‘But don’t you mind?’ Goddwin had raged when he had come galloping home from London. ‘Don’t you mind that he may be bedding with another instead of you!’
What had she been supposed to answer? That aye, of course she minded that Harold did occasionally look for his needs elsewhere; that aye, she cared that one day he might take another wife? Instead, she had regarded her first-born son with a direct, steadfast look, and told him of the truth.
‘A man may bed a woman he admires or lusts after, but he need not love her. It is to the woman he loves that he will always return.’
She picked up the birch broom from where she had leant it against the wall, returned inside the Hall in time to reprimand Gunnhild from getting in the way of the servants lifting down Harold’s war axes from the wall for cleaning. ‘If one should fall on you girl, it could take your head from your shoulders!’
With a squeak of alarm, Gunnhild stepped back hastily. Could an axe do that? She resolved to ask Papa when he came home.
Beneath the trees the snow had not fallen so thickly, the debris of last autumn covered only by an uneven shawl, pocked here and there by deeper drifts. Along the track, every hoofprint that had churned the mud before the snow fell bore a fragile film of ice that cracked as the boys deliberately stamped their boots. All lay still and silent, hushed as if set under an enchanted sleep – and then a dog-fox suddenly appeared, his coat winter-thick, a rich, chestnut red. Unconcerned at the yelping leashed dogs, he stood, one forepaw raised, his amber eyes contemptuously staring, and then he turned and streaked off, leaving only the pungent whiff of his rank scent. Goddwin released the dogs, but the creature had gone and the dogs were eager for more enticing scents to follow.
The wind bit into their exposed skin as they stepped from the shelter of the trees to cross the open plain that topped the ridge, before plunging downwards again through the scattered army of bare-branched beech. At the bottom of the hill a grey column of smoke rose in a lazy spiral from the smoke hole in Granny Gnarlhand’s roof. The barking of the dogs had alerted her, for the woman stood waiting on her door hearth, her smile gap-toothed, her aged shoulders bent. She beckoned her visitors to come inside, warm themselves by her fire, grateful for their company as much as the welcome gift of provisions from their good-hearted mother.
She had lived in this wattle-walled cottage with her husband since the day she had come to him as bride, nigh on forty and six years past when she had been a fair-haired girl of fifteen years, but no one remembered her at that young age. To this small community she had always been grey-haired, shrunken and aged. It was to Granny Gnarl-hand that children came in summer to ask for the telling of tales, from Granny that the young girls sought lovepotions and charms. To her mothers brought their ailing children, their women’s problems, their doubts and fears of approaching childbirth.
When her son had been killed two years past, she had feared for her own survival. She was fortunate, though, for Lord Harold was a good landowner; he would not see an old woman turned out of her home to await death in the clutch of winter.
She ladled herb and root broth into wooden bowls to warm their insides. ‘Be there news of your father yet?’ she asked. ‘He has been so long absent these past months.’ Concealing the pain that whined in her chilled old bones, she lowered herself into her wicker chair beside the hearth fire. Magnus, always one to chatter, answered her. ‘Mother tells us that our father will be home soon. He has had great adventures while with Duke William – has ridden to battle with him and been given gifts. He is bringing us a pair of rabbits – creatures that are like hares but smaller and with not such long ears. He says in his letter that they make good eating, but that our little sister Gunnhild will delight in their soft fur and comical actions.’
Goddwin scowled, said nothing, concentrated on supping the watery broth into his belly.
Granny Gnarl-hand rubbed at the knobbed, pain-wracked twist of her knuckles that gave her the name. ‘Rabbits, you say? Never ’eard of such critters!’ Her eyes sparkled at Magnus’s rapid talk, nodded at Edmund that he might refill their bowls. ‘If you’m be so good as to replenish the wood beneath the pot, first.’ She regarded the silent eldest born with her sharp blue eyes, said, ‘Do you not welcome your father’s return then, Master Goddwin? Why be that, eh? Be there some silly quarrel atween you?’
‘You ask too many questions, Old Mother,’ Goddwin answered, with a polite but curt gesture of dismissal.
