The Wind From Hastings

by Morgan Llywelyn

  “Seeing Harald Hardraada go down gave us more heart than anything else could have done. Even with my hurt arm I flung myself back into the fighting, yelling as I went until I nearly split my throat. I tried to stay close to the King and his housecarles, for that was the forefront of the fighting, and I knew when victory came it would be there.

  “So it was that I saw that noble who had come from the Viking side to talk truce come forward again, and this time he brought with him Hardraada’s battle flag. And I heard men who were around me shout that it was the Earl Tostig.”

  Gytha gave a moan like unto dying. No one else said anything.

  “King Harold rode out to meet him,” Byrhic told us, “and the others fell back around them. They met alone, with axes in their hands, and King Harold turned loose his horse, that he might fight his brother on equal terms. They stood knee to knee and spoke to each other a moment, but I know not what was said.”

  “I don’t want to know,” said Leofwine softly.

  “They stepped a little apart, then, and went for each other in rage. Tostig fought like a berserker, slashing and flailing about him with his ax. King Harold stepped back and circled his brother, weighing his huge ax in his hands and biding his time.

  “Tostig seemed like a man insane in his desire to sever the King in half, and he danced so wildly on the bloody grass that his foot slipped. In a flash the King was upon him; one swing of the ax, and Tostig’s head rolled from his body.”

  We were all turned to stone, our breaths inheld, our hearts scarcely beating. Gytha sobbed and ran from the hall, and we could none of us look after her.

  “The battle did not last long after that. The Norsemen had lost their King; the heart was cut out of them. They began to surrender in two and threes, then tens and twenties, and before sundown the field was quiet save for the moaning of the wounded.

  “I knew that messengers would be sent to London with the news of victory. I told no one of my injury but applied straightway, and put myself forward so boldly that I was given a fast horse and sent that same night.”

  “You have been a remarkably brave boy,” commented Leofwine. “Is your wrist paining you now?” He reached out and took the lad’s arm to look at it. The boy winced, but did not cease to smile.

  “It matters not,” he said. “I have ridden both day and night, sleeping only in snatches beside the road, and twice I have had to beg fresh horses along the way. And I tell you I felt no twinge of pain at all until this minute!”

  “I believe you, boy,” Leofwine smiled. “Now go with my squire there and rest.”

  The boy let himself be led away, casting a marveling gaze about him as he went.

  The invasion was repulsed, the Viking force destroyed. Harold was safe. Tostig was dead. The giant from Norway was dead. A boy named Byrhic had fought well, ridden hard, and seen the royal palace. It was too much to take in; my head throbbed and ached and I wanted to laugh and cry.

  Abbots and clerics, reeves and yeomen, everyone seemed to be crowding into the Great Hall. The crowd spilled over into the passages and chambers and at last out into the courtyard, and Byrhic’s tale was repeated again and again. We heard a cheer raised outside that echoed up and down the river. “God save the King! God save our good King Harold!” the people were crying.

  I went to my chamber and had a fit of hysterics I could not explain even to myself; Gwladys had to put heated bricks at my feet and make some of her vile concoctions for me to drink before I could be quieted. And when I slept, it was as if I would never waken.

  Would that I had not. I went to sleep feeling secure for the first time in months, feeling that the threat of war had been removed and we could have some sort of normal life. That was foolish of me, I grant; normalcy is an illusion at best. My life had already taught me that and I should have remembered.

  But I did not expect to awaken to find Gwladys’s distraught face leaning over me, nor to hear her quavering voice tell me that an invasion fleet from Normandy had been spotted, crossing the Channel.

  William the Bastard had set sail at last.

  WALTHAM ABBEY

  THIS TIME THERE was no restraining Gyrth, nor Leofwine either. Armorers were summoned immediately, hauberks fitted and helms made ready. Every man on Thorney Island between the ages of twelve and sixty made preparations to join the English fyrd as it came south again to do battle with William. Riders were sent in desperate haste to the outlying shires, reminding every thegn of his sworn duty to defend his King with every man beholden to him.

