The Conquest

by Elizabeth Chadwick

  'She resembles Rolf,' Felice said, giving the howling bundle to the exhausted, but happy mother.

  Ailith laughed. 'God grant that she does not act like him. Two of them is more than I could bear!'

  'You do not mean that!'

  'Could you imagine Rolf in female form?' She put the infant to her breast. The baby found her nipple immediately and set to with a voracious will. 'But I fear you are right,' she added wryly. 'She certainly has his appetite.'

  'I'll go and fetch him,' Felice said as the midwife set about tidying the room, putting the afterbirth and bloodstained bed-straw in a basket for burning and covering them with used linens.

  Ailith gazed down upon her new daughter, enchanted by the fragility of her skin and the coppery-gold lashes lining her half-closed lids. She was long of limb, and since both her parents were tall, would doubtless grow to match them. Ailith spoke softly to the baby and her eyes opened. They lacked focus and were an indeterminate horizon-blue, but they followed the sound of the voice and seemed to study Ailith curiously. She felt a pang of protective love so fierce that it brought tears to her eyes.

  'Julitta,' she murmured, testing the strange, Norman name on her tongue. At Yuletide she had made a bargain with Rolf beneath a kissing bunch of mistletoe. If the baby was a boy, she had requested that he be named Lyulph in remembrance of her younger brother. Not Goldwin, for that was a name too sacred and painful to her heart. Rolf had agreed on the condition that if the child was a girl, she should be named after his mother, Julitta.

  'She did not have very much out of me or my father during her lifetime,' he had said with a shrug, 'and I know that she would have liked you.'

  'Why didn't you give her name to your… your wife's daughter?' Ailith had asked, the word 'wife' sticking in her throat.

  Rolf had smiled. 'I did think about it, but Arlette desired to call Gisele after her maternal grandmother, and I knew that I could have the naming of any sons. Besides, it did not seem to matter. When I saw Gisele lying in her cradle, I knew immediately that she was no Julitta.'

  'And are you a Julitta?' Ailith asked her newborn daughter, and was answered by a loud sucking noise. The tug of the baby's lips on her nipple sent waves of cramp through Ailith's loins.

  The hangings across the doorway moved, and she propped herself up and put a smile on her face for Rolf. The curtain billowed again, and instead of the anticipated lean, red-haired man, there entered a bright-eyed small boy.

  'I've come to see the new baby,' announced a confident Benedict de Remy.

  The midwife set her lips and started towards the child, but Ailith stopped her. 'No, let him come and look. He does no harm.'

  Benedict sidled past the village woman and ran up to the bed. He stared solemnly at the sucking infant and very gently placed his finger on her downy red hair.

  'Except for your mother and Wulfhild, and Dame Osyth here, you are the first person in the castle to have seen her,' Ailith told him.

  Benedict nodded. 'She's very small,' he said, frowning.

  'You were too when you were born.'

  'I want a brother, but Mama can't have any more babies. What's her name?'

  Ailith told him, and he repeated it carefully. A bright little imp was Benedict, full of life and filled with a ruthless quest for knowledge. In her tired state, he quite overwhelmed Ailith. She was rescued by Felice, who hurried into the room, looking exasperated.

  'I'm sorry, Ailith, he gave me the slip. I should have known he would come straight here to you. Ben, leave Ailith alone, she's exhausted.'

  The little boy pulled a face and refused to move from his post at the bedside, but he ceased his chatter.

  'Where's Rolf?' Ailith asked of Felice. 'Could you not find him?'

  'He's gone out to one of the horses. Mauger summoned him in a panic so the steward says, about half a candle notch since. Something about a broken leg.'

  'Oh.' Ailith nodded and tried not to feel disappointed. She knew that his horses came first, that she should not expect him to be waiting in the hall on the whim of his child to be born, but nevertheless, weak tears filled her eyes. She blinked hard. Supposing Sleipnir had broken a bone, Rolf's prize stallion? Or what if it was Elfa, her own little mare?

