The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  The press of bodies, the stale odour of the unwashed, the heat from hundreds of candles and the intense smell of incense made for an atmosphere tense with urgency, as if God were calling on the mourners to be whisked away into the after-world with Alan. Disappointed that Prior Anselm had brought Brother Francis to Bury, she prepared to endure what would be a long mass before Count Alan was lowered into the ground.

  Towards the end of the mass, Gunnhild’s eye strayed around the nave. She saw then that a group of nuns stood close. Yes, the nuns from St Mary Magdalene at Lincoln. She smiled, thinking how good it was of them to come south in such uncomfortably hot weather, but her smile turned into a frown when she observed one studying her with speculation on her face – Christina of Wilton, another unwelcome mourner. In that moment she knew that her departure for Brittany was imminent. Never would she return to Wilton, never.

  Several hours later they filed from the church into bright sunlight. She stopped at the west door to speak with Anselm of Bec, to offer him alms to be distributed to the poor of Bury that day, and for prayers to be said for a whole year at Bury every day following her husband’s funeral, prayers that would help ease Alan’s journey to paradise.

  ‘It will be done, my lady.’ Anselm lowered his voice. ‘I know the loyalty you and Count Alan bore each other, but now, perhaps, it would be wise to consider your future.’ He had selected his words with care. How could he understand the torn and damaged love hers for Alan had truly been?

  ‘Prior Anselm, it is too soon to make such a decision,’ Gunnhild said.

  Christina sidled up and stood straight-backed in front of her. ‘You will be welcome at Wilton, my lady. We await your return to the abbey where you belong.’

  Gunnhild bowed her head graciously, ‘I think not, My Lady Christina. I have business elsewhere.’

  ‘Richmond?’ Christina raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘You husband’s brother is lord there. He will soon find himself a wife.’ Her words stung like an unexpected insect bite.

  ‘Elsewhere,’ Gunnhild said. ‘Now, if you will excuse me, I have other guests to speak with.’ She looked for her lady. ‘Come, Hilde, we have much to do. I must bid farewell to the tenant lords of Yorkshire, and, after that, we can return to the manor and the funeral feast for my husband.’ She bowed to Prior Anselm. ‘My lord prior, the cloister is not my vocation.’

  Anselm looked at her with kindly eyes. ‘I hope you change your mind. You have a great talent that can be used in God’s service.’

  ‘No, my lord prior, I have completed my testament to St Brigit. I intend secular writings from now on, poetry, romance, perhaps a story of a great love,’ she said and turned on her heel, not looking back once.

  During the calends of August, Gunnhild said goodbye to Niall with heavy heart. He did not try to persuade her otherwise, knowing that she was resolute, but he took her hands in his own and said sadly, ‘Come back soon.’

  ‘It would not be the same,’ she said, ‘though it breaks my heart to leave.’ She kissed him, a very public kiss and therefore chaste. She slipped a token into his hand, a curl of her hair, still golden and tied with a scrap of scarlet silk. He tucked it away into the tunic underneath his breast plate and whispered, ‘Close to my heart.’ Moments later he took up his position at the front of the retinue that had travelled south from Richmond. Seated high on Aragon, his piebald stallion, his train moved off following the unfurled Richmond banner carried by his squire. Gunnhild, her two ladies, Hilde and Emma, and Grete and the other maids who were to accompany her to Brittany, climbed to the upper chamber of the two-storey manor house at Bury. They watched the colourful cavalcade vanish into the late August sunshine, over the flatlands to eventually become swallowed up by a corridor of beech trees still heavy with summer leaf. As the long train disappeared into the woods she wondered sadly if she would ever see Niall, Ann, Hubert and Father Christopher again.

  Her leave-taking of Maud a fortnight later was not so sorrowful. She knew that they would meet when Maud and Walter travelled over the Narrow Sea. Alice promised that she would visit her in Brittany. ‘And, my dear friend, my home is your home, is it not, my husband?’ She turned to Sir William.

  Sir William reached out to Gunnhild. ‘You were Alan’s wife, not an easy marriage, I suspect.’ He looked penetratingly at Gunnhild. ‘But I like you very well, Gunnhild. And not just as my old friend’s wife but for yourself, so return to us soon.’

