I Am the Chosen King

by Helen Hollick

  Because of that vicious rumour she was to be packaged off, sent into obscurity, within a nunnery, Emma clenched her teeth, bit back a torrid retort. She would rather drain the lifeblood from her wrists first! “I am perfectly content here in Winchester, I thank you.”

  “But madam,” Edward answered placidly, “this residence will be beyond your means to maintain, I would advise you to seek somewhere”—he paused for effect—“cheaper to reside.”

  Emma could no longer hold her anger. “You insult me! I have plenty wealth, enough to—”

  Interrupting, Edward tossed his last jibe, enjoying every cruel and calculated moment. “Enough to what? To pay for soldiers to swell Swegn Godwinesson’s pathetic little army? Enough to finance a fleet of ships for Magnus of Norway to attack England? No, madam, you had wealth. You had my treasury, I now have it, all of it, including your lands and movables. You will retire with grace, as befits a woman of your age, and you will no longer be allowed to commit further treason against the Crown.”

  “How dare you!” Emma hissed. “You cannot take my lands from me!”

  “Ah,” Edward retaliated, “for the charge of treason I can.” He gestured to Siward who had remained with Godwine and Leofric on the far side of the door. “My Lord Earl carries the necessary papers. They are documented in a court of law, duly signed and witnessed.”

  Siward removed several rolled scrolls from beneath his cloak, held them so that she might clearly see the seals placed on each. He walked into the room and set them in a row atop a table near at hand.

  Emma ignored the scrolls and glared at her son. As king, Edward had every right to confiscate property and goods from whoever he wished, if he had good cause. And any king could, with ease, find such cause if he so desired. “On what do you base your charge? Treason, you say. You have no proof.”

  “Should I find it necessary”—Edward raised a warning finger, held her attention—“I could find it.”

  The threat was clear, Emma had to accept his will, for now. There was one thing, however, that she would not relinquish. “You have no entitlement to my land and residence here in Winchester. It is my dower land and is outside the jurisdiction of the royal demesne. Beyond the touch of provost or shire reeve. It is land granted me by your father at the time of our marriage.” Then she added bitterly, “Or will you take my dower also? Why not create total scandal and force me into exile?”

  Why not indeed? Edward had considered it, but rumour was not enough to discredit his mother entirely. To exile a woman of her standing would be to invite his enemies to unite behind her. No, Edward would not banish her abroad. He needed to keep a close eye on her plotting.

  “I have not your unyielding nature, Mother,” he answered. “I have a sense of justice and forgiveness.” Tongue in cheek, he continued, “I must have inherited that from my father.” He moved to the table, sorted through the scrolls, selected one and, crossing the room, tossed it on to the fire. “You may retain your dower property here in Winchester, on condition that you live here quietly.” Edward felt the blood pulsating in his veins; the sweet, sweet essence of victory! He had outmanoeuvred his mother! “Bear that condition in mind, Mother. I would prefer to have you permanently removed. I need only an excuse.” Turning to the door he added a gloating afterthought: “You will hear soon, but I would be the one to tell you. I have ordered your choice of bishop removed from East Anglia. I do not consider Stigand’s poor morals to be suitable.” Dipping his head in farewell he strode from the room, his laughter echoing triumphantly up the staircase.

  The three earls turned silently to follow him, but Emma halted Godwine, her voice scathing: “So this is how you treat me? How short-lived is your loyalty, sir.”

  “My loyalty must lie with my family, madam, with the future of my seed.” He spread his hands. “I am sorry, but that is how it is.”

  “You put yourself first, then, above the love of your queen?”

  Godwine was a proud man, he would not lie to one who had offered, and he hoped would continue to offer, patronage and friendship. “No, madam. My love for the queen comes above all else, but alas, you will soon no longer be the one to bear that title. My Lord Edward is to take a wife.”

  Emma’s eyebrows shot upwards with startled surprise. Edward had actually agreed to take a woman to his bed? Gods! Would he know what to do with her? “So, with such ease you transfer your loyalty?” she mocked. “Did you then love me so poorly?”

