The Chosen Queen

by Joanna Courtney

  ‘What about me?’ she demanded.

  Edwin glanced at her.

  ‘You? You, sister, must stay safe.’

  ‘Safe?!’

  Edwin wheeled his stallion round and rode up tight against Môrgwynt’s flank.

  ‘Safe, Edie. You are Queen of England and you carry her heir. You must stay back.’

  Edyth could see the sense of it but she was done with sense. She was done with waiting. She and Svana had craved a woman’s year for so long but whilst women were left to ‘stay back’ it would never come.

  ‘I am Queen of England, Edwin, at your desire and at Morcar’s desire and at Harold’s desire. I have done your bidding and now you will do mine. I ride with you.’

  Her brother’s eyes narrowed but there was no time to argue and he knew it.

  ‘I will guard her,’ Morcar assured him and Edyth just had time to flash him a grateful look before the Saxon horsemen spurred into action.

  Môrgwynt, ever strong beneath her, sprang forward eagerly with the pack. Fleetingly Edyth thought of Griffin. He had given her this magnificent horse in an impetuous, generous gesture so typical of his fiery approach to life, and Môrgwynt had carried her much further than either of them could have imagined. She dug her heels in and drove on but within fifty paces they had to halt as a gaggle of men, eyes wild and limbs flailing, skewed up the road towards them.

  ‘They’re ours,’ Morcar breathed.

  The men fell to their knees before him, whimpering pitifully.

  ‘Have mercy, my lord. We are not traitors. They have sounded the retreat. We must flee.’

  Their eyes flickered desperately over their shoulders as they spoke and Morcar glanced back at his wall of troops.

  ‘The battle is, then, lost?’

  ‘The battle is lost, my lord, God help us.’

  Edyth started forward.

  ‘And the king?’

  The men looked at the floor.

  ‘I know not, my lady,’ the first one offered. ‘I’m sorry. He was with his housecarls when we fled but I fear . . .’

  Edyth’s whole body started to shake. Môrgwynt, feeling it, shied and she instinctively gripped the reins.

  ‘We must go to him!’

  ‘No,’ the man cried. ‘No, my lady, you cannot. They are coming. The Normans are coming.’

  ‘Not any more,’ Edwin said grimly.

  ‘You cannot stand against them, my lord. There are too many. We must flee.’

  Edwin regarded him coldly.

  ‘We do not flee.’ He glanced at Morcar. ‘We must face them as cavalry. It is the only way.’

  Morcar nodded, his eyes darting around. Already the men were fanning out, but they were not yet into the forest and the road was open with vast grasslands either side. Even Edyth could see that they were horribly exposed. ‘We do not flee’ might be an honourable code but was honour wisdom? And yet, Harold might breathe still and, God help her, she would sacrifice every one of these soldiers – her own dear brothers included – to save him. She felt a strange calm creep across her flesh, stilling the shaking and stiffening her bones. She felt the future drain away and the present fill her up. Was this battle fervour?

  ‘This way, my lord,’ another of the fleeing men was babbling now. ‘If you must fight come this way. There is a deep cutting at the edge of the trees, we call it Grim’s Ditch. If you position yourselves above it the Normans may not see it in the fading light.’

  ‘Is it a trick?’ Morcar asked Edwin.

  ‘It is a chance,’ Edwin responded. ‘And probably a better one than we have out here. There is little cover and they will surround us.’

  Morcar nodded curtly and caught the man up onto his big chestnut’s back.

  ‘Follow me!’

  There were some four hundred horsemen in their company but they were swift to turn aside. The man led them a little way east and, sure enough, the land sloped upwards to where the grass lost itself in shrub. Moving cautiously, they drew up on the edge of a great cut in the land, scattered with crumbling earthworks. Edyth strained to see the battlefield but it was beyond the first trees of the Andreaswald and she had no way of discovering Harold’s fate.

  ‘Hold,’ she willed him. ‘Hold but a little longer, Harold. We are coming.’

  They could hear Norman pursuers crashing up the London road, trumpets blaring, and suddenly they broke out of the trees, armour flashing in the last of the light.

