New Title 1

by Helen Hollick

  Duke William’s family knelt in prayer to the fore of the congregation: the Duchess, surrounded by her brood of children – the boys, Robert, Richard and William, and the eldest daughter Agatha, her face rapt in the joy of prayer.

  Harold watched her discreetly throughout the monotonous service. A child of ten years, round-faced like her father, short and plump like her mother, serious-minded with a shy smile and a delightful laugh. This very morning William had offered her as wife to Harold.

  ‘You are among the bravest of my knights, I would have you for a much higher status, I would have you for son.’

  Why? had been Harold’s immediate thought. Why are you so eager to bind me to your side?

  ‘You honour me, Sir,’ he had answered, chiding himself for the uncharitable scepticism and attempting to think quickly of a suitable answer. ‘I have commitments to a hand-fast woman in England. A marriage such as you suggest must needs be considered with care, not answered on the spur of a moment.’

  ‘You have until Sunday,’ William had said, forcibly, which detracted somewhat from his air of good humour. Beneath the congeniality lay something darker, more sinister. Harold had not heard it then, but he could now. Now that he was certain he had confirmed Hakon’s warning. Heard it as clear as the singing of the monks. He was held prisoner to William’s whim.

  What did he want from Harold? Not friendship alone, not from a man who was just an earl, albeit an earl who held the ear of a king. In truth, Harold was flattered by the unexpected – and uncourted – offer of marriage. To be united with the Duke of Normandy would bring much to the House of Godwine. Edith, Queen of England, Harold allied with Normandy – so much could be achieved . . . but at what price? Did Harold, the most powerful man in all England below the King, want to be chained to this arrogant Duke of Normandy? A man concerned with naught save the promotion of his own ambition? And then there was Edyth, dear, sweet, gentle Edyth, and the children. Gunnhild and Algytha, cherry-faced girls, bubbling with laughter like a brook gurgling beneath the summer sun; Edmund, Magnus, young Ulf and Goddwin. Ah, and Goddwin. Jealous, fiercely loving, loyal Goddwin, who adored his mother beyond all life and who mistrusted his father for what must, one day, occur.

  How would my son, my heart, my pride, welcome the daughter of Duke William as stepmother? Harold almost laughed aloud at the thought of the obvious, none too complimentary answer.

  By chance, he found himself beside Agatha as the royal party stepped from the cathedral into the incessant rain. Harold gallantly offered his arm and lifted the drape of his cloak around her shoulders. ‘Allow me to escort you, my Lady.’

  Agatha accepted Harold’s huge, sheltering presence with relief. The roar of the wind as it shrieked through the narrow streets of the town, tearing at roof tiles and window shutters, toppling anything not properly secured, frightened her. It seemed as if the devil himself were riding across Normandy, crying out for the lost souls of the dead to join him. And Harold was a good, kindly man. She could not imagine the Earl of Wessex erupting with uncontrolled bile at some inconsequential matter, as did her father all too frequently. Shy Agatha dreaded the approach of Christmas with its enforced frivolity, knowing full well that her father would soon be quarrelling with her eldest brother and vociferously berating men and women for their bawdy behaviour.

  Often of late Agatha wished that she could remain for ever within the peaceful confines of a nunnery. Oh, the blessed joy of hearing naught but the voice of God for the rest of her days!

  ‘In English,’ Harold said to her as they walked, his voice pitched loud to rise above the pummelling wind, ‘your naming would be Ælfgyva.’

  Politely, Agatha smiled at him, struggling with the strange pronunciation. English was a difficult language, uncultured, her father so often said, a tongue of simpletons. Harold was no simpleton, but Agatha knew instinctively how her father despised all but the noblest Normans.

  ‘I think I had best remain Agatha,’ she answered after several failed attempts at Ælfgyva. ‘Your English is beyond me.’

  ‘You have no desire to learn my tongue, then?’

  Agatha laughed at that. ‘Oh, no, my Lord. Of what use would English be to me?’

  ‘Perhaps you may marry an Englishman.’

