by Justin Hill
At the end Godwin took a deep breath. He remained kneeling by Kendra’s feet. He wished that she had told him before. ‘You have weighed down my heart,’ he said, ‘for this was my fault. I should have left men to guard you all. I am sorry,’ he said. ‘Can you forgive me?’
Kendra started crying. She laughed at the same time. ‘Forgive you?’
He nodded.
She hugged him. ‘Of course I forgive you. I thought that you would hate me. I did not think that you would kneel and ask me to forgive you!’
‘You will?’ Godwin said. It pleased him more than he could say to see her smile and cry all at the same time.
‘Come,’ he said, and lifted her up. She was light in his arms as he carried her to the bed. Godwin lay down next to her in front of the dimming fire.
‘Hush!’ he whispered in her ear. ‘Do not fear.’
And he gently loosened her girdle.
That year, 1014, ended peacefully. By Yuleide the hall at Contone was finished and was a wonder to behold. The cauldron chain, which hung from the high roof timbers, was twenty yards long. Men had never seen such a long link before. The beer vats could cheer a war band with prodigious thirst, the copper mash-pot could sit ten men inside, and the kitchen house was larger than most men’s homes. Godwin was justifiably proud.
He stood as the walls were being whitewashed and imagined them ringing to the sound of the bravest war band a thegn ever led. He pictured the fairest maids in all the kingdom, the finest feasts, the best tales ever sung. He had spared no expense on the tapestries that hung over the wainscoting, and Prince Edmund had been true to his word: the carved pillars now writhed with living figures, birds, beasts and the divine jewel-work of twig and leaf.
The onset of winter was a time for staying inside, feasting and taletelling, and the crescent moon was still hanging in the morning sky when the guests arrived in all their finery on their finest steeds to celebrate the completion of the hall. There was white bread and butter, and though there was little meat, there was fish aplenty and pickled oysters. The fires were lit, the benches were adorned with laughing faces, and Godwin welcomed all the people from miles about to come and feast. Kendra was with him, with keys at her belt and ivy in her hair, and there was joy on both their faces.
CHAPTER TWO
The Red Road to Malmesberie
Two years passed in unfamiliar peace and prosperity. A new order returned. The land grew fat again with wool and trade and lawfulness. Bishops died and were replaced; fields were sown; April rained and in the ploughed strip fields new green shoots shimmered with hope and promise of full stomachs and a bounteous year.
Godwin turned eighteen and then nineteen. He was a good and well-respected lord, was generous with alms and at the Christmas feast. He was as strict with freemen as he was with thegns, men respected him for that: that he imposed the law on all, whether they were great or small.
Whenever Godwin returned from seeing the prince he brought gifts for Kendra: a necklace of polished amber beads, a gilt brooch, a belt of bright colours, rings of silver and a Celtic cross necklace he bought from some Norse traders in Cicestre.
One day he came back with a broad-chested bay mare. ‘She is the gentlest creature in Christendom!’ he said.
‘Why do I need a horse?’ Kendra asked.
‘Because!’
‘Because why?’
‘Because I am away so much, while you are at home, and I thought you should see more of this country.’
Kendra was not keen. ‘It was a long and cold journey that brought me to Contone. I think if I never left this place, I would remain content.’
But Godwin was used to getting his own way these days and did not take no for an answer. ‘You shall come with me. There are places I want to show you, people I want you to meet.’
So Kendra travelled with Godwin and Edmund as they toured the country, but each time she returned to Contone the place seemed to have grown even more beautiful.
In the autumn of 1015 Godwin took Kendra to the coast. The larger the sky grew, the flatter the land, and Kendra looked up to the high shoulders of the Downs with a mixture of longing and wonder.
‘Where are we heading?’ she asked.
‘This way,’ Godwin said, and turned his horse towards the low, windswept headland, that thrust far out into the choppy grey waters.
Selsie lay a mile or so off to their left, still inside its square of pale grey Roman walls. The wind whipped Godwin’s cloak and hair. He stopped his horse and looked out to sea. Kendra saw a scrap of drift-wood – a piece of ship’s planking, she guessed – and remembered when she had drifted about in the waves. She thanked God for bringing her to a good resting place.
