The Last English King

by Julian Rathbone

  Harold meanwhile was becoming peevish with impatience, for he could see, indeed we all could, how the Norsemen on the hill were arming and forming up; the Land Waster was already plucked from among the tents and was being brought to a point halfway down the hill to where Hardrada and Tostig, struggling in haste into their armour, were waiting for it. Indeed, as moment by moment we lost the first advantage of surprise, Harold himself drew his sword and made for the bridge. We had to restrain him and it was Wulfric, almost as big as this Berserker, who plucked up a fallen axe and strode on to the bridge.

  Now maybe it was that this Berserker recognized in Wulfric an adversary with a strength and indeed a like-minded meanness that could spell danger, for he descended to an unlikely ruse. Carelessly, it seemed, he set aside his shield as Wulfric set foot on the timbers, and with a snarling laugh leapt this way and that, dodging unprotected as he now was the sweeps of Wulfric’s weapon. But his left-hand was now free and from some pocket or pouch he filled it with sand and, as Wulfric came at him with his fastest and most dangerous charge, he flung the sand into Wulfric’s eyes, and sidestepping simultaneously tripped him as he passed. We all heard the thud of his body on the planks. The Berserker quickly took advantage of his stumbling and with one mighty blow hewed off his head. He kicked the body into the stream which now flowed with blood, and held the head up for us all to see - and by some freak of nature we heard a high keening note issue from his lifeless mouth before his eyes turned up in death. The Berserker tossed the head into the water so it actually bounced on Wulfric’s back as his body floated down stream.

  ‘That,’ said Daffydd, who of late had become closer than friendly with Wulfric, ‘was out of order. A long way out of order.’

  And he slipped away, upstream into the willows and alders that hung aslant the brook. Presently he reappeared, this time in a large swill-tub he had perhaps already spotted near a deserted pig-sty. This he punted towards the bridge, using an eight foot ash spear he had snatched from one of our fyrd. Because of a bend in the river just above the bridge, he was approaching the Berserker almost from behind, at least unless the Norseman took a glance over his left shoulder. Seeing what Daffydd was up to we all tried to engage the Berserker’s attention by throwing stones and so on, and Timor himself danced on to the end of the bridge on the right-hand side, hurling taunts and nimbly dodging the sweeps of that terrible axe.

  The swill-tub came nearer.

  Now Daffydd must get it right - no easy thing, for if he was to use his spear as a weapon he could not longer use it to control the passage of his craft. But somehow he managed. As the current took him directly beneath the Berserker our host fell silent and for a second or two the giant looked around him in all directions, suddenly sensing danger but unaware of where it came from.

  He was astride two planks.

  Daffydd thrust through the gap with all his might and his spear entered the man from below, just between his balls and his shit-hole, and the broad leaf of the spear-head went on, up into his entrails. Daflrydd released the spear’s haft and drifted out the other side, spattered a little, but not much, with the Berserker’s blood and shit . . .

  The thing was the man was not yet dead, indeed died slowly over ten minutes or so during which he remained thus impaled and held upright by the spear and as we all rushed past him on to the other side first someone took off his helmet, and then others spat on him as we passed, and pulled his beard and long red hair. He remained, impaled and upright, a dreadful figure, right through the rest of that day and into the next when the crows and kites came down and worked their way into the places our missiles and weapons could not reach.

  Meanwhile, seeing the Norsemen were in line, Harold called for his horse and beckoned to Helgrim and me to accompany him up the hill with his standards but also with Albert, carrying a flag of truce. The Norsemen were drawn up in a formation they favoured for defence, namely a half square whose full angle was at the lowest point nearest the enemy, and in that angle flew the Land Waster. Seeing us pull up just beyond axe-throwing distance, Hardrada and Tostig pushed through the line and came to meet us.

  Harold addressed himself first to Tostig.

  ‘Brother,’ he called, ‘there is no need for this. Four days ago you broke and destroyed the army of the north. Edwin and Morcar disobeyed my orders and have no army or following. Leave this Norseman now, bring what men you can call your own, fight at my side against William, and you will be as you were, the Earl of Northumbria.’