  Agatha halted in mid-stride, so unexpected was his remark – so worrying. Her face paled. ‘No, Sir, I have no desire to marry. I wish to make my vows as a nun.’

  Harold stopped also. Suddenly he felt sorry for the girl. ‘I doubt that is what your father desires for you, lass. His decision is the one you must follow.’

  ‘My mother will speak for me, I am sure.’ Agatha raised her head, breathing courage and fortitude into her lungs, continued walking. Her mother would not marry her to a man against her will. Would not. Surely?

  ‘Of course she will,’ Harold responded, and then, as if he were jesting, asked casually, ‘but would you not consider me as a potential husband?’

  Her reply was immediate and, in its naïveté, answered the mudstirred doubts that had chased Harold so doggedly these past few days. ‘I regret that my father would never consider a marriage with you, my Lord. You represent too much of a potential obstruction to his ambition.’

  Harold pressed his lips together. Had she realised what she had said? He doubted it. She was a child, had, in her innocence, repeated something that she had heard fall from either her mother’s or father’s own lips.

  Entering Bishop Odo’s imposing Hall, Harold stood aside, allowing the girl to go ahead of him. Blushing, she thanked him for his escort, then said, very quickly and in a whisper, ‘But if I had to marry, then I would surely choose you.’ And she was gone.

  Harold watched her go, raindrops falling from her cloak as a scatter of diamonds. She was a child, only three years older than his own youngest daughter, Gunnhild. How could he contemplate marriage with one so young? Ah, but the political advantages could be so great, and the personal ones also. The more intimate formalities of union would have to wait, allowing time for Edyth to grow accustomed to the presence of a formal wife – perhaps she would even look upon the girl as another daughter? Watching Agatha scamper through a far door to the sanctuary of the women’s quarters, how could he think of her as anything more?

  If he had to marry for convenience – and one day he would have to – he could do worse than consider William’s daughter, but something held him back: this growing sense of unease, like the current of a river trapped beneath the ice-bound freeze of winter. Temptingly placid on the surface, so dangerous below.

  26

  Bayeux The Duchess Mathilda was certain that she was carrying another child. Her second flux had been due over a week past and her breasts were beginning to tingle. She shut her eyes. It had surely been an eternity since she had risen close after dawn! The luxury of bed and sleep beckoned.

  With no knock or pause the door to the bed-chamber opened, William’s overpowering presence dispelling the quiet atmosphere of the dim-lit chamber. He tossed his cloak on to the bed, sat, lifted his foot for his body servant to remove his boots, then gruffly told the boy to leave.

  ‘And you.’ He indicated with a jerk of his head that his wife’s three women were to go. They bobbed curtsies and hurried out. William slammed the door behind them.

  Mathilda, disguising her exhaustion, formed a smile for her lord, rose gracefully from her stool and walked over to him, began unbuckling the leather straps of his tunic. At six and thirty years he remained a well-muscled man, his hair with only the merest hint of grey at his temples. In all the years of their marriage William had not once fallen ill, not to disease or injury. If his head ached, he but worked harder to drive it from him. If tiredness attempted to dull his mind, he concentrated more on whatever it was that required doing. He was not a man who would admit to frailties, or indulge in the more frivolous areas of life. Unlike Earl Harold, who enjoyed books, women’s chatter, or the attention of over-excited children. He was six years older than William, but his equal in untappe
d energy. If silver flecked Harold’s hair, then it did not show so clearly against his colouring. His mouth was fuller than William’s, more likely to curve into a smile, break into outright laughter. His eyes, too. Where William’s brooded, dark and ever watchful, Harold’s sparkled bright with amusement and merrymaking.

  Mathilda tried to concentrate on helping her husband undress. She knew she ought not think so much of Earl Harold; she fully realised the extent of her fortune. She loved William; he had given her all any woman could expect from marriage, especially the children. How she loved her children! Ought she tell him of her suspicions that she was breeding again? Pas maintenant, she would wait until later. For all that, why did she so often think of Harold?

  ‘Has the Earl come to any decision regarding our daughter, my Lord?’ she asked, kneeling down to remove his hose. Her chemise was of fine linen. Beneath, the silhouette of her breasts was clear and defined. William found himself looking at their enticing shape.

