I Am the Chosen King

by Helen Hollick

  Would Harold’s lovemaking be as forgettable as William’s? Had his woman, this Edyth Swan—something-or-other, Mathilda could not pronounce the difficult English; Harold had translated it as “swan neck,” implying her beauty—were her seven children conceived in a few minutes in indifferent boredom, or had she experienced this great enigma of pleasure that Mathilda had heard others boast of?

  Her husband, she was certain, had underestimated Harold. The Earl had no need to mask fears or self-doubt to prove his domination or repeatedly enforce his will. That made him placid and calm, not vulnerable.

  Spent, William rolled from her, fell almost immediately asleep.

  If Agatha resented this marriage, then the girl was a fool. Mathilda would willingly welcome a man such as Harold to her bed…she gasped aloud at the adulterous thought.

  “Mm? What was that?” William had heard!

  “Nothing of import, my love. I spoke my thought, that be all.”

  “And what thought would that be?”

  What could she say? She grasped at the first thing to come to mind. “Will you permit Harold to take this lad, Hakon, back to England?”

  “Hakon? Oui. The boy is only a nephew with no living father, and a mother secured within a nunnery in disgrace. I shall allow the brother, Wulfnoth, to accompany Agatha into England when I think her of a suitable age to go to her husband’s marriage bed.”

  “And when will that be?” Mathilda’s hand moved across William’s buttocks and down to his thigh, brushing against his incapacitated manhood. He had awakened her desire but not fulfilled it, but was frustratingly not ready for more lovemaking.

  William’s half-smile was composed and calculating. Harold could go home to England soon, for he had him where he wanted him. “When? When I am certain that he will do all he can to secure for me the throne of England.”

  The Duke rolled on top of his wife, his mouth bruising heavily against hers. There were ways of ensuring loyalty, some obvious, some subtle. He was using subtlety against Harold of England, luring him into friendship, tantalising him with the promise of an assured future. Binding his hands with invisible chains. And tomorrow he would turn the key in the lock that would clamp those chains tight. Tomorrow, when the nobles and vassals of Normandy, and beyond, swore their annual oath of homage to their duke.

  But that was for tomorrow. Tonight, he would ensure the fealty of his wife.

  27

  Bayeux

  Agatha sat completely miserable, in a corner of her father’s great Hall, as far from the glare of watching eyes as she could. She would have preferred to remain in her bed-chamber, but her mother had not allowed it. The exchange of heated words between them this morning had been almost as red-hot as the blaze of the yule log in the central hearth fire. She did not want to marry, could her parents not see that? She had a calling, her desire was to serve God. That was her duty, not the giving of her body to a man in marriage. Not that she disliked Earl Harold, he was kind and he made her laugh, but then, so did William de Warenne and Ralph de Tosny…many other men. And to go to England? Oh, she could not, could not! It was a country of heretics and pagans, where men worshipped beneath oak trees and took oath in the name of the gods, like Odin and Thunor. Where the women were all whores and their husbands adulterers…how could her father contemplate sending her to live in such a dark pit of iniquity?

  As Bishop Odo’s raucous laugh boomed across the crowded Hall, Agatha shrank deeper into her holly-green woollen mantle, clasping her fingers tighter together in her anxiety. Her uncle had been there this morning. Confronted by uncle, mother and father together, what chance had she, a ten-year-old girl, of making her voice heard? If she was frightened of her father, she feared Uncle Odo’s chastisement more, for he brought the added wrath of God’s word to his reproof. Agatha knew she could withstand any punishment, any beating, but not the condemnation of God. Surprising even herself, she had shouted and clenched her fists, declaring that she would not, would not, become betrothed to Earl Harold—and her uncle had slapped her, right there in front of her mother and father, slapped her so hard that the bruise would blacken her cheek for many days to come, in the name of God’s displeasure at her discourtesy and refusal to accept her place as a woman and wife.

  A tear dribbled down her cheek. Never before could she remember enduring such misery.

  “Why the tears little mistress? What ails you?”

  A man’s shadow fell tall and broad across her. Her downward gaze saw only his boots. Doe hide, dyed blue. Earl Harold’s boots.