  Llywelyn came to me. “I am not twelve, my lady, but I am tall for my age, and I am good with a bow and quick with a knife!”

  I stared at my eldest child in horror. “You will not fight, Llywelyn! You are a child!”

  “Byrhic is but a few years older than I, and he has already been a hero at Stamford Bridge! He told me all about it!”

  I made a silent note to myself to get Byrhic out of the palace immediately. We owed him a great debt, in truth, but I did not want him telling beguiling tales to my babes.

  “You will not go, Llywelyn, and I wish to hear nothing more about it! There are pages in the palace older than you, and they are still reckoned too young to fight!”

  He went away with his lower lip thrust out.

  Messengers raced north to the King, heavyhearted with their task of carrying bad news. It seemed a cruel jest to follow such a great victory with such a downward turn, but there was no help for it. We were invaded again; the King and the fyrd must be brought from the North to stand and fight once more, this time against a rested and freshly provisioned army.

  It took but thirteen days for Harold to make Northumbria secure, find and free Edwin, locate Morkere and reseat him at York, and double-time his armies back to London, red-eyed and shamblefooted.

  The entire city turned out to meet him. Shops were left with doors agape, kitchens with pots a-simmer at the hearth. I chewed my lip while my tiring women dressed me in a gown of brilliant blue and Gwladys plaited my hair into a coronet of golden braids atop my head. When I could sit no longer, I ran out the privy gate and down the shallow fording to join the mass of courtiers, waiting on tiptoe and craning their necks for a first glimpse of the King.

  He rode slowly along the river, giving his tired horse a long rein that it might stretch its neck and rest. In a ragged group of bright colors the thegns and housecarles, Harold’s victorious generals, followed after him. Women broke from the crowd before the palace to run splashing into the water, careless of their lovingly chosen gowns as they called out the names of their returning menfolk.

  Some of the women waited in vain, their eyes searching the road for figures that never appeared.

  I waited at the edge of the river, feeling the damp mud ooze through my shoes. He rode straight toward me, sitting erect and seeing nothing. There was nothing in his face that I recognized. The eyes were not blue but gray and bleak; his mouth was narrowed to a thin line beneath a drooping straggle of golden mustache, and an unkempt stubble disguised the clean line of his jaw.

  I curtsied deeply as his horse drew abreast of me, but he did not even glance down. He rode on by me at the same slow walk, and I picked up my skirts in my two hands and followed him into the courtyard of the West Palace.

  In the Great Hall he greeted us all with courtesy, but as remotely as if his spirit were still somewhere about the Stamford Bridge. The tone of his skin looked dead. Gytha would not come out to well come the King but kept to her chamber; he did not ask for her.

  Those who had ridden with him—Ansgar, Eadwig, Waltheof and the rest—it was they who told us once more the story of the battle. It differed from Byrhic’s version only in the viewpoint; a thegn sees a somewhat different war than a foot soldier does. But Ansgar added a note of interest to the tale of that lone defender on the bridge.

  “It is a wooden bridge, there over the Derwent,” he said, “and the planks of the floor are not closely joined together. The man who guarded the bridge fought so
savagely and well that none could get past him until a Saxon secreted himself in a little boat and let it float down the river and under the bridge. Then he reached up between the planks and skewered the Viking on the point of his spear!”

  In different circumstances it might have been a tale to laugh at; it might have brought many a hearty guffaw around a roaring fire. But we could none of us see anything funny in it; there seemed to be nothing left in the world that might start laughter anymore,

  The situation was so grave it did not even have to be discussed. Without orders, the fyrd was re-forming itself as quickly as possible. Men who had been almost too tired to march home were struggling to find the strength to go and fight again.

  When we went to our bedchamber, Harold dismissed all the servitors, even his squire of the body and my Gwladys. He had ordered the fire built up, though the night was warm for early October, and he sat himself on a stool in front of it and wrapped his arms about his knees.

