The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  ‘Surely the abbey at Canterbury will claim them, I mean, well, since she has become a Bride of Christ, surely they must claim what was once her property?’ she said in an equally low tone.

  ‘The King, my cousin, will decide their future. Odo of Bayeux and Kent and the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lanfranc, already have a great fortune. He will not allow more to fall that way. So … well … enough …’ He shrugged his broad soldier’s shoulders. ‘What must be must be, Gunnhild.’ He lifted a purse from his belt, drew open its silk cord and removed a small object. ‘I hope you accept my concern for your welfare.’ Confused, she lowered her eyes again. He went on, ‘I came to see you today because I am on my way south to the coast and I want to give you this.’ He pushed a golden chain with a jewelled cross attached to it through the latticed grill. As she took the fine chain their fingers touched, the glittering cross dangling between them. He allowed his fingers to linger. Although only a finger touch, there was strength in it. Behind her she heard the intake of breath and the clink of a dropped spindle. He withdrew his fingers and said, ‘It belonged to your grandmother. I discovered it when they departed the palace at Exeter.’ Gunnhild started.

  After the great battle, her grandmother Countess Gytha had withdrawn to Exeter with Thea, Gunnhild’s older sister. Months later, when Grandmother had refused to pay King William’s tax, the King had marched on Exeter and besieged it in the middle of winter. Countess Gytha had closed the gates on the King and his army, hoping that they could hold out until Gunnhild’s brothers came from Ireland with an army. After three weeks of siege the burghers of Exeter and their bishop saw the way their future lay and made peace with King William. Aunt Edith had said at the time, ‘Sometimes, my dear Gunnhild, it is best to be pragmatic. My mother can be very stubborn.’ The noblewomen of Exeter had been allowed to go into exile in Flanders and Denmark. That was when her mother, Elditha, had refused to leave England and instead retired to Canterbury.

  Suddenly Gunnhild realised that Count Alan had stopped speaking and was looking at her curiously. She smiled and he went on, ‘I kept it safe thinking one day I might return it.’ He paused. ‘One day, if you do not take vows,’ he added quietly, ‘you will be able to wear it outside the cloister.’

  She searched for hopeful meaning in his countenance but sadly found none. His beard was concealing; his face was neutral. She whispered, ‘I forgive you for Reredfelle’s destruction, Count Alan.’

  ‘Thank you. It means everything to me. Goodbye, Gunnhild. May the Lady Mary protect you.’

  He rose from his chair. There was something she must ask, and she might never have such an opportunity again. She clutched the screen. ‘Wait, Count Alan.’

  ‘Yes, Lady Gunnhild?’ He sat down again.

  ‘I had a brother called Ulf. He was taken to Normandy. He would be fourteen years or so now. Does he live?’

  She felt a moment of hesitation before he said, ‘The youth is well. He dwells in the Norman court with the King’s son Robert. That is all I know of Ulf Godwinson.’ He rose and bowed to her. ‘I hope we have occasion to speak again, my lady.’

  ‘I hope so too,’ she said quietly as a sister appeared from the shadows. He turned away and the nun ushered him out of the chamber.

  Marte reached for the gift. Gunnhild held the cross tightly. ‘No, Sister Marte, this was my late grandmother’s crucifix. It is a gift. It belongs to me, not the Church.’

  ‘Then it is kind of the knight to return it.’ Marte snatched it from Gunnhild’s fingers and stroked it, saying, ‘Fine gold and little sapphires: much too valuable for a novice. Sister Christina must place it in the treasury.’

  Gunnhild had no choice but to hand over the crucifix that linked her to her grandmother, who had lived out her life far away in Denmark and who had died just a year before Aunt Edith.

  Later, Christina called Gunnhild to her chamber and said that when Gunnhild had taken her vows, then and only then would her grandmother’s crucifix be returned. For days Gunnhild mourned the loss and wept in the solitude of her chamber. She hated Christina more than ever.

  Every day following a painful period on her knees at Sext, Nones, Vespers and Matins, her anger threatened to rise to the surface. As Gunnhild’s frustration grew, Eleanor patiently bent a dark head over painstaking embroidery. When Gunnhild was in difficulty and about to descend into a tantrum, Eleanor gently reached across to correct her stitches or to guide her hand into the correct position.

