by Justin Hill
The Danes came on with terrifying speed and determination, their war chief at the front, his banner-bearer behind him, leading his men on like the head of a boar. Blecca’s sword grip was slick with sweat. He wiped it on his thigh, rolled his shoulders to warm them up, the way he’d seen grown men do. And then the arrows and spears began to fly.
Blecca heard a dull thud and a grunt of pain. He looked down and saw an arrow sticking out of his chest. He had not felt it hit him and he looked with amazement to the men on either side of him, as if to ask if they had seen it coming, but instead of words, a trickle of blood came from his left nostril, and then a great gout came out of his mouth, and Blecca fell backwards against the knees of the men behind him and rolled to the left and lay astonished, with his face pressed up against the bed of freshly laid straw, and wished Godwin was there to hold him and tell him that he was going to be all right.
Cross-gartered legs were all about him and he thought someone was going to step on him, but then he felt hands under his armpits, felt himself being dragged backwards through the ranks.
‘Mother,’ he bubbled as blood filled his mouth. ‘Oh, Mother.’
All across the city word spread that the Danes had broken through the wall by St Forster’s Church. The king sent his best troops galloping off, the bells of St Paul’s began to ring, and the townsfolk gathered in furious bands. They armed themselves with hammer and pitchfork, spear and cudgel, and ran through gardens and alleyways, houses and workshops so that the Danes did not know from where the enemy would come, and in this way, with numbers and ferocity, the English drove the intruders back.
Godwin wiped the gore from his face, and realised it was not his, but that of the dead Dane that lay atop him, his skull staved in by an axe. He wriggled free of the body, somehow managed to drag himself back through the stamping and shoving feet. He found a shield and courage and kept to the back of the fighting. He parried every blow that came his way, did not dare to strike out. But Fate did not spare the fearful man, and Godwin was quickly caught up in the ferocious fighting. It was very different from hunting outnumbered and ill-prepared Danish foragers and Godwin expected to be cut down at any moment. When the last Danes had been surrounded and butchered, Godwin began to ask for Edmund.
It was an hour before he found the company, and he almost wept for joy when he saw Edmund, unhelmeted, running his hands through his sweat-soaked hair.
‘Where were you?’ Edmund laughed.
Godwin was splattered with other men’s blood, his mail shirt had been snagged by a spear point, and his right arm had been so badly bruised it hurt to clench his fingers.
‘Fighting,’ Godwin said.
Men slapped backs and laughed and bragged as they watched the Danes retreat to their camp.
‘Did you kill any?’ Edmund asked.
‘I think so,’ Godwin said, but the details that had once been so clear were now blurred and muddled. He had killed many, or rather he had been part of the mob that had surrounded the stranded Danes.
‘I got an axeman!’ Edmund said. ‘He thought to steal my sword pommel.’
Godwin looked around. ‘Where’s Blecca?’
Blecca was dead and already cooling by the time Godwin found him in an untidy heap of arms and legs, open mouths and lolling heads that had been stacked up against the churchyard wall. Someone had stolen Blecca’s garnet-studded dagger hilt. They had stripped off his red wool trousers and silver belt buckle, and it was the slim white foot that caught Godwin’s eye, unmistakably that of a boy among the large and hairy feet of men.
Godwin’s bruised arm was numb. He worked one-handed to roll the other bodies clear. They were heavy and unwilling and seemed to resist his every effort. Godwin rolled the top bodies away. Some of the dead men seemed to stare at him. The open and blank full-moon eyes were terrible to look upon. They watched unblinking as he moved the bodies. One man had a piece of his head missing. Another’s guts were beginning to spill out: pink and sausage-like and slippery, and Godwin clenched his jaw shut and yanked Blecca free. The boy’s front was dark and wet with blood, and his mouth lolled open, and his eyes were open still – but they death-stared at Godwin without expression or recognition.
‘Blecca! You idiot,’ Godwin said, as he lifted the body over his shoulder, as if he might have done if his friend was still living, and carried him away from the unclaimed dead.
