The Conquest

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  CHAPTER 9

  'Sister Edith says that I still have at least another two months until the birth, but I know I shall burst before then,' groaned Felice, her hand upon the mountain of her belly. 'I'm as big as one of Aubert's wine barrels now!'

  Ailith, who was visiting Felice at St Aethelburga's, contrasted Felice's impressive mound with her own which was no more than a gentle hillock. She too had another two months until her confinement.

  'I asked Sister Edith if it could be twins, but she just laughed and said that there was a lot of water around him.'

  'Him?' Ailith smiled.

  'From the way he kicks me night and day, I know I am carrying a boy. Only a male could be so inconsiderate. Oh! Feel him now!' Taking Ailith's hand, she placed it over her swollen stomach. Ailith felt the vigorous thrust and surge against the palm of her hand and was both surprised and a little disconcerted.

  'If what you say is true, then mine must surely be a girl,' she said. 'I have felt nothing like this — tickles and flutterings that is all. Dame Hulda says that I will suddenly swell up, perhaps in the last month.' Dame Hulda had not said a great deal, although she visited Ailith frequently to keep an eye on her wellbeing.

  Felice's condition had improved tremendously since her arrival at the convent. There were two Norman nuns and a Fleming among the thirty-strong community. The Abbess herself, although English by birth, had a sister who was married to a Norman merchant, and these connections made Felice feel less of a foreigner.

  The outside world intruded little upon the daily routine of the nuns. Their time was spent in prayer, contemplation and hard work. Felice, as a boarder, was not required to go to prayer at all hours of the day and night. Indeed, being in a delicate condition, she was positively cosseted by the holy women. Her security restored, Felice had recovered much of her confidence and poise. She was still terrified of the ordeal of childbirth, but for the nonce she was able to control her fear. 'He will be named Benedict,' she told Ailith dreamily. 'That was the name of Aubert's father.'

  Ailith curbed herself from uttering a sarcasm concerning Aubert's loyalties. No cause would be served by making hostile remarks to Felice about her absent husband.

  'Have you decided on a name for yours?' Felice asked when Ailith said nothing.

  'Goldwin says Harold for a boy, Elfled for a girl.' Ailith had been sitting on the edge of Felice's bed, but now she rose and paced to the window. It was a square opening in the wall of about shoulder height, and with the shutters thrown back for fresh air and daylight, yielded a view of a swept yard containing animal pens and a well housing. Sleeves pushed back, overskirt pulled through her belt, a nun was winding the bucket. 'My brothers are home from the shore watch,' she said into the natural silence which had fallen. 'Harold could not keep the army together any longer. There has been no sign that your Duke will make a crossing yet.'

  'He is not my Duke.' Felice petulantly plumped up the bolsters at her back. 'I wish he had never laid claim to England.'

  'So do I,' Ailith said with a heavy heart. She watched the nun cross the courtyard with her full bucket of water. The weather was still and grey, a waiting day. Abruptly Ailith turned from the window. 'I have to go, Goldwin doesn't like me to be away for too long.' Leaning over Felice, she kissed her on the cheek.

  'Come again soon,' Felice entreated.

  'If I can.' Ailith forced a smile. 'God willing, this dispute between Harold and William will soon be over.' In her own ears her voice sounded false and overbright, as if she stood at the bedside of a terminally ill patient, reassuring them that they would soon be on their feet.

  When she arrived home, her brothers' mounts were tethered outside the forge, and she saw that the horses were laden for a journey. Hauberks and quilted tunics were rolled up and strapped behind the saddles together with bundles of provisions. More ominously, held by a twist of leather at the horses' flanks, the heads of their great Danish war axes gave off dull gleams of light. Propped against the forge wall were two round shields and two ash-hafted spears. A third saddled horse dozed on one hip, and beside it stood her own irascible pack ass. Ailith poked her head around the forge door, but there was no-one inside and the fire was low. Goldwin's workbench was devoid of the usual clutter of tools. A feeling of dread came upon Ailith. Running to the house, she flung open the door.

