Shieldwall

by Justin Hill

  The horse’s legs thrashed. Her eyes were wild with fear. The water swirled hungrily around. The yellow foam was the spittle of bridge trolls. Godwin saw brown serpents in the churning water, a thrashing of eels twining about them, and just when he thought his time on earth would end here in the swirling river water, his horse’s hooves found something solid and she scrambled forward and the brown water clung to her haunches as she strode up into the flooded field-shallows on the far side.

  They were both bedraggled and chilled to the bone marrow. Godwin looked back. No bridge-troll shall take me! he thought defiantly, and the water swirled and writhed as it swept past him.

  Godwin remembered his maxims:

  Water from the mountain shall flood-grey tumble;

  field water shall slow and spread its banks wide;

  wide estuary water meanders to the sea.

  The sound of his own voice reassured him. He soothed the horse and she snorted in reply.

  ‘Come – no flood shall hold Godwin Wulfnothson from home!’

  Edmund’s grandmother had filled Godwin’s head with tales of how England used to be when a good king ruled. He had spent many years imagining what he would do when he returned home and he saw himself as a thegn or a shire-reeve, imposing good order upon the land. Law and order. They were simple things, easily misplaced, like a comb or coin, but when they went missing chaos reigned; might became right.

  The evidence was all about him: houses stood empty; thatched roofs had fallen in; only the graveyards were busy. There were pitifully few livestock in the wattle enclosures, and when he passed by – hurrying on lest he be recognised and reported to Brihtric – wary faces watched him from doorways and under dripping hoods, pale and pinched and snotty. At one point he saw below him the black and jagged outline of a derelict hall, once bustling and busy with harp music and laughter. But now there were overgrown fields and crow-haunted homestead, a row of old graves where the grass bent in the breeze. Waste and bones, like the ruin of a dragon.

  At another hall, a cart was being loaded with sacks and hams. It was the tax, Godwin guessed, being sent to Swein. A woman’s voice rose in a long slow wail, and when Godwin was a bowshot away a thegn came out of the longhouse door and stood and watched. He wore a red cloak and a blue felt hat, and carried a spear. The man’s manner was dark and unfriendly; he gesticulated that Godwin should stay away.

  ‘See what defeat has done,’ Godwin said to his horse. ‘We are a cowering and timid breed of men.’

  The midwinter light quickly failed. The bitter north wind puffed out his cheeks and the air whistled through the black twig hedges and flat winter furrows, turned Godwin’s knuckles red, brought sparkling droplets to hang from the end of his nose. He considered stopping at a ruin, but it looked haunted, so he pressed on and spied a wood to the right with a stream running through it.

  ‘That will make a good and sheltered spot,’ Godwin told his horse. ‘Let us rest there.’

  Solitude weighed on Godwin. He was not used to being alone like this, and he had not quite got the thought of trolls from his mind. His imagination teased him. He gritted his teeth against fear. Fear motivated too many men. The shadows haunted with watching eyes – kobolds and gogmagogs and all kind of skin-prickling night spirits.

  Godwin screwed up his courage and hummed to himself as he saw to the horse. He pulled a pack of sodden oats from the saddle, filled the nosebag and hung it over her ears. She seemed content. Her flanks were warm and damp with sweat. Godwin stroked them, partly to warm his hands, partly to reassure himself, then walked out into the burnt field-stubble.

  He was halfway into the Downs. He looked behind and down, saw a patchwork of brown and green fields, clumps of black trees, the occasional rooftop, and saw how far he had come. Godwin’s spirits were raised.

  ‘Contone lies high up in the next valley,’ he told the horse as she chomped and lifted her tail, and out tumbled a steaming pile of droppings. ‘We will rest here for the night. On the morrow we shall see my home!’

  The horse chewed and nodded and snorted the cold from her nostrils.

  ‘I’ll see if I can get a fire going,’ Godwin said, but even though he dried his flint against his skin, his fingers were numb, the kindling too wet, and he was unable to produce more than a spark.

  Lone horses were wary; they did not lie down to sleep. Godwin brought the mare to her knees and hobbled her so he could lie down next to her and warm himself. It was the best he could do. He kept his sword and shield close. As the darkness grew the stars began to shine and Godwin called out in a clear and stirring voice, ‘Éala Éärendel, engla beorhtast ofer Middangeard, monnum sended!’

