by James Long
They drove out of the village and picked up speed on the main road. No one spoke but five miles on, Mike sensed Ferney was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He turned round to look at him, ‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘Leaving here is harder than I expected.’
‘You’ve done it before.’
‘Not since all this got going again. It’s different now.’
‘Do you want me to stop?’ said Rachel.
‘Just for a minute.’
She pulled into the next lay-by and they got out. Ferney stood looking back the way they had come.
‘What does it feel like?’ Mike asked.
‘Like a rubber band that might snap if I pull it too hard. I think it’s like this when we first come back. We need to stay in the village for a while to feel safe, but there’s no choice, is there? Think what it’s like for Gally. We’ve got to go.’
Another car drew in behind them. It had L-plates on.
‘I need to keep a tight grip on who I am,’ Ferney said. ‘That’s all.’
A boy of eighteen or nineteen got out of the passenger’s side. ‘I don’t know, Dad,’ he said.
His father, an older version of him, was walking round to swap places. ‘Go on,’ he said. ‘You can do it.’
‘There’s a lot of cars today. Can’t we go back to the little roads?’
‘Look, Adam,’ said his father, ‘you have to tackle the big ones sometimes. If it gets too hard, you just pull in and I’ll take over. I won’t let you get into any trouble.’
They watched as the car kangarooed out into a gap in the traffic and ground away in a low gear.
‘So what shall we do?’ asked Mike. ‘Give up or go on?’ and Ferney didn’t answer. He just gazed up the road where the other car had disappeared.
‘Ferney?’
The boy turned back to him. ‘There’s a story right at the heart of all this. I think maybe it’s the key. Shall I try telling it to you? It might get me there in one piece. Just give me a moment.’ He stared back at the ridge, slowing his breathing down, blotting out the noises, taking away the road and the signs and the modern buildings, but he couldn’t get to the precise moment in all that long, dull time. Then he knew what had set him on that path, concentrated on the father and son he had just seen and what the man had said – ‘I won’t let you get into trouble’ – and there it was.
‘It might last the whole way there,’ he said as he got back in the car.
‘All the better,’ said Mike.
He began to talk as they drove away and very soon, the car surrounding him was no longer really there.
‘The church,’ he said. ‘It started at the church . . .’
He told them the story of Britnod the thane, and his call to arms, and how he stepped in to volunteer but found his son was taken all the same. He told them of Gally’s moment of choice.
‘That’s what’s hurting her now,’ he said. ‘It’s Edgar and what happened, and she’s mixed it up with Rosie, so now she’s grieving and guilty and muddled all at the same time. She thinks she killed her children twice over. It’s undone all the good he did.’
‘Who did?’
‘A man who helped us.’ He fell silent then, after a moment, he said, ‘The battles of 1066. You know about them. Stamford Bridge, Hastings.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good. I’ll skip that. Everything I know about Hastings was second-hand anyway.’
‘Yes, all right.’
‘So it was a few months later, after Christmas. Now, do you know about—’
Then Mike’s brain caught up with his ears. ‘You just said everything you knew about Hastings was second-hand.’
‘Yes.’
‘So does that mean that everything you knew about Stamford Bridge wasn’t second-hand?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That’s right it wasn’t?’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t mean you were there?’
‘Yes, I was.’
‘You fought at the battle of Stamford Bridge in September 1066?’
‘Yes, I had to, but it was a very long time ago.’
‘Indeed, Ferney. That’s what makes it interesting. Tell us about it. Leave nothing out.’
The boy tried to conjure up his son again but felt only a wall of sadness. He cast around for some other point of purchase on the story and had a sense of unaccustomed weaponry, the sword belt and the helmet. It was the helmet that did it – the helmet with the nose guard that rubbed the skin of his nose raw until he heated it, bent it to fit, and then re-tempered it for strength. In his mind, he put on that helmet again and the past rushed back to meet him.