  Seated at the table near the hearth, Aldred, Lyulph and Goldwin broke off their conversation and looked at her, their expressions a mingling of surprise and guilt. The board was littered with the crumbs of a hasty meal. In a corner Wulfhild was sniffing and wiping her eyes on her apron.

  'What has happened?' Ailith demanded. Her gaze flew to Goldwin and she saw with rising panic that he was wearing a quilted gambeson and had strapped a langseax to his belt. 'Why have you taken your tools from the forge?' On the trestle she noticed his own lightweight hauberk rolled into a bundle and secured with a leather strap. She met his eyes. 'You are going to war,' she managed to say hoarsely before her throat closed.

  'Aili, I must. The King will need an armourer in the field.' Jerking to his feet, Goldwin hastened around the table and took her in his arms. 'If I stay here and brood any longer, I will explode like a barrel of overheated pitch.' His embrace tightened.

  Never before had he smelled so strongly of the forge and acrid masculine sweat. Ailith saw with painful clarity the way his hair curled on his brow, the squirrel-brown of his eyes and the density of his lashes.

  'I cannot bear it,' she whispered, her fingers tightening in the quilting of his tunic.

  'Sweetheart, I know how you feel, but I have to go.'

  'To prove your manhood?' she snapped. 'Surely there is proof enough of it here!' She pressed his hand against her belly. 'It is this you need to stay and protect, or are you going to do like Aubert de Remy and leave me to fend for myself?'

  Goldwin whitened beneath the lash of her tongue. 'It is for the very reason of my unborn child that I am doing this,' he answered huskily. 'So that it may have a future. Aili, please!'

  She bit her lip and laid her head against the erratic thud of his heart, her own heart leaden with terror. 'So William has landed?' she asked after a moment, when she had swallowed enough of her bitterness to be able to speak without screaming.

  'No.' It was Aldred who spoke as he and Lyulph rose from their hasty meal. 'The King's brother Tostig and Harald Hardraada of Norway are ravaging the north country. York has fallen and the armies of the northern English lords have taken a severe battering. If you want to save your child, pray as never before that the winds continue to keep William of Normandy from our shores and that we can hold back the might of the Norwegians.' His mouth a tight, grim line, Aldred went to the door. 'We have no time to tarry if we are to march out before noon.'

  Ailith tightened her grip on Goldwin. There was so much she wanted to say, but all of it was locked inside her, and intertwined with it was a tide of helpless rage. 'Oh, Goldwin, have a care!' she choked out.

  Her lips were smothered by his kiss, hard and long. 'And you too.' His own voice was strangled with emotion.

  It was impossible; she could not let him go, and finally he had to pluck her arms from around his neck. Striding to the trestle, he took up his bundle, and swiftly walked out of the door.

  Ailith followed him outside and watched him mount up. Her brothers embraced her, first Aldred, then Lyulph, and then they too were in the saddle and turning their mounts for the ride to the muster point.

  A numb disbelief settling over her, Ailith stood in the middle of the dirt road and watched her menfolk ride away to war.

  CHAPTER 10

  The dappled stallion's coat was dark silver with sweat and his eyes were wild, displaying a dangerous rim of white as Rolf and two grooms fought to hold him.

  'Richard, in the name of Christ and Thor, whatever possessed you to buy this brute?' Rolf demanded of his anxiously watching friend. 'The state he's in, he'll kick out the side of the ship for sure!'

  Richard FitzScrob scratched
the back of his shaven head and pulled a face. 'He's all right saddled up with a rider on his back. He doesn't like ramps, that's all.'

  Rolf swore beneath his breath at the understatement. Not even Duke William's Spanish black had been this difficult to load, and Rolf was horribly aware of how short of time they were. All of the horses had to be on board the transports and out of St Valery before sunset in order to take advantage of the outflowing tidal currents. The Duke's fleet had been held up for long enough already, and there would never be a better occasion to embark.

  A stiffening easterly wind ruffled Rolf's dark auburn hair and spun the weather vane on the roof of the church of St Valery. Duke William had wanted to sail two weeks ago, but the wind had refused to change until the aid of St Valery himself had been invoked and his relics paraded through the town, escorted by the entire Norman cavalry to the accompaniment of drums, trumpets and horns. Their entreaties must have reached the saint on his heavenly couch, for this very morning the wind had changed direction, banking to the east, and the scramble to embark had begun.

