The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  ‘I expect to see it on my return,’ he said.

  Thankfully this birthday gift was not to be kept hidden in a treasure casket. Gunnhild wore it around her neck where it nestled beside her grandmother’s sapphire cross. She glanced in the polished brass mirror that lay on the ash wood table. The coral glowed against the soft sage of her woollen overgown, a garment so voluminous that she felt it flow and swish against her ankles as she walked to the table. Although this necklace was a small compensation for the jewels he had locked away it was by far preferable to the Penthiévre ruby. That had been tainted by his displeasure.

  On the day following her saint’s feast, Alan was packed and his coffer was strapped to a second horse on which his young squire had perched. ‘When I am in Rouen, I shall see that the seamstresses return by spring to make you garments for your churching. Hopefully I shall be able to return then also.’ He leaned down and kissed her hand.

  They had reached a place of calm and she did not want ill-will to linger between them. ‘Godspeed, my lord,’ she said warmly. ‘Return soon.’

  Dorgen ran around Alan’s stallion, keeping well away from the horse’s back legs as he had been firmly warned to do. ‘Can I be your squire soon?’ he asked, looking up at Alan with great pleading eyes.

  He is an endearing boy, Gunnhild thought to herself, but how are we going to cope with his persistence when he is older? ‘I am sure you may,’ she said aloud. ‘But first you must learn to handle a horse as well as Count Alan. I think a groom is coming now to take you riding so say goodbye at once, and then off you go, Dorgen.’

  Dorgen waved wildly at Alan who was turning his horse and beginning to ride towards the gatehouse. He glanced back at the child with a look of pure adoration. I hope he loves our daughter as much as he loves Dorgen. She bit her lip. Soon, Dorgen will have to know that Alan is his father. She shrugged. It is for the father to tell his son who he is, not me. Pushing that thought away she watched Alan and his squire canter out of the bailey gate to clatter over the ditch bridge. She waved and hurried from the yard back up to the keep and, though she had difficulty catching her breath, she rushed to the antechamber behind the hall to watch him ride down the trackway towards the road to Rouen. Standing by opened shutters she followed his progress until he became no more than a distant speck on the landscape, until he had disappeared completely.

  A week later, Gunnhild was clenching her teeth. She gathered together all her willpower and bore down. In constant pain, she had been labouring since Vespers of the previous day and now from the distance she could hear the chapel bell ring out the midday angelus. Her contractions were painful and she was exhausted. When she opened her eyes, through the fug of the chamber she could perceive concern on her midwives’ faces. She closed her eyes again to sense Ann leaning down over her. She felt cool water as Ann bathed her brow. As if from a great distance she heard her voice. ‘It will be well, my lady. We sent to Dinan yesterday for Agenhart. She is more skilled than all of us here.’ Gunnhild was too tired to complain. Another contraction swallowed her and she cried out again.

  Agenhart arrived early in the afternoon. Gunnhild groaned, imagining she was lost in a night so dark and long that surely God Himself had forbidden day to ever return. She had sinned; she had turned her back on God and the abbey that had nurtured her. This was her punishment and her unborn child’s misfortune to have such a mother. She was doomed. Sensing Agenhart by her pillow, she could hear her voice from far away. The sweet oil of lilac, a perfume that Agenhart had worn at the Christmastide feasting, floated in the air. She felt Agenhart touch her. The woman never spoke a word. Gunnhild saw from the edge of her vision that Agenhart had crossed to the window and was clattering opened the shutters. ‘If only for an hour, my lady needs air, fresh air.’

  Gunnhild could feel the mild March afternoon air caress her face. She breathed in the aroma of rosewater as Agenhart bathed her. It soothed her until a midwife gently put a long, thin hand up inside her private, secret place towards the neck of her womb. All was agony there. ‘The child wants to be born. He is coming,’ the midwife whispered. ‘My lady must push him to life.’ Agenhart raised her, placed a cup with a sweet liquid to her lips. ‘Drink,’ she said, and, praying for relief, Gunnhild sipped the sweet honey drink. ‘You need your strength. Soon you must push.’ Gunnhild felt as if she had no energy left to push.

  Agenhart was insistent. ‘My lady, when I say so you must push.’ Another contraction came and she felt racked with a pain so profound she was sure she must die.

