We passed the blackened remains of timbers strewn across a field of ash, where houses had once stood. In the wake of the battle there had been much looting, I had learnt, and many parts of the city had been burnt, including several of the churches. This was surely one of them, for amidst the ruins I glimpsed a figure dressed in brown robes kneeling upon the ground, eyes shut and palms together in prayer: a Mass-priest. I shivered, shifting uncomfortably in the saddle as I was reminded of Ælfwold, but soon the priest was lost from sight.
Overhanging the street was the great elm under which Radulf had died, its branches now dotted with purple-grey buds where new leaves were soon to emerge. He had been buried while we were gone, in the grounds of the chapel attached to Malet’s palace, as befitted a knight of his household. Others had been less fortunate, their broken bodies left to rot in great ditches dug outside the walls, where they were picked at by the dogs and the crows; we had smelt them on our approach to the city.
‘I release you from your oath, Tancred,’ Malet said as we left the crowds behind us. ‘You may consider yourself no longer bound to me. Henceforth you may take your sword where you will.’
He had not asked whether I might extend my oath to him, nor had I expected him to. Instead he was making it clear that there was no further place for me in his household. As much as I had helped him, he couldn’t afford to have among his retainers men whom he could not trust implicitly. The business with Ælfwold would have taught him that, if nothing else.
To tell the truth I was relieved to be leaving his employ, after all that had taken place these past couple of months. So much talk of intrigues and betrayals had tired me. I was a knight, a man of the sword, and I would be glad simply to return to that life once more.
‘I hear my son offered each of you land in return for your part in the battle,’ Malet said.
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Of course it isn’t for me to say what men Robert chooses to keep around him.’ His cold gaze fell upon me. ‘But he clearly trusts in your ability. I only hope that you will serve him well, should you choose to follow him.’
Better than we had served Malet himself, was what I took him to mean from that remark. The barb was not hard to miss.
‘We will, lord,’ I said. In all honesty I hadn’t given much thought to what lay ahead or to where we might go: whether we would stay here in England, or return instead to France or Italy, where there were many lords to whom we might pledge our swords. Though I suspected that few of them would be able to offer as much as Robert.
For it wasn’t just silver or land that I was thinking of; there was Beatrice too. The kiss we had shared remained fresh in my mind, even though many weeks had passed since then. I could sense her delicate touch still, the feeling of her lips upon mine. Unless I gave my oath to her brother, what chance did I have of ever seeing her again?
We drew to a halt by the bridge. Upon the river, sails of all colours billowed in the breeze. Drums beat in steady rhythm as shipmasters leant upon their tillers, bellowing orders to their oarsmen.
Across the waters a second castle was being built, opposite from the first. Already the ramparts and palisade had been erected, and a mound was under way, although no tower yet stood upon it. Even from this distance I could see men at work: sawing timbers, pushing barrows full of earth. In the centre of it all flew the wolf banner of Guillaume fitz Osbern, whom the king had placed in charge of the construction. For a long while Malet gazed at it, and I wondered what he was thinking. Overlooked for the command of not just one but two castles: a clear sign that he had fallen from the king’s favour. It did not surprise me. After all, he was the man who had allowed Eoferwic to fall to the rebels in the first place, the dishonour of which would, I imagined, remain with him for some time.
As for the king himself, it seemed he had departed some days before we had arrived back. In his absence he had left Fitz Osbern with more than a thousand men to hold the city in case the enemy should try another attack. Not that many thought they would, at least not for some time. The rebels were divided, our scouts said, for while the ætheling himself had retreated to Dunholm, many of his followers had left him to go back to their halls. His Danish swords-for-hire had sailed back to Orkaneya and wherever else they had come from, and there were rumours of discontent among the old Northumbrian families.
Nevertheless, I knew that the year was long, the campaigning season barely begun. And as long as Eadgar lived, the English had a leader around whom they might rally. The pain of this rout would be felt for some while, but given time he could easily raise another host. I sensed that the battle for the kingdom was far from over.
‘They will return,’ Malet said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘No matter how many castles we build, how many defeats they suffer, they will not stop until they have taken England back from us.’
I shrugged. ‘In that case we must be ready for them when they come.’
A flock of gulls wheeled overhead, screeching in chorus. At the dock a sack had fallen from a cart, bursting along its seam, spilling grain on to the ground. The birds descended upon it in their scores, pecking and flapping, squabbling over every last speck of seed as deck-hands vainly tried to chase them away.
‘Indeed,’ Malet said, sighing. ‘We must be ready.’
My horse snorted impatiently and I patted his neck. We would not stay here long; soon we would be moving on to places new. That was how it was, when one lived by the sword as I did. And I knew, besides, that somewhere out there was Eadgar, the man who had murdered Lord Robert, who had murdered Oswynn, and I was determined that I would find him: that before long I would take my vengeance upon him.
I looked out across the river a moment longer, listening to the bells ringing out from the minster behind me, feeling the warmth of the sun upon my face, until a cloud came over and a shadow fell upon us. Malet did not seem to notice when I tugged on the reins, leaving him there to gaze upon the half-built castle alone.