Godwin sat the body up against the church wall, set the young man’s head straight, closed his lids so he would not have to look into those dead eyes, and fetched water to wash the congealing blood from his chin and nose. He rearranged his clothes to hide his naked legs, touched the end of the broken arrow shaft gingerly, as if it might still pain the dead, and felt like St Thomas touching Christ’s wounds. ‘You idiot!’ he said again. ‘Hold your shield high till the battle-play begins.’
Blecca did not respond. Godwin was stunned with battle-shock. He grabbed and held the young man’s body close to him, felt Blecca’s head on his shoulder, and wept.
As night fell monks came with hooded lanterns and began to dig a mass grave for the dead.
‘Hello?’ one said when he caught sight of Godwin. ‘One is living over here.’
Godwin stumbled to his feet and blinked against the light. He was smeared in Blecca’s blood and they thought for a moment that he was wounded, for many men stumbled from the battle in shock, or crawled away, like a winged bird or wounded hart, and found some dark place to die.
‘Come! Are you hale, lad?’ the man said. ‘Why it’s a miracle! There’s not a scratch on him.’
The monks gathered round and all of them touched Godwin as if he were a holy relic. ‘Not a mark on him,’ they agreed. ‘We thought you were dead, child. Christ be praised! Victory against the Danes!’
The monks were not unkind, but there were many men to bury that night and they worked quickly, passing bodies down and stacking them like sacks of oats. Godwin stood to the side and thought silent words for his friend’s soul as it drifted into Heaven’s harbour. Godwin laid him out with his arms crossed over his chest, but as the other dead were thrown into the hole, Blecca was quickly hidden from view.
The monks carried the lanterns to light the way for men bringing more bodies and Godwin was left staring down into a deep black hole that smelt of blood and sweat and unwashed feet. He remembered a monk one night entertaining them with tales from former days, when Rome ruled Middle Earth and men raised beautiful buildings of stone and mortar. He had recited poems of a man named Horace who sang how great it was to die for your fatherland, while in battle he dropped his shield and ran away. Wulfnoth had guffawed at that. The Romans could recite poems, but they forgot how to fight.
Godwin felt he had passed a test. At least I did not run, he thought, and held out a hand to the grave in a final farewell, then turned away and started wearily home.
It was a weary and silent band who sat about the fire that night. The mood at the benches was grim. Godwin sat alone away from the fireside. He began to shiver uncontrollably.
‘Where’s Blecca?’ one of Edmund’s men asked.
‘Dead,’ Godwin said.
‘Oswald too. And Baldred and Cole.’
Godwin could hear the songs and taunts and jeers coming from the Danes outside the walls. He limped, even though it was his arm that was hurt. He limped and was jealous of the men who had more obvious wounds, for he felt like a fraud.
Edmund’s mood had improved markedly. Along his stretch of wall the Danish attack had been repelled and he had helped to drive the Danes back over the wall. All across the city men were talking of Edmund with awe.
‘Cheer up – you’re still alive,’ Edmund said to Godwin as he moved along the benches, slapped him on the back.
‘Still alive,’ Godwin said.
Edmund seemed to revel in the battle-name he had earnt, and many sat round him and set a full horn of ale at his side. One night they sat with a sweaty friar who claimed to have been on the last ship into Lundenbu
rh before the Danes closed off the river.
Edmund clapped Godwin’s back, put his arm round his shoulder and cheerfully accepted a horn of ale. ‘This is my bravest companion, Godwin Wulfnothson,’ Edmund told the friar. ‘Son of Wulfnoth Cild, no less!’
‘Wulfnoth Cild,’ he replied. ‘Well, well, well, that’s some heritage. He was a good man. He stood up to the Danes, didn’t he?’
‘He did,’ Godwin said. ‘And will do, I’m sure.’
There was a moment of silence and the friar gave Godwin an odd look. He cocked his head; began to laugh nervously.
