Shieldwall

by Justin Hill

  ‘They’re fleeing!’ one woman cried.

  ‘No!’ another said. ‘No, look – it is just the dying and the wounded being brought back to safety.’

  Panic settled, like a startled hen.

  ‘How long have they been fighting?’ Ealdgyth asked, but it was hard to tell how quickly time was passing when so alert to the present moment.

  ‘More than an hour,’ her chaplain told her.

  The abbey bells began to ring back in Malmesberie.

  Ealdgyth said the paternoster.

  She made a private wish, when she saw the yellow cross of St Alban, which marked out the Mercians with Eadric Streona: in the name of Elfhelm and Morcar and my dead husband, Sigeferth, and all their loyal and fair-hearted retainers, kill Eadric for me, Lord!

  Her chaplain was praying out loud as well. ‘O God, strike down the Danes,’ he intoned. ‘Strike the Danes and their kinsmen down!’

  Men stumbled up the slope towards them. They were weary and bloodied. Some rested on other men’s shoulders; some used a spear as a crutch; a few men crawled to safety, or fell down, or were dragged back by the armpits and dumped. One of them crawled a little way and then stopped and lay still.

  ‘Help him!’ Ealdgyth wanted to say, but she was rigid with fear. The longer the battle went, the more certain it was that one side would break and flee and be massacred.

  Please God, she prayed, please God.

  Blood splashed Godwin’s cheek as he stabbed straight at the faces of the enemy. He rammed spear through teeth and bone and up through one man’s palate, splattered his brain out the back of his head. He caught the next man in the hip socket. The fighter fell to one knee and writhed as Godwin stabbed him in the side, then set his heel upon the man’s midriff, wrenched out his ash spear.

  The press of men seethed blindly about him and brought up another Dane – a shorter man with freckles, strawberry-blond hair and bright blue eyes – and without a moment’s hesitation Godwin thrust the spear into the indent between his collarbone and the base of this throat and heard him scream as the crowds drove them apart.

  The spear blade was wrenched from Godwin’s fingers and his shield arm was caught between him and the next man. Godwin did not dare reach down with his free hand for his dagger, but kicked and kneed and clawed at Danish faces. He felt the wet softness of eyes and nostrils and mouths, and one man bit his fingers so hard Godwin thought he might lose one of them.

  Spear shafts splintered; skulls were shattered; a fragment of bone grazed Godwin’s cheek; and a lump of someone’s brain hit him in the forehead.

  Voices roared with pain and fear and anger. At one moment Godwin was pushing forward with his shield; the next he had room to draw his sword and was slashing and stabbing over a Danish shield. He felt neither pain nor weariness. Just a terror and a joy that surged over each other like angry waves. Then very suddenly a great sigh of exhaustion seemed to pass through both hosts. There was a tremor along the killing line. Both sides gave ground just a little. There was no order, no signal, but the fighting lines stepped back from one another, panted for breath, wiped salt sweat from their brows and stared in exhaustion, just as the stone-quarrier, who spends all day chipping at the cliff face and despairs that a crack will ever appear.

  Godwin looked for Edmund. He was there. His helmet was dented in many places and he pulled it off, and pulled off the linen cap and ran his blood-matted fingers through his hair and shook it free.

  ‘Up! Up, you Englishmen!’ Edmund called out. ‘There are your enemies! Let us at them one more time!’

  But he was hoarse and his voice barely carried to where Godwin was standing, and the English were exhausted and had stopped listening to him.

  ‘Have we lost?’ one woman asked.

  Ealdgyth looked to the monk. He shook his head, not so much as to say no as to express his confusion.

  ‘I cannot tell,’ he said.

  ‘They’re breaking!’ someone shouted, and Ealdgyth bit her lower lip as men on the left of the English shieldwall began to fragment and run.

  ‘Stop!’ she shouted as Danes began to pour through the gap, widening it, deepening it. ‘Stop! Someone stop them! Where is the reserve? Is there no one who can see the danger?’

  For a moment the cohesion of the ranks was lost in swirling combat. They could see individual Englishmen break off and sprint for safety. The Danish rearguard had already mounted their horses. They were fresh and eager, and their spears gleamed with cold sunlight.

