The Last English King

by Julian Rathbone

  ‘All England.’

  Silence stretched between them. Stigand was too clever a negotiator to be the first to break it. He carefully chose a second cherry and let his gaze wander across the cloister and up to the squat roof of the abbey church. Edward knew he should either dismiss the man, or himself stand and go. But he felt his temper rising again and wanted to have it all out, get to the bottom of it. He leant forward, banged the table, almost shouted.

  ‘It is, is it not, transparent why Edith the daughter of Godwin should be Queen?’

  Stigand looked mildly surprised.

  ‘Transparent? I suppose so. What we need is an English succession, and one which will stick and last. With, once again, an English royal house properly established, then all these Scandinavian connections of Canute, God rest his soul, not to mention the Norman bastard who through your mother also has his foot in the door, will simply have to forget any spurious claims they may now think they have. Edith is English . . .’

  ‘Half. Gytha, her mother, is Danish.’

  ‘And so is about a third of the population of your kingdom and they all consider themselves English. They’ve been here a hundred years. Nevertheless, the fact she is a connection of Canute’s through marriage will please them too. But she’s really English, as English as any of us. As English as apple-pie. All through.’

  ‘So is the Athling.’

  ‘The other Edward?’ Again the bishop spat out his cherry stone. It chimed on the rim of the silver platter. ‘He’s under age and lives in Hungary. Wherever that is.’

  Edward at last got up, stormed round the room, came back to the table, lifted his mead-cup and banged it down so some of the amber liquid splashed.

  ‘The Godwins would rule. That is what all this is about. With a prince who is half Godwinson, who is likely, should I sire him, to be still in his minority when I die (I recall you were kind enough to remind me that I am not immortal), he will be ruled, and all England too, by his grandfather, if that old devil survives me, and by his uncles if he does not . . .’ One of whom is Tostig, and the thought filled his soul with a void which his anger could scarcely fill.

  ‘I see no reason for this union,’ he concluded. ‘I see no advantage to me or the English.’

  Stigand shifted forward so he could reach the spilled mead. He scooped a drop up with his ringed pinkie, and sucked it.

  ‘There might be advantage to you.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘The Godwins fear what might happen when you die. And let’s not beat about the bus - you could fall from your horse tomorrow or catch an everlasting cold this winter. A murderer cloaked and hidden from our sight, a man perhaps known to us but not his intent, may even now be slipping through your housecarls. . . And, and this is the crux, no matter who succeeds you, be it Norway or Normandy, they will have no use for the Godwins -- unless . . .’

  Edward listened to nothing but the rush of his own blood, felt little but the prick of cold sweat in his palms. But the message was clear. Perhaps the shade of Alfred his brother whispered it in his ear.

  ‘Unless,’ he said at last, ‘one or all of the Godwins has assisted my successor to the throne by murdering me.’

  ‘You may think what you like. I could not possibly express an opinion.’ Edward stood, walked to the unglazed window. Beyond the cloister he could now hear the monks chanting the office of Terce. Like Benedictines everywhere their mastery of Gregorian plainsong was of a high order and filled him with nostalgia for the remembered simplicity of the life he had left, of uncomplicated devotions in places like Bayeux or Lisieux, the fragrance of incense, the sad face of God on the Cross and his sorrowing Mother, the sweet, mindless religiosity of adolescence . . . tears pricked his eyes, his heart felt empty. He turned back to the gross, cunning bishop.

  ‘So. Once I have an heir, they can murder me anyway.’

  ‘The Witan will never elect a child. Ill fares the land . . .’

  ‘. . . where a child is king.’

  The distant monks fell silent and the persistent buzz of a trapped humble-bee filled their space. Stigand stirred in his seat again and cleared his throat.

  ‘For the time being,’ he said, ‘a ceremony of betrothal is what they suggest. They propose this should take place at Lammas-tide, at Cerne, in Dorset.’

