‘Well, well! So all the while Harold was playing his own private game of constable and thief. While our father was thinking he had cornered all the playing pieces, Harold had a second army in reserve.’ Robert’s delighted grin broadened. How wonderful, someone had bested his father! ‘I always thought Harold had more sense than Papa credited him with.’
‘Oh, you did, did you? Then you must be a better judge of men than I have given you credit for.’
Robert spun round, his face blanching. His father stood in the doorway, his great size filling the space. William strode over to his son, Robert resisting the temptation to step back a pace although he would have done so had the wall not been so close behind.
‘As you seem to know so much more than I, perhaps you had best talk with my vassals into pledging their support for a war against England. Do you think you could do that? Hah, boy!’ William spat the last, jabbing his face forward into Robert’s own, his hands coming out to fasten on the lad’s tunic neck-band.
Whimpering, Robert, of a sudden, desperately needed to empty his bladder.
William shook him roughly, then tossed him aside as if he were a rat with a broken neck. ‘Get out!’
Robert ran, fear cramping in his throat, tears stinging his eyes. He fled to the kennels, where he knew he would be left alone. God’s teeth, he hated his father!
Agatha pressed herself into a window recess. She had liked Harold, with his quiet calming voice, his gentle teasing. He had been kind to her. She would not be wife to him now, Mama had said, in a curiously taut, angered voice. Listening to the rise and fall of conversation – the frequent outbursts of blasphemous oaths from her father – Agatha had tried to understand what was happening.
A letter was to be sent immediately to England, demanding that Harold relinquish the crown; a similar missive was to go to the Pope in Rome, protesting at Harold’s usurpation; and then Papa was to order ships to be built, and for all his vassals to pledge their support of an invasion of England. Agatha was not much the wiser. She thought her father had liked Harold, that was why he had pledged her to him. What difference did it make if the kind Englishman wore a crown and not he?
Agatha breathed on the rough texture of the window parchment, watching the droplets of moisture form and trickle downwards. No doubt things would happen as they usually did: her father would besiege a few castles in England and kill any man who persisted in opposing him. She wondered whether her father would allow Harold to remain king once he had defeated England. If she could not be a nun she would have quite liked to have been a queen and worn a crown.
But what did a twelve-year-old girl know of the intricacies of war and invasion? Of victory and conquest?
4
York There were, it seemed to Harold in those first tentative weeks of kingship, not sufficient hours in a day to complete all that was so suddenly and urgently expected of him. He thought that under Edward he had acquired a grasp of government and administrative decision-making – but he soon discovered that his expertise was minimal. So much to be done. So much to learn! Rarely did he seek his bed before midnight – to be up and about again by the sixth hour of the morning. Throughout January and into the early days of February, Harold could almost believe that England as a whole – and beyond – was queuing at the gateway of Westminster Palace to speak to the new king.
Exhaustion was creeping up on him; and as ever when his body was overtaxed, the signs of his old illness surreptitiously re-emerged. His fingers would stiffen, his jaw sag, slurring his speech as the hour grew late and tiredness increased. He longed for the chance to hunt, to fish, to relax, but there was never a respite.
Writs, grants, appointments. All lands held in trust in the King’s name to be scrutinised, confirmed or withdrawn at his discretion – from a single-held hide of farmland to the vast acreages of the earldoms. So soon into his reign there was little he wanted to alter. Nobles and lords – and a few women – who had loyally served Edward were confirmed in their landlordship. There was no cause to doubt their constancy, at least not yet. In those few, very few, cases where questions were raised the landholding was passed to another of Harold’s choice. For the earls he made no change except in one area. Northampton and Huntingdonshire had been held by Tostig, but had not been transferred by Edward to Morkere. To reinforce his directive that Tostig would not be reinstated, Harold passed that small portion as a new, separate earldom and awarded it to Waltheof, the young son of Earl Siward, to be held in trust for him by Morkere until he came of age. He hoped that would please the Northerners – and it did, but it was not so easy to convince them of his long-term intent.
