Conqueror tt-2

by Stephen Baxter

  'I grow sick of this place,' Orm said, his face tight. 'The stink of compromise. The hypocrisy. These fools who follow prophecies like gullible old women. And I am sick,' he said harshly, 'of your brother.'

  'Well, I sympathise with that. What will you do?'

  'I'll go back to Normandy. In training the English thegns' sons to fight I consider I have discharged my debt to Harold, and I tire of the disdain of these flabby men. At least with William you get a good clean war, and I am respected by his followers.' He studied her. 'Are you shocked that I'm thinking of joining the enemies of Harold?'

  She looked into her heart. 'No. In fact,' she said slowly, coming to the decision even as she spoke, 'I'm thinking of going to join Tostig myself. My father was his thegn after all. I have a place there. Everything is too murky here. And I too would like to get away from my brother, after today.'

  'So we are separating.'

  'It's a year of war, I think. Not of love. When this is over, one way or the other-'

  'We'll find each other.'

  But she wondered if that could be true.

  He turned, and in a moment was gone into the dark, narrow streets. She returned to her lodging-house, and prepared for bed alone.

  In the middle of the night she was woken by Sihtric. He had received a new letter from Ibn Sharaf in al-Andalus. Sihtric brandished this before her, his face round in the spectral moonlight that filtered through the unglazed window. 'He has seen it,' he breathed. 'The comet. It has appeared in the southern skies of Iberia…'

  Too impatient to light a lamp, he had her throw on a cloak, and they went outside to study the letter by the moon's glow.

  'The comet was faint – and perhaps not visible from our latitude, or under our murky English skies. But it first appeared in March, just as the Menologium promised. It has come true! Now the empire of the north longs to be born-and Harold must do as I say.'

  Godgifu felt chilled at this talk. 'You are arrogant, Sihtric. A priest who would command a king.'

  Sihtric said, 'But even Harold is a mere tool to enable the fulfilment of the grand scheme of the Menologium.' His eyes were bright in the eerie light.

  Not for the first time she wondered at the motives of the agent who was truly behind all this: the author of the Menologium, the Weaver. What kind of being was he, who dreamed of establishing an Aryan nation in the north?

  And then she saw the King himself, standing by the wall of the church. Harold's tall figure was unmistakable, as he stood with close companions, a couple of housecarls and an archbishop or two, and peered up at the sky, revealed for the first time in days.

  She looked up, the way they were looking. And her skin prickled with cold.

  'Ah,' Sihtric breathed, staring at Harold. 'He looks every inch a king. See how the gold thread of his tunic glitters in the moonlight.'

  Godgifu looked at Sihtric. In his grimy nightshirt, his tonsured hair tousled, he looked oddly vulnerable, much younger. 'You really are unworldly,' she said. 'You have obsessed over this comet all your life, and yet you don't even look up at the sky, do you? Sihtric, that isn't moonlight.'

  Now he looked up, and saw a glowing silver cloud suspended in the sky, with tails like lengths of hair washing away from it. He gasped, and mumbled a prayer.

  Godgifu explored her own emotions. For all Sihtric's elaborate interpretations she had never really believed in the Menologium. But with the comet in the sky, this was no longer just an intriguing game played out by an eccentric young priest. The prophecy's fundamental truth had been demonstrated. Everything was different now, she thought.

  And while Lunden lay silent under the comet's unnatural light, to north and south fleets were being assembled, armies massed, vast forces stirring. She wondered if the Weaver was content.

  XIII

  On his return to Normandy, Orm went back to the household of his last Norman employer, a man called Guy fitz Gilbert.

  Fitz Gilbert was a minor landowner and third son, seeking his own fortune from William's latest campaign, as Norman nobles had done for generations. But, through layers of hierarchy, fitz Gilbert owed his allegiance to Robert Count of Mortain, who was one of William's half-brothers through his mother the tanner's daughter. And soon after his return in May, Orm found himself moved to the household of Robert himself. He got an increased purse and there was some kind of compensation for fitz Gilbert – and more responsibility for Orm.