  'He'll be back soon,' Felice soothed with the false heartiness of a sickbed nurse. 'Try and sleep, so that you'll be refreshed when he does arrive. Come on, rascal, you can see the baby again later.' She took her son's hand and drew him firmly away while the midwife came to tend to Ailith and take the satiated baby from her arms.

  Ailith gave Julitta to Dame Osyth and wearily closed her eyes. She knew that she was being irrational, but knowing did not prevent her from feeling as if she had been deserted.

  Several hours later, a sound woke Ailith. The baby was no longer in her cradle where Dame Osyth had placed her, and of the midwife herself there was no sign. Ailith pulled herself up on her pillows and stared round the room. There were cramps in her belly and the entire area of the birth passage was no longer numb, but decidedly sore. The sound resolved itself into Rolf's voice talking softly near the shutters, and she saw that in his arms he was gently cradling the swaddled baby.

  'Rolf?'

  He turned as she spoke, and came to the bed. She saw that his face was slack and tired, as if he too had not slept all night. Certainly he had not shaved, for his lips and jaw were outlined in garnet stubble.

  'Did I waken you?' Leaning over the bed, he kissed her.

  'It does not matter. I am glad that you're here.' Her eyes filled with tears again. It was a weakness of women the days immediately following childbirth, or so Dame Hulda had told Ailith when she bore Harold. 'Is she a Julitta?' she managed to choke out. 'Does she meet with your approval?'

  'She is a princess,' Rolf said softly, and brushed away her tears with the hand not occupied by his daughter. 'And yes, she is a Julitta. My mother was the one responsible for the red hair in the Brize bloodline, and I can see that this little one has it.' He seated himself on a stool at the bedside. 'Down her back it was, a mane of wild curls. But I think that her namesake is going to be even more beautiful.'

  His words were a soothing balm on Ailith's earlier feelings of rejection, and a watery smile emerged through her tears.

  'And I think that last night is only the first of many sleepless ones that she will cause us,' she teased.

  Rolf acknowledged the truth of her words with a grimace. As if indignant at being maligned so young, Julitta set up a fractious wailing, and when rocking her only brought forth louder roars of protest, Rolf hastily handed her to Ailith for feeding.

  'Felice said that you could not come when our daughter was born because you had gone out to tend a horse?' Ailith settled Julitta at her breast and hoped that her tone had not sounded petulant.

  His grimace lost its humour. 'The bay pony stallion, the one I bought in the north,' he sighed. 'Put his leg in a mole mound this morning while Mauger was trying to catch him, and snapped the bone clean through.'

  'Can nothing be done?'

  'It was a hind leg; he would have been useless for breeding -no strength to mount the mares. The break was too severe to even try to save him. I had to kill him.'

  'Oh, Rolf, I am sorry!' She touched his hand in sympathy with her free one and was ashamed at the anger she had felt earlier. 'And you had such hopes!'

  'It just means I'll have to go north and buy another stallion.'

  Ailith tightened her arm around the suckling baby and was filled with fear.

  'Oh not yet,' he said as he caught the look on her face. 'Next month perhaps, or early in April when the roads are fit for travelling. I have learned my lesson about visiting those parts in wintertime.'

  'Do you think there will be anything left up there to seek out?' she demanded with some agitation.

  'What do you mean?'

  'Oh you know as well as I do. The traders who come to Ulverton tell dreadful tales of what your king has done in the north lands; of the villages he has wasted. People s
ay that if peace lies over England, it is the peace of death.'

  If he noticed her say 'your king' as opposed to 'the King', he did not remark upon it. 'Pedlars always exaggerate,' he said uncomfortably. 'And the north was in rebellion — the Scots, the Danes, several English earls. What was he supposed to do? They had received warning enough already.'

  She said nothing, but bit her lip and paid undue attention to the feeding baby. She did not have the strength to quarrel.

  'I won't find another pony stallion of the bay's stamp in these parts. Nor will I know what I can obtain in the north unless I go and look for myself.'