  He sat beside her on the bench, near enough to exchange private talk, distant enough not to compromise her honour. “I think we are all disenchanted this day,” he said. “The rain and biting cold does sour our humour.” He tried a small jest: “They say when this rain eases, that it will turn cold enough to freeze the feathers of a gander’s backside.”

  No smile touched her mouth. Another tear dribbled; she brushed it aside.

  Harold decided to try the direct approach. “Your father tells me that you have been informed of our intended betrothal.” Still no response. He leant forward, cupped her chin with his hand and tilted her face upwards to look into his own. “Am I, then, so terrible a prospect? I am not so bad to look upon and at least my breath does not smell like that of your father’s toothless old wolfhound. Nor do I scratch at fleas with my foot.”

  At last Agatha attempted a smile at his absurdity, then answered him with a choking stammer: “It is England I fear, not you.”

  Harold chuckled. “There is nothing especial to fear about England, sweet one. It is just as damned cold in winter as it is here in Normandy, just as wind-blustered by the northern breezes and flatulent men. Many of us in England are descended from the Viking race, as you are, and we all have as much passion for climbing the ladder of power, by whatever means, legal or murderous, as your father’s fellow countrymen. The one difference between Normandy and England, Lady Agatha, is that we live in houses built of timber, not stone, and we prefer talking about fighting rather than risk smearing blood over our long hair and our trailing moustaches.”

  Agatha fiddled with her kerchief, drawing it fearfully backwards and forwards through her fingers. Whispered, “But I would know no one in England, I should be the only Norman.”

  Setting his large hand over the smallness of hers, Harold shook his head. “There are more than a few of Norman birth in England, child. Our King Edward, for one, is more Norman than English.”

  “But he is old and will soon die!”

  “Aye, and then your father will try to enforce taking the English crown for his own. There’ll be more than a few Normans attempting to come into England when that day occurs, I’m thinking!”

  The girl’s mouth had dropped open. “How did you know? Father has forbidden anyone to talk of his ambition for England!” Her mind raced. Had she inadvertently let it slip? God help her hide if she had!

  Harold gently squeezed her fingers in reassurance. “You father, for all the love you rightfully bear him, is not as clever as he thinks. I have known all along, I am an important man in England; my word will carry much weight when the time comes to elect our next king. Your father has been courting me with as much energy as it seems I may need to employ should I make up my mind to take you as wife.”

  Agatha seized on those last words. He had not, then, yet agreed to have her? Oh, thank God! Mayhap he would not want her and she would be free of this. He seemed so unconcerned about being used by her father as a stepping stone to what nearly all men in Normandy privately said was an impossibility. Robert, her eldest brother, had said openly that their father was a fool if he thought he could ever persuade the English to accept him as their king. “Half of Normandy does not want him because of his tyranny and foul temper,” he had told her not so long ago. “Why he thinks England would open her arms and joyfully welcome him, I know not. Not unless that count
ry is indeed as moon-mad as our father often credits her to be.”

  Agatha had not been shocked by her brother’s discourtesy; Robert detested their father with a vehemence that was becoming close to the hatred that existed between opposing armies. That was another whisper rustling quietly through the shadows of court: one day, when he eventually came into his own strength, Robert would be pushed too far by William’s constant ridiculing and would retaliate by overthrowing his father. Except even Agatha could see that Robert, with his mood swings between spiteful bullying and effeminate parading, was not half the man her father was.

  To Harold, she said, “Do you not mind that my father has been befriending you for purposes of his own? I should be most grieved to learn that I was only wanted as a friend because of my position, not because of who I am.”

  Harold suppressed another laugh. She was so young and naïve. How could he take her away from Normandy and subject her to the lonely life of an unwanted, unloved wife? Yet that was what probably awaited the poor lass anyway, whomsoever she might eventually marry. At least with him she would be getting a man who cared for her welfare. There were plenty of men—men four and five times her age—who would covet the pleasure of taking such a young maid to their bed and nothing else.

  “Do I mind? Non, mademoiselle, not as long as the tactics your father is using suit my purpose also. I am willing to play the blind-eyed fool to his scheming if, at the end of the day, I can return home to England with my brother and nephew.” At the seriousness of her expression, he added with an eye-wrinkling smile. “And warmed with the knowledge that I have had the honour of meeting the prettiest young lady in the whole of Normandy.”

