by Justin Hill
St Dunstan’s Abbey was one of the most ancient of the minsters of Wessex. The walls were vast and ancient; the arches hunched over them all; the high roof soared up into darkness; from the darkness the songs of the angels fell.
Outside the willows drooped their heads and wept. The Tor stood like a silent watchman as the candles lit the stained glass from inside, and the sound of the plainchant rose and fell like waves upon a distant shore.
Godwin was wearied by grief. He had been here, in this cathedral with Edmund, back in the days of the Wild Hunt. Godwin was fifteen then, Edmund seventeen. The country had turned to God for help, and the king had decreed that the whole country should fast and sing the third psalm.
They had stood in this cathedral, before the rood screen, and while Athelstan had joined in, Edmund had refused.
‘Lord, how are they increased that trouble me! Many are they that rise up against me.’
‘“They trouble me,”’ young Edmund had laughed.
Godwin and Edmund had been bystanders then, skulking and hooded youths standing in the hall shadows, bitter and angry. But they used that anger and fashioned it well, and fought the Danes back. Godwin stopped. He was tormenting himself. He tried not to think, but at last, like a lone warrior against impossible odds, grief overcame him.
In the morning Godwin and thirty others stood and watched as Edmund Ironside, Bravest of Warriors, Dearest of Kings, was laid in a freshly dug grave by the side of the altar. The slab was lowered back over him and dropped the last inch.
Godwin crossed himself and turned away.
So that is that, he thought.
Outside, the pale winter daylight was so bright it made Godwin blink.
‘Eadwig has raised the royal standard at Wincestre,’ one man said. ‘Which way will you fare, Godwin Wulfnothson? Will you rally to Eadwig’s cause?’
Godwin sat down on the abbey steps. He was not listening.
‘Wulfnothson, whither will you ride?’
Godwin squinted and then looked down at the land, which was touched with frost. His voice was uncertain. ‘I promised Ealdgyth I would help her escape,’ Godwin said. ‘Then I shall return home.’
The image of Edmund and him sitting with feet stretched to the blaze flashed in his mind for a moment, and he screwed his will down on it, refusing to torment himself any longer.
‘There is fine hunting in Contone. Come up and visit me there.’
Their breath steamed about their heads. Each made their choice, and they stood for a moment and embraced, then turned each away from the other and made their separate ways into the world.
Godwin sat down again, stretched his feet out and did not know what to do or think. The days were at their shortest. He was weary beyond measure.
Godwin saw some children gathering ivy and holly, and making their way across the frozen ruts to the village that lay a little way from the abbey gates.
It was nearing Christmastide when Offa the Fox arrived at Athelingedean. He threw a leg over his horse’s neck and landed before it had come to a halt.
‘So this is where Edmund plotted,’ he said, and put his hands on his hips to admire the hall and then turned to look at the well-tended fields that were part of the manor. His men rode up behind him, and pulled their horses to a halt.
‘And yours now, lord.’
Offa turned to look at the speaker. It was a short man with thick brown eyebrows and a slight stoop. ‘Yes, it is.’
The man bowed.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Coenwulf,’ the man said. He spoke in a strong Sudsexe accent. ‘I was steward to the Old Lady.’
‘The Old Lady?’
‘Sorry, sir. King Ethelred’s mother.’
Offa Fox nodded. ‘I am Offa Fox,’ he said.
Coenwulf had guessed. Who else could the red-haired giant be except Eadric’s trusted henchman, but he held the man’s gaze and gave nothing away.
‘Show me the hall. Then you can summon the freemen.’ They started towards the hall, and then Offa stopped. ‘You were here when the princes were young men?’
Coenwulf nodded. ‘I have lived here all my life.’
‘Then you will know Godwin Wulfnothson.’
Coenwulf nodded again. His voice was flat. ‘Yes sire.’
‘The king wants him,’ Offa Fox said.
‘He is not here,’ Coenwulf replied.