  The colour flew to Tostig’s face.

  ‘Brother, you have had a year to say this in. It’s too late now to try to make amends.’

  ‘Tosty ... in the summer I visited our mother. She begged me to do what I could to bring us all, all her sons, through so we could meet again and feast together as we used to. For her sake, leave these intruders and come back to where you belong.’

  But Tostig, still handsome for all he had filled out and his cheeks were red, still with his coarse straw-coloured hair pulled back and fastened behind his neck, turned away. Pulling on his helmet he pushed back through the front rank of armed men to where the Land Waster had been planted.

  Hardrada himself now looked down the slope, which put his head on a level with Harold’s although Harold was mounted.

  ‘You’ve offered Tostig an earldom. What will you give me?’

  But Harold was now filled with anger and sorrow. He looked at Hardrada from head to foot and back again.

  ‘Seven feet of English earth,’ he said. ‘And that’s more than you are worth.’

  The battle went on almost to nightfall. In numbers the armies were almost matched, though probably we had a slight advantage having won the fight on the west side of the river. They had the slope in their favour. Both sides were tired - we because we had marched so far in so short a time, they because of the battle four days earlier. It’s not just the weight of your weapons, and the mail on your back - it’s the men you killed and maimed, the ghosts that still hover around waiting to see you take your turn and join them. That’s what the Norsemen felt. And maybe we did too, not three weeks later, when we got to Hastings.

  Anyway, it was tough slogging. Both sides knew they had to win. Remember, we had the river at our backs and the slope against us. If we had broken it would have been worse than Fulford. And there was no escape for them for we were between them and their ships. They did not give an inch and we did not let up our attack for to do so would have invited a charge from them. It was just get in there with axe or sword, and kill or be killed. Harold was everywhere, rallying the faint-hearted, urging on yet another attack and, of course, Helgrim and I went with him with the standards. Not easy holding a twelve-foot pole with your left hand, fighting off the buggers when they come near with your sword in the right hand and trying to hear what the boss says or tells you to do all the time.

  Towards dusk, no earlier, the sun still shone from behind us and in the Norsemen’s eyes, Harold sent Albert for the fyrd who were now on or near the bridge, on both banks. They came streaming across, whooping and shouting, waving their billhooks and spears, loosing off their arrows and hurling their axes and rocks. In fact, although it was probably a fluke, their intervention was decisive, for at a moment when Hardrada, just behind the first rank of his men, removed his helmet to mop his brow, a well-slung stone hit him on the forehead and he went down. Probably at that point he was just concussed, but they could not bring him round and soon the word spread through the Norse, encouraged by taunting shouts from our men, that their king was dead.

  Kingship is a powerful thing. Tostig did his best to rally them but the fight had gone out of the Vikings . . .

  And that’s about it. Only Tostig fought on, eventually it seemed Tostig only. With dead and dying on the floor around him we all stood back. He stood, bleeding from ten or twenty wounds, and, dropping his shield and sword pulled off his helmet. Harold went to help him but before he could reach him his brother fell. Nevertheless Harold held him there, p
ut his arms round his shoulders and Tostig’s head on his breast.

  Tostig had two things to say as he died: ‘I told you I’d be back.’ Then, looking up at the Fighting Man I held above him: ‘That’s a good flag, Harold. I like it.’

  Harold let Olaf, Hardrada’s son, sail back to Norway with what was left of his father’s army. They came in two hundred ships. It needed only twenty-four for the return journey. Tostig was buried with honour in York Minster. Hardrada got his seven feet out there where he fell. And while all this went on the army, which had marched all but two hundred miles and fought the hardest battle yet fought on English soil, rested up. By Christ we were tired. And we had suffered. Of the four thousand housecarls who marched from Waltham Abbey less than three thousand would ever be properly fit enough again to fight, though all but the five hundred or so dead made it to Hastings. Wulfric was gone, Helmric too - killed by a Saxon axe thrown by someone who thought he was on the other side. Little Albert we never found -- but there were three thousand bodies . . .

  Two days later, on the twenty-seventh, William sailed from St Valery, landing the next day, in the evening, at Pevensey. Three days later, on the Sunday, six days after Stamford Bridge, we got the news. . .

