There was a quarter moon, just enough light for me to pick my way along the path to the water. It seemed to me that would be a pleasant place to die, close to the running water.
But the nearer I got to the river the icier the wind became, and the woolen cloak I had wrapped around me seemed as thin as silk. Foolishness, to be unpleasantly chilled in the hour of one’s death—what need of comfort then, anyway? The brew I had mixed for myself would be unpleasant enough to make me forget cold hands and feet! Nevertheless, by the time I reached the bank and felt the cold mud ooze through my thin slippers, I had begun to feel I lacked the courage for the thing.
The clicking I heard was my own teeth chattering. My body was shaking with cold rather than fear, but the effect was quite the same. If I had been a warrior I would have said I was unmanned, but at any rate the power to act was quite gone from me. I stood there, thoroughly miserable, gazing at the dark and rushing water and feeling cheated. “Next time,” I vowed to the night. “When the night is not so bitter and my hands are more steady, then I will be able to do it.”
With a sense of anticlimax I turned and made my way back to the house. It seemed a much shorter road that time, although I tripped over roots and rocks I had not noticed before. I was able to return to my chamber as unobserved as at my departure, and I hid the jar of poison behind my bed once again, until such time as I would be able to make use of it.
I wonder what became of that jar? Mayhap Gwladys found it and did away with it, thinking to save me that way. Or perhaps it was never found and molders there still, in a dusty corner screened by cobwebs. For the time was somehow never right for me to use it, and at the end of the winter a large party of Harold’s relatives and servitors arrived to prepare me for my wedding to the new King of England.
Pious old Edward was dead at last, and Harold Godwine had claimed the throne.
YORK
HE CAME TO Mercia with a large company of housecarles and body servants, men-at-arms and hangers-on. In short, he came with all the retinue of a king. The day before his arrival, a herald galloped up our road to make us aware of our forthcoming honor.
“King Harold of England has chosen to visit the home of his friend Edwin, Earl of Mercia!”
The household was thrown straightway into an uproar. Edwin, having been off on some business or other, arrived at about the same time as the King’s herald, all atwit with plans for the tremendous impression he wanted to make on Harold Godwine. He wanted the stables to contain nothing but fat and glossy horses, all the fields to appear ready for the plow, and a day of intense sunshine and unseasonal warmth. Within ten minutes of his arrival, he had driven his wife to tears and me to my chambers.
“I am not at all interested in making a good impression on that man,” I said to my brother over my shoulder as I left the frenzied activity in the hall, “and you would be well advised to leave me out of all this.”
“But aren’t you anxious to see your children? For a while they were all you talked about!”
My heart jumped in my breast. “Is the King bringing them with him?” Something in me hated referring to that man as the King.
“Ah, no,” Edwin said with no real appearance of regret. “It seems they are being sent ahead to the city of York, to take their part in the nuptial celebrations.”
Of course. The bait for the trap, just to be certain the bride arrived for the ceremony. Small wonder Harold was King; he planned his campaigns with such thoroughness.
And when he arrived with all his display of wealth and power, that was part of a campaign, too. Shiremen and ceorls, farmers and tenants, they lined the road to see him and do him honor, and so of course Edwin mounted me on a horse and rode with me to the head of our valley to see all this and greet the King.
He wore crimson velvet and a fur-trimmed cloak that billowed in the wind of his horse’s galloping. He came out from his party and cantered up to meet us alone, leaving even his guard behind. He rode with a certainty of himself that was meant to impress me, and it did, even against my will. Edwin’s rare and sunny day sparkled around us, and the new King of England looked every inch a king.
It is hard to hate something that is beautiful and perfect. Griffith would not have hated Harold, seeing him like that in all his hard-won glory. Griffith would have understood and respected him for it.
“Well come, my lord.” I bowed low over my saddlebow, keeping my face impassive.
“And my greetings to you, madam. Is all well with you?” If Harold were wooing me in hot blood, his voice was remarkably cool and formal!
