The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  They rode along a lane into Well just as the church bell rang out the midday hour. As they approached the hall she heard Alan call to Sir Edward that this was one of the most profitable villages, with ten or more households, fourteen plough lands and seventeen plough teams. He dismounted and led his stallion through the village, scattering clucking hens and squawking geese, all the time watched by women who followed him and his soldiers with suspicion in their eyes. When they saw Gunnhild and Maud they sank on their knees to them. They had remembered how she had sent them food and visited their sick during the winter famines.

  ‘I see they give my wife the deference they owe their lord,’ Alan remarked as he slowed his pace to walk his stallion beside Blackbird, as if Gunnhild, a dispossessed princess, provided them with legitimacy. He never looked at the peasants who had ignored him.

  They rode into the yard and stopped in front of a long wooden hall with a thatched roof. Sir Edward dismounted. As of one accord his clerks came off their scruffy nags and began to unfasten saddlebags that bulged with ledgers. The village headman, Alfred, met them at his doorway and ushered them into the building, a simple hall but clean. Inside, Alfred’s wife, Ingar, had a long trestle near the round raised hearth laid with cheeses, meats, bread, watered beer and an enormous jug of buttermilk. Shabby servants scurried around. Dogs yapped over a bone and a family of new-born kittens mewed from a corner. They sat down to eat. Maud clung close to her mother. ‘You know these children,’ Gunnhild said. ‘You must talk to them.’ Maud refused to speak. She looked away from Ingar’s brood and busied herself breaking her bread into a myriad of crumbs.

  It was early afternoon by the time they were finishing the plain fare proffered by Ingar. She was a comely woman, tall, handsome and proud. She came from old Norse stock. Alan liked her and patted the bench between Sir Edward and himself saying she should rest a moment and eat with them. The servants could serve. The woman shook her head. ‘Thank you, my lord, but I have fruit tartlets just ready. Best when they are hot.’

  After she finished her rhubarb pasty, Gunnhild laid her napkin aside and suggested that she and Maud would visit a weaving shed whilst the survey continued. Alan nodded but warned her to keep an eye on Maud and not to let her wander loose around the village with the children.

  ‘Come, Maud, we shall see if there is any cloth we like here.’ She studied Maud’s green mantle. ‘There might be some russet woollen stuff for a new riding cloak.’

  Maud glanced around the pleasant hall and said in a precocious manner, ‘This would make a fine place for a new hall, Papa. I think my knight and I should very much like it as a wedding gift. I do not want to move far away when I am married.’

  ‘It is not your father’s to give away, Maud,’ Gunnhild said crossly and tugged her daughter’s hand, anxious to get her out before she further insulted Ingar and Alfred.

  ‘Oh yes it is,’ Maud said quickly. ‘It absolutely is. My father owns everything here. Sir Edward says so.’

  ‘I think Ingar and Alfred here have rights, too, according to the King’s law,’ Sir Edward said. ‘You would agree Count Alan?’

  ‘Yes, indeed and now we will see what he does to earn those or Maud will have them off him.’ He slapped Alfred’s shoulder. ‘Come, Alfred, while the lady Gunnhild is inspecting your weaving shed we can finish here and ride on to Middleton before the night closes us in.’ He pulled his long legs from under the bench and pushed past Gunnhild, tweaking Maud’s chin as he went. He shouted over his shoulder ‘The privy calls my member first. Then we are ready, Alfred. Get your pen shovellers together, Sir Edward.’

  Alfred grunted. His wife bustled about for a bit and called her brood to the table to finish up what remained of the meal. She looked askance at Maud and Gunnhild. Maud whispered to Gunnhild ‘Was it what I said?’

  ‘No, it is what your father said. Alfred is very proud. He was lord here when your grandfather was the king. Your father should not throw his weight about, nor must you. They don’t like this survey. It will mean a bigger tax for them. Come on. Let us get into the air before your father returns and changes his mind.’ She politely thanked Ingar who was smiling at something her smallest son was saying. The woman’s temper was slowly recovering.