  Gunnhild bowed her head. She had not really known what Sir William thought of her. She seized his calloused soldier’s hand and kissed it. ‘Thank you, Sir William. I am fortunate that you have care of Alan’s and my child.’

  On a blue sky day with just one little cloud tinged with gold floating through it, Gunnhild and her carefully guarded group of women, ladies and maids, along with a band of young faithful knights, set sail from Norfolk for Normandy. They had enough sealed boxes, chests and baskets to overflow the hold of the ship; these were along with their palfreys, a covered cart and two lean hunting hounds with jangling bells on their collars. The sea was still as a polished mirror. It swished and gently rolled while they dined on small cheese pasties, fish and oatcakes cooked on a brazier on the deck. As night fell the women gathered their mantles and sat under an awning where they told each other old stories. Above them there was a wash of stars some men called the Milky Way. Gunnhild pointed up. Tears gathered into her eyes as she said, ‘If I could wish on one of those stars, I would wish that my lord Alan were there above them with a host of angels, for I believe that in the end he meant well by us all.’

  Hilde squeezed her hand. ‘My lady, I am sure that he is at peace.’

  ‘When we reach Brittany I have a mind to visit my brother Ulf in Rouen, if Duke Robert will permit the wife of an old enemy safe passage into his city. My brother was King William’s prisoner for many years and now he has his freedom. He was only five years old when I saw him last. I shall never see my sister again, I know, but at least I have seen my mother. I never really knew my older brothers. Now I would like to see Ulf. He was my childhood companion.’

  ‘My lady, if that would be possible, I think it would bring you great happiness.’ Hilde said and her other ladies crowded round agreeing. She felt at peace. A new life was opening.

  27

  Brittany, 1089

  My only crime was to love Isolde.

  ‘Tristram and Isolde’ in The Death of King Arthur by Peter Ackroyd, 2011

  Late in September a messenger from Lincoln crossed the sea to Fréhel carrying two letters, one from Alice and a second from Maud. There was nothing from Richmond. Nor did she hear anything concerning the new Count of Richmond from pilgrims who sailed over the Narrow Sea, stopping at her castle on their long journeys south. She prayed daily for Alan’s soul in the little bailey chapel at Fréhel and although she meant her prayers with all her heart, it was Niall whom she missed. Frequently her hand flew to a silver and emerald brooch pin that Niall had given her a year before as a Christmas gift. Sometimes she felt such longing for his touch her whole body would ache from the lips he had kissed to the fingers he had so often held.

  Another kind of melancholy had set in during September, making her even more uneasy and restless as she began to search for her brother. Just as Niall was King William Rufus’s man, Ulf was Duke Robert’s man and as such he could not return to England unless there was peace between the two royal brothers. She sent a messenger to Duke Robert at Falaise asking for news of Ulf. The agony of waiting began. She waited patiently during a long golden October and then through the chill mists of November, but no news returned to her.

  As December opened and her messenger returned without news of her lost brother, another route of enquiry occurred to her. It simply was brilliant. Her new idea, something she had remembered from fifteen years before, dropped into her thought as she planned Christmas provisions to be purchased in Rouen. She wrote to William, Rouen’s archbishop. This archbishop, once a young bishop, had been a friend to her aunt.
She would send him a Christmas gift of a precious psalter that contained depictions of the many strange beasts that were saved from the great flood. After she wrote to the archbishop she sprinkled sand over the wet ink and sealed the parchment with her personal seal, a garland of heart’s ease, alongside Alan’s family motto ‘Live in Harmony’. Surely this would elicit his response. Fulk, her steward, could deliver her letter when he journeyed with the cook to Rouen to oversee their purchases.

  As she approached the kitchen intending to seek the steward out, she overheard him involved in a conversation of a personal nature. ‘Lady Gunnhild is nobody’s fool,’ Fulk was saying. ‘Good it is to see a woman with wits about her and a sense of economy.’ She stopped short and cautiously peered through the half-opened door. Her steward was talking to the cook.

  The cook replied, ‘Even the kitchen servants speak well of her. They are dressed in new garments which she has provided. None will go cold this winter.’