Helpless I might be, but he could not force me to play his games. “All is not well with me, my lord,” I told him while Edwin was still spouting his own greetings. Harold’s eyes told me he considered Edwin as unimportant as I did. “My children are still motherless, and I am to be given into a marriage I did not desire.”
For a moment I thought he would be angry, but then the skin around his eyes crinkled and he came close to smiling. “Your tongue is still icy, my lady! Come, have you no words of congratulation for me? I have come to you almost straightway from my hallowing, Edyth; I set aside matters of grave importance in order to gallop up the Watling Road like a beardless boy, anxious to press my suit, and you think no more of me than you would of such a stripling lad?”
“As I understand it, neither my admiration nor my cooperation is essential to this marriage,” I told him. I gathered up my reins, ignoring the black looks Edwin was giving me, and said formally, “By your leave, sire?” Without waiting for his answer, I turned my horse and rode back to the manor.
I suppose he would have liked to bury a battle-ax between my shoulder blades, but he did not. Instead, he brought all his passel of people and was feasted that night in Leofric’s hall.
Edwin had, of course, relinquished his own High Seat in favor of his sovereign, and I was placed on Joan’s customary bench. We were fed and toasted as if we attended the celebration of a hand-fast marriage; I am sure the resemblance was intentional.
At dinner Harold made it obvious that he did not wish to discuss his recent excursion to the court of Duke William in Normandy. There were already rumors about that enforced visit. Edwin said that some of Harold’s own men believed Harold had sworn an oath of fealty to William and vowed to support the Norman’s claim to the English throne. If Harold Godwine had indulged in such double-dealing, he was wisely loath to speak of it, and he regaled us instead with the events of King Edward’s death and his own succession.
“The King had been in poorly health for some time,” he said, “but it seemed that Tostig’s behavior was the final blow. It was not my desire to banish my own brother from the kingdom; when we were children together we were close as peas in a pod. But I could not, in good conscience, overlook murder for political advantage, even with my own brother and sister at the bottom of it!”
His blue eyes danced with fire. I wondered if he would consider my Griffith’s death as murder for political advantage; he was slain to further the ambitions of one of the Godwine brood as surely as the dead Cospatric. But I kept my counsel and marked another score in my book against Harold: hypocrite.
“I spoke against Tostig, and my own sister, the King’s wife, to the Witan. They would not act against the First Lady of England; she has built up a reputation for piety near as large as her husband’s, and it protects her now! But they agreed with me that the greed and malcontent of Tostig had become a danger, so he was outlawed as his own subjects in Northumbria wished.”
Harold was not eating as he spoke. A steaming joint lay across the trencher of bread in front of him, but he had taken no more than a bite from it. I could not credit him with such sensibilities that discussing the banishment of his brother could destroy his hearty appetite, so I concluded something must be wrong with the meat and left my own untouched. After all, this was my residence; if I were eating as usual in my chambers and sent back my meat untouched, no one would consider it an act of discourtesy!
&n
bsp; “The Earl, the former Earl Tostig left England much in a grumble, I understand,” put in Edwin. If Tostig were a sore subject with Harold, Edwin was too dense to notice, anyway.
“He took quite a large troop with him and sailed immediately to Flanders. Baldwin is half-brother to Tostig’s wife, Judith, and no doubt has given him sanctuary and sympathy. But the sympathy should have gone to the King, who was heartbroken over the whole affair and took to his bed.”
Harold dropped his voice, as one does when speaking of the dead and dying, and we all leaned forward a little without even being aware of it. The death of kings is a solemn thing, to be repeated in quiet rooms by the flickering of firelight, so that even the servants ceased their bustling and rattling of dishes.
“By the eighth day of Christ Mass we all knew the King was dying. The members of the Witan were summoned, his Lady slept at the foot of his bed and prayed continually until her voice grew hoarse. Stigand, Archbishop of Canterbury, attended the King, and his chamber was crowded both night and day. For two days he lay in the drowsing sickness, recognizing no one, but on the morning of the fifth day of the New Year his mind came to him again and he spoke to us.
