Conqueror

by Baxter, Stephen

  It was all to do with the tangled history of kingly politics in England.

  The flight to Aethelingaig had proven to be England’s darkest hour. Alfred was remembered as the first and greatest king of a united England, though he left a country partitioned between English and Danes. It was left to his sons and grandsons to take back the ‘Danelaw’ from the Danish rulers - even though it would always be impossible to scrub Danish fashion, words and blood from the population.

  But under the reign of Alfred’s great-great-grandson Aethelred a new Danish threat emerged. The invasion of England became a policy of the Danish kings - and their resolve was stiffened when Aethelred ordered a massacre of all the Danes in England, one dark November day. Huge assaults brought about the conquest of the whole of England by a Danish monarch called Cnut, and for a generation England was part of a North Sea Empire including Denmark and Norway.

  Harold’s father, Godwine, had begun his career as a minor thegn in the land of the South Saxons. Now Godwine submitted to Cnut, and became the only survivor of a purge of the English nobility.

  ‘He even married Cnut’s sister-in-law,’ Godgifu said. ‘Harold’s mother, Gytha.’

  ‘This Godwine was a traitor to his king, then,’ Orm said.

  Sihtric shrugged. ‘I think Cnut saw qualities in the man. A steadfastness. You need competent men to run a country, you know.’

  When Cnut died his sons competed for the throne with King Aethelred’s sons, Edward and Alfred. Alfred came back to England - and was blinded and killed. Though Godwine always denied responsibility, blame stuck to him. But the bloody events moved quickly, the sons of Cnut all fell, and soon Edward was the only surviving claimant.

  Edward had grown up in Normandy. He had no English base of support, though he had Alfred’s blood in his veins. He needed Godwine’s help to take the throne. Godwine even pressured Edward to marry his daughter, Harold’s sister Edith, whose womb proved barren.

  ‘How King Edward must have hated Godwine and his strutting sons,’ Orm said. ‘This kingmaker who had killed his brother.’

  ‘This was all before our time,’ said Sihtric with a certain relish. ‘But, yes, that’s what the gossips say. It all came to a head some years ago …’

  Godwine made an enemy of Robert, Archbishop of Canterbury, a Norman ally of Edward. A showdown came when another of Edward’s Normans was mistreated in Godwine’s territory. Godwine had to give up hostages to the King, including his own son Wulfnoth, another brother of Harold. Archbishop Robert fled to Normandy, and delivered Wulfnoth to Duke William.

  And there Robert made a promise to William, on behalf of Edward.

  ‘He promised William the throne of England,’ Sihtric said. ‘William already had a claim, of sorts, for Edward’s mother was his great aunt, but it’s a pretty spurious one. All malice, of course, a way to put a block on Robert’s enemy Godwine.’

  Orm grunted. ‘And what did Godwine say to that?’

  ‘Not much. He died soon after. And Harold was made Earl of Wessex. The King leans on him, despite the antics of his father.’

  ‘And,’ Orm said dryly, ‘I am to believe that Harold has no desire for the throne himself.’

  ‘No!’ snapped Sihtric. ‘You don’t know the man. When it became clear that Edward was likely to remain childless, Harold went to Hungary to bring back Edward’s great-nephew, known as Edgar the Atheling, the true heir. Harold went to fetch this boy. Now, is that the action of a man who seeks the kingdom for himself? When Edward dies, as he will soon, there will be challenges for his throne—’

  ‘From William.’

  ‘Yes. And from Harald Hardrada King of Norway-that’s a complicated business to do with the sons of Cnut. Maybe there will be others. But Harold will work to secure the succession of the Atheling, the rightful heir, and thus to unite England.’

  Orm snorted. ‘So you like to believe.’

  Godgifu said, ‘My brother seeks to get involved in this tangled story. For he believes that through Harold’s career his prophecy will be fulfilled.’

  Orm studied Sihtric. ‘It is a murky business, and dangerous too, to meddle in the destinies of kings. What’s in it for you, priest?’

  ‘He’s ambitious,’ Godgifu said immediately. ‘He fancies an archbishopric some day - don’t you, Sihtric?’

