The Last English King

by Julian Rathbone

  Hearing of the feast, and indeed probably seeing the coils of smoke that drifted into the hazy sky, people began to come in from all around, but all with some contribution -- a skinful of mead, a bag full of pasties, or drums, pipes, rebecs and the rest to add to the growing cacophony.

  Through all this they all kept almost mum on one subject alone, though it must have weighed with all of them. No one mentioned William or the threatened invasion, though they knew it could not be far off. The harvest was over and most of the men would be marching back to Sussex to rejoin the fyrd within the next week or so, and of course all knew that Walt, now a major thegn in his own right, was one of the king’s innermost bodyguard, and likely to be made an earl if all turned out well.

  Night came -- the sun a big red disk through the mauve haze, the sky jade-green above it then deepening blue, the air filled with swifts, swallows and martins, now fledging their second broods, the rooks swirling back into the tree-tops and the buzzards and kites either relishing the thermals above the fire or the smell of hot meat soaring to where their wings caught the sun, even after the last sliver had dipped behind the hills on the far side of the Vale. A moment to pause in, to sit on the warm daisy-strewn grass and chew at beef bleeding or charred, swig ale and talk of what had happened during the day, of feasts in the past and feasts to come. Only the children still scampered about in tireless games of chase, though the infants slept.

  Then the moon rose, huge and orange in the east, just past full, someone threw more branches on the big fire and sparks rolled upwards on a billow of smoke, and from the big cart still on the other side of the field a pair of pipes wailed a spiralling, twisting, dancing tune into the air and drums fell into a beat that at first followed the pipes then drove them. Pair by pair, sometimes falling into lines or squares, sometimes remaining as couples, some staggering wearily or drunkenly, others quick, grasping the moment they had been waiting for, the whole throng, maybe now as many as five hundred, filled the field and the dancing began.

  Until then the feast, the party had been communal - a celebration of their Lord’s and Lady’s wedding, an affirmation of the hierarchies and pecking orders, of the freedoms and restraints that bound them all together - now it became something different, wilder, unrestrained, a swirling, floating world through which each sought in their own way the ecstasies that dancing, drink and love-making can bring.

  For a time Erica and Walt joined in, but he was not the greatest dancer in the world, was too content to sway back and forth on his heels, watch her twist and turn, her profile flash from left to right, her loosened hair swing so occasionally it touched his cheek, the way the now dropping pleats of her simple dress flattened with her movements to the curve of her thigh or breast and the sweat spread from beneath her arms. Presently she stopped, grinned, took his hand.

  ‘Enough of this. It’s their party now,’ and gently but firmly she pulled him towards the fields that filled the lower slopes of the hill.

  They were not alone, other couples already threaded the hawthorn or, having got to the top, wandered down the hollows between the ramparts, looking for a place where the tussocky grass provided a softer bed above the chalk, or a spot that conferred a minimum of privacy, but Erica would have none of that. She took him through the two deep ditches, over the last rampart and on to the long rising hump-back of the top of the hill. The grass here was cropped short and sheep drifted away from them as they approached, though still the fragrance of thyme after a hot day lay heavily across it all.

  At the highest point she stopped and embraced him again with a long slow kiss, then broke away and made him turn slowly through the compass to look north first across the Vale towards Shaftesbury and then down into the field below where the big fire glowed and showered sparks when a bough fell into a cave of heat whose orange and red brightened and waned with each passing breath of air. The muted sounds of music, laughing and singing, the thud of the drums was a distant presence.

  Then west to where there was still a warm glow in the sky and the planet of love burned like a green spark above the broken hills; then south where the river Stour was a silver snake through the darkness of woods, and the square hill of Hod, once a Roman camp, was caught in one of its loops; and all of it lit by the huge moon shining from the east, more silver now than orange as she climbed into the clear sky, ruling the night far more surely than ever the sun rules the day. Erica, still holding his hand, offered her a shy, slight curtsey and, almost without knowing it, he found he too had bowed his head and as he did so his whole being -- heart, mind and soul, from the top of his head where his hair stood on end to his curling toes -- was flooded with an ancient joy.

  She made him take off his clothes then lifted her dress over her head. He wanted to take her in his arms, take her to the ground, but she took both his hands in her palms and gently made him go on to his knees and then his back. She straddled him, her knees on either side of his thighs, and reaching forward and down, slowly caressed him, neck, shoulders, arms and chest, while he reached up with his hands, cupped her breasts, and stroked her sides and hips, and, as she came in closer, her buttocks too. At last, by shifting a little this way and that, and using her fingers and encouraging him to use his, she took him inside her, with all the gentleness both could muster. For a moment or two they were perfectly still then her head came down almost to his face and she whispered:

  ‘There, then. That hardly hurt at all.’

  Then she began to ride him, slowly at first, then more and more fiercely, calling him to hold on, which he did, by biting his lips until they bled, gouging into the turf with his nails and then, remembering something Daffydd had told him, counting in thirteens up to three hundred and thirty-eight and then down again until she threw her head up to the Moon and let out a long howling cry.

