Conqueror

by Stephen Baxter

  Meanwhile the invasion fleet was built and assembled. William’s advisors had calculated that nearly seven hundred ships would be needed. Most of these ships would have to be built from scratch. Norse and Danish shipwrights agreed on a design with broad beams and shallow draught, capable of crossing the ocean then navigating far upriver if necessary, and easily hauled ashore on the roughest beach. Some of the ships would be constructed with enclosed booths for the horses, like floating stables.

  Woodmen, shipwrights and carpenters came from all across Europe to labour all summer with their saws, axes, adzes and bills, hammering together the ships. The Viking shipbuilders were the best, of course, their skills honed over centuries and passed down father to son. To supply this vast industry immense rafts of stripped logs were floated down the river arteries. It was said that fifty thousand trees were felled.

  The great invasion was a massive undertaking that drained the resources of the whole duchy - and it all had to be paid for. William imposed quotas on his nobles: you ‘owed’ so many ships, so many infantrymen, so many horsemen. Even Odo had to provide a hundred ships. William made up shortfalls from his own coffers and the duchy’s treasury.

  Orm began to see that the invasion was an extraordinary gamble. If it failed, Normandy would be left bankrupt and bereft of a generation of leaders. Its enemies, not least the king of the Franks, would surely pounce. But the Duke’s will never faltered.

  As a fatherless child William drew his closest allies from his own family, his half-brothers by the tanner’s daughter, Robert of Mortain and Odo of Bayeux. These three were energetic competent men around forty years old. They were hardened, experienced warriors - even Odo, who proudly wore a coat of chain-mail, paid for by poor folks’ church tithes. They were after all descended from Viking raiders who had cowed a Frankish king into ceding them Normandy; they were formidable.

  But they were limited men, Orm thought, compared to English rulers like Harold.

  In England, freemen met in their open-air moots once a month; the moots of a hundred would gather under the reeves two or three times a year; and the witan, the sum of all these small councils, met twice yearly. It was imperfect, but it was a way for the smallest voice in the land to be heard by the King. There was nothing like the witan in Normandy, no element of consent in the governing. William was a primitive ruler who used the rewards of military success to cement the allegiance of his followers. And he expected them in turn to respect his own authority absolutely. If they didn’t, they were shut out.

  And if William took England, Orm saw, this limited man with his band of petty war-making brutes would come into possession of wealth and lands beyond the dreams of the monarchs of Europe. It was an astounding thought.

  But first there was an invasion to mount.

  The culmination of all the preparations came in June. The dedication of an abbey constructed by William’s wife Mathilda became a celebration of bloody war, and soldiers in mail coats watched William and Mathilda give their seven-year-old daughter to be a child oblate at the abbey. Orm thought this mixture of sanctity and aggression was utterly characteristic of William.

  With the ships built, William gathered his fleet and his forces in the Dives estuary. But the weather was poor, with ceaseless rain and northerly winds that kept the fleet stuck in port. The men and their horses sheltered in their vast camps, in tents if they were lucky, under cloaks and blankets thrown over branches if not. Every week two thousand carts brought food, fuel, water and wine, and a thousand carts left full of horse manure. Disease nibbled away at the static army. William ordered fasts and prayers; he had relics paraded by the sea.

  But still the weather did not break.

  And in England, a different threat loomed.

  XIV

  Godgifu saw the English army arrive from afar, from her position on a slight rise away from Hardrada’s main camp at Stamfordbrycg. And, though she was too far away to see the expressions on their faces, she could see shock and fear ripple through the ranks of the Norse and their English allies.

  The geography of the site was clear, in this place that was soon to become a battleground. It even looked beautiful, in the bright noon light of a September day. There was the river running roughly north to south, crossed at the bridge by the arrow-straight east-west line of the Roman road to Jorvik. The Norse had spread themselves out on both sides of the river around the bridge, and threads of fires rose from their camp. On the east bank Godgifu could see the ugly raven standard, the ‘Land Waster’, of the King of Norway, Harald Sigurdsson - known as Hardrada, Ruthless—with the lesser standard of his English ally Tostig rising alongside.

  The Norse were relaxed. Some of them were even fishing.

  And there came the English, advancing steadily along the Roman road towards the bridge, their painted shields a colourful wall before them, their conical helmets shining like grains of wheat. Godgifu saw standards rising from among their ranks: the Wessex dragon, and the red and gold Fighting Man, the standard of Harold King of England, this September day not yet ten months on his throne.

  It was impossible for Harold to be here. And yet he was.

  ‘Hell,’ said Estrith. ‘Hell, hell, hell. They’ve caught us with our pants around our ankles. Who’d have thought it? Now we’re for it. Come on, Godgifu, help me with this stuff.’ She was bundling up clothing, bits of armour and weaponry, food. Beyond, the other women collapsed sail-cloth tents and ran for the horses.

  Estrith, a powerful woman of about forty, was the wife of a fyrdman, a common English soldier - a man who was down there by the bridge, Godgifu realised, along with the rest of Tostig’s contingent. These women had sheltered Godgifu since the Norse had joined the English. Godgifu ought to help them break camp and flee.

