by Justin Hill
*
Leofwine took to his bed, and Godwin had to sleep in a corner of the hall floor where the sacks of seed corn were kept. After a week and a half their father was summoned home, but it took a long time for the messenger to find him, and he could not find a physic to bring back with him, so it was their mother and her ladies who tended to the boy, with charms and prayers and poultices of stinking herbs mixed with goose fat.
‘You smell like a goose!’ Godwin told his brother, and Leofwine smiled.
‘I feel like a goose,’ he said.
Godwin went in to see his brother each morning, and even though the leecher came and opened up vein after vein, his brother did not get better.
One morning Leofwine said, ‘Men say the Danes will come in the spring, and then we will ride out with Father,’ and he seemed so much brighter that Godwin hugged him.
‘You are looking much better!’ he said.
‘Am I?’
Godwin nodded. ‘Much. When the Danes come, Father said we can ride with the fyrd.’
That was something to look forward to, and Leofwine started to come out of his bed and sit by the fire.
But it was like the light of the setting sun that shines full in the face, warming the skin, blinding the viewer.
‘Of course we will,’ Leofwine said, as if these things were certain, though life could be as brief as a sparrow’s flight.
A week later Leofwine was confined to bed and weaker than a girl.
‘Are you going to die?’ Godwin asked when the days were at their shortest and it was easiest to slip from the world.
‘No,’ Leofwine said, for his coughing had improved, and it seemed that the spotting of blood had lessened. ‘You will grow up and we will ride and hunt together. I’ll take you to catch a falcon for yourself. I can see it. You will grow a pitchfork moustache!’
The two boys laughed.
‘Down to your chest,’ Leofwine assured him, and his laughter turned into a thick, rattling noise in his chest. and even as Leofwine struggled for breath his humour was still good. ‘It’ll be so long you can sieve your ale.’
Godwin smiled and his brother laughed again, but the laughter made Godwin wince, and he wished that his brother would not tell any more jokes.
Gytha took Godwin aside for their daily prayers one day.
‘Your brother does not have long for this world,’ she said.
‘What do you mean?’
‘He is almost ready to slip across into the Lord’s care.’
‘Will the Lord look after him?’
Gytha nodded.
‘But why should He take Leofwine?’ Godwin asked. ‘He has done nothing wrong.’
‘None of us has done anything wrong,’ she told him. ‘It is just the way of the world.’
‘The world is wrong,’ he said as if it were his mother’s fault.
There was nothing Gytha could say. ‘You’re right, it is.’
Godwin was angry. ‘I thought you brought a priest!’
‘Godwin,’ she said. Her tone was low. It was almost like a warning.
He turned away and kicked the door.
‘Can’t you do something!’ he shouted. He punched the door as well.
Punched it again.
Leofwine lasted all the next day. He seemed to rally during the afternoon, but he had grown too weak to talk, and for the brief moments they were alone Godwin spoke. The words did not come easily, for he did not know what to say, so he told Leofwine all the things they would grow up and do together. Hunt, hawk, marry, have sons. He kept talking even as the wan winter light began to fade about them, and Leofwine closed his eyes and his chest moved very slowly, and then Godwin didn’t talk any more. and someone put their hand on his shoulder and patted it, and Godwin looked up and saw Beorn’s face.
‘How’s he doing?’
‘Well,’ Godwin said.
Beorn nodded. Godwin could not tell what he was thinking, but then he forced a smile, and patted Godwin’s shoulder again. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Good.’
*
Day seemed barely to have begun before night came creeping back among them all. The candles burnt steadily down and on Christmas Eve Leofwine opened his eyes, saw his family near and smiled. But he was past hearing and almost past caring, and the angels came for him in the darkness when Godwin’s head had fallen forward in sleep.
When Godwin woke he looked up and could sense his brother’s soul had departed. He could see it in the maid’s face as she swept the hearth ash into a bucket, feel it in the silence of the heavy roof-thatch, the taut look about his father’s mouth, the dull clang of the chapel bell where the monks’ prayers had failed them.
