The Handfasted Wife

by Carol McGrath

  The Normans had treated the women courteously. Alain of Brittany came daily to enquire after Elditha’s wellbeing. Though she could speak French, she chose to communicate with him in English. She sat by the tent opening where the air was cooler, watching and thinking. There must be deeper motives for his solicitations; maybe he hoped for financial gain. His men had called her concubine and whore, but she was often known as Edith the Rich. They would know that too. Her lands in Cambridgeshire and in Essex were many. She also owned houses in Canterbury. By English law this all still belonged to her, despite her marriage. If the Normans won she would lose it all, and if they did not she would remain their hostage and they could demand a ransom. But, for now, she was the enemy’s captive and soon England could be too. She worried for Harold, for herself, for their children, and for what would become of England if William, with his great army of disciplined mercenaries and with so many fighting knights on horses, won the battle.

  Duke William refused her an interview and his aloofness infuriated her. Yet she considered her lot better than those poor peasants Padar had spoken of in her antechamber. We are all of us nobility, the Count, William and our earls, she thought to herself, and us women singled out for special favour because of it. The Count of Brittany sent them feather mattresses, clean linen and old but dry mantles. He had set a protective guard on their tents. Two local women attended them. He even asked his own Breton priest to say mass for the women on Saint Calixtus’ Eve. When the waiting became unbearable, Elditha requested needles and thread and mending to keep their hands busy and he sent them baskets of torn leg-bindings.

  From a distance she watched Duke William walk the ramparts of the wooden watchtower on the top of the mound that his men had laboured for several weeks to build. His body was still long and lean, his hair tonsured like a monk’s, his cloak was richly coloured and he was flanked by a group of elaborately clad bishops. The Pope’s banner, a great red crusading cross on a white background, flew beside his own. Elditha turned away from that sight and entered her tent.

  ‘Perhaps I should have kept Ulf with me,’ she said to Ursula, who was sewing a rent in a soldier’s garment. ‘Who knows if they met with Padar? There are perils in the woods too.’

  ‘Our Lady will protect him from evil. If they are in the woods, we can pray that God keeps them safe from our enemies.’

  Elditha touched Ursula’s hand. ‘By St Cecilia, I hope it is so. Come, Ursula.’ She turned to the others. ‘Maud, Freya, leave those leg-bindings; let us pray together for our King’s success in battle, for the safe-keeping of my child and our deliverance from this foul place, though why they have taken us four women as their captives, I cannot really fathom. It may be ransom.’

  ‘Better than dead,’ Ursula said dryly.

  There was shouting outside. Elditha hurried through the entrance, elbowing their guard aside, and accosted one of the soldiers who had ridden in. He was a scout, she quickly discovered. ‘What news?’ she asked as she ran alongside him.

  ‘The King’s army is marching towards us. There is to be a battle.’ The scout wheeled round on his horse and she watched him follow the last group of archers out of the camp.

  ‘Go back inside and pray, lady. Pray for mercy,’ one of her guards said. Elditha said back, ‘It will be you who begs mercy before this day is finished.’ She turned on her heel and marched back into the shelter to pray.

  12

  Edith, surnamed Swanneshalls, knew secret marks on the king’s body better than others as she had been admitted to a great intimacy of his person.

  The Waltham Chronicle, circa 1177, edited and translated by Marjorie Chibnall

  It was past midnight when a monk rode in from the battle. He fell to his knees. ‘Countess Gytha. It is all over. The King and his brothers are dead. The battle raged all day …’

  She raised her hand to stop what she suspected would be a long and painful account. ‘Just tell me this. How did my sons die?’

  ‘Lord Gyrth and Earl Leofwine fell when they came off Senlac Ridge. That is all I know of them. They lie there murdered somewhere in the valley below. It was a massacre. After that there were more assaults on what was left of us, over and over until the sun fell in the sky. Many, many, died. I was with our horses behind the King. I saw it all.’

  ‘How did the King die?’