  'You will do as you please,' she said stiffly. Here he was, watching his newborn daughter suckle at her breast, and he was contemplating leaving her. It was a bitter morsel to swallow. Was this how his wife felt when she saw him for a few brief weeks each year? The land on the horizon was always better than the land he possessed. From feeling bathed in love, she returned to feeling desolate and frightened. The midwife would say that it was the effects of giving birth that were making her emotions swing from high to low like a falconer's lure, but Ailith knew differently.

  'You need to sleep,' Rolf said, leaning over her to brush his lips lightly against her temple and cheek. 'I'll come back later.'

  She watched him make his escape, treading buoyantly to the door, and wondered if that was what he always said. One day, she thought, he would 'come back later' to a cold hearth.

  CHAPTER 30

  Rolf had been prepared to see a scarred and punished land, but he could never have envisaged the devastation which greeted his eyes as he, Mauger, and eight retainers crossed the Humber and headed into what remained of the Yorkshire Danelaw.

  Entire villages had been scorched to the ground, their livestock butchered and their crops destroyed. Charred bodies lay where they had fallen, and many of them were human, with no-one to bury them decently. The few living people they did encounter either fled at their approach on famine-thin legs, or accosted them in desperation, begging for food. They had nothing to sustain them, not even hope, for William had destroyed everything. There was no seed to sow crops, no fruit trees to provide winter stores, no animals to salt down.

  Occasionally Rolf found a village which had escaped more lightly than the others, but even here there was a lack of men to do the work. Every male over the age of fifteen had been slaughtered. Terrible indeed had been William's vengeance upon the rebels. It was almost as if he had decided that he could do without the troublesome population of northern England, and with a determined swipe of his iron fist, had swatted it from existence.

  Mauger began to have nightmares and Rolf found himself touching the talismans he 'wore around his neck and praying more than he had done in a long time. The loyalty he felt towards King William remained as staunch as ever despite the atrocities, but the admiration which had long been attached to his loyalty died, and in its place grew a cold disgust. He saw starving women and infants and tried not to think of Ailith and Julitta, but his imagination would not be commanded. Time and again he saw their ghosts in the gaunt, skeletal faces cursing their tracks as they rode towards York. Obtaining a single pony stallion suddenly seemed futile, a paltry speck on the road of his life. In his black mood, he would have turned back, but he was so close to Ulf's village by then, that he knew he had to go on. For good or evil, he had to know what had happened.

  They approached the village on a hazy spring afternoon, the sun a misty halo in a pale sky. The track was muddy and Rolf was encouraged to see the print of hoof and foot gouged in the mire. Neither pigs nor swineherd materialised to greet them, and at the place where the Odin statue had stood sentinel, there was nothing but a lush growth of nettles. Rolf drew rein and saluted his respect as if at a grave before riding on.

  The palisade of wooden stakes was commemorated by a charred circle of ashes, blurring black into the soil. It surrounded fewer than a dozen houses, and these were new structures of fresh thatch and green timber. More black smears and twisted black beams revealed what had happened to the other dwellings. Ulf's village had not escaped the attentions of William's Norman mercenaries. It had been seriously mauled, but it had not been utterly destroyed.

  A woman carrying a large water jug from the well was the first person they encountered. Her eyes widened, but she did not panic as the swineherd had once done. Instead she put down the jar and went straight into one of the huts, her step swift but graceful. Rolf recognised Inga, Ulf's daughter-in-law. Moments later Ulf himself emerged from the building. He walked with a stick, his limp severe, but the same iron will was in evidence.

  Rolf dismounted and walked over to him.

  'So,' Ulf jutted his silver and rust jaw at Rolf, 'your Viking instinct brings you back to see what the ravens have wreaked?'

  Rolf drew a deep breath. 'I am grieved for what my countrymen have done, but I tried to warn you what would happen.'

  'Aye, so you did,' Ulf said without warmth. 'What do you want?'

  'If you still have ponies, I have come to trade for another stallion. The one you sold me broke his leg before he had covered more than one season of mares.'

  'Aye, I still have ponies.'

  'Will you trade?'

