by Nerys Jones
Two
Godiva entered Cheylesmore to find the yard stirring. Inside the manor house she greeted Gwen and went up to her bedchamber, where she found Lovric standing, already dressed, and gazing through the glass window into the yard below.
‘Went to see Prior Edwin, did you? I saw you coming up the lane.’
‘Yes, I think I’ll have an obedient prior from now on.’
‘Good. I like your new windows. You were right about putting in glass after all. You can see everything that’s going on down in the yard. Gwen’s had the slaves out at dawn to sweep up after last night and get the yard ready for our departure. We’re lucky she’s still fit for work. But are you training someone to replace her?’
Godiva went to the window. ‘There is one new man. That one over there, talking with Odo and Arne.’ She pointed at a young man in a green huntsman’s tunic, wearing a feather in his cap. ‘He came here as a gift from the king. His name is Bret – Beorhtric of Nottingham.’
Lovric raised his eyebrows and examined the man.
‘Edward sent him to us early this spring to develop our stag hunting. You complained to him that there were too many boars in our forests and too few stags.’
‘I don’t remember saying that.’
‘Well, it’s true anyway. You were probably drunk when you said it. They say Edward is always cold sober and never forgets a thing.’
‘Never forgets his Psalms and such. Bring the man up and let me meet him.’
Godiva opened the window and leaned out into the yard. The man in green appeared to start when she called his name, then he bowed respectfully.
‘That’s odd,’ Lovric said as he peered over her shoulder. ‘This fellow does not quite have the build of a huntsman. More like the shape and movement of a swordsman. He’s been in someone’s army.’
He beckoned to the man and, in less than a minute, he was up the stairs and knocking on the door of the chamber. In one glance Lovric detected all the marks of the huntsman on him – the calluses on his fingers, the narrowing of the right eye, the slight stoop forward from the waist and a supple, feline walk. Then Lovric glanced down.
‘What’s wrong there?’ he said, pointing at Bret’s foot. ‘You look like some men I’ve seen who’ve been in the iron boot for a while. Been in trouble, have you?’
Bret looked offended. ‘My foot would be far worse if it had been in the boot, sir. It would be crushed. It is only my ankle that is wrong. Look,’ he pulled off his loose suede boot.
Godiva looked away, embarrassed that Lovric was putting her huntsman through an uncalled-for test of his innocence. Lovric ignored her and scrutinized the man’s lower leg carefully, concluding that Bret might yet have been tortured with the iron boot, but perhaps only briefly until he talked his way out of it.
‘Well? What happened to you, if not the boot?’
‘I was caught in a stirrup during a fall two years ago and got dragged by my ankle. I won’t use the damn things any more. That was the reason I left military service. John, the chief huntsman, will tell you, sir. I always ride foot-free now.’
Lovric put aside his moment of doubt. He looked Bret over once more and thought what a fine specimen he was – tall and broad-shouldered, well spoken and handsome, with an open, tanned face and dark-green eyes that seemed to flicker in the light of the candles. The two talked for a few minutes more about the forests, the weather and the increase in the signs of poaching, and then they shook hands and Bret, bowing reticently to Godiva, made to leave. She smiled apologetically at him, and seeing the sympathy in her eyes he smiled back at her, so warmly that she felt she had not really noticed him before. As he walked away she stared after him for a moment, wondering why she had seen so little of him since his arrival at Cheylesmore. But then the demands of the day reclaimed her, and her attention moved on to the complications of last-minute packing for a journey that would see them ride through forests, sleep at humble thegns’ halls and dine in the presence of a king and queen.