  “Come here, Aldith, and sit by me,” he said. It was not a request.

  I went to him timidly and sat down as he directed. I could think of nothing to say.

  When at last he began to speak his voice was rusty and old; I could scarce hear it above the snapping and crackling of the fire. “I did not want to kill my brother, Aldith,” he said.

  “My lord, I should not hear these things! They are best said in the confessional, to your priest.”

  He ignored me. “I did not want to kill Tostig. But it was what he wanted. I saw it in his eyes that day at Stamford Bridge. It was some kind of triumph for him, getting me to kill him.”

  I tried to offer consolation. “Mayhap he thought that would wipe out the stain of his treason, set the scales in balance some way.”

  Harold shook his head but did not look at me; his eyes reflected only the flames. “No, it was not that. He desired the death stroke at my hands; it was some sort of victory to him. When I went up to him before we fought I thought to offer him a chance for life, but he would not have it. ‘You were the golden one, Harold,’ he said to me. ‘You were always the golden one.’ That was all he would say. Then he attacked me with the ax and I had to defend myself.

  “In the moment I swung the blade, and knew it would take his head, he knew it too. And there was joy in his eyes, Aldith. There was triumph!” Suddenly he buried his face in his hands, the great shoulders slumped forward in the firelight. “Why did he do that? Why, sweet Jesus, did he do that?”

  I stood up and put my arms around that big, huddled figure as I would one of my children, and I cradled his head on my breast. I held him for long and long, feeling dry sobs shake him and knowing from experience that only time could bring him a measure of forgetfulness.

  If there were any time left.

  One day only did the King plan to stop in London. The fyrd would use the time to prepare as much as possible for the campaign against the Normans, to regroup and take stock of what assets it might still possess. The King wanted a little time for himself, to go to Waltham Abbey and pray.

  In the morning, even before he had been dressed, his mother came to our chamber. She spoke with a low voice and would not look at either one of us. “Send your wife from the room, please, Your Grace. I would speak with you in private.”

  Harold glanced at me. “There is nothing you could say to me, madam, that Aldith need not hear.”

  She lifted her head then and her eyes flashed. “Why do you persist in calling Edyth by that foreign name?”

  Before I could give her a short answer, the King replied calmly, “She prefers it, madam. It is a small gift. Now, what did you wish to say to me?”

  She looked once at me, resentfully, then half-turned her shoulder to me and spoke to her son directly: “What was done with my son’s body? Was he given Christian burial, or have you fallen too low for that?”

  Harold’s face looked all sunken about the eyes as he gave her his answer: “Harald Hardraada I sent home to Norway on his shield, in honor of a great warrior. Your son I buried in holy ground in York; I did not disgrace him. You should have trusted me better than that.” I heard his voice waver a trifle from the force of control he exerted upon himself, and I damned the woman in my heart.

  She turned to go, slumped down and shrunken within her clothes. But at the doorway she stopped, and I saw that she could go no farther. She stood there unmoving, only trembling a little, and at last we heard her say in a whisper, “My son!”

  I do not know which son she called, but Harold Godwine answered. He crossed the room in giant strides and had her wrapped in his arms so tightly I feared she might be smothered. He said nothing to her, nor she to him, but I could feel the healing flow between them. Sometimes the touch can say what the tongue cannot, methinks, and so it was with mother and son. And I was glad, for his sake.

  When at last his arms loosed, she stepped from them and was gone into the passageway.

  The King was not able to go that day to Waltham as he had wished. Hardly had Gytha left him when a page entered to tell us that an envoy had arrived from the camp of William the Bastard.

  “Perhaps he wants to treat for peace?” I offered hopefully, but the King silenced me with a scornful look.

  “If anyone should treat for peace it is I, Aldith! God knows I want no more of war. But you may be sure William sends me no soft words and false hopes; surely he knows our position by now as well as we do ourselves.”

