‘So, Harthacnut, you were the one who asked for this meeting . . . why?’
Harthacnut’s mouth was full of ox meat. He took his time chewing, washed the remnant down by emptying his tankard of mead in a single draught, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and said, ‘Because I have better things to do than waste time, men and money on another pointless campaign against Norway. How old were you, Magnus, when my father sent yours into exile in the land of the Rus?’
‘I was two. My first memories are all of Novgorod. I don’t remember living in Norway before that at all.’
‘I thought as much . . . Tell me, did your mother come with you?’
Magnus shook his head. ‘No. She was a slave, belonging to my father’s wife, Astrid. Hell would freeze over before Astrid would let her come to Novgorod.’
‘Have you ever met her, since you came back?’
Magnus shook his head.
‘So we know what that war cost you. Now let me tell you what I remember about those days. I was eight, living in England, when my father took me aside and said he was making me his regent in Denmark. I didn’t really understand what that meant. I thought he just meant for a short while, you know. So I kissed my mother goodbye on the boat, just before it sailed, and I haven’t seen her since that day. We have that much in common, Magnus: we were parted young from our mothers.’
‘And our fathers are dead,’ said Magnus. ‘What sorry fellows we are!’ he added with a self-mocking grin, and the atmosphere seemed to become a little more relaxed.
‘Anyway,’ continued Harthacnut, ‘my father became King of Norway, and then he lost the throne, and won it back, and lost it again.’
More mead had been poured into Harthacnut’s tankard while he was talking. He swallowed some down and then said, ‘And after all that, after all the pointless, futile bloodshed, and plotting, and changing sides, all those years of total confusion, where are we? Exactly where it started, with a Danish king in Denmark and a Norwegian king in Norway. So my suggestion to you, Magnus, is that we should keep it that way. You are young. You should be able to grow up in peace. Let’s make a proper peace, and have done with the fighting.’
‘How can I trust you?’ Magnus asked. ‘How do I know you’re not deceiving me? Maybe what you really want is for me to lower my guard and think there’s no need to prepare for war . . . and that’s when you strike.’
‘I say he’s scared,’ said Strongbow. ‘All this talk of history, of fathers and sons, it’s just shit. The truth is, if we fight him, he’ll lose, and he knows it.’
‘Maybe we should fight, Einar Eindridesson, just you and me,’ Harthacnut suggested. ‘If you stand as King Magnus’s champion in a fight to the death, I will fight you. If you win, Magnus can have Denmark. If I win, I take Norway.’
‘Harthacnut, be careful, this is the mead talking,’ warned Sven Estridsson.
‘No it isn’t. I can hold my drink and I know what I am saying. This man says I’m a coward, a disgrace to my father. Well in that case, I should be easy to beat. Except that, oh yes, Einar, you’re twice my age. And behind your back, people don’t call you Strongbow any more. They call you Wobble-gut because of that big fat belly you’ve acquired since you became the king’s right-hand man.’
‘I’ll fight you, don’t you worry, and I’ll beat you too,’ said Strongbow. ‘I was killing men when you weren’t even a gleam in your father’s eye.’
‘The decision is not yours, old man,’ said Harthacnut. ‘It’s a matter for your king. So, Magnus, will you take my offer of peace, or would you rather stake your crown on a single fight?’
Magnus thought for a moment before he spoke. ‘You don’t expect me to say yes to that fight, do you, Harthacnut? You don’t really want to risk your life, and, there’s something else. I don’t know for certain, but . . .’ Magnus frowned and bit his lip in concentration, suddenly betraying his youth, ‘I don’t think you want to win the fight, either. I think you’re telling the truth that you want to keep things as they are. But I reckon there’s something else you’re not telling us.’
‘If there were, then obviously I’m not going to reveal what it is,’ Harthacnut said, with a smile.
‘Because you don’t want the fight, whatever the outcome, maybe I should accept your challenge,’ Magnus went on. ‘In Novgorod, I was placed in the care of the Grand Prince Yaroslav the Wise. He taught me that when I was considering what to do, I should always choose the thing my enemy would least like. So that would be the fight.’
