by Justin Hill
Godwin’s breathing started to slow. He jerked awake. His lantern had gone out. He could hear men cheering one of the poems that were being chanted about the Ironside. He pushed himself up and walked straight towards the sound. He needed more beer.
Godwin woke next morning at dawn with a firm-breasted girl lying next to him. She had blonde hair and nut-brown eyes and freckles, and it took a few moments for her name to come back to him.
Jesu! he thought. Hilda did not look as pretty as she had the night before, and he grabbed his cloak and his trousers and stumbled out into the rain.
The street was still littered with drunken thanes.
What a feast they had had last night. What a welcome from the Lundenburh folk!
Edmund was not seen until nearly midday, and his guards kept Archbishop Wulfstan from his chamber until he had finished. He lay back. His head hurt and he was still a little drunk from the night before. He could hear the archbishop coughing outside. He rubbed his eyes ran his fingers through his hair.
‘You take that door,’ Edmund said to the girl. He patted her backside as she slipped out of a side door and the archbishop was let in at last. Queen Emma was with him.
Edmund’s legs were bare and hairy. He grinned at them. ‘What a fine day,’ he said. ‘Drizzle has never looked so cheerful! Smell the shit. That’s Lundenburh!’
The English were like hounds that had the enemy’s scent, but the bridge across the Temese to Sudwerca had been broken, and there had been rain in the Oxenefordscire hills and no crossing was fordable before Breguntford. It was late in the afternoon when they finally crossed the Temese. Godwin was among the outriders, searching for the Army.
The forces met again on the second day. The Danes arrayed themselves on a marshy field along the southern banks of the Temese. Both armies were at least twice as strong as the forces that had met at Sorestone, and all the banners of the great men flapped eagerly.
Edmund was as cocky as a barnyard rooster. King Edmund Ironside. He believed in himself, and his cause, and the faith of the country. He knew he could not lose as he rode along the line with his head unhelmeted. He fixed gazes with his eager warriors, ostentatiously dismounted, had his horse led far off, stood for a moment out in front of his men and beheld the great size and glory of his host, drew in a deep breath.
‘Dear God,’ he prayed, ‘give us Your strength. Send St Michael down among us with his revenging blade.’
Then Edmund took his place in the front rank of warriors, where a true king stood, before God and country and his fellow warriors.
Godwin stood next to him. He was a veteran now, felt the weight and responsibility and the thrill as well. The men around him seemed very different from those who had stood on the ridge at Penne or the valley lip at Sorestone. Caerl was dead. Others too, many of whom had shared a cup or a joke under a hedgerow anywhere from Hamtunscir to Defenascir. Men who had ridden alongside Godwin and swapped tales and histories and family tales. Young, brave and glad-hearted men. All dead.
He did not look at men in the same way now.
He will not last in the front of the shieldwall, he would think of one man.
He will last an hour, if he is lucky.
Godwin remembered names, but learnt to forget them quickly as well. At least Beorn was unscathed and Godwin’s neighbour, a stocky farmer named Enwulf, had caught up with them and brought fresh mounts and twenty mailed warriors, with grim humour, who were eager to kill Danes.
The sun shone today, and the spear-line was keen for battle. They drew themselves up smartly, and the Danes did likewise. Both lines banged their swords against their shields, shouted war cries, and someone at the back of the English line struck up a war song that made them all laugh. They had the Danes and both sides knew it.
The two shieldwalls formed and strode towards one another. They paused briefly to hurl spears and javelins, insults and stones. Godwin saw a spear curving towards him, laughed as it fell three long strides short. Edmund turned his back to the Danes, slowly put on his helmet, drew his sword, blew his war horn and then waved his father’s ancient sword. The English let out a great cheer and marched forwards, the shieldwall firm.
Men on either side quickened the pace and charged. Godwin felt no fear today. The sun was too bright, the air too clear, the omens too good. He exulted in the coming battle. Time slowed about him and he took in the world. It seemed to him that there was a glorious moment of possibility as both warhosts moved towards each other, banners flying and brave hearts, and it seemed almost sad that one side had to lose. Then Godwin saw the man who would come up against him and he fixed his eyes upon him and raised his spear to shoulder height. He saw a gorse bush to his right; it seemed fitting that the bush would be there to witness his stand.