  Agatha blushed. She envied her brothers. They would have some degree of choice in whom they married. It was so hard being born a girl. All the harder, she supposed, once the girl became a woman grown. “If I were to come to England,” she said slowly, “there is the possibility that my father will become king and my mother queen. As your wife I would be at court often, would I not?”

  “Oui, certainement.” What else could Harold reply? She would soon realise, as would her father, that Harold had no intention of promoting William’s hopes before the English Council. Propose a bastard-born Norman for the throne of England? Had Harold heard William’s eldest son’s scorn, he would have cheered at his good sense!

  Harold, glancing across the crowded Hall, saw William fitz Osbern frantically beckoning him. Now what did Duke William’s attendant arse wiper want? “Excuse me, mademoiselle.” Harold stood. “I am being hailed and must go.” He raised her hand to his lips. “I would ask that you keep our conversation private, for the reason that you may, one day soon, be my wife.” He raised an eyebrow and stared his meaning fully at her for a long moment.

  She nodded, the kerchief again threading in agitation through her fingers. He was telling her that if she betrayed his confidence she would regret the tale-telling as soon as he had her in England. “I shall say nothing. I expect Papa wishes you to witness the oath-taking of his lords and nobles. He always insists that all take some part in the ceremony.”

  Harold bowed to Agatha, then walked forward to meet an agitated fitz Osbern, who escorted him towards the raised dais to the east end of the Hall. There Mathilda sat, lavishly gowned, beside her husband; the eldest boy, Robert, scowled his displeasure from the front ranks of waiting noblemen. A few more years and he would be the first required to mount the dais, kneel before the Duke and pledge the annually renewed vow of fealty. If father and son had not succeeded in slitting each other’s throats by then.

  Harold found the prospect of this ceremony distasteful. In England a housecarl pledged loyalty to his lord out of respect and love for that man. They chose which lord they would serve and their faith maintained that lord’s exalted position. If he did not keep faith with their loyalty in return then a lord would fall as swift as a mouldering fruit is plucked from the store barrel and flung to rot on the midden heap. These oaths of allegiance being sworn, monotonously repetitive as, one by one, William’s knights came to kneel and kiss his ring, did not come from the heart. There was no pride in the step of each man who came forward, no sincerity in their muttered words. This oath was made under duress: serve me, be loyal to me, or lose all you have. That was the only choice available to these harnessed mules. Eustace, comte de Boulogne, came forward; Robert de Maine; le comte d’Evreux; le comte de Mortagne; Aimeri, vicomte de Thouars; Walter Gifford; Ralph de Tosny; Hugh de Montfort and Hugh de Grandmesnil; William de Warenne; William Malet; Roger, son of Turold; Turstein fitz Rollo; Richard fitz Gilbert; Alan Fergant de Bretagne, vassal of Normandy…so many more; Harold knew most of them by sight now. He stiffened as a man he had no desire ever to meet again knelt before Duke William. Guy, comte de Ponthieu. He caught Harold’s displeased glower and returned it with a none too discreet gesture of lewdness.

  And then eyes and bodies were swivelling towards Harold.

  “My Lord Earl? Will you not also grant me the honour of declaring your intention of prospective kinship?”

  The Hall had fallen almost silent. Harold stood, bewildered. William sat forward on his throne, one elbow resting on the naked sword blade that lay across his knee. His mouth smiled, but there was a glint of something else in his eyes. “Sir?” he repeated. “You are my knighted comrade. I myself put the armour about your shoulders, placed the sword in your hand, my kiss upon your cheek. You are, are you not, my declared vassal? Will soon, perhaps, become my son by marriage? I think it right you do swear the oath to me also. Do you not agree?”

  This, Harold had not expected. The anger shuddered through him with the force of the bore tide that surged up the estuary of the Severn river. He licked his lips, trying to think what best to do, glanced at the watching faces hoping to spy a hint of help. No one met his eyes. Not one of William’s whore-poxed lick-spits dared face him. How many had known of this trap? How many had privately laughed at the stupidity of this damned bloody fool of an Englishman? Some? All?