Northumbria, it soon became apparent, was not over-anxious to embrace another son of Godwine. Had it not already been shown that Wessex had no consideration for the North? How many southern kings had put the interests and concerns of the people of the North as their priority? What would make this new-crowned king any different – and aye, him a Godwine along with it. He had taken their side against Tostig when outright rebellion had threatened – but for whose benefit? For the North’s? Nay, ’twas only to prevent a costly war for the South. Earl Morkere was liked and welcomed, but he was more than likely soon to be proved the fool in trusting a southern Godwinesson to look to the North’s interests.
Rumour was a powerful tool for the stirring of mistrust. How long, men asked each other over a jug of ale in the taverns, or while haggling for a bargain in the marketplace, before this king waits for us to drop our guard? How long before we again find that bastard, Tostig, strutting his arrogance through the streets of York?
Verbal reassurance from Harold, spread by messengers chosen to infiltrate those areas where the whisperings were loudest and harshest, failed. As mid-February approached the discordant rumblings grew more persistent; a strong wind of blustering opinion was blowing up into a gale.
Once the administrative details at Westminster had been tended as well as he could, Harold took the decision to visit York. Better to get out and do rather than brood, wait and hope.
Without doubt Tostig would soon raise a following from somewhere abroad; an attempted invasion would come. In Tostig’s place, Harold would do no different. The justifiably wary Northerners needed his reassurance. Before he left London, Harold signed the charter proclaiming the provost of Abingdon to be promoted as abbot and issued orders that all else of importance was to be forwarded to York. He had ideas a-plenty for reform but they could wait. The North, the stability and safety of the kingdom, held priority. Also, riding northwards held another advantage personal to Harold: it gave him a chance to draw breath and to think – a luxury that, since Edward’s death, he had not been able to entertain.
Although cold, the weather was dry and Harold’s party of mounted men made good progress, for the road – where once the red-crested Roman armies had marched – was well maintained. They had been on the road northwards from Peterborough for no more than an hour, and their mounts were fresh and eager. Lincoln was to be their next major stop, where they would rest two or three days, Harold taking opportunity to receive homage and hear local appeals for justice, as he had at Royston, Huntingdon and Peterborough. He deliberately travelled with a small entourage to demonstrate his peaceful intent. A few housecarls only accompanied him, with his clerks and court officials. Beside him rode Bishop Wulfstan of Worcester, a respected man suited as a mediator, should, as was likely, one be necessary.
‘ There are those who are natural leaders, and those who are more fitted to following.’ His father had told him that on the day he had been appointed Earl of East Anglia. A lifetime ago!
What else had he advised, that Easter day twenty-three years ago? Words that had been applicable as earl, but were become more poignant now, in this unanticipated high position. ‘In a position of power,’ his father had said, ‘you very soon discover who are your friends and whom you can trust – or not. It is unfortunate that it is the “nots” who cause the most pain, come slower to the fore and are hard
er to unmask.’ As earl, Harold had eventually discovered the men who had courted favour with him for their own gain; as king, more were slithering from beneath the stones, like worms and slugs on a raindamp day.
And the most meaningful advice? Harold checked his stallion as the animal stumbled over uneven ground, ran his hand soothingly down the arched crest. Nothing could totally prepare an honest man for power until the responsibility of it came. Harold was grateful for the wisdom, but regretted his father not being with him. How does a man who thought he had already reached the limits of his ability prepare for the ultimate test of kingship? The people of England – accepting and cheering him as his entourage passed by their farmsteadings and hamlets – would be the ones to suffer if he should get things wrong.
The uncertainties had been there at the outset, when Council had asked this thing of him, but they had been overtaken by a quick breath of excitement, a gleam of wonderment, the gathering speed of unreality. It was too late to undo what had been done, but the doubts were crowding back, pushing and shoving from every direction. Again Harold stroked his hand along his stallion’s neck. Aye, he had found the chance to think, but were there not too many thoughts that he had deliberately set to one safe side? Could he carry the burden of this crown? Why had he not taken an easier option, agreed to be regent over Edgar? The accountability, the blame would then soon pass to the boy – nay, that was fool’s thinking! He had become king because the armies of England would not follow a boy into battle. Because Edgar could never outface Tostig when he tried for his earldom, nor William when he eventually tried for the throne.
