Leofwine looked at Gyrth, who nodded, then straightened and faced Harold who straightened too. Both shared a reputation for selfless courage and strength. Like all of Godwin’s son they were handsome, well set-up, proud.
‘Brother. Gyrth and I have talked long about what I am going to say and we are agreed on it. The oath that was forced from you in Bayeux a year ago means nothing to us, but there are many, perhaps some even in this room, certainly in the ranks of the fyrd and the housecarls, who say because of it you should not lead an English army against the Bastard. Please hear me out. We think your plan is the best there is and sure of success . . . but you must admit,’ and here a hint of a smile lifted the corners of his mouth beneath his moustache, ‘it is not complicated, it requires little in the way of finesse or cunning. In short, Gyrth and I are quite capable of carrying it out without you. Moreover, if anything should go wrong then at least England shall still have its rightful king around whom resistance and indeed armies will gather again, whereas if we lose you then, indeed, all will be lost.’
The colour that had filled Harold’s face faded and left him almost white beneath skin coppered by years on campaign or hunting through forests and over hills. He bit his lip and then turned, left the room. Again he went to his abbey church. When he came back to the hall he looked calmer but somehow sad as well, yet determined. He paused as soon as he was over the threshold and the men at the other end of the room turned to look at him.
‘Brothers,’ he said, ‘I am the King. No one else. And I must defend my right and my title. If I do not then, indeed, will the hearts of our men be filled with doubt as to who should rule -- he who hangs back behind his younger brothers or he who leads his men into battle. Now . . .’ and he came firmly into the hall and took up his place again by the fire-side, ‘let’s sort out the details.’
Next day, just as the light began to fade, Harold himself, with his five companions and his two standards, was the first to arrive at the meeting place. From the crest he could see the Norman camp, nearly six miles away, just north of the small town and port, how already an earthen motte and bailey castle dominated the fields and marshes around it and even the masts of the ships beyond. The sun shone on the sea, turning lead into gold beneath the grey clouds. The breeze was stiff enough to shift the folds of the gold dragon and the Fighting Man and cold enough to make the men shiver as the sweat from twelve hours’ steady riding dried on them.
Walt looked around, at the Normans and the sea, and then back to the forest they had come through. A long line of men, spears and helmets glinting, wound out of it and the sound they made was a sibilant rumble punctuated by the squeal of cart- wheels. Then he glanced at the tree by his side.
The bark and twigs were covered with a friable, grey lichen which crumbled at the touch. A handful of tiny, wormy, wizened apples still clung to its brittle twisted twigs. Possibly the long, cold, dry summer had deprived its roots of water on the chalky top of its hill, but, whatever, it was dead.
Chapter Fifty-Four
By seven o’clock the next morning it was clear that William had decided to attack. Scouts rode back from the Norman camp with news that they were arming and forming up, and presently the first columns began to wind up the road. Harold immediately deployed the housecarls across the ridge from coombe to coombe, from brook to forest, in a line four deep and a thousand yards wide, so each man had room to wield his battle-axe or sword and leave gaps through which the skirmishers drawn from the fyrd could filter out and in. Daffydd and Walt, with help from Rip, Shir and Timor, dug holes into the chalk next to the grey apple tree and planted the staffs of the standards in it, thus leaving their hands free to fight.
Harold called his brothers in from either side and gave them final orders. They were to fight in open order unless William massed a large number of well-armed men in one place, in which case the housecarls were to overlap shields in a shield wall - especially this was the tactic to be used against mounted attack. They should not, he insisted, be awed by men fighting from horses -- no horse would charge a wall, they all knew that, and as soon as the enemy came close, they should go for the horse first, then the man.
‘You have only one thing to fear,’ he concluded, ‘and that is their superior numbers. But it doesn’t need a single man more than we have to hold this ridge, three thousand can defend it as well as ten thousand could. But remember, it is the ridge, the hill, that makes this so. Break ranks either in flight or attack and, as long as they have more men than we do, they’ll carve us up. That’s my last word. Stay in the wall. Stay put.’
He embraced his brothers, shook their hands and turned away. There was a solemnity in what he said and in the way he shrugged on his byrnie and helmet and allowed Walt to fasten the collar of the one to the neck of the other. His fingers touched and then lingered for a moment on the small gold crown that circled it, then he grinned.
‘Is it straight?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Right, then.’ He pulled in breath, smacked his leather gloves together. ‘Let’s go for it.’
The Normans were now just over half a mile away and, behind a screen of light troops, mostly bowmen, were deploying into close-knit lines - foot soldiers first and then mounted knights - in three main blocks across the slope. The English could easily make out which was William himself. He was taller than almost anyone in either army, a gangly figure occasionally lurching on his big, black stallion as he cantered and trotted this way and that with a handful of men and his lion standard behind him. They could even make out his high voice shouting, almost screaming as he got his men into line, just so, just as he wanted them. They could see the white and gold banner the Pope had sent and the small reliquaries that were slung round his neck from gold chains, the reliquaries on which Harold had sworn his oath.
