The Handfasted Wife

by Carol McGrath

  ‘You have returned to us at last, Padar?’

  ‘For a few nights; I bring news, both good and bad.’

  He handed her a small roll of parchment. She turned it over. The seal tag was Harold’s but the letter came from Leofwine. She cut the letter open with her belt knife and slowly read its content.

  ‘Tostig has not returned south. The King has disbanded the fleet and has allowed his men to return to their families to help with the harvest.’ She glanced up. ‘Is this wise?’

  Padar said calmly, ‘We need the harvest, but, my lady, I have heard from our merchants that the Duke of Normandy is building an invasion fleet. He is making alliances with Boulogne and with Brittany. He has sent a mission to Rome requesting the Pope’s support for an invasion. It will take time and it may not be this year. After the harvest is in, the King will recall the fyrd.’

  The scare died down. There was no evidence that William was about to sail a great fleet across the Narrow Sea. Elditha was busy making mead, supervising the churning of cream into butter. Hours flew by in her bower hall where the women passed their afternoons embroidering golden borders on their new linen shifts.

  On Lammas Day, Brother Francis led a limping Ulf up the stairs and into her antechamber. ‘I found him lying on the ground by the bee skeps. He should have been at study,’ the monk said crossly. ‘He climbed the tree above the skeps. Look at the stings!’

  She peered at Ulf’s leg. He whimpered when she touched him. ‘Ulf, I can make it better. It will take only a moment.’ She leaned down and kissed her child’s soft head. These swellings needed more than lavender oil. She turned to the monk. ‘Stay with him.’ She hurried into her bedchamber, reached into a basket in her cupboard where she kept salves and medicines. In it she found a mandrake tuber she had placed in a linen bag. She had purchased all these medicinal herbs and healing salves in Canterbury. She opened the cloth and stared at the root. It looked like nothing, a wizened apple. The wise woman who had sold it had told her to use it sparingly and with good will. ‘Rare, it is, my lady. Keep it with you for it owns you as much as you own it,’ she had warned. ‘The root has travelled here from Jerusalem, from the lands of our Lord.’ Elditha understood its power. She would rarely awaken it. She scraped a little into a balm. If she used it with a prayer chant, she knew she could heal Ulf’s stings before they caused him a fever. Yes, mandrake could be used for good or evil but she was using its power for good.

  She returned to Ulf and began to gently prise out the stings with a needle. As she removed them one by one, she whispered the chant.

  ‘Ouch,’ Ulf yelped.

  ‘It will soothe. Look, Ulf, the stings are out.’ She pointed to her needle but even Ulf, with his sharp sight, said he could not see the stings his mother had just removed.

  Brother Francis looked on, growling his disapproval. ‘What are you saying? Are you praying?’

  She ignored him. Ulf was settling. ‘I believe so,’ she said carefully, as she rubbed the oil of lavender with a scraping of the mandrake root into the swellings on Ulf’s hands and legs.

  ‘Will that ointment help? I could bleed him.’ He whipped out a scrap of parchment from his small Gospel Book and scanned it. She peered over his shoulder, at a figure of a man with pins protruding from every section of his body. She shuddered. ‘Not for your eyes, my lady.’ He glanced angrily at her but she had already seen a maze of symbols, including astrological signs.

  ‘His birth sign is the fish, I believe. I can bleed him from the ankle today,’ the monk said folding the paper back into his Gospel.

  ‘No, you will do no such thing. That would weaken him.’

  ‘What is this?’ the priest demanded, lifting the root from the bench between his long finger and his thumb. He dropped it again as if it were poison. ‘Mandrake root! Is this what you mixed with that oil? It is forbidden by the Church, my lady. You must rid yourself of its evil influence. It is the Devil’s root.’

  ‘Mandrake is only used here for salves like this one.’ She showed him the clay pot. The innocent whiff of lavender filled the air.

  He frowned. ‘I fear for your soul and for the child’s. This is the Devil’s doing.’