  ‘Push now.’ The order came to her as if from a great distance. Supported by Agenhart and the other women she heaved and pushed. It was hard. This great effort devoured the last remnants of her strength. Yet as she pushed she felt calmer.

  ‘You will be delivered soon, I promise, my lady,’ she heard Agenhart’s distant voice say. She clutched the woman’s hand and gasped, ‘I know I must. If I do not then I shall die.’

  ‘Strive again, my lady, I can feel the baby’s head,’ a midwife said. ‘He has crowned at the end of the passage.’ Gunnhild felt as if everything inside her was compulsively moving. She could not stop the sense that waves were swelling and crashing onto the rocks below the castle, except that she was part of the swell. Then she felt pain and enormous relief as the baby was eased from her passage.

  ‘You have a girl, my lady,’ Ann was saying. The sound of her voice was far away. ‘She is a great strong baby. What will be her name?’

  ‘Matilda,’ Gunnhild managed to whisper hoarsely. ‘Maud.’

  It had all been so awful that she knew that she never wanted to have another child. The last twenty-four hours had been the worst she had ever known. A bundle was placed into her arms and she looked down on her daughter. ‘Maud,’ she whispered despite her exhaustion, ‘I shall love you with my last breath.’ She kissed the baby’s forehead, and after that she could feel nothing, see nothing. Agenhart had given her something to drink, honey and wine maybe, she thought sleepily. She faintly heard the words, afterbirth, bleeding, and wet nurse. Someone put the baby to her breast. She had felt the washed and swaddled bundle root and then felt her suck. After that she was sure that Maud had been given the second breast. There were whispers around her, something about too much bleeding, a rip, strain, small passage.

  She heard Agenhart say, ‘Hush. Ann, send into the village for the wet nurse. Lady Gunnhild cannot continue to feed the child. She is too weak. Drink, my lady, again, just a little. It will expel the afterbirth.’ This new concoction tasted bitter; it smelled of parsley, of leeks and she could smell vinegar. It woke her up. They were holding her legs, though she could not see why. She tried to resist but soon realised that her limbs could not move of their own accord. Now they were dripping vinegar into her secret place. She could smell it and it stung.

  After that, she knew no more for several days.

  When she awakened her feet were supported on cushions so they were higher than her body. Ann told her that they had had to heal a rupture in her vagina with powder made of comfrey and daisy and cumin which Agenhart had carried with her from Rouen. They had packed her passage with a suppository of musk oil, camphor and rue. Every time the midwife changed it she was aware of warmth. The rupture was healing and she had passed through a terrible danger, Ann insisted, as she spooned mouthfuls of milk and softened bread to Gunnhild.

  ‘Where is Maud?’ Gunnhild tried to ask.

  ‘We had to put her with a wet nurse. I shall send for her. She is a beauty. She will make a grand marriage one day.’

  ‘I shall nurse her; none other must. Return her to me,’ Gunnhild muttered and fell back against her pillows. ‘My lord?’ she said. ‘Has anyone sent him word?’

  ‘Yes, my lady. But as yet we have not heard back. It is too soon.’

  ‘How long have I been …’

  ‘A few days, you have been near death but Agenhart has nursed you to health again. I knew we were right to send for her.’

  ‘Where is she?’r />
  ‘She returned to Dinan today.’

  ‘And Dorgen?’

  ‘He has asked for you every day. He looks at the crib, as if Maud was the Queen of the Silkies, her tail shed and she has come amongst human kind to steal his heart. He is besotted with her.’

  ‘Good, but he must continue with his lessons and ride every day.’

  ‘He will.’ Ann patted her arm and removed the spoon and bowl. ‘Tomorrow we can allow your feet to lie on the sheets and dispense with the cushions. Your passage is healing well. There is no more bleeding and no need now to pack it with the poultice.’

  ‘Thank St Margaret for that.’

  ‘St Margaret?’

  ‘Ann, don’t you remember? She is a helper to women in labour, just as St Cecilia represents refined womanhood and St Brigit protects our castle.’

  ‘Ah, of course, and all three helped you survive?’