Offa laughed. ‘No. But his hall is not so far.’ Both men looked westwards, to the dark heights of the Weald. Coenwulf pictured Mykelhal in better days. Pictured Godwin as the stiff and awkward eleven-year-old that Edmund brought in like the starveling that is brought from the cold into the hall and grows to strength and health. He pictured the Old Lady sitting with a honey cake in her lap, waiting for the boys to return from their hunt. From this hall he had seen everything.
‘Has he been here?’
Coenwulf shook his head.
‘Have you heard tidings of him?’
Coenwulf shook his head again.
Offa’s ruddy eyebrows were severe, the freckles very bright, his pale blue eyes fixed Coenwulf to the spot. ‘If you hear anything, then be sure to let me know.’
Coenwulf nodded, and caught the silver coin that Offa flicked towards him. ‘There’s more for anyone who brings me his head,’ Offa said. ‘Double if they lead me to his den, so I can cut it off myself.’
Coenwulf slipped the coin into the folds of his kirtle. ‘I’ll put word out,’ he said, and then threw the hall wide open. ‘Welcome Lord Offa to Sudsexe and the royal manor of Athelingedean.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Unlucky Man
Queen Emma heard the news of Edmund’s death and a strange mix of emotions ran through her. Sorrow and grief, but delight as well, for now Edmund was dead there were opportunities for her.
She summoned Edward and Alfred to her chambers. ‘Your half-brother King Edmund has been murdered,’ she said. Alfred was twelve now, and he struggled to look manly as he weathered the shock. Edward, at sixteen, looked on with a sneering look as if he did not believe her. ‘He has been murdered,’ she repeated, and a voice in her head was singing the Kyrie eleison. ‘The man is dead.’
‘Mama,’ Alfred said. He still used the childish diminutive. ‘Who killed him?’
Emma drew in a deep breath. ‘I do not know.’ It was not me, she thought, though who would have imagined the Lord God would give me, his humblest servant, such a bounty?
Knut arrived at the gates of Lundenburh the next day.
Queen Emma sent word out that she would come to welcome him, and offered him the Palace of West Minster, so that he and his men should be comfortable while they waited.
She sat in her chamber. It was a stone room, with a high, plain window, the shutters of which had been thrown open, and the air and light streamed in. Emma felt a cold breath of air, as if God Himself had come down to her. She felt like the Virgin Mary waiting for the Archangel Gabriel. She closed her eyes, felt the chill breath on her neck and understood what God wanted.
It was thrilling and appalling at the same time. But it was God’s will, she felt it and she decided her course, for good or ill.
‘Bring my sons!’ she called.
Edward and Alfred came together.
‘Knut is here,’ she said. She seemed almost excited, as if the danger thrilled her. ‘We cannot resist him. You two must flee.’
‘Where will we flee to?’
‘To your uncle in Normandig. He will care for you both.’
‘When can we return?’ Edward asked.
‘I do not know,’ Emma said.
‘When will we see you?’ Alfred asked.
‘Hurry along with you both.’
Emma put her sons on to the boat with a kiss and a hug, but she did not wait to see their captain push off but hurried back to organise the meeting with Knut.
The Danes stood in a great and excited crowd and awaited her arrival.
‘Let us ride out to meet her,’
Knut said, and in a moment they were all riding towards her, and some of her party seemed to take fear, as if the Danes were meaning to run them down, but she stayed resolute and commanded them to stay.
Knut liked that. He pulled his horse to a stop with a fine flourish, bringing it from a gallop to a halt almost on the spot. He bowed gracefully.
‘Greetings, Emma, daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandig.’
Emma bowed her head. She was decked out in a robe of red velvet, with her hair bound in her wimple, but with a few coy strands of gleaming blond hair flapped in the breeze. ‘Greetings, Knut Sweinson, King of All England.’
There was a brief moment of bows as each man was introduced, and then Emma said, ‘It was my part to defend the city of Lundenburh while King Edmund lived, but now the Lord has judged him wanting and delivered you to us as king, I hand to you the keys of the city.’
Knut was delighted. His horse stamped with enthusiasm and tossed its head and snorted.
‘I have a feast prepared. Shall we ride into your city?’ Emma asked.
‘Excellent. Your Danish is very good.’
Emma laughed.
