Shieldwall

by Justin Hill

  It made him laugh.

  His laugh was like a faint croak. The noise worried her. She finished wiping him clean, rinsed her hands in the bucket and dried them on her skirts. Caerl slipped out, tears in his eyes, glad that Wulfnoth had not seen him. A warrior humbled, a lord passing, the last glimpses of a dying friend. It was a good reason to go and pray, Caerl told himself, and made his way, after too long absent, back to the home of the Nailed God.

  There was a tiny mud-and-wattle chapel on the other side of the cattle market, ill lit with smoky rush lights, with a packed earth floor and white quartz stones embedded around the altar. A carved stone cross was set there, with a painted Christ staring out with wide blue eyes. Caerl bowed his head and knelt, shut his eyes and prayed. The words did not come easily at first, but his wish was simple, and he said it out loud for Christ to hear as he had done once before. It hadn’t worked then, and as he opened his eyes the rush lights flickered as before, the statue did not bleed or weep or move. The Lord gave him no sign.

  Caerl pushed himself up, but he paused at the door, unbent the silver arm-ring that Wulfnoth had given him years before and tossed it on to the altar table.

  God would understand that, he thought.

  When Caerl had gone, Wulfnoth lay silent for a long time, and his slave girl sat next to his bed and repeated the words of the paternoster.

  ‘Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...’ she said and Wulfnoth felt those words as never before. Et dimitte nobis debita nostra, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive...’ Wulfnoth’s lips moved in time with hers.

  Beorn prayed with her. It took a while before he realised that Wulfnoth was awake. Beorn met his gaze and then looked away.

  Wulfnoth understood. He shut his eyes, remembered the first man who’d died in his arms. It wasn’t on the battlefield, but in the low meadow in Contone. A young lad – a freeman’s son – who’d been trampled by a plough team of four oxen. That boy had clung on to life like a man who feels he is drowning, had not gone gently.

  Old memories came so easily now, clustered round him like a crowd of friends at some last and final reunion. Wulfnoth had stood and watched the soul go out of that boy. Ælla, they had called him. Cenhelm’s son. It was very clear to him now. In the year of Our Lord’s incarnation 997. A frosty morning after Yuletide. Pale and still. The fields fixed with frost, blades of green grass sheathed with white hoar-frost, splattered with red blood. Ælla’s last rattling breath on Wulfnoth’s cheek as a dawn rook flapped low across the unploughed field.

  Wulfnoth slept for a while and woke and saw his men crowding in the doorway, their watching faces pale. Beorn still sat by the bedside. His face was strained. A rosary was twisted about and through his fingers. The other hand held Wulfnoth’s.

  Wulfnoth opened his eyes at the touch. ‘Who ever saw Beorn pray!’ he said.

  Wulfnoth caught Beorn’s eye and he would have laughed, Beorn thought, if he had the strength, but Wulfnoth seemed barely to have the will to signal Caerl forward. The other men made space for Wulfnoth’s shipmaster and kinsman. Caerl stood close now, so close he could smell his lord’s sickness. Wulfnoth’s flesh and skin were parchment-thin; the links between bone and tendon and gristle were obvious.

  ‘My lord,’ he said, no other words coming to him.

  Wulfnoth shook his head, as if warding off argument, and pointed with his chin to the end of the bed, where his sword leant against the bedpost. There was a bundle of cloth as well, tied close with knotted leather thongs. Both men knew why it was there. ‘It is my sword. Take it to him.’ The slave girl propped him up on his rolled-up cloak. ‘And the bundle,’ Wulfnoth’s voice was as thin and soft as the night rustle of leaves.

  ‘Save him!’ Wulfnoth croaked.

  Caerl nodded.

  ‘Promise me,’ he whispered.

  ‘I promise,’ Caerl said.

  ‘Help him,’ Wulfnoth said to Beorn and Caerl, and both men nodded.

  Wulfnoth held their gaze a long while and then sighed and shut his eyes. There was a heavy silence and some of them thought that he had already gone. Beorn wiped his cheeks with his rough warrior hands. Caerl stayed kneeling by the bedside, his head bowed. Wulfnoth’s breathing became ragged. He opened his eyes for the last time. His voice was so faint that only Caerl could hear him. They watched as Caerl nodded again, then hung his head and started to weep.