  ‘Or hungry, and glad they are to serve her,’ Fulk replied. He added, ‘Now, Cook, do you have that list of goods my lady has given you?’

  The steward, a busy little man with gesticulating hands, stopped talking, coloured and opened them wide as Gunnhild pushed open the door with a flourish and entered the kitchen. ‘Fulk, I wonder could you come to the antechamber for a moment since I have a letter for Archbishop William? You can deliver it when you travel into the Norman city tomorrow.’

  Moving his hands constantly and nodding, he followed her from the kitchen and listened to her request in the antechamber. He bowed and took the letter and held the psalter delicately, as if it were made of thin glass.

  God willing, there would be a reply from Rouen.

  Two days before the Nativity Eve, Gunnhild woke up with her mind fogged, as if she had just shed a nest of uncomfortable dreams. She dragged herself out of bed and, not waiting for Hilde to come to her, lifted a faded gown from her clothing pole. Careless of her appearance she pulled it on. Hilde sleepily appeared from the small chamber next door. Gunnhild sent her down into the hall to ask for soft rolls, butter and honey and followed slowly, thinking sadly that had she still been at Castle Richmond, Niall would be in and out of the hall bubbling with excitement, anticipating celebratory happy evenings of music, dance and feasting.

  In Fréhel’s hall the yule log glowed comfortably in the hearth. Resolutely she drained a cup of buttermilk and ate the rolls. Maybe, she told herself, hoping for cheering news, her wagons would return today and she would have a reply to her letter.

  The morning became busy. Her servants showed enthusiasm for the festival by rushing about, placing holly in great jars and winding mistletoe around the tall candle sconces. She supervised the spreading of new green reeds and camomile over the hall floor. She found herself glancing towards the door, wistfully looking for Niall, even though she knew that she would never see him tramping through the hall towards the antechamber.

  In the late morning she climbed upstairs into the solar where her ladies had comfortably established themselves by the fire and were embroidering belts and purses for New Year’s Eve gifts. Momentarily, she watched their needles whisper in and out of fine cloth. She could not help wondering what gifts Niall would have that year.

  Just as she was about to unpin her mantle and join her women, a shout barrelled up from the courtyard. Curious, she crossed to the window and peered out. A lone outrider had ridden in and was calling out that the wagons were returning from Rouen. She ran from the solar and raced up all five staircases to the battlements, fighting a gusting wind all the way to the edge of the tower, where she leaned over the wall and watched the road. Her goods wagons were slowly approaching the castle, but there was no pennant with the archbishop’s colours flying in the wind, no sign of a messenger.

  A gust caught her veil. She took a step back. Her cloak was threatening to pull loose from its silver pin. By the time she had refastened her mantle the provision wagons were crossing the drawbridge into the lower bailey. Behind them rode a lone figure dressed in multi-coloured garments, scarlet, green and blue. She felt a sense of hope that this was a messenger but he looked more like a glee-man, an entertainer. Struggling with the wind, she returned to the narrow door that led on to the staircase, pushed it opened and slowly walked down the steep stairways back to the solar.

  She peered out through the solar window again. The carts were awkwardly moving forward towards her keep from the lower bailey, swaying a little under their heavy weight, slow and unsteady as they climbed up the hill.

  ‘There is a gleeman following our wagons,’ she called back to her ladies, who were still sewing and chattering as if nothing unusual was happening. But when they heard the word ‘gleeman’ they looked up, dropped their fabrics, leapt to their feet and crowded round her by the window embrasure.

  Anna-Maria said from behind her, ‘No, no, my lady, that is never a gleeman. He is a new kind of singer, a troubadour.’ Before Gunnhild could respond, Hilde called out, ‘Oh no, they will take a tumble now.’ Gunnhild leaned out over the ledge, anxiously drew in her breath and exhaled with relief as the wagon righted itself. The four carts were now struggling through the upper gateway.

  ‘A troubadour,’ she said, turning to see which maid had said this new word. ‘Have you seen one before, Anna-Maria?’

  ‘Yes, my lady, it is the new sort of entertainer. Some years past one came from Spain to my uncle’s castle in Occitan. He sang songs of love. He sang to the ladies.’ She giggled.