It was a strange thing to look at such a beauty, dressed in the finest cloth that Christendom could offer, speaking Danish like a Sealand farm girl.
‘Thank you, lord. We do not forget our ancestry. We share a common lineage, do we not?’
‘We do,’ Knut said, but privately he scoffed at the idea. He was descended from Odin while the Norman dukes were upstart descendants from a Danish exile. His first wife had been an English Dane, and she had already given him a son. He fancied the idea of taking Emma as wife and spawning another heir on this Danish colonist. He liked the idea of his loins making a union of new and old Danish blood. He was only nineteen years old and look at what he had achieved.
So King Knut took Lundenburh and the treasury and mint, over the dead body of the loyal English moneyer, Godric, struck down by Emma’s own men.
Knut put his first wife aside.
Emma refused to marry him until he also swore an oath to put the son by his first wife aside and to make any sons of their union king of England.
Knut started to swear, but she knew how easily men made wrongful oaths and later relinquished their hold. She brought her favourite relics and threw open the caskets so that the skulls of St Ouen and St Augustine stared at Knut with their dark and empty sockets.
St Ouen was missing his low jaw, while the teeth of St Augustine were worn down to the roots. The saintly witnesses brought a chill to the room. Knut’s skin prickled.
He put his hand out, and Emma took a tooth from a locket about her neck and added it to the pile.
‘St Bridget’s,’ she said.
It seemed a little vulgar to put so much faith in oaths sworn over relics, but Knut put his hand out and swore.
‘And that any of our sons shall be made king. None of the sons of that other woman.’
‘Other woman’ was how she spoke of his previous wife.
Emma insisted on having a priest come and bless the union, as if such things were needed to make a betrothal official.
She was no virgin, and Knut was quite delighted with the enthusiasm with which she took the seed from his loins.
‘I want to be pregnant,’ Emma said, as she lay with her backside up on a pillow. ‘I will give you strong sons,’ she promised, ‘and they will be great rulers.’
Knut yawned. ‘Well, first we must make sure all England is mine. Who shall we kill?’
Emma went through lists of names of men who could be swayed, those who could be bought or intimidated, and those who would have to be killed.
‘Godwin?’ Knut said. ‘Is he the fair-haired man who carried the banner at Penne?’
Emma nodded. ‘Yes. Fair hair, tall and strong, and a fine talker.’
There was no mistake.
‘Yes, you must kill him,’ she said.
Seeing which way the wind was blowing, one of the great Hamtunscir families sent armed retainers to seize Ealdgyth, but she had the sense to gather up Edward and flee. Her boat was pushing off from the Boseham quayside when the horsemen caught up with them, and they glared out as the wake widened between them, and cursed their luck.
Ealdgyth sailed far, and fortune buffeted her ever eastwards, till she found a haven in the Kingdom of the Huns, where she hoped that her son would be beyond even the reach of Knut’s killers and where, later in the year Ealdgyth gave birth to another son, whom she named Edmund, in honour of his father.
Eadwig was not so lucky. He raised his banner and no one came and he was seized and slain as he tried to board a ship to Flandran.
One by one killers went through Queen Emma’s list. Men were drowned or beaten to death, or hung from their necks from gibbet trees.
Godwin hid in wood and field. He spent another night in Wayland’s Smithy, and came out again, from the great stones, still alive. But his footsteps led him slowly home and at last he turned his horse along the road to Contone. He stopped and looked up and saw the shoulders of the Downs appearing through the low grey clouds. He was alone and feared the faces of the wives and children of the men he had led to their deaths.
A lone horseman, dark in the midwinter landscape, a week after a bleak and cheerless Yuletide. He had tears in his eyes as the people came out, women in shawls, old man with their cloaks pulled tight about them, their feet in mud as they stared at him with blank dark eyes.
Godwin came closer. He wiped his eyes to clear his sight.
They stared at him.
Arnbjorn, Wulfnoth’s old steward, limped out. ‘Lord Godwin!’ he said. ‘We heard that you were dead, that all were dead. Lord Godwin, it is you! Oh, thanks be to the Lord God, Maker of Heaven and Middle Earth.’