‘He is angry with our father because there was talk at court of him taking a well-born woman as wife,’ Magnus said carelessly. ‘Mother says it is a thing that our father must one day be expected to do. If she does not mind this thing happening, then why should my brother?’ Magnus set his bowl upside down on the floor to show he had finished and wiped the back of his hand over his lips. ‘Edmund and me, though, we think he’s cross because he’d rather have a pretty blossom for himself than that stinging nettle he already has.’ His elder brother’s scowl furrowed deeper.
‘You’m be careful not to let that wronged look sit for long on your face, my lad.’ Granny Gnarl-hand chuckled at him as if he were a child. ‘Lest the wind change and set it there for good.’
Goddwin silently cursed. ‘With respect, Old Granny, I am one and twenty years of age. I do not need lecturing as if I am but Ulf’s age.’
‘Nursing moon-fool jealousies like a child leads others to treat you as such. No doubt your mother has told you so often enough.’
The three younger boys grinned at each other. They would wager as much as a shilling each that Granny would get the better of Goddwin!
‘My woman is a dutiful wife. I have no complaint against her and Mother is hiding behind a brave smile and a stout heart, but I have seen her eyes red-rimmed from the tears she has wept whenever my father is long away from home.’ Angry at himself for being so easily riled, Goddwin slammed out through the door.
‘He has been like a boar with a headache for months,’ Edmund confided by way of apology. ‘It has been his ill temper that has upset our mother on occasion, not our father being away.’ Added as an afterthought, ‘Though that does sadden her greatly.’
Granny nodded, said cryptically, ‘Loyalty be a difficult thing to set straight in a fuddled mind.’
Magnus was not quite certain what she meant. Loyalty was to trust without question, as he trusted his mother and father. Either Goddwin did trust their father’s judgement and was therefore loyal
– or did not, which made him an enemy. Ah, it was all beyond a boy’s reasoning!
Edmund too wondered about his father’s relationship with his mother. They all knew that they were not church wed, that the marriage could be easily dissolved should both parties agree, but their mother would never agree to divorce, so why all this fuss?
Ulf, the youngest, was perhaps the most confused, for during the Holy Days of Christmas he had overheard Goddwin quarrelling with their mother. ‘Goddwin said that Father no longer loves our mother or us, that is why he has been away so long in Normandy and why he seeks a new wife.’ He looked sharply at Granny, desperate for her to deny it, so afraid that she might nod and say aye, it was so.
‘Then your brother,’ Granny said firmly, ‘be talking out his arse, lad. Lord Harold has always, and will ever, give love first to your fair mother and the ones born of his seed set in her womb.’
She pushed herself out of her chair and shuffled to the doorway, and looked at Goddwin’s solitary tracks plunging away through the snow. ‘You be a fool unto yoursel’ to rage so. You’m be wed to a Christian-taken wife; it be no good lusting after someone different,’ Granny mumbled. ‘And if ever your father took another as wife, it would not be your mam to lay abed alone at night, knowing he took his need elsewhere. It would be the other wife to be a-wonderin’ that, for your da’ll not ever be giving up his Edyth Swan-neck.’
Goddwin’s temper cooled before he had gone a few hundred yards. Why was he so damned touchy these days? Perhaps because of the sourn
ess of his wife’s mood? Frytha was a disappointment to him. He had married her because it had been expected of him since his childhood; her father was a respected thegn and she came with a substantial steading as dowry. Moreover, she could cook and weave, and manage a Hall as efficiently as any woman. But she was sullen, endlessly grumbling. Worse than that, there was something missing in his marriage, something that his father had with his mother. A little thing called love. What he could not understand was why his father could so easily think of ending his marriage with the woman he adored when he, Goddwin, had no mortal chance of unshackling himself from Frytha in favour of someone as beautiful as Alditha, the Widow of Wales.