  ‘The Duke’s army came up at us where the King was fighting beside his standard. Our great shield wall had broken, chipped away every time a group of our warriors ran the Normans down that slope. The horsemen fought their way up the hill where they smote and pierced the King’s ranks. They shot arrows up into the air over our shields. The King fell … a chance arrow but it struck his face under his nose-plate. His house-ceorls tried to protect him, Countess, they tried but they failed and they died beside the King – all, as was he, hacked brutally to death.’

  The monk hung his head. He swallowed and tried to speak, then covered his face with his hands. Stiff backed, Countess Gytha tapped her stick. ‘It’s not all, is it? Find your voice, monk.’

  He looked up, his eyes shot with blood. ‘Countess, they came in among the dying. One knight hacked at the King when he was down. Another decapitated him and struck at his legs, parting leg from body.’ His tears flowed. He swept a dusty sleeve across his face.

  ‘And?’

  He cleared his throat. ‘That was when I turned my horse and came from the ridge. I outrode the pursuit. I gained woodland and lost myself in there until I found the route out farther on. It was ignoble. And, God knows, I should have died there too.’

  Gytha sat still in her chair.

  ‘God will avenge my sons, all of them,’ she said. ‘There will be time to weep tomorrow. Today we must claim our dead before the crows pick them over.’ She sent the monk away. ‘Go and find food and rest. It is as well you lived. The Greatest of Lords wished it. Enough blood is spilt already.’

  She called for her guard. For two hours she impatiently tapped her stick on the floor as they deliberated and hesitated, fearful of the roads. At last, she took decisive action. She ordered her wagon to be readied and her horse saddled. With Thea beside her, she rode out through the south gate with the silken and jewelled Wessex dragon flying before them and her hoard concealed in the wagon.

  ‘My mother?’ Thea said.

  ‘The Normans will not find Reredfelle. That estate is on the way to nowhere, my dear. Be assured, they will not find her or care about her either.’

  The soldiers brought Elditha to the battlefield shortly after Matins. They brought her to where Duke William had remained all night in his bivouac encampment. She could see Harold’s captured standards flying alongside the Duke’s own by the entrance to his tent. Desperately looking around she saw a horrific sight. Everywhere bodies were already stripped of mail, hauberks and weapons. Even boots and hose had been taken from them. The Duke’s soldiers had been at their grisly plunder during the night. Torches burned over it, lighting up the grim sight. She sat on her horse, her long neck erect and with Ursula by her side. They were accompanied by the two monks who had come with the King from Waltham. They had said that they could not identify the King’s fallen body, only his head. The rest was mutilated, in pieces. They told the Norman leader that only Elditha Swanneck would be able to recognise her husband and reunite the King’s severed head with his body. So here she was, unceremoniously lifted onto a horse, escorted from the camp and marched north to the boundary of Harold’s estate of Crowhurst that was marked by a grey apple tree, and into the meadows of death that lay around the ridge.

  Her very sense of herself was frozen. She searched for him through the piles of the dead, pointing for this body or this limb to be turned over. Her fine boots were slippery with blood and she had to clutch her veil close against the metallic smell of it; not only that, but also the stench of shit and spilt guts. Duke William, his brothers Bishop Odo and Robert of Mortain, and a group of knights were watching her as she moved among the corpses of departed Danish hous
e-ceorls and Saxon aristocrats. A great gathering of priests was permitted to take away the corpses of fallen noblemen for burial. Another quarter hour passed and still she had not found Harold.

  ‘You have done what you can, Lady,’ said William Mallet, half a Norman and half Englishman, a knight who had lived at Edward’s court. She had known him then. ‘Would you rest?’ he added.

  ‘This place will too soon become a Golgotha of skeletons, a vast field of bones,’ she cried out. ‘What evil have you done here? You will rot in Hell for this, Mallet. I shall find my husband.’

  He turned away from her. She refused to be consoled or stop searching, but frantically carried on asking for bodies to be lifted, peering closely at any torso that resembled her husband’s. It was as she made a second tour of the dead up on the ridge that she found him. She identified his long body by marks on his shoulder. There were battle scars too, which she now recognised on his torso and bracelet tattoos on his other arm. When she found his severed leg close by she could see the swan’s feather and the blood-stained, green-eyed dragon that encircled it and, by these marks, she knew the limb was his. It was then that she sank into the mire and wept for her loss.