Godwin led her to the end of the spit of land. The grassy dunes turned to sand, then shingle, and then shallow beach and finally to the restless slate-grey water. The waves swirled with gulls, and flecks of rain flew into their faces, and broad bladed grasses battled in tufts. To the right, a gannet stood on a hump of tussocky grass and spread its wings to the sea breeze – a Christ-like silhouette, crucified against the bright sky. A curlew called out. It made the wind bite more coldly. Godwin took no notice, but pointed into the water. His voice was thick with memory.
‘Out there, at low tide, there are sandbanks. My father took me out one day to stand on them. We were knee-deep in water. “This is Cymen’s shore,” he told me.’
Godwin turned to look at her. His eyes were veiled. ‘Cymen was the son of Ælle. This headland used to extend far out into the sea. I don’t know why he took us there. I was only five years old, my brother a few years older. My father was proud of the place. Proud to set his feet where the old heroes stood. But it seems sad to me. Look!’ he said and turned back to the shifting waters. ‘The sea has taken the land from us, just as we took it from the Walsh.’
He stretched out a hand to her. ‘This has been a blessed time,’ he said. ‘And if I died now, then I would be happy.’
‘Why are you talking like this?’
Godwin smiled sadly. ‘There is news,’ he said. ‘Knut and Harald have made peace. The Danish king has let it be known that in the spring he will lead a fyrd to England. They mean to drive Ethelred out.’
Kendra did not like the tone in his voice. ‘Good. You have prepared for this for two years. Are you ready for them?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘We are ready.’
Kendra’s blue eyes were hard. ‘Look at you! You are no boy now. If Knut returns, he will have a shock when he meets Edmund and Godwin in the battle play.’
Ethelred called for an Easter moot at Oxeneford in 1016. A gruff Euruic trader, in Russian fur cap, gave a complete account of the Danish preparations, which were well underway. Ethelred’s health had not been good and he was tired and irritable, and sat sulkily.
‘If they come we shall march against them,’ he said.
Eadric was at his shoulder. ‘Lord, how can we repel the enemy when there are traitors in our midst?’
‘What traitors?’
Eadric did not like to point the finger. ‘Well, there are some here who are related by marriage to Knut.’
Morcar was furious. ‘And there are some of us who swore oaths to Knut,’ he said. ‘If you had a daughter, you would have married her to Swein’s son faster than a cat in heat. I was there that day when our dear Ethelred had fled, and Swein was in my hall, and you came crawling on your belly like a worm, begging to be let in and allowed to swear your oath to Swein. And I buried the feud between our families and let you in! And how have you repaid my generosity? By continually spreading rumour and lies about me and my folk.’
Eadric said nothing. Rumours had their own life. They were difficult to kill, and their poison was as slow and sure as the inexorable decline of age.
‘Swear your loyalty to King Ethelred, then,’ Eadric said.
‘Why should I?’ Morcar said.
‘To show that you are loyal.’
‘I am loyal. I have sworn an oath. W
hy should the finger always be pointed at me?’
‘You will not swear.’
‘I will not do anything that you tell me to do, Eadric the Cursed.’
The queen spoke. She was still a young woman, only twenty-eight years old, but her voice had become deeper, Godwin noticed, as if she wanted men to take her more seriously. ‘Morcar, all men should be prepared to swear an oath, and if we are to repel our enemy, then you will have to fight side by side with Eadric.’
‘I will not stand next to him,’ Morcar said.
‘You will,’ Ethelred said. His temper was short and his voice was stern. ‘Eadric is your alderman. You will stand with him in battle if I command it.’
Morcar’s bald pate began to sweat.
Godwin felt for the man. He remembered the day that he had stood with his father, before the whole court, and knew how alone that felt.
Godwin stepped forward. ‘No man doubts Morcar’s loyalty.’ His voice carried through the silence, but it did not break the tension. ‘Morcar, words do not wear out loyalty. I would gladly swear an oath to King Ethelred. Stand with me and let us swear.’