By noon the riding party was almost ready to leave. Gwen stood next to Godiva in the yard, taking last-minute instructions and trying not to show her annoyance at the unexpected disruption of her routines. Milly stood to one side, arms folded, not talking to her parents, but making her presence and her anger palpable. Odo, as steward of the hall, strode around, arguing with his assistant, Arne, both of them trying to count heads and make sure that no one assigned to hall duties had managed to slip into the riding party. Young girls from the dairy came rushing in, frantically seeking out their lovers and pressing small plaited straw crosses into their hands. Agatha, seventeen years old and the only rider amongst the women of the manor, sat up on her horse, pretty and flushed with excitement and longing to go. Then she spotted her mother, who seemed to be smiling and waving farewell. Agatha waved back, only to realize that Bertha was not waving, but shaking her hard little fist in warning.
‘Bugger off,’ Agatha murmured, too quietly for her mother to understand, but loud enough for Godiva to overhear.
‘None of that, or you stay home and help Bertha repair clothes all summer,’ Godiva scolded.
Agatha bit her lip, as she had done since she was three whenever she felt ashamed. All of a sudden, Godiva saw her again as a child, Harry’s playmate in the manor gardens of Hereford. He had called her his sister and told everyone he would marry her when he grew up. Her eyes burned. But this was no time for tears: the departure had begun. Godiva took her place alongside Lovric and urged her horse on.
A short while after leaving the manor the riding party reached a lane that wound east through the Forest of Arden towards a junction with an old Roman road. From here they would continue unimpeded and straight south to Oxford. A great hush fell on the riders as they entered the undisturbed world of Arden, where even quiet words seemed harsh and alien. All round them were oaks that had been young when Guinevere and Launcelot lingered beneath their branches. They towered now like tall kings, garlanded in glittering raindrops, and from beneath their canopy shy creatures offered their eyes and ears briefly to the light, and then took fright and dived into holes or plunged deeper into the beckoning green shadows behind them. Godiva was so silent that Lovric wondered if she was brooding about what lay ahead of them in Winchester. In fact, she had plunged into reverie about the sprites whose mischief had entertained her childhood years in Sherwood Forest and those of her children in the Forest of Haye. Puck would be lurking nearby, cloaked in leaves and hiding in a cluster of toadstools, or sliding down a dusty sunbeam through the trees to the earth below. And the Fairy Queen must be here too, swinging on the catkins and coating herself in golden dust, raising the petals of her gossamer skirts to tease the elves and the butterflies. In this paradise she and her children were forever young and safe and joyful.
Lovric grew silent beside her, enjoying a reprieve from his constant military vigilance. The whole riding party gradually fell into a similar consoling trance, and it was not until late afternoon when they were deep in the forest that sounds of human activity brought them all down to earth. Shouting and the sound of axe blows against timber, and then the dismal creak and sigh of a crashing tree, announced the presence of woodsmen ahead of them. There would be charcoal-burners nearby, and Lovric halted the riding party, told them to water the horses and announced that he would go ahead alone to procure some charcoal water for his burning stomach. Godiva, saying she wanted some charcoal and flaxseed poultice for the medicine chest, followed him.
The forest, though it was legally within Lovric’s domain, was in fact beyond anyone’s control. The king talked about imposing his authority over all the greenwood, but the forests of England were too big and his servants too few, and they remained as they had always been – a world apart from the human web of fields, pastures and gardens. Nevertheless, Lovric felt safe, for his riding party was surrounded by a penumbra of scouts, and no one had reported trouble from the route ahead. It was, then, with a shock that he brought his horse to a sharp halt as soon
as he entered the glade in which the charcoal-burners had made camp. He tried to get Godiva to go back, but it was too late. She drew alongside him and took in the scene before them.
The camp was a big, commercial one, with several smouldering fires on the go at the same time, slowly hardening wood into the charred substance that would heat the furnaces where metal ores were smelted to make, above all else, weapons. There was money to be made from charcoal, and foreigners had moved in recently with licences to operate and with the cheapest labour they could get their hands on. This inevitably consisted of men and women who had been enslaved as punishment for serious crimes, and of these the very cheapest, and the least likely to run away successfully, were those whose punishment included mutilation. It was these who now faced Lovric and Godiva: a filthy, ragged woman with holes like two accusing eyes where her nose had been, and three men who seemed intact until they shouted at the intruders to go away, waving their arms and making indecipherable noises with their tongueless mouths. In the background were other coal-blackened workers, and walking between them were several overseers with whips. Lovric took the reins of Godiva’s horse and jerked its head away. They retreated from the glade and returned to the riding party without a word.
