The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  ‘King William’s soldiers will ride in tomorrow. His men are hardened mercenaries who will deal ruthlessly with any hint of rebellion from your villeins. They will be assessed and they will pay their dues to the King. And you should be grateful for a new garrison, my lady. Rest assured that should there be a rebellion, this castle will be safe.’

  With those words he swept away with his four dark-garbed clerks. Niall touched her arm, and bent to her ear. ‘It is best to say as little as possible. I shall send warnings out to the larger manors. They must give the impression of co-operation even if they intend evasion. I shall summon our reeves and request representatives from the freed men to the hall within days.’

  A crack of thunder awakened Gunnhild from a deep sleep. She threw back her covers and jumped out of bed just as a flash of lightning crossed the room. Running to the window she flung her hand out and struggled to draw closed the opened shutters. Another blast of thunder was followed by a high whistling wind that drove the rain through the square embrasure drenching her. She dragged the shutters over and began to fasten them. Peering through the wooden slats she saw that two pails left behind earlier were crashing and tumbling against each other, bumping along the pathway as if Satan drove them forward. A wicker fence was bending with the gale and it was clear that it might not hold. She forced a bolt to keep the shutters firmly closed and ran back to the safety of her bed covers. She pulled her bed curtains close trying to lessen the noise that had begun to swirl around the castle. There could be no land survey. The route-ways would soon be flooded and the castle yards a quagmire. No one could ride across the estates and through their fields and villages whilst the sleeting, drenching rain lasted, but then she worried as she huddled under her covers, if such weather continued through the summer as it had done in previous years, famine would return to Yorkshire by winter.

  High up in the great square keep, the sound of the storm must be even harsher. It would be miserable and damp in those dank chambers. She smiled to herself as she thought of the leaks and the chill draughts that the clerks were to suffer that night. Well, they were monastery men, pious-looking creatures, and ought to be used to lack of comfort.

  Niall was as good as his word and sent messengers to all the outlying halls and estates that owed fealty to Count Alan. During a brief conversation with Gunnhild, Sir Edward confronted her objections and insisted that the survey was a military necessity. Otherwise how would the King maintain his army and protect his realm? He needed a new geld tax and for that he needed to know what he owned.

  ‘The King owns everything,’ he said.

  She was tired of hearing this. Not me, she thought to herself. If I can avoid it, I shall not be recorded in his ledgers by these scribblers.

  Sir Edward and his clerks took up residence in the antechamber behind the hall. When they asked for details of the estate, Gunnhild indicated the locked oak chest that stood in the corner. ‘There are contracts there,’ she said. ‘My lord has the key. He is in Brittany.’

  ‘Ah yes, he will be returning soon.’

  Gunnhild’s eyes widened. No message from Alan, no warning. He would bring the mercenaries of course, she realised.

  ‘So how can we feed them, the men that come with my husband? Can the King tell me that?’

  ‘My lady, you had better send out to your villages for salmon and pike, and whatever grain, peas and beans they have concealed.’ His thin-lipped smile was an irritant. She disliked him even more. ‘Now, if you will send us candles and sconces, we can prepare questions for your reeves and chief tenants.’

  The clerks opened their travelling boxes and withdrew portable desks that they hung about their necks. They covered her oak table with their inks, parchment and pens. She stared down. Her eyes widened. They used fine goose quills. She would have taken one or even two when they were at prayer, but for the fact that her servants might be accused of theft.

  Outside the rain was still blasting down, descending around the castle in torrents. It hammered at the shutters and lashed down the outer walls. The messengers Niall had sent out the night before were unlikely to ride back through it. Their jurors, for that was what they would become, those chief men and clergy and the free sokesmen of the hundreds, could not be recruited in a day, nor could they set out in such weather.

  ‘I’ll send for candles and sconces. It will be days before you can progress,’ she said to the clerks with a tight-lipped smile.

  Sir Edward grunted but never replied. She wondered if she had made an enemy.

