The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  ‘If only Papa could see me,’ she said as she pirouetted, kicking out with her blue slippers. ‘He should be here for me.’

  And for me too, thought Gunnhild, but he never is. ‘Uncle Niall is with us tonight and he will be very impressed. Come here.’

  Maud danced back to her and she pinned Maud’s cloak with a silver swan. ‘You know your grandmother had a swan’s neck. I believe you have one, too. She was so lovely that even your father, who was a very young man then, younger by far than your grandmother, admired her.’

  Maud reached out and touched Gunnhild’s stiff silk overgown. ‘But, Mama, you look beautiful, too.’

  ‘Thank you, sweeting, I hope so.’ She laid her hand on the gown. ‘This gown once belonged to your great-aunt Edith who was a famous queen. I married your Papa wearing it.’

  ‘So you always say. I remember everything.’ Her small voice held an impatient tone.

  Gunnhild studied Maud’s earnest face. ‘I know, you clever girl, but stand still for a moment.’ As a final touch she placed a small wreath of cornflowers on Maud’s golden hair. Sometimes Maud dwelled in a faery world of her own making. Yet she could be astute, and very observant.

  Gunnhild slipped on her silver bracelets and hung a string of tiny amber beads about her neck, the only jewellery she possessed, along with a poignantly remembered but never worn coral necklace, Gytha’s chain and cross and a few brooch pins for her mantles. Alan still locked the Penthiévre jewels away in his coffers. He concealed the key to his treasure chest about his person. She really would not care, except that those jewels not only contained the Penthiévre ruby but also gifts that had come to her from Countess Gytha, her father King Harold’s mother, who after the battle at Hastings had fled with Thea, Gunnhild’s sister, to Exeter in the south-west. There, the countess had held out against William’s forces back in 1068. She had died in exile in Flanders.

  Many years later, a parcel of gifts to Gunnhild came with messengers from Flanders to Richmond. Alan had also removed a book on hawking once owned by her father, five gold arm bands and two strings of pearls, a torc with a large garnet set into it and a brooch that had special sentimental value. Her father had worn it on the Christmas old Uncle Edward had died. Into it was set a piece of amber as large as a goose egg.

  How could Alan be so cruel? These were all the memories that were left to her of her mother, father and grandmother. She tapped her toe as if ready to dance and smoothed down her skirt. It was fortunate that he had not taken away the dress she was wearing tonight. And, had he remembered that it had once belonged to her Aunt Edith, a queen, he might have done so, lest she remove the pearls and sold them to buy inks and parchment.

  ‘Come, my love,’ she said reaching for Maud’s hand. ‘We are ready.’ She turned back to her ladies. ‘Make a line,’ she commanded. ‘And follow us down.’

  The hall trestles were covered with flowers tied into posies, bound with red thread signifying love. A posy of five different hedgerow flowers lay on the white cloth in front of the great chair that Gunnhild was to share with Niall. She lifted it and, pressing her nose into the nosegay, inhaled its sweet scent. In that moment she had captured the essence of wild roses and peonies, cornflowers and daisies and foxgloves, fragrant summer flowers that she had often included in her manuscript work.

  ‘I wonder whom my lady will grant her favour to this night.’ Niall’s voice hovered by her ear below the clash of cymbals and the ringing of bells. She kept the flowers by her nose and ignored his whisper for a moment. How she wished everything was different. She longed to respond to this black-haired brother of Alan’s. It was wrong. She should not but tonight the devil was tempting her sorely. Still holding the posy, inhaling its seductive scent, peeping over the flowers, she tried to distract herself from her true feelings by watching a Danish skald gambol around the hall disguised as a fool as he led a band of youths in rolling a great wheel through the trestles.

  After the skald had passed by the high table she set the nosegay back on the cloth, the red ribbons trailing between her and Niall as she locked eyes with him. ‘Be careful what you say. People see things that are not there. They see what they want to see. There are those who could cause mischief for us both.’