  ‘Watch where you step, watch your boots! Mind the dung there,’ Gunnhild scolded Maud as they followed a pathway behind the hall to Alfred’s weaving sheds. Through gaps in the hawthorn hedge she could see the dozen or so soldiers they had brought to Well. The sun was glinting through the branches and was reflecting off their breast plates. They had removed these and were settling down with the remains of the repast, slouching against the rough stone wall that marked the boundary of Ingar’s vegetable plot.

  Glancing the other way through shrubbery she could see the mill which stood across a rushing stream. Alfred and Alan were approaching it followed by Sir Edward and his clerks, but since their voices competed with the mill wheel’s crashing through the river she could not make out their words. She clutched Maud’s hand tightly. Something was not right. The mill owner, a lanky man with yellow hair tied into a pigtail, had rushed onto the pathway and was shouting at Alfred and the gaggle of clerks. He pointed over the gurgling stream towards the weaving shed in front of her. Then he was flapping his arms and yelling.

  Gunnhild stopped and pulled Maud to her and considered turning back but at that instance a familiar voice called to her from just inside the door of the long weaving shed. It belonged to Uhtred, the lord of Middleton, whose village they had hoped to visit later that afternoon. She took even tighter hold of Maud’s hand. Maud squeaked, ‘Let go, Mama, you are hurting me.’ She loosened her grip intending to ask Uhtred what was happening.

  ‘My lady,’ he called to her. He beckoned her into the dim light of the shed. It was an old hall building with a back entrance.

  ‘I am coming.’ As she hurried inside she realised that the atmosphere within was very still. Five silent men stood around inside watching her. With a glance she saw that she knew them. That winter she had thrown caution away and had ridden with Niall into this village leading mules with saddlebags of provisions, salves and tonics, all to be distributed from here to cotters in the fells. She had ridden to Middleton, despite the danger all around them, with Father Christopher in tow to help bury their dead during the two winters of famine.

  She realised too late now that this time these men were not welcoming. They held clubs instead of weaving tools. Gripping Maud’s hand, she turned to escape but found her way barred. One of the men stepped forward. It was Clac, their foreman. Before she could protest, he spat his words, a gob of spittle flying towards her, ‘We have naught against you or Lady Maud, my lady. She is the granddaughter of a king, and she is your daughter no matter who is the sire, but we intend to keep your daughter with us for a while. I swear to you she will come to no harm. Lord Uhtred will see to that.

  Before Gunnhild could prevent it, Clac tore Maud away from her, swept the shocked child off her feet, and carried her struggling and protesting through the opened back door. The other weavers, still clutching blackthorn clubs, hurried after them. Uhtred lingered just a moment to say, ‘No harm will come to Maud. She returns when we are assured that the geld will remain unchanged. Keep Count Alan and his hounds away from us or his lands will not produce another ear of corn, his mills will stop grinding and the weaving sheds will close. Your daughter will return unharmed if he helps us. ’

  ‘You demand help!’ she cried. ‘He will string you up, send your innards to the four corners of the shire. He will burn your villages. Have sense, take heed. He is not to be thwarted.’ She opened her palms in supplication. ‘Take me instead or let me come, too,’ she begged.

  ‘No, my lady. You will see that he complies.’

  He turned on the heel of his boot and hurried after the others, only pausing briefly at the doorway to throw back at her. ‘And we won’t betray your secret meeting in Castle Richmond’s bailey barn some winters past, not if you help us.’ Gunnhild fro
ze and bit her lower lip from fear. How did he know? He had this information either himself or from a spy. She clapped her hand to her mouth, remembering how once she had heard rustling outside the barn. It was not this past winter but the one before. Yes, it must have been two winters past. They had waited for the best chance to use such information against her. Uhtred would have known the survey was soon to reach their lands. He had planned all this.

  She heard horses canter out of the village by the back way where deep beech woods ran through the valley. On hearing a row behind her she stumbled to the entrance. Alan and the miller, Alfred and Ingar and her gaggle of shocked children, Sir Edward, his pasty-faced clerks and a half-dozen mercenaries had arrived on the pathway. The soldiers’ swords were drawn, and all of them were running towards her. She gathered her wits, shouted and pointed at the back entrance. ‘They took Maud. It is Uhtred of Middleton!’