  Éärendel was the Archangel Gabriel, war chief of the Angelic Host. He was the Evenstar, and singing brought hope to Godwin’s heart, warmth when there was none.

  Godwin slept fitfully. He stood up long before dawn and rubbed his hands together. Dawn brightened the eastern sky, silhouetting the trees and fields and morning rooks, he found a low mound upon which was set an old stone that had been carved with a cross. The stone stood at a weary angle, half hidden by the tall pale winter grass.

  Godwin suddenly realised he had been here with his father. This was the stone of the Hundred Court. It was Ælle’s Stone – High King of the Seven English Kingdoms – before the English were united. It was on monuments like these that the heathens used to swear oaths.

  The horse waited for a long time and flicked her tail, stamped a hoof.

  When Godwin came back down the hill he had a frog in his throat. Saddling the horse was a long job with fingers stiff with cold.

  ‘Come!’ he said when the task was done. ‘Let us go on.’

  An ancient oak marked the beginning of the Contone estate. Old offerings of food and clothing hung in the branches, wind-bleached and rustling, or were nailed to the deep and craggy bark. To either side were meadows, lush in summer, where Wulfnoth had once driven his cattle to fatten. Ahead was a small, glistening stream. Godwin stopped and drew in a deep breath. He looked up the valley for a glimpse of his father’s hall, but it was obscured by a copse of oak and hornbeam, and only the shingled roof of the chapel bell tower was visible, peeping through the tangle of bare tree branches.

  Fate had brought him here, but now his stomach yawned empty and unsure. He tried to swallow his fear but his mouth seemed full of saliva and in the end he hawked and spat and spat again. This was the land that had nurtured him through childhood. He had played here with Leofwine. Before the Army came. Hope flickered within him, a giddy and excited hope, as if Godwin expected to find his childhood – or happiness – before him.

  His brave thoughts lifted him up and bore him forward as a great sea-swell will lift a ship and bear it on. Godwin drew his sword and held it high, pale and cold, gleaming like ice, crossed the stream in a shower of sparkles.

  Filibrok – the month of full streams – was the time of year horned oxen were limbered to the plough and fields sown with the first crop of barley. Freemen were already out, leading their teams of four oxen along the furrows, while churls carefully carried seed corn from the winter stores.

  Of the great events in the rest of the kingdom they had heard much. By trial of battle their king had been found wanting. Doom! the hedgerow priests called out, for what was Swein but the Antichrist, sent by God as a forerunner of the Apocalypse.

  Out of the North an evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land, and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth; that they should kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.

  That morning was a Monday. The Sunday sermon was fresh in the people’s heads – a long and harrowing homily about death and pestilence and terrible horsemen, delivered by the wandering monk at the field-side stone cross.

  Men in the lower fields saw a lone horseman riding up the lane with sword drawn and they screamed and dropped their baskets – seeds and all.

  ‘Danes!’
they yelled, and the men in the fields let go of the oxen and fled.

  ‘Danes!’ the shout went up the valley, from field to field, and even the oxen panicked and started down the slope, the half-hitched plough snagging in a patch of brambles a furlong away from the path, drawing them up short. The lead ox stretched out its neck; Danes! its mournful bellow seemed to say, Daaanes! and shouts and screams of freemen and churls came back in reply. ‘Forgive us our sins! The End of the World is come!’

  A few of the villagers rushed out to the lane with any weapons they had to hand. They stood across the lane, crossing themselves and praying to God Almighty to grant them courage as they prepared to sell their lives. At their head stood Agnes the Alewife, pudgy fingers gripping the shaft of her pitchfork. She clutched her charm of woven straw and led the men forward. Her husband had died and her son Godmaer – a chubby lad with a club foot – stood close behind her. Even though she had little enough to lose, she prepared to sell it dearly.

  The Dane rounded the lone hawthorn bush and Agnes fiercely brandished her pitchfork. ‘Man or devil, come not here!’ she shouted, and they prodded forward with rake and pitchfork. ‘Back!’ she shouted. ‘Back!’

  Godwin opened his mouth to speak, but the woman almost speared his horse and his terrified animal started in surprise. ‘I am Godwin!’ he shouted as he batted her thrust away, but she was too angry to hear and thrust at him again, shouting, ‘Demon and devil!’