  It was true but perhaps if they were very careful … no … the Devil hung by her shoulder whispering into her ear. Take him for your lover. Did Leviticus not forbid communion with a husband’s brother? That was a long ago law. The Devil murmured into her ear, ‘Did not Deuteronomy say that a brother should take to wife his brother’s widow?’ Neither applied here since Alan was alive and she would never ill-wish him. ‘Yet,’ spoke the Devil, ‘ you are living in a widow-like state since Alan is so often absent.’

  Niall broke into her thoughts ‘Not Ann and probably not the children. No one else is close enough to watch you.’ She shook her head.

  The Devil was gone and for a while her reason returned to her. ‘Yes, Niall, yes the children. They notice things. Maud is very astute. And there are servants, a hall full of them, and then there are my ladies.’

  ‘Who wishes you ill, not them surely?’ he said, with amusement in his voice.

  ‘The priest would for a start and those two monks,’ she whispered, turning her glance to where the priest Father Christopher sat beside two monks who were visiting from St Cuthbert’s Priory.

  ‘But we have done nothing to bring about their suspicion,’ he whispered. ‘And more’s the pity.’

  She ignored the remark and turned to ask Ann to pass the bowl of strawberry sauce for her duckling wing.

  From the corner of her eye she saw that all three of the monks had cleared the posies from their part of the trestle. They wore narrow, watching faces as if they felt that St John’s Eve was already disintegrating into a charade of frivolity. Yet, Gunnhild noticed, they did not refuse the special midsummer ale prepared in her brewery, nor did they abstain from the slices of pork or the pies filled with thrushes, the chickens and duckling and the sweetmeats, fresh stuffed salmon from the river or the rich sauces prepared in her kitchens.

  Gunnhild set her face into a fixed smile and pretended to watch the skald’s antics as many courses of delicious dishes continued to circulate about the trestles. The skald approached the dais. When he asked her for a favour she plucked a rose from her nosegay and gave it to him. He bowed and promised her a poem in return for a kiss. Laughing, she stood up, leaned over the trestle and kissed his balding head. Cheers and whoops followed her action. The skald tucked the flower into his cloak pin and bowed to her. There was further applause as he danced up to Ann, reached over, snatched her hand and kissed it. The children laughed and cheered.

  As the candle clock burned down, the children began to nod and when midnight approached their nurses swept them off to bed. The doors of the hall were flung open and the remains of the feast was carried away to the bailey and out of the gates, over the second drawbridge to the villagers who lived in wattle-and-daub dwellings strung along the river. Led by musicians many of the castle inhabitants followed the servers who were carrying the baskets of bread and cheese, left-over meats and pies and flagons of ale.

  ‘Come on,’ said Niall, taking Gunnhild’s hands. ‘Why don’t we join them?’

  ‘It would not be seemly.’ She looked down. ‘Besides I might ruin this gown. It belonged to my Aunt Edith … and …’

  Her protest faded as he interjected, ‘We can ride out to the edge of the woods by the field. Why not? Your people will be pleased to see you.’

  Reason was prevailing though she was beginning to detest reason. ‘They will see us both. I am not sure that is a good idea,’ she replied sharply.

  ‘Nonsense, there is no harm in it. Wait in the courtyard. I shall get our mounts.’ He disappeared through the hall door before she could refuse. And he was right, what was the harm in it? The Devil was in it though, she thought, as she searched around for Ann and for her four ladies but they had already vanished with the dancing crowd. Only the men of th
e garrison and the servants who were moving trestles into the alcoves to provide sleeping areas remained inside. The Devil reached deep into her heart. What is the harm in a ride out with him on a festive midsummer’s eve? If I did not feel as I did why there would be no harm, none at all, she reasoned.

  Gathering up her dress she threw her legs over Shadow and rode astride out through the gate-house and over the drawbridge. Others raced past them, hardly noticing that their lady was out. Occasionally someone shouted a greeting her way. Once they were on the pathway behind the straggly village, Gunnhild saw couples entwined amongst the shadows under trees. ‘Tomorrow is St John’s Day,’ she said, thinking of the sour-faced monks. ‘The villagers are bold tonight.’ She could not hold back her laughter. The wine had made her feel giddy, reckless even.

  ‘The witches are out and the dragons, too,’ Niall said softly.

