Emma’s stone hall was hung with rich tapestries but otherwise barely furnished and heated only by one small brazier. She had no intention of wasting the savings of a life-time on fuel bills. However, she was not averse to having rich and beautiful things about her - hence the tapestries, the gold drinking vessels, the furs wrapped round her thin but by no means frail body, the jewels and gold she wore, including a circlet with enough ornamentation to be called a crown. All these were saleable commodities. Charcoal ash and chicken bones were not. She did not rise from her throne-like seat when Edward approached but let him kiss a cheek lined like a walnut but fragrant with Indian sandalwood.
‘You’re not king yet,’ she said, explaining why she had stayed in her seat.
‘But you are for ever a queen,’ he replied and took the armless chair that had been set for him beside hers.
Her red-dyed hair was pulled back beneath her crown-like coronet. Her eyes were bright and sharp, the black pupils bird-like in their darting awareness. She was never quite still - her nails, long, brown, ridged and hooked, tick-tocked on the arms of her chair, which were carved at the ends like lion heads; her feet tapped to some inner rhythm only she could hear. She brushed aside his enquiries about her health.
‘So,’ she began, ‘you would be king.’
‘I will be king.’
‘Not while those bully boys rule you.’
He shrugged, ignored a spike of irritation.
‘I need them now. I shall not need them for ever.’
‘So. When you no longer need them you’ll say, Dear Godwin, dear Sweyn, dear Harold and so on, thank you very much for everything you have done for me, now kindly relinquish your earldoms and all your power and go and live in . . . Cathay, beyond high Karakoum and the Roof of the World . . .’ she cackled, snapped her fingers, ‘and just like that they’ll pack their bags and go.’
Foolishly (but who can avoid mentioning, as if casually, the name of a secret lover?), he replied: ‘You left out Tostig.’
‘Oh, keep your bummer boy. He’s of no account.’
Irritation shifted to an anger he bottled up.
‘Mother, come to the point. Why have you sent for me?’
She leant towards him, fixed his eyes with hers, sank her voice to a whisper.
‘Tell Siward and Leofric that if they need money to raise a power strong enough to defeat the Godwins you have it.’
He was so taken aback at this that he had to stand, walk behind his chair, then turn away, strut half the length of the hall before returning.
‘If anyone can hear us,’ he was thinking of Stigand, ‘you have already said enough to have us murdered.’
Her claw-hands ceased their tap-tap and gripped the chair arms so her swollen knuckles showed white.
‘Jesus, but you are your father’s son.’ She meant Ethelred, but her mind was fixed on Godwin. Her voice shook with rage and chagrin. ‘That man, that evil bull of a man ruled England whenever your step-father was away - You and Alfred were in Normandy so you did not know, but he treated me like dirt. And he murdered your brother. Your brother! Does not that count, does that not mean something . . .? Come on, you steer, you eunuch, does that not mean something?’
He swung back at her, smashed his fist into his palm.
‘Of course it does. But when the time is ripe. When it can be done with no loss to me, to you,’ he hissed, close to her ear, afraid to shout, ‘then we’ll do it. Do you not understand? Wessex, Sussex, Kent, East Anglia, the shires north of the Thames, the ships, the navy, the house-carls - will your treasure run so far as to buy a host big enough?’
‘Yes. Even without Siward and Leofric. There are Normans I, we, can buy. Danes, Norsemen. Macbeth too is a mighty warrior and, being a Scot, always ready to accept a handout --’
‘And do you think, once this hired host has come and ravaged the country, this part of it anyway, to ruination, and killed all the Godwinsons as well as their father, for if one of the brood remains alive none will be safe, the people of this country will want me as their king?”
‘The people? Pah! Who are the people? The people will do as they are told.’ Ever a good Norman was Queen Emma.
‘And do you really believe,’ still hissing, ‘that out of all that hired host, victorious as it will be, they will not find a prince, a duke or a king they would rather serve than me?’