  And so it did. Edward with Harold and the nucleus of what was becoming a royal, that is Edward’s own, bodyguard of housecarls rode out of Sherborne through a steady downpour. Edward’s hunting dogs, big, long-legged, grey and shaggy, much like wolves apart from their long, broad, very dog-like muzzles, jogged alongside the horses. Occasionally they’d break away, attracted by the smell of a hare or the sight of a pair of partridges in an open field. Their pelts were soon as wet and mired as the horses, and the cloaks of their riders. Thunder rumbled around the beech-clad hills.

  Naturally none of them was in a good temper.

  ‘Could we not send someone on ahead and call this all off for a day or two.’

  ‘Not really,’ Harold replied.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Lammas-tide. Important day.’

  ‘Certainly. Rents fall due. Let me see, what else? With the harvest, home fences are pulled down in certain parts, opening fields for common pasturing for the months before the Spring sowing on Lady Day. A sensible system as the cattle feed the land with what they dump. What else? The name means ‘loaf-day’. Barley cakes, made from the new-mown grain are offered in churches. But none of it adds up to a particularly good day for a betrothal.’

  Harold was impressed. The Norman aristocrat, brought up in cloisters and stone halls, on the Tales of the Virgin and the gestes of Charlemagne’s knights, really was taking on the detail of the lives of his new subjects. However . . .

  ‘The sanctity of the day lies deeper than that.’

  They rode in silence. The hooves clipped the flints that metalled the road and clopped in chalky puddles. Harnesses jangled. A frown spread across Edward’s face.

  ‘Witches meet at Lammas,’ he said at last.

  Harold said nothing, but his lips hardened into a thinner line.

  ‘I’ll not be party to any pagan nonsense,’ Edward declared, and reined in, so his horse snuffled and twisted its head to the side, anticipating a turn. The rain came on more heavily, strings of silver about them, grey curtains against the Downs ahead.

  ‘There’s no harm in it.’

  ‘It’s devil’s work and you know it. I’m surprised you have any truck with it at all.’

  ‘Oh, come on. It’s just an excuse for a feast, a bit of dancing and jollity.’ Harold repeated: ‘There’s no harm in it.’

  ‘I’ve never known this country ever lack a reason for a feast - especially if there’s plenty to drink on hand. But I’m going back to Sherborne before I get any wetter.’

  ‘Hang on. There is more to it than that.’

  Reluctantly Edward pulled his horse’s head back to face south. ‘Well?’

  ‘Most round here have Celtic blood -- they say the Saxons who came here had no women folk of their own and married the women of the peoples they had defeated, while inflicting serfdom on the men who survived. Sure, they are all Christian now and have been for many generations, but the old customs linger on, especially amongst the women. They are just customs. Not religion.’

  ‘So. Of no importance. ‘

  Harold sighed. This was more difficult than he had expected. The damned rain. Because of it the subject had been raised earlier than he had planned.

  ‘They are slow to pay their taxes, they will not let their sons join the housecarls, the fyrd turns out, marches as far as the west bank of the river Stour and then goes home. They say our kings are not their kings, our queens are not their queens. To be sure of them when we need them, we must change that. What will happen today will help. If they accept you and Edith - Edith is important for they set as much store by the Queen as the King - then they will follow you and yours. Moreover, they will protect you if ever you
should need it. . .’

  ‘Are you trying to say that by going through with this flummery today I will gain the loyalty of the peoples who live west of the Stour, the Frome and the Parret.’

  ‘Yes. As far as the Cornish border.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll go through with it. But I will not participate in anything blasphemous, in Devil worship, or anything of that sort.’

  Harold said nothing but kicked his horse into a trot. Edward, housecarls, dogs, splashed on behind him.

  The rain eased a little as they approached Cerne and, once they were in sight of the great Down, crowned then with a grove of holly trees, a rainbow glowed briefly above it. They wound down the valley, following a brook towards the small nuns’ abbey and found the track lined, but sparsely, with folk from the settlements around. Some wore animal masks, others held hoops bound with the flowers of late summer, or carried sheaves of barley. A fool or two went amongst them, hitting children with a pig’s bladder tied to a stick. But there was something lethargic about it all, uncommitted, self-conscious, or so Edward thought.