  ‘The villagers won’t dare sport tomorrow.’ She felt relieved, as she glanced back over her shoulder, that the pious monks were not in evidence. ‘They had better make the best of tonight. Tomorrow they can pray for forgiveness.’

  At the edge of the field they could see the huge crowd of castle servants and villagers, making merry as the music-makers played pipes and clashed cymbals. A loud cheer seemed to shake the air like thunder when a group of youths hoisted a makeshift dragon, painted green and red with a trailing ragged tail, on to the bonfire. It burst into flames that crackled and hissed as the dragon began to burn away. Its enormous papier-mâché painted eyes, bulging at first, seemed to look out through the licking flames with an expression of anger.

  Niall lifted the reins of her horse and turned her towards the woodland pathway.

  ‘Would you ride on, Gunnhild? I think we can have a while to ourselves and I have a hidden place to show you. It is somewhere you can always find solitude if you ever want to be alone.’

  She raised an eyebrow, surveyed him, hesitated and pulled on her reins so that her horse drew closer to Niall. ‘Is this wise?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You will be delighted with it, I promise.’

  Her heart beat with anticipation and the delicious sense that she was enjoying an adventure with someone she cared for and whom she suspected cared for her. No words of romance had been shared. There was no need. She forgot the Devil and his temptation and just felt the romance that was hovering about them, a fragile thread that linked them but could easily break. They were alone for the first time ever, and, truthfully, though she was always in the company of others in Castle Richmond, she felt the loneliness of one unloved.

  When she had first ridden out from Richmond in the early months, much of the countryside around them had been laid waste. Close to the castle, swathes of woodland had been charred and in many places only isolated areas of ragged shrubbery and stumpy trees remained. On the hills and in the valleys abandoned huts were crumbling into the earth and empty fields appeared blackened where King William’s troops had scorched the earth to starve the rebellious population into submission. Count Alan had put many of the old British and Norse thanes in charge of outlying estates and villages and slowly the woods, the fells and the dales were lush with growth again. People came north from his estates in the south and repopulated the empty land. Tonight these tenants, villagers and servants were out in the field celebrating, making love in the hedgerows, dancing about a dragon on a great bonfire, as if the terrible destruction of ten years earlier had never happened.

  Tonight she felt the heart of Richmond had stopped beating. She was in a faerie place between heaven and earth where rules were undone. Caught up in a sense of her own momentary happiness, she forgot her safety. She forgot the Devil at her shoulder. Her pulse increased as they passed through the moonlit trees, through the rustlings of wild creatures and the scent of trampled heathers. The path forked and Niall led her to the edge of a dark glade. She looked up. Through the canopy she glimpsed the moon hanging fat in the starry sky. They paused. He pointed. The moon cast its light on two ancient oaks with canopies that had joined above their paired trunks. A crude lime-washed wattle-and-daub shelter was fashioned between them, a hut of sorts. It had a door with a handle carved into a bird of prey, an eagle with a broken wing. Close by the door Gunnhild saw a shuttered window, and above that an exit for smoke. Niall rode up to it. She followed. He pointed. To the side of this strange hut, the tree trunk sweated oak galls.

  ‘So this is what you wanted me to see, oak galls for ink?’ she exclaimed, feeling a slight sense of disappointment.

  ‘Yes, but inside there is more to see. I think that before the great rebellion a maker of inks must have lived in this place. There are shelves in the cottage with evidence of his craft, pots, jars of dried out inks; and all are abandoned.’

  ‘Let us look,’ she said, excited now. She shook her right foot out of the stirrup, threw her left leg over her saddle and began to slide down onto the bracken. Her dress caught in the stirrup. She swore, reached up and pulled on it, causing the linen undergown to rip. ‘I would have to be wearing Aunt Edith’s gown.’ She unhooked the undergown from its trap, lifted the silk overgown carefully away and twisted around to inspect the underdress.

  He jumped off his horse, knelt down on the bracken and placing his hands on her own removed them from the gown. She stood still, hardly breathing. He gathered a handful of silk overgown into his own hands. As his fingers lightly touched her legs he remained kneeling, for a moment, holding up her dress.