  PART VII: And All That

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Late next morning Quint, Taillefer and Walt took a walk around Sidé. It was a beautiful town, filling the coastline between two headlands half a mile or more apart. Its new turreted walls, faced with a reddish-brown rock, linked the headlands in a deep semicircle and dominated the narrow plain of cotton-fields and orchards. Beyond the plain the sheer timbered mountains climbed from foothills clad with olive groves and vineyards to high but not distant peaks.

  They walked down a short cobbled path into a town which had a pleasant, ramshackle air about it since every twenty years or so it was sacked by pirates: elegant parks and gardens alternated with patches of wasteland where wild flowers bloomed beneath the cypresses and cedars the roots of which had cracked the marble pavings; lizards basked in the warm sunshine or flashed across parterres whose roses had reverted to the briars on which they had been grafted. Narrow alleys beneath lines of washing that were almost dry in the warm and balmy air took them away from the quays. They bought small brown buns crusted with brown sugar from the sugar-cane fields, grapes, figs and slabs of a sticky sweetmeat made from pounded hazel nuts, sesame oil and honey. Taillefer had his leather bottles filled - one with spring water, the other with wine.

  Presently they came to the old forum. Many of the temples and colonnades still stood, but brambles and broom had invaded the area, much of the marble and brick had been quarried to build or repair the streets they had passed through and almost all the statues were overturned. The more fragile extremities -- noses, hands and penises - had been broken off. Nevertheless, in a little artificial grotto, a nymphaeum, hidden by wild shrubs, protected by gratings, they found three marble Graces holding hands above a still pool of dark water. The two outer ones faced inwards, displaying callipygous loveliness, the middle one faced outwards and looked down at the turning ankle of her companion. The marble was honey-coloured, slightly veined. A small branch with three gold quinces still attached had been left on the nearer side of the pool and was clearly an offering. Sweetly mingled reverence and desire stirred in the breasts of all three men.

  On the inland side of the forum rose what was left of the ancient theatre. A half-drum, it was still a substantial structure - the curved wall terraced on the inside above shadowy galleries, the straight one the stage-wall which had been for the most part tumbled not by Vandals but by earthquake. Almost all the facing marble had been stripped away, but the huge mortared conglomerate bricks the Graeco-Romans used for such places had resisted the efforts of later generations to pull the thing apart. The three men climbed the terraces and settled themselves on the topmost step from which they could see the quays, and beyond them, across the emerald green and then the deep blue-beyond-blue to violet to mauve sea, dotted with the triangular sails of fishing boats and small cargo-vessels, an unblemished horizon. To the north the mountains, the high peaks of the Taurus and -

  ‘By God,’ exclaimed Quint. ‘There’s snow!’

  And indeed there was - pure, unblemished, as brightly white as only the first mountain snow of Autumn can be.

  They laid their food out on a slab of broken marble that the looters had not bothered with and began to eat and drink - but slowly for there was no hurry and plenty to enjoy. After the first mouthfuls of wine and prompted by the golden quinces in the shrine to the Graces, Walt fell into a reverie, almost a trance.

  Walt dreamt. A procession -- no, not really a procession, more a crowd of people, followed a chalk track between fields, through a beech wood. Sunshine filtered by the beech leaves dappled the chalk with flakes of light and purple shadow. Pipes played and sticks rattled on skin-covered drums. Walt was near the front, with flowers in his hair and round his neck. Behind him Bur, the strongest man in Iwerne, carried a ten-foot pole of oak, also wreathed with flowers beneath a floral crown. Streamers of coloured cloth blew in the slight breeze. Walt wore a brilliant green cloak over his saffron shirt, gold round his neck, gold fastening the cloak, gold armbands, and gold inlay on the clasp of his belt, boots that shone.