  ‘I resent that,’ said Sihtric pompously. ‘I’m doing my holy duty. There is a tradition of clerical devotion to the Menologium, if you look at its history. And you are nothing but envious of me, sister, as you have been all your life.’

  Godgifu pulled a face.

  ‘So,’ Orm asked, ‘why has Earl Harold come here? Surely he’s at risk.’

  ‘He’s come to make peace with William, if he can,’ Sihtric said. ‘For he knows William is dangerous.’

  William, thirty-seven years old, had been born the illegitimate son of the Duke of Normandy by a tanner’s daughter. It wasn’t an auspicious birth, and woe betide you if you reminded him of it. When William’s father died on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem the warrior-aristocrats of Normandy immediately turned on each other. William, only eight, never learned to read, but he learned to fight.

  Northern Frankia, with a weak central monarchy, was split into dukedoms, all in a state of constant warfare. William was still in his early twenties when he started launching raids against his neighbours. Perhaps because he had been born out of sinful lust himself he became an austere, pious sort of soldier who slew with brutal efficiency and then prayed for forgiveness from a vengeful God.

  ‘And now,’ Orm said, ‘he has his eyes on England.’

  ‘Harold always seeks peace first,’ Sihtric said. ‘He knows that William, with this “promise” of Robert’s in his pocket, will be a threat in the future. So he’s come to seek an alliance with William, through a marriage to his own sister.’

  ‘And Harold has also come for his brother,’ Godgifu said. ‘Wulfnoth, who has been a hostage of William’s for more than a decade. That’s why he’s come here. As for the risk, you’ve met him, Orm. Harold can look after himself.’

  ‘You think so?’ Orm said dryly. There was a commotion outside, and Orm nodded to the tavern’s open door. ‘Take a look.’

  Sihtric and Godgifu left the tavern, followed by Orm. And they saw the unmistakable figure of Harold, flanked by his brother and his other companions. His arms pinned by burly Normans, Harold, white with fury, was being led towards Odo’s church.

  Godgifu asked, ‘Should we help?’

  Orm shrugged. ‘I owe him my life. I must.’

  Sihtric hesitated. Orm saw calculation and cowardice warring in that thin face. Then the priest said, ‘Yes. Yes, we must help.’

  They hurried after Harold.

  IV

  The church was packed. Orm had to use his shoulders to force a way in through a crowd of prelates, armed warriors, and the retainers of William and Harold. The atmosphere was tense; English and Normans alike fingered the hilts of their swords.

  Harold and his brother Gyrth had been brought to stand before William. They were a contrast, the tall, red-haired, blue-eyed, well-built Englishmen before the short, portly Norman. But with his face shaved and the jet black hair at the back of his head scraped to the scalp, William glowered with menace. At the altar stood Odo, bishop and half-brother to the Bastard. In his expensive vestments Odo was a sleeker copy of his corpulent brother. He held a leather-bound Bible, and a small gilded box.

  Sihtric, with the avid ears of a courtier, picked up the mutterings of the English in the crowd. William had sprung the trap he had evidently been planning all along. The box held by Odo contained a holy relic, the finger of a saint. Now William required Harold to swear allegiance to him, an oath to be sworn on the relic - and Harold was to promise to uphold any claim William made to the throne of England.

  Orm, astonished, realised that he had been catapulted into the eye of a storm that might engulf a kingdom.

  Harold, his face like thunder, glared around. When he saw S
ihtric he beckoned him. The priest was shocked and frightened, but when he was allowed to pass he hurried forward, and Orm and Godgifu followed.

  ‘I think I need some holy advice, priest,’ Harold muttered.

  ‘I am here to serve, lord.’

  ‘I can’t believe the arrogance of the man. This blustering brute demands such an oath of me. Well, it is a trap into which I have fallen. What should I do? If I make the oath and keep it, William will surely take the throne. You saw his methods, what he did in Brittany. I will not have that befall England. But to take the oath and break it would be a sin.’ The oath was the very foundation of the law, binding kings and lords as well as free men. Oath-breaking was a grave offence - and to break an oath sworn on holy relics was graver yet. ‘But if I fail to take the oath at all—’

  ‘Then we will all be cut down, brother, here and now,’ Gyrth said grimly.

