Bello:
hidden talent rediscovered
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Contents
Alfred Duggan 1903–1964
Prologue
1. The Lady Emma
2. Edward the King
3. Sweyn Godwinsson
4. The Fall of Earl Godwin
5. The Return of Earl Godwin
6. The Rise of Earl Harold
7. The Rule of Earl Harold
8. The Wars of Earl Harold
9. Earl Harold’s Oath
10. The Fall of Earl Tostig
11. The End and the Beginning
Alfred Duggan
The Cunning Of The Dove
Alfred Duggan
1903–1964
‘There have been few historical imaginations better informed or more gifted than Alfred Duggan’s.’ (The New Criterion).
Historian, archaeologist and novelist Alfred Duggan wrote historical fiction and non-fiction about a wide range of subjects, in places and times as diverse as Julius Caesar’s Rome and the Medieval Europe of Thomas Becket.
Although he was born in Argentina, Duggan grew up in England, and was educated at Eton and Balliol College, Oxford. After Oxford, he travelled extensively through Greece and Turkey, visiting almost all the sites later mentioned in his books. In 1935 he helped excavate Constantine’s palace in Istanbul.
Duggan came to writing fiction quite late in his life: his first novel about the First Crusade, Knight in Armour, was published in 1950, after which he published at least a book every year until his death in 1964. His fictional works were bestselling page-turners, but thoroughly grounded in meticulous research informed by Duggan’s experience as an archaeologist and historian.
Duggan has been favourably compared to Bernard Cornwell as well as being praised in his own right as ‘an extremely gifted writer who can move into an unknown period and give it life and immediacy.’ (New York Times)
Prologue
It was said by the wise men of old: ‘Call no man happy until he is dead.’ I am still alive, but in the nature of things I cannot expect many more years; and I am happy at present, in a household where I am held in honour. I cannot be accused of boasting when I say my life has been happy, and I can look for it to be happy right up to the end. A castle is a queer sort of place to live in; I work among foreigners and serve a foreign lord. But as chamberlain to the Count I am a local personage, and I shall end my days within a mile of the house where I was born, surrounded by the grandsons of boys who played with me when I was a boy. That is always best, to come home at the end to the scene of the beginning, to be buried in the church of one’s baptism.
If I had been no more than a happy man there would be little to tell. But for much of my life I filled a humble post in the intimate service of the great. I was never an actor in great events, no one ever followed my advice or depended on my help; but because I was insignificant, and I suppose because I was also easy to get on with and a good listener, I heard what went on behind the scenes. Sometimes I talk at supper-time of the stirring days of my youth, and of the holy King who was once my master. The other officers of the Count are always interested in my stories, and whenever a great man visits us I am called to the high table to answer questions. So when one of the Count’s chaplains offered to write down what I should tell him I thought it would be absurdly modest to refuse. Of course I have to tell my story in French, and he writes it in Latin; that means that I can’t break into verse to mark a crisis, or rattle off a jingle of alliterations when things seem dull. That is how good writers keep alive the interest of their readers, but then I am only a chamberlain. Peter the chaplain says he must write in Latin, because no one has settled how French ought to be spelled and there are so many different ways of pronouncing it; and if I told him my tale in English he would interrupt every minute to ask the meaning of some unusual word. He understands English well, for a foreigner; but it is a difficult language, full of compound words and poetical metaphors. Even my holy master sometimes stumbled in it, though it had been the tongue of his infancy; when he had to say something important, which must be accurately understood by his hearers, he would sometimes drop into French without noticing it. I have seen great Earls very angry at being addressed in a foreign language which they could not understand; and they would be even more angry when my master switched to Latin, the best language for real accuracy.
But there it is. The curse of Babel was especially a curse on the great. A humble ploughman may live and die believing that all the sons of Adam speak as he speaks; a burgess of the great city of Winchester knows that in Christendom there are hundreds of languages, and that men who deal with the world at large must be patient of clumsy translation. I think in English and speak in French; Master Peter thinks in French and writes in Latin. I shout through the fog as clearly as I can. But the reader must do his share of the work; for undoubtedly a great fog lies between us, the fog of vanished manners and a dying language.
1. The Lady Emma
I was born in the year 1027. That was the year when the great Canute, the King of the North, was received honourably in Rome by the Pope and the Emperor. It was a good time to be born, for there was peace and prosperity in England, and especially in Winchester, the home of Kings. I was the eldest son of my father, and so I was christened by his name, Edgar. I grew up among a crowd of younger brothers and sisters, but they do not come into this story. Indeed my father scarcely comes into it, for we were not important folk; but it is important that my father was the best cordwainer in Winchester.