Wulfnoth did not cry, but stood silent and nodded to his son as if he understood. He should have fought the Danes. He should not have given them his food. He should have died in battle rather than watch his eldest son starve and sicken. Wulfnoth sat by the embers and his eyes gleamed red, a slow and angry flame, stoked to fury. His nostrils flared and his hands open and closed; his eyebrows came together and he refused ale or milk or whey. His loss weighed on him, and it was all he could do to sit upright and not curl like a child in grief.
You are a coward, Wulfnoth Cild, he told himself. God has punished you for your cowardice. And as he sat his hands opened, as if about a Danish throat, and he looked down and imagined slowly squeezing his fury out.
Better to revenge, Wulfnoth decided, than wade through mourning.
Early the next day, Godwin came in and knelt with his father and mother, and the monk led a prayer in Latin. Leofwine was propped up on down pillows, his arms had been tucked in under the blanket, a cloth had been tied about his jaw, and the king’s silver coins weighted down his eyelids. The monk talked and the words flowed over Godwin and he was jealous and angry, and did not know how his brother could leave him like this.
As the day drew on, Godwin half expected his brother to sit up or stop playing dead, but day turned to night, silence to tears, tears to a sudden wail in the middle of the night that chilled men’s hearts.
Godwin thought it was his mother, at first, but slow dawning he understood it was his father’s voice, ripped from the gut, and it spoke of pain Godwin knew he did not understand.
Open doth stand the gap of a son
Woeful the breach where grief floods in
Godwin didn’t know what to do or say any more and for a few weeks he decided he wanted to become a monk.
‘Father, can we bring Father Cuthbert back so I can study?’ he asked one night, and Wulfnoth’s face paled.
‘No,’ he said. ‘And do not speak to me of this again.’
When dawn came, Wulfnoth shook Godwin awake. ‘Godwin! Awake, there is much work to be done.’
Godwin did not pause for his day meal, but threw on cloak and boots and hurried after his father. He worked like a churl with wedge and mallet splitting timbers for the new barn his father was building. He chopped firewood from crooked timbers; wove hazel rods into wattle; warmed sick sheep with his own body; carried water; laid hedges; trapped foxes; helped foal a colt by the light of a candle; and bore the weight of two sons upon his growing shoulders. There was no time for grief, but Godwin saw the absence of Leofwine everywhere: in the stables, the bed closet, the benches, the hillsides, even at the pregnant grave mound, which slowly fell back into itself. He steeled himself, vowed to survive and vowed to live for Leofwine as well as himself, and to do the things that they had promised each other in the depths of the Weald.
Wulfnoth saw the look in Godwin’s eye. ‘Come, I can smell our night meal,’ he said, and he and Godwin trudged through the darkening day. At the hall door Wulfnoth and Godwin scraped the caked mud from their shoes and Wulfnoth held the door open for Godwin, as if he were an equal, and that gesture meant more than a saga.
On Godwin’s tenth birthday Wulfnoth presented him with his first sword. It was a simple blade of patterned steel: the swirling clouds of light and dark where nine rods of iron and ste
el had been welded into a perfect blade. The hilt was unadorned, except for a wolf’s head in silver on the cross guards.
‘I had this made for Leofwine,’ Wulfnoth said as he held it out in two hands. ‘But it is yours now. Practise with it. You might need it soon enough. And here!’ Wulfnoth gave him a new-made shield. It was unpainted yet, but had already been covered with rawhide. The pattern of the fur looked familiar.
‘It is the prize bull’s skin,’ Beorn whispered as they boiled up the hooves for paint. ‘So that you will stand in battle and remember!’
Godwin took sword and shield with pride and did not go anywhere without his sword strapped to his waist. It was heavy and slapped against his thigh, but he felt like a king already. He puffed out his chest, put his hand on the hilt and swaggered about as Elfhelm’s men had done. But when his mother saw him, her face hardened.
Has it come to this, her look seemed to say, that we arm boys to fight when the king himself will not.
Wulfnoth met her gaze without flinching. Yes, it said, the world has come to this.