  ‘Sound the trumpets!’ Edwin cried.

  Their own buglers raised their instruments and blew, strong and fierce. Below, the Normans reined in and their heads turned. A thrill ran through Edyth and she grabbed for her delicate eating knife, thrusting it into the air as fiercely as, all around her, the men did their great swords. The Normans let out a furious yell. Their leader raised his own sword and the whole storm of them swung off the road and onto the grass, spurring their huge, battle-dressed horses into a full canter as they surged towards the Saxons.

  ‘Hold your position!’ Edwin bellowed but no one needed telling.

  They knew what lay at their horses’ feet, but, as if someone had snuffed it out, the last line of light died away over the trees and the Normans had no such warning. The screams, when they came, were pitiful. Hundreds of horses plunged over the hidden edge, keening wildly, their riders shrieking with fury and sudden blind fear. In the darkness, Edyth heard more than saw the great mass of flesh crash through the little trees and tear against the jagged rocks below as man after man tumbled to his death.

  The second line pulled back but many were moving too fast already and went over, crushing onto their comrades and mangling with their beasts. Edyth’s brief bloodlust died with them. Around her, men were cheering, taunting the dying Normans, but all she could feel was waste. Surely no lives were worth losing so sickeningly for petty land squabbles? She slumped over Môrgwynt’s neck, burying her face in her soft mane.

  ‘They are retreating, Edie,’ Morcar said softly in her ear.

  ‘They are dying, Marc,’ she flashed back.

  He shrugged.

  ‘Better them than us.’

  ‘Better no one,’ Edyth flared. ‘Svana was right. It is all futile. Idiotic.’

  ‘It is war, Edyth.’

  He could not see; he thought she was the foolish one. Blood, it seemed, blinded.

  ‘What now?’ she asked.

  ‘We must follow at first light. We must find Harold.’

  Edyth shook her head.

  ‘You will not.’

  ‘We might.’

  But she knew better now. Hundreds of Normans had fallen into Grim’s Ditch and hundreds more escaped to flee back to their camp. Such vast numbers would not have been released from the battlefield if the king still lived.

  ‘Harold is dead, Morcar,’ she said, her voice grating on the vicious words. ‘Whatever minor victory you have secured here, if you ride on, it will be to meet your new king.’

  ‘You give up too easily, Edie.’

  ‘Nay, brother, I should have given up years ago. I should have stayed in Coventry with Griffin’s boys. I should have told Harold to retreat to Nazeing with his wife – his true wife – and let Duke William be king if he wanted it so badly. At least that way we would all be alive.’

  ‘But dishonoured, Edie.’

  She did not answer. Grief was whirling in on her, choking her heart in its coils. She tried to think of her children, safely back in Coventry with Meghan and Godiva, but dearly as she loved them she could not even picture their faces as anything more than ghosts. She, it seemed, like the hapless Normans, had fallen into an abyss. She had fallen off the side of the earth where there was only blackness and horror and a relentless icy wind sucking her ever downwards. Harold was gone and England was lost and all solidity and form seemed to have been taken.

  ‘It cannot be true,’ she said over and over, waiting for her words to gain a hold and stop her falling, but the wild-legged English soldiers scattering past told her it had to be. Sh
e slid from Môrgwynt’s back and stood against her strong shoulder as, all around, men set guards and pitched rough shelters. Messengers were sent forth to spy on the battlefield and rode back to a solemn assembly but Edyth could not bring herself to be a part of it. She stood at the edge of the crowd, no longer a queen but a frightened girl once more.

  ‘The king?’ Edwin dared to ask.

  ‘The king is dead.’

  The words seemed to scream around the hollow woodland at their backs and be picked up by the wretched cries of the Normans still alive within Grim’s Ditch. Edyth put her hands over her ears but such a petty barrier would never keep this horror out.

  ‘How?’ Morcar asked.

  ‘How do you think?’ Edwin snapped at him. ‘Savaged by Norman swords. We were too late. We failed him in the north and now we have failed him again.’

