The Leopards of Normandy: Duke: Leopards of Normandy 2

by David Churchill

  For a man who never appeared to indulge in carnal activity himself, Edward was obsessed by the possibility of it in others and, as Godwin had anticipated, seized upon the servant’s evidence like a starving dog being thrown a juicy red steak. He insisted on her repeating her account for him. At first, she refused.

  ‘He said I shouldn’t talk to no one, Your Majesty, or else he’d cut me tongue out and brand me face.’

  ‘Well I’ll do that if you don’t talk to me,’ said Edward.

  Mildred looked completely flummoxed and started sobbing again.

  ‘For God’s sake, woman, stop howling!’ the king commanded.

  ‘It’s all right, you can tell His Majesty what you told me,’ Godwin said.

  ‘You won’t cut me tongue and stick hot pokers on me face?’

  ‘It might improve your looks, girl,’ shouted Siward of Northumbria, bursting out in laughter at his own wit.

  So Mildred told her story once again and received a silver penny from the king for her pains. Edward was delighted. ‘I’ve got her!’ he told his senior earls. ‘The devious old bitch won’t wriggle out of this snare!’ He looked around. ‘Master Chamberlain, can you tell me where my mother can be found?’

  ‘I believe she is in the solar with her ladies, sire.’

  ‘Very well then . . . Godwin! Leofric! Siward! You’re coming with me.’

  ‘Where to, sire?’ Leofric asked.

  ‘Why, to the solar, of course. I’m going to arrest my mother.’

  8

  A convent outside Winchester, and the city itself

  Oh, the irony of it, Emma thought. Not long ago, she had been wallowing in the humiliation that Elgiva was suffering as a lowly nun. Now here she was herself in a convent, but her status was even lower than Elgiva’s, for she was not even a nun. She was very clearly a prisoner.

  Stripped of her treasure, her servants and even her title, she had been locked in a penitent’s cell, from which she was released twice a day to perform her ablutions and stroll awhile – always under close supervision – in the convent cloisters. She was not allowed to communicate with any of the nuns, all of whom were under strict instructions not to talk to her. Once again she had been struck down, and by her own son. The injustice of the situation, and Edward’s sheer ingratitude, was all but overwhelming. Yet her absolute conviction that she was in the right gave Emma strength and imbued her with a stubborn determination not to be beaten by her whey-faced coward of a son.

  A number of weeks passed, and then, without any warning, Emma was summoned to see the mother superior. The nun was standing just inside the convent gates talking to a young nobleman Emma recognised as one of Edward’s closest allies, Ralph of Mantes. Ralph was Edward’s nephew, the son of his sister Goda. He was also, therefore, Emma’s grandson. She had heard a little about him from the occasional letters she received from Goda, but they had only met once or twice at court, and she barely knew him.

  Ralph was well built and handsome enough, but he seemed nervous. ‘I’ve c-come to take you to, er, Winchester, G-grandmother,’ he stammered.

  ‘Am I to be my own grandson’s prisoner?’ she asked.

  ‘Oh n-no, no . . . er, not at all. I was hoping you might come of your own free will and, er, give me your w-word that you will not try to escape.’

  Emma looked at the half-dozen mounted soldiers Ralph had brought with him. ‘My dear boy, I am an elderly woman armed with nothing more than my wits and what’s left of my charm. I hardly think I could get away from you and your men, do you?’

  Ralph agreed that this was unlikely, and so Emma was helped up into the open ox cart in which she was to be carried back to Winchester. ‘Ride alongside me awhile, boy . . . please,’ she said.

  ‘I’m not sure if I’m allowed to do that,’ Ralph replied.

  ‘Would the king really forbid a man to talk to his grandmother?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  So Ralph fell into line, riding his horse at a walk beside the ox cart while Emma questioned him as gently as possible, so as not to frighten him into silence. She learned that her possessions had been seized by the king, and that Aelfwine had been stripped of his bishopric and all his personal estates.

  ‘Why did they punish him?’ she asked, in genuine puzzlement.

  ‘Because of the a-a . . . the adultery, Grandmother,’ Ralph replied.