7
Waltham Abbey After the snows, flooding threatened the vulnerable lowlands of England where, even during the driest summers, marsh could remain oozing among the alder and willow, reed and rush. Almost overnight the water meadows turned from a spread blanket of white to the ripple-shifting shimmer of lake-like water. The wide flat spread of the Lea valley could not escape the inrush of melt-water. Already over-fed, a series of high tides pulsing up the Thames and into its tributaries pushed the banks of the river beyond the limit of endurance. Like an invading army, the flood marched onwards, unstoppable, mercilessly invading the tranquil host valley.
This morning, Edyth stood at the unshuttered, narrow window of her first-floor bed-chamber, her fingers automatically plaiting her loose hair. It had rained again in the night, only a drizzle but even that might be enough to raise the Lea a vital half-inch more.
Please God , she thought as she reached for a ribbon to tie the end of her braid, that the sea-tide, downriver, does not come high again today.
‘The water has risen, I swear,’ she said.
‘Need you stand with the shutters wide? ’Tis cold in here.’
Edyth twisted her head to observe what was visible of Harold above the heap of bed furs. For six days had he been home, days during which he had immersed himself in the needs of the steading, local business, his family and friends. In Edyth’s comfort and warmth. None of which was yet sufficient to drive aside the worry that hung like a rain-sodden mantle around his shoulders. Normandy. Tostig. The succession. An endless round of disquiet that disturbed his sleep and offset his happiness at being home.
‘If it rains again, I fear for the village. Will the crypt flood if the waters break through the abbey walls?’ Edyth mused aloud.
Harold sat up, yawned and wrapped a fur around his nakedness to join his woman at the window. Leaning his hands on the sill, he peered out. Cattle, sheep, swine had all been moved these last few days to higher ground, were grazing uneasy in more cramped conditions. A few families, those with house places close by the river, had taken what possessions they could and moved to safer havens. Others, belligerently, intended to stay. His son, Goddwin, among them.
‘There is a story’, he said, encircling Edyth with his arms, bringing her close under his fur, ‘that Cnut once proved he was only a mere mortal by attempting – and failing – to turn back the tide. We need God’s hand to help stem this rise of water, for I fear, like Cnut, no man can stop it.’ He kissed the tip of her nose. How he had missed her these last months – and only these next two or three to be with her before Edward wanted him to go off again? Dissension was reheating in southern Wales, but at least Wales could be quashed. Normandy and Tostig were not going to be so easily controlled. Sodding Normandy and bloody Tostig! What was to be done with the both of them – what could be done? And even if there was anything, would Edward do it? Harold doubted it.
As long as the King lived for three, four more years. As long as Edgar was allowed by God to come to manhood. His eyes searched the water glistening along the valley. The river banks needed shoring up with turfs, mud, stones, anything that might hold the water at bay. As did England. A tide of danger was rising to the north and across the Channel Sea. Either it would recede and the danger would pass, or the defences would break and the flood tide pour in to engulf them.
‘I do not know what to do about this ambitious greed of my brother and the Duke,’ Harold admitted to Edyth. ‘I feel like I am stuck, holding everything at bay as best I may, while the water gushes between my feet.’
‘Tostig will find his own course, surely? You have warned him to tread with care; beyond that, what can you do? This thing is for him and the North to settle, is it not?’ She was uncertain if that was so, for if it was, why would Harold be so anxious? Would an uprising in the North adversely affect the South? As far as she could see, these grumbles were the same as the troubles in Wales. A diplomatic intervention, a show of disciplined strength and the dissent would be smoothed. At least for a while.
‘Mayhap Tostig will see that he is pushing men’s patience overfar. We can only hope he does, but Normandy . . .’ Harold released a lengthy sigh. ‘I fear that Duke William does not possess a halfounce of sense in his smallest finger, let alone his worm-addled brain.’
Something caught Harold’s attention; he leant forward, squinted out of the window. A rider was coming, fast, from the direction of Goddwin’s steading. ‘Someone comes. I think there’s trouble.’
They dressed rapidly and went to meet the rider, one of her son’s retainers, as he pulled a sweating horse to a standstill.
‘My Lord,’ he panted. ‘My master bids that you come with all available men. The river is about to break its bank. If it cannot be held, the steading will be lost.’