  Godwine, Earl of Wessex, faced Emma, Dowager Queen of England. “I love you as no man, who has already a Christian-blessed wife, ought love another woman. But there is to be one I must love the more. My future grandson. The next king.”

  For a long moment Emma stood, speechless, uncomprehending. Then threw back her head and laughed, great, breath-filled gasps—the laughter of finally accepting, outwitted, defeat.

  8

  Nazeing

  Harold lay dazed and confused, aware he was abed. With so much that he ought to be doing he could not understand why. Nor could he understand why he could not move his arm to toss aside the covers that laid heavy over his aching body, as if he were being buried alive. Surely he was asleep? He would wake soon—but he could not open his eyes, could not surface from this threatening redness that engulfed his mind.

  Voices—there were several—unclear and distant. He tried to tell them, whoever they were, to cease their mumbling, to speak up. No one listened; they just tucked those damned heavy covers tighter around his painful limbs. Sweat scrambled off his brow, down his face, yet there was no life in the iced blocks that were his feet and hands.

  Once, when he did manage to open his eyes in this bizarre dream, he saw a man standing at the end of the bed, a man he knew not, with a black, cowled gown and a solemn, pale face. This man lifted his hand and made the sign of the cross, then shook his head and muttered something. A prayer? He had come, Harold was certain, to take him up to God’s paradise. He must wake! Must make this man realise that he was only sleeping, that he was not ready to die, for there was so much to be done! He had been summoned to the King to meet him in Winchester.

  A young woman spoke. “Rest, my Lord,” she said. She held a drink to his lips. He swallowed, tasted the sweet sensation of honey and some other bitter substance. He saw her face bending close over him, saw the white skin of her neck, the haloed gold of her hair. So, it was too late, then, he was already with God. Harold closed his eyes, drifted into sleep.

  Edyth, with her mass of fair hair and the lamplight glowing behind her, did indeed resemble one of God’s angels. She looked up at her mother with wide anxious eyes, the red rims betraying that tears had been falling. “Is there nothing more we can do for him?” she pleaded. Her mother was so skilled with herbs and potions, yet this young man was suffering. “Surely there must be something more, Mama?”

  Ælfthryth dipped a cloth into the bowl of cold water, soaked it and wrung the excess from its folds. She passed it to her daughter, shaking her head. What more could they do? She had tried everything she knew. “He is beyond our mortal care, child. If his own chaplain and our Father from the church at Waltham cannot between them bring healing with their prayers, what chance have we earth-bound women?”

  It was a great pity that one as young and handsome should depart this life so soon. He had seemed to have the making of a fine earl, too. Why was it that the good were taken to God while the evil were left to pursue their wickedness in the world of men? Ælfthryth sighed. Of course, it was not for her to question God’s will but was it not a cruel jest of His to send the Earl Harold here? How would she explain to his mother, when she arrived, that they had failed him? How would her husband be able to face Earl Godwine again, knowing that his son had died beneath this roof? And Edyth was troubled by the Earl’s foundering, poor lass. She had barely recovered from the senseless death of that wretched dog; and now, here she was nursing the Earl, all the hours of the night
and day, with a passion for him stirring within her.

  With quick efficiency Ælfthryth straightened the crumpled bed-linen and tucked the bed fur tighter. With good fortune, Countess Gytha should arrive on the morrow. They had sent a messenger south to Bosham, asking her to come to Essex. Once she was here Earl Harold’s illness would be out of their hands and Edyth’s attention could be directed towards a more promising suitor. The Earl, should he survive this illness, might look at a thegn’s daughter for a temporary companion to warm his bed, but he would most certainly be seeking a girl of higher breeding to become his wife.

  “We have done our best for him,” Ælfthryth declared aloud. That is all the God and Lady Gytha can ask of us.”

