I Am the Chosen King

by Helen Hollick

  “You always were a soft-hearted fool.” Tostig thrust at him. “Treat peasants and imbeciles with honeyed words? The North understands only the lash of the whip. They are unmannered, vulgar, primitive barbarians.”

  “And this is a land that nourished the Christian centres of Durham, Whitby and Lindisfarne? Venerable men like the saints Cuthbert and Bede?” Harold retorted mockingly.

  “I retract what I said.” Tostig sneered. He bowed briefly to Edward, then headed for the door. “You would be of no help to me—go back to Normandy, you and William are well matched, both pathetic dreamers!”

  Provoked beyond endurance Harold moved with two long strides to catch his brother’s arm. He thrust his face close, said with vehemence, “If you assume Duke William to be inadequate, then you are the fool He is a man to be reckoned with. If Edward should die before Edgar reaches a suitable age, England will be dragged into a war similar to—or worse—than that against the Danes. The Normans are descended from those same Vikings who produced Cnut—but I tell you this William is not, by any short measure, comparable to that noble man.”

  Tostig brushed his brother’s grip from his arm, answered with contempt, “You may fear this illiterate, illegitimate foreign bastard, brother Harold, but I do not. He is husband to my wife’s sister, I know him well and do not fear his ambition. Nor do I fear the consequences of Edward dying within the next month or year. The King is to name our sister as protector of the child. She will guide the boy when England elects him king; there will be no possibility of William querying his crowning. We will be quite safe from both hobgoblins and aspiring Norman sea-wolves.”

  Harold was sickened. His throat constricted. He looked at Edward, who was sitting fiddle-fiddling with embarrassment at the embroidered hem of his tunic. “So when was this decided?” he asked incredulously of the King. “Was it made without the agreement of Council—as you made a similar decision all those years past to offer your crown to Duke William and so put this greedy notion into his ambitious head?”

  Edward licked his lips and put out his hand to Edgar to help him rise. “It is time I sought my bed, I think. I often take a nap of the mid-afternoon. Come, lad, escort me to my chamber.”

  Edgar leapt to his feet and took hold of the old man’s arm. Harold bit back further remonstrations. There was no point in arguing with Edward, he was too blind to the consequences of his fool promises.

  Edgar glanced up at the Earl as he escorted the King past, saying, “No one has asked what I want. I do not much like the sound of this foreign duke, nor the wearing of the crown.”

  Harold made no answer. Stood in stony silence as Edward left the room. In some weird way he almost wished he had stayed in Normandy. Then he looked towards Tostig, who had moved to stand behind Edith, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders, said, “A woman cannot rule. Edward’s successor must be deemed kingworthy. Edgar may yet be of a suitable age when we need consider it, but has he the ability? Admittedly he is a boy still but he displays no interest in what ought become his. England will be in desperate need of a man of courage and strength to hold back this tyrant from Normandy, should he decide to come. I do not think Edgar will be that man.”

  Tostig squeezed his sister’s shoulder and lifted his chin proudly. “Aye, brother, I agree we need someone suitable. You are looking at him.”

  Harold’s jaw clenched, but Edith forestalled any scathing retort. “Neither of you need have any fear for England. Ædwardus Rex reliably informed me but two days past that he intends to solve the problem of his succession simply by living for ever.”

  6

  Waltham Abbey—1 January 1065

  Last night it had been intensely cold and snow had fallen again. Come morning, the air was as brittle as glass and an ice-clad wind ploughed across the valley and into the nostrils of Harold’s children. The bare branches of birch and willow waved forlorn against the frigid sky. The meadow below the manor was a carpet of white, touched only by the prints of birds and the track of a fox. Gunnhild, turned seven years as January dawned, and Ulf, rising eleven, being the two youngest and most excitable, had been the first outside for an energetic session of snowball-tossing. The temptation to join them in the snow had been too much for their brothers Magnus and Edmund, though they would see fourteen and fifteen their next birthing days, and when Goddwin strode up the hill known as Mott Street from his own farmsteading at Sigurdstun, the game became a wild snow fight in earnest. Even Algytha, eighteen next week, came to watch, leaning on the gate and laughing at the antics of Goddwin’s two brindled wolf hounds, Dane and Weyland, barking and leaping in excitement at the flying snow. The game became ever more unruly until Goddwin called a breathless halt. Their cheeks red-rosy, breath blowing from their mouths like steam from a boiling pot, they all leant against the rails of the meadow gate, the two dogs lying, panting, their tongues lolling.