  Emma burst out laughing and kept on going until the tears ran down her face, while Ralph looked on with an expression of clueless panic.

  ‘W-what’s so funny?’ he asked eventually.

  Emma had to make an effort to pull herself together before she replied. ‘Because the very idea of me wishing to have carnal knowledge of that man is completely ridiculous. Bishop Aelfwine is a very old, very loyal and very dear friend of mine. But he is hardly the kind of man I would take to bed, even if I wished to take any man to bed, which at my age I most certainly do not.’

  ‘I don’t understand. The k-king himself has accused you. Robert Champart, the new Bishop of London, will prosecute you on Edward’s behalf.’

  ‘I’m sure he will . . . and find me guilty if he possibly can. Well, I know I’m telling the truth, and I will put my trust in God to know that and protect me.’

  On arrival in Winchester, Emma was kept for a night in a locked and guarded cell beneath the palace before being taken to the great hall, which was packed with a huge crowd of onlookers, all agog to see the trial of a queen.

  A dais had been erected at one end of the room and the council table placed upon it. Behind it sat Champart, the king, Godwin, Leofric and Siward.

  Mildred, who had been dressed and groomed to lend her appearance some semblance at least of respectability, gave her evidence.

  Someone’s been coaching you, thought Emma, for the girl spoke far more fluently than she would ever have managed if her words were all her own, and her account had been embellished with rhetorical flourishes – a vivid description of the guilt on Aelfwine’s face; a hint that his cassock bore unseemly stains – that added spice to her tale.

  For her part, Emma was entitled to be defended by the testimony of character witnesses who would swear to her chastity. But she had been given neither the time nor the means to find someone willing to speak on her behalf, even had there been anyone willing to risk the king’s anger, which she doubted.

  It was not long before Champart rose to give his verdict. ‘Emma of Normandy, you have been charged with the crime of fornication with a priest. The evidence against you, given by an eyewitness, has been heard by everyone present here today. Since you deny the charge, but have no witnesses of your own, the case will be decided by a trial by ordeal. If God knows you to be innocent, He will ensure your survival. If you are guilty, He will see to it that you die.’

  Emma felt her insides quail, and it took every scrap of the self-control learned over decades as a duke’s daughter, royal consort and dowager queen not to let the terror show on her face as Champart went on, ‘As one who once held royal rank, you may choose the ordeal that you will undergo: trial by water, or trial by fire. Which will it be?’

  Emma could not swim. If thrown into water, she would drown. She had seen a drowned corpse and it had not been a pretty sight. If she perished in flames, however, she might be burned away altogether, leaving no trace behind. Of the two outcomes, the latter was marginally the less terrible.

  She looked Champart straight in the eye and said, loudly and clearly enough for all to hear, ‘I choose trial by fire, sure in the knowledge that I will survive, for God knows that I am innocent.’

  ‘Very well,’ said Champart. ‘The trial will be held one week from today. A fire will be laid in the cathedral here in Winchester. It will be ten paces long, and you will walk over the embers, taking five paces for your sake and five for Aelfwine, who once was bishop here. I
f you do not complete the walk, the verdict will be guilty. If you do complete the walk but there is any burn, or wound, or even a single blister upon your feet, then you will be found guilty. The penalty for guilt will be death, both for you and for Aelfwine.’

  There was a gasp from the onlookers crammed into the hall, followed by a few shouts of disapproval and a loud hum of conversation. Wounds suffered in an ordeal were not normally deemed a sign of guilt. It was left to God to determine whether the accused recovered, and if they did, that was taken as proof of innocence. But to walk across burning embers without so much as a blister, well, that would take a miracle.

  ‘Do you have any final requests?’ Champart asked once the hubbub had subsided.

  ‘Yes,’ Emma replied. ‘I wish to spend the night before the trial keeping vigil by the tomb of St Swithun in the cathedral crypt, so that he may hear my prayers and make my case with God.’