Lovric knew that the scene in the camp had reminded her of the perils facing Alfgar and Harry. It was true that as men of high birth they would not be subject to flogging or mutilation, but there were other cruelties that could be inflicted upon them in captivity. She would know that. To distract her attention he began to run through the pleasures that lay ahead as they crossed lands that belonged to his thegns, Wulfwin and Waga. They were men she knew well and liked – men whose halls would be open to them, whose wives would offer mead and ale, whose daughters would sing, and whose scopman would tell an exciting or funny tale. Then there would be bed, and because he was the overlord, Lovric would have a quiet place of his own to lie with Godiva. So different was this, he told her, from his long tours of duty in the troublespots of the land, where no welcome awaited and no wife was there at night, and where the only shelter was a leather tent, hauled with great effort up hill and down dale in the pursuit of elusive, evanescent peace.
She smiled at his efforts to cheer her, a deliberately composed smile, intended to show him that she had calmed down and put the brutal scene in the forest behind her. But Lovric was not deceived, nor did he know what else to say to her. He turned towards her again and looked at her riding clothes – the close-fitting leather tunic and the tight cap that was unflattering, but which, because she had worn them both for years, he found enchanting.
‘My lady,’ he began, and then found he couldn’t say what was on his mind. She knew he loved her, but he told her that so often, in the same plain old words, it seemed pointless to keep saying it. Then, to her surprise, he cleared his throat and started to sing. Lovric had a strong, tuneful baritone that Godiva had not heard for months. She joined in the song too, and then the trumpeter, at the head of the column, picked up his penny whistle with his free hand and accompanied them. Behind them someone pulled out a small flat drum, and down the line of horsemen several found their knick-knack bones or spoons, and soon everyone was making music. The horses pricked up their ears and though their pace remained unchanged, it grew livelier as manes were tossed and tails swished. Then, suddenly, from far down the line, rising like a blackbird’s song, came the tenor voice of an unknown soldier. Lovric held up his hand and passed the message back: bring that man up here to sing with me.
It was the new huntsman, Beorhtric of Nottingham. Only now did Godiva realize that he had been tacked on to the end of the line. He came trotting forward and pulled up alongside the head of the column, where he bowed his head in greeting to Lovric.
‘Do you know the ballad of the Mill at Stoneleigh?’ asked Lovric. Bret nodded. ‘Then let us sing it together. I shall be the man and you shall be the girl, since you can do the high notes.’
Godiva glanced across at Bret curiously and he nodded back diffidently. She thought how dull he was, despite his good looks and his ability to sing, and how he probably had no conversation other than forests and hunting. But then, as his husky voice soared effortlessly up the scale, from a distance no further than the cream-throated song thrush that sat on the small apple tree beside her open window at night, a violent thrill passed through her heart, making her blush deeply and turn away. Lovric saw none of this, but Bret did, and afterwards, when Lovric sent him back to his place at the rear of the column, he vowed he would stay there and call no more attention to himself on this journey, for the likes and dislikes of powerful people are fickle, and he was not a man who could afford a fall from grace.
Two days later the little group from Mercia prayed silently for protection from all foreigners as the church towers of busy, clerical, long-robed Oxford came into view. They were now leaving their homeland and crossing into King Alfred’s old kingdom of Wessex, where the frontier line had been drawn against the Danish invaders, drawn and held by means of burghs like this walled town. Today this was still Wessex territory, and that night they would lodge with one of Earl Godwin’s thegns, a man named Wiglaf, undistinguished, but rich and loyal to the overlord of Wessex.