“He told us that he had had a vision, and in that vision our whole land was conquered and laid waste by its enemies. He said this was to be a punishment for the wrongdoings of those in high places, and that there would be no salvation.
“We were all shocked and affrighted. I thought he said these things because he was so disappointed in Tostig and some of the others, but Edward seemed to believe he had had a true vision. He clutched my hand and begged me to try and save my country, and I stood there with my head bowed and the tears on my face, not knowing what to say.
“Stigand tried to assure us the King spoke out of his old age and illness, but all around me I could feel fear creeping like a bramblebush. There was a sense of doom about the chamber, as if Edward had cursed us all, and I felt he had laid on me a burden too heavy to be borne. As I said to Stigand, I am but mortal; I cannot hold off Fate itself with sword and ax!
“The King would not let go my hand, however. Again he bade me defend the country, and then his breath made an ugly noise in his throat and Stigand hastened to give him the last rites. His old friend Edwin of Westminster administered the Eucharist, and even as the cup left his lips so did the King’s spirit. I swear I felt it go! I actually felt his sense of relief at laying down the burdens of a life he had never enjoyed overmuch!”
As he spoke of the King’s death, Harold made the sign of the cross upon his breast, as did we all. There was the appearance of genuine grief in his face, and I wondered suddenly if he had actually loved the saintly, bumbling old man, even after Edward showed his preference for Tostig. It was hard for me to think of that golden, impervious warrior loving and caring. To care is to be vulnerable, as my children made me vulnerable; as far as I knew, King Harold loved nothing.
Harold continued his narrative; he was coming to the part he obviously relished telling. His voice lifted again and his eyes brightened as he told how the Witan had convened and chosen him as successor to Edward on that same day.
“No one spoke for the boy, the Atheling. No one supported the various claims of those others who feel they have rights here.”
“We all understood that you were the King’s choice,” Edwin said. “He may have loved your brother, but Edward always felt the kingdom would be safest in your hands. All your earls supported you, my Lord!”
Harold grinned. “And so you are—all—my earls! My own brothers and you and your brother, my good Mercia. I owe you much, Edwin, and you owe me. Remember that.” A look passed between them, and I saw my brother pale a little. I knew then that he feared the King even more than he respected him, and, perversely, that lessened my own fear of Harold.
“On the last day of Christ Mass, King Edward was buried in his newly hallowed West Minster, and that same day I was anointed King. Eldred, Archbishop of York, set the crown upon my head, and I dedicated myself to caring for the kingdom Edward bequeathed me.”
How noble. How fine. I helped myself to a pickled egg.
“Your coronation was fraught with good omens, my lord!” Edwin burbled. “You must not dwell overmuch on the dying King’s prophecy; it is as Stigand said. His mind was clouded. It was a splendid ceremony,” Edwin continued to the table at large, “and the sight of our Lord Harold in white linen and gold surcoat heartened us all. When you turned to address us, with Edward’s crown upon your head and the orb and scepter in your hands, my lord, it was like a fresh beginning for us all.”
“Symbols of power only have meaning in hands that can hold onto them, Edwin,” replied Harold. “The struggle is not yet over, even though I am anointed. There are many who will be loath to accept me as King, my own brother Tostig among them, I fear. The Northmen, the Normans, the adherents of the young Atheling—doubtless we shall hear from all of them in quick time. Only when all claims are silenced can we consider our land secure, as Edward wished.
“Therefore it is imperative that we present a unified front. The problem with Tostig has taught me a lesson; I would have no squabbling or treachery on my own doorsill.”
Harold turned then and spoke directly to me with a forthrightness my own brothers rarely accorded me. “Edyth, that is much of my motive in this marriage. It is important at this time that all England be welded into one strong unit as it has never been before. We must be done with all this rivalry between earls, all this border warfare to add a few rods of land to some noble’s holdings. By joining the house of Godwine to the house of Leofric I can do that!