  ‘I’m Godwin Wulfnothson!’ Godwin told her, and she was about to spear him when his words and language finally registered and she batted down the weapons of the men around her. ‘He’s no Dane!’ she said. ‘Look! He’s no Dane. He speaks like an Englishman!’

  ‘I’m Godwin, son of Wulfnoth!’ Godwin called down again.

  ‘Lord Wulfnoth’s son?’

  ‘Yes!’ Godwin said.

  ‘Bless my barrel,’ she said, and put up a hand to wipe the sweat from her brow, ‘it’s Wulfnoth’s son or I’m a cat!’

  A few men lowered their weapons and peered up at him, not sure if they should spear him or touch their caps.

  ‘I am Godwin, son of Wulfnoth!’ Godwin said, and laughed. ‘I am Godwin.’

  ‘Wulfnoth’s son!’ they said in surprise and relief. ‘Look – it’s Lord Wulfnoth’s son!’

  More men came running ready to fight; when they came upon the scene it took a moment for them to understand what had happened. They threw down their weapons in shame and embarrassment and pressed around Godwin’s horse, grabbing his hands and waving to him and telling him that he should have sent word that he was returning.

  ‘Where’s Wulfnoth?’ the question came faster and faster.

  Godwin crossed himself.

  ‘With Christ,’ he said. ‘He passed away before Christmastide.’ The words seemed too abrupt and he added, as if here of all places he did not quite believe it, ‘So the seafarers say.’

  Lyftehal – the high hall – was hidden by a long, low hump of land and a thicket of birch. The excited crowd pushed Godwin forward and he was almost fearful of what he might see. The hall was slowly revealed to him as he walked towards it.

  It had an unkempt look, the barley thatch was thick with grass and stands of bracken, and a small bush grew at one end, as if it were an ancient ruin. It was lower and smaller than Godwin remembered. He looked around to get his bearings, but the landmarks seemed out of place, shorter than his mind’s eye had it. A man came out of the hall, still buttoning up his trousers. A girl hurried off behind him. She had a beaten look about her. Godwin recognised the redhead as one of the daughters of his father’s freemen. They think so little of my people, he thought.

  The man, Ulf, had not noticed him. He was the sour-faced steward of Godwin’s enemy. His lord was Brihtric, and his job was to squeeze every shilling from Contone.

  Hands on hips, he looked out at the excited peasants with irritation. ‘Who’s ploughing the fields?’ he shouted. ‘What is that team doing in the hedge? I want that acre finished by nightfall!’ When he saw Godwin he pulled himself up a little taller, but he did not recognise this young lad, and not knowing was not liking. ‘Greetings, stranger,’ he said in an unwelcoming way. ‘Are you stopping my men working? This is Brihtric’s manor. There’s no alms to be found here, so if begging is your business then pass along!’

  ‘I am no beggar,’ Godwin replied, ‘and these are not your men. They are not Brihtric’s men, nor yours. They are my men, and I am their rightful lord!’

  ‘Are you now?’ Ulf laughed, and looked about him to draw others into his insults. ‘Look at this! I’ve shat bigger turds in the pot at night. Who is this bum-fluffed bairn standing at my hall?’

  ‘I am Godwin, son of Wulfnoth. I have come through fire and sword and battle. Across sea and land, through oath-breaking and injustice, and I am here to right those wrongs. My father was Wulfnoth Cild, Lord of Contone and Marshal of the Southern Shore. Good men remember him well. Who are you to stand in my hall and order my folk?’

  Ulf laughed. He was the bastard son of a farthing-a-frolic camp whore, the ugly face of Eadric’s brother Brihtric, sent to bully tax or labour from unwilling slaves and churls. His name was English, but his blood could have been Irish or Walsh or Scottish or Danish or Norwegian or Norman or Frankish – any of the mercenary mix who had camped that night, thirty-three years ago, outside the stone and stake walls of Canturburie. Ulf liked to pick the nation that suited his mood. This morning he was feeling Scottish: wild and hairy and angry about something.

  He lifted one buttock to let out a fart. ‘Your father was an oath-breaker and a coward. This is now the land of Alderman Brihtric,’ he said, ‘not any Godwin Wulfnothson! Get ye gone before I whip your baby backside.’