  And then Harold saw Hakon standing at the back, his face drained of colour, the fear on it easy to read. Behind him stood two of William’s guards, apparently positioned there by chance, but Harold could see their fingers hovering over their swords, their gazes firm-fixed on Hakon’s back. Knew as well as the lad that were he to refuse to swear then both of them would be seeing the darker side of Duke William’s damp and foul-smelling dungeon. And would be kept there until they died.

  “You promised that you would take me from here!” The words leapt from Hakon’s expressive, desperate eyes. “You promised!”

  In these few short days Harold had come to know Hakon as a trusted and trusting friend. Something that ran deeper than the tie of kinship had sparked between them and the years of enforced separation had dwindled into nothing but a memory.

  How binding was a promise? Ah, that depended on the nature of the oath and the amount of honour within the man. When a man offered his sword to his chosen lord he was bound to keep his word or lose his honour; the promise to set an afeared youth free of his shackles was equally binding. An English lord paid homage and loyalty by undertaking to do his best by the men who served him. To rule fairly, to protect the children and womenfolk, to lead bravely in battle. To take upon his shoulders the responsibility of caring for those men who had promised to serve without question. And in the Saxon tradition, above all else, a man could knowingly declare false oath and not be perjured for that swearing, if the safety or honour of another depended on it.

  They were waiting expectantly, most of them hoping Earl Harold of England would show himself the greater fool by refusing outright the Duke’s command. Harold must surely oblige them, for William had no right to demand he speak the word of faith and fidelity. It would be an oath taken against his will and better judgement. Yet had not most of the men here this day proclaimed their troth under the same harsh conditions? Swear, or lose your land and freedom. Or your
life.

  Duke William was holding his beringed hand out to Harold, the gloating smile broadening into triumph.

  “We are allies, are we not?” he coaxed, his voice smooth with practised charm. “Soon, alas, we must set you on your way home to England, accompanied, no doubt, by your nephew. Soon, also, your brother—Wulfnoth be his name? Wulfnoth will honour me by escorting my eldest-born daughter to you. In return for the patronage of my kinship you will agree to represent my care and concern for the future of England’s throne. You will remind King Edward that he did favour my claim. I shall expect him to honour that favour in the making of his will, and from you also, as my sworn vassal.”

  The fury choked in Harold’s throat. Vomit rose in his gullet. So this was why he had been kept in Normandy, why he had been played for the simpleton! Once the annual day of oath-taking was past, once he had pledged this foul promise, he would be free to return to England. Aye, free, but bribed with the lure of the daughter of the duchy as wife, threatened with harm to his brother if he refused. Yet for the good of another an oath might be made and broken without loss of honour. For the good of Hakon, and more, for the safety of England…They were only words, after all.

  Harold stepped forward, his throat and lips dry, his fists clenched. He stared with a hard dislike at William, then knelt, touched the sword and set his lips to the Duke’s ring.

  William nodded his acceptance, but before Harold could repeat the oath said quickly and with menace, “I think I may need some further assurance from you, my Lord Harold. Being that you do not reside here in Normandy.” He clicked his fingers; two servants brought in two wooden caskets. “These contain the holy relics of Normandy’s most precious saints. Swear your oath on them, Earl Harold, make your words truly binding.”

  Harold’s rage almost boiled over the edge of restraint. It was one thing knowingly to break an oath made to a man, another to do so against God. Yet was not God, too, just and honourable in His wisdom? Did He not respect the time-cherished ways of the Saxon kind? Not bothering to mask the rage that was churning in his mind and stomach, Harold laid a finger on each casket, repeating aloud the words of fealty that Bishop Odo dictated to him: “I pledge to my Lord Duke William, son of Robert of Normandy, my fealty and my loyalty. Do offer my duty as Earl of England to your honour. To speak your words, as if spoken from your mouth, to the noblemen of England’s realm. To provide for you, when Edward is at the end of his noble life and called unto God, the crown, the sceptre and the throne of England, so that you may rule in the way of Edward’s wisdom.” It was done. With gorge in his mouth, but done.