  ‘May my lord’s soul rest in peace.’ She took a cloth from her belt and carefully wiped away the blood from around the marks.

  Elditha and Ursula left the place of death as they had come, on horseback. The monks remained with the dead King. The sun was up and it promised to be another hot day. As she rode away she saw other women moving among the bodies just as she had done, searching for any marks that identified the men they had loved, looking for any tokens left to them.

  As the sun began to disappear that day, Elditha heard that Gytha had reached the battlefield. They brought the Countess to the camp. Sobbing, she hugged Gytha, whose face was as white as dried bones. Elditha pulled Thea close and clung to her weeping child, weeping herself and between her sobs trying to comfort her daughter, promising that soon they could all go home. She wondered at the truth of her hopeless empty words. Where was home? The Normans had destroyed everything: her home and her heart, and her child was wandering lost in the woods. Gytha told her that on the field of bones, as far as the eye could see, there were many more sobbing women and chanting priests than she imagined the county ever held. William had taken no prisoners. Thea had been sick with the horror of it and had leaned over her mount and had vomited. Gytha had demanded to see Duke William, saying that she had come to claim her own. The Norman knights who remained on the ridge had looked upon her haughtily, until finally William Mallet came to speak to her. It was Mallet who had guided her to the camp at Hastings, and here they were.

  Elditha sobbed, ‘They burned Reredfelle.’

  Gytha looked around and then let out a cry. ‘Elditha, where is Ulf? What has happened to my grandson?’

  ‘When they fired my hall, I sent him away from Reredfelle into the woods with the nurse to find Padar, who was bringing us a garrison from Canterbury. It was a mistake. I should not have let him go.’ She bit her lip hard, drawing blood. It tasted bitter on her tongue.

  ‘Then let us pray that they have found him.’ Gytha reached out and took Elditha’s hand. ‘Have faith; Padar will discover him. I feel it.’

  Darkness fell and the camp was once again lit up with torches. The women sat in a circle inside the tent praying, wondering what would happen next. Sometimes they reached out for each other’s hands, trying to find a desperate, fragile comfort in simple touch. William summoned the family of women. As Alain of Brittany escorted them through the camp to the Duke’s pavilion, they could hear the racketing sounds of a jubilant and celebrating victorious army.

  The Duke was seated in a winged chair. He never spoke but gestured to them to follow him. He led them to the tent where Gytha’s three sons lay on trestles, each under linen cloth. Shields and swords were placed by their sides. Candles flickered by their remains. Numbed by shock, Elditha listened to the rhythmic sound of chanting and smelled the pungent smell of incense.

  On seeing the Countess, the monks of Waltham ceased their prayer and bowed their heads to her. Gytha lifted away the cloth coverings and looked for the last time on her sons.

  ‘This is God’s will, Countess,’ the Duke said coldly. ‘Many men’s lives were wasted who, if right had been honoured when it ought to have been, would be living now.’

  Elditha only saw hatred in Duke William’s cold stare. His eyes were as deep as an open grave. When the Countess finally spoke her voice rang clear. ‘My Lord Duke, I will take my sons’ bodies for burial at Waltham.’

  ‘Earl Gyrth and Earl Leofwine you may have, Countess, but I claim Earl Harold’s body. He will be buried in a place of my choosing, a place that will be known only to myself and those who are close to me.’

  ‘Then, I offer you the King’s weight in gold for his corpse.’

  ‘No, I keep his body. And I claim your gold for the Church. By Christus, I will build an abbey here as a monument to our dead.’ He paused. ‘All of our dead, English and Norman.’ He looked at the women in a haughty manner. ‘Tomorrow you may leave my camp.’

  ‘Then I ask that Leofwine and Gyrth are laid beside him. As they were in life, so they will be in death, warriors and brothers together.’