When rude urchins want to insult a cordwainer they shout after him: ‘Stinking cobbler!’ But making shoes is the least part of his skill. The real art is in the dressing and dyeing of the leather, to make it smooth and supple, to colour it a bright and even red or green or blue; above all, to tan it with as little offensive smell as possible, and then perhaps to fix a pleasant scent throughout the fabric. Anyone who can do that, as my father could, will find it easy to sew pieces of soft leather into fine shoes for the nobility.
The King and his court were often in Winchester, more often than in any other city of England. There were plenty of rich folk to buy our shoes, and as a child I was always well fed and well dressed. When the great King of the North died I was eight years of age. Canute’s peace died with him, and for the next seven years there was constant war throughout England. But we in Winchester were protected from the worst of these troubles, for our noble city is the traditional dowry of the Lady of England. The widowed Lady Emma came to live permanently among us. She had a great hall of her own, quite distinct from the King’s hall; and there she stayed all the year round, protected by a bodyguard of the mighty housecarles who had fought for King Canute, and served with the splendour that was the due of the widow of two Kings (though King Ethelred her first husband was almost forgotten, and she was always spoken of as the widow of King Canute).
The axebearers of her bodyguard kept the peace in Winchester, even while the rest of England was ravaged by the wars between the sons of Canute. Not quite so many rich nobles came to buy my father’s shoes; but the fa
mily still lived well, and so did all the city.
In my fourteenth year my father had to decide how I was to earn a living, for soon after my fourteenth birthday I must be bound apprentice. I was not the heir to my father’s business, for we English burgesses follow a custom which must always be explained to incredulous foreigners: the heir to a craftsman is his youngest son, not his eldest. That is fair, when you come to think of it; a man’s eldest son will be settled in life by the time his father dies, it is the baby in the nursery who must live on the stock in the family shop until he is old enough to support himself.
The trouble was that I could not abide leatherwork, especially the stink of it. I have always been in love with cleanliness, and perhaps more nice and dainty than is fitting for a common burgess. In childhood, if I dirtied my hands by accident I would run sobbing to my mother and beg to be washed, and I was always bothering her to give me a clean shirt when she thought the old one would do for another two or three days. Tanbark revolts me; the stench of undressed hides is even worse; even the pungent but not unwholesome smell that comes from the bubbling dyevats is more than I can bear.
Three friends of my father in the same line of business refused to take me as apprentice, when they noticed how I wrinkled my nose at the smell of their workshops. After the third refusal my father brought me home in anger, and stormed at my mother for encouraging my ridiculous love of cleanliness. ‘The boy’s too dainty for this fallen world,’ he shouted. ‘He’ll never eat bread in the sweat of his brow. If he were a savage Dane we could send him off to be a Viking, but that’s no life for a civilised Englishman. The minster won’t look at him; monks preach that too much washing is evil luxury. He’s fit for nothing but to carry basins of scented water for some fat old woman to wash her hands in.’
‘Then that’s just what he’ll do,’ answered my mother with spirit. (Her father had farmed his own land until he was ruined by ravaging Danes, and she thought she had come down in the world by marrying a cordwainer.) ‘There’s a fat old woman at the end of the street, and I hear she has vacancies in her household.’
‘That’s no way to speak of the Lady of England, the King’s mother,’ said my father severely. ‘All the same, it’s an idea. I must go to her hall in a day or two, as soon as I have finished that pair of purple slippers. I know a chamberlain slightly, and I shall ask if he has room for a clean young page. Would that suit you, little Edgar? There’s no future in a job like that, and you will never be your own master. But you will live softly, if you do as you are told. Someone has to carry wine for these great lords, though it’s not really honest work. But then you turn up your nose at honest work.’
I had never before thought of such a calling, but as soon as it was mentioned I saw it was exactly what I wanted. I am not lazy. I would not be in charge of all the manservants in a large castle if I could not be trusted to keep them up to their work. But I like to do my work in pleasant surroundings, particularly in surroundings that smell sweet. There are always a few stinks about, even in a prosperous castle; but now it is my job to get them cleared away as quickly as possible, and I do it willingly. I like living in a crowd, for people amuse me; every man in the world is quite different from every other man, when you get to know him, and it is my delight to know people and revel in their difference. I am always willing to obey orders, or to give them if that is my duty. I consider that a mark of civilisation. Only heathen Danes try to live on a little patch of land, paying no taxes and obeying no lord; Christians must remember that we are all members of one another, and that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished unless one man directs and many obey him.
A few days later I left home for ever to live in quite a different world, though it was only a furlong away from the little house where I had been born. I had expected to wear different clothes, to eat different food, to keep different hours; it was a shock to discover that I must also learn a different language.
While the under-steward was fitting me out in my livery, a handsome red tunic and leggings of white linen crossed by garters of narrow red cloth, he informed me of this.