  Orm had no illusions about his capabilities. He knew he was a good warrior, and had commanded units of ten or a dozen men, but he was out of his depth with generals. But, decisive, intelligent and, more important, literate, he was recognised as able to contribute to the vast logistical exercise that consumed the whole of Normandy that summer: the preparations for invasion.

  So Orm was in a position to watch, fascinated, as William drew up his plans against England.

  William first had to persuade his own counts to follow him. Few of them had even ventured across the ocean before. England was strong and formidably organised, and Harold was well known to be a competent general. An expedition against England would be orders of magnitude more difficult than an adventure against Maine or Brittany.

  But if England was powerful it was also rich. And it was the wealth to be won in this gamble of a lifetime that seduced William's warriors. One by one, strong-armed, cajoled and bribed by William, they came round.

  Meanwhile William sent embassies to the Pope in Rome. In an elaborate scheme to seek the Pope's backing for the war, William was able to point to Edward's promise of the throne, and Harold's own broken oath; Harold was a perjuring usurper. Not only that, he was portrayed as complicit in the crimes of his father, including the murder of Alfred, Edward's older brother.

  Orm the pagan had always thought that Christ was a prince of peace, and he found it hard to understand why the Pope would back an unprovoked military assault. But the Pope had his own ambitions; he wanted more control over the English church. Even Bishop Odo was cynical, though. 'God guides us all, but it does no harm to back a winner, even if you're the Pope.' Anyway William's embassy worked. Harold was actually excommunicated, and Odo was proudly able to display a papal banner for William's forces to carry into battle.

  All this may have been a pious justification for a vast act of robbery. But the strange thing about William was that he needed to believe it, utterly. For all his achievements, Orm saw, the Duke seemed to have a grievous fear of death and the punishment of God that could follow. He genuinely needed a holy pretext to justify the blood he spilled. In this, brother Odo was useful. The bishop provided the reassurances that helped the Bastard sleep at night.

  With the Pope's backing secured, William was able to present his expedition not just as a Norman adventure but a holy reconquest of a fallen Britain by a European coalition. William borrowed troops from the rulers of Flanders, Brittany and Aquitaine, and cast his net wide for mercenaries. Soon it seemed to Orm that every second son, bastard, murderer and rapist in Europe was drawn to William's banner – all of them hard, experienced fighting men, and few of them with anything to lose.

  The force assembled in the estuary of the river Dives, facing England, lodging in tent cities. There would be two thousand cavalry, eight hundred archers, three thousand infantry and a thousand sailors, supported by another army of servants, cooks, carpenters and carters. Three thousand horses would be shipped over. The landing might be opposed, and so stores to feed the army for a month would be carried; for the horses alone there would be ship-loads of hay and grain.

  Orm was involved in training the multinational force in how to obey commands in the Frankish tongue, and to respond to the bugles and horns. Orm was a foot-soldier and he concentrated on working with infantry troops. But he watched the cavalry training, as tightly knit teams of a dozen men wheeled across the chalky grass. Orm had seen the use of horses in Brittany. In their petty assaults on farmers the knights had never known defeat – but they had never been tested against a shield wall, and Orm wa
s sceptical how much use they would be. But the cavalry was certainly an inspiring sight, that long Norman summer.

  Meanwhile the invasion fleet was built and assembled. William's advisors had calculated that nearly seven hundred ships would be needed. Most of these ships would have to be built from scratch. Norse and Danish shipwrights agreed on a design with broad beams and shallow draught, capable of crossing the ocean then navigating far upriver if necessary, and easily hauled ashore on the roughest beach. Some of the ships would be constructed with enclosed booths for the horses, like floating stables.

  Woodmen, shipwrights and carpenters came from all across Europe to labour all summer with their saws, axes, adzes and bills, hammering together the ships. The Viking shipbuilders were the best, of course, their skills honed over centuries and passed down father to son. To supply this vast industry immense rafts of stripped logs were floated down the river arteries. It was said that fifty thousand trees were felled.

