Nursing his ale, Ulf took up the complaint. ‘’Twas two shillings for every six hides, now it’s two shillings for four hides only. A goddamned increase of nigh on half as much again.’
The December afternoon was drawing to an end; dark came so early during winter. The open-fronted shops would soon be sliding their shutters closed, market stalls packing their wares. Micklagata, the main street, would be crowded with those who lived outside the city making their way home to steadings and farms, and this tavern was filling as folk, their work finished for the day, passed by on their way down the street of the shield makers, Skeldergata.
Gamal Ormsson jerked his head over his shoulder, indicating the growing press of customers. ‘We had best finish our business here.’
Reluctantly the others agreed. If Tostig received word that five of his thegns were talking together in the Black Bear down Skeldergata . . . aye, well, let him hear of it and speculate on the nature of their conversation!
‘Then we agree,’ Gamalbearn said, ‘that we must put our case to Tostig? Two of us shall go to the Earl’s palace and ask leave to see him. We must do it this night before he leaves for Edward’s Christmas Court.’ He paused, looking from one man to another. All wore doubtful expressions, for they privately wagered that Tostig would not listen to one word spoken.
Dunstan selected five rushes from the floor, sliced with his dagger to make them all equal, then carefully cut two the shorter by half. Gathering the pieces into his fist so that all appeared the same length, he held his hand gravely to each man. One by one they chose. Gamalbearn, long. Gluniarn, long. Gamal, short. Ulf, short, leaving the last for himself. He could barely conceal his relief. Long.
‘Then you go, Gamal Ormsson and Ulf Dolfinsson. Luck and common sense be your companions.’
Ruefully, the two men rose from the bench, finished their ale and shouldered their way through the tavern to the door. The light was fading outside as they made their way, cloak hoods thrown over their heads, towards Conig Street and the Earl’s palace.
Perhaps they would not have gone had they known Tostig had no liking for thegns who decided to challenge his rule of law. He was later to claim they had attacked him in a frenzied attempt at assassination.
Their three companions knew nothing of their fate until the next morning, when the heads of Gamal Ormsson and Ulf Dolfinsson swayed on spears, decorating in grisly warning the gatehouse above Micklagata.
2
Gloucester Throughout the previous day the last of the noblemen and their families had been arriving for the annual winter gathering of Edward’s Council. The royal buildings at Gloucester, never wholly suitable as a king’s palace, were crowded almost to capacity with the number of men and women housed beneath the rush-thatched roofs of guest chambers or sleeping crammed together on straw pallets in the Hall. Litters, wagons and carts were set, higgle-piggle, in the pasture beyond the gate, and the rain-flooded pathways were churned into deeper mud with the tread of so many hooves and feet. Over it all hung a smell of cooking that barely masked that of human body odour, wet horses and dogs, the mustiness of wet thatch and fungi-smeared walls and of drying clothing.
The rain had eased during the early evening of the previous day, although louring grey clouds threatened more of this wretched weather. Even so, Edward, bored with being within-doors, had decided to hunt. On Christmas Eve, four fattened geese had been slaughtered in broad daylight by a fox; Edward required no second misdemeanour to track down the thief come the earliest opportunity. Foxes were considered the creatures of the devil, their colour and stink being the very essence of hell. The King ordered all earths to be stopped with faggots and two peeled sticks set in a crucifix to warn the creature, should it attempt to return, that the wicked evil of gluttony and theft would be punished.
The throng that set out through the low archway of Gloucester Palace was in merry mood: about thirty or so men and six women mounted on fine horses that pranced and snorted, excited by the eager, yodelling voices of the hounds. The copse where the ground began to rise upwards to meet the thicker beech woods, where that pest of a torn-eared, grey-muzzled dog-fox often prowled, was to be their first draw. A vixen had also raised her cubs there last season.
‘That be the beggar you are after,’ Edward’s constable had informed Edward as together they had studied the paw prints by the goose pen on the day of the killing. ‘A cunning brute, who sets his brush close to Lucifer’s shadow, I’d wager.’
