.
We reached Durham in the second week of September. It was a bleak and desolate place. The iron fist of the Normans did not rule as firmly that far north, and in the spring there ha
d been a gruesome massacre.
Walchere of Liège, both Bishop of Durham and Earl of Northumbria, had become yet another victim of the lawlessness of the far reaches of England’s northern wilderness. Many of the Northumbrian nobles and thegns had found refuge in Scotland or escaped to the high fells during William’s onslaught of the winter of 1069. Now they were returning to their estates and villages and attempting to rebuild them. It did not take long for tensions to surface with the new Norman rulers.
In trying to settle a dispute between his Norman retinue and the local Northumbrian knights, Walchere had agreed to travel to Gateshead with a large force of his household knights to meet the local aristocratic families. Old enmities arose at the meeting and boiled over into violence. Walchere and his men were overpowered and locked in the church, which was then torched. Many died in the flames and any who escaped were butchered as they left. Over a hundred men were killed, almost all of them Normans.
When Robert heard the details of the slaughter, he acted with the ruthless efficiency that was the hallmark of Norman rule. Like the Roman disciplines of the past, the tenet was simple: work hard, pay your tithes, stay on the right side of the law and you will prosper; become idle, avoid your taxes or break the law and you will be punished with a ferocity that you will never forget.
Like his father’s Harrying of the North ten years earlier, Robert ordered his conroi to travel far and wide to find the perpetrators of the atrocity at Gateshead. For understandable reasons, my conroi was spared this odious task, but within two weeks the patrols had returned.
Their reports made my blood run cold. In total, 251 men had been killed in the chase or executed. Each arrested man had been tortured to extract the names of all who were involved in the massacre until the Normans were satisfied that all the culprits had been dealt with.
Where a man had been hiding in a village or farm, all the buildings were torched, livestock killed and the people cast out. The execution of the leading figure in the outrage, Eadulf Rus, a local nobleman related to the powerful Earls of Bamburgh, was saved until last and carried out in full view of the entire population of Durham, who had been ordered to attend.
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