  “I trust none of you has a mountain of snow worked inside your boots!” Edyth called jovially, appearing at the door of the house place. Her hair was tied back in a tight braid, a kerchief was bound around her head and a sacking apron covered her gown. In her hand a birch broom. Today, snow or no, was cleaning day when the shields and weapons were taken from the walls and dusted, the cobwebs banged and thumped from the hanging tapestries and the timber floors cleared of old rushes, thoroughly swept and spread afresh with a new layer. “As you all have so much energy, you can come help within doors…” At the unanimous groan of protest she added, “Or you can take food up to old Granny Gnarl-hand. She has none to fend for her now her son is dead; it is our duty to keep an eye on her, especially during these winter months.”

  The younger children glowered, for neither chore appealed. Algytha brushed snow from the hem of her gown, offering to help her mother, Gunnhild too, for she enjoyed a closer look at the magnificent weapons that hung on the walls. The boys were reluctant to walk to the widow’s cottage that sheltered below the high ground where the oak, birch and alder gave way to stately beech, especially as the letter Mother had received yesterday had reported that their father would soon be home. What if he came today? “As soon as may be possible, with gifts for you all,” his curved, polished writing had declared.

  “I will go with the boys, Mother,” Goddwin offered and whistled the dogs to heel. “There is little to do at my own steading and my wife is also elbow-deep in cleaning.” He grinned at his family. “Would you believe, I came up here to escape being dust-mired! Perhaps the dogs will put up something suitable for the supper pot.”

  Magnus and Ulf whooped their pleasure at the prospect, Edmund shouting that he would catch up with them after he had fetched his new hunting spear.

  Edyth smiled to herself as she watched the boys set off across the snow-thick field, Edmund soon racing after them, stopping to collect a handful of snow to toss at his eldest brother’s back. The two of them were almost of the same height; Edmund had shot up since last autumn—Magnus, too, promised to be a tall young man. They were all fair-haired as Harold and herself; Goddwin, perhaps, being the most like his father, sharing a similar shape of eyes, chin and mouth. Edyth sighed. Goddwin did not possess Harold’s easygoing temper, though. He had not forgiven his father for what he saw as an insult to her, his mother. It was all so senseless! They were two fool-brained march hares boxing at each other.

  “But don’t you mind?” Goddwin had raged when he had come galloping home from London. “Don’t you mind that he may be bedding with another instead of you!”

  What had she been supposed to answer? That aye, of course she minded that Harold did occasionally look for his needs elsewhere; that aye, she cared that one day he might take another wife? Instead, she had regarded her first-born son with a direct, steadfast look, and told him of the truth.

  “A man may bed a woman he admires or lusts after, but he need not love her. It is to the woman he loves that he will always return.”

  She picked up the birch
broom from where she had leant it against the wall, returned inside the Hall in time to reprimand Gunnhild from getting in the way of the servants lifting down Harold’s war axes from the wall for cleaning. “If one should fall on you girl, it could take your head from your shoulders!”

  With a squeak of alarm, Gunnhild stepped back hastily. Could an axe do that? She resolved to ask Papa when he came home.

  Beneath the trees the snow had not fallen so thickly, the debris of last autumn covered only by an uneven shawl, pocked here and there by deeper drifts. Along the track, every hoofprint that had churned the mud before the snow fell bore a fragile film of ice that cracked as the boys deliberately stamped their boots. All lay still and silent, hushed as if set under an enchanted sleep—and then a dog-fox suddenly appeared, his coat winter-thick, a rich, chestnut red. Unconcerned at the yelping leashed dogs, he stood, one fore-paw raised, his amber eyes contemptuously staring, and then he turned and streaked off, leaving only the pungent whiff of his rank scent. Goddwin released the dogs, but the creature had gone and the dogs were eager for more enticing scents to follow.