Huh, Duke William! Harold signalled that they increase the pace to a jogtrot, nudging his horse’s flanks with his spurs. To invade England would take no small amount of expense and organisation, practical factors that Harold assessed William would automatically dismiss as irrelevant. He would never consider that there might not be a suitable number of boats, that tides and winds could go against him – that men might not be eager to support him. Harold had learnt that much of William while in Normandy. He rubbed at his moustache, smiling in enigmatic self-mockery. Duke William would never doubt, as Harold was doing at this moment, his personal ability, his aptitude, his right. Perhaps that was why he doubted himself, for he could concede an area where the Duke of Normandy was the stronger of the two.
Then other worries swept over him. Who was to say that England would remain loyal to Harold Godwinesson? Approval for him was widespread and apparently unanimous – at least, south of Lincoln it was – but who was to say how long it would last? A year, two, three ahead, would these same people who lined the roadways as he passed by cheer and wave, and give their blessings?
‘You look pensive, my friend. What troubles you?’ Bishop Wulfstan jolted the King from his reverie. ‘If you are concerned about the loyalty of the North, it is only that they fear for their own well-being. Once we have allayed those fears, all will be well.’
Harold smiled at his old friend and travelling companion. ‘Nay, it is my own fears that concern me, my own self-questioning.’
‘It is no bad thing for a man in authority now and then to examine his conscience. Doubt, my Lord King, balances aggression and a greed for power. So what troubles you? I possess a good ear for listening, and occasionally can find a sensible answer.’
Harold shook his head. ‘You of all men carry a fathomless well of wisdom. No other is so apt to say the right thing at the right time as you.’
Wulfstan snorted. ‘Nonsense, I am older than most men and have therefore fallen into more difficulties – and found my way out of them again, that is all.’
Declining to argue, for the Bishop was, above all else, a modest man, Harold admitted, ‘I have a weight of doubts and troubles rattling in my head, but it is for me to sort them.’
Beneath the shelter of the hedgerows, nestling in deep rifts and pockets of undergrowth, lay a carpet of white flowers, looking almost as if fresh snow had fallen in a haphazard scatter overnight. Yet few of the men took notice as their horses trampled by, for the snowdrops had been in bloom for several days and were no longer greeted with pleasure as the heralds of spring.
Ahead stood a mill set beside the race of the river. Folk were coming from within wiping floured hands on sacking aprons, faces eager and curious, expressions turning into excited delight as the banners were recognised. A woman sent a boy running up the road, to summon out the villagers; a little girl stooped to pluck a fistful of new-budding celandines, their opening, even more than the snowdrops, signalling the last flourish of winter. Gravely, she held them up to Harold as he passed. He smiled, leant from the saddle and accepted the posy, tucking the ragged stems through the pin of his cloak brooch. She reminded him of Algytha, as she had been as a child of six or seven. Blue, wide-amazed eyes, pert little mouth, cherry-coloured cheeks. And Algytha reminded him of Edyth. As if he needed reminding! Christ God, but everything reminded him of her. A blue sky. A thrush’s song, a bank of snowdrops . . . Edyth. Would he ever, ever see Edyth again?
They rode on past the mill and through the village, accepting the gifts and good will of the land-folk. Several boys ran with them a way, keeping pace and chattering with the last men of the phalanx of riders. On into the woods, the deeper shadows of oak and ash and beech. No birch. Harold was glad of that. Of all trees, the silver bark of the birch brought Edyth’s dear, sweet face too close to mind.
