The Norman advance shook, but only briefly; it came onwards. The English reset their shields, braced their legs and shoulders, and waited.
Needing to distract the attention of the front line, to sow confusion so that the cavalry and infantry could come in close without danger, the Norman archers had come to a standstill – were aiming
– let loose their arrows in a high, wide trajectory to fall from above. How many men would be fool enough to look up as that cloud of hissing, whining shafts sped overhead? Enough? Would enough stop an arrow in the vulnerable, unprotected flesh of the face? Enough to do damage to the shield wall? And how many had instinctively ducked, cowering from the death-tipped cloud, had crouched, exposing their shoulders and backs to the same spitting barbs?
Clever! thought Harold, as he watched, listening to the screams of his wounded men. For all I think of him, I admit Duke William is indeed a capable man.
They joined. Norman breath heating on English faces. Eye to eye, sword to sword. The front line was weakened – but holding. Hand-to-hand fighting, the weight of the Norman advance crashing against the shield wall, as if some great devil-driven sea storm was mercilessly battering at a shoreline. The defence coming as desperate and brutal.
The Duke appeared to be everywhere at once – to the fore, to the rear. To left, right, to centre. Shouting, urging, cursing. His horse was killed from under him – two now had he lost. He leapt clear as the animal crashed downwards, screamed at the nearest rider to dismount, took the animal for himself. He must be mounted, must be seen! Must drive these cur-sons on!
For one whole hour they fought. So rarely did a battle last this long – nearly the whole of the day had they fought here, up on this ridge seven miles from the coast at Hastings. Harold himself was now fighting, had come nearer the front with the best of his housecarls. The line that had held so long was beginning to break and to crumble; too many were dying; not enough were there to take their places.
And then the breaches came, great gaps of dead men, and the Norman cavalry were through, the advantage, suddenly, exultantly, swinging towards the Normans. William’s helmet was dented by an axe blow; Robert fitz Erneis rode for Harold’s standard, intent upon seizing it, killed several men with his sword before being cut down by the cold metal of English axes.
The mêlée was man against man, group against group, nothing left of that wall that had stood, unshakeable, since the ninth hour of the morning. Naught Harold could do, save stand and fight. Hope and pray that they could last out until darkness fell. It was not now a matter of winning, but of staying alive. The light was fading, soon the sun would be down. The housecarls fighting for their king at the centre of the ridge were growing smaller in number, gathering closer around the two royal standards. There was no time to think, to analyse, to feel. Only once, briefly, did Harold wonder that perhaps he ought to lay down his great death-edged axe and surrender. But he remembered Dinan. No, this was the better way to die.
Four mounted men were closing in, two of whom had a personal grudge against this Saxon King: Eustace de Boulogne, who had suffered humiliation at the hands of Godwine his father, and Guy de Ponthieu, who had lost the hope of a chest of gold. With them were Hugh de Montfort and Walter Gifford, all from the FrancoFlemish side, now forcing their way inwards from the eastern end of the ridge. They showed no mercy to the dying or the wounded as they hacked their way through towards Harold with a bitter thirst for revenge that had taken hold along with the unstoppable fever of bloodlust. The King’s guard tried to protect their lord, but there was nothing, nothing they could do to stop the vicious tide of bloody death. Nothing they could do to save England’s last Saxon-born King.
To the western end Duke William had been unhorsed a third time. He remounted more leisurely, for all his army were now upon the ridge and the English were broken, beginning to run. He rode at a walk, issuing commands, encouraging that last, final push. Could not believe his fortune.
The shout went up in French, spread, was repeated, clarioned from mouth to mouth. William spurred his horse to a gallop to where Harold had stood, where the standards of England had, all the day through, fluttered . . .
‘Le roi anglais est mort! Le roi est fini! The English King is dead!’