“This afternoon, on the High Road, you said that this marriage did not require your cooperation, but it does, Edyth. I am doing what I genuinely believe to be best for all of us and for the kingdom, and I need your support as much as that of your brothers and their thegns!” He rose from his seat and came toward me, one hand extended as if in supplication. Earnest entreaty was in his voice and eyes; it would have been so easy to believe he meant what he said and was acting from the noblest impulses.
But the hand he stretched forward to me had accepted my Griffith’s bloody head as tribute, had lifted it by its matted hair as he gazed into its lifeless eyes!
“Offer you support, my lord?” I let the bitterness I felt sit like bile upon my tongue and flavor my voice. “I offer you nothing, nothing at all. Whatever you may gain from or through me will be gained without my help in any way! You hold my children hostage, knowing that I cannot endanger them by refusing to go through with this hated coupling, but do not ask any more of me than that! I will repeat the marriage lines with you, Harold Godwine”—all the company gasped when I referred to him thus, ignoring his blood-bought title—“but I will be neither your friend nor your ally!”
Harold stared at me, shocked that I would speak to him in that fashion in the presence of others. I was surprised at myself, yet proud of the courage that welled up in me with my anger. Edwin leaped from his seat with an oath and would have struck me, I think, had not Harold caught his hand by the wrist and held it tightly.
“I will not have her hurt for telling me the truth, Earl Edwin,” he said in a deadly cool voice. “If that is how the woman feels, I am well advised to know it; there has been enough treachery and hidden feeling.” He looked at me. “What about you, Edyth? If I insist we go through with this marriage will you betray me, as my sister tried to betray King Edward and elevate Tostig over me?”
His gaze was so stern, so intense, that I could not break the lock his eyes had on mine. I lifted my trembling chin and spoke as proudly as I knew how. “In my lifetime I have seen enough of treachery to sicken me, too, my lord. If you do insist, I will marry you, and I will not plot against you for any reason. Not for your sake, but for my own. I will not be a dog to hide under the table and snatch bones.”
Harold continued to look at me for a long moment, holding Edwin’s arm as if he had quite forgotten it. Edwin glanced from me to Harold and back a
gain; I could imagine he saw himself losing the support of the throne and all that entailed. Then, gently, Harold released him.
“It is a strange vow for a woman to make to her bridegroom, but I daresay it is more valuable than many vows made with more tender feeling. I trust you, madam, and I believe you will do as you say.
“Earl Edwin, you will be so kind as to direct me to my chambers. I would be abed; we rise at cockcrow and ride on to York. You will bring your sister to me there as soon as you can have her ready.”
He met my eyes again and made a courteous bow. “I shall see you in York, my lady. I trust I will find you quite unchanged?” With that curious remark, he turned on his heel and left the hall.
As it fell out, it took much preparation to turn the Welsh Prince’s widow into a suitable bride for the English King. At five and twenty, I was much removed from the trembling virgin to be dressed in simple silks; seamstresses labored night and day to make me a trousseau of satin and samite and fine linen. Joan was as thrilled as if the wedding were her own; she certainly enjoyed the preparations more than I. Even Gwladys was all a-twitter. More than once I had to remind her sharply that her delight in these things was a disloyalty to Prince Griffith.
“But he was a hearty man, my lady!” Gwladys defended herself. “He would not have wanted you to spend your life in a long face and purple mourning robes. Prince Griffith would have been pleased to see you safely wed again.”
“Mayhap,” I agreed, “but not to Harold Godwine.”
“He is the King, my lady!”
“He is King of the Saxons and the Angles and the Jutes. I am now Welsh, Gwladys, by marriage and by choice. Harold is nothing to me. I will endure this thing in order to have my children again, but I take no pleasure in it.”
There was one matter I took great interest in, and that was the subject of my marriage gown. Gytha had sent yards of saffron silk from Arundel, with instructions that it was to be sewn into my nuptial robes. She would! Knowing full well that in yellow I would appear like a jaundiced sheaf of wheat, Harold’s mother had expressed her dislike for me in that meanly fashion!
The Wind From Hastings Page 12