‘We had to get to the muster as fast as we could. Somewhere on the Thames. Near London, I suppose.’
‘How did you know where to go?’
‘Our thane knew. He took us east and when we got close they’d set beacon fires to lead us in. We got there in five days’ hard going.’
‘But that must have been thirty-odd miles a day.’
‘I suppose so. We had horses.’
‘Oh, I see.’
‘Well, it wasn’t that easy.’ Ferney sounded nettled. ‘You don’t gallop like they do in cowboy films. The horses would last half a day if you did that. It’s walk, trot, canter, trot, walk when you’re trying to do the distances.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to imply it was easy.’
‘Anyway, that was only the start of it. The weather was rough, gales blowing, and all the way I tried to tell Edgar enough about weapons to give him a chance. He’d never even used a sword before so it was a tall order. There were only a few hundred who beat us to the muster. We hardly had a moment to feed when three riders came tearing in, lathered up and shouting. New orders. Everybody with horses to ride north to join the King. While the storms were keeping the Bastard’s ships in France, Harold’s rotten brother and the King of Norway had landed an army on the Yorkshire coast.
‘Now that was a ride. I was lucky, I had my good old saddle. We fitted each other well, that horse and me, and Edgar had youth on his side. We went hard at it, from first light to after dark, and this time we galloped whenever the ground was good. We caught up with Harold halfway and we got to Tadcaster in four days flat. The history books say we did fifty miles a day on that ride. I’ve looked it up. They’re not wrong.
‘Edgar was excited but I was dreading it. I felt we were rushing to our deaths too fast to stop. There weren’t nearly enough of us and we knew what those Norsemen were like. There was bad news waiting at Tadcaster, but it had good news wrapped up in it. The locals told us the Norsemen had wiped out the northern army near York but they weren’t expecting us, not for days yet. They were calmly sitting there, five or six thousand of them, waiting for the losers to bring them food and horses and hostages. I doubt there were even two thousand of us, probably less, but Harold decided it was a God-given chance to catch them napping.
‘Honour is a luxury when it’s three to one against you. The scouts told us half of them were larking around in the river, playing games and sunbathing, no armour to be seen. Big mistake. We came charging at them over the top of the hill and there was nothing they could do but run. Very few of them got back across the bridge to their mates.’
The boy shook his head in sad wonder. ‘Even then, there was this huge Norseman who nearly stopped us. He was standing there in the middle of the bridge, screaming his head off. He had the biggest axe you ever saw and he was hacking everyone who came at him. I can’t tell you how many of ours went down. He kicked them over the edge into the river. We were still game for it. Our men had their blood up. Not me. I never played it like that.’ He fell silent again.
Mike was focused intently on Ferney’s account. ‘What happened?’
‘It was our man Britnod. He could think sideways. He found a rotten old punt further down the bank. He ordered Edgar and this other youngster to get in it because they were the lightest. He said he would float the punt
down on a rope’s end, right under the bridge, so they could spear upwards between the planks. I saw what was going on and I got to the bank in time to pull Edgar out and take his place. They pushed us off and paid out the rope but the other kid was too wound-up. He gave out this ludicrous yell before we even reached the bridge, trying to shout down his own terror. The Norseman saw us coming, flung a spear, and skewered him right through the guts. Then he picked up another spear and I knew I was a sitting duck. I saw him look the other way. I heard yelling and feet pounding on the bridge and I realised they were attacking him to make a diversion. Then I was under the bridge and I could see up through the planks, where blood was running down on to me and into my eyes, and I rammed that spear up into his calf. He came down hard and they got him. He died and that was that.’ Ferney paused, then he said, ‘I’ve never been one for killing and I paid the harshest price.’
Rachel shot Mike a glance as though she could guess what was coming.
‘I scrambled ashore beyond the bridge,’ he said. ‘We were streaming across it by that time and they were running. We were armoured and they stood no chance. It felt good for just a moment until Britnod stopped me and told me why I was still alive. That diversion was just one man, you see? One man who saw what was happening and took his sword and went for the Norseman with everything he had, which wasn’t much because he wasn’t even a man, he was really only a boy. He was . . .’