He took deep breaths, calmed himself a little, and returned to his seat beside her.
‘Mother,’ his voice took on a pleading, reasoning tone, ‘you upbraided me with being my father’s son. But he was a fool and I am not. He was foolhardy, and I am not. He was a wastrel of his resources and callous with human life--’
‘And I am not,’ she chanted with him, rocking her head from side to side in mockery.
He struggled to ignore this, but only just.
‘Unfortunate though it is, Godwin and the Godwinsons are the only resource I have. What is fortunate is that they need me. That’s the way things are. They will not always be so, but now, yes, that is the way things are.’
He stooped to kiss her, but she shrank back as if from something vile. He turned, walked briskly back to the door that faced her. Behind him she stood, hands still on the lion carvings of her chair and screamed: ‘You are a cock-quean, a faggot, a coward, a fool. You’ll regret this. You’ll be sorry for this. And when you are, remember Alfred, my first-born and your brother . . .’
Chaplain Stigand showed him personally to the street door.
That was not the end of the story. In September of the same year Edward, now King, was in Colchester, the guest of Harold Godwinson, then Earl of East Anglia, with whom he already had some rapport. Together they were reviewing the needs of the fleet: rumour had it, backed by reports from spies, that Magnus, King of Norway, son of the sainted Olaf who had supplanted Swein and Canute’s first Queen Elgiva, was planning at least a series of raids, and possibly a full-scale invasion.
Edward and Harold were standing on the quay, watching the grey tide flood over the brown flats below the town and up the navigable channel that led back to the Thames Estuary. Beside them an attendant scooped oysters from a bucket, opened them skilfully with his seax, salted their phlegmatic flesh, and handed them in turn to each of the two lords. They swallowed them with relish, even though they were the staple of the very poorest in the area, those who cut reeds in the fens to supply thatch. Gulls, black-headed and the larger predatory brownish ones, swooped and cackled tunelessly about the two men, hoping for scraps. Between oysters they discussed where a ship repair yard should be sited and a naval magazine, and the difficulty of procuring adequate timber in a region where the trees were all willow, alder or poplar.
A distant blast on a horn drew their attention to the causeway that carried the London road across the estuary. Four horsemen came towards them at a slow gallop. The standard amongst them and the way the sun glinted off helmets and mail suggested they were people of some note. At a hundred paces Harold recognised Leofwyne, his younger brother. Breathless, the youth swung his leg over the front pommel of his saddle and slipped to the ground, feeling as he did for a parchment in the leather pouch at his belt. Though he made a brief obeisance to Edward, it was to Harold that he gave the letter. The seal had already been broken. Harold took his time, for he was not that well lettered, handed it to Edward.
‘Here, you had better read this.’
Edward glanced first at the addressee and then at the signature and style given at the bottom. The first was Magnus, King of Norway; the second Emma, Queen of England. Then he read the matter between, which was in a clerkly hand, not hers. The gist was plain. Whereas the Kingdom of England had been given over to her son Edward who was a cowardly sodomist who allowed himself to be governed by a gang of murderous rogues, she, mindful of Magnus’s sainted father and his unblemished record as a Christian Prince both just and wise, invited him to come to England to clean out the midden it had become. To this end she was ready to put at his disposal gold
coin and jewels, worth some thirty thousand pounds.
‘Is it your mother’s hand?’
‘The signing is.’
Edward, pale, hands shaking, turned the parchment over, fitted the cracked wax together.
‘The seal, too.’
Harold sent an oyster shell, which skipped five times’ skimming across the tide race, which was now almost level with the quay, wiped his mouth on his sleeve, turned to his brother.
‘Has our dad seen this?’
‘Yes. He sent me, he said we were to --’
‘How did it come into his hands?’
‘Stigand got hold of it. In fact she asked him to find messengers who would carry it for her.’
‘All right. Now tell us what Dad says.’
‘He says to meet him at the bridge at Putney and to ride as fast as we can to Winchester. We must get there before she has news that we are on our way.’