  ‘Stop them!’ someone was shouting, and Ealdgyth realised it was her voice, and all about her women were lamenting.

  ‘Lady, we must ride to safety!’ the monk’s voice broke through at last, but she was too shocked to speak. ‘The child, my lady, it is the king’s babe.’

  The babe in her belly kicked again and Ealdgyth wondered if its father still lived.

  ‘Come!’ the monk said, and took her reins and led her away. ‘When we reach Malmesberie, we’ll seek sanctuary,’ he kept saying. ‘Knut is a Christian; we shall seek sanctuary.’

  But Ealdgyth did not know if they would make Malmesberie before the Danes. She wished she had not ridden out like this. Futures appeared before her like a handful of threads in the hands of the weaver. Many were terrible; some hard and short; a few offered hope, which was all she could grasp on to. She put her hands to her stomach and wished her child could see the battle. Battle and struggle would temper her son. You will be a warrior and a king, she promised him. I will make it happen!

  ‘Hurry!’ the monk urged her. ‘Alas, alas, the day is lost!’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The Ironside

  Knut paced up and down the hall where he held court. ‘He lives!’ he spat. ‘Edmund lives! Christ’s shit! How the hell did he escape! Where were the riders! We were supposed to kill him today. We were supposed to kill them all!’

  His captains were too exhausted to answer. They stood – sweaty, bloody and stunned by the battle they had fought that day – barely able to speak. They did not know whether to stand or sit, did not know what had happened today, only that they had survived, though they felt as though they had been caught between the hammer and the anvil. They had no answers for him. They had done their best. They had not routed. They had battered this new English fyrd. They held the place of slaughter.

  Eadric and the other English nobles made much of the wounds they had suffered. Only Thorkel seemed unruffled. He limped towards the girl with the ale-jug and held out his horn. He dwarfed Knut, but Knut held his ground before the huge warrior.

  ‘We had twice their number!’ Knut said. ‘How can it be that we did not break their line?’

  ‘We did break their line,’ Thorkel said, and drank noisily. His clothes were dark with blood or sweat or both. He held out his horn and drank again.

  ‘Yes, but they broke ours!’

  Thorkel shrugged. ‘Let us line up again tomorrow. I will lead the charge myself. Tomorrow I will kill him. If not, I will surrender all that I have taken from the English.’

  That evening the ale flowed and Ottar the Black, an Icelandic skald, chanted a quick poem:

  Great king you grappled

  On the green Sorestone fields

  Bloodshedder of Swedes,

  You laid waste the English.

  But Knut was still fuming. He felt that fear, felt that what had previously been assured – a Danish victory over the English – was now in question. ‘Damn your poems!’ Knut told Otter. ‘I want Edmund dead!’

  ‘I should not have listened to you to split the Army,’ Knut told Thorkel. ‘Brawn could win this battle. We need a man with cunning, like Eric.’

  The Danes debated back and forth. Eadric found it hard to hold back his irritation. ‘You should not have split the Army! If Eric of Hlathir was here, we would have caught the traitor by now.’

  ‘If Eric was here, we would not have let them slip away at Penne.’

  ‘If Eric would have been here we would have hung Edmund�
�s corpse from a gibbet tree.’

  Eadric put his hand to his cheek. A scab was forming, but the flesh all around was sore and throbbing. It had been caused by a stone or an arrow; he didn’t know which. It had struck him as the two lines came together, and served as a badge that he had fought bravely, even though he had stayed well back from the front.

  Let Abbot Osgodric bludgeon his retainers’ shields to kindling. Poor dead Osgodric. Eadric had seen his body, hacked to pieces as the English broke. You might have spoken for God, Eadric had thought as he looked down on the dead cleric, but you chose the wrong king to fight for today.

  Indeed, from the dead bodies, it was clear to Eadric that Edmund had paid a heavy price that day. He found many bodies as he stalked along the battle line, where the dead lay three deep. The biggest pile was about the giant handsome body of Alderman Athelsy of Defenascir, Edmund’s cousin. His hearth troops lay about them, their sugar-loaf bosses marking them out. Someone had cut off their ears to make a grim necklace. The Defenascir men had served their lord well. They had taken the soldier’s wage and were dead. Edmund had lost a strong ally, and the enemies of Eadric had been whittled away.