There was a thunderous clash of linden shields. Godwin killed the man, but his shield bent under the force of the spear-thrusts against it. The two hosts hewed at each other over the war linden. Amidst the shouts and the din of sword on helm, there was a low groan. Godwin cursed himself. His shield was too high and he could not see his enemy well. The grass was slippery. Under the trampling feet it turned quickly to mud, which smothered wounded men. Godwin’s spear shaft snapped and he thrust the splintered wood into the face of a bearded Dane. He drew his sword and beat down upon the enemy helms. Godwin struck and slashed and found that the roaring he could hear was his own voice, raging. He realised that the shield in his hand had been hacked away and he slammed the boss into the face of the man opposite him.
Godwin fought by the gorse bush for an hour or more. He did not remember taking a single step back or forward. He hacked and stabbed and trampled the wounded underfoot. Suddenly a blow knocked Godwin sideways. He winced as he tried to stab again, but he could hardly lift his arm. He fell to one knee and it was only the crush that kept him from the ground. He thought he would be trampled to death and fought desperately to get back to his feet.
Godwin would have died if it were not for a tremor that went through the Danes and made their lines give just a little ground.
The English followed up. ‘After them!’ someone shouted. ‘Don’t let them get away!’
‘Hold!’ Godwin shouted as he limped after them. ‘Hold!’ But his side stabbed with every breath.
In front of him, a fat Dane limped after his hurrying fellows. He was set upon by Beorn and his men and there was a sickening sound as the Dane parried the blows with his bare hands and forearms.
In the end one of the men lifted the bottom flap of the Dane’s mail and stabbed his sword up into his gut.
‘Here’s one,’ the shout went up, and another Dane was ruthlessly butchered.
Godwin paused and watched as the Danes fell back and groups of pursuers gave chase.
Godwin turned round, pulled off his helmet used his forearm to push back the sweat from his face. Just twenty feet behind him he saw the gorse bush. About him was a field of dead and wounded. The thick green summer grass was trampled and littered with the bodies and weapons of the slain. Men lay like torn sacks in a line across the field, their pink guts spilt over the grass. Others were still moving, hands and legs twitching or waving, scattered voices calling out for help or their mothers. The wounded Danes were being killed. Godwin understood then why men fought for the bodies of their friends. Leave no man behind. Not to this, he thought.
The sun broke through the clouds. A blackbird sang. Godwin saw the face of a man who had been killed. It was ugly and twisted in death. One of his killers had stripped his fingers of rings and taken his heavy purse.
The pursuit might go on for miles. Godwin slumped to the floor. Joy bubbled up. After the long crush the field now seemed empty. A watching raven swooped down to a far hedgethorn, and stared at Godwin with black twinkling eyes.
‘Wulfnoth’s son fought well today,’ Godwin called out. ‘The English put the Danes to flight and held the place of slaughter.’
Back in the safety of the hastily erected camp, Godwin ached as if it had
been beaten by hammers. His bruises were livid, and as he stripped his mail shirt off he found that he had taken a spear-thrust in his left thigh, just below the mail line.
‘Under the shield!’ Wulfnoth had taught him. ‘That’s where the hidden blow will come.’
Well, they got me, Godwin thought as a serving man draped the clotting wound with a spider’s web.
‘A web and a prayer,’ Beorn laughed, and when Enwulf came in he laughed and rubbed Godwin’s head.
‘How did you come to harm? Tripping up fat Danes?’
‘No idea,’ Godwin said.
Enwulf bent down to look at the wound and wrinkled his nose. ‘My, that is a close blow. He certainly got you, didn’t he!’
‘I got him back.’
‘Really? How do you know?’
‘Because I killed every Dane I saw.’
Enwulf slapped Godwin’s shoulder. ‘Listen to him! Little Godwin. Let’s share a cup or two.’