  At the end of a particularly difficult day Gunnhild closed the door to her chamber, edged her key from its hidden place, opened her coffer and pulled out the green silk overgown. The knowledge that Christina was eating honey cakes in the same private garden where she had once spent treasured hours with Aunt Edith drove her into a fury. As she stood in her chamber with the embroidered silk dress skimming over the paler undergown, soft shoes on her feet and her hair loosened, a momentary wildness possessed her. The dress swirled about her ankles and as she spun around and around in the Godwin slippers she felt beautiful. She would have her freedom for one day her knight must come for her.

  Throughout the hungry Lenten season Gunnhild watched the road from her opened shutters hoping that the knight would pass this way again and seek her out but he never came. The only visitor was the tapestry designer from Canterbury who rode into Wilton on a mule during the third week of February.

  The designer, a small man with scarred fingers, whose breath stank of garlic and who spoke in a high voice like a boy singing plainsong, stood behind her from Terce until Sext on the second morning of his visit, watching over her shoulder as her needle ploughed slowly back and forwards embroidering the caskets that allegedly had contained holy relics. He leaned over, touched the fabric and told her to make sure that Earl Harold’s fingers touched both caskets.

  She looked up with fury in her eyes. ‘Earl Harold was my father. The promise was a lie,’ she said quietly. ‘His fingers never touched those caskets. He never promised to recognise Duke William as King of England after my uncle, King Edward, died.’

  ‘Insolent girl,’ the master designer said. ‘How dare you question?’

  He called Christina over, and, whispering in her ear, drew her away to the far side of one of the charcoal braziers that heated the barn-like room.

  Christina crossed the flagged floor and yanked Gunnhild from her stool. ‘How dare you say such an untruth?’ she hissed through her yellowing teeth. ‘Those words are treason words. Come with me, my girl.’

  Gunnhild spent the rest of that day in her shift on her knees in St Edith’s chapel shivering, teeth chattering, pretending to pray for forgiveness for her rudeness. That evening she received a beating from Christina herself, six strokes of a willow rod across her bare shoulders. She wore stinging red stripes for days, long after the master designer had departed. It took a whole week for the soothing balm the abbey’s herbalist rubbed into her shoulders each evening and morning to ease the vicious streaks on her white skin. The salve of cowslip and goat’s grease could not heal her pride.

  As the weeks slipped by, her hopes of rescue slowly faded. Eleanor would enter the Benedictine order and then she would be utterly alone. She thought about escape when she was in the chapel, when mending hose, another task she disliked, and during the tedious silent meals. For a time she squirrelled away bread and cheese thinking that she could walk out into the chill of winter and just leave, but snow lay deep about the abbey and the bread went stale. She had to feed it to the birds. If she had taken Aunt Edith’s jewels rather than the pearl-trimmed overgown she could have sold them to a jeweller for silver coin and used that for a passage to Flanders and freedom, but she had not. Now it was too late. Queen Edith’s jewels were locked away in the royal treasury.

  By March the weather turned gentler. Postulants were sent into the gardens to plant onions and carrots and to gather herbs to flavour pies and soups. Christina supervised her charges with diligence. ‘Hurry,’ she chided. ‘The abbess says we are to have more v
isitors. They will expect to see our gardens neat and our workshops as productive as their own. Here, Gunnhild, take this basket of greens to the kitchen and you, Beatrice, take the others to the lane by the weaving shed. There is a great crop of nettles there.’ Gunnhild glowered but held her tongue.

  Christina wiped soil from her hands and said, ‘Girls, be in the abbey church in time for Vespers, clean and neat. No mud on your shoes.’ Christina shoved the basket into Gunnhild’s hands and marched off in the direction of the abbess’s apartment.

  On her way to her chamber to change her work overgown, Gunnhild caught sight of one of these visitors, a man who looked more like a messenger than a monk. He was of middling stature and dressed in a long, dark blue tunic that was belted at the waist. His hair was cropped short and was greying. He smiled as she passed. She did not hesitate to return the smile but afterwards she cast her eyes downwards and scuttled off to the novice quarters wondering who he was.

  He was in the church at Vespers with Christina but he never looked her way. She was just another girl in a brown linen mantle and pale coarse habit. Closing her eyes she dreamed of wearing the green gown and of showing the world how she could speak in foreign tongues and not just write letters but also cover them with drawings of delicate flowers and tiny animals touched with magical brightness.