  They did not hear what Wulfnoth said, but they heard Caerl’s response: ‘I shall.’

  Wulfnoth nodded and gave Caerl’s fingers a final squeeze. There was a smile on his lips, as if, on the border of death, the grey rain curtain of the world had lifted. and the sun shone and he heard beautiful singing, smelt sweet incense and looked out from his hall down across a broad, green and ordered country. They sat waiting for long, dragging moments before Wulfnoth’s breathing paused and then stopped. It was as if he had forgotten to draw in another breath. They waited for the next but it did not come. The stillness stretched on impossibly long and they bowed their heads and some made the sign of the cross; all were silent.

  Beorn spoke. ‘Here passes Wulfnoth Cild, son of Athelmar, Marshal of the Southern Shore, Beloved Lord! No longer shall we share a cup. No longer shall we ease your cares or stand shoulder to shoulder in the battle play. Alone and leaderless, we lament your passing.’

  As they stood, the slave girl slipped out of the chamber, head bowed, one hand to her mouth. She hurried through the hall, which her memory still filled with Wulfnoth’s shape and voice and touch and laughter, thrust the doors open and stepped outside.

  The evening air had deepened to darkness; the mist had cleared; the night air was cold, the air damp. High, ragged clouds were tearing apart; the cold stars were glimmering overhead. Wulfnoth would have loved this night, she thought, would have breathed deep the presence of the old and unforgotten gods, entertained her with a tale of ancient times before his people had sailed out of the Nameless North when great heroes won eternal fame. His stories were sad but never gloomy. Most of them were encouraging and uplifting and Wulfnoth’s favourites were when the hero knew he was to die and all that was left was to die well. It wasn’t the end that was important, but the choices men made.

  Kendra took a deep breath and turned her face to the pale and starry Heavens. Sad tales gave comfort where happy ones did not. The wise took strength from sorrow, for sadness brought beauty and wisdom and, when all else failed, steeled men with the courage to continue against the tallest odds.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Easter King

  Godwin was born in the shire of Sudsexe in the summer of the year 998. ‘He looks sickly,’ one of the village women whispered as the babe was washed and swaddled. ‘Should we fetch the monk?’

  ‘Hush,’ his mother, Gytha, said. She reached out and held the babe close to her chest. ‘Don’t speak so. He’s fine. Aren’t you, my son? There is no need for monks tonight.’ The infant jerked his head towards the finger that touched his cheek. ‘Look – he thirsts for life. Here, drink deep.’

  The women gathered round the childbed, as the animals had done for Jesus, and cooed over his little toes and fingers and face. Gytha helped him take the breast. She felt her milk begin to flow and Godwin opened his eyes for the first time – indistinctly blue and unfocused – and she was so proud that she began to cry.

  Of course, Godwin did not remember any of this, but he heard the tale many times from his mother, and it formed in his head as if it were a memory.

  The next tale Godwin remembered was his cold dip in the marble font at Cicestre Abbey.

  ‘Godwin had a cold. I began to fear for him, but he coughed and spluttered his way through the baptismal mass,’ Gytha told visitors as their children played at their feet with soapstone marbles. Godwin was four. He heard himself discussed and sat up.

  ‘Hold his right hand from the font so he may wield a sword without fear of sin,’ Gytha had whispered to Wulfnoth, and Wulfnoth did as she bade him, but the monk noted the gesture. He was an
ill-looking man, who had not seen a bath for a month too long.

  ‘It is not just by swords that men sin,’ the monk said.

  Wulfnoth laughed. ‘Shall I hold that away too?’

  Wulfnoth liked to retell his joke. It always got a laugh. But on that day the monk did not smile. He was not a humorous man. He lifted his head to the roof-timbers and called out in a loud voice: ‘Agnus Dei, qui tollis paccata mundi, miserere nobis. Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, dona nobis pacem.’

  Young Godwin felt that the story had strayed a little far from himself and tugged at his mother’s skirts. ‘Mama! Mama! Mama!’ he called till she paid him attention. ‘Did I cry?’

  ‘Yes,’ his elder brother Leofwine said quickly, though he didn’t remember either. ‘You always cry!’