As her horse ambled carefully through the congested streets, Godiva thought how big Oxford seemed and how full of monks and priests, and of nuns and laundresses, kitchen maids and the other women of vague occupation who always seemed present in abundance wherever there were many monks gathered together. But there were few children, she noticed. To her mind this gave Oxford an air of purpose and order such as one never found in ordinary towns like Coventry, where small voices and hands wrought constant havoc. Everywhere she looked she saw churches, many small and old and built in a familiar squat Anglo-Saxon style, but some much grander and hinting of links with Normandy and beyond. They crossed over an arched stone bridge that amazed Godiva with its solidity and graceful lines – for Coventry was still getting by with pontoons and flat bridges – and then, entering another quarter of the city, encountered yet more and even greater churches. There would be relics here in abundance, she thought, and wondered whether she could visit a shrine. Immediately, though, thoughts of Alfgar and Harry put paid to that idea: speed was the essence of this journey.
It didn’t take long to reach Wiglaf’s home, an old-fashioned manor house with a detached feasting hall standing to the rear. As soon as they dismounted, Wiglaf’s house-steward appeared to show them through the yard to the manor-house door, where a moment later the lord of the manor appeared, arrayed despite the early hour in rich, heavy clothes designed to impress his guests. Lovric, a soldier to his marrow, glanced disapprovingly at Wiglaf’s silver embroidery, but then pulled himself together and played the diplomat. Wiglaf bowed to Godiva, uttered a rudimentary greeting and then with no explanation took Lovric by the arm and led him away. Godiva stared after them for a moment, thinking how Wiglaf’s shiny threads showed up his oafish manners. Then she shrugged and turned to enter his home.
As she stepped into the manor house the scents of seasoned oak, beer and fresh bread greeted her, and in the background, teasing the appetite, the smell of slowly roasting meat. Despite the master, the house was delightful – dark and polished, well swept and padded out with thick cushions and colourful hangings, a sanctuary of comfort for aching bones in the cold of winter and cool shade on dusty, fly-ridden summer days. And as for luxury, this house had carpets – small, it was true, but carpets nonetheless. Godiva, who had rarely seen anything but straw and hides on floors, stepped tentatively on to the first, a dark-red oblong whose intricate pattern glowed with a sheen that one never saw on wool, no matter what was done to it. She leaped back, realising that she was stepping on foreign silk, and just then she heard a delicate step behind her. Godiva readied herself for a cold welcome from a jealous hostess, and turned around. But Wiglaf’s wife was also beautiful, and much younger than Godiva. What money buys, she thought, remembering the bandy legs and shapeless face of the lord of
the manor.
Adelheid, who wanted to be called Adel, exuded kindness and consideration. She took Godiva’s hand and did not let it go until they had toured every room. Agatha was told how to look after her mistress in this unfamiliar house, and Father Godric was sent to a priest’s room so that he could pray for everyone and stay out of the way. Adel sent the servants off to the kitchen and brought Godiva to a small dining room used only by the family when they wanted to be alone together. They talked, as women always did on occasions such as this, about their children and their ancestors, about the price of wool, meat and horses, and about their latest purchases of lands and livestock. Only after they had learned a lot about each other and started to feel a warmth that reached beyond courtesy, did Adel raise the matter of husbands.
‘I have been lucky,’ she confided. ‘I married as my father ordered me, and I didn’t love Wiglaf until after our first child was born. But when I saw the child in his arms, and how he swore so fiercely to protect him and me from all danger – then I fell in love with him.’
Godiva was no longer used to the way young women confided in each other about men, but felt she had to respond. ‘I was lucky too,’ she said. ‘I fell in love with Lovric at first sight, and he turned out to be as good as he looks.’
‘And is he strong?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Adel said hesitantly, ‘in times of trouble, does he grow angry with you? Or deceive you?’
‘No,’ Godiva replied firmly, unwilling to go into details with Adel about Lovric’s occasional bouts of bad temper.
‘That is what I worry about,’ Adel continued, lowering her voice in case a servant might hear. ‘I fear my husband will grow cold again if bad times come back to England. I could go without food, or firewood, or servants, but I could not go back again to being without love.’