  After Vespers she sat in the silent refectory playing with her spoon. Challenging the Rule’s imposed silence the girls had worked out a code of hand signals. When they saw that the nuns were not watching they moved their hands, gracefully sending messages between each other in a language all of their own. That afternoon Emma received a message from Greta and passed it on to Beatrice who passed it to Gytha who finally nudged Gunnhild. Gunnhild gasped when she caught its meaning. Greta had traced an M for Marte, two circles for her eyes and a rectangle for their building and sent her fingers walking into every corner of her palm. Marte was searching their chambers.

  Gunnhild dropped her spoon. It clattered on the stone floor and she dived under the table. The nun seated at the lectern glared around the refectory seeking the source of the disturbance. As Gunnhild retrieved the spoon she felt herself flush as scarlet as the blood painted onto the crucified Christ figure that hung from the wall behind the lectern. She scrambled back on to the bench and bowed her head. The nun glared at her and resumed her reading. Eleanor was sitting with the other novices. She glanced over and placed a finger on her lips.

  The meal stretched out in one long agony. What if Marte demanded the key to her coffer; what if she had actually discovered the key’s hiding place? As soon as she could, Gunnhild rushed from the refectory to the postulants’ building, her heart hammering hard against her ribs. The moment she placed her hand on her own cell door she sensed that Christina was waiting behind it. She hesitated before pushing the door open. If Christina had discovered the dress she must confront her and refuse to take novice vows.

  She opened her door wide. Christina stood in the middle of the chamber but from a cursory glance Gunnhild could see that nothing had been disturbed, nothing.

  ‘Ah, here you are. Come with me,’ Christina said, clearly not aware of Gunnhild’s discomfort. ‘You have a visitor.’

  Gunnhild let out a long relieved breath. ‘Count Alan?’

  ‘Certainly not. Compose yourself.’ Christina snapped and turned about, not even looking anywhere near the locked coffer. ‘The abbess has news for you.’ She scowled at Gunnhild. ‘I am not to tell you it. Our lady abbess wishes to tell you herself.’

  The nun hurried along through the cloisters like a busy spider, scuttling so quickly that Gunnhild could hardly keep pace with her. They passed into the small courtyard and through an archway that led to her aunt’s once lovely rooms. She had not entered them since the night she had taken the dress. Now she felt nervous.

  ‘Wait here.’

  She stood outside the door, her hands clammy with sweat as Christina knocked on an inner door. A servant opened it and stood aside as they entered. Gunnhild modestly glanced down. When no one spoke she lifted her eyes. The abbess sat very straight in Aunt Edith’s chair, smothered in a cumbersome wimple with a heavy shawl-like veil. Even though the evening was warm, she wore a thick mantle, her bony mottled fingers stretching out from her cloak like little shrubby branches. The stranger whom Gunnhild had met earlier was seated on a cushioned bench by her side. She felt his eyes scrutinise her and dropped her head again. Though she had washed her hands before supper, scrub as she had tried, she simply could not get the garden’s green marks off them. She clasped them under the folds of her cloak.

  ‘Christina, thank you. You may leave.’ The abbess dismissed Christina with a little pennant-like wave of her hand. Gunnhild watched with surprise as Christina exited the door, her lips pursed because she was not asked to stay. The abbess turned to the man seated on the bench. ‘This is Gunnhild whom your mistress, Matilda of Mortain, sends for, daughter of Harold of Wessex. She is her mother’s heiress so, in time, understand that her lands must come to the Abbey at Wilton.’ Her stare at Gunnhild was steely, clearly never kindly when property was a topic of conversation.

  Gunnhild tried to still her twitching hands.

  The abbess went on, ‘We have educated her in languages, in the art of writing and reading and in English embroidery. Indeed, I must remind you that the child was educated by Queen Edith herself.’

  Gunnhild remained very still. The old abbess’s clear voice was still strong enough to slice through the soft twilight.

  ‘Will she do?’

  Gunnhild started. Do for what?