  They turned left away from the brook before they reached the abbey and the small manor farm that lay around it and began to climb the shoulder of the Down. It was at this point that Edward caught sight, askew and from the side, of the giant figure cut into the turf so the white chalk shows through - the Fighting Man of Cerne.

  Then, just in the way he still does today, his right hand wielded a club aloft made from holly, the best of all trees, while in his left he held a lion skin. Between his legs his erect phallus reached almost to his navel. He is Hercules, the Holly King who vanquishes the Oak-king at midsummer and is worshipped by witches to this very day at Lammas-tide, then the first of August, now the twelfth. Almost as it were in his honour, tiny white or purplish blossoms clustered on the holly bushes that climbed the lower slopes of the hill.

  The rest of the Godwins had already come up from near Dorchester, where they had camped on Maiden Castle, the Celtic hill fort which they, and the local people, took to be holy ground. They were waiting now on the edge of the grove above the Fighting Man. Amongst them, veiled from head to foot in green, was a faceless figure of good stature but not tall. In spite of everything, Edward could not suppress a twinge of curiosity. This was the first time he had seen her. But she crossed the sward with some white-gowned women and entered the grove and all he could see of her were her feet, long-boned and white, bound in her sandals’ golden thongs.

  The first part of the ceremony, which was conducted outside the grove, was long and tedious and had almost no Christian content at all, though an old priest was in attendance who occasionally mumbled fragments of dog-Latin and crossed himself exaggeratedly and often. For the rest, some was in an old language with a few sounds and words recognisable to anyone who could speak English, but most was in the sing-song lilt of mainland Gaelic. Edward was at a loss as to whether what he was witnessing, and indeed was part of, was a Saxon ritual remembered across six centuries from the forests of Thuringia or a yet more ancient Celtic, even Goidelic liturgy. Perhaps it was an eclectic combination of both.

  He was asked to sip strange bitter concoctions from flattish clay beakers marked with spiral patterns of dots which had been exhumed from nearby barrows, the burial places of ancient kings. He would have feared poison, had not Harold with some reverence accepted them, too. He submitted to having a mixture of spittle and mud smeared on his eyes, nose and mouth, was symbolically whipped with hazel, and so on. For a time he wondered if this were all not some elaborate joke the Godwins were playing on him, but looking round them he saw nothing but serious, sober faces. Tostig, whom he had not seen since his meeting with Stigand at Bath, was among them. He was red-eyed with weeping and refused to meet his gaze.

  At last he was led into the grove itself, with Harold at his side. It seemed his future brother-in-law was playing the part of sponsor. Inside the grove the dark glossy trees were laden with pearl-like blossom and were loud with the bees that fumbled the flowers. It was all very bright and hard-edged, each detail standing out. The many shades of green pulsated against each other, the blossoms throbbed with inner life, a raindrop caught in a transient sunbeam burnt like the sun itself, the odours of a damp wood, steaming slightly, intoxicated a mind already tilted out of kilter. Worst, or best, of all he was conscious of a warm glow spreading up over his stomach and round his buttocks, emanating from his balls and prick, which he realised, with some embarrassment, was more than partially tumescent beneath his kirtle.

  In the centre of the grove there was a round space and in the centre of the space a round, flat stone, yellowed with lichen, set in the ground so it made a step about a foot high. It was about six feet across. For a yard or so round it there was a circle of grass, the only grass in the place, since nothing will grow beneath dense holly.

  Ranged in front of the stone were the women who had gone before. Edith, still in green, was set apart, framed in an arch of holly boughs, rich with blossom, the leaves glowing dark with their natural oils. All faced the stone, with their backs to Edward and the rest. At a signal, or perhaps just aware of his presence, she turned, and pulled off the green muslin hood. For a moment he could not breathe.