There should have been great merriment that night, but the men who chased the Danes the farthest came back in dribs and drabs, under the guard of Edmund’s mounted companions.
Godwin could tell from the way they carried themselves that they had bad news. He used a spear as a crutch, limped out to see what they had to tell. The Danes had pulled away in good order, and many of their pursuers had become overstretched and the Danes had fallen upon the scattered groups of English and cut them down or driven them into the Temese.
‘And there they drowned,’ the survivors said.
That evening Godwin drank heavily. He woke late in the night in a stable hut and he groaned. His head ached, his body ached and each breath hurt. He shut his eyes and tried to sleep.
‘Lord,’ a voice said, and a hand shook him. ‘Lord, are you not well?’
Godwin squinted. It was day and Beorn was standing over him. His body hurt more than before. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not feel well.’
Beorn went off to find someone who knew their physic and ended up bringing back the king’s own blood-letter, a thin and slightly inebriated monk with liver-spotted head and bushy grey eyebrows and his sharp physic’s knife. The monk had not had time to clean himself between each bloodletting and was so blood-splattered he looked as if he’d been in the battle himself.
‘This is the one?’ the monk asked as he smeared the blood off on his robe front and knelt next to Godwin. He lifted each eyelid, looked into the eyes and tongue and the wound on his leg.
‘Where is his urine?’
A bowl was produced.
The monk smelt it. ‘It smells of beer.’
‘He’s been pissing all night. He was at the ale,’ Beorn explained, though it was hard to explain when he wasn’t sure what the man was looking to learn. ‘Can’t you just let some blood?’
Godwin’s arm had already been bared to the elbow and still the monk insisted on smelling his breath. Beorn had never seen a medical man take so long to decide to let a pint of blood. It took a few more moments for the man to bring his blood-bowl out, and Beorn looked away as the monk said a quick prayer and wiped his knife on his knee. He never liked bloodletting, and this moment took him back to a stinking hall in Dyflin, as Wulfnoth lay on his death bed and he bit his lip and wished there was a Dane he could kill. He would murder him with his bare hands, Beorn thought, rather than watch this again.
‘If I die,’ Godwin said as the blood flowed into the bowl, ‘then have prayers said for me. Care for my people. Have prayers said for my father. Look after her.’
Beorn let Godwin talk, and did not need to ask who ‘her’ was. Yes, he nodded, yes, and did not look up till the blood had stopped flowing, and Godwin’s face had turned ashen and his eyes had fluttered and he had fallen silent.
‘I dare not let more,’ the monk said, but the men knew too little to question him and they stood around and looked at Godwin and prayed silent prayers, made silent vows, tried not to remember that night in Dyflin when they were made lordless men.
Edmund came unscathed from the battle, but his warhost was as weak as Wulfnoth’s son and too many of his best warriors had been drowned. Even Wiglaf, his standard-bearer and the two men who took the White Dragon up after him had been cut down. Edmund’s fyrd had lost as many men as the Danes. More, Edmund feared, when he saw how few of Leofwine of Hwicce’s men came back to camp that night.
Beorn rode with Edmund to see the Danish camp, and it was twilight as he returned and Éärendel, the even star, glowed bright in the south-eastern sky. The dead had been stripped and they looked very ordinary as they lay in the mud and waited for burial. The Danes had camped where the horsemen had left them, and he could hear them singing their war songs. They seemed in an unusually good mood considering the drubbing they’d been given.
No doubt they’ll be singing more of their poems, he said to himself, and wished his own men were singing as well, but there was a strange hush in the English camp, for even though they held the battlefield, all of them knew that they had had a chance to rout the enemy and had let it slip, and that the Eternal Lord might not offer them such battle-fortune again.
That night the captains gathered at Edmund’s fire. The flames were red on their faces; some of them had broken noses, swollen eyes or bandaged wounds.
‘You were an ugly-looking bunch before the battle, and I do not think it’s made you any better,’ Edmund said. A few of them laughed, but the laughter was weak and weary. ‘So, we’ve beaten Knut again, but the Army is intact and harvest time is upon us. We must let our men go home.’