  ‘I believe Agenhart saved my life because they willed it so.’ Gunnhild felt for her coral necklace. It still hung around her neck. It must have helped, too. The door rattled and she started as she heard a mewing like a kitten’s sound. When the wet nurse put the baby into her arms, Gunnhild started. Her child was tightly wrapped in swaddling and tied to a board. This seemed such a cruelty, even if the nurse intended to straighten Maud’s limbs. ‘Remove that. I do not want her strung to a board. I want to see her as she was born,’ she said. The nurse hesitated but when Ann said, ‘Do it,’ the woman obeyed and reluctantly removed the straightening board. She placed the baby into Gunnhild’s waiting arms.

  ‘Now, Maud,’ Gunnhild summoned all her slight strength, ‘I want you by my side, your cradle by my bed, and more than anything, I want you to give suck.’

  A disapproving expression settled on the nurse’s countenance. She glanced at Ann with frog-like eyes that begged for support. Ann shrugged. Gunnhild repeated, ‘Do as I say, both of you. Either I can or I can’t, and unless I try I will not know. Unbind me, Ann.’

  She sat up, despite her weakness, and kicked away the cushion that supported her feet. ‘I shall try,’ she said, summoning her most commanding tone. ‘She will take suck from me. I am her mother.’ She kissed Maud’s fair-coloured down and smelled her comforting smell. She is beautiful and she is my child, more precious than any jewels. To her delight after a short time, though she felt it painful at first, Maud began to give suck. The bond she felt with her baby was worth any amount of initial discomfort.

  From then on Gunnhild kept Maud and Dorgen close, watching over both children like a tigress would her cubs. She was churched in Alan’s absence and for a time was saddened by the fact that he never sent her word from England. She did not even know if their messengers had reached the wilds that lay beyond York in her native country where Castle Richmond stood guarding the troubled North. Almost four months passed. The Beltane festival came and went, a quieter occasion than that of the previous spring and still nothing. She told herself daily that she had healthy children and the company of women and that her garden overflowed with flowers, herbs and salad. Her cup was half-full. She must be patient.

  14

  There should be different kinds of pictures, cloths of diverse colours, and pearls placed in front of the child, and one should use nursery songs and simple words; neither rough nor harsh words should be used in singing in front of the child.

  ‘On the Regimen for the Infant’, The Trotula, ed. and trans. by Monica H. Green, 2002 (dates from the 12th century)

  Alan returned on a June morning filled with the scent of wild rose and celandine. Not thinking about him, Gunnhild pottered through her herb beds filling a reed basket with fat, newly ripened strawberries. She glanced up at the cerulean sky and gasped with pleasure. It had not a single cloud to mar its perfection. Maud was alternately squawking and batting at a row of dangling shells with her fists. Her mewing grew into an insistent howl in the moments it took her mother to reach her. Cradling Maud in one arm, Gunnhild eased herself onto the bench and with her free hand unlaced the ties on her gown. Maud attached herself to her mother like one of the limpets that clung to the rocks below the castle.

  Gunnhild had come to enjoy her houseful of women. Her home hummed with contentment. Now that summer had come to Fréhel the seamstresses had returned. They mended her gowns and filled linen bags with shapeless baby shifts of so many sizes that Maud had enough to last her for several years. The wet nurse remained at the castle with her own child until Gunnhild sent her away, paying her off with a purse of small coins, glad to see the back of her dour face. Throughout the spring months, as Gunnhild grew stronger, the bower was filled with the noise of singing, sewing, scissor clinking, maids chattering, and the small thudding sounds of spindles dropping as her women exchanged stories of babies.

  Gradually Maud’s hunger was sated and she let loose the nipple and began to doze. Gunnhild gently lifted her back into her crib. Rising slowly she saw with amazement that Alan was standing by the gate. She blinked, thinking that the sunlight was deceiving her, but he was no imaginary being. He was fully human and moving along the garden trackway towards her.

  She sank back onto the bench. Tears of frustration threatened to flow as the happy moment she had just felt vanished and, instead, she remembered how she had nearly died bearing his child. He had not sent word to her since his departure months before. Wiping her tears away with her sleeve, she watched him cross the path but did not move to greet him. Her anger at him prevented her. Her disappointment was deep-seated. He was wearing a light blue wool mantle, hose that was clean and his overshirt looked new, a rich garment woven of natural linen decorated with gold embroidery. She suspected that he had not come to her straight from a ship.