  The wind bit into their exposed skin as they stepped from the shelter of the trees to cross the open plain that topped the ridge, before plunging downwards again through the scattered army of bare-branched beech. At the bottom of the hill a grey column of smoke rose in a lazy spiral from the smoke hole in Granny Gnarl-hand’s roof. The barking of the dogs had alerted her, for the woman stood waiting on her door hearth, her smile gap-toothed, her aged shoulders bent. She beckoned her visitors to come inside, warm themselves by her fire, grateful for their company as much as the welcome gift of provisions from their good-hearted mother.

  She had lived in this wattle-walled cottage with her husband since the day she had come to him as bride, nigh on forty and six years past when she had been a fair-haired girl of fifteen years, but no one remembered her at that young age. To this small community she had always been grey-haired, shrunken and aged. It was to Granny Gnarl-hand that children came in summer to ask for the telling of tales, from Granny that the young girls sought love-potions and charms. To her mothers brought their ailing children, their women’s problems, their doubts and fears of approaching childbirth.

  When her son had been killed two years past, she had feared for her own survival. She was fortunate, though, for Lord Harold was a good landowner; he would not see an old woman turned out of her home to await death in the clutch of winter.

  She ladled herb and root broth into wooden bowls to warm their insides. “Be there news of your father yet?” she asked. “He has been so long absent these past months.” Concealing the pain that whined in her chilled old bones, she lowered herself into her wicker chair beside the hearth fire. Magnus, always one to chatter, answered her, “Mother tells us that our father will be home soon. He has had great adventures while with Duke William—has ridden to battle with him and been given gifts. He is bringing us a pair of rabbits—creatures that are like hares but smaller and with not such long ears. He says in his letter that they make good eating, but that our little sister Gunnhild will delight in their soft fur and comical actions.”

  Goddwin scowled, said nothing, concentrated on supping the watery broth into his belly.

  Granny Gnarl-hand rubbed at the knobbed, pain-wracked twist of her knuckles that gave her the name. “Rabbits, you say? Never ’eard of such critters!” Her eyes sparkled at Magnus’s rapid talk, nodded at Edmund that he might refill their bowls. “If you’ll be so good as to replenish the wood beneath the pot, first.” She regarded the silent eldest born with her sharp blue eyes, said, “Do you not welcome your father’s return then, Master Goddwin? Why be that, eh? Be there some silly quarrel atween you?”

  “You ask too many questions, Old Mother,” Goddwin answered, with a polite but curt gesture of dismissal.

  “He is angry with our father because there was talk at court of him taking a well-born woman as wife,” Magnus said carelessly. “Mother says it is a thing that our father must one day be expected to do. If she does not mind this thing happening, then why should my brother?” Magnus set his bowl upside down on the floor to show he had finished and wiped the back of his hand over his lips. “Edmund and me, though, we think he’s cross because he’d rather have a pretty blossom for himself than that stinging nettle he already has.” His elder brother’s scowl furrowed deeper.

  “You’m be careful not to let that wronged look sit for long on your face, my lad,” Granny Gnarl-hand chuckled at him as if he were a child. “Lest the wind change and set it there for good.”

  Goddwin silently cursed. “With respect, Old Granny, I am one and twenty years old. I do not need lecturing as if I am but Ulf’s age.”

  “Nursing moon-fool jealousies like a child leads others to treat you as such. I expect your mother has told you so often enough.”

  The three younger boys grinned at each other. They would wager as much as a shilling each that Granny would get the better of Goddwin!

  “My woman is a dutiful wife. I have no complaint against her and Mother is hiding behind a brave smile and a stout heart, but I have seen her eyes red-rimmed from the tears she has wept whenever my father is long away from home.” Angry at himself for being so easily riled, Goddwin slammed out through the door.

