The Handfasted Wife

by Carol McGrath

  He shook his head. ‘The enemy will descend on us like wolves into a sheep pen.’

  ‘The watch by the gate have seen nothing strange.’

  ‘My lady, they are no good.’

  It was true. Her best house-ceorls had gone to fight in the north for the King. She thought for a moment. She could not ride away leaving everyone to be slaughtered. ‘Padar, can you ride again today?’

  ‘With a fresh horse.’

  ‘Then ride to Canterbury. Bring us a garrison.’

  ‘My lady, if you will not leave, then you must set whomever you can spare on the palisade and keep a watch on them.’

  ‘The women and children will come into the protection of my hall. Those who cannot must stay in the village church with Father Egbert tonight.’ She left the window, crossed the room to him and took his hands in her own. ‘May St Cecilia watch over you.’

  ‘And you, my lady.’

  He shook his head, pushed out, back through the heavy tapestry, and was gone.

  She was left with the noise of the morning’s usual activity: the rattling of plates, the calling servants, the slam of coffer lids, laundry maids shouting for dirty linen, the thud of logs and yard boys laughing as they stacked them beside the hearth.

  * * *

  Later that morning she climbed up onto the stockade and shaded her forehead with one hand. She gazed out at the deep blue sky, over trees that were turning to gold, over her villagers gathering fruit along the hedges and others who were helping in the big field. She wondered if, after all, she had been unduly concerned for their safety. After all, Reredfelle was not on the way to or from anywhere.

  Below, in the field, Guthlac was directing villagers and ceorls to load the very last stokes of wheat from the harvest onto a cart. This year the barley had been late. The women and children were collecting dried stalks left behind, filling up huge reed baskets, nothing wasted. When she looked out to the west along the river and towards the mill, she could see a cart pulled by a donkey on the path. A villein sat on top of the sacks flicking at the creature with a stick. The miller was coming out to greet them. To the east a group of swineherds were collecting pigs into two pens on the edge of the woods. When she came to the top of the ladder, she turned and glanced back again towards the forest. Jet-black rooks rose up from the trees into the sky, careered for a moment above the canopy, set up a cawing, and then swooped down again. She shuddered and climbed onto the ladder to descend. She looked back and counted the guard: 12 men stood at intervals, armed with shields, bows and spears. It was not enough and she thought about her women and her son. For a moment Elditha closed her eyes and prayed to the Holy Mother, ‘Dear Lady Mary, help us. Help us all to survive this. Guide us to safety.’

  As Elditha walked towards the hall, she saw Brother Francis ambling with Ulf along the path from the chapel. She hurried to greet them. In the hall the trestles were laid for dinner. Not wanting to frighten her women she sat in Earl Godwin’s oak chair under her swan pennant and, beside it, Harold’s banner. As dinner passed everyone’s conversation was a jerky dance jumping from subject to subject. It was a relief when the meal ended.

  After dinner, Elditha gathered her ladies around her. They sat in the antechamber sewing and talking in low tones. Ulf bent over a wax tablet struggling to make his letters with a stick. From time to time he glanced over at his mother.

  Hands fumbled with the cloth, stitches unpicked and redone, scissors dropped, threads split. She thrust a taper into the smouldering charcoal, lit a candle and lifted her little book of riddles from the table. ‘Come, Ulf,’ she said. ‘You will guess these easily.’ Ulf left his wax tablet and sat cross-legged on a cushion by her sewing chair. Slowly and carefully, she began to read. The sentences created tiny mysteries. Her ladies liked to hear them told over and over again. When they had guessed a few, she turned the page and said, smiling, ‘This is the last one for this evening. It is time for supper. Listen, Ulf. Let’s see if you remember this one: “I am a lonely being, scarred by swords, wounded by iron, sated with battle deeds” …’ She paused. ‘… But cuts from swords ever increase on me …’

  Ulf leapt to his feet and called out, ‘Shield!’ But she didn’t hear it. She heard shouting out on the palisade, muffled at first then clearer, then jeers and yells, a swish in the air followed by the twang of arrows released from bows. Weapons were clashing. She dropped her book and ran to the half-opened window shutters.