  The crowd liked that. Such a sign of faith showed that Emma’s reputation as a truly devout Christian was well deserved. As a bishop, Champart could hardly deny a request for the chance to pray. ‘Very well then,’ he said. ‘At sunset on the eve of the trial, you will be taken from your cell to the crypt and you may pray there, under guard, until sunrise. Then you will be held in captivity until the time for your trial comes. And may God have mercy on your soul.’

  9

  On the afternoon of the day preceding Queen Emma’s ordeal (for so the people still called her, for all that the king had decreed otherwise), the roads, tracks and footpaths leading into Winchester began to fill up with travellers, all converging on the Old Minster. Men and women, young and old, fit and ailing, they came as if on a pilgrimage, by the score, by the hundred and then by the thousand, so that every tavern and outbuilding was filled, every scrap of common land packed with people come to witness the following day’s events.

  Edward was not pleased, for it was apparent to anyone who walked among the crowds that they had not come to jeer and mock his mother, but to show their love and support for her in her time of trial.

  ‘Do not trouble yourself, Your Majesty,’ Champart assured him. ‘She will die on the fire and be consumed in flames and it will be all the better that so many people should be present to see it, for it will prove that she is guilty and God’s judgement will be seen by all.’

  ‘But what if she does not die?’ Edward asked.

  ‘Calm yourself, Your Majesty.’ Champart leaned forward and spoke softly in the king’s ear, as if offering him a private, priestly benediction. ‘Edward, dearest, don’t be afraid. The bitch will die. No one can walk through fire and come out unscathed the other side. No one.’

  The king’s shoulders slumped, though whether it was from relief or despair, none could say. ‘I suppose so,’ he said.

  By sunset, the cathedral and the yard outside were full to bursting and echoing with the noise of conversation, laughter, argument and general hubbub. But all noise ceased as word spread that Queen Emma was being led to spend the night in prayer by St Swithun’s tomb. She was tall enough that her white linen headdress could clearly be seen between the steel helmets of the soldiers guarding her, and the weight of the silence of so many souls and the intensity of so many staring eyes all concentrated on the same point seemed to burden the very air itself as she walked through the yard, into the cathedral and down the stone steps to the crypt. Even when she had disappeared completely from view and people felt able to talk again, they did so in hushed voices, as if unwilling to disturb the vigil taking place beneath their feet.

  Though her faith had sometimes been tested to the limit, Emma’s devotion to God had never been a matter of show. She truly believed in His power and His mercy alike, and did all she could to praise and glorify His name. But God had made her road a hard one. Both her husbands and three of her five children had died before her. Now another of her children was seeking to have his own mother put to death. She prayed to St Swithun to intercede on her behalf. She prayed to God and Jesus to guide her and give her strength in her time of trial. And she prayed to the Blessed Virgin Mary to take pity on another mother who had known the pain of losing the sons she loved.

  Late in the night, when the torches rammed into iron sconces on the stone walls of the crypt had burned down almost to extinction, and Emma was lost in a daze, halfway between wakefulness and sleep, she thought she heard a voice in her ear and saw the figure of St Swithun himself walking towards her. ‘Do not be afraid, my child,’ he said. ‘Walk steadily over the fire, as if on soft green grass. Look neither to the left nor the right, but straight ahead. Walk towards the light and God will walk beside you.’

  Was it a dream, or had the saint really spoken to her? Emma did not know, but a sense of calm, of warmth spread through her, and she felt sure that all would be well.

  The king’s men had set slabs of paving stone over the floor of the cathedral’s aisle, so that it would not be damaged by the fire. Then a local blacksmith, skilled in the art of creating a fire hot enough to melt iron itself, laid a thick bed of charcoal over wooden kindling. Long before dawn, he lit the kindling, then he and his apprentices tended the fire as lovingly as a mother with her child, fanning the flames with their leather bellows to make it burn hotter, then letting them subside so that what was left was a path of glowing red-hot embers, running along the aisle towards the great west door of the cathedral.