  ‘If that is your wish, Countess. My priests will pray for their souls.’

  Duke William turned away from them to speak with his two brothers, Bishop Odo of Bayeux and Robert of Mortain. It was as if they were of no importance, dismissed and forgotten. Count Alain escorted them back to their tents. He touched Elditha’s arm and said in a quiet voice, ‘Lady, I am sorry for your loss and that of the Countess. I will see that tonight she has a comfortable couch. Tomorrow, you are to travel to Winchester with a guard to protect you.’

  Elditha took Thea by the hand. ‘It is too late to be sorry, Alain. You have murdered the father of my children.’ She turned her back on him, lifted the tent flap, pushed Thea in first with the flat of her hand, and then helped the silent Countess to enter. She turned back to the knight. ‘Winchester? We want to return to Canterbury.’ Count Alain only shrugged.

  Later, the Duke charged William Mallet with the King’s burial. When night fell, Mallet spirited the corpses from the camp and travelled with them west along the coast towards Pevensey. There King Harold was quietly laid to rest on a cliff with his brothers by his side, overlooking an angry sea that swirled onto the shores of the kingdom he had lost.

  PART TWO

  A Journey

  And Earl William went back again to Hastings, and waited there to see if he would be submitted to; but when he realised that no one was willing to come to him, he went inland with all of his raiding party which was left to him.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, September 1066, Worcester Manuscript, edited and translated by Michael Swanton

  When the great Duke William first arrived in this land, many of his men, pluming themselves on so great a victory and considering that everything ought to yield and submit to their wishes and lusts, began to do violence not only to the possessions of the conquered but also where the opportunity offered to their women, married and unmarried alike, with shameful licentiousness. Thereupon a number of women anticipating this and fearing for their own virtue betook themselves to convents of sisters and taking the veil protected themselves from such infamy.

  Eadmer’s History of Recent Events in England , Books I-IV, written in the last decade of the 11th century, translated by G Bosanquet

  13

  Winchester

  November 1066

  Once out of the woodlands Padar clutched Ulf tightly before him on the saddle. With Margaret on Eglantine, they galloped furiously across the weald towards the Queen’s town of Winchester. When they reached the gates, they mingled with refugees, grim-faced country folk who lamented that Duke William’s army had ridden like devils through their villages, had fed his soldiers with food from their barns and destroyed their homes with fire. His men had violated their wives a
nd daughters. Padar called to Margaret, ‘Do not be frightened by their talk.’ But she was very afraid; terrified for the boy and for herself.

  They parted from the column of the dispossessed near the two minsters, old and new, and rode on slowly towards the royal palace. Although the Queen’s Gate was usually wide open, guards were stopping refugees from seeking shelter there. One of them prodded Padar’s horse with a spear, and told them to move off. Margaret reined back as she watched Padar turning his horse from side to side, clutching hold of Ulf, rising up in his saddle to peer into the palace courtyard. An angry soldier reached through the partially opened gate and touched the soft leather of Margaret’s boots. She recoiled and pulled Eglantine back another pace.

  Padar shouted over Ulf’s head. ‘I’m Padar … the King’s skald. The boy is Harold’s son.’

  ‘We have no king! Where were you on Saturday when our warriors were cut down?’

  ‘Saving the King’s boy from harm.’

  ‘Turn around, skald. Go and write songs about our defeat!’

  Margaret murmured a prayer as Padar bawled at them, ‘You sons of whores, let us through now.’

  A dark column of canons filed out from the palace and across the yard, walking in a procession to the gate. The Provost leading them stopped. They were on their way to the Old Minster and he demanded that the sentries move aside and allow his canons through.

  ‘Take these people with you, my Lord Provost. They think they have King Harold’s boy.’

  The Provost stared at them. Margaret saw him look from Padar to her and back to Ulf, who was wide-eyed watching the fracas. The Provost raised his hand. ‘No, hold your tongues. I know this man. He is the King’s skald. Allow them in.’ He called out to Padar, ‘There was a fire on the Lady Elditha’s estate. Her hall burned to the ground. Is the boy her son?’