  Pushing the shutters back as far as they would go, Elditha stared over the yard to the palisade. She thrust her head out. Smoke drifted towards the hall from the west. The stockade was on fire. The yells of men rose above the crackling of burning timber. Geese and hens were squawking. Dogs began barking. There were more shouts, the plunk of bow strings and the hiss of arrows again as they flew through the air.

  The flames engulfed the three-barred gate, spitting sparks and blazing debris. Clouds of thick smoke rose up, blotting out what was left of the sunset. Now, not a man could be seen on the palisade. The guards had vanished with the sun. Riders appeared through the smoke, spurring their steeds forward through gaps in the estate’s great ringed fence. Pennants unfurled behind them, glowed red as dark horses galloped towards the hall. Hooves pounded. Servants and villagers poured from the barns. Others raced from the stores. A villein came running at a horse with a pitchfork, another horseman sliced at him from behind. He toppled forward onto his crude weapon. Men fell and others ran. Women were kicked aside. An anvil went flying through the air but missed its mark. Although the horse reared up, the rider remained seated. He pulled an axe from behind his saddle and swung it at the man who had thrown the anvil and missed. A woman shrieked as her toddler was trampled. Children ran for cover.

  The riders surged forward. Dust flew up in dense clouds. More figures appeared on the path. Her fighting men, those left to her, now helmeted and heavily armed with axes and shields, yelling curses and battle cries, ran from the hall. They stood firm in front of the grassy swath and attempted to lock shields. A hedge of spears angled outwards. For a moment the horses backed off whinnying and snorting, kicking dirt, on the brink of panic.

  Their riders yelled, ‘Glemure, merde!’

  Someone yelled back, ‘Filth and shit, you spawn of Hell. You bastard sons of bastard mothers!’

  Waving their weapons and shouting insults, the riders urged their horses back towards the shield wall. One sliced his battle-axe through an overlap and forced an entry. They pushed and pressed and shoved at the wall of men until it broke into two sections. A hall servant ran out, stabbed at a horse’s leg with a short sword, missed and stumbled. Its rider leaned over and sliced at the sprawling man. Horses pushed, rose up, whinnied and stamped but the foreigners held firm and lashed out furiously. Swords cut and shield clashed against shield. All at once each side of the shield wall disintegrated. The ghost of courage remained before the survivors fell back. The well-armed Normans trampled over broken shields and swords and the bodies of fallen men.

  A second wave of ceorls and villagers surged out of the hall. They beat at the Normans with axes. The dark fiends moved quickly, manoeuvring in circles around them, catching the angry villagers inside a tight ring. Trapped, a few of the hall ceorls dropped their weapons at the feet of the victors. Others broke away by stabbing at the horses’ legs, forging a way out through the circle. Two riders pursued them. One struck a young ceorl with his long sword. He fell forward slowly, his blood pouring from the wound. The horsemen chased his companions towards the barns. Others fled back into the hall through the small gap between door and doorpost. Those inside pulled the door fast and bolted it. Elditha heard it whine closed and came away from the window.

  Her women clutched each other, weeping. They could hear people dragging trestles across the flagstones in the hall. Soldiers began banging on the great front door.

  Ulf clung to his mother’s hand.

  Elditha said, ‘I’m going down.’

  He snatched at her skirt with his ot
her small hand. For a moment she froze, afraid for them all. Determination crept back into her voice, ‘Margaret, hold on to Ulf.’ She handed him to the nurse and pulled her cloak about her shoulders.

  The calls continued. ‘Putain, putain!’ And in English, they bellowed, ‘Harold’s whore, come out.’ Holding her head high, she walked down the staircase into the crowd of servants, men, women and children who had already sought the shelter of the hall.

  Children huddled behind pillars. Others clung to their mothers. Everyone turned to watch her pass. She saw her linen table covers in a heap among rushes on the flagstones. Wooden bowls had toppled from trestles which had been dragged away to make barricades. Dogs whimpered and cowered in corners.

  Again and again, their chant penetrated the great door, ‘Concubine, concubine, come out.’ Guthlac ordered the men to pull more trestles against the door. Brother Francis sank against a pillar crying, shaking and sweating and holding aloft a great wooden cross that hung around his neck. There wasn’t a fighting man left in the hall.

  ‘Are they all out there?’ she said.