  The great invasion was a massive undertaking that drained the resources of the whole duchy – and it all had to be paid for. William imposed quotas on his nobles: you 'owed' so many ships, so many infantrymen, so many horsemen. Even Odo had to provide a hundred ships. William made up shortfalls from his own coffers and the duchy's treasury.

  Orm began to see that the invasion was an extraordinary gamble. If it failed, Normandy would be left bankrupt and bereft of a generation of leaders. Its enemies, not least the king of the Franks, would surely pounce. But the Duke's will never faltered.

  As a fatherless child William drew his closest allies from his own family, his half-brothers by the tanner's daughter, Robert of Mortain and Odo of Bayeux. These three were energetic competent men around forty years old. They were hardened, experienced warriors – even Odo, who proudly wore a coat of chain-mail, paid for by poor folks' church tithes. They were after all descended from Viking raiders who had cowed a Frankish king into ceding them Normandy; they were formidable.

  But they were limited men, Orm thought, compared to English rulers like Harold.

  In England, freemen met in their open-air moots once a month; the moots of a hundred would gather under the reeves two or three times a year; and the witan, the sum of all these small councils, met twice yearly. It was imperfect, but it was a way for the smallest voice in the land to be heard by the King. There was nothing like the witan in Normandy, no element of consent in the governing. William was a primitive ruler who used the rewards of military success to cement the allegiance of his followers. And he expected them in turn to respect his own authority absolutely. If they didn't, they were shut out.

  And if William took England, Orm saw, this limited man with his band of petty war-making brutes would come into possession of wealth and lands beyond the dreams of the monarchs of Europe. It was an astounding thought.

  But first there was an invasion to mount.

  The culmination of all the preparations came in June. The dedication of an abbey constructed by William's wife Mathilda became a celebration of bloody war, and soldiers in mail coats watched William and Mathilda give their seven-year-old daughter to be a child oblate at the abbey. Orm thought this mixture of sanctity and aggression was utterly characteristic of William.

  With the ships built, William gathered his fleet and his forces in the Dives estuary. But the weather was poor, with ceaseless rain and northerly winds that kept the fleet stuck in port. The men and their horses sheltered in their vast camps, in tents if they were lucky, under cloaks and blankets thrown over branches if not. Every week two thousand carts brought food, fuel, water and wine, and a thousand carts left full of horse manure. Disease nibbled away at the static army. William ordered fasts and prayers; he had relics paraded by the sea.

  But still the weather did not break.

  And in England, a different threat loomed.

  XIV

  Godgifu saw the English army arrive from afar, from her position on a slight rise away from Hardrada's main camp at Stamfordbrycg. And, though she was too far away to see the expressions on their faces, she could see shock and fear ripple through the ranks of the Norse and their English allies.

  The geography of the site was clear, in this place that was soon to become a battleground. It even looked beautiful, in the bright noon light of a September day. There was the river running roughly north to south, crossed at the bridge by the arrow-straight east-west line of the Roman road to Jorvik. The Norse had spread themselves out on both sides of the river around the bridge, and threads of fires rose from their camp. On the east bank Godgifu could see the ugly raven standard, the 'Land Waster', of the King of Norway, Harald Sigurdsson – known as Hardrada, Ruthless-with the lesser standard of his English ally Tostig rising alongside.

  The Norse were relaxed. Some of them were even fishing.

  And there came the English, advancing steadily along the Roman road towards the bridge, their painted shields a colourful wall before them, their conical helmets shining like grains of wheat. Godgifu saw standards rising from among their ranks: the Wessex dragon, and the red and gold Fighting Man, the standard of Harold King of England, this September day not yet ten months on his throne.

  It was impossible for Harold to be here. And yet he was.

  'Hell,' said Estrith. 'Hell, hell, hell. They've caught us with our pants around our ankles. Who'd have thought it? Now we're for it. Come on, Godgifu, help me with this stuff.' She was bundling up clothing, bits of armour and weaponry, food. Beyond, the other women collapsed sail-cloth tents and ran for the horses.