‘To what end?’
Leofwine, whose eczema had receded, glanced at Edward. Harold reassured him.
‘This is the King’s business, not ours. Speak openly.’
‘To take her treasure off her before she can plan any more mischief with it, and put her in a house of seclusion.’ He turned to Edward. ‘Not a prison, but under watch by people we can trust.’
‘And the treasure?’
A brief pause.
‘Why, to be placed in the King’s treasury. Of course.’
Harold turned to Edward.
‘Would that be your wish too?’
Just once, Edward thought, you might bother with a Sire, or a Majesty, or even Your Grace.
‘All right. But I ride with you.’
Two days later, they burst in on her - Edward at the front, briefly, Godwin, Sweyn, Tostig, Harold, Leofwine close behind and overtaking him. Behind them came housecarls equipped with crowbars and outside in the street a small fleet of covered waggons waited.
There were no formalities, no laboured reading from a warrant or a judgement. They went straight to it, the way shown by Stigand who clearly knew where to go, down to the cellars, breaking locks, dragging out chests which sometimes needed four strong men to lift. Emma stormed about screaming abuse directed mostly at Godwin himself whose eyes she tried to tear out with her long hooked nails. No doubt she had her first-born in mind. Roughly restrained though she was, she yet broke free and turned on Edward, making a grab for his balls and screaming that, unnatural practiser of forbidden vices as he was, she would be happy to castrate him herself. Harold and Leofwine bundled her back into her great chair and Harold tore from her cloak the silver brooch she wore, depicting a hawk grappling with its prey. It had been a betrothal gift from Canute.
Meanwhile Godwin and Sweyn rampaged around the room, tearing down the tapestries, and dropping the few but expensive ornaments, drinking vessels and so on into sacks. Physically restrained, Emma regained if not composure then at least some self-control, and at this point Stigand came into the room. There was, he began to say, more to be collected from the upper rooms but the doors were good ones and the locks Moorish work and very fine -- it would be a shame to break them . . .
‘There, there’s your man,’ she screamed, and managed to get on her feet again. ‘He put me up to it, it was his idea, he composed the letter, the fucking bastard even wrote it . . .’
One glance at the cleric confirmed the truth. It was not transparent guilt that seared Edward’s heart but the look of complicity the monk exchanged with old Godwin. The fear, hate and scorn Edward felt for Godwin and all their clan, apart from Tostig whom he loved and Harold for whom he was learning an unwilling respect, bit deeper into his soul. And worse was to come.
Chapter Seventeen
One June dawn in the first full year of his reign he woke in the upper room of the great hall of Cheddar to find that Tostig had deserted their bed, was sitting on a small bench beneath the small window. Since it was near the solstice and the sun had just risen above the gorge the youth was bathed in the magical light of full dawn. The horizontal beams made a nimbus of his yellow hair: he looked like a naked angel, Lucifer before The Fall.
Outside the dawn chorus quite overpowered the crowing of numerous roosters in the enclosures below and the village beyond. A stir in air which had responded to the sudden warmth of the sun filled the room with the fragrances of honey-suckle and rambling roses. White-rumped house martins flashed by, feeding their twittering young in their clay-built nests suspended beneath the eaves. The grey shape of a cuckoo flew by above the trees, and the woods resounded with its trisyllabic call. “In June I change my tune.”
Meanwhile a very small baby balled its lungs out at some distance - from the lady’s bower. Edward guessed the source: the day before he had stood as sponsor, godfather to the tiny infant. What was the baby’s name? Athelstan. What will he be when he grows up? The mother had answered -- a bishop. The father, step-father apparently, the father having fallen to his death down the cliffs in the gorge, raiding a peregrine nest for its chicks, replied - housecarl.