  ‘There’s none of them in here!’ Guthlac exclaimed. ‘Go back up to your women, my lady.’

  She pushed him aside. ‘Let me through, Guthlac, and Brother Francis too.’

  Guthlac glanced past her to the priest. ‘Some luck that one will bring!’

  A firebrand of rushes was shot into an opening; another and another and another. Hangings caught fire. Everyone began running. They tried to beat out the fire with linen cloths. More and more burning torches flew through window openings. The villagers ran along the wall beating at flames but to no avail. The flames took hold and snatched at banners, devouring them in a red-and-gold blaze.

  ‘Look out for the shields!’ Guthlac yelled and pulled Elditha towards him.

  A shield with a great dragon painted on it came crashing down. The fire raced, eating into tapestries and hangings as it flew. Children were pulled from chests and clasped close to their mothers. Hounds went mad, barking and growling, snapping, wildly shaking the bells on their collars. Everyone coughed and spluttered as smoke rose in the hall. Those who could lay their hands on a ladle or a pitcher ran back and forth from the vat that stood by the central hearth. They hurled water at the flames. It was hopeless.

  Flames grasped at Elditha’s swan pennant and Harold’s warrior, swallowing feathered bird and fighting man. Small fires began to flare up, catching at the straw strewn over the flagstones. Smoke thickened in dark, suffocating plumes.

  Elditha’s ladies hurried down the stairway clutching veils over their faces. They ran with the crowd to the entrance. Elditha screamed at Guthlac. ‘Let my ladies out.’ Then she cried, ‘Where is my son?’

  She began searching frantically through the smoke for Ulf, pushing into the crowd that surged towards the entrance.

  ‘Margaret, where is he?’ She clutched at a woman she thought was her. Then, ‘Have you seen Margaret?’ The woman shook her head. Her ladies began to pull the burning timber away from the door themselves. Elditha shouted louder but no one heard her above the yelling from outside, the crashing of shields and the roaring flames. At last a pathway was cleared. With a whining and groaning and the pressure of men pushing and the enemy pulling from the other side, the door opened.

  Men, women and children and barking dogs clambered over each other in their panic to escape. The pressing human river closed behind her. Elditha sped in the opposite direction, back towards the stairway, screaming, ‘Ulf! Margaret! Where are you?’ As she reached the bottom step the child’s nurse came stumbling through a cloud of smoke and ash towards her, spluttering and calling for help.

  ‘Ulf!’ Elditha shouted.

  Margaret waved towards the roof and began running back up.

  Elditha followed. She pushed the nurse through the doorway.

  Margaret pointed above the table. ‘He’s in there,’ she choked. ‘I can’t get up.’

  Elditha lifted the candle, held it high and looked into the dim roof, searching along the beams. She couldn’t see him. There was the splitting of burning wood. The smoke in the chamber thickened. A shriek came from high above them.

  She climbed onto the table and, for the second time that day, pulled herself up into the rafters. ‘Wait!’ she called down coughing. She could see him now, above her head, crouched over behind the crossbeams and vertical struts that supported the highest point in the building. He was frozen like a wooden effigy. She reached upwards with one hand, steadying herself with her other. Gasping for breath, she gathered her strength and called up, ‘Ulf, climb down to me.’ She heard the rush of flames on the thatch of the roof. The roof space was filling up with a dense, pungent smoke. ‘Ulf, you must move now. I can’t get up,’ she shouted.

  Ulf began to inch towards her. He climbed through the cage of wooden struts and down and down until she was able to pull him to her. Grasping Ulf tight, she swung her legs round and dropped onto the table.

  They propelled themselves down the stairs and behind the pillars that led to the rooms beyond the hall. Armed men rushed in, racing through people who still surged out. They mercilessly lashed out at the hall’s inhabitants, tore veils from women, pushed them aside and shouted, ‘Where is she?’ Soldiers ran for the stairway. Fed by the draught from the opened doorway, the fire was gaining in strength. Elditha held Ulf tight and ran into the chambers behind the hall. Margaret followed. They could hear feet thundering above them. Soldiers had already reached the upper floor. She heard them come back down again, shouting, ‘The roof is burning. Nobody’s up there!’

  ‘Run, Margaret, run!’