  She shook her head and placed a wax seal on the lavender salve again and pushed the root back into its linen bag. She would keep it safe under her mattress where it could not be found. ‘Ulf, go and play with your friends and keep out of mischief.’ She patted his back and pushed him towards the door. The monk spoke again as she wiped the table with a dampened rag, saying he had business in a remote abbey on the Romney marshes. He would be gone for only a few days.

  She looked suspiciously at Brother Francis. ‘So when will you return, Brother Francis, and what is this business?’

  ‘The monks from Féchamps have a prayer book for the Lady Chapel. I go to fetch it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Elditha. ‘As long as that is all; then we expect you back before the month is out.’

  The monk inclined his head and said smoothly, ‘Indeed.’ But as he turned to leave she was sure she heard him mutter the dreaded word “witch”. It hovered in the air like a malevolent odour long after Brother Francis had left her chamber.

  After the Lammas feast day everyone who was able-bodied helped to gather in the harvest. Padar departed, then came home to Reredfelle again a week later with news of Thea and Gytha. This time he carried a correspondence for her: two scrolls. She took them to read in the privacy of her chamber. There she sank back into the soft cushions in her sewing chair. She set aside Harold’s letter and examined the other. It came from the Earl of Meath. She leaned forward, flattened the small scroll on her knees and scanned its contents. She read that Earl Connor thought that she might wish to hear news of her sons. The three princes had improved their skills with shield and sword. They rode stallions with ease and they were popular at court. They sent their greetings to their lady mother and to their father, the King. Elditha read it over and over. She laid it down on the small table beside her chair.

  Harold’s message was a roll of parchment tied with gold thread and his seal. She broke the seal, untied the thread, unrolled it and flattened it out with her palm. It must have news. She clapped her hand to her mouth at what she read. Harold could not come before September. Instead he reported that Aldgyth was with child, saying that he would rather Elditha had this news from him than from others. He wrote that he did not intend to disinherit their sons. Her hand flew to her belly. She had not herself conceived as she had hoped.

  She clattered down the staircase and stamped out of the back door to the kitchens. Furiously, she seized a bowl of cherries and snatched a jar from the shelf. Using a spoon abandoned by one of the cook’s servants she packed fruit into jars. No one spoke to her. They quietly went about their own tasks. Later Padar tiptoed in, looking for her.

  ‘My lady, may I have a word?’

  ‘The Irish court is full of barbarians and the sons of Thor,’ she said angrily. ‘My sons will not learn the skills of courtiers there.’ She emptied a dish of gooseberries into a sticky liquid of wine and honey.

  ‘My lady, they must be kept safe.’

  ‘Harold has sent our boys into that barbarous land so that they are out of his way.’

  ‘No, he has sent your sons to be taught the skills princes must have. Many scholars attend the King of the Irish. You lived there for a summer once, yourself. The King wants to keep the boys safe. These are difficult times.’

  ‘She is pregnant and I am not.’

  ‘But he loves you, my lady; that is what matters.’

  ‘He is gone. Is he with her?’

  ‘Lady Aldgyth is in Chester with her mother.’

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘This is what I have come to tell you. The King is marching north; Earl Tostig has been in Norway.’

  ‘What do you mean, Padar?’

  ‘Harald Finehair has sent a fleet into the Northern Sea.’

  ‘But Tostig has recognised that the King’s army is
more powerful than he. That must be an end to it.’ She dropped her spoon. ‘Oh, he can’t. Oh no, not Tostig and Harald Harthrada!’

  ‘Yes, Tostig seeks allies.’

  ‘What will happen if …?’

  ‘If the Finehair attempts invasion the King will win the battle.’

  She called for the kitchen serfs to finish her tasks. England would soon be at war, but Harold had been born into a family of warriors. She had seen him win victories in Wales. He would call out the fyrd again, and she must make sure the harvest was pulled in before all her menfolk left her for the north. She must talk to Edwin.

  A few days later, Harold called out the men of Sussex and Kent. Osgod came to her. ‘I must follow the King, my lady.’

  ‘Go then, and God go with you, Osgod,’ she said. ‘God go with the King, my love,’ she murmured under her breath.

  Osgod began a trickle that became a stream. Soon she was left with a small garrison, her villagers and the last of the harvest to get in.