  Orm saw Harold’s hand move towards his sword, and the tension in the church tightened even further. ‘At least we can die fighting.’

  Sihtric spoke rapidly to Harold in English, perhaps hoping that William could not hear. ‘You are twice the man the Bastard is, ten times. In your wisdom you are a man of the future; William is nothing but aggression and greed, a throwback to a darker past. You must think of the greater good, lord.’

  ‘The greater good? You’re saying I should take the oath to stay alive, knowing I will not keep it?’ Harold looked agonised. ‘But my soul, priest,’ he said. ‘My soul.’

  Sihtric said, ‘An oath made under duress is not binding, and no sin.’ But even Orm the pagan knew that he was lying.

  Odo advanced with the Bible and the reliquary. Harold, his expression torn, placed a hand on the reliquary, faced William the Bastard, and gave his oath.

  V

  Under a bleak winter sky the Norman ship sailed cautiously up the crowded river. The ship was one of a small flotilla belonging to a Norman lord, Orm’s current employer. With its mast lowered, driven by its oars, it passed under the single bridge which united Lunden, north and south of the river.

  It was early January, in the Year of Our Lord 1066.

  Orm Egilsson stood at his place in the prow and peered out curiously. On both river banks wharves and jetties crowded to the water like the snouts of pigs to a trough. Further away buildings rose like a stony wave to cover the hills. Centuries after the last legionary had left his post the famous Roman wall was huge and unmistakable, a brooding mass of concrete and worked stone.

  Orm’s nostrils twitched at a stink of wood smoke, broiling meat, and sewage. Even the water was strange, black with filth, its surface littered with turds, ashes, scatterings of dead fish - and a few bloated human corpses. The city’s sprawl and bustle and sheer scale dwarfed the petty towns of Normandy. Lunden was the hub of England’s trade with Europe, and huge quantities of wool, England’s principal export, flowed out of here to the continent. But there were green swathes of farmland within the walls. Nearly two centuries after King Alfred had ordered the reoccupation of Londinium, the English had still not filled up the old Roman space.

  Today the city was even more crowded than usual, and the Norman ship had trouble finding a berth. Lunden was hosting the Christmas court of the King Edward, a ritual that was a descendant of the old witan meetings, and two archbishops, eight bishops, eight abbots, all five earls of England and all the nobles of the court, each with his or her retinues, had crowded here to turn the city into a nest of diplomacy, intrigue and gossip.

  And, according to a letter sent to Orm by Godgifu of Northumbria, this year the Christmas court was an even more intense affair than usual - for, it was rumoured, Edward King of England was dying.

  The ship berthed, and its crew and passengers disgorged into the narrow streets. The sailors left behind to watch the ships noisily ordered their companions to bring back only decent ale, maggot-free bread, and virginal whores.

  Orm set off to find Westmynster, where Godgifu had promised to meet him. He had to ask directions several times, and the responses were in English or Danish, or a rough mix of the two. After centuries of immigration and invasion a new language was emerging from the rough argot of traders and soldiers, a rich mix of the vocabularies of the two tongues, all complexities in the grammar rubbed away.

  Situated close to an enormous bend in the Tamesis, Westmynster turned out to be an island of gravel, cut out of the river bank by two tributary streams. Godgifu’s letter said that the old name of this place was the Isle of Thorns. Here, supposedly, Caesar had forded the river during his first assault on Britain. Now the island had been drained, and Edward, in the course of his long reign, had established a royal palace, and an abbey.

  And in recent years he had set about commemorating his pious reign by building a mighty new church here in the continental style. Still incomplete, its lead roof shining, it was a vast box of stone that made the English buildings nearby look rude and half-finished.

  The streets around the abbey precinct were even more crowded than elsewhere. Somewhere in there, Orm supposed, great men were circling over a king’s deathbed like buzzards. But Orm was a mere soldier of fortune, and his destination was not a palace - at least, not for now.

  He skirted the abbey’s walls until he spotted a tavern, a broken-down wooden building whose blackened thatch indicated it might once have been a smithy. It was unremarkable, save for the standard that fluttered in the smoggy breeze. The woollen tapestry, done in red and yellow, was a crude imitation of the Fighting Man standard of Harold son of Godwine.