Morcar and Eadric clashed again, accusing each other of stealing land or sheep or breaking the peace oaths, and one day Eadric brought into the hall to swear a large, ugly man with red hair.
Godwin’s heart skipped a beat. He tensed at the sight of the man, waited to hear his name.
‘This is Offa Fox,’ Eadric said to the king.
The ginger man’s eyes sought out Godwin and he smiled a crooked smile. Anger flashed in Godwin like a swiftly drawn sword. He felt hot in his kirtle and clenched his jaw as he breathed through his nose, trying to calm his fury.
‘Enough!’ Ethelred suddenly shouted. ‘Is this how the kingdom of Alfred and Edgar has fallen? Bickering thegns in an Oxeneford barn? If Knut triumphs, his men will seize your widows; take your daughters as common slaves without price or honour or recompense; sleep in your beds; and take your halls and your herds as their own! I am sick of you all. You will ride and fight, and that is it!’
*
That evening Ethelred summoned Morcar and his cousin Sigeferth to his hall. ‘The king wishes you would join him at his prayers this evening,’ the messenger said, ‘and he would like to feast you afterwards.’
‘Thank the king,’ Morcar said, and sent him away. But Sigeferth and Morcar were concerned that they use this opportunity to impress upon Ethelred their loyalty.
‘Perhaps he has changed his mind about Eadric,’ Sigeferth said.
Morcar shook his head. ‘He is too stubborn for that. How can he admit that? He would have to admit his guilt in Elfhelm’s murder. No. Ethelred will not do it until he is on his death bed.’ Morcar wished that his wife were there. ‘I miss her sense,’ he said. ‘She would know what to do.’
‘Well, what would she tell you to do?’ Sigeferth asked.
Morcar put a hand to his bald scalp and scratched it.
There was grey in Sigeferth’s beard. It gave him a handsome and warfierce look. Morcar was glad that Sigeferth was with him because their mothers were sisters and they had grown up together like brothers.
‘She would tell me not to go,’ Morcar said, and laughed. ‘But she told me not to come in the first place.’
Sigeferth nodded. ‘What else?’
‘To repeat my oath. “Swear whatever he wants,” she’d tell me, “and let God be your witness.”’
Sigeferth crossed himself. ‘So,’ he said, ‘we go and pray with the king. And let your good wife be our guide. Let us do that.’
Morcar and Sigeferth washed and dressed for the mass that evening. They wore their best and came ready with fine gifts for the king; each brought twenty retainers, as the king had said.
Their retainers were all the men of their family. There were long-beards and young men and everyone in between. For some this was their first glimpse of the king’s hall. Others had ridden with Elfhelm long ago and had sat in Wulfnoth’s hall when they had more teeth and stronger grips.
There was a buzz among them as they rode through the muddy Oxeneford streets and entered the king’s manor there. Stable boys led their horses away. The men waited for Sigeferth and Morcar to straighten their clothes. Morcar tightened his belt and adjusted his kirtle over his stomach.
‘Let us swear anything,’ he repeated to Sigeferth. Sigeferth nodded. They were loyal to the king. They would do what he said. They would take holy mass and feast, and if Eadric was there as well, then they would refuse to rise to any of his barbs.
Sigeferth and Morcar and all their kinsmen and retainers, young man and old, left their weapons at the door. They strode into the king’s hall and the hall doors were hastily shut behind them. Morcar paused and looked about. The room was empty. The king’s chair stood at the head of the room, but the benches had been put away to the side, fresh rushes had been spread, and in the long hearth an old fire had crumbled to ashes and smoked lazily. The tapestries rippled in cold drafts. Morcar looked about him and rubbed his hands together. His men stood and waited.
Morcar appeared unruffled by the moment. ‘It’s chilly,’ he said.
Sigeferth nodded.
‘I suppose we’ll be going to mass first.’
A door opened at the far end of the hall. It was the door that led from the king’s robing room and they turned towards it with expectation.