  Almost he felt excluded, but after that she came down and curled herself up into a ball between his knees and his chin, before starting a slower, gentler love-making, much of it marked with gurgles of laughter as well as sighs and groans, until the moon began to sink on the other side of the sphere they inhabited, the eastern horizon brightened and the sun chased off the chill that had preceded the dawn. Larks sang and swifts switchbacked silently over the tussocks and mole-hills around them. Not far off a shepherd’s dog barked. They pulled on their clothes, kissed once more and . . .

  ‘Catch me if you can!’

  And she was off down the slopes, leaping like a deer, a white hind across the ditches between the ramparts.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  The stiff breeze which had chopped up the sea the night before was from the west and, early in the morning, a ship’s boy - small, Arab, skin he colour of cinnamon, bare-foot beneath a yellow singlet and a striped headband - was banging on Amaranta’s street door and calling for Quint. The master had concluded his business quicker than he had expected and now wanted to take advantage of the fair wind: if the travellers who had booked deck-room on his vessel were not on board within an hour, he’d sail without them.

  Quint and Walt travelled light, but not Taillefer and his children. Their horse and mule were still stabled half a mile away near the city’s inland gate and had to be fetched. It would not be possible to take them on the boat but they needed to get his trunks and bags of tricks, his harp and the rest down to the quayside -- it was that or hire porters who, trained by experience to recognise a crisis when they saw one, would double their charges. The animals arrived within the half hour, were loaded in fifteen more minutes, and all then bustled, ran and trotted down the cobbled alleys, spilling the odd vegetable stall as they went, and made it on to the quay with a good five minutes to spare. All? Amaranta, with two of her maids came too.

  The wind was indeed brisk, plucking at their cloaks and skirts, filling the flapping, half-hoisted sail and, even in the harbour, rocking the boat. Gulls cruised on it before dropping to scoop up scraps thrown from the fishing port on the other side of the harbour where the women were already gutting and fillet
ing the fish from the nights’ catch. Ropes slapped against the masts of this and other boats moored nearby. Beyond the moles the sea was almost black so deep was its blue beneath the white horses that stormed across it.

  Taillefer watched his goods hoisted on to the deck by means of a temporary derrick then came over to Amaranta.

  ‘Sell you a good pack-horse and a mule?’ he offered.

  ‘Daddeel’ Adeliza exclaimed, taking his hand. ‘After all our dear friend’s hospitality, the least you could do is give them to her.’

  Amaranta smiled.

  ‘You could auction them,’ she suggested, looking round at the small crowd of traders, stevedores, pedlars and passers-by.

  And when he did just that, she made the highest bid and insisted that he take the three gold pieces her oldest servant took from the household purse she carried for her mistress.

  ‘It’s a fair price,’ she said, ‘though I shall make a profit if I sell them on at a proper horse fair.’

  That moment of awkwardness now, that always comes when farewells have to be made and one is not quite sure how soon the boat will sail or the caravan move off. Walt, feeling heavy in his heart and filled with doubts, wandered off down the quay, communing with himself about the voyage to come. To his fear of death by drowning there was now added a sudden and recognised nostalgia for hearth and home.

  He heard English spoken and looking down found he was above a small open trader, a long-boat really, not much more, a bit fatter in the beam perhaps, and higher in the prow and stem than the war-boats, but a fifth of the size of the Arab galley bound for Joppa that he was booked on. It was even smaller than the boat that had taken them from Bosham to St Valery back in ’65, since this lacked a cabin for the master. It too, like the Arab freighter, was loading bales of cotton, though he could see below them boxes of salted fish and mountain-cured hams. Up in the stern, perched upside down on a bale, there was a tiny tub of a row-boat, no more than a coracle.

  ‘We could do with another hand, though,’ were the words he had heard.

  ‘Another hand and a change of wind,’ came the reply.

  The accents were those of Wessex, mid-Wessex, Southampton perhaps. And they were English all right -- a podgy man with slightly protuberant eyes, wearing cotton or linen dyed blue and impregnated with oil, had spoken first. His mate was shorter and more compact, had ginger hair and a melancholy cast about his mouth.

  With heart pounding, mouth suddenly dry, Walt hunkered on the quay above them.

  ‘One hand is all I have,’ he said. ‘But it may serve to earn my passage back to England . . .’

  They looked up at him.

  ‘Have you ever worked a boat like this?’ the master asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Walt lied, ‘how else would I be here?’

  They came to a quick agreement, one tenth of all profits made between Sidé and Southampton for Walt. Light-hearted now, even lightheaded, he made his way back to the others. Quint was impatient: ‘We’re sailing in five minutes,’ he called.

  ‘But not with me. I’ve travelled enough. There’s an English boat up there. It’ll get me back where I belong or drown me first . . .’

  Explanations, expostulations, resignation, thanks especially from Walt to the travellers: to Adeliza for making his stump heal finally and cleanly, to Alain and even Taillefer for the magic of their illusions and the greater mystery of their harp’s music, and, above all, to Quint: ‘For looking after me when I could not look after myself, for talking to me and listening to me, for helping me to --’

  His voice faded.

  ‘To understand?’ Quint supplied. ‘I think you’ll find it’s been a healing experience.’