  The grey lashed out and a shod hind hoof narrowly missed one of the grooms. The horse waiting behind sidled restively as it caught the scent of the grey's fear.

  'Fetch a blindfold,' Rolf snapped at one of his men. 'Richard, take Hamo's place.'

  The groom ran off and FitzScrob grasped the stallion's cheekstrap and hung on grimly while the grey sawed up and down. Rolf beckoned the equerry waiting behind to lead his horse up the steep ramp onto the vessel. She was a deep merchant galley with higher sides than the Duke's spearhead of fast, dragon-prowed warships whose sleek lines strongly resembled the raiding vessels of the first Viking Normans. The Duke's own ship, the Mora, was already provisioned and rode at anchor in the bay, separated from the chaos on the beach. The Duke himself was to be rowed out later. For the moment he was stalking up and down the shoreline, supervising the preparations to embark with his customary vigour. Rolf hoped that he would not choose to inspect this particular vessel just now.

  'I ought to make you travel with the beast!' he panted to Richard, his arms burning with the effort of holding the grey. The groom returned with the blindfold and the fight began to tie it around the stallion's eyes. 'Where in the name of God did you get him?'

  'Not in the name of God, but of Allah the Merciful,' Richard replied between gasps. 'My father bought him off a Moorish trader and found him a little too light compared to the Brabancon stallions he usually rides, so he gave Sleipnir to me.'

  'Are you sure there was no other reason?'

  'I told you, he's superb to ride,' Richard said defensively. 'He just hates ramps. Stop scowling. Wouldn't you like a Moorish stallion to service your mares?'

  'Not if he's going to impart qualities like this!' Rolf snapped. 'First thing I'd do if he were mine is geld him!'

  Richard grinned. 'You wouldn't, I promise.'

  The blindfold in place, the grey calmed enough to be led onto the ramp. His damp silver shoulders and quarters twitched and trembled. Sweating with the expectation that at any moment the horse would run amok and charge them both off the edge into the freezing sea, Rolf coaxed the destrier on board the ship and after a brief deliberation, tethered him at the end of the line of warhorses in the open hold.

  'It will be easier to reach him and cut his throat if he panics once we're at sea,' Rolf said darkly to his friend. 'I mean it, Richard.' He patted his belt. Beside his short meat dagger hung the longer bladed English scramaseax. 'If one runs wild, then the rest will follow and the ship will go in short order to the bottom of the sea.' He gave the quivering grey a jaundiced glance. 'For now, the blindfold remains.'

  Accepting Rolf's decision, but looking none too happy, Richard left the ship.

  The first vessels sailed out of St Valery in the hour before sunset. Rolf's command was one of the last to leave, since embarking the horses had been left until late to avoid stressing the animals too much. Ships containing men and supplies followed the Mora in ragged procession out of the Somme estuary and into the cold green waters of the Channel. The east wind ruffled their striped sails. Here and there oars were broken out and scuds of white water curled on the surface of the waves. The setting sun was a low slash of orange on the skyline, the tide flowing out fast as Rolf's galley cast off her moorings and to the escort of a dozen wheeling, screaming gulls, set her sails to the wind.

  Rolf watched the port of St Valery slowly diminish across the water until it became tiny and unreal. The reality was the creaking deck beneath his boots, the muscular thrust of the sea beneath the caulked timbers, the salt tang of spray exploding against the sheer-strake, and the chill wind searing his ears and face. He fetched a hood and shoulder cape from his baggage and as the sun sank beyond the horizon and Norman soil vanished from sight, he ordered the ship's master to light the lantern on the mast.

  In the middle of the night, the invasion fleet hove to so that England would be reached at first light rather than in the pitch-darkness of the hours after midnight. The channel was as smooth as molten jet, with only the gentlest of swells to rock the ships. The crescent moon had set several hours since. In the deep of the night, Rolf watched the twinkles of lantern light which marked the position of the other vessels. Isolated but not alone, he was aware of a feeling of utter tranquillity. A tiny voice warned him that this was literally the calm before the storm, but he paid it no heed except to cast it overboard and commit it to the deep.