  But she couldn’t take her eyes off the scene unfolding down by the river.

  The Norse commanders issued hasty orders, trying to rouse their men. Scouts ran for their horses and rode east, heading for the fleet, to call for armour and reinforcements.

  But the English were here, already in battle order under the noon sun. They approached from the west, from Jorvik, and the Norse detachment on that side of the river was small and mostly unarmed. These men now scrambled to get back across the bridge to the east bank. They were brave, brutal men, hardened by years of warfare - but only moments before they had believed they were safe. Now, as English arrows began to fly, they panicked, crowding onto the bridge, and Godgifu heard the first screams of the day.

  The English foot-soldiers reached the bridge and a wall of shields pressed into the mass of Norse, swords and axes flailing. Blood splashed, bright red in the noon light, becoming a kind of crimson mist amid which blades hacked and slashed. The cries were sharp now, like the screams of wounded birds.

  This was the first pitched battle Godgifu had witnessed. She had been involved in combat herself, in the raids with Tostig’s men on the south coast, and in petty incidents when she had protected her brother. But she had seen nothing of the first major battle of the summer, Hardrada’s victory over the English at the Foul Ford. She had never seen anything like this before, a scene of hundreds of men crowding, hacking and stabbing at each other almost mindlessly.

  It didn’t last long. The last of the Norse fled, or were cut down, and the English had the bridge. Already the river ran red with blood. The English began to advance once more, stepping over corpses and kicking them into the water.

  Godgifu felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Estrith. ‘It’s always like this, you know.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Battle,’ Estrith said. ‘Just a bloody churning. And it all comes down to numbers. Now we get a break. They’re going to talk before they fight.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About avoiding the slaughter. Perhaps Harold is asking for Tostig to be given up.’

  ‘If so he will offer him quarter,’ Godgifu said. ‘Harold won’t kill his brother.’

  ‘After inviting in an invader, after th
is?’ Estrith shrugged. ‘Then he’s a fool. But it’s up to him. Anyhow while they are talking, which won’t be for long, we have to move.’

  ‘Why?’

  Estrith sighed. ‘You really are green. Everybody knows the Norman Bastard is prowling the coast of Frankia, waiting for the wind to carry him to England. Do you think Harold is going to show mercy to whatever’s left of Hardrada’s rabble, to leave them to roam around Northumbria causing trouble? No. Harold will cut them down. And he will be no less sparing with us, mark my words.’

  ‘So we run.’

  ‘We run.’

  But even as she worked with the women, frantically packing up the camp, Godgifu kept an eye on the battlefield. Unable to get the blood out of her head, she thought it seemed a long time since May when she had joined Tostig, a long journey that had brought her to this muddy Northumbrian river bank.

  XV

  Godgifu had been riding with Tostig since his first landings on the south coast. Tostig’s men had had trouble knowing what to make of her. She was a woman who fought; she was neither a wife nor a nun nor a whore. But she had proven her worth in the light skirmishes they had fought as Tostig raided along the coast. She was treated with respect by the English, and was never troubled by them.

  And she had enjoyed the feel of the horse under her, and of a sword or axe in her hand, and of the breath of the sea in her face when they sailed on Tostig’s ships. As Orm had said it was good to be free of the moral complexities and compromises of a king’s court, and to immerse yourself in loyalty to your lord and some simple physical action.

  But Harold had managed to drive off Tostig from the south coast. England’s defences, the navy and the fyrd, responding rapidly to the call-out, had worked well at their first test under Harold.

  The embittered Tostig sailed around the coast to the north-east. He sought help from the Danes, and even approached William, it was said. But the Bastard had his own schemes and they didn’t involve any Godwines. Tostig landed in the north, intending to head for Jorvik. But the northern earls, Morcar with his brother Edwin of Mercia, had driven him back once more. Harold’s tactic of hastily marrying their sister had evidently paid off.

  Tostig spent the long summer brooding in Scotland. And meanwhile he sent embassies across the northern sea.

  During the summer Godgifu had glimpsed Harald the Ruthless, King of Norway, several times. Aged about fifty he was tall enough to tower over most of his troops, and yet he wore his hair, beard and moustache carefully trimmed. Some even said he dyed his hair. It was an affectation he might have picked up during his long and exotic career in the east.

  Aged only fifteen he had been exiled by Cnut. Harald had served in the Varangian Guard at the court of Constantinople, and fought in Sicily, Africa, Greece, Italy, and the Holy Land. He became known as lucky and brave - and ruthless, famous for hauling captive women to his ships in chains. He had returned, extremely wealthy, to claim the crown of his home country, and had immediately launched a war on the Danes that lasted sixteen years.

  By the time Tostig contacted him this summer, seeking an alliance, Harald was flat broke, drained by war. But he had a claim of sorts on England, for, he said, he had made a treaty with a son of Cnut. And he had an army fabled across Europe and hardened by sixteen years of war. In Tostig’s plea he saw an opportunity. If he was ever going to strike at England, now, in the opening months of Harold’s raw new reign, might be the time.