  He used the Greek word - therapeutic.

  ‘But we won’t hear the story of the great battle,’ Alain complained.

  ‘When does your English boat sail?’ Amaranta asked.

  ‘When the wind changes to the east.’

  ‘Then I shall hear it,’ she said, with some satisfaction.

  By now the Arab master, showing signs of serious impatience, was urging the travellers on board.

  Kisses and handshakes, embraces and slaps on the back all round and an especially warm hug from Adeliza and up the gangway they went. The hausers were slipped, the sail hoisted fully and the reefs shaken out. One bank of oars on each side to take them between the moles and then the sweeps were shipped, the sail bellied and all Walt could see of the friends who had been so close was the scarf Adeliza waved from high up on the stem, by the helmsman. He thought for a moment of where they were going, of the Holy Land and the Orient beyond, of the long trails across deserts beneath star-studded skies, of the illusions Taillefer and Alain would perform and the scrapes these would get them into and out of, of Quint conversing with philosophers and men of science or knowledge, Arab, Tartar and those in Cathay, and of the sweet harp music they would take with them wherever they went, the music Adeliza would dance to, and his eyes filled and for a moment he regretted his decision.

  But then he thought of home, of Iwerne and Erica and a greater regret and longing filled him. When his eyes cleared the ship was a speck on the eastern horizon.

  ‘Come,’ Amaranta said, ‘rest for a time and then tell me the story of the battle.’

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  On hearing the news of William’s landing at Pevensey we marched as soon and as quickly as we possibly could and made it from York to London, Waltham Abbey, in four-and-a-half days - a few hours less than the march north had been. But that was only the vanguard, the first thousand men, Harold’s personal bodyguard, and at their head, always with him, his five remaining closest comitati, companions - Daffydd, Rip, Shir, Timor –

  ‘And you.’

  ‘And me.’

  During the next two days a further two thousand fully armed housecarls under Leofwine and Gyrth came in, with another five hundred, mostly suffering from minor injuries, trickling in behind them.

  What was to be done?

  The choice was clear. Stay close to London and wait for reinforcements or move south now and contain William on the coast until they arrived. Many in Harold’s war council argued for staying put, or at least for moving no further than across the Thames to protect London, taking up a position in the North Downs and waiting to see what William would do. But this left the initiative with William. While London would indeed be a valuable prize, he could just as well move west along the coast, taking his fleet with him, from port to port, right up to Southampton. From there he could attack Winchester -- which, as far as Harold was concerned, was as important as London, especially as that was where the treasury remained.

  Meanwhile, as the days relentlessly succeeded each other, reports came in of the truly ruthless ravaging William was carrying on, coupled with pleas front the burghers of the Cinque Ports that Harold should come to their rescue before they, too, fell to the invader.

  On the morning of the eleventh Harold made up his mind. His men had rested for nearly a week; Edwin and Morcar were believed to have left York. The final factor which tipped the balance was his intimate knowledge of the countryside north of Hastings.

  He called his leaders together in Waltham’s small mead-hall. He pulled a piece of charcoal from the cold hearth and hunkered to draw on the unglazed tiles in front of it. They all crowded around, the front ones also bending or even kneeling so those behind could look over their shoulders. Harold looked up and around - clear blue eyes earnest but sure - sure of himself, his brothers, and his men.

  ‘Many of you will know the place I am going to describe,’ he began. ‘It’s about six miles north of Hastings. The road south through the forest from Ton Bridge and London meets the old coast road on the crest of the Down . . .’ With broad sweeps using the side of the charcoal he indicated the Andredesweald up under his knees then showed the coast road running east-west in front of it and the cross-roads with a spur turning south towards the town.

  ‘After the place where the roads meet and become
one, the one road runs along a spur that runs out from the Down and then rises into a round hill above the plain. The road skirts the top of this hill before dropping down to Hastings. The hill has coombes on each side of it with brooks running through them and the land below it is heavy and marshy. In front of it the ground drops less steeply though the last two hundred yards to the top have quite a slope on them. On the crest, just west of the highest point there is a solitary apple tree.

  ‘Right. This afternoon we leave here and we aim to reach that apple-tree, which will be our meeting-place, by night-fall tomorrow, Friday, the thirteenth,’ he gave a hasty little shudder, but pressed on, ‘and we will camp in line of battle along that ridge. I shall be in the centre, close to the tree, Gyrth to my right, Leofwine to the left, with all our companions and housecarls about us. Meanwhile the fyrd will be told to meet us there too. The first to arrive will occupy the wings of our position and the rest will form up behind the housecarls. We shall leave guides and messengers here at Waltham to tell the northerners where we are, commanding them to make as much haste as they can to join us.

  ‘That hill is so strong William will not be able to shift us from it. Hopefully he will see this is so and not make the attempt. But if he does we’ll hold him. The battle then might end in a stale-mate, but it is we who will be receiving reinforcements to replace our losses, whereas he’ll be stuck with his. Once our numbers exceed his by half as many again, which they will within a week, we shall offer him terms, demand hostages, indemnities for the damage he has done, a renunciation of his claim to what is not his and let him go . . . Any questions?’