  ‘I’ll send in a boy with logs for the hearth,’ she offered later in the morning. Still no word of thanks from Sir Edward, just a grunt and a nod. His clerks’ eyes followed her with suspicion as she turned and swept through the tall arched door, glad to be away from their taciturn faces. She was, after all, King Harold’s daughter.

  ‘I hope Count Alan can make it through to us in this weather with a fresh garrison. We may need it once we do begin the survey.’ She heard Sir Edward call to her retreating back.

  21

  He [King William] ruled over England, and by his astuteness it was so surveyed that there was not one hide of land in England that he did not know who had it or what it was worth, and afterwards set it down in record.

  1086/1087, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles , trans. and ed. by Michael Swanton, 2000

  ‘I cannot understand why Niall did not give up his gatehouse to these men. Why I am giving Sir Edward my own lodging,’ Alan grumbled as he prowled around Gunnhild’s bedchamber some days later. He touched this and that, her linen chests, her clothing pole, the cushioned winged chair and the stool by the blonde wood table on which lay her two completed books St Margaret and St Cecilia. ‘Very nice, Gunnhild,’ he said picking them up and glancing at the carefully stitched-together pages one after another. ‘You could still make a good nun.’

  ‘Not my calling, my lord.’ A shudder ran through her. She wondered what he suspected.

  He snorted and laid the book for St Cecilia back on her table. ‘I recollect that St Cecilia is your mother’s name-day saint. She is a nun. After I am gone you might take your vows, too. After all, my wealth goes to Niall and then to my younger brother, Stephen. I hope Niall considers marriage soon. I cannot understand why he does not. His outright evasion of my words to him “get ye wed” becomes tiresome.’ He sighed, ‘As for Stephen, we hear little of him. He remains in Brittany where he has married Hawise de Dol. Stephen has had nothing to do with Richmond, Gunnhild, nothing, yet he and his brats could get everything I have striven for here.’ He gave her a hard look. Was he giving her a warning?

  Alan pinched the heavy fabric of her new bed curtains between his finger and thumb. It was as if he was measuring its value as Sir Edward measured the value of their lands. ‘What need have you of new bed curtains? The old ones have a half century left in them, more than all our life times and our daughter’s, too, and maybe her sons.’

  ‘I gave the old curtains to Ann for the bailey hall, for their chamber there.’

  Alan sat heavily on the bed. They had been married for over ten years and, well into his fourth decade he was still lean and muscular, strong and agile. Yet the years had taken their toll on his countenance. His hair was greying and his face weathered and lined. He beckoned her to him. Hesitating a moment, she left the bench by the window and approached him. The nightingale set up a squawk. ‘Send that bird to the solar. If I hear it sing tonight I shall wring its neck.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’ She stood before him, her head held high, steady-eyed, determined not to allow him to intimidate her.

  He studied her for a moment. His voice became gentler. ‘How do you think we will get on tonight, Gunnhild?’

  ‘Comfortable enough,’ she said, carefully looking at the width of her bed.

  ‘Well then help me off with these.’ He pointed down to his boots.

  Slowly she knelt and began tugging on his right boot. To her discomfort he reached out and began unpinning her veil. He loosened the
pins that bound her plait.

  ‘You had best unpin it yourself.’ He pulled her onto her feet. ‘I shall get my own boots off. You are too slow.’ He bent down, pulled off one boot, then the other and kicked them aside. ‘Go on, you finish this,’ he said. ‘First the hair, then the gown. I want to see Eve as God made her.’

  She inhaled a deep breath and obediently removed the final pins and shook her hair loose. Could he possibly know that she had sinned with his brother? Could he see her as Eve banished? She felt her knees weakening as she removed her gown. However, when she stood before him naked he simply gasped and said, ‘By the Virgin, what a beauty. Gunnhild you have not aged since I first took you on the crossing to Normandy, in a storm.’ He laughed. ‘You have ripened like a peach in summer.’ He looked around the chamber. ‘Bring me the pot. I would take a piss before I take you.’

  She hesitated and said, ‘My lord, please do not offend me. It is there.’ She gestured to a wicker screen in the corner.