  The visitor scrutinised her and at last said, ‘Gunnhild, I am Sir Edward of Winchester, steward to Robert of Mortain’s wife Lady Matilda. My Lady of Mortain desires you as a companion for her daughters until they return to Normandy next year.’ His voice was almost, though not totally, pompous. ‘Lady Matilda is of English descent and sister to the Earl of Shrewsbury. But as wife to the king’s brother, her household is from Normandy and she wants a native noblewoman to teach her daughters English as they will spend more time here in England than in Normandy. In a year’s space she will deliver you back to Wilton. I understand that you are to take novice vows.’

  Gunnhild opened her mouth to reply but the abbess was already speaking for her. ‘It is an honour for us.’ She shifted her weight in her chair and addressed Gunnhild.

  ‘You depart for Winchester in the morning. Christina will travel with you as far as Romsey Abbey. We have St Helena’s relic to deliver to the abbey church there before Easter.’ She lowered her voice into a tone of deep reverence. ‘The relic belonged to your aunt, Dowager Queen Edith, as you know.’ She looked at the steward, Edward, as if he did not know. ‘It is a small fragment of the holy cross carried to England centuries past by none other than St Helena herself. There is no one more suited to carry it there for us than Lady Christina who is much loved at Romsey.’

  ‘I see,’ the steward, said. ‘We can accommodate the relic and Lady Christina under my protection. No doubt there will be a nun from the great Romsey Abbey who can chaperone Gunnhild on to Winchester and watch over her until she is settled in Lady Matilda’s household.’

  The abbess glanced back at Gunnhild. ‘Yes, a Romsey nun can be trusted to watch over her. She is a sensible girl.’ She pointed her stubby finger at Gunnhild. ‘You will be ready to make the journey tomorrow, Gunnhild. Yes, you should learn much in the household of such as Matilda of Mortain, but do not neglect everything we have taught you here. May St Edith protect and guide you, my daughter.’ She raised her hand and made the sign of the cross.

  Gunnhild fell to her knees. ‘I shall do my best, Lady Abbess.’

  The abbess pulled something from her voluminous mantle and proffered it to Gunnhild. ‘You may wear this as a token of our trust and your status.’

  Gunnhild reached for the fine gold chain with the sapphire-studded cross, its small stones glowing in a thin ray of afternoon light that slanted into the chamber. ‘It is fitti
ng that you wear your grandmother’s cross but do not lose it. Keep it on you always.’

  Without a word Gunnhild slipped the delicate gold chain over her head, allowing it to fall below the neck of her dress where no one could see it. They have decided for me but I would never have objected anyway.

  ‘Good,’ the abbess said. ‘Now go and pack your bag.’ She called for a waiting nun who ushered Gunnhild out of the chamber.

  Moments later Gunnhild was back in the cloisters where Christina was waiting with a thunderous look on her face. Gunnhild knew better than to show her delight to Christina. She wore a serious look to conceal her delight. No one would ever return her to Wilton. This would be her goodbye at last.

  ‘You will be glad to return here, Gunnhild.’ Christina loomed over her. ‘Matilda of Mortain may be English but I have heard she is a demanding mistress.’ She prodded Gunnhild along the cloisters. ‘Hurry, we leave at dawn. Bag packed and into the wagon. Father Antony will drive us. Mortain’s man will ride ahead of us.’ When they reached Gunnhild’s cell in the white building, Christina gave her a push through the open doorway. ‘No shilly-shallying and no need for goodbyes. You will soon be back here.’ She took the thin wool of Gunnhild’s old mantle between her finger and her thumb and pulled her hand back, clearly disgusted. ‘I shall send you a new one with a fur-trimmed hood, one of my own, and two clean gowns, two undergowns and fresh linen from the store chest and a cloth bag to hold them. Leave the old ones here. Be ready to depart after Lauds.’

  Gunnhild ran through the abbey corridors to the chapel where the nuns were at prayer. In the courtyard a servant was sweeping the pathways. She could hear sounds from the refectory building, the thumping of platters, tables being laid for supper. From the church plainsong floated into the twilight. This was her chance to say goodbye to Eleanor. In a week her dearest friend would take her vows and then she would be gone from Gunnhild’s life for ever. Gunnhild blended into the shadows of a side chapel. First the nuns filed out, behind them the novices, the postulants and finally girls from the school at Wilton. Eleanor walked alone. Gunnhild waited until she came close, stepped out and touched her arm.