  The sun had not yet risen in the east when Robert Champart, Bishop of London, came to inspect the site of the ordeal. He seemed shocked to discover that the flames were not rising high into the air as he had pictured them doing. The blacksmith, who had anticipated this possibility, assured him that he would not be disappointed. ‘Watch, Your Grace,’ he said, and took a slug of pig iron and placed it in the embers. He and his apprentices then worked the fire around it with their bellows, and Champart’s eyes lit up as he saw the iron growing red hot and then white with blazing heat.

  ‘Show the people,’ he said.

  The blacksmith used a pair of tongs to lift the iron out of the fire, then held it up so that the people clustered at that end of the cathedral could see it. There was a gasp as they understood that this was the fire over which their beloved Queen Emma would soon be walking.

  The blacksmith was unmoved. To him this was simply a job of work, but he was showman enough to want to prove his point even more powerfully. He placed the white-hot slug on his anvil, then picked up his hammer and beat down upon the end of the piece of iron, stretching and flattening it. The sound of the hammering echoed through the cavernous building like a demonic answer to the cathedral bells. When he was done, the blacksmith held up the steel, which had been transformed into a crude but vicious-looking blade. ‘There you are, Bishop. If the flames don’t kill her, that will.’

  Champart went off to take matins, the first service of the day, at the palace chapel with a spring in his step. ‘I’ve been to see the fire,’ he told Edward afterwards. ‘I think you will be very pleased indeed with its heat.’

  Emma was led from the crypt to a vestry, where she was given the use of a chamber pot and then provided with a simple breakfast of bread and water. It was a chilly morning, with an early winter frost lying white on the cathedral roof and making the ground hard and cold beneath the feet of the crowds surrounding the great church like a besieging army. Emma shivered as she ate her meagre breakfast and offered up one last prayer to God: ‘Dear Lord, do not cause me to shiver when I face my ordeal. I would not have the people believe that it was fear that made me tremble.’ A few moments later, she was led out into the main body of the cathedral to face her fate.

  Edward, her own son, whom she had carried in her belly and whose blood-smeared newborn face she could see as clearly now as she had on the day he was born, was seated on a platform, raised above everyone else. He did not give his mother so much as a glance as she was led past him, and she kept her eyes looking straight ahead of h
er, for that was what the saint had commanded and she was damned if she was going to be seen begging her ungrateful offspring for mercy.

  Champart was waiting in the pulpit and Emma was taken to stand before him, looking up at him while he gazed down on her from on high as if he were a deity himself. ‘You know the crimes of which you are accused,’ he said, speaking as loudly as if he were giving a sermon so that all might hear what he said. ‘You are an adulteress and a fornicator, no better than a common whore. Do you repent of your crimes and beg God for forgiveness, or do you still deny your guilt?’

  ‘I deny it,’ Emma replied, as strongly and clearly as she could. ‘For I am innocent, and God knows it.’

  The words and the manner in which they were spoken acted on the crowd like an archer loosing his bowstring. It was as if all the tension and trepidation that had grown within the multitude through the hours of the night was suddenly set free, and a great roar of defiance went up from the thousands inside and then outside the cathedral. Emma felt her people’s support lifting her like a wave, so that she hardly heard Champart shout, ‘Take her to the fire!’ nor felt the floor beneath her feet as she was led to the ordeal.

  No need to worry about shivering, she thought as she finally stood before the fire, for the heat that rose from the glowing coals was enough to make the skin on her face feel scorched just from standing beside it. She knew that the distance she had to cover was the length of ten male paces, and her stride was not much shorter than a man’s. Yet it seemed to stretch before her like a road a thousand leagues long, running all the way to the horizon.

  Fear seized her, clawed at her guts and gripped her throat so that she could hardly breathe. She felt a warm trickle down the inside of her leg and thanked the Lord for the long dress that hid the humiliation from her people and her enemies. She fixed her gaze straight ahead. Far away in the distance, beyond the fire, there was light. The doors of the cathedral had been opened, for the king, confident in what Champart had told him, had decided that he wanted the crowds outside to be able to see his mother burn. But in her state of fear and confusion, Emma did not see a door, with a cathedral yard outside. She simply saw a square of light, and the saint’s words echoed in her mind: ‘Walk towards the light and God will walk beside you.’