Wulfnoth brooded all winter on the death of his son. Leofwine’s death seemed entwined with the decline of England, and after the months of long, dark nights and even darker tales he was eager for the chance to slake his fury in Danish blood. As soon as the spring sea lanes reopened Wulfnoth rode off with his steel-shirted retainers. In March he caught three Danish ships in the Soluente and killed their crews to a man. Godwin was not there, but Beorn was and told him how Wulfnoth leapt like a berserker into the Danish captain’s ship and set about him with his sword as if he were reaping hay. Wulfnoth’s fury did not abate till he had burnt their ships and watched the thick columns of black smoke bring the news of the slaughter to God and His angels.
His father revelled in the bloodshed. He strode up to their leader and killed him in single combat, then had the dead man’s skin nailed to the church door, while the survivors were sold off into slavery.
Godwin begged to be taken to the coast next time, and a month later another slaver tried to run the gauntlet, but Wulfnoth knew the Soluente better than the pirates and on a gloomy Thursday morning, in a fine drizzle, he caught them as they stumbled drunkenly back to the coast, loaded down with slaves and booty. Godwin watched in astonished fascination at the fury of Wulfnoth and his men as they butchered the drunken rabble.
Their leader had a fine coat of Frankish mail, and Wulfnoth gave it to Beorn as a reward. The steel shirt was worth more than the manor of Contone made in a year. It was a fine prize and all looked on in admiration as Beorn threw it over his shoulders. Godwin looked up at him in wonder.
‘Norman pirates,’ Wulfnoth said as he wiped the blood from his sword. ‘So much for their oaths!’
The more Wulfnoth hunted pirates, the unhappier Godwin’s mother became. She sat by the afternoon fire and held up the square cloth she was embroidering with the face of Jesus.
‘Back from the hunt?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ Godwin said.
‘Did you catch anything?’
‘A hind.’
‘Make sure Agnes hangs it,’ Gytha said.
‘Yes, Mother,’ Godwin said, and pushed himself up and started back towards the door.
Gytha flung a question after him. ‘Have you heard?’
‘What?’
‘Your father is planning to go back to sea.’
‘I know.’
Gytha looked back to her needlework and pursed her lips as she stabbed the thread through Christ’s eye. She worked quickly, the black thread forming Christ’s pupil. ‘He is intent on making himself a noble corpse. There is nothing useful in a corpse. A blind man can sing, but a buried man is good for nothing but tears.’
‘Better to die than to suffer shame,’ Godwin said, and his mother was up in a moment. Her slap startled him.
‘You were brought up to talk more sense than that!’
Godwin’s cheek stung. At that moment Wulfnoth strode in, wiping his hands on his kirtle front. He looked from Godwin to his wife and back again.
‘What’s this?’ he said. Godwin’s eyes gleamed with anger but he held his tongue.
‘We were talking about how you are making a name for yourself,’ Gytha said at last.
Wulfnoth sighed. He threw his cloak back and warmed his hands near the fire. ‘Want to come to sea?’ he said to Godwin.
Godwin nodded.
‘Good,’ he said, and winked. ‘We’ll catch some Danes and feed them to the fish.’
CHAPTER FOUR
The Wolf Hunts
Wulfnoth’s favourite ship was named Seawolf. She was a sixty-oared craft, deeper and stouter than the Army’s longships, a sturdy sea-mount for the roving warrior.
That summer they sailed up and down the south coast. Wulfnoth knew many of the sea captains, buff and tanned men with thick salty beards and bulging forearms. At night they moored the boats behind headlands and in sheltered inlets; each day they rowed out to catch the wind. They rekindled friendships, traded news and raced each other round the Needles. There were a lot of drinking games, which Godwin joined in, and learnt to hold his own and not let the ale talk for him. But he was only ten years old and each night he fell into his blankets and snored like a pig.
When they sailed as far as Cornwalia, Godwin stared towards the shore to catch a glimpse of either hut or hall, but all he could see was sheer black cliffs and pounding black water wild with white spray.
Cornwalia was a foreign land. The name made that clear for ‘wal’ meant ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner’. In the far west lived the Walsh; nuts came from the hazel tree, but from the south came the walnut, and the strange stone circle high on the Downs, where witches played at night, was named Wal-Ditch.