  Estrith, a powerful woman of about forty, was the wife of a fyrdman, a common English soldier – a man who was down there by the bridge, Godgifu realised, along with the rest of Tostig's contingent. These women had sheltered Godgifu since the Norse had joined the English. Godgifu ought to help them break camp and flee.

  But she couldn't take her eyes off the scene unfolding down by the river.

  The Norse commanders issued hasty orders, trying to rouse their men. Scouts ran for their horses and rode east, heading for the fleet, to call for armour and reinforcements.

  But the English were here, already in battle order under the noon sun. They approached from the west, from Jorvik, and the Norse detachment on that side of the river was small and mostly unarmed. These men now scrambled to get back across the bridge to the east bank. They were brave, brutal men, hardened by years of warfare – but only moments before they had believed they were safe. Now, as English arrows began to fly, they panicked, crowding onto the bridge, and Godgifu heard the first screams of the day.

  The English foot-soldiers reached the bridge and a wall of shields pressed into the mass of Norse, swords and axes flailing. Blood splashed, bright red in the noon light, becoming a kind of crimson mist amid which blades hacked and slashed. The cries were sharp now, like the screams of wounded birds.

  This was the first pitched battle Godgifu had witnessed. She had been involved in combat herself, in the raids with Tostig's men on the south coast, and in petty incidents when she had protected her brother. But she had seen nothing of the first major battle of the summer, Hardrada's victory over the English at the Foul Ford. She had never seen anything like this before, a scene of hundreds of men crowding, hacking and stabbing at each other almost mindlessly.

  It didn't last long. The last of the Norse fled, or were cut down, and the English had the bridge. Already the river ran red with blood. The English began to advance once more, stepping over corpses and kicking them into the water.

  Godgifu felt a hand on her shoulder. It was Estrith. 'It's always like this, you know.'

  'What is?'

  'Battle,' Estrith said. 'Just a bloody churning. And it all comes down to numbers. Now we get a break. They're going to talk before they fight.'

  'About what?'

  'About avoiding the slaughter. Perhaps Harold is asking for Tostig to be given up.'

  'If so he will offer him quarter,' Godgifu said. 'Harold won't kill his brother.'

  'Afte
r inviting in an invader, after this?' Estrith shrugged. 'Then he's a fool. But it's up to him. Anyhow while they are talking, which won't be for long, we have to move.'

  'Why?'

  Estrith sighed. 'You really are green. Everybody knows the Norman Bastard is prowling the coast of Frankia, waiting for the wind to carry him to England. Do you think Harold is going to show mercy to whatever's left of Hardrada's rabble, to leave them to roam around Northumbria causing trouble? No. Harold will cut them down. And he will be no less sparing with us, mark my words.'

  'So we run.'

  'We run.'

  But even as she worked with the women, frantically packing up the camp, Godgifu kept an eye on the battlefield. Unable to get the blood out of her head, she thought it seemed a long time since May when she had joined Tostig, a long journey that had brought her to this muddy Northumbrian river bank.

  XV

  Godgifu had been riding with Tostig since his first landings on the south coast. Tostig's men had had trouble knowing what to make of her. She was a woman who fought; she was neither a wife nor a nun nor a whore. But she had proven her worth in the light skirmishes they had fought as Tostig raided along the coast. She was treated with respect by the English, and was never troubled by them.

  And she had enjoyed the feel of the horse under her, and of a sword or axe in her hand, and of the breath of the sea in her face when they sailed on Tostig's ships. As Orm had said it was good to be free of the moral complexities and compromises of a king's court, and to immerse yourself in loyalty to your lord and some simple physical action.

  But Harold had managed to drive off Tostig from the south coast. England's defences, the navy and the fyrd, responding rapidly to the call-out, had worked well at their first test under Harold.

  The embittered Tostig sailed around the coast to the north-east. He sought help from the Danes, and even approached William, it was said. But the Bastard had his own schemes and they didn't involve any Godwines. Tostig landed in the north, intending to head for Jorvik. But the northern earls, Morcar with his brother Edwin of Mercia, had driven him back once more. Harold's tactic of hastily marrying their sister had evidently paid off.