  He slowly stood up, loosening the ties on his hose. ‘As you wish.’

  When she heard him make water she leapt into bed and pulled the coverlet over her nakedness.

  She leaned back against her pillows. She did not want his caresses. Nor did she want to respond to him. She lay as if she were a carving on a tomb. Her desire had gone, but then a women’s desire was wrong, so said the Church. Afterwards, she lay wide awake, feeling sad it had become so, listening to rain beat on the outside stone. Tonight she was more of a leman than she had ever been with Niall. She was Agenhart’s replacement, their roles once again exchanged.

  Sir Edward and Count Alan spent two days delivering questions to the agents selected from the villages and halls on the Richmond demesne. Throughout a week of drenching rain a gaggle of representatives from the villages trailed into the castle hall to be interviewed by Count Alan and Sir Edward. The clerks looked like toads, wearing their portable writing desks strung from their necks by leather straps. They watched on and scribbled, recording the information. The ten men sullenly returned to their homes with a store of further verbal questions for their neighbours and underlings.

  During these interviews, Gunnhild sat quietly on a bench with two of her ladies, her head lowered over a piece of embroidery, a napkin for the table. She peeped out from her wimple at the proceedings. She noted the questions that sadly reminded her of a world of English names that she had known as a child before that world became a lost world. Now it would recede further into the past. She had a feeling that with the great survey there would be new changes and she felt for those who had lost their land twenty years past in a time of greater freedom and individuality. Who owned the land when King Harold lost the great battle, who owned it now? What had the geld tax been then? How many in each household? What were their names? What did they possess in the way of sheep and cattle, geese and hens? How many ploughs and who were the ploughmen?

  She heard Uhtred mutter, ‘We’ll not take this easy.’ She noticed the sly looks between Uhtred and Gospatrick of Ellerton on the Swale, but kept silent thinking that if anything was amiss Alan would see it, too. But Alan did not because he was conscientiously questioning his other chief tenants, Robert of Montiers and Bernwood of Well. Both were nearer his social class. They were knights and loyal to him. These men could give Sir Edward intelligent answers and create a better impression than the assortment of English freedmen and clergy who dwelled on The Honour of Richmond. The tenth juror was Enisant Musard of Brough Hall. He was an old friend to Count Alan, a Flanders man who had carved out an existence in Yorkshire for himself after the troubles of 1070. Yet now, too, he found it impossible to pay the tax levied three years past, never mind what was to come after the survey.

  During the days of soaking rain, Sir Edward and his clerks were shut away in the chamber behind the hall like moles buried in a peaty-smelling, earthy gloom, punctuated with the acrid scent of ink, where they absorbed Alan’s total attention. Sir Edward was as keen as a fox with its snout into the wind, determined to get as much gain as he could squeeze out of their lands for the King.

  Some days later the rain became a slant and then a drizzle. At last it stopped and Alan announced, ‘Tomorrow we ride out to the villages. Gunnhild will ride with us. As King Harold’s daughter she has respect amongst the villagers.’

  Yes, you recognise that, she thought to herself, but it will not save us if the villagers turn against us all.

  On the following morning, Maud slipped through the curtain that separated her bedchamber from her mother’s, smiling to see her father seated on the coverlet pulling on his riding boots. She curtseyed to them both and pertly said, ‘Merleswein needs exercise. My father has not seen me ride him.’ She took a step forward. ‘If it has stopped raining I need to be out on my pony. I want to come, too.’

  ‘Maud, now your father is back you do not enter this chamber until sent for. Stand still and be quiet for a moment.’ She glanced at Alan, seeking agreement from him.

  ‘Your mother is right, my girl. You do not enter her bedchamber without permission. What would Walter d’Aincourt’s family make of you?’

  Gunnhild turned from Maud and stared at him open-mouthed. ‘Whose family?’

  Ignoring her, Alan hoisted a thick greying eyebrow at his daughter. ‘Yes, my girl. You are to be betrothed to a knight and as part of your dowry I shall be giving him a portion of your grandmother’s lands in Cambridgeshire and a few hides of land here in Yorkshire. As for you, you will be bedecked with jewels on your wedding day.’ He raised his eyes to the beams above them. ‘Pray God it is soon.’