He had come to a halt, unable to say any more.
‘He was Edgar,’ said Rachel, and the boy in the back seat just nodded through grief that was almost a thousand years old.
He collected himself. ‘It’s never worth it,’ he said. ‘We shouldn’t have gone. Simple as that.’
‘It was an invasion,’ Mike pointed out.
‘Is there some special rule for the people who got there first? Think about how I arrived in Pen. I was with the invaders then. It didn’t do Gally’s people much good, being here first.’
‘What about Hitler? What about 1940? Did you fight then?’
‘I did what I could. I wasn’t fit enough to fight. I did other things. That’s not the point. If you’re part of a tribe, you fight for your tribe. All I’m saying is don’t get too high-minded about it. I went to fight so that my son didn’t have to risk his life. It went against everything I believe in and it didn’t work. Do you see why we didn’t have children after that? It’s been simpler that way.’
‘What happened next?’
‘I buried Edgar, that’s what happened next. Britnod helped me. I sat with my boy all night and talked to him, then we dug him a grave right beside the bridge and we stuck the Norseman’s sword in the ground as a marker, but I’m sure someone had it as a souvenir as soon as my back was turned. After that I went off to speak face to face with my sorrow and puzzle over how I was going to tell Gally. Britnod had volunteered us to stay behind and guard the bridge. The rest of our lot slaughtered the Norsemen as they ran. By the time they surrendered, there were only one in ten of them still breathing. Our lot were celebrating. We’d had to put up with the Vikings for ever and a day.’
‘But how were you?’ Rachel asked.
‘Me? I was at the end of my tether. For the rest of them, that was when the exhilaration hit them and they could have gone on for days like that.’
‘Except if I remember my history,’ Mike said, ‘they didn’t have too many days.’
‘You know that, do you? Am I wasting my breath?’
‘Don’t mind him,’ said Rachel. ‘I don’t know any of this and I’m all agog.’
‘It wasn’t even a week later we were getting set to go back south. I had to get back to tell Gally.’ He made a face. ‘I was trying to tie the Norseman’s helmet on my saddlebag – not for a souvenir, more because I wanted her to know the size of the man Edgar had taken on to save me. I looked up to see a horseman coming fast from the south and my heart sank because horses in a froth are seldom good news. We all watched him head for the king and then the call went out for the commanders and I knew I would soon have to leave Edgar by himself.’
‘William the Conqueror had landed.’
‘That wasn’t what we called him. He hadn’t conquered us yet. We called him Gwillam the Bastard, or Guillaume if you knew the French. He’d found a gap in the weather and slipped across the Channel while we were busy. He was camped out on the coast and we had to do it all over again – to burn down the road south before any more of his army made it to dry land.’
‘How long did that take?’ Mike asked.
‘Four days for the first leg.’
‘To London?’
‘Ah, you really don’t know all this story then. No. We stopped short of London at an abbey. A place called Waltham.’
They had come to a sudden halt and the story got passed back down the line. Divine help was on offer. A monk on horseback had met them in the road and asked to see the king. It was a chance to water the horses and to shelter from the strong wind. The whole procession turned off on to a track which led to a clutter of huts. Ferney edged his horse through the milling mass of men and saw a stone gatehouse ahead.
Two monks, each carrying a brace of pigeons, came out of the woods.
‘What’s this place?’ he asked.
‘Waltham Abbey, chosen resting place of the Holy Rood,’ said one of the monks, crossing himself. The other monk giggled, stroked Ferney’s horse and then his leg.
‘The Holy Rood? The Holy Rood from Montacute?’