  Her hair was a deep red and threaded with pearls. Her skin was whiter than any skin he had ever seen before. Her forehead was high. Her eyes beneath brows shaped and darkened a little were wide-spaced and large, aquamarine in colour. Her features were small, delicate though her mouth was full-lipped, her nose straight, her chin firm, her neck a column of ivory. But most of all it was her head of flaming hair that made her almost supernaturally beautiful. She was not in the least like Tostig, as she had been in fantasies he now forgot, but, as far as her face was concerned, there was no reason not to interpret it as the countenance of a peculiarly beautiful and epicene boy on the cusp of puberty. This, not to put too fine a point on it, was much how he liked them. Certainly his first sexual experience, at the age of fourteen, had been with just such an angelic form.

  She stretched towards him a hand, long-boned and white like her feet, and her mouth spread in a smile that did not reach her eyes. He placed a gold ring taken from his mother’s treasury upon her ring finger, and submitted while she did the same for him. He could not repress a shudder at the touch of her fingers. She then led him by the hand out from under the holly arch, to the rim of the stone.

  He was now heavily under the influence of the potions he had imbibed which were possibly aphrodisiac, and certainly, being distillations of certain mushroom juices, conducive both to dionysiac behaviour and hallucinations. To all this she now added alcohol. One of her acolytes handed her a jewelled gold cup. His fevered mind recalled that he was not that many leagues from Glastonbury and in an area where visions if not the actual reality of the Holy Grail had been recorded. She bade, indeed made him, drink it off in one draught. It was in fact nothing more exotic than cider, but cider kept in cool cellars for a year or two and therefore clear and very strong, and possibly again laced with additives designed to exaggerate its intoxicating effect. And the fact that it was cider had its own significance for by it this being of supreme and palpable corporeality and evanescent beauty was identifying herself with the apple-goddess.

  Indeed, a second acolyte now brought to her a bough taken from an apple tree, laden with apples. She indicated one, it was plucked. A flint knife was used to cut it, but not in the normal way, from sepal to stem, but in the way that is often tabooed - across its equator, so that when it fell in two it presented a cross-section of the five seed-caves in the form of a star, with each pip cut cross-wise. Tabooed in part because each seed cave now had an emblematic, schematized likeness to a female vulva. She gave him one half and ate the other, watching him with serious eyes to make sure he did likewise. Thus she was Frigg, Holda, Held, Hild, Goda or Ostara for those who remembered their Saxon, Germanic origins and Rhiannon, Arianrhod, Cerridwen, Blodeuwedd, Danu or Anna for the Celts. And he? For a moment he was any hero or god
mothered by the goddess, seduced by the goddess, sacrificed by the goddess.

  The acolytes now closed round them. Unfastening Edith’s robe down the front two of them drew it back like a curtain, while others began to undo his clothes. His head swam, his heart pounded. The fact was that he had never before cast his eyes on a female naked form, naked that is apart from her golden sandals. He was torn in two - by disgust and desire -- disgust mainly at the sight of her flame-red pubic hair. He had never supposed that women had hair there, too, indeed he took her to be some sort of monster because she had. And now, forming itself out of the mist and holly behind her, a figure slowly materialized and the disgust this time was unmitigated ... a ram’s head, with ram’s horns on a man covered in furs, with a rampant phallus reaching up from between his legs, he lorded it over them both, over all.

  Illusion or representation? Edward never found out, but if it was the latter then the Godwins had gone too far. He knew, whichever it was, this was the devil and he was about the devil’s business. Filled with the rage that comes over men in battle and which he himself had never felt before, clutching what garments they had managed to undo about him, he tore through the circle of women, then the small crowd beyond, and so to where his own men and their horses remained at the bottom of the hill. Lightning flickered, thunder crashed, and the rain swept down again.

  Up in the glade the women did up Edith’s dress.

  ‘Damn,’ she said, with the rain streaming down her face. And then: ‘Fuck!’

  Later, much later, when Tostig was married and had returned to court to be Edward’s chief adviser and only real friend, he told Edward the truth of the whole matter -- which Edward had partly guessed.

  ‘They knew you could not lust after women in the normal way of things, but they thought if they fed you love potions, and created a numinous ambience, then you might be aroused at least once for Edith. And once would be enough, especially in front of witnesses.’