Epilogue
The Battle Place – 15 October 1066 More than 600 horses and 4000 men lay dead along the 600-yard ridge of Sendlach Hill, the place of battle. The place of death. In the drizzle-misted dawn of the fifteenth of October the carnage and destruction were unfathomable. Had it taken so much death to achieve such a little kingdom?
William stood, exhausted and unshaven, near to where Harold’s standard had flown proud until the moment that everything had ended for the English. He had not slept during the hours of darkness
– had not sought a bed until after the midnight had passed and then his mind had whirled with thoughts that would not, would not, be banished. Thoughts of how close he had come to defeat, of how many had died and in what manner. The unbelievable realisation that he had won. Harold was dead and the crown of England was his for the taking. But the winning was empty, the nightmares had been there instead, hammering with galloping hooves behind his eyes, trampling his brain, howling with the cries of the dead and the dying. Harold was dead, but William now knew the manner of his dying and it would haunt him until the day of his own passing. He knew how Harold had died. How brutally he had died.
Walter Gifford had struck the first blow, slicing his sword through Harold’s left thigh, shattering the bone. As the King had staggered, half fallen, de Montfort’s lance had pierced his shield, penetrating through to his chest. Harold’s axe had remained in his hand; he had attempted to rise, the ground drenching with his blood; he had fought on. Bleeding, dying, he had fought on. Eustace de Boulogne’s sword had slashed through his neck, below where his helmet had protected him; he was already dead as the Norman removed his head from his body, and as Guy de Ponthieu, with deliberate savagery, disembowelled and dismembered England’s King before also hacking at those English housecarls who had fought to their deaths to protect him.
Few of the Norman army had slept well, because of that dishonourable death. They had curled beneath their cloaks where they had dropped, unable to carry their aching limbs far from the carnage of the battlefield. Too many crowding, weeping spirits walked over-close at heel for easy rest.
By flaring torchlight they had searched through the bodies, heaped several deep, around the standard of Wessex, looking for Harold. Could not find his head, could not identify what remained.
Angry, the Duke had thrust his face closer to de Montfort’s, had stabbed his finger into the older man’s broad chest. ‘I suggest, my friend, that you search again, and keep searching, until you find it!’ Incompetents and fools! Why was he surrounded by such? He must have Harold’s body, to prove he was dead.
Come morning, the anger had increased, fuelled by the lack of sleep and the first insidious stirrings of conscience. He had not undressed to sleep, but had lain, clothed, on his cot. As the sun rose and the day began, he strode from his tent that they had erected to the leeward side of Telham Hill and looked up at where, yesterday, they had fought. He would build an abbey, he thought, up there on the ridge, where the victory had been his. An altar could cover where Harold had fallen. A small voice flickered to the back of his mind. Was thrust immediately aside as he bellowed for his horse to be brought up. The voice of honesty: To honour a victory? Or to honour a king whom you had no right to kill?
Someone touched his arm. He spun round, a gasp half leaving his lips, almost expecting to see Harold’s headless corpse standing there. No ghost, only William fitz Osbern, his face haggard with fatigue. ‘My Lord, there are two women asking to have audience with you.’
Irritated, William snapped, ‘I have no time for the weeping of widows – tell them they may take their husbands’ remains and be gone. I have more important things to tend, Will.’
‘Sir, these are no ordinary women. One is Co
untess Gytha, Lord Harold’s mother, the other is his concubine, Edyth the Fair.’
William raised an eyebrow. ‘They have come to bargain with me? What is it they want? My protection? Tell them I intend no harm to women who do not oppose me.’
Fitz Osbern said nothing for a moment. The appalling savagery that he had witnessed – participated in – since their ships had beached on the bay at Pevensey sickened even him, a seasoned warrior. He had believed this campaign to be right, that Edward had promised the throne to William, that Harold had thrown a given oath into the wind and deserved punishment. But not like this. Not with the slaughter of the innocent. Of women and infants. Nor with the cowardly mutilation that had happened up on that ridge.
‘Sir, the Countess asks for naught but her eldest son’s body. She has offered its weight in gold, were you to return it to her for Christian burial.’