  And it was under this flag, just as she had promised, that Godgifu waited for him.

  VI

  ‘You look well.’

  ‘So do you,’ she said mockingly.

  In Normandy and Brittany eighteen months before, as she rode with the warrior princes of Normandy and England, Godgifu had worn mannish clothes. Now pins studded her hair, and she wore a long dress tied tight at the waist, with heavy, expensive-looking brooches and clasps. She was dressed for court, not for the field. She was not beautiful. She was too short, her face was too square, her nose too long, her blue-eyed gaze too direct for that. But Orm was stunned by her mixture of femininity and strength. This was a woman to have at your side, he thought, when you won your land, and carved out your life. And, he saw, his own interest was returned in the lively warmth of her gaze.

  ‘I haven’t seen you since Normandy,’ he began. ‘Bayeux, that business of Harold and the oath.’

  ‘Well, I know that.’

  In the tension and confusion after that murky oath-taking, Orm, expected to stand beside his Norman lord, had lost track of Godgifu and her brother. And he had not seen her from that day to this.

  ‘I was glad you wrote to me. I thought we might never see each other again. And we have unfinished business.’

  She grinned, almost lascivious. ‘So we have, Viking.’

  ‘And we have business too,’ said Sihtric. The priest came bustling from the tavern bearing a brimming tankard. ‘Although I’m not interested in the contents of your trousers, Orm, but of your head.’

  ‘For a man of God you’re crude sometimes, priest.’

  ‘Not crude but truthful, and God has no problem with that.’ And he downed half his ale with a gulp. Sihtric was clean-shaven, his tonsure and eyebrows neatly plucked, and he wore a white tunic which glittered with golden thread. He was putting on weight too; he had a pot belly comically protruding from the front of his slight frame. He was evidently doing well. And yet the slyness and ambition Orm had discerned in the young priest he had met in Brittany was, if anything, even more striking.

  ‘So what do you think of our new cathedral of Westmynster, Orm?’

  ‘It is an impressive building.’

  ‘Yes. The first cruciform church in all England, you know, and bigger than anything they have in Normandy -’

  ‘I hate it,’ Godgifu said with surprising strength. ‘It’s a Norman box. A coffin for God. It has no place in England.’

&
nbsp; Sihtric grinned at Orm. ‘You’ll have to forgive my sister. Lacks sophistication sometimes. The cathedral is a sign of how the church has prospered under Edward. As, indeed, have I.’

  Orm said, ‘In her letter Godgifu told me you’re closer to Harold now.’

  Godgifu nodded. ‘He has been ever since that business of William and the oath.’

  So Sihtric had seen his chance and taken it, Orm thought. He said, goading, ‘I’m surprised. I thought you were Earl Tostig’s man. Aren’t you loyal? Didn’t you follow your master into exile?’

  Both Godgifu and Sihtric glanced around nervously. Apparently the tensions surrounding the fall of Harold’s brother were strong.

  ‘Come,’ Sihtric said. ‘Not here, you never know who’s listening. Let’s drink and talk.’ He led them both into the tavern, and fetched more ale.

  ‘I am destined to meet you two in taverns, it seems,’ said Orm.

  ‘My brother likes his ale,’ said Godgifu.

  ‘My only vice,’ said Sihtric, ‘unlike poor Tostig.’

  Harold’s brother had been appointed Earl of Northumbria a decade before. It was a difficult realm, full of English who pined for the great days of their own kingdom, and of Danes who dreamed of the restoration of the Viking kings of Jorvik. For seven or eight years, though, Tostig looked secure. Then he murdered a few rivals, and, worse, tried to raise the Northumbrians’ taxes.

  Sihtric was slightly drunk. ‘The thegns and ealdormen wouldn’t have it, oh no, Tostig could murder their sons if he liked, but for him to come between them and their purses …’

  The crisis had come in October, just three months ago. Tostig had been in the south, hunting with Edward, when the thegns had occupied Jorvik, slaughtered Tostig’s officers and his housecarls, and sacked his treasury. And then they had called for a new earl: Morcar, brother of Edwin the Earl of Mercia, son of Siward the old rival of Godwine, a scion of the only great English family strong enough to challenge the sons of Godwine.