  Morcar sucked in his breath. Edyth knew she should step forward, should stop them squabbling as she always had when they were younger but she had no heart for it. Let them fight, all of them – nothing she said or did could make a difference anyway.

  ‘It is not over yet,’ Morcar insisted. ‘If we retreat to Westminster we can regroup, defend. Harold may be dead, God rest his soul, but William is not yet king.’

  It wearied Edyth.

  ‘Will you have us all killed?’ she demanded.

  ‘Will you have us ruled by a tyrant?’ he shot back.

  ‘What choice do we have? It is over, Morcar, or it should be. Harold should never have been forced onto the throne. They made him king to stop the bastard duke riding roughshod over us but the duke has ridden anyway and now Harold is gone. England asked too much of him and she must see that.’

  ‘Harold wanted Duke William kept from England’s doors more than anyone,’ Edwin insisted, stepping up next to Morcar.

  ‘No,’ Edyth said. ‘That is what everyone else wanted him to want. In truth he just wanted peace in which to bring up his children.’

  ‘One of whom rests in your belly now. Do you want him born into Duke William’s rule?’

  Edyth turned away.

  ‘I just want him born safe.’

  Silence fell between them and then Morcar said, ‘I’m sorry, sister.’

  He opened his arms and, after only a moment’s hesitation, she crept into them. Edwin joined them and the warmth of their love cracked the hard surface of her grief. They were bigger than her now, her little brothers, and broader and tougher and so much more scratched by life than when they had crawled into her bed as children, but they were her little brothers still.

  ‘I am done with fighting,’ she whispered against their broad warriors’ chests but they held her too tight to hear and now there came the sound of horses’ hooves on the road.

  Edwin and Morcar leaped back so that she tottered sideways and she clutched at a tree as the men ran out onto the road, weapons raised.

  ‘Who goes there?’

  The reply was faint but it stirred in Edyth’s iced-up heart and she crept cautiously forward. The clutch of figures on the road held weapons but they were no band of soldiers. They walked with the rolling gait of farmers and at their head was a woman, a woman in a gown of softest primrose yellow, bright in the new moonlight.

  ‘Svana? Svana!’

  Edyth was out and running before anyone could stop her. The other woman looked up, frozen for a moment, and then she was down from her horse and running too.

  ‘Edyth? Edyth, is it you? Thank God.’

  They fell into each other’s arms and for a moment Edyth lost herself in her old friend’s embrace, but then the times rushed in on her again and she drew back.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I went to Westminster to find you. After I’d seen Harold I could not stand the waiting alone. It felt as if you were the only one who would understand and I longed to see you. It was presumptuous of me, I apologise.’

  ‘It was not presumptuous at all, Svana.’

  ‘Indeed it was. You are Queen of England.’

  ‘I am not.’ Grief rushed back in on Edyth and she grabbed for her old friend’s hands as the men melted tactfully back into the scrub. ‘He is dead, Svana.’

  Svana’s eyes, too, clouded in the moonlight and she nodded.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You sensed it?’

  ‘No! How many times must I tell you, there is no magic in me, Edie, especially not now. We met men on the road. Sad news travels fast. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Nay, Svana, the loss is yours. I never meant to take your place. I never meant to hurt you. I never meant . . .’

  ‘Hush, Edyth, do you think I don’t know that? Harold needed you. He needed something I could not give. If anyone forced you into this, it was me.’

  ‘No! You have never forced anyone into anything.’

  ‘Least of all myself. I should not have written to you as I did, Edyth. I asked so much of you, more than was fair. I’m so sorry.’

  Edyth looked down. Guilt swirled around her, like the cries of the Normans still weeping for death in the ditch behind them.

  ‘You have it all wrong, Svana,’ she said quietly. ‘You did not force me. I went willingly. I betrayed your position as his wife.’

  ‘Because I asked you to, Edyth.’

  ‘No! No, it was not for that, not truly. For so long I have tried to pretend that it was, to the world, to you, to myself even, but it was a lie. A lie, Svana. I married Harold because I loved him.’

  Silence shuddered between the night shadows. Edyth looked miserably to the dewy ground but Svana’s warm fingers clasped tightly at her own.