‘And where would that be, think you? This Christian burial?’ William snorted.
Fitz Osbern shrugged; he did not know, had not asked. ‘Winchester, I assume, where I believe his father, Godwine of Wessex lies. Or Westminster, within the cathedral that King Edward had built, where he rests.’
Duke William ran his gaze over the sprawl of the Norman dead, beginning to be gathered by those who had survived. Looked further, to the crest of the hill, where the Saxon women were still walking, searching for the remains of husbands, fathers or sons. So many dead, and all for the arrogance of one who thought he could take that which was not his – Harold had caused all this. Harold, who had called himself king – and they wanted to bury him beside other, lawful kings? Non. Jamais. That he would not permit! But these women could prove useful for his own purpose.
‘Tell them I will consider their request, but first they must find what they want. This Edyth, if she is Harold’s whore, she will be able to identify him for us.’
The night had passed with bitter slowness for Edyth. All those men who could walk, limp or hobble had drifted away, silent, into the darkness, making for their own homes, to try to forget what they had witnessed; to rest, to heal. To be ready to fight again, if they were wanted, another day. Those who were left, the wounded who had no strength for walking, lay waiting for death. Most of them had not survived the night of cold rain. The women had made their way among them throughout the night, collecting up those they knew for burial, helping those few who remained alive to the tents in the woods to be comforted and bandaged as best they could.
Strange, but Edyth’s tears would not come. They were there, screaming in her throat, in her head, but they would not reach her eyes. And beyond that silent scream there was nothing else. Nothing, only a blankness and that last view of Harold as he had stood beneath the trees, one hand raised in a salute of farewell . . .
The sounds of that ending had carried through the forest, tossed by the wind moaning through the autumn-coloured leaves of the trees. She had heard that last cry, that desolate howl of defeat, the bewildered silence that had followed.
They had gone up to the ridge, Gytha and she, with the other women, once the dark had settled and the Normans had gone back down to their side of the valley beyond the brook. Had carried a torch, eerie in the blackness, that had flared and hissed as the rain spat into the pitch. The rain . . . if only the rain had come earlier! They had looked for Harold, but had not found him.
She thought she would not be able to do this thing, to walk up and down the lines of what had once – only yesterday – been men. The Normans had gathered those who had fallen beside the standards together, laid them in a row along the gory ridge. So much blood, the rain had not yet washed it clean. They had all been stripped naked, their hauberks and tunics stolen, everything that belonged to one man of value to another. So many of them were without limbs or heads, their bellies slit open, their innards pulled out . . . She tried not to look at the details as she walked from one corpse to another. She recognised the faces, distorted in the agony or surprise of death. These were – had been – Harold’s housecarls, his loyal men who had given everything to serve him, some of them since he had become Earl of East Anglia, on through his being Earl of Wessex and King. Some had even served Godwine before Harold.
It was no use looking at those who had faces to recognise. She would not find Harold by his familiar face or by the colour of his hair. They had hewed his head from his neck. William, the Duke, had told her so as he had come up on the ridge escorted by that other man, fitz Osbern. How he had looked at her, spoken to her! As if she were something a boot had trodden in. He had stood, legs spread, fists resting on his hips, his head, with the hair shaven in the style of all his kind, tipped backwards, bloated with arrogance.
‘So you are his whore,’ he had said.
Edyth had looked at him, eye to eye, her pride the more dignified, the more honourable. ‘I would rather be whore to a good man like Harold than duchess to a man who commands murder to satisfy his ambition.’
She found Harold towards the end of the row. Recognised him by the faded, distinctive scar that swerved across his shoulder. And by the others on the upper arm, the right thigh, the small V shape on the hip. Scars, honourably won in skirmish and battle, in fight and feud. It was the one on the shoulder, though, that she reached out for. Her trembling fingers stretched forward but did not touch. She remembered her dog, his brother’s dagger making this wound. The killing of her dog and the kindling of their love.