  Three hundred ships crossed from Norway. As their coastal towns burned, the people of England knew that nearly three centuries after Lindisfarena another invasion by Northmen had begun, under Harald, who they called the last of the Vikings.

  Harald joined his forces with Tostig’s, and things changed for Godgifu. The Norse were not like the English; even stone cold sober on a Sunday morning they were a rapacious lot. So Godgifu took the advice of Estrith, who had befriended her, and retreated to this camp of the women, hundreds of them, mostly English, banded together for safety against their husbands’ allies. You were removed from the fighting here, but there was plenty to do. And if all else failed you could pretend to be a Norse wife and sit spinning sail-cloth.

  The Norse had sailed upriver and marched on Jorvik. The northern earls, Morcar and Edwin, made a stand on an estate owned by Morcar - and once by Tostig - at a place called the Foul Ford, where they could bar the road and the river, and their flanks were protected by marshes. It was a good site, but a hasty engagement. Maybe the earls should have waited for reinforcements from Harold - but they hoped to keep the Norse out of the walls of Jorvik.

  They lost their gamble. Though the earls themselves had survived, the English forces were crushed. Soon leading citizens of Jorvik came to meet with Harald the Ruthless, offering their allegiance.

  Feasting on the spoils of the victory, Harald and Tostig had relaxed. Harald could have stayed within the walls of Jorvik, but he moved his army east to a place by the river, at Stamfordbrycg, between his fleet and Jorvik. It was a useful site, a place where roads converged, with easy access to both city and fleet. And it was a good political choice, recommended by Tostig, being at the junction of several hundreds. Here they waited for hostages to be surrendered from the shire.

  Stamfordbrycg, however, was not a good place to fight a battle. But it didn’t need to be. Here on this stretch of marshy farmland by the river, the Norse hadn’t built any fortifications. They had even split their forces, between the bridge and the fleet. Some of their mail and heavy gear was with the fleet too.

  Why not? King Harold had spent the summer camped on the south coast, waiting for an invasion by the Normans which had never come. Now, Harold didn’t even have an army. The fyrd could be called out for just two months; that was the law. Harold had extended this to four months, but by early September, running out of food, he had been forced to let the fyrd disband.

  From the Norse point of view Harold was at the wrong end of the country, with no army, and no time.

  And yet Harold was here, with an army, just five days after the defeat of the northern earls. Five days.

  The women, with a few children, older men and wounded, were beginning to form up into a loose caravan, a stream of women, carts, horses and baggage. They were going to head east, towards the ships - always the first refuge for Vikings.

  And, Godgifu saw, less than an hour since they had first reached the bridge, the English were on the move again. His efforts at diplomacy evidently rebuffed, Harold wasted no time. The English moved in a mass. The front rank had their shields locked together in a wall, and they marched in step, thousands of men together. And they drummed on their shields, yelling, ‘Ut! Ut!’ Out! Out! Despite the blood she had already seen spilled, Godgifu felt her pulse race at the chanting of the men, the drumming of their shields, the glitter of their spears.

  She knew that the Norse looked down on the English as a bunch of farmers armed with rusty swords and a scythe or two. In fact, Godgifu had learned, the English were well equipped and decently trained. The core of Harold’s army was his housecarls, full-time professional soldiers. And as for the fyrd, yes, they were raised from the ranks of farmers. But the land army had come a long way since the days of Alfred. A complex system of levies and taxes ensured that one in every six or seven healthy men in England was properly equipped and trained to fight, when called upon. Each of them had a conical helmet, a shield and sword and axe, and many of them even had mail coats like the housecarls. Thus Harold had thousands of soldiers available, dispersed across the country, trained and ready to be called out at a few days’ notice.

  And today they looked more than ready to be tested against the might of the Norse.

  As the English advanced from the bridge, Hardrada made the best of a disastrous position. That raven standard was thrust into the ground, with the standard of Tostig alongside it, and Godgifu could hear the thin calls of horns. Men with shields, some still pulling on mail coats, lined up in a rough circle. Hardrada’s purpose was to form a fortres
s of shields, so that the English could not turn his flanks even on the open flat ground. It was an ingenious strategy, and a brave one. But the skjaldborg was patchy, the men strung out thin.

  And the English closed. The shield walls clashed with a sound like thunder, a sound that had echoed across English battlefields for centuries.

  Before the advancing wave of English the Norse fell back, and that neat circle was flattened - but it held. Swords and axes hacked down over the shield line, and again blood splashed. Godgifu could smell it, a stink like hot iron—and she smelled fouler stenches too, the sewage spilled from the guts of dying or terrified men. The roar was continuous, a merger of yells, insults and screams from six, seven, eight thousand throats.

  ‘Come on.’ Her sleeve was plucked. It was Estrith. Godgifu knew Estrith meant well - that she was trying to save her life - but Godgifu shook her off. Estrith gave up. ‘Suit yourself.’ The baggage train moved on, leaving Godgifu standing alone on her ridge.