  Brother Francis returned with the Psalter, but after his return he made short visits about the countryside, claiming that he wished to visit shrines to pray for the King’s victory. No one noticed or even cared about his absence except Ulf, who trailed after his mother around the estate. Elditha sent him to Padar until Padar too rode away.

  Elditha carried on as before, spinning, preserving fruit and directing her people herself as they worked hard in the fields. In the late afternoons, she embroidered the hem of a new cloak. She worked slowly and carefully, creating a border of chains and tendrils of leaves, making the small depressions in the centre of flowers particular to English embroidery. Into these she stitched seed pearls. It gave her pleasure to lose herself in the final touches to this mantle, the borders where she imagined a future as rich as her embroidery. She prepared for the coming winter, seeking out distraction, hoping and praying that catastrophe would be avoided.

  9

  Then Earl William came from Normandy into Pevensey, on the eve of the feast of St Michael, and as soon as they were fit, made a castle at Hastings market town.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, 28 September 1066, Worcester Manuscript, edited and translated by Michael Swanton

  September days held fast on to harvest sunshine as the villagers safely brought in the last of the grain. Elditha and her ladies worked in the fields too. Then news of another threat, not entirely unexpected, seeped into her hall. The Normans were gathering on their coast and everyone knew that soon they would cross the Narrow Sea. She persuaded herself that Reredfelle was safe, on the way to nowhere, hidden, surrounded by woods and drovers’ tracks. Just to be sure, however, she put guards on her gates and warned her villagers to make new bows and practise with them in the deer hay. But those men who were left to her were either old or very young boys and only a few of them joined her remaining house-ceorls for evening target practice.

  Today was Sunday. Not all Sundays were set aside as rest days and they often forgot the day unless Brother Francis reminded them. Although everyone else would be in the great field, today she insisted that her ladies must rest. Slowly waking late, she opened her eyes, propped herself up against pillows and still in a state of half-sleep she lay on, only partly hearing sounds of activity in the hall below. She watched the light seep through the glass windows. Its quality varied depending on the weather and this morning a great pool of green light filtered through them. She glanced away and upwards, but the crossbeams along the roof felt too close, as if they were pressing her concerns down on her. She was wide awake. There was something she ought to do, something half-forgotten and now remembered, an irritant that was entangled in her memory. She tossed the covers off, knelt on top of her high mattress, craned her neck, and looked up into the rafters, straining to see her casket of bone and silver – the box that she had hidden months before behind her shoes, and which until a moment ago she had forgotten. She pulled her shoes and boots down and tossed all five pairs in a heap beside her clothing coffer. Peering up deep into the roof space again she could hardly see the box. As time had passed she had pushed it back until she could only glimpse the edge of it. Standing on tiptoe, she reached up into the space, caught the casket with her fingers, edged it carefully along the beam and pulled it down.

  Sinking down onto the bed again, she leaned back against her pillows and for a moment stroked her thick golden plait. These were precious possessions. There was, of course, Harold’s Christmas gift of sapphires but the other things it contained had sentimental value. She opened the lid to look at and smell again the tiny christening robe embroidered with gold thread and recalled its heritage – all the children for whom it had been used. God willing, perhaps there could still be another child. The sapphires nestled in their soft purse and her little figurines of St Cecilia and St Brigit, the Lady Mary and St Margaret gleamed in the soft light. She lovingly lifted them out one by one and fingered their delicate and smooth contours. Then she slipped her hand under the mattress and removed the mandrake root, and placed it inside the box. Carefully, she laid the fragile garment back into the casket and closed its lid. Now she needed to climb into the roof and hide it properly.

  She dragged her bolster into position below the beam and stood on it. This time she leaned her arms on the broad rafter, slowly levered herself up and threw her legs over it. She sat on it, her legs dangling, and shuffled along clutching the box. The roof was dirty and damp and smelled of rotting thatch. She held her breath as she ducked under another crossbeam, her face brushing against cobwebs, felt deep into the corner, and pushed her treasure into the stench. She clung to the beam again, swung back over and dropped her legs back down and fell back into the bed – just in time, for as she did, the tapestry shifted. Panting, she swept cobwebs from her hair, gathered her pillows and pushed the bolster back behind her, lay against it and pulled the embroidered coverlet up to her chin.