What? Edmund’s face asked.
‘You’re both jesting,’ the friar said.
‘He’s jesting!’ the friar said to the others.
The crowd looked unsure. They didn’t think he was jesting. Godwin didn’t understand.
The friar’s cheeks turned purple. ‘You mean you did not know?’
Godwin shook his head.
‘Oh,’ the friar said. ‘Two knorrs from Dyflin brought the news. A week hence. Bound for Flandran.’
‘What news?’
‘About your father.’
‘He’s back?’ Godwin said.
The friar shook his head.
‘He’s dead.’
The friar told the tale that he’d been told. At midwinter, in Dyflin. Wulfnoth Cild’s allotted hour had come and he had passed into the keeping of the Lord. Godwin listened, but he missed almost all that was said. He sat very still and felt the eyes of all upon him. It was at moments like these that a man’s character was judged.
Godwin nodded, thanked the men for their kind words, didn’t know what to do or say or think. Some men clapped him on the shoulder; others gave him a solemn nod. Edmund refilled his horn with thick, dark ale.
‘Here!’ one man with grey in his beard said, and Godwin held his empty horn out for more. He was old enough to take strong ale; would drink it all down tonight – damn the morning.
Open doth stand the gap of a son. Godwin remembered. Woeful the breach where grief floods in.
Godwin woke with fur in his mouth and a head that spun. He did not know where he was for a moment, did not remember the night before, sat up wondering what and how and why and when. He started unsteadily to his feet and the memory hit him.
Godwin reeled under the impact. He staggered erratically between laughter and tears. The only release was sleep – deep and sound and dreamless – but however long he slept, morning came, insistent as a leprous beggar tugging at his sleeve.
His father’s life had been cut short. Godwin picked at the roughly shorn ends: the fantasy where his father came home laughing; sent word to arm and meet him with retainers; when they ran towards each other and his father lifted him off the floor in a fierce embrace. When all was forgiven and forgotten, and amends had been made. When the future lay before them: ordered, peaceful, prosperous and calm and the time when they did not need to talk about the past any more.
The shorn possibilities stunned him.
No man’s handshake, no chance to forgive, no last words, no moment when they sat alone by the fire and his father looked at him and saw that he had grown into a man, with stubble on his cheeks, and broad shoulders, and showed his appreciation with a brief pat on the back. ‘Well done, son!’
Wulfnoth and Blecca, Godwin thought, and reeled under the loss. There was little time for grieving, though grief was commonplace with so many dying of battle-wounds or the sickness that had broken out in the damp riverside hovels south of Knightridestrete. Spear or sword or sickness. Death hemmed them in.
Godwin began to believe he would never leave this dirty city and he railed against that fate. If I am to die, at least let my bones rest in Contone, he thought, and determined that he would escape somehow the doom that was drawing about them.
The Danes spent another week probing the English defenders. Sickness spread as far as the abbey about St Paul’s and many of the monks fell ill.
At last the burghers of Lundenburh came to Ethelred and begged him to leave before the city was forced and the Army poured into the city, or before hunger and plague consumed them all. The king had no choice. Edmund and Athelstan stood in shocked silence.
‘You hoped for my death,’ Ethelred said, ‘and instead you all have to flee into exile with me.’
For once they said nothing. The boats waited.
‘We are all exiles,’ Edmund said with forced jollity as Godwin stepped down from the gangplank.
Godwin said nothing. Godwin Wulfnothson was no exile. Exile meant treachery to him. Betrayal, oath-breaking, like the broken promises a father made to his son.
*
They spent two miserable weeks on Wiht, stood and stamped their feet against the cold as they watched ships cross over from Boseham as all that could be salvaged from the Wincestre treasury was shipped across the Soluente.
Edmund said: ‘In the spring father will hire mercenaries and return.’
The irony escaped neither of them: the good king did not pay men to fight; he rewarded them after victory.