‘You will begin by standing about in the anteroom to the Lady’s chamber. She likes to be served by boys and young men. In the anteroom there are always housecarles who decide which visitors should be admitted, and women to help the Lady when she needs them. But when she rings her little bell for someone to run an errand you will answer it; she calls her women by name. The only trouble is that she may give you her orders in French. It’s her native tongue, and at home she prefers to speak it. If you don’t understand what she says to you, ask her to repeat it in Danish. She doesn’t mind doing that. But she gets very angry with servants who are too shy to ask for a translation, especially if they then guess what she wants, and guess wrong.’
When he saw my look of dismay he added kindly: ‘It won’t be long before you understand French, though it’s a tricky language to speak correctly. There are a great many Frenchmen in this hall, and the rest of us can manage it fairly well; so you will hear it spoken all round you. In any case, the Lady won’t be conversing with you. She will only tell you to fetch something. Learn the French words for comb and wine and a basin of water and a few other things, and you will soon be as useful to her as if you had been born and bred in Rouen as she was.’
The under-steward was quite right. A great many of the upper servants in the Lady’s hall were French-born, including nearly all the women in her bedchamber. She liked to be surrounded by people who understood French, though it was enough if they understood it; she would rather be answered in fluent Danish or English than in stammering French. In a few weeks I had picked up the ordinary forms of French politeness, and the few necessary names of the things I might be asked to fetch. I was determined to be slow rather than make a mistake, and if I did not grasp what was wanted I always asked to have the order repeated in Danish. That language sounds like English with a broad northern accent; any Winchester man can understand it.
In those days the Lady Emma was a splendid figure, worthy to be the wife and mother of Kings. Her hair was white, and her figure certainly on the plump side; but she wore her girdle tight round her waist, so that she bulged above and below it as a woman should. The skin of her hands and face was smooth and very clear; she was tall, and held herself erect. It was the first time I had seen an elderly woman who was obviously in perfect health, without rheumatism or gout or any other crippling infirmity; her stately walk and good eyesight seemed to me almost supernatural attributes. But then, unlike all the other old women I had met, the Lady Emma had never once been cold or wet or hungry since she was born.
She was considerate to her servants, and at the beginning made allowances for my shyness. She gave her commands in clear distinct French, though when she chattered with her Norman women she slurred her consonants in the Norman manner; and if she saw that I did not comprehend she repeated what she had said in careful Danish with a French accent. She could never have been mistaken for a native Englishwoman, but her foreignness was not the most striking thing about her.
I was not as frightened of her as a stranger would have been, for though she was the Lady of England and I was merely the son of a burgess she had a good reputation in Winchester. We knew that she was mild, and very generous to the Church; and if some said that she was niggardly to the lay poor – well, hardworking burgesses never like beggars.
My duties were light and pleasant. For a few hours every day I waited in the Lady’s anteroom, taking my turn with the other pages. I had to be clean and well-dressed and graceful in my movements, but that came easily to me. For the rest of the day I made myself useful in the wardrobe, caring for fine robes or polishing beautiful jewels of silver and gold; I am in love with fine craftsmanship, and it was a pleasure to clean those glorious cups and splendid brooches. The under-steward quickly saw that I enjoyed my work and did it thoroughly, and he seldom had occasion to rebuke me.
When I first came to live in the Lady’s hall I was a lit
tle bothered by giggling girls. I was a new face, a well-set-up youth on the threshold of manhood; and in any large household love-affairs occupy most of the time of under-worked servants. Half a dozen young sewing-maids competed to catch me, not because they loved me for myself but because they wanted another trophy. Young women would creep up and tickle me as I sat dozing on a bench by the fire. But when they saw I was not interested they gave it up. I may as well confess now, for it will make the rest of my story easier to follow, that I am not attracted to young women. I find handsome boys more enticing, and if I had been born a heathen Dane perhaps I might have sinned with them. But that is one of the sins that Christians just may not commit, and it is all the easier to resist temptation because the public opinion of everyday England happens to be on the side of virtue. I have never yielded to my private inclination, perhaps because the fear of God was reinforced by the fear of the neighbours. In a way I have been born lucky. Some men are inclined to drunkenness or murder, and no one helps them to resist those temptations; at Christmas it is difficult to keep sober, and anyone who inherits a bloodfeud is incited by all his friends to go out and slay. But no Englishman makes it easy for his comrade to be a sodomite.
I have never married, yet in a large mixed household of men and women I have always behaved with decorum. But that is enough on such a subject. I am not yet making my deathbed confession.
I had hardly grown used to wearing my handsome red tunic when the court went into mourning and I had to change it for a grey one. News came that King Hardicanute, son of the Lady of England, had died suddenly in the prime of his youth. His end was very terrible; as he stood to drink the health of the bride at a wedding feast God struck him down without warning. He went to Judgement unshriven.
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