  ‘This is no land of Brihtric.’

  ‘No? The king says so.’

  ‘Which king?’

  ‘King Ethelred!’

  Godwin smiled. ‘And you speak for him?’

  ‘I am Ulf Edwinson, steward of this manor,’ Ulf said quickly, ‘given to Brihtric by royal writ.’

  ‘Show me!’

  Ulf laughed. Of course he would not.

  ‘Have you not heard, Ulf Edwinson? Ethelred is king no longer! I come from the ruin of Lundenburh. I saw Ethelred sail for Normandig, his ships weighed down with English silver. This manor was given to my family by Alfred King in the elder days! It is mine and mine alone. Stand aside and no harm shall come to you!’ Godwin spoke fiercely and passionately.

  Both men read the situation in an instant. Ulf was a grown man, Godwin young.

  ‘Then let us fight!’ Ulf said.

  ‘Why spill blood so close to Lent?’ asked one of the onlookers, a timid farmer named Deor. ‘Christ will not forgive any of us. Surely there can be parley.’

  Ulf laughed at parley. ‘I stand aside for no traitor’s brat.’

  ‘It is the mark of an unworthy man who speaks ill of the dead.’

  Ulf hawked and spat. ‘That’s for your father – living or dead!’

  Repay friends with friendship, gift with gift, betrayal with treachery, insults with an axe. ‘I am glad you are a foul-mouthed braggart, Ulf Whoreson. I shall make Sudsexe one nithing lighter when I kill you. Let us find a clear space and settle the issue there.’

  So it was decided.

  Godwin spoke. ‘I call on the Lord Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Middle Earth, to bear witness to this duel.’

  Ulf laughed. ‘I’ll tan your backside before I kill you and send your head to Eadric so that he knows one more enemy is dead.’

  Godwin laughed. ‘You are welcome to my head if you can remove it from my shoulders.’

  A space was found at the foot of a pollarded ash, recently harvested for spear shafts. The boundary of the circle was marked with pieces of hazel rod like a pagan ritual.

  ‘Let all of you hear and keep to my word, even if I should die,’ Godwin called out. ‘I came here of my own free will and challenged Ulf to battle. If God finds me lacking, I ask only that my bo
dy be buried here in the hallowed ground with my forefathers.’

  Ulf drew his sword and swung his arms about his head to warm his shoulders. up. ‘Can you fight as well as you talk?’ he shouted. ‘Should I spank you and send you home to your mother!’

  ‘Let him be!’ the crowd urged Godwin. ‘The man’s a fool and a coward.’

  Godwin kept his mouth closed and breathed deeply. He was tougher and more worldly than any guessed. He was as still and calm as an evening tarn. Just fifteen years old. His eyes bored into the older man’s face. Ulf hefted his shield and stepped into the ring as the morning sun broke through the clouds and bathed the frozen turf in a cold yellow light. Godwin stood still and graven like a warrior of old, with gold in his hair and on his sword and shield rim.

  ‘I do not fear you or your father,’ Ulf called out, but his words came to Godwin as if from a great distance.

  His jaw was set. He heard the breeze whistling in his ears and dried his hand on his thigh, felt the weave of the wool on his skin, felt the sweat on his hands and the nerves coursing through his arms. This is the moment all the poems spoke of: the sport of points, the banter of spears, the hailstorm of hatred, the truest test of men. Just get it over with, he told himself, and lifted his shield as he stepped towards the challenge.

  Ulf was large and strong. He had a fearsome swing and tried to batter his opponent down with mighty blows that sent shivers down Godwin’s shield arm. Godwin kept on his toes. Keep your eyes on the enemy; be aware of what his weapon is doing. Godwin began to get the feel of his opponent. Swordsmen strike with their right foot forward, he remembered learning in his stableyard sparring. Watch the opponent’s eyes, for they tell you where the next blow will fall. Ulf was a typical barnyard bruiser. His eyes signalled his next attack like a battlefield trumpet.

  Godwin began to hope. Strike towards the face to disorientate a man, then strike under his shield.

  Damn! You could have had him there! Godwin told himself as he risked a moment to wipe sweat from his brow. The more Godwin held his ground, the more Ulf circled, backed off and circled. Godwin saw the fear in Ulf’s eyes, saw white knuckles clutching the sword hilt.