Within ten minutes, Harold was riding at a fast canter down the hill with fifty of the manor’s men, all of them knowing that there was little to be done but that they had to try.
Edyth’s instinct shouted at her to ride with them, to help bale and build, but her practical self knew otherwise. She would take down food and ale, then fetch back those who, for their own safety, could no longer reside in the valley. Among them Frytha. Goddwin’s wife would have to leave her home, although no doubt she would protest and grumble as was her tedious way, but with their second child due within six weeks, she would have no choice. Edyth sighed, resigned. Not that she welcomed Frytha’s dour company, but it seemed she too had no choice.
The water was sloshing over the river bank, running into the meadow. Twenty yards beyond stood the steading courtyard and its buildings, the winter-stocked barn, house place, sty, kennel and stable. Goddwin himself was standing in the river, stripped to the waist, taking his turn at heaving the cut slabs of turf into a secondary bank. If they could only shore up this stretch so that the water would break through lower down into the western fields, then perhaps the farm would be safer. An inch or two of river water would cause little harm. Let this portion of the bank give way, though, and the flood would do untold damage.
Leaving the horses tethered on higher ground, Harold and his men ran to join Goddwin’s, who were already mud-spattered, sodden and weary.
Seeing his father, Goddwin stood a moment, fists at his hips, catching his breath. They had spoken once only since Harold’s return, and that a curt exchange. Now Goddwin still said nothing, but words were no longer necessary. He held out his broad hand as his father came up to the bank to take his proffered clasp, readily acknowledging his son’s unspoken gesture of thanks. Quickly, Harold removed his cloak and tunic, lowered himself into the water alongside Goddwin and the line of desperate men, and took hold of a clod of turf to pack it into the makeshift wall. Then another and another. The river reached to mid-thigh, the footing beneath his boots uncertain, the water cold. Once, his footing gave way and he fell, tumbling backwards into the mud-swirl current. Goddwin, with a cry of alarm, lurched to grab at him, help him regain his balance.
Harold grinned, wet hair dripping into his eyes. ‘I’m trying to decide’, he said amicably, grasping his son’s arm and allowing his quickened breathing to settle, ‘whether ’tis better to do battle with this damned river, or pluck up the courage to inform Duke William that I want to chain myself to him as much as I’d welcome a constipated turd in my bowels.’
‘Which is the greater threat?’ Goddwin asked, heaving another turf to the top of the reinforced bank. So far they were winning, the thing was holding, but the tide would have been rushing up the Thames by now and would be sweeping up the tributary of the Lea.
‘That is what makes decisions hard, lad,’ Harold panted, scooping mud to fill the cracks. ‘Which takes precedence, danger to yourself and your immediate family, or to the wider spread of the people you hold responsibility for? You or your country?’
Goddwin was about to answer that family must come first, but he had no chance to form the words, for the river suddenly swirled and lifted. Water seeped through the wall they had just laboured so hard to build, finding cracks, areas of softer mud, lighter turfs not so well clamped down. A trickle or two became three and four, more, became a gush of water. Frantically Goddwin attempted to stem the flow, cover the widening holes; men, shouting with fear, were scrabbling from the river, running from the crumbling bank. Harold heaved himself from the water, leant down to grasp his son’s arm, angrily pulling him out. ‘Leave it!’ he bellowed. ‘Leave it, it’s going to go!’
As the turf and the natural bank collapsed in a seething torrent of overspilling water, Harold clasped his son’s arm; together they waded and battled their way through the flood. Already water was swirling at the walls of barn and Hall, creeping under doors, sucking at the timbers.
They stumbled to the rising land of the north pasture and stood, panting and defeated. Nothing now would stop the river as it cascaded over the bank and into Goddwin’s home.
A chicken, squawking with terror, wings flapping, sailed by, clinging desperately to a floating log. A basket full of sodden wool bobbed past; a cooking pot. The steading was lost. Harold stood, one hand resting in offered comfort on his son’s shoulder, looking out over it all. Trees, buildings, all so rapidly half submerged. The mud and silt and debris that would lie foul and stinking, when the water receded.
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