  Ulf stared at him for a long time with eyes of winter ice. Then abruptly he swept his arm towards his hut. His tunic sleeve fell away to reveal heavy bracelets of incised silver and bronze on his wrists. 'Enter within and partake of what meagre hospitality I can offer. I am one of the fortunate ones, I still have a roof over my head.'

  Once more Inga brought food for the guests, serving Rolf and his men coldly, her mouth tucked in a severe fold and her cat-hazel eyes downcast. The bread was gritty and impure, the boiled stockfish salty and tough. Mauger pulled a face and almost gagged, but a glare from Rolf made him choke down his food and murmur his thanks.

  'Your community has survived,' Rolf said, forcing himself to eat, knowing what a sacrifice the old man was making in his pride.

  'After a fashion,' Ulf growled. 'There are no villages left hereabouts with whom we can trade. We have to go to York for our provisions and that costs silver. But it is due to you that some of us are alive to grumble about our lot.'

  'Due to me?'

  'As you said earlier, you warned us about what your Duke would do. I heeded your words above those of my own son and I had our people take all of our winter supplies and animals into the woods and hide them. When the Normans arrived, they found the village already deserted. All they had to burn were our empty houses.'

  Rolf ate in silence. There was nothing he could say apart from that he was sorry. He was being thanked and hated at the same time, and the sensation was disquieting. His eye fell on Inga as she went about her duties. She looked beaten down and weary. Her son sat on the floor playing with a chicken's foot, fiddling with the guiders to make the toes move. Of the little girl there was no sign. 'There were many more houses when I came before,' he said to Ulf.

  'My son Beorn and our hot-headed young men died fighting a Norman patrol on the York road at the beginning of the troubles. And then, around the time that we had to hide in the woods, many of us took sick of a pestilence and very few recovered. Inga's daughter was among them.'

  'I am sorry.' Rolf's glance flickered again to the young woman. He would have pitied her, but her self-contained manner forbade such a sentiment.

  'Being sorry will not bring the heart back to this place,' Ulf grunted sourly. 'Have you finished? Then come, I will show you the ponies.'

  The new stallion was a glossy, pine-pitch brown which hovered just short of being pure black. He was more sturdily made than the previous bay Rolf had purchased, for he was three years older and in his prime. Fine hairs feathered his hocks and pasterns, but his leg action was high and clean.

  'I was saving him for myself,' Ulf announced, 'but there is no-one in this wilderness with the money or need to buy a horse unless it be to eat, and for that they will steal. I keep him close to the compound; I know if I do not,
he will finish his life upon some poor wretch's table. Silver is of more use to me now. I can buy seeds and supplies to start anew.'

  They settled down to haggle a price, although Rolf did not haggle very hard, for he could see the older man's need. Blood money, he thought, the price of feeling less guilty for the sin of being a Norman.

  'There is one other thing I desire of you,' Ulf said as Rolf counted the silver coins out of his pouch.

  'There is?' Rolf was alerted to caution by the sudden gruff note in the other's voice.

  'When you leave, I desire you to take Inga and the lad with you. There is no future for them in this village save that it be from hand-to-mouth.'

  Rolf stopped counting and looked at Ulf in surprise. 'You would entrust them to a Norman?'

  'To save them from being killed by other Normans. What if your king's mercenaries should return and ravage again?' Ulf shook his head, his shoulders drooping. 'Even if that does not happen, Normans will still come and lay claim to what is ours, and we are too weak to stop them. What was "Ulf's land" will become Osbert's or Ogier's.' He spat the French names with contempt. 'How will my grandson fare against them, do you think?'

  'You believe they will fare better in the south?'

  'They could not fare worse,' Ulf said scathingly, but then moderated his voice. 'You are a man of honour, I trust you to see them safely settled.'

  Rolf looked thoughtfully at the old horse-trader. 'And what will you do?'

  'I do not need a place of sanctuary. My roots are too deeply buried here to be torn up and planted elsewhere, and there are others in the village of my ilk who will need my counsel in the months to come. For Inga and Sweyn it is different. The boy is still thistledown in the wind. He could settle anywhere.'

  Rolf inclined his head. 'Then so be it,' he said. 'My roof is theirs.'