  Contone – ‘coombe-ton’, the village in the valley – was Godwin’s patch of Middangeard – Middle Earth. The agricultural year started in March, when winter was over and spring beckoned and day grew as long as the night, and then longer. Dark diminished and oxen were driven out to be yoked for ploughing and sowing. For as long as they could remember Godwin and Leofwine helped goad the oxen, and when the fields were done and the beasts were returned to their warm hay and stabling, they dashed up to the high stone shielings, where their father was bringing down the sheep, fat with this year’s crop of lambs, to the low pastures for lambing.

  The long fast of Lent made a virtue out of necessity, as their mother liked to tell them, for even though the world bloomed and budded and began to ring with birdsong – the crops were still too young to eat, and the store of last year’s wheat was thin. But they never starved. There were berries and turnips, and, in the autumn, crab apples and cabbages, and beer of course – a thin and fizzy small beer that they drank at breakfast, lunch and dinner. In fact Wulfnoth prospered selling wool and worked iron that he bought from high in the Weald, and he did not forget to pay his due to God.

  When Godwin was five his father built a stone bell-cot on the wooden village chapel and bought a copper bell that became a thing of wonder.

  ‘It is glorious!’ Godwin’s mother said. ‘Like Christ’s angels calling us to prayer.’

  At Easter men came from three valleys away and waited for the priest to ride up from the valley bottom on his brown rouncey, with his wife and children sitting on a stubborn mule.

  The priest was a cheerful man; he greeted Wulfnoth and Gytha, pinched the cheeks of Leofwine and Godwin. He walked about and shook hands liberally as he slaked his thirst on a mug of small beer. He always took his sword off to say mass, and left it at the church door where it remained untouched and the boys stared at it in wonder.

  ‘Bene!’ the priest began in Latin, pronounced with a thick Sudsexe accent, before switching into English as the boys bowed their heads. ‘Let us pray...’

  But when the priest left, they solemnly carried the corn dolls, that had spent all winter in the shelter of the home, out into the field to be ploughed into the first cut furrow. Easter was a goddess from heathen times, when the doll was a real man, killed as a blessing to the Earth. That man was a slave, but when great calamity came the king knew his calling and went willingly to sacrifice, like a prize stallion. ‘For sacrifice is always the price of leadership,’ Wulfnoth taught his sons. ‘As Our Lord Christ sacrificed himself on the cross on behalf of sinners. Now when the enemy comes, the king still stands at the forefront of the battle and marches against our enemies and dies there, if necessary.’

  It seemed a hard job to be king.

  ‘Who was the last king to die in battle?’ Godwin asked.

  Wulfnoth frowned. Kings were murdered and overturned, but no Wessex king had fallen on the battlefield. ‘None,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’

  Wulfnoth was tired of the list of questions. ‘God is on our side.’

  Autumn was Godwin and Leofwine’s favourite season. It was hunting time, and they would ride behind with the other boys. Hunting was good training for a young thegn, for he should always be ready to take his best men and ride at his king’s bidding. But the best were the great harvest feasts. The hall doors were thrown open and the whole valley filled the benches in noisy and excited crowds. In the morning there were games, in the afternoon eating, and in the evening, when they were all merry with ale, there were songs and tales and laughter.

  Leofwine and Godwin shared a narrow closet along the side of the hall, shared a blanket as well as each other’s warmth, and they lay listening to the harp music fading into the night.

  ‘Your feet are cold,’ Godwin told his brother.

  Leofwine moved them. He lay in silence, and Godwin could see his eyes were open. They gleamed darkly, and he wondered if he had upset his brother, tried to think of something to say.

  ‘Leofwine, when we are men and we fight in battle, I will stand by your shoulder,’ he said.

  ‘You’re too young,’ Leofwine said.

  ‘So are you.’

  ‘I’m three years older than you. Father has said he will take me to court next time the king rides through Sudsexe.’

  ‘He will take me too.’

  ‘No, Godwin, you’re still a baby.’

  ‘No I’m not!’

  ‘Yes you are. You stay with the women all day. That means you’re a baby.’

  ‘I won’t be a baby any more. Who else will guard your back in battle?’