Nor did I look back as, under darkening skies, I rode to join my friends.
Historical Note
THE NORMAN CONQUEST is one of the defining turning points in English history, the date 1066 ingrained into popular consciousness. But whereas the events of that fateful year have been told many times, the story of what happened afterwards is less well known.
The Conquest did not happen all at once on the battlefield at Hastings, but in fact took several years to achieve. The years following 1066 were turbulent ones, as the conquered English slowly came to terms with their new, foreign overlords. England at the beginning of 1069 was still a kingdom divided. The south and the midlands had submitted relatively quickly – within weeks of King Harold’s defeat at Hastings – and by this point had probably come to accept the invaders’ presence as a fact of life, even if they did not accept the Normans themselves. By the summer of 1068, King Guillaume’s armies had advanced as far north as York, where he built a castle and installed his namesake Guillaume Malet as vicomte.
This, however, was the limit of his authority, as the Northumbrians still refused to swear allegiance to him. Several attempts had been made through 1067 and 1068 to install in the region an English earl who was both loyal to King Guillaume and who would be accepted by the Northumbrian people. Each of these attempts, however, met with failure. Finally – probably around Christmas 1068 – the king appointed Robert de Commines as earl, sending him north to take the province by force. It is this episode and its aftermath which form the focus of Sworn Sword.
In writing the novel I have tried for the most part to remain true to historical events. The Northumbrian rising – including the battle at Durham, the death of Earl Robert de Commines, the siege of York and its relief by King Guillaume – did indeed all take place in the early months of 1069 and on the timescale portrayed. Similarly, although Tancred and his companions are all fictional, many of the other characters are based on real historical persons, including Malet, his wife Elise (known in some sources as Hesilia) and their c
hildren, Guillaume fitz Osbern, Gilbert de Gand, the Northumbrian leader Eadgar Ætheling, Harold’s handfast wife Eadgyth (popularly known by the more familiar name of Edith Swan-neck), and Dean Wulfwin. The original castellan at York, Lord Richard, is also based on a historical person, whose real name was Robert fitz Richard. However, since the novel contains two other Roberts – de Commines and Malet – I decided to change his name to avoid confusing the reader.
So far as possible, then, I have tried to stay close to the agreed facts. On some occasions, however, I have diverged from the agreed history to meet the demands of the story. For example, it is recorded that in the hours prior to the real battle at Durham, Æthelwine, the bishop of the town, actually warned Earl Robert of an impending attack, but that the latter did not believe him. Why the bishop would have betrayed his people in this way, and why the earl ignored him, are questions which I felt I could not satisfactorily answer, and which in any case did nothing to advance the plot. The true location of Earl Robert’s death – burnt to death in the bishop’s own house – only complicated matters further. Since I had no further role for Æthelwine in the novel, I chose to omit this episode entirely from the opening chapters, and to change the place of Earl Robert’s death to the mead-hall in the fastness.
There are also many places where the true details are disputed or impossible to ascertain, and in these cases I have felt free to speculate. For example, although the Normans were known to decorate their shields and banners with their devices and colours, Earl Robert’s hawk and Malet’s black and gold – as well as those belonging to the other lords – are by and large my invention. The two exceptions are the gold lion on a red field that was the symbol of Normandy, and the purple and yellow which was the traditional banner of Northumbria.
The precise movements of individuals in the medieval period are often difficult to trace, and in this respect too I have engaged in some speculation. Whether Robert de Commines really fought in the battles at Varaville (1057) and Mayenne (1063), or campaigned in Italy – as I have suggested – is not known, although it is by no means impossible. The same applies to Robert Malet’s journey from Normandy and participation in the relief of York, for which there is no evidence.
Whether Eadgyth was in fact even still alive by the time of the Conquest – and if she was, what happened to her – cannot be said for certain. However, her second daughter by Harold, Gunnhild, is known to have been educated in the convent at Wilton (much later, in c. 1093, she was abducted from there by the lord of Richmond, Alan the Red). Thus it is not unreasonable to suppose that Eadgyth, if she lived, could have accompanied her in taking refuge there following the Norman victory and her husband’s death at Hastings. If she did, she is likely to have enjoyed a comfortable existence. Ian W. Walker makes a strong case in his book Harold: The Last Anglo-Saxon King (Sutton, 1997) for identifying her with the Edith ‘the Fair’ and the Edith ‘the Beautiful’ who are named in Domesday Book. If he is right, then it is clear that she was a wealthy woman by the time of the Conquest, with large holdings of land worth more than £520, a significant sum at the time.
Guillaume Malet is another shadowy figure. For a start, there is no concrete evidence that he was in England prior to the Conquest, although for the purposes of this book I have followed the traditional belief that he was. There was certainly a significant influx of Normans during the early years of King Eadward’s reign (1042–66). Eadward had grown up in exile in Normandy and so when he returned to England to take the throne, a number of prominent positions were filled with his Norman supporters. If Malet was in England before 1066, he could have come over at this time, or else might later have inherited land from his English mother. It is true that he held a manor at Alkborough in 1069, although its destruction by Northumbrian rebels en route to York is again my own invention.