At last they moved forward, and, since bowmen and light troops remained as a screen in front of the leading files, Harold ordered the first wave of the fyrd to filter through the ranks and engage them. As he did so a solitary figure broke through the Normans, a weird capering figure, in a bard’s purple cloak, but bareheaded, almost bald, black-bearded, carrying a small guitar.
Paien s’adubeut desobsercs sarazineis
Tuit li plusur en sunt dublez en treis
Lacent lor elmes mult bous samguzeis
Ceignente spees del'acer viaueis . . .
The pagans put on their Saracen hauberks
Most of them triple-linked
They lace up their helmets from Saragossa
And buckle on their swords of Vianian steel . . .
‘And it really was Taillefer?’
Oh, yes. It really was.’
A shower of missiles were slung at him and down he went, with blood streaming across his face. Within moments the front rank of the advancing Normans, bowmen for the most part, had trampled over him and he was not seen again -- not until he turned up outside the gate of Nicaea, busking for a living.
The thousand or so of the fyrd who had filtered through our lines were carrying as many missiles as they could manage, in their hands, slung about them from leather straps, in bags, stuck in their belts -- small throwing-axes, rocks tied to the ends of short hafts, just plain stones. The Norman bowmen were no match for them - the bowmen were shooting uphill, their arrows rarely did more than graze a neck, a shoulder or a thigh, they fired at will which meant there was no concerted volley and each separate churl or freeman was able to dodge any arrow that threatened his face. Meanwhile the English flung what they had brought with them, downhill and from close quarters, laying the archers low or driving them back through the ranks of the oncoming soldiers.
These were different -- with their long leaf-shaped shields, their hauberks of mail and their steel helmets, they moved slowly but relentlessly, and while a few took a serious knock or two, sticks and stones were not going to stop them: the fyrd fell back before them, mostly in good order, some scampering not out of fear but with battle-glee at having played their par
t so well. And we, housecarls and companions, drew swords and hefted our axes -- took breath, and held it.
The first thrust as a spear probes your guard, the first clang as a sword edge smashes across the rim of your shield, the first metallic crunch as you swing your axe or sword-blade into the chain-mail just below your adversary’s ribs and you see his face contort with rage and pain as the blood spouts from his side - these are shocks, physical and psychic, and suddenly you realise, yes, the bastard really does want to kill me and the only way I can stop him is by . . . and he falls aside but there’s another one behind him.
Face to face, line to line, the battle at this stage resolved itself into a series of single combats -- short and long, shifting as a fallen man allowed you to help your neighbour or brought in two on one against you, each man deploying his own particular skills and weapons - sword, axe or mace, making the best of his physique, denying his weaknesses to his adversary. The big and strong relied on a solidly held shield, a weapon swung with such force that it would break down the defences of the men they faced; the smaller, like Daffydd or Timor, on nimbleness of foot to dodge a blow and strike under a careless guard. Where numbers were not a consideration, the victory tended to go to the side that had the advantage of the ground, whose members were fittest and whose weapons and armour were most sound. The weight of mail began to tell on our backs and arms, the repeated sickening jar of blows taken on shields or parried, the mounting heat although the day was cool, and, before long, hunger and thirst - for the fact of the matter was the Normans had rested for a fortnight, during which we had fought at Stamford and marched much the length of England twice.
But at last trumpets called them back. For a moment some of the housecarls hallooed with the battle-joy of victory and began to break ranks in pursuit. Harold’s voice rang across the hillside and most of us remembered our orders and held back. The wild ones, seeing themselves out on their own, paused, hurled insults and what missiles they could pick up off the ground at the retreating Normans and then regained the line.
Clustered round the apple tree and the twin standards, Harold weighed up our situation. To left and right the standards of both his brothers still stood, the slope was strewn with dead and wounded, and most were Normans. Our line still held, and looking back north he could see more men now winding down the track out of the forest: a Mercian ealdormen with a hundred housecarls, and maybe twice as many levies, their billhooks over their shoulders, their round shields on their backs. He looked back over the Norman army below him and smiled. With luck, by midday or a little later, our numbers might match or surpass those of the invader.
I also took stock. Since Wulfric s death I was the most senior of the companions. Daffydd was on the ground with Timor hunkered in front of him bathing a nasty gash on the Welsh princeling’s cheek. Shir was just returning from taking his brother Rip to the rear with a broken arm. My own right arm was badly bruised and possibly grazed beneath the mail and ached terribly, but still seemed to work, and when the battle-joy came again I knew I would forget the pain. But so far we were all still alive, and more important, so was our chief, our man, our king.
Trumpets again, and this time it was the mounted soldiers who were forming into lines below us. Pennants fluttered from lances, helmets stood out black against the sheen of the distant sea, hooves rattled on the loose flints in the turf, harnesses jingled, horses snorted and some neighed with the trumpets. Harold, and his brothers to left and right, brought all the housecarls forward from four lines into two and the front line overlapped their shields to make a solid wall eight hundred yards long while those behind waited to fill any gaps that occurred or deal with knights that got through.