  King Harold gave the Norman ambassadors audience before his High Seat, and much of the court was present to hear what was said. The monk Huon Margot had been chosen as spokesman, and he began straightway by addressing the King insultingly, without title. He reminded Harold that he had sworn an oath of fealty to William, vowing to support him as successor to Edward.

  “Restore the kingdom you have stolen from my Lord,” the monk cried in ringing tones, “and he will show you mercy!”

  Ansgar the Marshal seized Harold by one arm and Gyrth grabbed the other, elsewise we would have had a pie made of Huon Margot on the table by dinner. While the King was held raving, William’s emissaries made a hasty departure from the West Palace, and nothing was heard from them again.

  It took long to restore the King to a reasonable temper, fit to lead the fyrd into combat. But at last the final arrangements were made, the final instructions given. I was commended to the keeping of the palace guard, with strict instructions that I was to remain safely on Thorney Island “until William floats belly-upward in the Channel!” But I had done enough waiting. Unbeknownst to the King, I had summoned my own allies and was making my own plans—as were others of the court ladies, though I did not know it at that time.

  King Harold rode to his devotions at Waltham a day late. He returned in the evening, his companions with him; all seemed mightily shaken. The King did not even speak to us but went straightway to his private chapel and was closeted there long and long with only Wulfstan and his God.

  A visit to Edith Swan Neck, if the trip had included such, could scarcely have had that result. I sought out Leofwine to speak with him of it, and so happened to be present when two senior clerics from Waltham arrived at the West Palace.

  They had been sent by the Dean of Waltham to accompany the King to the field of battle and to give him what spiritual aid they could. This was deemed necessary by the canons of the abbey as a result of what had happened during the King’s devotions in the chapel that day.

  The special pride of Waltham Abbey was the life-size crucifix in wood and marble, a gift of Toftig the Proud, which hung behind and slightly to the right of the high altar. Osgood, the elder priest, told us that the King and his party of thegns had taken part in the mass and then remained in the chapel to pray for success in the coming battle. Even after his friends completed their devotions, King Harold lingered on, accompanied only by Thorkild the sacristan.

  Afterward, Thorkild reported to the clerics of Waltham that the King had gone to pray directly before the crucifix, throwing himself face downward on the s
tone floor and extending his arms at right angles to his body in the sign of the cross. And as he lay there, prostrate, the wooden head of the Christus turned slowly downward upon its neck until the eyes looked directly at Harold Godwine!

  Thorkild gave a gasp of awe and horror which startled the King, but he had not looked up and seen the crucifix. He completed his prayers and left the church, stopping outside to talk briefly with the Abbot. As soon as Thorkild recovered his wits he summoned his fellow clerics, and they all gazed in wonder at the altered figure which had once looked heavenward in its final agony. The face was now, truly, turned down.

  The King was not told directly, but within minutes the news had spread through the precincts of the abbey like a blaze in grass. By the time Harold and his party set foot once more on the London road they knew of it, and the senior clerics of the church were already sitting in solemn conclave to try to determine the meaning of the miracle.

  “It was agreed that we should be sent straightway after the King,” Osgood concluded, “to accompany his body in this life and minister to it as is needed thereafter.”

  If I had had any lingering doubts as to my own intentions, that put an end to it. Harold Godwine had been my father’s enemy long before we were met, yet he was husband to me now, and father to the babe that was only just beginning to kick within me.

  Once, obedient and compliant, I would have done as I was bid and suffered another long agony of waiting. But the submission was gone from me; whatever fate lay in store I would know of it myself. “I will no longer be a piece in a chess game played by others!” I said to Gwladys in an attempt to convince her of the rightness of my decision.

  She was not happy about it, but she worked in secret to prepare wardrobes for myself and the children; and she carried messages to Osbert for me.

  On the morning of October twelfth, King Harold and a force of some four thousand men, including all the earls of the land save only my brothers, who had not yet reached London, marched out of the City and across London Bridge. In the wake of the fyrd came various parties of families, clerics and hangers-on, and a train of hastily assembled supply wagons too slow to keep up with the main force.