  ‘You fool,’ Alan hissed at Gunnhild. ‘By the Devil’s spawn, you useless Eve; you stupid, idiot pretence of a woman, get out of my sight.’ He turned back to the soldiers, ‘Ambush the bastards.’ To Alfred he growled, ‘If a hair on my daughter’s head is harmed not one of you here will live to tell the tale to your grandchildren or their children. You will be burned to ash and your dust cast onto the fields.’ He seized Alfred’s youngest child, the tow-headed boy Gunnhild had seen Ingar laughing with not a quarter hour before. ‘He comes with me.’ Reaching out he roughly grabbed the boy’s tunic. He turned again to Gunnhild who was still shaking with shock and shouted an order into her face. ‘You, my lady wife, get on your nag and get back to Richmond.’ He pointed at Alfred. ‘You too, and your brat.’ He glared at the guards. ‘You, you, you and you will ride with them.’ He counted out six of them and turned to the gaping pen men. He addressed Sir Edward, ‘And you too, Sir Edward, and your scribblers. Be gone, the lot of you. Your work here is done.’

  Alan pushed his way through the crowd that had gathered and was blocking the path towards his horses. He whipped his sword from its scabbard and raised it at the cowering villagers. ‘Get back to your huts and pray for deliverance.’ Following his example, his soldiers raised their weapons. The peasants, mostly women and children and a few old men ran, falling over each other, scurrying into hiding as if wolves of the forest were in pursuit. It was clear that Count Alan’s soldiers would spare none who hindered their passage.

  ‘Come, Lady Gunnhild,’ Sir Edward said quietly, ‘You have had a great fright here.’ He took her arm in a gentle way. ‘Let us do as he says and be gone from this terrible settlement. It is only fit for wild beasts. Count Alan will get her back, and I pour scorn on those here when he does. Their fate will hang in the balance. I shall see you safely home to your bower.’ It was the kindest word he had ever spoken to her and she was glad too of what he said next. ‘God smite me dead if I ever speak to my lady in such a manner.’ He lifted his arm about her shoulder and guided her back to where their horses were grazing along the shrubbery within Alfred’s hall compound. Alfred and his family followed, herded like animals over the pathway by an angry, stony-faced guard.

  She glanced back as they rode away from Well. Alan was at the head of his galloping swordsmen, knees gripping his mount, forging through the hamlet, set on plunging his pursuit deep into the forest. Ingar stood sobbing on the pathway, her other children clinging to her. Not one soul remained about the cottages. Even the hens and geese had flapped into hidden roosts and bushes, terrified of the tempest that had engulfed the village.

  22

  The land of Count Alan: In Middleton Tyas, Ulf had a manor, with sake and soke, of 6 carucates to the geld, and there could be as many ploughs. Uhtred has it now of Count Alan. In demesne is 1 plough and 5 vellans with 4 ploughs. Tre worth 40s now 20s. The whole manor is 2 leagues long and 4 furlongs broad .

  Domesday Book, A complete translation, edited by Dr A. Williams and Professor G. H. Martin, 2003

  ‘You must keep up your strength, my lady,’ Ann said as she tried to comfort her mistress when she rode sorrowfully into Richmond’s bailey that evening. ‘Her father will get her back.’

  Gunnhild shook her head. ‘It is my fault. We should never have taken her to that village.’

  ‘You can’t change what has been, my lady.’

  ‘No, but we can try to change what will be,’ Gunnhild said.

  Three long nights passed, and during that time she neither slept nor ate. She felt as if she was a collection of fragile bones rattling about the castle keep. By the fourth afternoon, when Niall came to her chamber, she was seated by the window with a book of prayers open on her lap. She hardly glanced at it. God had abandoned her. All day she had watched intermittent showers of rain slant down on the herb garden below and felt overcome by sadness as grey as the weather.

  Niall knelt by her bench and took her hands in his own hands. ‘Gunnhild, my love, they promised no harm would come to Maud. If Lord Uhtred promised this, he will make good that promise. We have sent another troop out to the hall at Akebe to help Alan.’