But the king did not step through it. A single man walked into the room. It was the little figure of Eadric, not the king. Morcar noticed Eadric’s paunch and noted how they had both grown old and stout during the long feud between their families.
He drew in a deep breath. ‘Greetings, Eadric.’
Sigeferth gave Eadric a curt nod.
Eadric walked to the back of the king’s chair. ‘Greetings, Morcar and Sigeferth,’ he said. ‘You are waiting for the king?’
‘That we are,’ Morcar said. ‘Are you taking mass as well?’
‘As well? I do not know. I shall certainly be taking mass.’
Morcar nodded. He had no intention of entering into a play of words and half turned to his men and gave them a cheerful and jolly smile. ‘Good,’ he said to Eadric. ‘Good.’
Morcar took a few more steps. The door into the king’s robing room remained open, but the king did not come through. Morcar started whistling to himself. It was a thin tune that quickly faded. When Morcar turned, he could see that Eadric had not moved. He was watching Morcar, and there was a bright light in his eyes.
‘I do not know that tune,’ Eadric said.
‘No?’
‘No. Whistle it to me again.’
Morcar almost started to whistle again, but Sigeferth was tired of this. ‘We are not songbirds,’ he said. ‘We have come here to see the king.’
‘Whistle,’ Eadric said.
Morcar was irritated too. ‘I shall not. Where is the king?’
One of the men tried the doors behind them. ‘The doors have been bolted!’ he cried.
Eadric smiled. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they have.’
Morcar turned on him, but at that moment armed men poured into the room, at their head was a large, red-haired man. Offa Fox. From behind the tapestries, more men appeared.
Eadric grinned. ‘I am sorry to say that the king is not coming,’ he said, ‘and will not have the pleasure of seeing this.’
‘What?’
Eadric’s retainers drew their swords.
‘How we deal with treachery.’
Sigeferth and Morcar and their men had nothing but eating knives with them, knives and bare hands and righteous fury. Once they saw that they had been tricked, they charged at their hated foe.
Offa stepped before Eadric and his sword came back as Morcar rushed towards him with knife raised. Come to me, his posture said, and the sword stroke fell.
It was a brief and bloody business. The last sword strokes were unnecessary as the steel-gored bodies fell. Morcar’s fat corpse was almost unrecognisable. Sigeferth’s grey-bearded head
had been cut from the body and kicked across the room. The forty men of their families had been dealt with without distinction. They all lay dead.
Ethelred was in Christ Church Cathedral. He heard the church bells ringing the hour, knew that the deed had been done, said three paternosters, then crossed himself and rose stiffly from the prayer cushion.
It was a hard job, being king, taking tough decisions for the good of the people, and sometimes he had to break his own word if it aided the country. He had organised it all. The hall would be washed of blood, the bodies handed over to the Church. Fifty armed retainers were already riding hard to the dead men’s halls to stop this feud from spreading. They would seize hostages, take them far away from their kin and lock them safe in Malmesberie. It would stop any man from rousing his people against the king, cut off the angry head of dissent.
The news of the murders spread through Oxeneford with wild lamentations. As soon as the washerwomen and mistresses and travelling women of Morcar’s company heard of the treacherous crime they hurried to the scene and tore at their hair and clothes and bewailed the loss of their proud and handsome men. Eadric’s men tried to keep them away, but they grabbed at mementos and clothes, and dipped them in the pools of blood, so that they could take them back to their people as tokens to remind them of the blood-debt that Eadric owed them all.
As soon as he heard the sound of grief, Edmund summoned his door wards. ‘What is that noise?’
A moment’s hope sparked and he imagined that his father had been struck down with elf-shot and had died at his cups or collapsed in prayer. You will be king, the thrill of hope ran through his veins, but when the door wards ran back into the room, Edmund saw their faces and his hope was crushed.
‘Morcar and Sigeferth and all their retainers have been foully slain in the king’s own hall.’
Godwin was with Edmund as they strode into the king’s chapel. Gamal, the king’s door ward, now had shots of grey at his temples. He put his hands up, to try and stop them entering. ‘No swords!’ Gamal said. ‘No weapons in the king’s presence.’