Trotting along the lane, Edith closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, enjoying the uncluttered openness of the outdoors and the fresh, clean aroma that assaulted her senses. There had been a catastrophe yesterday – the wind had lifted the shingle tiles almost clean off the solar roof, leaving the chamber below open to the weather. Her tapestries and furnishings were quite ruined; it was as if the wind had picked everything up, swilled it around and dumped it down again. The room would be unusable for days. Disaster would happen while they were in residence – why not while they were at Winchester or Westminster? So damned inconvenient! Apart from her bed-chamber there was nowhere to be private. Never over-fond of company not of her own choosing, Edith disliked the bustle of the Hall – the inane chatter and laughter, the nearness of so many unwashed people. She detested Edward’s palace here at Gloucester at the best of times. Why they always had to come here at this gloom-skied season she knew not. It would be so much better to spend Christmas at Winchester, but Edward insisted that tradition must be maintained. Tightening her fingers around the reins, as she rode along the slippery track, Edith vowed that when he was gone she would see about altering poxed tradition. She and Tostig together would have the opportunity to change many things once the Council declared them joint regents of England.
She glanced ahead at her husband. Edward was talking animatedly to Tostig on his right-hand side; on his left rode the boy, Edgar, joining in, chatting about their shared love of hunting, no doubt. She smiled. They made a most appealing trio: king, earl and ætheling.
Edgar would reach his teen years on his next birthing day; a dutiful lad, attentive to his studies of history, languages, numbers, reading and writing, but just as eager in his lessons at archery and weapon practice. Polite and devoted to the King, there were few who doubted that, as a man grown, Edgar would be unanimously chosen as the successor – but unless Edward should live for many a year more, the boy was still too young to rule. Would yet need a guiding hand on his shoulder. And Edith had every intention of ensuring that hand would be her own entwined with Tostig’s.
Edward doted on her brother, constantly sought his companionship; moped and mithered like a disconsolate child throughout the interminable months when Tostig had to be in his earldom. On occasion it nauseated Edith, this reliance that her husband placed on Tostig’s company – and if she felt sickness rising into her throat when Edward simpered over him, then how did Tostig himself contend with it? Her brother loathed Edward’s attentions but, like herself, knew the reward that might lie at the end of it all. What were a few smiles and platitudes in exchange for a kingdom?
They reached the copse and spread out, waiting for the huntsmen to unleash two couple of hounds and send them into the undergrowth.
Recently, other more ambitious thoughts had been preoccupying Edith’s mind. Edward was getting old, almost three score years. His skin was wrinkled and pocked with brown age freckles. His white hair, short-sighted eyes and befuddled memory did not belie his age. Despite his insistence on hunting, he tired easily, but slept less at night, frequently dozing wherever he sat – more often than not while in Council or in judgement at law. He would sit on his throne, propped by cushions, and his eyes would cloud, head would nod, a snore emit from his occasionally dribbling mouth. He was not a dotard, or feeble, just old. They would leave him when he slept, Edith and whoever was assisting at whatever government function was under discussion. The King rarely made any relevant contribution anyway.
Since Edward’s last bout of illness had taken him
to his bed for several weeks, Edith had begun to wonder if it were possible to play for an even higher reward than that of a regency. Even if Edward lived another year, or two, or three, there might be those who could be persuaded that Edgar was too young. The most suitable candidate would be chosen to take up the crown – and could the Witan of England, in all conscience, however much they admired the boy’s eagerness, regard him as suitable?
Within the copse a single hound spoke, then another. They had found the trail. Edith’s eyes searched the winter undergrowth for any flicker of russet. For the chosen king not to be of full royal Wessex blood was unusual, but not unknown – Cnut had not even carried a shred of English blood in his foreign veins. Tostig was trusted, favoured by Edward, had proven his ability to govern. Northumbria had been a barbarian place until Tostig had set about imposing law and order. And had he not campaigned with success in Wales, distinguished himself in various skirmishes with rabbles from across the Scots border?