They pulled Godwin off his horse and hurried him inside and threw wood on the fire and sat around. It was an odd feeling. There were no young men there – just women and old men and boys – except Godwin.
He looked about and their faces were still trusting and loyal. Even Kendra. It struck him that she was the last of the ship-full who had been with Wulfnoth. He looked at her for support, then began to speak.
They drank him up, drank all his words, and sniffed and one by one the women began to cry as they learnt how their men had stood in battle and bravely given themselves for kin and king and lord and country.
‘What will you do?’ Kendra asked in the morning.
Godwin could not bring himself to go to Knut and plead for mercy. ‘I will stay here,’ he said, ‘till Knut comes to kill me.’
Of course it would not be Knut who would come. Just a spear in the fields, or a band of men, brave with numbers. A shoddy death.
Kendra waited for the right moment. There was none, so she spoke anyway.
‘Men have been here.’
‘Who?’
‘Offa Fox.’
Godwin said nothing. He sat alone, staring into the fire. He did not ask any questions about what happened, could not hear.
‘Sing for me,’ he said after a long pause.
Kendra tried, but he voice broke and she had to bite back the tears.
Godwin looked up, and she saw pain in his eyes. Unbearable pain. Sing for me, his look implored, and she drew in a deep breath.
Coenwulf was up early the next morning, the silver coin sweaty in his hand. He hurried through the hall and knocked on Offa Fox’s closet door.
‘Lord!’ he called, but there was no answer. He set the candle down and lifted a first to rap against the door. He rapped again, and this time there was a grunt.
‘It’s Coenwulf,’ he called. ‘Open the door, I have news of Godwin Wulfnothson.’
From inside the sleeping closet there was another grunt and the sound of furs being thrown back, and a heavy tread before the latch was lifted and the door swung open. The candle cast enough light to illuminate Offa’s hairy shins, his naked legs and the kirtle he had thrown over his shoulders, which hung half way down his thighs.
> It illuminated Coenwulf’s face. ‘What time is it?’ Offa blinked.
‘The third watch,’ Coenwulf said.
Offa’s face was screwed up with sleep. ‘What news?’ he yawned.
‘You wanted Godwin?’ Coenwulf said.
‘He is here,’ came a voice. This time it was not Coenwulf who spoke. A figure stepped forward, and the candle threw enough light across his face for Offa to see who the third man was.
Godwin smiled. ‘You’ve paid my hall two visits, and yet I have never been there to welcome you.’ Godwin drew his sword. It gleamed red. Offa shouted, but the sound was quickly stifled, and Coenwulf lifted the light.
Offa lay on his bed, his freckled skin stained with gouts of dark blood. Godwin wiped his blade clean on the furs, and took Coenwulf’s arm.
‘You cannot stay here,’ he said, and blew the candle out.
*
The manor of Burne lay on the coast, six miles due south of Contone. The settlement there was not as large or prosperous as its royal neighbour, Bosenham, but there was a modest Benedictine minster and a small village of workshops and longhouses spread out along the fowl-filled fens that gave a great harvest of reeds for thatching. It was the place Wulfnoth used to go to when he needed to pray, and it was where he had kept all the charters for his lands.
Godwin had not been there for a long time.
The slow creak of the mill drifted over the flat fields as he paused his horse at the end of the avenue of old and twisted yews that lined the approach to the abbey gates, like silent watchmen. The yews were malevolent in the gloomy evening light, like old hags with twisted arms and backs and fingers. The trees were deep in winter dreams, and Godwin kicked his horse onwards and ignored the strange shadows that flickered at the corner of his vision.
The abbey was secluded from the world by a deep ditch and palisade, but the roofs of the buildings were visible from outside, and a blacksmith was banging away on his stone as Godwin called to get a door ward’s attention. It was a long moment before anyone appeared.
‘I am Godwin, son of Wulfnoth.’
His words seemed less weighty after Edmund’s death, but if they had charm, they still had a power on those closed doors, and after a long pause each leaf heaved wide open and Godwin heel kicked the reluctant horse inside. A pale-skinned novice led Godwin into a low wattle room where a small fire burnt.