  ‘Only this,’ he said, looking up. ‘Just the one little rip that is the perfect size for my middle finger. I am afraid, though, it penetrates right through both layers.’ Before she could protest he had put his finger through the rips and was gathering up a fistful of silk and linen, exploring, so within a moment he was touching her naked thigh just above the ties that held her stocking up. ‘And you are wearing nothing under it,’ he said, looking up at her with mischief in his black eyes.

  She stood still, lost for words. She wanted him to continue. She felt dampness seep between her thighs, but as she swallowed her gasp of pleasure, he removed his hand. He allowed her clothing to drop and stood up, swept his hand gently along her overgown and said, ‘There is nothing a good needlewoman cannot repair. Shall we take a look at what the maker of ink has discarded?’

  For a moment Gunnhild felt bewildered and without saying a word she followed him, her boots crunching through the fall of last year’s leaves. They approached the deserted hut. As she glanced back over her shoulder she noticed that their two horses stood together in the moonlight, by ancient tree roots, their necks reaching for the foliage. Apart from the sound of their horses grazing, the world of the forest was quiet.

  Niall pushed the door open. He stooped down and entered. ‘Careful, Gunnhild, it is dark. Wait there.’ From the doorway, she heard him rubbing flints. A heartbeat later she saw the spark and the candle glow that filled the space inside. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Come, look.’

  When she stepped over the threshold her eye was drawn to the high shelves set into the wall opposite. She counted six of these, one above the other, each filled with an assortment of pots and all except those on the lowest shelf draped with cobwebs and below them a sturdy wooden table with the remains of quills and dried-out ink pots. Near the table a plain wooden chest sat in the corner. She crossed the earth floor and pulled open the lid. It was empty except for a few pieces of vellum. She leaned in and lifted one out, Niall’s presence momentarily forgotten with the thrill of discovery.

  ‘There are no marks on the parchment, nothing,’ she said turning round. She saw pots by the hearth. ‘Whoever lived here took his writing with him and departed in a hurry because he has left all those pots of ink and look, Niall, he has left his copperas and bits of iron, too.’ She indicated the scraps of metal lying in a pile by the empty hearth stones. There was a hint of sulphur in the air, a smell like soured eggs. She crossed to the hearth and lifted a clay pot. ‘And there has been gum Arabic in this. He would grind it up.’ She s
niffed the empty vessel. Her eye caught a basket. She reached into it. Her fingers came out covered with dirt. Reaching in again, this time she felt around. ‘It is filled with oak apples. He made gall ink, the very best.’

  ‘I wonder where he is now.’ Niall stepped over to her and lifting the candle so they could see better peered into the basket, his face close to her own. Her heart beat fast as they looked into it together. His closeness, their twinned concentration; it was perfect. If only he would kiss her. What would it be like, a deep kiss, a real kiss, not just a greeting kiss? He said, ‘He made ink with colour. These pots are all dried out. The hut has been abandoned for some years.’

  Gunnhild tore herself away to the shelf and lifted the small pots off, one by one. ‘So he did,’ she remarked. ‘He has made red inks – yes sulphur and gum Arabic and egg whites,’ she sniffed at each pot, ‘and vinegar.’ She lifted another and another, brushing dust away, pulling out their wax stoppers. She dipped her little finger inside one. ‘Bring the candle here.’

  Niall held the candle up by her shoulder. There it was again, that closeness, that longing for a kiss. ‘Blue ink,’ he said touching the dust on her finger with his own.

  Again she felt his breath on her neck. She replaced the ink pot and slowly turned round. She must not desire him so. Instead, with difficulty, she mastered her self-control. She must first be sure he felt for her what she felt for him, very sure. ‘How did you find this place?’ she said aloud.

  ‘I was hunting nearby last year. One of the hounds led me to it. I have come to this glade a few times since. It is as beautiful by day as it is by night.’ He lowered his voice. ‘A place to share.’ His breath was on her cheek, his mouth near her own. She could smell his cold sweat.

  She could not help herself. She lifted her face to his, her fingers to his cheek. She touched his hair. It was longer than was usual for a knight in Duke William’s cohorts, longer than Alan’s hair. She traced his mouth with her finger, then let it drop and said, ‘But, Niall, who else knows about it?’