Edward eased himself upwards, put his hands behind his head, spread his elbows. For a month he had been housed here in a timber hall with plank walls plastered with rough-cast while he sorted out the government of the south-west corner of his kingdom. Albeit the only latrine was outside and at the other end of the building and the whole place was draughty in comparison with a decent solid-stone Norman keep with proper conveniences, he had to admit to himself England had its points -- at any rate during a fine spell in early summer.
He felt drowsy, over-relaxed, ready perhaps to sleep again, though the noises from below and the smells too of fresh baked bread overriding or mingling with the fragrance of the blossom told him that soon the young thegn who served as steward of the bed-chamber would be knocking discreetly at the door. And the reason for this delicious lassitude was the passion, excessive even by their standards, which Tostig had brought to their love-making the night before, that and rather more mead than he was accustomed to.
He licked his lower lip and found the tiny swelling where Tostig had bitten it; the skin round his groin still tingled from where the young man’s stubble had too roughly pushed and rubbed against it. There were odours on his fingers that he savoured . . .
‘Last night,’ he began, ‘you were--’
He was going to say ‘magnificent’, but in response to his voice, Tostig turned his head from the sun and Edward could see how tears rolled down his cheeks. He was off the bed immediately, kneeling between his lover’s knees, holding his face between both palms.
‘Don’t cry, please don’t cry. You know I can put it right, whatever it is . . .’
And he stood and cradled Tostig’s cheek against his stomach, smoothed his long hair, continued to murmur love and assurance.
Tostig broke back, looked up at him.
‘I’ll tell you the matter.’ His voice was hoarse, his eyes frantic. ‘They want you to marry. I’ve been meaning to tell you for weeks, but we were so happy I couldn’t. They want you to marry Edith, my sister--’
‘Who wants this?’ This was a shout, although Edward knew the answer. He clenched his fists, banged them on the folded back shutter so it banged against the wall. A chunk of plaster fell to the floor, revealing the plank behind. “I’ll see them in hell first,’ and he stamped about the room, throwing their clothes about, came back to the shutter, banged it again so more plaster fell. ‘In hell before I marry,’ he repeated.
Tostig looked up at him, shook his head wonderingly, but suppressed a hint of a smile from his lips and the laugh that was in his throat.
‘No you won’t,’ he said, and then his lovely face darkened again. ‘I tell you, she’s a bitch, a bloody, bloody bitch. And she’ll have you to sleep with her here in my place.’
‘I won’t, I won’t,’ stormed the King. ‘I will not allow it.’
‘You will. Oh yes you will.’
‘Why?’
‘England requires you to provide her with a succes
sor.’
‘There are many alive, and no doubt others to be born who qualify’
‘Too many. And where there are too many there will be divisions and strife. Civil war.’
It was not Godwin he was faced with, not a Godwinson, but the man who had betrayed his mother, or trapped her into treason - Stigand, now rewarded with the bishopric of Elmham for his pains, a position which was more important than it sounded, for the Bishop of Elmham was in fact the Bishop of East Anglia. It may not have been a coincidence that Harold Godwinson was its earl.
They were in Bath, in the Benedictine Abbot’s private rooms which had been made available to them. Since the Benedictines had been there for a hundred years, and were so far untouched by the Cluniac reforms, the interview took place in surroundings that were certainly comfortable and bordered on the luxurious. The large chairs were cushioned and the cushions were embroidered with hunting scenes rather than religious ones; the jug and cups from which Stigand poured mead were silver, and there were silver plates filled with cherries and wild strawberries. Outside in the cloister butterflies flickered above the flowering aromatic herbs the monks used to invigorate their cuisine and bumble-bees cruised through them. ‘You speak as if I might die tomorrow.’
‘May the King live for ever,’ Stigand replied and spat out a cherry stone. ‘A gracious prayer, said at every coronation since that of Solomon, but a vain one. You are mortal. However,’ he sighed and shifted in his seat, easing beneath him the chasuble which he had not bothered to remove after Mass; Edward sensed a fart but a silent one, ‘. . . we do hope you will live long enough to see your son and heir reach his majority.’ ‘We?’
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