Hounds were speaking, singing their music in unison; the red rogue would be breaking cover shortly. What if Edward were to die soon? Next week, next month? It was possible. He could fall, or succumb to some dreadful illness. She refused to entertain the possibility of the opposite, of Edward living for many more years . . . no, he was an old man.
Someone a few yards along shouted. Gospatric, a thegn from Northumbria, but no friend of Tostig’s. He raised a horn to his lips, sounding a burst of quick notes. A flurry of blurred movement and a dog-fox shouldered, with an air of disdain, from the shelter of the bushes and loped away across an open ploughed field. The pack of hounds slipped quickly off their leashes, streaked away after him. Edward waved his arm, hollered and blew his own horn to sound the gone away. He kicked his horse into a gallop, Edgar and Tostig close at heel, with the rest of the hunting party in rapid pursuit.
Edith gave her plunging mare her head, forgetting all thoughts of intrigue, coronations and kings as the wind from her gallop whisked through her firm-secured veil, and her eyes watered and stung with tears, nothing but the reckless thrill of speed and freedom filling her exultant mind.
The fox was running easily, aware of his territory and the escape routes, all the shadows and sheltered places. He slipped into a smaller copse, trotting towards where he knew a deep-excavated earth to be, stopped, confused, as he found its entrance blocked with piled sticks and stamped-down earth, the intrusive unpleasant stench of man wrinkling his sensitive nostrils. He trotted on, heading uphill. The hounds had checked where he had entered the copse, were not able to slink so efficiently through brier and draping holly bush.
Gospatric Uhtredsson, thegn of Bamburgh, had only one thing in common with his overlord Earl Tostig, and that was a delight in hunting, although on his own manor, vermin such as foxes were poisoned or trapped, the thrill of the chase being preserved for more worthy game. However, he had to admit, as his horse plunged down the steep bank of a tumbling water course and through the swollen, white-foamed current, this red-coated beast was giving them a fine run. He kicked his bay up the far bank, swung him right, ducking low beneath the bare, low-sweeping branches of beech trees. A thin, whip-like branch caught his face as it swished backward; he cursed and put up his hand to feel blood oozing from a cut that jagged from nose to jawbone. Hauling his horse to a halt, Gospatric dismounted and, looping the reins through his arm, bent down to the stream, scooping cold water to dab at the cut.
The sounds of the others crashing on through the woods faded quickly as the chant of the horn told that the fox was once again streaking out into open country. Gospatric could catch up: it would be easy to follow the trail left by so many.
The horse was not so content to be left behind. The animal was snorting and stamping, neighing anxiously. Irritated, Gospatric tugged at the reins, but upset and excited the horse tossed its head with a sudden jerk and simultaneously backed away. The leather reins broke with a snap and the horse was gone, whirling around in a flurry of legs, dead wood, beechmast and swirled leaves from the autumn fall. The Northumbrian man leapt quickly but was not fast enough. He stood, fuming, as the god-damned animal galloped away after his companions.
Sour-faced, Gospatric slithered down the bank and waded into the rain-heavy rush of stream water. No good chasing after the beast, he would never catch the damned thing. Better to head for home. Huh, more than a five-mile walk! The water came to midcalf, fortunately no higher, but the opposite bank was steeper and mud-churned. By the time he had pulled himself up to solid ground, he was thoroughly wet and grimed, and in poor temper. He called out, hoping some servant or peasant might be near at hand. Nothing. No sound save the raucous cawing from a nearby rookery and the toss of branches clattering against each other as the wind grubbed through the bare tree canopy.
As he stumbled on, his temper increased. Twice he slipped on wet grass as the woods began to drop sharply down; added to that, his boots, new a few days since, were already rubbing. He vaguely remembered urging his horse upwards through these trees – aye, there was the trail. Holding on to a low branch he wondered whether it would be safer, on this steep slope, to sit on his backside and slither down. A long, ditch-like gully ran off to his left – aye, he remembered someone shouting ‘ware the hollow’. He turned left slightly, then stopped abruptly. A mounded shape lay in the bottom of the chasm, protruding from the gush of sluicing rain water. A horse, a dead horse.