  They were all there, everyone who lived, worked and served in Iwerne, all in their best clothes or any rate clothes washed and stretched to dry on bushes and fences the day before. They all carried food or drink -- the strongest men with firkins of ale on their shoulders or leather bottles filled with mead. Two of them carried between them, just, the eighteen-month-old boar they had slaughtered that morning - gutted now but otherwise still whole; two more who worked the manor’s forest had roebucks slung across their shoulders. As well as these, there were hens, ducks and geese: all still alive - some carried by their feet, but the geese stupidly waddling along with the rest, flapping clipped wings to keep up. The chattering children carried big baskets filled with loaves of bread, cheeses and cakes made from barley and honey. Their elders had to tell them off for picking at them. All in all there were over a hundred for many had come in from nearby villages and farmsteads. Even Bran, the King of the Charcoal-burners, had turned up with five of his blackened fellows, he with his antlered mask on his head.

  At the brook where Erica and Walt had been betrothed ten years before, the elders of Shroton waited for them, with Erica’s uncle and aunt and cousins from Childe Okeford, the village that lay round the other side of the hill. Walt and Bur, the pipes and drums, and the older people from Iwerne solemnly crossed the small narrow bridge to be greeted with exchanged embraces, while the rest of the party swarmed down the banks, splashed through the stream and scrambled up the other side.

  Now the track climbed a little through fields from which the corn had already been harvested and Walt could see clear across to the other village and farmstead nestled beneath Hambledon, and there, at the gate, still a half-mile away, dressed in white with her yellow hair bound up with a gold fillet, her figure framed in a great arch of apple-boughs bearing fruit, was Erica.

  ‘We ought to get down to the market quite soon,’ Taillefer remarked. He spat grape-pips into the palm of his hand, disappeared them, rediscovered them in Walt’s ear. ‘If we’re going to get the sea bass madame asked for.’

  ‘Where’s our Walt gone, then,’ he went on, passing his palm in front of Walt’s unfocused eyes.

  Walt shook himself, laughed -- a rarity since the battle.

  ‘Just day-dreaming.’

  Quint now had his restless eye on the quay.

  ‘There’s a boat just in,’ he said, ‘flying the Mussulman crescent. And since it came from the west it’s fair to think its destination lies eastwards. To Sidon or Tyre, perhaps, or even Joppa. It’s worth looking into, at any rate. We cannot trespass on our hostess’s hospitality for much longer. We should leave before she throws us out.’

  Walt felt a tremor of doubt.

  ‘You a
re still set on getting to the Holy Land?’

  ‘I think so. I think the places where the Mountebank performed his stuff are worth a look, don’t you?’ Quint turned to Taillefer. ‘You may pick up a hint or two.’

  ‘Oh, I think I have it all off pat. Except perhaps the Feeding of the Five Thousand.’

  ‘Get a grip on that and we’re made men.’

  They finished their meal, stretched and yawned a bit, except Walt who was now bothered by various conflicting perceptions and emotions. He chewed on the nails of his one hand, but not, Quint noted, on the now unblemished stump at the end of his right arm.

  ‘Right then,’ said Taillefer at last. ‘A sea-bass for Madame Amaranta, and perhaps we’ll book a passage on that boat.’

  ‘Some fennel would go well with the fish.’ Quint began the climb down the terraced stone benches. ‘Walt, something’s bothering you.’ Walt paused on the step above him.

  ‘You just called our hostess Amaranta,’ he said.

  ‘It’s her name.’

  ‘Not Jessica, not Theodora nor Junipera?’

  ‘Certainly not. Whatever gave you the idea . . .? Ah, I see.’ Quint slapped his brow with his palm. ‘Theodora because at Nicaea she said she was a gift from God to us, that I understand. But I do not recall she said that was her name. And Jessica? Surely you cannot think . . .?’

  ‘I thought Theodora . . . Amaranta . . . was the murderous, adulterous Jewess in disguise. She who followed us out of Nicomedia, keened in the night and stole the gold from your back-pack.’

  They were now in the theatre’s orchestra. Quint leant against a fallen piece of masonry.

  ‘You seem to have got into a frightful muddle about it all. There was no Jessica. The wife of David ben-Shimon, who dealt in lapis lazuli, was a gentile. The woman who followed us into the mountains above Nicomedia and keened is a figure of your imagination. I do not know who stole my gold but I doubt it was a woman.’