For a moment, Harthacnut thought that he really was about to find himself in a fight to the death. But then Magnus said, ‘Still, there is a chance that you might win. Einar was a great fighter, but he is old and grey now, and if you beat him, that would be very bad for me. You may not want Norway, Harthacnut, but I do. So I say this. I will accept your call for peace on one condition. If one of us dies without a son to succeed him, then the other can take his kingdom.’
‘But you are younger than me,’ Harthacnut pointed out. ‘You have a greater chance of living longer.’
‘You are hardly an old man. You have plenty of time to find a wife and produce an heir, and if you do, my claim will lapse. In any case, you will be dead, what do you care who rules Denmark?’
Harthacnut laughed. ‘Not a jot.’
‘So do we have an agreement?’
‘Yes, we do. And if you have it drawn up, I’ll sign it.’
‘Very well, then . . . Please, have some more mead. And more mead for you, too, Einar Strongbow. You look as though you need it.’
News of the agreement spread throughout the camps on both sides of the river, and though there were some who felt deprived of the opportunity for slaughter and booty, there were many more who thanked God that they would be returning home safely to their farms, their fishing boats, their market stalls and their families.
Many hours later, as the Danes staggered back towards their tents, Sven Estridsson stopped, screwing his eyes tight as he attempted to still his swimming brain. ‘Wait . . . wait.’
‘What is it?’ Harthacnut asked.
‘This deal . . . you gave Magnus Denmark . . .’
‘If I die before him and I don’t have a son . . . only if I die.’
‘But if you die . . .’
‘And I don’t have a son.’
‘Right . . . if all that happens, I want Denmark. Don’t want Magnus getting it. Want it for myself.’
Harthacnut put his hands on his friend’s shoulders and looked him directly in the eye. ‘I told that Norwegian brat he could have the throne. Didn’t say he could keep it. You want it, kill him and take it.’
Estridsson thought and nodded. ‘Very well . . . One other thing, though. What’s the real reason you don’t want Norway?’
Harthacnut smiled. ‘Simple. All these years my mother has been writing to me, begging me to join her and take England away from Harold fucking Harefoot. I’ve decided it’s time I went and did it.’
‘So you want to be King of England, like your father?’
‘That’s right, Sven . . . that’s exactly what I want.’
Christmas came, and New Year too, and then the weeks of feasting gave way to months of cold grey skies, the land rock-hard with frost, when it wasn’t deep in snow. In February, two groups of clerics travelled from their respective parishes in Kent to Oxford, for the King of England was residing there and they wished to plead their cases to him. To plead them exhaustively, and at great length . . .
‘And so, to conclude, Your Majesty,’ said the priest who had been speaking for what seemed an eternity.
The young man with the crown on his head coughed, as he had done repeatedly throughout the monk’s speech, reached for his goblet of wine (again, a much-repeated gesture) and muttered, ‘About time.’
The priest continue
d, ‘I have demonstrated both by the legal principle of uti possidetis, or “as you possess, so you may continue to possess”, and by the established weight of precedence in royal judgments on similar issues that the port of Sandwich and the duties raised therefrom are lawfully the property of Christ Church, Canterbury, and that there is no merit to any claim to the contrary, even from an institution as eminent as St Augustine’s Abbey. I might also add . . .’
‘Must you?’
‘. . . that since your gracious father King Canute donated the body of St Mildred to St Augustine’s, the revenue generated by the abbey from the pilgrims travelling from all parts of Christendom to visit this famous relic means that the abbey simply does not need the money from Sandwich in the way that our church does. I hope you will recognise the merit in the case that I have put to you and give your judgment accordingly.’
‘Go ahead, take it, I couldn’t give a damn either way,’ slurred Harold Harefoot. ‘Stuck inside all day when I could be out hunting. Perfect weather for it, too.’