Duke William himself, with gold circling his helmet above the nose-guard, and behind him the white and gold banner of the Pope next to his own gold lion on a crimson ground, was out in front. Behind him, a regiment of horse, three deep across a front of a hundred and fifty troopers, broke into a slow trot, holding their line steady. Out on the wings, similar formations also moved forward and the ground began to shake.
For many of us English this was a moment of deep uncertainty. Few of us had ever faced mounted soldiers before and, though we had been told what to do, and been assured that it would work, it was suddenly difficult to believe. For a start the horses were much bigger than we had expected, gleaming blacks and bays for the most part, four-year-old stallions, several hands taller than the ponies we used, not for fighting but for hunting or travelling.
At twenty yards the Normans hurled their lances, which did little damage though those that were aimed high above the wall did get in the way. We were tripping over them for most of the rest of the day. Then, drawing swords and maces (William himself had a spiked mace a yard long), and giving a great shout, they spurred their mounts into a slow gallop and thundered across the space between. The urge to run before such an onslaught of metal and heavy horse flesh was almost irresistible but the wall held. For the most part the horses turned sideways on as they reached us, refusing to lead with their heads but used their shoulders and haunches to barge into our shields while the knights reined blows on helmets and shield rims from the advantage their height gave them.
Here and there the wall did break, a shield buckling forward, a man dropping backwards with blood pouring from his smashed-in forehead, but when that happened and a knight urged his big, heavy horse into the gap, the cry went up: ‘Kill the beast, then the man, kill the beast first!'
Not as easy as it sounds, although the horses themselves carried no armour. Swords slashed into their necks and flanks, axes hacked at their legs. They dealt out almost as much grief and damage with their heavily shod hooves as the knights on their backs did, until at last over they toppled in a maelstrom of whirling limbs, the weight crushing the men they fell on in the dense throng. Sometimes an unhorsed knight got through the line but then the men from the fyrd hurled themselves, five or six at once, on to him, weaving past his whirling sword or mace, grasping his knees and neck, hauling him to the ground where a seax could cut his throat or search up for his genitals beneath the split skirts of his mail.
Yet, for all the line held, we suffered heavy losses, for most knights that went down took three or more with them. William himself lost his horse in the wall, and for a moment was circled, only yards from Harold’s standards, by thegns and housecarls. This was the nearest they came to each other in the fight. For a second their eyes met above the helms of those who stood between them, and a moment of cold silence passed. Then, bellowing and swinging his terrible mace, William fought his way out without hurt, and, spattered with blood, left smashed skulls and rib-cages behind him. One of the ones he killed was Shir from Thornig Hill.
After twenty minutes of this the trumpets sounded again and, to a derisive cheer from all of us, the Norman horse pulled back -- but it was no defeat, simply that their horses were winded, their arms leaden. Almost immediately the foot soldiers repeated their first attack. But this time Harold ordered the line to remain with shields locked and there was little the foot-soldiers could do against the wall apart from win a respite for the troopers, who reformed behind them and in many cases took second mounts.
It was at this point, as they pulled back and the horsemen came on again, that I felt my spirit overwhelmed by fatigue. Where there had been a sort of glory and hope if not certainty, there was now disgust edged with the bitter, sharp taste of fear. All around and in front of me men were dying of fearful wounds, faces once proud and handsome were twisted in grimaces of agony, rage, and, as they realised they were dying, of fear. There was blood everywhere, and shattered bones in it, spilled brains and purple guts. The smell was appalling, too -- blood and shit, the slaughter-house and the shit-house.
For a moment I covered my eyes with my hands and briefly was overwhelmed by longing -- for Iwerne, for the bower at night where Erica held me in her arms with my head between her breasts and I could hear the slow, steady beat of her heart and savour her nesty w
armth, the blissful comfort of satisfied desire, the sweet givingness of muscles relaxed and rested.
But the Norman too were feeling the strain, not those in the middle, still led as they were by the Bastard, now mounted on a frisky chestnut, but over on the English right, the Norman left, where the advance was slower and more broken up than before, with those who were better mounted getting ahead of the rest. At the far end there was a slope down into marshy ground before a steeper climb up the other side and it seemed some of the horses were almost dragged down into it. The result was that the Norman line was broken even before it got to the shield wall and the knights were arriving piecemeal, ten or a score at a time. The English, seeing an advantage, broke out of the wall, surrounded these small detachments and hewed them to pieces as they isolated them man by man. Those further down, instead of coming up the hill to their comrades’ aid now hesitated and milled about indecisively. Seeing this the second line of our housecarls broke out and, followed by the fyrd, went careering down the slope to fall on them. The Norman cavalry broke back up the hill down which they had come and rolled back on to their own infantry who were also thrown into disarray.
In the midst of the melee round the standards, Harold did not realise what was happening, but from the back of his horse William did. Breaking off from the fight in the centre he went careering across the slope. He screamed with rage, hurled abuse, battered his own men with the flat of his sword (he had lost his mace), and turned them round, got them into some sort of line just as the English, now climbing the reverse slope into the Norman position, got amongst them.
The Last English King Page 40