‘The West Walsh are a strange and secretive people,’ Wulfnoth said. ‘Each man has two names – one Saxon and one Walsh – and outside the towns no man speaks a word of English.’
‘Two names and two faces,’ Beorn said. ‘And two sets of laws.’
Which meant no law at all, Godwin knew.
As they stared up to the top of the black cliffs they saw a cloaked figure step to the lip and lean on his spear, silhouetted against the sky.
‘To them we are pirates,’ Wulfnoth said.
As he spoke, three more armed warriors came to the edge of the cliff. One of them lifted his spear and pointed. It was a foreign gesture, something between a salute and a threat, and it thrilled Godwin, and stayed with him long after.
At Lizard Rock, the last headland of the Isle of Britain, five grey seals were basking on the rocks, and Godwin felt the boom of the sea and rocks deep within his bones as they turned for home with a great flapping of sail and creaking of timbers and sealskin ropes.
That night on the whale road they saw the great beasts rising like hillocks from under the waves. One came so close that its spray was blown into the faces of men along the boat’s edge. It half rolled in the water, one great eye open to the moonlight. Whales were mysterious and malevolent beasts and one rubbed along the side of the boat. There were shouts of alarm as the well-caulked planks began to spring leaks.
‘They’re trying to turn us over!’
‘He’ll break our keel!’
Beorn’s crooked teeth were clenched. He grasped a spear and thrust down at the terrifying beast. The point caught it just behind its baleful eye, and it let out a great blast of water as it sank. The sudden and bloody upwelling rocked the vessel violently and Godwin was almost thrown over the side, but he clung on and Wulfnoth grabbed the tiller and righted the boat.
‘Are these my brave warriors!’ he laughed. ‘Who face Danes in battle but take fright at a sea monster!’
So the year 1008 passed waiting for Danes who did not come.
In Normandig Duke Richard II’s court imposed the ducal family’s rule through Church and State. In Rome there was plague and famine, while in the Middle Sea heathen Saracens used their base on the rocky island of Sardinia to ravage the coasts of Italy.
/> In England life seemed so hopeless that men talked of the End Times, when Christ would return in all his glory. It had been over a thousand years since Christ’s birth. His return was imminent. To think, men said, that it should come in our time!
Autumn arrived and the fields were full of golden strips of wheat and barley. Wulfnoth decided to end his summer’s sailing. They brought Seawolf back to the royal port of Boseham, a rich town at the end of a muddy inlet that fed into the Soluente. It was a royal port. There the king kept his well-painted boats and there the best shipwrights worked on the stretches of beach that doubled as marketplace and open factory.
‘So it’s true,’ Wulfnoth said, as they admired a row of half-built warships. ‘The king is building a fleet.’
‘Will walls of wood help us?’
‘No,’ Wulfnoth said. ‘Unless we fill them with wills of iron.’
Wulfnoth ordered Seawolf to be dragged up the beach. She was caked in weed and barnacles and all manner of sea-slime. Her timbers had been eaten through by worms, and she bore scars from the whale’s back that ran almost the whole length of the craft. They propped her upright on thick ash staves, scrubbed her free of weed and barnacles, cut out her caulking, mixed coal tar and horsehair, set to work making her watertight again and sent word to the women-folk in Contone to stitch two new sails of red-and-white striped wool.
By the time they had finished Seawolf looked like a newly built craft. There was not a blemish on her, and Godwin and Wulfnoth spent the last afternoon – a cool September day with a faint breath of air and low-dripping clouds anchored over the shingle beach – stripped to the waist rubbing her down till the wet planks gleamed.
‘Done?’ Wulfnoth asked when Godwin came back exhausted, polishing cloth slung over his shoulder.
‘Done!’ said Godwin, and let out a long sigh as he slumped down beside him and shared a horn of ale.
At the harvest festival the talk was all of the new king’s fleet. ‘Every man possessed of three hundred and ten hides was to provide a galley; every man possessed of eight hides only to find a helmet and breastplate.’ The document was read from market crosses and the law mooted.