‘Is this it? Is this him?’ The voice, the eager words in French, startled her. William stood behind her, ordering men to take away what remained of the body. His men began carrying it down the slope towards the Norman encampment.
‘Monseigneur !’ she cried, coming to life, running after William who was starting to walk away. She caught hold of his tunic sleeve; he snatched it from her grasp as if stung, a hiss of anger leaving his lips.
‘Monseigneur, the body is for my Lord’s mother! Did you not say she could take it? She is with the English wounded, not down yonder. We would give my Lord proper burial.’
William glowered at her, unused to being questioned. ‘Do you think I shall not ensure it, madame? He shall be buried, but where no one will know or tell of it. By the sea, I think. Oui, he can guard the coast he failed to defend. Allons-y.’ He hurried the men forward, flicking his hand impatiently at the woman who stood stunned, disbelieving, as they took what remained of her beloved away.
The woman forgotten, William called to one of his lesser commanders who was making his way obliquely across the sloping, scarred hillside. ‘Malet! William Malet!’
The man raised his head at the shout, trotted to meet his lord duke, listened gravely to his orders. Already he had been charged with the burial of all these dead – the Norman dead, the English could look to their own. Mass graves, he had decided, would be best, pits dug away to the east where the ground appeared softer. Now he had this other grave to dig. By the shore, the Duke said. That would mean a journey back to the coast – as if he had not enough to do this day! But so be it. The Duke had commanded it.
Edyth sank to her knees. There on the blood-mired trampled grass, she covered her face with her hands. He was gone. Harold, her lord, her lover. Harold, husband, father, earl and king, was gone from her for ever. The tears were coming and now that they fell, it would be so hard to stop them.
Down on the slope, a robin fluttered to the highest branch of a fallen tree. He lifted his head and sang, proclaiming his territory.
A far sweeter song than the bloodied one that had been carolled here but yesterday.
Author’s Note
1066 is probably the most famous date in English history. It marks a decisive battle that dramatically altered English history, literally overnight – but English history did not begin in 1066. The Saxon kings – Harold II among them – were civilised, educated men. English law and chronicles were recorded and written, the administrative work of government highly sophisticated and well organised. William’s Domesday Book, a list of all the taxable commodities in Engl
and, was compiled so quickly and accurately because the information was already there. It only had to be updated.
The majority of what is known about the sequence of events that led to two such remarkable men – Harold and William – facing each other across a battlefield, seven or so miles from Hastings, was recorded after the event by the victors. Propaganda we would call it today – hardly a good starting point for accuracy. There was a keen need to hide or at least bend certain facts: that William had no right whatsoever to the English throne being one of them.
Harold the King is a novel. I have based it on fact, but cannot claim that the details of the events and circumstances are all historically accurate; it is, after all, only an interpretation. There are too many disagreements, even among the experts, ever to be able to state categorically that anything in history is undisputed fact. Unless we were there to see for ourselves, we will never know, and even then the truth can often be elaborated or exaggerated.
As with many events this far back into the past, we know what happened, often where, occasionally when but rarely the why or the how. Much of our information about the Norman Conquest comes from the Bayeux Tapestry, an embroidery (not, in fact, a tapestry) which was probably commissioned by Duke William’s half-brother, Bishop Odo of Bayeux. Being of Norman origin and showing only ‘cartoon-like’ illustrations, it leaves much open to conjecture. For example, it shows us Harold leaving Bosham by sea and being captured by Guy de Ponthieu, of his being a ‘guest’ of William – but why he went to Normandy is entirely unknown. It is in the tapestry that Harold rescues two men from drowning; that a woman named as Ælfgyva appears (who she was, we do not know; I have conjectured that she was Agatha, William’s daughter); Halley’s comet is there; and the consecration of a barely completed Westminster Abbey – we see a man putting the weather vane on the roof. And, of course, William’s preparations for invasion, the sea voyage and the battle itself – all strictly from the Norman view.
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