  On board one of the ships, someone was singing a melancholy tune in the Breton tongue. The sound drifted across the water and filled Rolf's soul with yearning. The moment was as beautiful and eerily mournful as the last drawn-out note of the song. It was with a feeling of deep regret that he left his position on the prow of the transport and stepped down to the open hold to check up on the horses.

  CHAPTER 11

  Ailith was standing over a cauldron in the garth, poking hanks of homespun wool in a steaming brew of stewed bracken leaves and rusty nails in the hopes of dyeing the wool to soft green, when Aldred and Lyulph brought Goldwin home.

  The breeze drove acrid smoke into her face from the fire beneath the cauldron and she was wiping her streaming eyes on her apron when she saw her brothers coming towards her, their arms linked basket-fashion to carry Goldwin. His arms were around their stalwart necks and she saw that his teeth were gritted with pain, the tendons standing out like cords in his throat as they bore him. His left leg was heavily bandaged from ankle to knee, and a naal-knitted sock covered his shoeless foot. Ailith dropped her dyeing stick and ran to meet them.

  'Jesu, Jesu!' she cried. 'What has happened?'

  Goldwin tried to smile at her. 'Not as bad as it looks,' he gasped. 'I'll be all right by and by.'

  'With rest and God's fortune you will,' said Aldred shortly. 'He's a lucky man, Ailith. A fraction deeper and he'd have been gutted by a Norwegian spear.' Aldred bore a long cut on his face that ended in a deep gouge at his helmet line. His blue eyes were red-rimmed with weariness. 'The ankle's nothing, he turned it when he insisted he was fit to mount his horse without aid and promptly fell down.' His tone was slightly patronising, but it also bore approving pride for Goldwin's courage.

  'There was a rut in the road,' Goldwin said through his teeth.

  Ailith thought that he looked terrible. All the colour had drained from his normally ruddy face and she did not like the way he was trembling. For certain he had a fever.

  'Bring him within,' she said brusquely to her brothers, and as they carried him, she ran on ahead, shouting for Wulfhild and Sigrid.

  While Ailith attended to Goldwin in their bed in the sleeping loft, she learned from her brothers about the bloody battle that had been fought and won against the Norwegians at a place called Stamford Bridge, about King Harold's rebel brother Tostig being killed by the royal huscarls, and about the grim news that had arrived during Harold's victory feast in York.

  'William of Normandy has landed troops in the south,' Aldred said, his lip curling. 'Tho
usands of them — infantry, archers and cavalry. We are to muster for a few days in London while King Harold gathers fresh troops, and then we are to march out and put an end to the Norman bastard.'

  'I'll be all right by then,' Goldwin said from the bed. He strove to sit up, then desisted with a groan.

  'Not with a gut wound like yours you won't,' Aldred snorted.

  Ailith lifted her husband's tunic and looked with dismay at the dirty bandages wound around his midriff and half-concealing a thicker wad of linen. Her stomach turned over and over as in her mind's eye she saw him upon a battlefield facing a berserker.

  'Lie still,' she said as he started to protest again that there was very little wrong with him. 'Let me have a look at your injury. Certainly it needs clean bandages, these rags are disgusting. Aldred, Lyulph, why don't you go below and let Wulfhild give you something to eat?'

  Aldred was all for staying at the bedside, but Lyulph, possessing slightly more tact, managed to drag him away.

  'So you rode all the way from York with this wound?' Ailith asked as she unwrapped the bandages.

  'It was important… if you had seen the King's face when the messenger interrupted the feasting with the news that the Normans had landed… ah!' He stiffened as she began to peel the linen wadding away from the site of the injury.

  'So you were well enough to sit and feast?' she asked neutrally, her tone displaying none of her fear and anger. Goldwin had a mulish streak in his nature. Probably in the presence of her brothers he had been determined to show no weakness, to prove that he was as tough a warrior as they.

  'There were others in far worse case than I. Some of them had to be borne into the hall on litters. I walked.'

  The note of pride in Goldwin's voice caused Ailith to tighten her lips.