  ‘I know that, Edie,’ she said softly. ‘I know that because looking into your eyes is like looking into my own.’

  Edyth blinked, stunned.

  ‘But I had no right to love him.’

  Now Svana smiled.

  ‘You had every right, my sweet. Love prefers to be free, and better, surely, an excess of love than all this hate?’

  Edyth nodded slowly.

  ‘They want us to go back to Westminster,’ she said, indicating her brothers, hovering nervously nearby. ‘They want us to find another man to force onto the throne to keep William from it and they want us to fight and to fight until all of us are gone.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ Svana said. ‘And you, my love?’

  ‘I am done fighting.’

  ‘All done?’

  ‘Svana?’

  ‘I want to find him, Edie. I want to find Harold and bury him. We may not have peace, but I would like him to find it at last. Will you help me? Please?’

  Edyth looked back to the soldiers in the scrub and to the ditch of death behind them. She looked to the dark trees beyond which the bloody battlefield lay, swarmed over by Duke William and his carrion troops. Svana was right – they could not leave Harold to Norman mercies for there would be none. ‘I can fight for that,’ she agreed softly. ‘With you, Svana, I can fight for that.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Edyth Alfgarsdottir.’ Duke William looked down his thin nose at her as if at some amusing curiosity before adding, almost as an afterthought, ‘Queen of England.’

  Edyth acknowledged the title with a curt bow of her head but William’s thin lip curled.

  ‘You’re no queen. My Matilda, my wife . . .’ He glanced at Svana, stood behind Edyth, and added sneeringly, ‘My one, true wife, is queen now. She has been very supportive of my campaign to claim my rights. Very supportive. She commissioned me a magnificent ship, you know, to carry me over the narrow sea, and she dedicated an abbey to our cause and now God has smiled on her – as is only just. She will make a wonderful Queen of England – truly wonderful. I think you will like her. She is of very noble bearing.’ He squinted at Edyth, dishevelled after her night in the wilds. ‘Perhaps you could be her lady-in-waiting.’

  ‘I’m no servant.’

  The Norman lords looked at each other and sniggered.

  ‘You Saxons,’ William said indulgently. ‘In a ci
vilised society it is an honour to serve a queen.’

  ‘That would depend on the queen.’

  William growled and Edyth cursed herself; always she spoke too soon. She felt Svana’s calm hand in the small of her back and stared at the ground, willing herself not to cry. Edwin and Morcar had begged her to retreat to Westminster with them but, with Svana at her side, she had been resolute. The men had ridden north before dawn had broken on their departure and at first light the two women had walked onto the battlefield alone.

  William had stationed himself beneath a golden canopy on Senlac Ridge where only this time yesterday the shield wall must have held him at arm’s length. He was sat on a golden throne he must have brought with him in arrogant anticipation and had thrown a fresh scarlet cloak over his still bloodstained chainmail. His men had cleared back bodies as roughly as they might have swept away rushes from a dance floor and Edyth could see them heaped all around the periphery of her vision. She fought to stay true to her mission.

  ‘I seek the body of my, my husband.’

  ‘How touching. You may find it, though, slightly . . . segmented.’

  Edyth drove her nails into her thighs, digging down through the wool of her fine gown. She would not let him torment her.

  ‘But I may look, my lord?’

  ‘Sire.’

  His eyes pinned her to the title. She thought it might kill her to speak it, but need drove her on.

  ‘Sire.’

  ‘King William – it sounds good, does it not? King William I, reigned the sixth day of January 1066 to . . . who knows yet?’

  ‘The sixth day of January? That is not correct. That—’

  ‘Oh, but it is, little Edyth. Harold had no right to be king. His reign must be wiped from the record – yours with it. No one will remember you as queen. Oh, and sadly that means that anyone who fought against me in that period is a traitor.’

  ‘No! You cannot do that.’

  ‘Harold’s reign was false.’

  ‘Like your birth.’

  The nobles sucked in their breath and William leaped to his feet.

  ‘My blood is true.’

  ‘Blood does not make a man, still less a king.’