  Refolding the damp cloth, Edyth sponged the sweat from Harold’s face. He had been mumbling again a moment or so ago, some deep trouble that must bother him greatly. He muttered often of the necessity to reach Winchester, where, so his companions said, they had been riding, Winchester! How she would enjoy seeing that city—or London, She had never travelled further than the village of Waltham, down in the valley. Her father, who had journeyed far as a young man, entertained them through the long and dark winters’ evenings with the mysteries of distant places. Of Winchester, and London, and York, The empty north lands of Northumbria; the terrors of the Welsh borders; the soft-coloured rolling Downs of Wessex; the wild grandeur and splendour of the sea. The sea! Oh, how Edyth longed to smell the sea! “The sea, like the canopy of the sky, goes on, seemingly, for ever,” her father had said. “It is wider than the broadest river or the largest lake.”

  Edyth found that hard to comprehend, for she could see with her own eyes where the sky met the earth not a few miles distant, but her father was a wise man who knew many things that she did not even begin to understand. Would she, one day, see the sea? Touch its restless tide with her fingers, delight in the spindrift of its surf, the swell of its life-beat? Perhaps, One day. Yet she was more likely to marry some near-by thegn, and settle in the next valley.

  Harold had lost much weight; his cheeks were hollow and drawn, his hair matted and his eyes, when he had them open, burnt with the same fire that scorched his skin. She remembered his sparkling, laughter-filled eyes from that day when he had first come. It had been spring, soon after Easter. How she remembered his strength. His gentle, concerned sorrow.

  The memory of that day, that awful day, lingered in her mind. The repulsive touch of Earl Swegn, his rough hands, his wet, dribbling lips. The brutal murder of her dog. Even now, at the thought of that vile man, her breath caught and bile would rise to her throat—but Earl Harold had been there also. Had been so kind. She ought to have thanked him for what he had done, to have been more concerned for the wound in his shoulder, the scar of which remained white and vivid against his skin. At least tending him now was a way of making amends for her neglect.

  She touched her hand to his cheek, winced at the laboured breath that rattled in his chest. Her mother was certain that Harold would not remain overlong in this world, but she, Edyth, a mere maid, knew better. Harold was not going to die because she was not going to let him.

  9

  Rouen—January 1044

  The cramp in William’s knees and lower back was becoming unbearable. If he could only move slightly, stretch his shoulders…He squinted to his left. Difficult to see clearly without moving his head…Henry, King of France, knelt there, his eyes fixed firm on the crucifix upon the high altar of St. Ouen Abbey, its ornate, golden beauty bathed by the glow of candlelight. The King knelt with his back spear-straight, his chin high, palms flat together, lips moving in silent prayer; he, William thought, would not shuffle about because his knees were hurting him. Henry was a gaunt, serious-looking man with hair already brindled at his temples, although he was not far past his early years of manhood. During these cold January days the Frenchman wore an extravagantly cut ermine cloak, the black markings in startling contrast to the pure, bright white of the fur. Looking at that cloak as it draped in magnificent swathes about Henry’s shoulders, William was reminded of a gyrfalcon that his father had once shown him, a gift from the King of Norway. It had been a splendid bird, pure white with flecks of black on its breast and wings. He remembered putting out his hand to touch the dazzling feathers, remembered marvelling at the softness beneath his fingers. Remembered also his father’s laugh and rich, melodic voice. “You’d not have done that, lad, were she not safely hooded. Shed have had those fat, pink fingers of yours for her supper!”

  Where had he been on that occasion? Surely, at Conteville with his mother’s husband, the Vicomte Herluin? Yet he could not picture his two half-brothers with him, Odo and Robert, and it was rare that his father had visited Herleve there.

  That his father had loved his mother, Herleve, was certain, but as the daughter of a tanner of Falaise, albeit a wealthy one, she could never have become Duke Robert’s duchess. He had found for her instead Herluin, a vicomte, a man who desired sons of his own bred from a pretty wife, no matter whose mistress she had once been.