  In the hall that night Eadric watched Knut closely. It was half the skill of knowing what a man wanted to hear before even speaking to him. And to know what he wanted to hear, you had to know his soul.

  Knut doubts himself, Eadric thought. His father’s shadow is long. He resents these old men. And they, Eadric saw with pleasure, resent him.

  Knut turned suddenly and looked at him. ‘You have been unnaturally quiet, Earl Eadric. Speak!’

  Eadric paused and drew in a slow breath. He was like a virgin, tossed into a pit of hairy Danes, sweaty and unhappy after the indecisive battle, looking for a weakling upon which to strap their shame.

  Eadric tasted his own fear, breathed it deep, found it almost exhilarating. He let the pause drag on so long Thorkel began to shuffle uncomfortably.

  ‘Neither side can claim more than the other, but Edmund had more to lose, so God favoured him this day,’ Eadric stated. ‘He has punished us for our pride, but it is clear that He is still on our side. We should offer prayers.’

  ‘I do not need you to mediate between the Lord and me,’ Knut said. ‘It is I who was made king, not you, Earl Eadric.’

  ‘Apologies, lord. You know this as well as I. Well, for more mundane advice – bring Edmund to battle once more as soon as you may. Alderman Athelsy died today, and with him the best men that Defenascir could offer. Abbot Osgodric died as well. Edmund has run out of allies. Your Army grows stronger each day. We held the battle-field today. This is a war Edmund cannot win. We all know that. Edmund was lucky, and luck is like love – it has a habit of running out.’

  Ealdgyth’s horse was led slowly to the end of St John’s Bridge as the sun set in the west. She watched as the sky paled and the air grew cool and as the light began to fail the battered and weary English force filed slowly back to town.

  A wild-eyed nun stood at the market cross in Malmesberie and called out to the Lord. A random collection of stout matrons and young girls lifted their quivering voices: ‘Protect us, Lord, from plundering Danes.’

  All the long summer evening wounded and exhausted men streamed into the burg gates. In the shadow of the walls, monks had dug a large pit and were rolling the dead into it like sacks of grain.

  ‘What news of the king?’ Ealdgyth called out to one of the stragglers. He was leading a horse on which a wounded man sat, the gash in his thigh bound tight.

  ‘What news of the king?’ she repeated but the man shrugged. He did not know. He could not speak.

  One man brought news that the local thegn, Jehan Rattlebone, had been killed and a great cry went through the town, for the fighting for his body had been fierce, and they feared that their sons and brothers and husbands had been killed as well.

  ‘What news of the king?’ Ealdgyth asked any man she could find.

  ‘Edmund lives,’ one man told her. His voice was hoarse, his hair matted to his head.

  ‘Is he wounded?’

  ‘Not last I saw,’ the man said, but at that point the figure on the horse groaned and the speaker gave him a quick look. ‘Forgive me, mistress, my lord’s son is sorely wounded. He needs a priest.’

  There were a lot of funerals.

  A one-eyed friar sang the Benedictus as some townsfolk hurried to the battlefield to pilfer the dead and others helped the wounded and weary back into the town and gave them drink and bread.

  ‘Come to the abbey!’ Ealdgyth’s handmaidens begged her, but she refused. Instead she sat like a statue upon her horse, staring out at the straggling survivors.

  Her eyes were keen. She saw into the hearts of the men, could tell who had fought bravely and who had shirked. Some of the men were almost dead in their saddles, some swayed with exhaustion, and others tramped on foot, their hacked shields abandoned at the battlefield, their spears over their shoulders, helmets hanging from their belts, mail shirts weighing each footstep down.

  The long shadows slipped away after sunset, and the half-light was starting to fail when at last Ealdgyth saw the White Dragon jolt towards her, as if the banner pole itself was striding along the beaten track. She looked for Edmund’s face and did not see it. She saw only one of Edmund’s retainers, a young, fair man named Wiglaf, helmet hanging at his saddle, his sword wrist bound with cloth.

  ‘A glancing blow,’ Wiglaf said.