  It was only Ulf. He ran across the floor and leapt onto her bed, pulling a pillow away and, as he tugged, a flurry of feathers escaped. Immediately, he blew at them until they floated up in a miniature storm.

  ‘Catch them, Ulf. They are much too precious to lose. You mischief, I should make you sew them back in.’

  Ulf laughed and cupped his hands. He caught some of them as they floated down and gave them to her. ‘Mama, you can sew them back in now.’

  ‘Away with you off to chapel,’ she said, stuffing the tiny feathers back into the rent. ‘There, just a stitch.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘Brother Francis will be waiting.’

  ‘Padar’s back, Mama. He wants to speak with you.’

  ‘Oh, is he? He will have news. Quick, go and tell him to come up and I’ll see him next door. Then, tell Ursula that I shall come below to break my fast.’

  Ulf obediently dropped from the bed and padded across the wooden floor to slide back out through the curtain. She heard him open the door at the top of the staircase and the thud as he closed it.

  Elditha lifted the heavy lid of her clothes chest and dug her arms deep into it, scattering linen and woollen garments onto the floor, ransacking the coffer until she drew out a gown of green linen with tight sleeves. She slid her hand along the fine fabric. It would be another warm day and for now the linen felt cool against her skin. He must come south again soon. She hastily bound her hair under her veil, fixed her fillet in place, and finally, sliding a gold ring onto her middle finger, she stepped through the curtain into her great antechamber.

  Padar was on the stairs shouting at servants. He knocked, but before she could answer he’d pushed past the guard and thrust himself unannounced into her presence. His red cloak was filthy, its dirty hood draped from his shoulders. His beard, usually so neatly trimmed, looked unkempt and he smelled of sweat and horse.

  ‘They tried to make me wait until your women came. The King hurries south.’

  She clasped her hands together. ‘Please tell me that he has had a victory.’

  ‘A great victory, but hard-earned; Harthrada and Tostig are dea
d. The Norsemen have sailed home to their fjords.’

  ‘Give thanks to St Augustine.’ She crossed herself. She tried not to wrinkle her nose as he stepped closer. ‘Where have you been to smell so rankly of the ditch?’

  ‘South, the coast by the old fort at Pevensey, concealed in a stinking river as Norman soldiers marched over me.’

  ‘They have sailed already?’

  ‘I rode through the night to bring you a warning.’ She saw how his eyes looked strained. He caught his breath and continued, ‘Norman soldiers are raiding our barns, burning our villages. They have ranged along the whole coast near Pevensey.’

  ‘Exactly what have you seen, Padar?’

  He pushed aside his cloak. His tunic was blood-stained, muddy and torn; his hands were covered with scratches. He held them open. ‘Look at these. I’ve crawled into briars to avoid the Norman Bastard’s scouts. I’ve slept in a pig pen at night.’ He paused. ‘I saw the soldiers come, steal a peasant’s sow, all in the time it takes to saddle a horse and …’

  ‘What happened to the peasant?’

  ‘They kicked in his door, wrecked his home, cut his throat and raped his wife.’

  ‘And slaughtered her too?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He waited as Elditha crossed herself again. She said quietly, ‘Continue.’

  ‘Everywhere I went, I saw death and destruction following in their wake; villages burned and men slaughtered. They came with great ships, piles of weapons, and thousands and thousands of men. I’ve watched their horses thunder over the land. I have learned that the Bastard’s fighters have carried planks off the ships.’

  ‘Planks – what for?’

  ‘They are throwing up a motte-and-bailey near the market town of Hastings. My lady, take the boy and go to Canterbury.’

  Outside a blackbird sang and she could hear a cart trundle across the yard. She went to the window and threw open the shutters. Below she saw two of her women chattering with the keeper of her hounds. The distant murmur of voices blew in from the fields. She turned back to Padar and shook her head. ‘Padar, how can I? I have my ladies to think of and villagers to protect.’