  Godwin and his brother loved tales from the elder days. There was a fine store that went back to the days of yore: of Goths and Ostrogoths, who killed Caesar and sacked Rome. Great heroes, oaths and honour compelled them to go out and face a formidable foe. One foe was followed by another, until eventually the hero, overmatched, went down fighting gallantly. The message was clear: although Fate conquered all men, word-fame never died.

  Godwin’s people were Saxons and they came across the water in the time of the Roman emperor Justin I, who was born a peasant. They brought their stories and their heroes, oath-bonds and law codes. Godwin’s folk were brave warriors, and Wulfnoth’s great-great-grandfather had carried King Alfred’s banner, the White Dragon of Wessex, at the Battle of Ethandun. At the height of the battle, when both sides thought they had reached the limit of their endurance, he beat back the Danes who tried to seize the king’s banner, and lost a hand in the struggle.

  Alfred’s reign was the dawn of England, from which the bright day began to shine out. Godwin’s family prospered; Alfred’s sons and grandsons drove the Norse and Danes and Welsh and men of Cumbraland back from the ruined kingdoms of Mercia and Northymbria and united all the English-speaking peoples in the Isle of Britannia. A hundred or so years since King Alfred’s death, the Wessex kings were kings of the whole of England. And England prospered.

  Godwin and Leofwine loved the saga of King Alfred: how he was driven into the fens of Adelingi and burnt the cakes as he wondered how to beat the Danes. They sat at their father’s feet, knees drawn up to their chests, eyes wide as they heard how Alfred secretly gathered a great fyrd, the name for an expedition, and defeated the Danes, then ordered the land with laws, organised men into boroughs and shires that would last more than a thousand years.

  Just a part of Wulfnoth’s tale could fill a night, and just one night of great tale telling lived for weeks after inside their heads.

  The fact that Alfred had once owned this manor added magic to the history.

  ‘Perhaps Alfred sat on this very rock,’ Godwin said to Leofwine as they sat by the willow-choked stream.

  Leofwine jumped up. ‘I’ll be Alfred,’ he said, ‘and you be Guthrum!’

  ‘No!’ Godwin said.

  ‘All right. I’ll be Alfred and you be Athelstan, and the nettles are the Danes!’

  Godwin and Leofwine drew their sticks, stood back to back and slashed at the ring of nettles that hemmed them in. They slashed and hacked till the air was full of shredded nettle, which stung their cheeks and necks and knuckles.

  ‘Good fighting!’ Leofwine told his brother, when there was no n
ettle left standing.

  ‘It was close,’ Godwin said. He watched how his brother held himself and tried to stand the same way. But there was a hollow in the slashed nettles and Godwin twisted his ankle and it swelled up to twice its size and Leofwine’s face was grave. ‘You’re wounded,’ he said. ‘I’ll carry you home.’

  Leofwine put Godwin over his shoulder as if he were dead. Englishmen did not leave their own on the battlefield.

  That was the year that Godwin first heard men speak of the Army. The Army was the name they gave the Danes who came each summer in increasing numbers, and soon began to over-winter. The Army claimed to be led by kings, but they were little more than a band of brigands who burned and ravaged. They avoided battle, preyed on the weak and relied on terror and violence to subdue the people about them. They only left once a tax had been raised to buy them off and soon men grumbled more about the tax than the Army.

  ‘It’s evil. Even Archbishop Wulfstan says so. It turns folk to hunger and hatred. The only way to deal with these heathens is to meet them in battle and bloody their noses,’ the local priest argued with a neighbour.

  ‘Alderman Byrthnoth tried that.’

  ‘And he died, I know that. But at least he gave the Army a kicking it’ll not forget.’

  They turned to Wulfnoth to adjudicate, but he was not convinced by either. ‘Of course we should meet them in battle. If we paid them to leave then we could use that respite to organise ourselves to repel them next time. But we don’t! We give them silver. Each spearman in the Army returns home rich. Look how easily the English are cowed, their neighbours think, and when the next sowing season comes, the Army has twice as many heathens!’

  Wulfnoth rode from hall to hall soldering alliances with the good men of the district. He took Leofwine with him but left Godwin behind. When they returned, Leofwine was smug with news.