  She held on to Ulf, shocked and numbed. Dragging him with her, Margaret pushing him on from behind, she raced through the gathering smoke and out through the side doorway onto the pathway that led to the bower hall. Timbers were falling. A whirlwind of debris blew between the cook house and the store huts. There was a hot rushing draught, followed by the thumps of falling wood. Sparks flew in the smoke. Leaping yellow flames engulfed the back of the hall. The wails and screams of women, cries of children and soldiers’ shouts penetrated the roar of the fire.

  They hurried through blazing timbers and around burning bodies, bent low until they reached the bower hall. Inside, soldiers were shouting. Women were crying and screaming. Doubled over, they ran along the building’s side towards the end gable. Halfway there, her foot caught on a broken body and she was staring down at a dead-eyed corpse. Elditha pulled her cloak tighter around Ulf and sidestepped the body. She lifted her head at the next window opening and glanced in. Soldiers were prodding the terrified women with swords. One shouted in English, ‘Out, you whores. Or burn alive!’ Tasting bile in her mouth, Elditha dragged herself along the last few feet of the wall. Margaret followed, still coughing into her veil. They paused. It was a short run to the garden.

  ‘Now!’ Elditha shouted above the noise of falling timber. They ran.

  It was clearer by the chapel and garden and more dangerous too. Smoke rose above them in shapeless clouds. They could see Brother Francis’s silhouette by the chapel door. Shadowy figures held up torches and appeared to be searching all around. They pushed past the monk and disappeared inside. At that moment, seeing her chance, Elditha set Ulf down but he clung onto her cloak. She clutched Margaret’s arm. ‘Get into the orchard. Go through the door behind the apple trees. You take Ulf.’

  Margaret pulled Ulf from Elditha’s cloak.

  ‘Listen well. Padar will come with a garrison along the river path. Cut him off. Take the riverbed. Give Ulf into his care.’ She kissed the top of her son’s head, breathed the smoky but still lingering little-boy smell of him. ‘Go!’

  Elditha watched Margaret crouch low with Ulf clinging to her neck as she raced forward. She waited until she saw her circle the sundial and stumble into the shelter of the trees in the orchard. Elditha glanced back at the hall. With a sudden gust of wind the smoke blew upwards and she could see the spectral-like lumps of bodies scattered
around the swath. Body parts were scattered everywhere she looked, guts spilling into slimy piles; all that was left of her servants and many of her villagers. The wind dropped as suddenly as it rose and all was smoke again.

  Soldiers had finished herding women and children out of the bower hall. A band of them had separated a small group of noble ladies and were pushing them onto the wide path, towards a row of waiting, already harnessed, carts, yelling at them to hurry. Elditha turned and moved slowly onto the path, into the firelight, hearing their shouts rise into the night. As she came through a patch of smoke, a sentry by the chapel wall alerted a mounted knight who rode from the shadows onto the pathway. He was helmetless and she could see his monk-like tonsured red head. She had seen that knight once before at King Edward’s court. Her head held erect, Elditha walked forward to meet him. And when she reached him, she looked at him fearlessly and said, ‘I am Elditha, she whom you dare to call concubine.’

  ‘Harold’s concubine and Normandy’s hostage, my lady.’

  ‘Hostage I may be, but whore I am none. And by Christus, Count Alain, you will regret this day.’

  He did not meet her gaze.

  A driving rain began to fall as the procession of carts and wagons reached the smouldering gate. Elditha sat in the foremost covered cart with the priest, Ursula and her two other ladies, Freya and Maud, both of whom quietly wept. She looked back through the falling rain at her burning house. Only part of the hall’s roof and a section of the west wall remained. The crashing of collapsing timbers, the sound of Reredfelle’s destruction, echoed into the night.

  Ursula whispered, ‘Ulf?’

  ‘Shush, he will be safe.’ She squeezed her friend’s hand and glanced over at Brother Francis. She laid a finger on her lips and Ursula nodded.

  The heavily armed convoy skirted the forest edge and followed the road south towards William’s lair, through silent villages with doors shut tight. Rain seeped in under the cover. The women cupped their hands to collect the water. They sipped thirstily, and as hour chased hour Brother Francis murmured prayer.