‘I have made up my mind as to the problem of satisfying the North,’ he said after a while to Wulfstan. ‘There is one way I can convince those northern nobles that I intend to remain true to my word. I shall forge an alliance with their earl, one that cannot easily be broken.’ Turning his head, Harold met the wrinkle-lidded gaze of the Bishop with his keen, clear-sighted eyes. ‘I shall offer to wed with Morkere’s sister Alditha.’
Wulfstan pursed his lips, nodded approval. ‘And you doubt your wisdom? Ah, no, my king, ’tis excellent thinking.’
Harold returned his eyeline to the front, studied a bone-thin goose girl herding a gaggle of hissing geese to new grazing on common land. He ordered that someone toss her a coin. A newminted penny, which bore not the head of Edward but the new king, of Harold, second of that name.
‘It was not of my thinking,’ he admitted to Wulfstan. ‘Edyth, when last I saw her, suggested it.’
Holding his peace for a few paces, the Bishop observed, ‘It takes a brave woman to suggest a suitable new wife for her own husband.’
Harold made no answer. It took a braver man not to break down and weep as he had clung to such a woman. And Harold had realised, at that instant of saying goodbye to his love, that he was not a brave man.
Alditha stood with her two brothers on the entrance steps to the Earl’s palace in York. She dipped a deep curtsey as Harold, stiff and cramped after the long hours of riding, dismounted. The townsfolk had waited at the London gate and lined the narrow streets to see their king ride in. Some had cheered his coming but many more stood silent. A few had dared to jeer, cursing the name of Tostig Godwinesson. The housecarls had made moves to reprimand them for the hostile welcome but, with a sharp word, Harold had forbidden any retaliation.
‘It is not me they show disrespect to, but my brother. I know him better than they and have every sympathy for their ill feeling.’
‘My Lord King.’ Earl Morkere stepped forward, bowed and greeted Harold with an embrace. ‘It pleases me to welcome you to York.’
Harold returned the embrace, then said, without a qualm, his hand flicking to the sullen crowd, ‘It seems not all the folk hereabouts share your enthusiasm for my arrival.’ Seeing Morkere’s unease, he added with a broad smile, ‘I must, then, make an effort to ensure that when I leave, they regret my going.’ Gallantly, Harold then turned to the Lady Alditha, kissed her hand and offered her his arm to escort her within doors.
Morkere exchanged a wry glance with his brother Eadwine before gesturing for the Bishop Wulfstan to proceed after Harold. Neither man had missed the ra
diant smile with which their sister had appraised the King, nor his answering expression of delight.
‘You are as thin as a peasant goose girl we encountered on the journey here,’ Harold remarked to her as they walked together. ‘Shall I cheer you by tossing you a penny with my portrait stamped upon it?’
‘I have no need for pennies or portraits, my Lord.’
‘No, indeed, not when you have the man in his very flesh beside you. I do believe I am not as hard or round as coin though. Somewhat of a higher value too, I would say.’
She smiled at his absurdity. She had, she must secretively admit, missed his company.
‘I was surprised not to find you at court when I returned from Normandy,’ he said. ‘Was Edward not kind to you after I had gone? Or were you pining for your brother’s company – or for Wales, perhaps?’
Since his questioning had been candid, Alditha answered in a similar vein: ‘I doubt King Edward could have been deliberately unkind to anyone. The ladies were somewhat tedious, and my brother Eadwine’s household suited me better. As for Wales, I have always admired the scenery. ’Tis but a shame the temperament of the people cannot always be as beautiful.’
‘I think you will find that the new king will be as kind, and that the ladies of his court will not be so glib with their remarks.’ Harold halted, placed his finger beneath her chin and tipped her face upwards. ‘As for Wales, no scenery could match in beauty that which I see before me.’
She blushed crimson and moved her head away, but almost immediately found her courage and stared back at him. ‘Kind words, my Lord, but words come easy. Sustained kindness that issues from the heart is far harder.’
Harold laid his fingers lightly over hers. In what was almost a whisper for her hearing alone, he said, ‘That depends, does it not, on who speaks the words and who owns the heart?’
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