Minding his footing, Gospatric tentatively made his way over to the dead animal. Its neck was broken, he could tell. He thought he recognised the dark chestnut – a wry grin of smug satisfaction tilted the corner of his mouth upwards. Tostig’s horse. He edged around the body and stopped, folded his arms and stood looking down, the smug grin etching deeper.
Always thought he knew it all. Always the clever one who would never take advice from anyone . . . that was Tostig, Earl of Northumbria. Tostig, who lay, eyes closed, groaning, among the blackened, mud-crusted leaves, his leg caught beneath the bulk of his dead horse.
Gospatric loathed Tostig. Would, without qualm, wish him dead. Tostig was not from the North, had no right to bully those, like Gospatric, who were descended from the ancient noble families of Northumbria. Did this jumped-up whoreson think they would forget the brutishness with which he meted out punishment on the poor and the innocent? The viciousness of his oppression of freeman, thegn and noble alike? The arrogance of his demand for respect that he had in no way earned. His greed, his avarice. The murder of those two men at York – men Gospatric had known and liked.
Aye, Gospatric, the last surviving son of Uhtred of Bamburgh, whose family had once ruled in their own right, had no shred of compassion for Tostig. They had all been warned to beware of the gully, had ridden carefully around it, but not Tostig it seemed. Gospatric looked to the far side, where the top of the bank was pocked and distorted. Aye, the braggart fool had attempted to jump his horse over – well the man deserved all he got.
Tostig pleaded for someone to help. The fingers of his hand clutched helplessly at the soft earth, sweat stood out on his forehead. His eyes flickered, attempting to focus on the vague, misted shape of a man who stood above him.
‘Please, help me! My leg is trapped.’
Gospatric said nothing. He pushed himself away from the dead horse, scrambled up out of the gully and swung on downwards, emerging out of the wood on to the grass common land that ran towards the town of Gloucester.
All colour had drained from the landscape, the sun blotted out by the thickening winter cloud. The wind, blowing from the northeast, drove a drenching rain across the hills. Gospatric shrugged his cloak tighter about his shoulders; he would be sodden to the bone before he reached home – but rain or no rain, he had no intention of hurrying. How could they prove that he had found him? None of them could. None of them would know. Serve them right for not realising he was missing from the hunt!
Christ’s truth , Gospatric thought, if a favourite’s presence cannot be missed, God help those Edward may dislike!
He walked on, keeping an eye to the approaching rain. Below, a big dog-fox, the colour of dead bracken, flowed along the line of a ploughed furrow, three fields ahead of the hunt. The cunning animal was doubling back on his tracks. The pack was closing, heads down, firm on the rank scent. Gospatric watched, fascinated, as the fox, out on common land now, swerved several times through a flock of panicked sheep then, leaping a stone-built wall, trotted direct through the centre of a farmyard, into the pigpen, disturbing the old sow, and out again on to the midden heap, where he took the opportunity to roll. Gospatric laughed. Hounds would never trail his scent through those rich odours.
3
Gloucester Queen Edith’s fear for Tostig had been near-hysterical. Thank all the gods that he was not seriously hurt beyond a bruised and torn ankle and calf! Jesu Christ, he could have been killed in that fall this morning! Or died unfound, completely alone, beneath the weight of that horse, soaked by the rain, chilled by the wind . . .
Edith was supposedly listening to Wilton’s Abbess giving a report on the progress of the rebuilding of the nunnery. Too late, she realised she had not heard a word, but had no heart to ask for repetition. All she wanted was to go to her brother, see how he fared. She had not noticed that Tostig was not with them on the hunt, had assumed that he was up at the front with the King. She had been too preoccupied with that beastly mare – wretched creature had pulled at her arm sockets, blistering her hands. And Edward – huh, Edward who professed to being so fond of Tostig but had not realised that his favourite was not beside him? How could her husband not have noticed, for heaven’s sake!
‘There are several caskets of relics here, madam, for you to choose from, though I am not certain ’tis right that we ought take from one holy shrine to place in another . . .’
Edith’s eyes narrowed as she gazed at the Abbess, her attention drawn back to the matter in hand.
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