  He spoke first, ‘I heard it did not go easily.’

  Looking up she widened her eyes and said with all her pent-up fury, ‘It has been four months, Alan.’

  ‘Gunnhild, it took a month for the message to reach me. I was on the borders up in Northumbria saving our lands from the Scot rebels,’ Alan replied quietly.

  ‘No message from you and yet we sent you many.’

  ‘Yes, I knew that you had survived as did our daughter.’ He looked puzzled. ‘I sent you word that I would return as soon as everything was settled in Northumbria.’

  ‘There was no message.’

  He frowned. ‘I sent a man to Dinan. My father had written saying that Agenhart saved you and the child. He said that she deserved my thanks. I requested that the messenger continue here.’

  ‘I see,’ said Gunnhild, but she did not see. It rankled that Agenhart had received Alan’s thanks and no doubt his gift. Yet, no word had come to Fréhel. In fact, the old count had never sent her any acknowledgement of his new grandchild either, nor had he sent a birth gift to Maud.

  She shook her head sadly. ‘You are here now so you had better meet your daughter.’ There was nothing to be gained by quarrelling with Alan. She reached down into the crib, lifted the sleeping baby and placed her into his arms.

  He seemed awkward as he held the child and looked down on the tiny sleeping face.

  ‘Where is the wet nurse? Why were you suckling her, Gunnhild?’ he asked.

  ‘Because, Alan, I almost lost her and because I choose to,’ she responded, relieved that Maud slept on despite the tension that was rising between them.

  ‘It is not seemly. You are not a peasant.’ He handed Maud back to Gunnhild saying in a more kindly tone, ‘She looks cast in your own image, a Saxon princess of King Harold’s blood. That will bode well in the marriage market.’

  She mused that Baby Maud had the look of Elditha about her too, fair and green-eyed. She showed the promise that, like her mother and her grandmother, she would one day own a very elegant neck. For a moment she felt sad that it was unlikely that Elditha would ever know Maud, her granddaughter.

  Aloud she said, ‘Our daughter will not be bought and sold, Alan. I want no talk of that. She is still a baby. ’

  ‘Girls from noble families marry into oth
er wealthy families and it will do us no harm to be on the lookout for a suitable match for her. So you called her Matilda?’

  ‘I chose Maud because you requested the name.’

  ‘The Queen will be pleased to hear that you have called her so.’ He paused. ‘And you are churched?’

  She nodded. ‘Hubert and Ann are her godparents.’

  ‘That will be convenient enough. We can save the nobility for our son. Though I would have thought my sister Matilda a more suitable choice this time. ’

  ‘I do not know your sister.’ She tucked the sleeping Matilda into her crib. Looking up she said, changing the subject, ‘Brother Gregory is to return to his old monastery in September.’

  ‘His was a temporary appointment. There is to be a permanent priest placed here from the Abbey of Landévennec, a studious and kindly man, which is good, because I am here to bring you back to England with me, and I intend leaving the new priest from Landévennec here. He will not allow the villagers to let their faith slip again.’

  Gunnhild said neutrally, ‘That is good.’ She looked over at her basket of strawberries, then leaned down, lifted it, held it to her chest and studied him over the mound of fruit that hovered between them. She should be pleased to return to England but she was not. For months she had learned to live without him. She added, ‘I shall be sorry to leave. This has become my home.’

  ‘There will be another home, a safer home since it is a fortress. Sit down, Gunnhild. I have something to say.’

  Gunnhild sank down onto the stone bench again, still holding the basket. He began to speak. ‘I have been in Rouen for several weeks in conference with the King getting agreement concerning your mother’s lands. I am to have her estates in Norfolk and Lincolnshire. They will be managed by my loyal stewards. I intend to take stock of them. Other lands your mother has title to are held by the King until such time as he decides to distribute them. Wilton Abbey apparently claims the Reredfelle villages and those lands she had in Essex. The King refuses and will have his stewards manage them for now. I shall claim them.’ It seemed that her mother’s lands had been whisked at the stroke of a pen from Elditha’s name and, indeed, from her own. It was unfair.