Edmund fell silent. He had gambled so much on a quick strike before harvest time came, and he had certainly caught the Danes unawares. Perhaps with five hundred more men he could have tilted the battle from victory to a massacre. Damn it, he thought, but he was still alive and that was a blessing.
At that moment Edmund realised how much he missed Godwin. He was not here and Edmund needed him. Godwin always spoke sense, and even when he was silent, Edmund drew strength and comfort from his presence.
‘So,’ he asked the companions left to him, ‘what should we do?’
There were lots of ideas, but none of them rang true. He listened and the various opinions were like the chisel blows of the minster mason. As he listened and differed, Edmund found his own opinion being revealed from within himself, like the image of a saint inside the squared block of stone.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Today was too close-run and we have lost too many to fight another battle. But we have a whole country to supply us and Knut is far from home. Let’s picket the Danes in this corner of England and gather another fyrd. Give out all my share of the plunder. Let the men go home to harvest. Let them tell their neighbours of the victory. Perhaps shame will winkle the fyrdsmen out.’
The English fyrd drifted back to their folds, and Edmund came to see Godwin, but he was feverish and did not understand what Edmund said to him.
‘Take him to Lundenburh,’ Edmund advised.
Next morning Enwulf and Beorn started to move him, but Godwin pushed them off. ‘No. Not Lundenburh. I will die there,’ he said. ‘Take me home,’ he urged. ‘Take me back home. Contone! Bury me in Contone.’
‘That’s a long day’s ride,’ Beorn hissed.
‘Contone!’ Godwin said again. ‘Take me home!’
Edmund’s riders kept a close watch with orders to bring news to him if the enemy so much as stirred. But the Danes shrank like snails back to their holes. Godwin knew none of this. He was not there and his absence was everywhere, especially in victory.
Edmund tried to joke of the days of the Wild Hunt, or playing football on the lawns at West Minster, or stealing honey cakes from his grandmother’s kitchens, but there was no one left on the benches about him who knew what he was talking about. These battles had cost Edmund, of those who were close to him, most dearly of all. And now Wulfnothson was gone.
Edmund mourned Godwin as if he were dead. He was heavy with friend-loss.
CHAPTER NINE
Twilig
ht at Contone
The last time Kendra had seen Godwin was in April, just after Edmund had been made king. She felt hollow for want of news.
Not long after he left they had learnt that Lundenburh was surrounded by ditches, the river closed. A few days later they heard that the Danes had taken the burg on the south side of the river and that it could not be long before the north bank fell.
‘If Edmund comes, then like as not he’ll come too late,’ men said. ‘Even now the Danes are pulling the noose tight about the city.’
On May Day Arnbjorn, Wulfnoth’s faithful steward, dressed as the Green Man and capered about like a fool, before handing out honey-cakes to the excited children. The whole scene seemed oddly detached. Kendra watched the children from the shadows; they left their branches in the yard, their ribbons and clothes got torn and muddied as they tramped off into the fields, and the little ones cried and held their hands out to be picked up.
There was a forced atmosphere to the celebrations, as if the festivity had been put on for the children’s sake.
‘Do you miss him?’ Agnes asked.
‘Who?’
‘Lord Godwin.’
Kendra nodded. ‘I do,’ she said.
*
In early June the first cuckoos were mocking the other birds when news came that Knut was besieging Lundenburh. Men did not sleep well, as if they expected Contone to be one of the places that King Knut might visit. Grond the bee-master’s wife had recently replaced the seat of his trousers, and he settled himself comfortably down, chewed on the grass stalk in his mouth and spat loudly as he lowered his backside to the stool and licked his remaining teeth.
‘Bah!’ Grond said as Arnbjorn did his rounds. ‘The bees are not happy. It’s too damp. Too little sun.’
‘You say that every year.’
‘This year’s worse. What is this – all these kings? What are we – heathens? It’s unholy, it is, and it’s affecting the bees. They swarmed twice yesterday, and if you listen to their buzzing you can tell they’re unhappy. Their honey’ll not be sweet, mark my words!’