Regarding the rest of Malet’s family we know surprisingly little for certain. There is no consensus on the number of the children that Malet had with Elise, their relative ages, or even (remarkably) on all their names. For the purposes of this novel, however, I have followed the family tree outlined by Cyril Hart in his article, ‘William Malet and his Family’ (Anglo-Norman Studies, vol. 19, 1996). Robert Malet is certainly known to have existed, as is Beatrice, although I have altered some of the details of her life.
The exact nature of Malet’s relationship with Harold Godwineson is also open to debate. He is described by one source as Harold’s compater, which historians have usually taken to mean that the two were co-sponsors at a baptism, although whose baptism, and when, is impossible to determine. Whether this acquaintance ever developed into full friendship is another matter. At the very least we know that when events came to a head in 1066, it was on the Norman side that Malet fought, so if any friendship did exist between him and Harold, it could not have lasted long.
The story of Malet’s involvement with Eadgyth, and his role in Harold’s burial, is based on a combination of two historical traditions. The first comes from our earliest account of the Conquest, the Carmen de Hastingae Proelio (Song of the Battle of Hastings), which mentions a man half-English, half-Norman whom the Norman duke made responsible for the burial. The same story is told by the chronicler William of Poitiers, who identifies this man as Guillaume Malet.
The second tradition is much later, originating with the twelfth-century Waltham Chronicle, which records that it was Eadgyth who was called upon to identify Harold amid the corpses on the battlefield at Hastings. This she was able to do because of her intimate knowledge of ‘certain marks’ on his body, which historians have usually presumed to mean old battle-scars, or else birthmarks.
Many other, often contradictory tales regarding Harold’s death and burial emerged in the generations following the Conquest. As a result Harold’s final resting place is unknown even today. One contender is Waltham Abbey, which Harold himself refounded in 1060, and which is named by both the historian William of Malmesbury and the canonry’s own Waltham Chronicle. But the Carmen tells an entirely different story, in which instead of being accorded a Christian burial, Harold is interred in pagan fashion beneath a stone tumulus, overlooking the sea. According to this version of events, a tombstone was erected by his grave, on which was inscribed the message: ‘You rest here, Harold, by order of the duke, so that you may still be guardian of the sea and the shore.’ However, the author of the Carmen neglects to reveal the actual location of this tumulus – if, indeed, there ever was one.
More recently a claim for Harold’s resting place has been put forward by John Pollock in his pamphlet Harold: Rex (Penny Royal, 1996) for Bosham, Sussex, the home of the Godwine family, after a stone coffin was uncovered beneath the chancel arch of Holy Trinity Church during repair work in 1954. Inside this coffin were the partial skeletal remains of a man, the condition of which Pollock contends matches the description of the injuries sustained by Harold at Hastings, as related in the Carmen and depicted in part on the Bayeux Tapestry. The fact that no contemporary account makes any mention of Bosham is a problem, admittedly, though at the same time it is entirely consistent with the notion that King Guillaume might have wanted to keep the location of Harold’s tomb a secret to prevent it becoming a focus for rebellion. Unfortunately, while Pollock presents a compelling argument, it is difficult to prove for certain. The true fate of Harold’s body, now as in 1069, remains a mystery.
As a final note, the poetry recited by Ælfwold and translated by Eudo in chapter twenty-two is excerpted from an actual Anglo-Saxon text known to scholars as ‘The Wanderer’. Perhaps appropriately, the poem tells the tale of a warrior whose lord and comrades have been killed in battle, and deals with his sorrow and his struggle to find redemption.
Sworn Sword reaches its climax with King Guillaume’s successful relief of York in March 1069. But as will soon become clear, this is only the beginning of the unrest that the Normans will face, and so Tancred’s fight will continue.
Acknowledgements
WRITING A NOVEL can at tim
es seem like a solitary affair, but the truth is that I could not have managed without the help and support of a great many people.
I first became fascinated by the period surrounding the Norman Conquest while I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, and my particular thanks go to Dr Elisabeth van Houts of Emmanuel College for helping to nurture that interest, which continues to this day.
For assistance with the various passages of Old English that occur in the novel, I am grateful to Dr Richard Dance of St Catherine’s College, Cambridge, to Olivia Mills and Cherry Muckle.
Thanks also go to Tricia Wastvedt and Dr Colin Edwards, my tutors on the MA programme at Bath Spa University. Early readers Beverly Stark, Gordon Egginton, Liz Pile, Jules Stanbridge, Michelle Burton and Manda Rigby all gave feedback on the novel at various stages in its development. Their observations and detailed advice proved invaluable as I worked to hone the manuscript, and I am indebted to them.
I would also like to take the opportunity to thank my editor, Rosie de Courcy, together with Nicola Taplin and everyone else at Preface, and my copy-editor, Richenda Todd, all of whom have been instrumental in bringing this novel to publication.
Finally, and most especially, heartfelt thanks to my family and to Laura, without whose support and belief this novel would not have been possible.
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