It was midwinter 1013; lazy cocks crowed; Godwin was up early to split wood. After a long pause Godwin wiped the sweat from his brow. He was about to start chopping again when he spied a horseman riding up from the boats along the shore. His horse went slowly, picking a careful way along the frozen ruts. The rider was a man with a scarlet cloak and hood.
‘What news from the mainland?’ Godwin called.
The horseman stopped and nodded towards the hall where Godwin had slept. ‘Swein is in Wincestre and he is crowned king,’ the man said. His voice was loud in the still morning; his words steamed about his head.
‘And what business have you here?’ Godwin asked. ‘You have come with the king’s treasury?’
The man heeled the horse forward a few steps. ‘I have,’ he said. ‘You ask of the mainland. It is not good. Swein has conquered all. And now he is raising a tax to send his war chiefs home.’
It was a bitter fate: many would die this winter, from cold or starvation or the depredations of Danes.
On the last night Godwin and Edmund stood on the headland as brisk waves heaved themselves against the shore, and the surf crashed and hissed back down the pebbles.
Neither of them spoke.
‘You do not have to come with me,’ Edmund said.
Godwin didn’t answer.
‘You do not have to come with me,’ Edmund said again.
Godwin could not bring himself to speak. His sleep had been troubled, his waking hours even more so. His ancestors had been given Contone by King Alfred himself. That land was his as much as he was its. He was the lord and shepherd of those people.
‘I swore myself to you,’ Godwin said. ‘And I will hold to that.’
‘You shall indeed. For I shall return. There is a long road ahead of us. But you are old enough to make your way in the world,’ Edmund said. ‘They are your people. Go – save them!’
Godwin started to argue but Edmund put up his hand.
‘Athelstan and I need men who will spread word that the sons of Ethelred are worthy of the name of king. Go! Take back your land and prepare against the day when we return to drive the Danes from England. Go and protect your people.’
Next day they waited for the tide. No one spoke much. Their minds divided on the separate paths that lay ahead of them. When the moment came for the princes to sail, the men who were staying lined up to embrace them. Athelstan embraced Godwin; when it was Edmund’s turn, the two held each other hard.
Godwin watched their ship depart and felt lonelier than the boy who stood to watch his father walk from the king’s hall.
He walked back to the abandoned camp. The isle was cold and deserted. The fields were empty. The tents blown over. The bright faces gone.
There was nothing but two watching ravens, sitting on a lone hedgethorn, that stared at him with black twinkling eyes.
Woden, whom heathens worshipped, kept two ravens named Hugin and Munin. The
y brought him news of battle and slaughter, but there was no battle here, just an abandoned camp and a coward king who would not fight.
‘Tell him the English have failed,’ Godwin called out.
The two birds listened and then flapped away together, low over the field and Godwin turned his back on defeat and despair.
CHAPTER NINE
The Return of Wulfnothson
It was ten miles due north from the port of Boseham to the manor of Contone. At the side of a flooded field Godwin brought his horse to a halt. These lands had now been given to Eadric’s brother Brihtric. Godwin felt a prickle of fear across his skin.
There was rain in the hills and the river before him had flooded to a swollen and bloated brown and tugging torrent. It was usually a shallow ford, but today it filled half the field before him, and only the line of naked trees in the middle of the brown water showed where the riverbed lay.
The flood was a warning, or a bad omen. Do not go further, the land seemed to tell him. Godwin took a deep breath. Only fools thought to live for ever, he reminded himself as he led his mare into the shallows. She paused at the brink. The dark water swirled with turf and twigs and a scum of yellow foam, and she shied and snorted.
Godwin swore he would do this or die in the attempt. He kicked her forward and the horse plunged up to her neck. She whinnied and her hooves kicked against brown water, not ground. Godwin was powerless. He urged his horse onward and she swam desperately. The current pushed them towards a tangle of submerged thickets. We shall be snared and drowned, Godwin realised.
‘Come!’ he urged, and paddled with his hands. ‘Come!’