  ‘He has not said, but sans doute, he will agree to take Agatha. He begins to grow impatient, is becoming suspicious of our generosity. I do not think I can delay his return to England much longer.’ He reached out a hand to cup Mathilda’s breast, feeling his manhood quicken as the seductive heaviness settled into his palm.

  Keeping Harold here in Normandy was becoming a problem, but perhaps it no longer mattered. William had learnt all he could of the man, or at least so he thought. That Harold was eloquent, easygoing and easily persuaded was evident. A fine horseman and huntsman, skilled in the use of arms, he possessed a flair for fighting. But he was complacently agreeable to other men’s suggestions. Did not, William believed, have that especial quality of leadership that bound a soldier to his lord’s battle standard. The Earl was too ready to discuss options and seek advice before making a decision. That was not the way to rule: a leader of worth must weigh the odds, certainly, but quickly and forthrightly, must never tolerate disobedience or question. Ah, but all these Englishmen were the same! Weak-willed, opting for the easy choice; more content to lie in the sun or play games with children than sweat on the battlefield.

  ‘He attempted to leave Bayeux earlier. As ordered, the watch guard refused him politely.’ William bent to kiss his wife’s lips, bringing her body nearer, feeling her against his naked chest. It did amaze him that this woman could so completely and easily disarm him, could make him forget that, maybe, beyond the bolted door stood a man with a dagger to thrust into his heart.

  Mathilda slid the chemise from her shoulders and allowed him to lift her on to the bed. He kissed her throat, fondled her breast, moved his hand across her stomach, parted her legs. Always the same, he always did the same.

  Her daughter would not take kindly to the prospect of marriage; she had her heart set on serving God. Well, she must be made to understand that the child of a duke such as William had no choice in the matter of her future. Perhaps Bishop Odo could help. As a man of the cloth he was in a position to persuade the girl that a nunnery was not a suitable destination for her. Odo, despite his pomposity, would be better than William in a rage, raving at the girl to enforce his decision. Force, as Mathilda knew well, was not the best way to begin a marriage – although, she supposed, it had worked for her in the end. She realised that her mind was wandering, that she was taking little notice of her husband’s intimacy.

  Would Harold’s lovemaking be as forgettable as William’s? Had his woman, this Edyth Swan – something-or-other, Mathilda could not pronounce the difficult English; Harold had translated it as ‘swan neck’, implying her beauty – were her seven children conceived in a few minutes in indifferent boredom, or had she experienced this great enigma of pleasure that Mathilda had heard others boast of?

  Her husband, she was certain, had underestimated Harold. The Earl had no need to mask fears or self-doubt to prove his domination or repeatedly enforce his will. That made him placid and calm, not vulnerable.

  Spent, William rolled from her, fell almost immediately asleep. If Agatha resented this marriage, then the girl was a fool. Mathilda would willingly welcome a man such as Harold to her bed . . . she gasped aloud at the adulterous thought.

  ‘Mm? What was that?’ William had heard!

  ‘Nothing of import, my love. I spoke my thought, that be all.’

  ‘And what thought would that be?’

  What could she say? She grasped at the first thing to come to mind. ‘Will you permit Harold to take this lad, Hakon, back to England?’

  ‘Hakon? Oui. The boy is only a nephew with no living father, and a mother secured within a nunnery in disgrace. I shall allow the brother, Wulfnoth, to accompany Agatha into England when I think her of a suitable age to go to her husband’s marriage bed.’

  ‘And when will that be?’ Mathilda’s hand moved across William’s buttocks and down to his thigh, brushing against his incapacitated manhood. He had awakened her desire but not fulfilled it, but was frustratingly not ready for more lovemaking.

  William’s half-smile was composed and calculating. Harold could go home to England soon, for he had him where he wanted him. ‘When? When I am certain that he will do all he can to secure for me the throne of England.’