‘What the king means,’ said his mother, Elgiva of Northampton, who was seated at his right hand, ‘is that he thanks you for your evidence, Father Osmond, and looks forward to hearing the case for St Augustine’s prior to making his judgment.’
She spoke in a sharp, decisive voice that cut through Harold’s drunken babbling. A portly fifty-year-old man with a ruddy complexion owed in equal parts to fresh English air and strong English mead was sitting to the king’s left. He nodded in approval at Elgiva’s words and murmured, ‘Hear, hear.’ Leofric, Earl of Mercia, was the effective ruler of a great swathe of the Midlands, from the Welsh border right across to the Wash. In the months following King Canute’s death, he had been the strongest advocate of Harold’s claim to the succession, and he remained loyal to both the king and his mother, for all Harold’s manifest failings. It was a simple matter of honour: he had pledged himself to Harold Harefoot, and he would not go back on his word.
The fourth member of the council hearing cases in Oxford that day had a rather more flexible, or perhaps just realistic, approach to life. Godwin, Earl of Wessex, was as powerful in the south and west of England as Leofric was in its centre. Now he leaned across to Elgiva and hissed, ‘For God’s sake, woman, can’t you keep your son under control? You worked hard enough to put the crown on his head. It won’t stay there much longer if he carries on like this.’
‘And who is going to take it off him precisely?’ she shot back. ‘Make the best of it, Godwin, he’s the only king you’ve got.’
Godwin had to admit that Elgiva might be a conniving termagant, but she was right. Harold was the only man in England with even a pretence of royal blood in his veins. There had been a time when Emma had the chance to put her son on the throne, and he had done everything he could to help her. But if Harthacnut chose to sit on his arse in Denmark, when England was his for the taking, then he didn’t deserve to be king. If that ever changed, Godwin would have to reconsider his position, but for now, he was stuck with Harold. What was it that monk had said, something about ‘as you possess’? Well, Harold possessed the throne and would continue to do so until further notice.
Godwin felt the jab of a sharp female elbow in his ribs and was jolted back to the matter at hand: the allocation of the revenues of the port of Sandwich. The abbot of St Augustine’s was now stating his case, with just as much long-winded legal nonsense as the man from Christ Church. In his drunken, pig-ignorant way, Harold had actually been right. This was a waste of time, and it would be far simpler if these two greedy, pampered men simply rolled up their sleeves and fought to see who got the damn money, as any real man would.
‘. . . and with that, I rest my case,’ the abbot eventually said.
Harold was slumped insensible on the table. It was left to Elgiva, who had virtually assumed the role of regent, to thank the two plaintiffs and announce that the council would now be retiring to consider its judgment.
She waited until the warring clerics and their retinues had left the chamber and then shook her son’s shoulder. ‘Get up, Harold!’ she snapped.
The king did not move.
‘I said get up!’ Elgiva repeated, and then muttered, ‘You really are going too far.’
Harold groaned and made a feeble, unsuccessful effort to get to his feet.
Godwin saw that there was nothing for it but to deal with the king like any other drunk. He stood up, made his way past Elgiva to the throne, grabbed Harold under the armpits and pulled him to his feet. ‘Up you get,’ he said.
‘Unhand the king!’ Leofric blustered.
Godwin shrugged and let go. Harold slumped back into his chair and fell forward again on to the table.
‘Can you stand, sire?’ Leofric asked.
Harold did his best. He pushed his body up from the tabletop and scrabbled for purchase with his feet, but then he was seized by a convulsive bout of coughing and dropped back down again.
Now Elgiva’s voice was that of an anxious mother. ‘Harold . . . ?’
Godwin sighed. Protocol be damned, the drunken sot wasn’t going to get up by himself. He lifted the king’s upper body off the table again, taking the weight of it in one arm as he pressed his other hand against Harold’s brow. It was burning hot, and wet with sweat. It wasn’t alcohol that had done that to him.
‘He’s got a fever,’ Godwin said. ‘We’d better get him to his bed.’