  ‘What good can another troop do? There are so many hidden places out there in the woods. Anything can happen to her.’ She waved towards the window embrasure and cried out, ‘There have never been such downpours in May! Where has Uhtred taken her?’ She drew her mantle closer, feeling cold, as if icy fingers were reaching into her heart and were tugging it from her husk of a body. ‘Two days and no word, no message and no return.’ She choked on her welling tears. She turned to him, ‘You know what he said. He said he knew about us.’

  ‘Uhtred said this? What, how?’

  ‘He said he would not tell about the barn if we sent the King’s clerks away. Well, if Alan did.’

  ‘This is nonsense. He thinks he knows but what he thinks and what he really knows may well be different. He is blackmailing and it won’t hold weight.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Unless he has a spy and has been storing this knowledge up but even so, he could be accused of mischief-making.’ He held out the cup of hippocras to Gunnhild that Ann had left earlier. ‘Take it. Drink. I doubt Uhtred knows anything real. I do not think he will say anything even if he does for the simple reason that he likes my rule here. There is no love between Alan and him. Try not to worry. He will not harm Maud.’

  She drank the sweet, honeyed wine. For a moment it warmed her, and she wiped her tears away with her fist. ‘Tears will not bring her back. If Alan does not return, I must go out and look for her myself.’ Looking up at him she said, ‘And those scribes are still scribbling, counting everything, as if nothing matters but their survey, that endless counting of stuff. If it wasn’t for Maud, I would approve of Uhtred’s rebellion.’

  He nodded. ‘Yes, though stealing a child will not get rid of the King’s men.’

  ‘If they took themselves away from our lands he would give Maud back to us. The fault is theirs.’

  ‘Sir Edward has to finish his job.’

  ‘Has he ridden out again?’

  ‘Yes, he rode out with the extra troops that came in from York two days ago. The villages are on our side now. They call Uhtred an outlaw, a nithing and they say they will co-operate.’

  ‘Even though they know it will increase their geld?’

  ‘They are angry with him for what he has done to you.’

  ‘And when do you suppose the King’s men will leave us in peace?’

  ‘They may not even wait for Alan to return.’ He paused then said, ‘Will you not come down into the hall, Gunnhild, and speak for yourself?’

  She shook her head, ‘No. Sir Edward has unsettled us. I cannot.’ She was thoughtful for a moment, ‘Alfred and the boy?’

  Niall crouched over and clasped his hands on his knee. After a moment he spoke quietly, ‘Listen, my love, Alfred and his son are safe in my quarters. He has an idea. It is dangerous but I think we can discover where they have taken her.’

  ‘What do you mean, “we can discover”? You mean without Alan?’

  ‘Yes, Alan would frighten them off, well,
in this case. That is if Alfred is right.’

  She leaned closer and grabbed his hand. ‘Explain.’

  ‘It is only a guess, of course, but Alfred thinks that Maud has been taken to Hallikeld. Not there at the great hall, but to a nuns’ house nearby. The Bishop of Durham owns the estate but he is never there. The nun’s house is hidden in the woods and the nuns themselves are long forgotten by the world. They are like hermits, secret and quiet.’

  ‘But the bishop is Norman. Why would they take her there?’

  ‘Well yes, but Uhtred is a friend to Bishop Robert and the nuns are English. One of the nuns at this house is Uhtred’s sister. Alan will never think of that forgotten nunnery. There are only four nuns living there now and they devote themselves to prayer. They are good women, Gunnhild.’ He hesitated. ‘But if she is there, and she could be, would they keep her hidden to protect their own?’

  ‘Maud is an English king’s granddaughter.’

  ‘And that is why no harm will come to her. That is why it is better that Alan does not barge into their nunnery with troops.’

  She gave him a stern glance. ‘If you are going to look for her I want to come, too. They might listen to me.’ She looked at him with hope on her face for the first time in days.

  He considered. ‘Yes, but it has to be done with stealth, during the night. I intend taking Alfred and Hubert but no others. Alan must not know so if by chance he rides back today, it is off.’ He rested his chin on his fingertips. ‘Alfred’s boy must stay safe with Ann in case Alan returns and finds Alfred, Hubert and myself gone.’