  “He has been like a boar with a headache for months,” Edmund confided by way of apology. “It has been his ill temper that has upset our mother on occasion, not our father being away.” Added as an afterthought, “Though that does sadden her greatly.”

  Granny nodded, said cryptically, “Loyalty be a difficult thing to set straight in a fuddled mind.”

  Magnus was not quite certain what she meant. Loyalty was to trust without question, as he trusted his mother and father. Either Goddwin did trust their father’s judgement and was therefore loyal—or did not, which made him an enemy. Ah, it was all beyond a boy’s reasoning!

  Edmund too wondered about his father’s relationship with his mother. They all knew that they were not church wed, that the marriage could be easily dissolved should both parties agree, but their mother would never agree to divorce, so why all this fuss?

  Ulf, the youngest, was perhaps the most confused, for during the Holy Days of Christmas he had overheard Goddwin quarrelling with their mother. “Goddwin said that Father no longer loves our mother or us, that is why he has been away so long in Normandy and why he seeks a new wife.” He looked sharply at Granny, desperate for her to deny it, so afraid that she might nod and say aye, it was so.

  “Then your brother,” Granny said firmly, “be talking out his arse, lad. Lord Harold has always, and will ever, give love first to your fair mother and the ones born of his seed set in her womb.”

  She pushed herself out of her chair and shuffled to the doorway, and looked at Goddwin’s solitary tracks plunging away through the snow. “You be a fool unto yoursel’ to rage so. You’m be wed to a Christian-taken wife; it be no good lusting after someone different,” Granny mumbled. “And if ever your father took another as wife, it would not be your mam to lay abed alone at night, knowing he took his need elsewhere. It would be the other wife to be a-wonderin’ that, for your da’ll not ever be giving up his Edyth Swan-neck.”

  ***

  Goddwin’s temper cooled before he had gone a few hundred yards. Why was he so damned touchy these days? Perhaps because of the sourness of his wife’s mood? Frytha was a disappointment to him. He had married her because it had been expected of him since his childhood; her father was a respected thegn and she came with a substantial steading as dowry. Moreover, she could cook and weave, and manage a Hall as efficiently as any woman. But she was sullen, endlessly grumbling. Worse than that, there was something missing in his marriage, something that his father had with his mother. A little thing called love. What he could not understand was why his father could so easily think of ending his marriage with the woman he adored when he, Goddwin, had no
mortal chance of unshackling himself from Frytha in favour of someone as beautiful as Alditha, the Widow of Wales.

  7

  Waltham Abbey

  After the snows, flooding threatened the vulnerable lowlands of England where, even during the driest summers, marsh could remain oozing among the alder and willow, reed and rush. Almost overnight the water meadows turned from a spread blanket of white to the ripple-shifting shimmer of lake-like water. The wide flat spread of the Lea valley could not escape the inrush of melt-water. Already over-fed, a series of high tides pulsing up the Thames and into its tributaries pushed the banks of the river beyond the limit of endurance. Like an invading army, the flood marched onwards, unstoppable, mercilessly invading the tranquil host valley.

  This morning, Edyth stood at the unshuttered, narrow window of her first-floor bed-chamber, her fingers automatically plaiting her loose hair. It had rained again in the night, only a drizzle but even that might be enough to raise the Lea a vital half-inch more.

  Please God, she thought as she reached for a ribbon to tie the end of her braid, that the sea-tide, downriver, does not come high again today.

  “The water has risen, I swear,” she said.

  “Need you stand with the shutters wide? ’Tis cold in here.”

  Edyth twisted her head to observe what was visible of Harold above the heap of bed furs. For six days had he been home, days during which he had immersed himself in the needs of the steading, local business, his family and friends. In Edyth’s comfort and warmth. None of which was yet sufficient to drive aside the worry that hung like a rain-sodden mantle around his shoulders. Normandy. Tostig. The succession. An endless round of disquiet that disturbed his sleep and offset his happiness at being home.