  The Duke rolled on top of his wife, his mouth bruising heavily against hers. There were ways of ensuring loyalty, some obvious, some subtle. He was using subtlety against Harold of England, luring him into friendship, tantalising him with the promise of an assured future. Binding his hands with invisible chains. And tomorrow he would turn the key in the lock that would clamp those chains tight. Tomorrow, when the nobles and vassals of Normandy, and beyond, swore their annual oath of homage to their duke.

  But that was for tomorrow. Tonight, he would ensure the fealty of his wife.

  27

  Bayeux Agatha sat completely miserable, in a corner of her father’s great Hall, as far from the glare of watching eyes as she could. She would have preferred to remain in her bed-chamber, but her mother had not allowed it. The exchange of heated words between them this morning had been almost as red-hot as the blaze of the yule log in the central hearth fire. She did not want to marry, could her parents not see that? She had a calling, her desire was to serve God. That was her duty, not the giving of her body to a man in marriage. Not that she disliked Earl Harold, he was kind and he made her laugh, but then, so did William de Warenne and Ralph de Tosny . . . many other men. And to go to England? Oh, she could not, could not! It was a country of heretics and pagans, where men worshipped beneath oak trees and took oath in the name of the gods, like Odin and Thunor. Where the women were all whores and their husbands adulterers . . . how could her father contemplate sending her to live in such a dark pit of iniquity?

  As Bishop Odo’s raucous laugh boomed across the crowded Hall, Agatha shrank deeper into her holly-green woollen mantle, clasping her fingers tighter together in her anxiety. Her uncle had been there this morning. Confronted by uncle, mother and father together, what chance had she, a ten-year-old girl, of making her voice heard? If she was frightened of her father, she feared Uncle Odo’s chastisement more, for he brought the added wrath of God’s word to his reproof. Agatha knew she could withstand any punishment, any beating, but not the condemnation of God. Surprising even herself, she had shouted and clenched her fists, declaring that she would not, would not, become betrothed to Earl Harold – and her uncle had slapped her, right there in front of her mother and father, slapped her so hard that the bruise would blacken her cheek for many days to come, in the name of God’s displeasure at her discourtesy and refusal to accept her place as a woman and wife.

  A tear dribbled down her cheek. Never before could she remember enduring such misery.

  ‘Why the tears little mistress? What ails you?’

  A man’s shadow fell tall and broad across her. Her downward gaze saw only his boots. Doe hide, dyed blue. Earl Harold’s boots.

  He sat beside her on the bench, near enough to exchange private talk, distant enough not to compromise her honour. ‘I thi
nk we are all disenchanted this day,’ he said. ‘The rain and biting cold does sour our humour.’ He tried a small jest. ‘They say when this rain eases, that it will turn cold enough to freeze the feathers of a gander’s backside.’

  No smile touched her mouth. Another tear dribbled; she brushed it aside.

  Harold decided to try the direct approach. ‘Your father tells me that you have been informed of our intended betrothal.’ Still no response. He leant forward, cupped her chin with his hand and tilted her face upwards to look into his own. ‘Am I, then, so terrible a prospect? I am not so bad to look upon and at least my breath does not smell like that of your father’s toothless old wolfhound. Nor do I scratch at fleas with my foot.’

  At last Agatha attempted a smile at his absurdity, then answered him with a choking stammer: ‘It is England I fear, not you.’

  Harold chuckled. ‘There is nothing especial to fear about England, sweet one. It is just as damned cold in winter as it is here in Normandy, just as wind-blustered by the northern breezes and flatulent men. Many of us in England are descended from the Viking race, as you are, and we all have as much passion for climbing the ladder of power, by whatever means, legal or murderous, as your father’s fellow countrymen. The one difference between Normandy and England, Lady Agatha, is that we live in houses built of timber, not stone, and we prefer talking about fighting rather than risk smearing blood over our long hair and our trailing moustaches.’

  Agatha fiddled with her kerchief, drawing it fearfully backwards and forwards through her fingers. Whispered, ‘But I would know no one in England. I should be the only Norman.’

  Setting his large hand over the smallness of hers, Harold shook his head. ‘There are more than a few of Norman birth in England, child. Our King Edward, for one, is more Norman than English.’

  ‘But he is old and will soon die!’