  Ah, no, it was at Falaise where he saw his father, while he was staying with his maternal grandfather! When he eventually returned home to Conteville, his second half-brother had been born, so he would have been—William paused in his thoughts, clumsily worked out his age, stealthily using his fingers to count forward from the date of his birth, 1028—yes, five years old! And it was summer, for he remembered the heat of the day, the sun sparkling on the bells attached to the bird’s legs and how, when he had looked up, his father’s face had been hidden in dark shadow. It had frightened him, seeing the tall man without a face, and he had cried. Robert had given the bird to a servant and swung the distraught boy up into his arms, assuming it had been the jest about the bird pecking his fingers that had brought the tears. William frowned. As if he would cry at that!

  They had not minded William then, the men of Robert’s court, when the Duke had been alive. Robert had been seventeen years of age when he had sired William, Herleve also seventeen. They had expected Robert to enjoy his youth with pretty maids but, when the time came to take a nobleman’s daughter as wife, produce legitimate sons. But he had died on pilgrimage, leaving a bastard-born seven-year-old as his only heir. There had been no wife, no other sons; only Herleve, a daughter, and William.

  Tiring of surreptitiously studying Henry, the young Duke William rolled his eyes in the opposite direction, to observe his paternal uncle, Archbishop Maugar. He had his head bent, double chin resting on his clasped knuckles, eyes closed. He, William thought, would not mind this vigil, for he was well used to long nights of prayer. Even so, William could easily have assumed the Archbishop to be asleep.

  Again, the boy focused his mind on the altar. He ought to be concentrating on inward reflection, on the glory that was God…on the significance of this night’s event. Not dwelling on memories of the past or on the eddying draught that was slinking under the abbey door to find its way under his thin cloak. He was cold and he was stiff but in two more hours it would be dawn and he would no longer be a boy. For it would be his birthing day and he would be, at last, sixteen years of age. No longer would he be an unknighted child, the vulnerable only son of Robert, Duke of Normandy. William lifted his chin a little, straightened his back, contracted his eyes. No longer would they dare call him bastard to his face. And soon, very soon, neither would they dare insult him so behind his back!

  William was to become a man this day. His overlord, the King of France himself, was to invest him with the regalia of the knight—armour, the emblem of virtue, a shield of faith, helmet of hope and a sword, the symbol of the word of God. William explored their meanings in his mind. Armour for excellence, quality and worth. Worthiness. Fine words that dispelled the slur—bastard born. Faith? Oui, faith that God intended him, and him alone, to rule this duchy with all the vigour of hope, while wielding a sword that carried the truth and might of God’s power and his. His power. Once he was a knig
ht, a man, just let them try to defy him…just let them!

  Some had already suffered punishment for trying. Justifiable revenge, taken with swift finality by those few faithful followers of the boy Duke of Normandy, men who had been loyal to his father. Brutal punishment, meted out for the brutal murder of his various guardians. Comte Alan de Bretagne, the third of that title, who had set William upon the back of his first pony; Comte Gilbert de Brionne, swift to chide, but quick to laugh, who had taught William how to hurl a javelin; gentle, quiet-voiced Turchetil; and Osbern. Dear, loyal Osbern…he could not think of that night and Osbern.

  William repressed a shudder, lest his two companions sharing this vigil assumed him to be shivering with the cold; he thought instead of his uncle, Walter, his mother’s brother. Walter had saved his life when, not more than a few weeks after Robert’s death, men had come to murder the boy. Snatching him from his bed, Walter had carried him through the night to a place of safety—had slept in the boy’s bed after that, journeying with him from safe house to safe house, dressed him as if he were an ordinary man’s son, not the child of a duke. They did not risk riding expensive horses, but used Walter’s shaggy old pony instead; took shelter in poor men’s bothies, sleeping on the floor beside a hearth fire or in a barn or cow byre. Men did not think of searching for a young duke among the swine. On fine nights they had slept beneath the stars, curled close together under Walter’s cloak. Thinking of those days, full of fear yet tinged with excitement, William could hear distinctly the breath of a summer night, the call of an owl and the sound of the pony, grazing. The threat of death had been a constant companion through his childhood, walking always behind like a menacing shadow.