Coming from Pen, all Britnod’s men knew the legend of the Holy Rood, from their grandfathers’ days. In the time of Canute’s peace, the story ran, a blacksmith had dug up a stone near the top of the pointed hill at Montacute, not so far from Pen. It was a natural miracle, they said, shaped by unearthly hands into a near life-size figure of Christ on the cross.
‘On the hill? Where we were digging?’ asked Mike.
‘Right there, on that same terrace. They put it in an ox cart but the oxen wouldn’t budge. The story said that a priest, recognising the signs of a miracle in the making, began to recite the names of nearby holy sites but the oxen would not stir. He listed places further and further away until he came to the name of Waltham Abbey. At that, the oxen set off, not stopping once until they reached the Abbey ten days later. It was a popular tale, even in Harold’s army, where I was one of the few who didn’t believe in miracles.’
Mike knew better than to interrupt because he sensed the boy was somewhere else, living it all out in his head, and the words were an almost accidental outcrop of that experience, but he couldn’t help making a noise at that point.
The boy stopped, looking around as if he had forgotten the others were there. ‘What?’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen one and I’ve had my eyes open long enough.’
‘Some might say you’re the biggest miracle of all.’
‘You won’t hear me saying that. There’s a rational explanation for us. We just don’t know what it is yet.’
The boy stayed silent. Rachel prompted him. ‘If it wasn’t a miracle, what was it?’
‘It was a scam,’ he said. ‘Just a low trick, no more. I know how it got to Montacute in the first place. I saw the carts on the road when they brought it. Finishing the milking we were, and a boy came running in to tell us, so we went to look. A strong guard and a covered load, heading west.’
‘I don’t follow,’ said Mike. ‘When was this?’
‘Oh, a whole century earlier, I suppose. About a hundred years before Harold was even born.’ Ferney seemed to get back into his stride. ‘When the Danes and the Norsemen were burning and plundering the east. Anyone with any sense in that part of the world was sending their valuables somewhere safe so these carts were bound for Montacute, and guess where they were coming from?’
‘I haven’t a clue.’
‘From Waltham Abbey. Forget about miracles. It was as simple as that. Waltham and Montacute both belonged to the same man. Tovi owned both of them and he sent all his precious stuff from Waltham
to be hidden away. You see? They buried the Rood at Montacute to keep it from the Vikings.’
‘So why was that a scam?’
‘That part wasn’t. It was what happened afterwards. All these abbeys needed a good story to draw the pilgrims in and get their money. Waltham was a backwater, falling apart, so when peace came back and it was time to take it home again, some smart person saw a chance for a bit of marketing. Lo and behold, the blacksmith with the spade digs up the miraculous cross and it’s not very surprising that the oxen take it to Waltham, because that was where it had come from and that was where it was always going back to. After that, the pilgrims came pouring in.’
‘You’re a cynic,’ said Rachel.
‘Only when there’s reason to be cynical. Anyway, it doesn’t stop there. It was no coincidence that Harold took us that way and ran into a monk. Tovi’s estates including Waltham Abbey and its miraculous Rood had passed to . . . can you guess who?’
Rachel and Mike glanced at each other and shook their heads.
‘To our King Harold, no less,’ said Ferney. ‘He owned the place but by that time the old Rood had gone a bit out of fashion with the pilgrims and it needed a shot in the arm.’
‘So you’re saying Harold took his army to the Abbey as a publicity stunt for the Holy Rood?’
‘Not just that. What do you most need if you’re heading for a battle?’
‘A good army?’
‘An army that has God on its side and knows its leader is God’s chosen one. When Harold came out of the Holy Rood chapel, the monks blessed us and sprinkled us and leaked their latest little miracle into all the waiting ears.’
‘Which was?’
‘The Holy Rood was a solid block of stone held up on the wall by iron bands but the monks all saw the Christ figure lean forward, hold out its stone hand and bless the king. That hit the spot. The men howled their cheers. The whole army galloped off, out of sheer high spirits, and we watched them go like nobody could beat them, least of all a godless bastard.’
‘You watched them go?’