Then he looked down at the table and saw, glinting back up at him, the reflective crimson surface of a drop of blood, about as wide as a silver penny piece. Harold was very ill indeed, or perhaps someone had poisoned him. Either way, thought Godwin, it could soon be time to start looking for another king.
2
The North Sea
It had taken Harthacnut three months to send word to his sea captains and bring them all together in one place. Finally he could begin the voyage that he planned would end in the reclaiming of the English throne as his father’s rightful heir. He sailed from Roskilde, north through the Øresund straits, across the shallow, treacherous waters that separated the Danish heartlands from his territories on the southern shorelines of Sweden and Norway, then around the Jutland peninsula and into the North Sea. Behind his flagship stretched more than sixty ships, a fleet as large as any that had been assembled since the days when the Danes were the most feared of all the Viking raiders who preyed upon the east coast of England, from the holy island of Lindisfarne in the north right down to the Kentish ports in the south.
Harthacnut, however, was not going to raid or pillage, but to recover what was rightfully his. To that end, as the fleet sailed down the west coast of Denmark, he ordered the bulk of his ships to go no further, but to anchor in the sheltered waters of the Heligoland Bight, while he went ahead to Bruges to see his mother. She knew England, its people and the nobles who would have to be won over, whether by the strength of his claim or the brute force of arms. He was all too aware that he could not afford to fail. As he told Sven Estridsson: ‘My half-brother Alfred failed to unseat Harold, and ended up dumped in the Ely marshes with his eyes gouged out. I won’t make the same mistakes he did. If anyone ends up dead, it will be Harold, not me.’
Harthacnut left Estridsson in the still waters, awaiting his signal to sail for England, while his flagship and the small flotilla accompanying it made for the open sea. Now they were a few leagues off the Frisian coast, and the last rays of the sun were narrow shafts of gleaming gold against the massed ranks of grey and black thunderclouds that were bearing down out of the north-west, all the way from Greenland and the icy wastelands of the far north.
The cloud mass marching across the sky looked as solid and overwhelming as an avalanche. Harthacnut had seafaring in his blood and had been accustomed since he was a little boy to rough seas, crashing waves and whipping winds that lashed the salt spray like a whip against his skin, yet he had never s
een anything quite like this.
‘Thor’s hammer is hard at work tonight,’ said his skipper, Rörik Ingesson, for a century or more of Christianity had merely overlaid the myths and legends with which Norsemen had been raised since time out of mind, like flimsy clothes over a strong, healthy body.
The wind seemed to rise suddenly and the sun disappeared completely behind the clouds. As rain began to fall, and lightning bolts flashed white light across the dark skies, the banshee scream of the wind in the rigging blended in a deafening cacophony with the pounding rumble of oncoming thunder. Harthacnut had to shout to make himself heard. ‘So what are you going to do?’
Ingesson was a massive man, barrel-chested and thick-bearded. Aboard his own ship he did not bow his head or bend his knee to any man, no matter what their rank. He saw no need to reply to his king, but instead shouted out, ‘Lower the sail and bind it tight! Stow the oars and make sure they’re properly tied down! Anything else that’s loose, stow it or tie it. Helmsman, keep the wind at your back!’
The crew, a mongrel band of Danes, Saxons, Icelanders and island men from Shetland and Orkney, busied themselves with his orders. To an untrained eye, their movements as they dashed about the long, slender ship might have seemed chaotic. But Ingesson knew what he was watching, and he satisfied himself that all was being done as he would like before he turned back to Harthacnut and said, ‘There’s only one thing to do: run with the storm as best we can.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘That wind’s going to drive us down towards the coast. You know as well as I do what the waters off Frisia and Holland are like. If we’re lucky, we’ll find a safe anchorage. If we’re not, we’ll hit a sandbank and founder, and we’ll all be thanking Thor in person for the storm.’
‘Then I shall pray to God Almighty to deliver us from the old gods’ evil.’
The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2 Page 12