  ‘Oh!’ Gunnhild said, and leaned out again to see the brightly clad troubadour leap off his sorrel palfrey.

  The ladies clucked amongst themselves as he began remonstrating with servants in the courtyard. ‘He is arrogant,’ Hilde remarked. The servants pointed up to the solar window. Gunnhild stepped back. From the corner of her eye she saw the young man sweep his cloak behind and run up the steps into the keep after Weylin, the cook.

  ‘Return to your stitching,’ she ordered. Obediently they scurried back to their places by the hearth. She closed over the shutters. The air outside was icy, the sky heavy with fat white clouds. There could be snow before Christmas was over. Just as she had begun to remove her mantle, her ladies glanced up at a knock at the door. She gestured to them to stay seated and opened the door herself. The maid, Grete, curtsied. Looking up, the girl said, ‘My lady, a man has come from Rouen to pass the Christmastide feast with us. His name is Ranulf and he says that he wishes to speak with you in private.’

  ‘Where is Fulk?’ Really, her steward should deal with the gleeman, not her.

  ‘He is busy … in the kitchen, my lady. The gleeman begged me to ask you to grant him an audience.’

  She glanced back over her shoulder. All her ladies had dropped the purses and belts back into their laps. They looked up with hungry looks in their eyes, eyebrows arched. There was a chorus of, ‘My lady, do you wish us to accompany you?’

  Gunnhild said in her sternest voice. ‘I shall see what this young man can provide.’

  ‘Ask him if he knows the old stories, my lady,’ Anna-Marie said.

  ‘Ask for Tristan and Iseult,’ Gretchen peeped up. ‘After all the troubadours sing love poems.’

  She smiled back at them. ‘I shall,’ she promised. Her ladies liked to entertain themselves with stories as they spun thread, mended hose and tunics and embroidered altar-coverings for the chapels in small towns like Dinan. The tale of Tristan and Iseult was popular with them and often as they embroidered they would piece the romance together. Gunnhild could hear the anticipation in their voices as she swept from the room, smiling to herself, secretly delighted that such a storyteller had found his way to her castle, hoping too that Fulk would have news of her brother. She stopped at a turn in the lower stairway and said to the servant who followed her, ‘Give the troubadour drink and meat. After he has eaten send him into my antechamber.’

  Fulk’s hands fluttered wide open as he came rushing across the hall to greet her. ‘Madame, can you come to the k
itchen this instant and check over your goods, before we store them all away. We need your help. I am trying to keep up with all of our accounting.’

  Gunnhild hurried after him. ‘Has the archbishop sent any word with you?’ she asked, the moment she caught up with Fulk near the kitchen archway.

  ‘Alas, no, my lady, but perhaps the man he has sent to sing for you might know something. The archbishop has sent him to you.’ He pointed to the hearth. ‘Over there!’ He gestured towards the colourful young man who sat on a bench strumming at a stringed instrument. Grete was approaching him carrying a platter and a cup. As the maid spoke to him, the troubadour removed his hat. Gunnhild observed that his hair was as fair and fine as her own, and that he wore it in the new fashion for young noblemen, longer than the Normans had worn their hair in old King William’s time. It was curled under at the bottom of his neck. She noticed, too, that he was gathering interest from servants who were still busy placing greenery in enormous pots about the hall. When he stood up to follow Grete towards the antechamber, their eyes followed him as he vanished through the doorway behind the hall.

  ‘He spoke with Weylin on our return journey. He might have gleaned something from him,’ Fulk said. Then the steward flicked his hand towards the kitchen. ‘My lady, it will only take a moment to come. Before you speak to the glee-man, speak to Weylin and come and see, too, what we have purchased for you.’

  The cook was supervising the last bags of goods coming through the outer door from the yard. He shouted at the boys who were carrying sacks on their shoulders to have care. Pointing to various corners, he showed the kitchen servants where to stack them. As Gunnhild entered he came over shaking his head. He said, ‘My lady, the archbishop has not sent you a message, but he has done well by you. He has sent you a troubadour to play for you this Chistmastide. The singer says that you will be pleased to see him.’