  ‘Where is the king?’ she called out. ‘Where are the others?’

  The sudden onslaught of questions seemed to stun him. Wiglaf did not know. He had been in battle. He put his hand to his ear and it came away sticky with blood.

  ‘Where is Edmund?’ Ealdgyth cried. Wiglaf frowned for a moment. He had been next to the king’s banner, had charged into the battle alongside him, but early in the fighting he had been struck with a hammer blow that dented his helmet and knocked him almost senseless. He had been dragged to safety and had lain stunned for the rest of the battle, his ear bleeding and his hand still clutching the broken end of his spear shaft.

  ‘The Danes,’ Wiglaf said, and she gave up and pushed on.

  By the time Godwin made it back to Malmesberie lanterns had already been lit against the darkness. He was parched and weary, had left Irwyn by the roadside, with promises that he would come back with a horse to bring him to town. When he reached the town, there were people everywhere, shouting and calling and lamenting, and all Godwin wanted was food and drink and a horse.

  No one seemed to understand him. It was almost midnight by the time he found a mule and stumbled back the way he had come. He could not find Irwyn or see him among the bodies that had been laid out by the side of the road.

  He searched for hours, and thought of Blecca, and that terrible night in Lundenburh what felt like a lifetime before, but he found no one. Godwin stood alone, calling, ‘Irwyn! Irwyn! Where are you?’ until the day overcame him at last and, he stood, holding the reins of the mule, and started to cry – dry wrenching sobs that came from his gut and waved, insanely, between tears and laughter.

  Eventually Godwin stumbled back to Malmesberie. The moon had already risen and it was as if he had never seen this place before. The streets were unknown; the people and shouts and weeping a confusion of sounds and light and faces. Some men sat and stared into the darkness; others lay and wept; others prayed for their deliverance.

  His men were about to come out and search for him by the time he stumbled into the firelit hall.

  ‘Godwin!’ they said, and jumped up.

  ‘Irwyn,’ he croaked back. ‘I have lost Irwyn.’

  Two of his men said they would go out, as others pressed a bowl of milk into his hands.

  ‘You’re still wearing your mail,’ they said, and Godwin winced as his warshirt was unlaced. It fell to the floor in a shapeless heap of knitted steel and Godwin suddenly felt as if he was as light as a feather. But his body ached, and he was tired beyond reckoning.

&n
bsp; ‘Ale!’ he said, and drank deeply, then asked, ‘What news of the king? Does he yet live?’

  The men in the abbey great hall shivered as bowls of broth and meat were passed around. Godwin sat pale and shivering on a seat by the fire.

  ‘Drink,’ someone called out, and a jug of small beer was brought. It took three horns full before Godwin could speak. No one had seen Edmund for hours, and some began to fear that he had been mortally wounded, but the abbot came in to assure them that the king was hale and within the queen’s chambers.

  ‘I have seen and spoken with him,’ the abbot said, ‘and it is a blessing from Christ that he is unwounded.’

  Men cheered then, but Godwin stayed silent. The last time he had seen Edmund, there had been a look of such desolation in his eyes. Godwin had never known him so exhausted and broken, struggling to keep the tears from his eyes.

  The chaplain had a worried look on his face, but he opened the door, let Godwin in.

  Edmund did not rise.

  ‘We failed,’ he said. ‘We were so close and we failed.’ Edmund looked up. ‘I saw him. He is no older than me. He hid behind his father’s warriors, and I knew that if I could bring him within the arc of my sword I would cut him down. I swore that oath long ago. Do you remember?’

  ‘Portemeadow. When Athelstan gave us his pewter badge.’

  Edmund nodded. Godwin had been there since the beginning. There were not many others who had. The less of them there were, the more precious the survivors became.

  ‘I felt God within me, like a great wave, and I felt sure we would break them. But I could not. I failed.’

  Godwin hung his head. He had no words of comfort. It was not the battle so much as the fact that they had come so close to Knut’s banner, had even traded blows with his retainers. When Edmund looked up, there were tears on the young king’s cheeks. Godwin put out a hand. Edmund did not speak, but he took it and squeezed it, then looked away at the far hall shadows, which watched and waited and judged.