  Gunnhild felt profound irritation. It was not that she resented anything granted to Maud but she suspected where those jewels would come from. She gave him a look brimful of anger. ‘Not Gytha’s jewels.’

  He reached over and patted her arm. ‘I have not decided yet.’ He looked back at Maud. ‘I think it right that Maud rides out with us. We have a guard. All will be well.’ Maud’s rosebud mouth broke into a smile. ‘I shall get Elizabeth to bring me my boots and mantle,’ she said in a very grown-up manner, before spinning round daintily to push back through the heavy gold-and-green embroidered curtain. She was clearly pleased with this outcome. She stopped, turned and said with a mixture of delight and wonder in her voice.’

  ‘Truly, I am to be betrothed soon, and to a knight?’

  ‘I believe so,’ Alan said.

  ‘I shall want us to live here, Papa.’

  ‘You shall be mistress of your own estates. Now hurry! Go and find your mantle and boots, my sweeting.’

  Gunnhild rounded on him the moment Maud was gone. ‘What sort of man is this Walter d’Aincourt? Why did you not tell me of this scheme? I raised Maud when you were off fighting and …’ She could not bring herself to mention Agenhart, not when she wore the stain of Eve’s guilt herself. ‘… and now you return and reorganise all our lives.’

  Alan pulled his heavy woollen mantle from a peg and fastened it across his shoulder. ‘I will do as I feel right,’ he said as he headed for the doorway, ‘for the child. It is me who has provided her dowry and do not forget it.’

  ‘You? My mother’s lands. You are giving away my mother’s lands!’ She called after him, unable to contain her fury. ‘My lands!’

  He turned back and for a moment she thought he might strike her. ‘Do not raise your tongue to me like some worn out whore who is past her reason. I need to speak with you about your mother, but not now. Not today. Today, Madam, I shall see you below. Wrap up well. There is a chill in the air. I want to be on the road by daybreak. You will have an opportunity to show great care for our daughter today.’

  She was dazed, hurt by his choice of words, wondering what he wanted to say about her mother. Changing her red slippers for riding boots, she struggled down the curving stairway into the great hall below. The hall was busy but she sensed sullenness from the servants as she broke her fast. If only these clerks would ride away and leave them alone.

  After Prime she
hurried out into the courtyard, a chattering Maud beside her. As Alan gathered together a band of the new mercenaries the bailey bustled with the clanging of swords and the snorting of horse. Their breath ghosted through the misty air. Ann hurried about wrapped in a heavy cloak. She had seen the men fed, and promised that she would oversee the dinner preparations that day in Gunnhild’s absence. As Gunnhild looked about the heaving bailey with its restless horses and barking dogs she could not see Niall anywhere. Since Alan had taken up residence in her chamber, Niall had avoided her and though she was determined to bring their relationship to an end, she found that already she missed him. As if he read her mind Alan announced that today Niall was to stay behind with the castle guard. At least Alan had not made any further attempt at intimacy but rose early and was at prayer in the chapel before daylight. How different he was to his brother, who was passionate and kind, whereas Alan had grown cold and dismissive.

  They mounted their horses, Gunnhild on her mare, Blackbird, since Shadow had died two years past, and Maud sitting erect and proud on Merleswein. Alan and Sir Edward took up their positions at the head of the column. The clerks followed. Surrounded by a sinister army of ghostly seeming shades, namely their new guard, they headed out through the clinging mist, over the drawbridge, past the row of lime-washed cottages that straggled through the town beyond the castle wall, and then deep into the dales. As wooded lanes narrowed the soldiers fell back, taking up the rear, ready to surge forward if there was trouble. A scout who knew the route to the large village of Well rode ahead, occasionally doubling back.

  At a trot, they moved through the thinning mist, past arable land and pasture. Every now and then Alan stopped the column and waved his gloved hand towards the great fields, showing Sir Edward how green shoots were rising from the muddy furrows. She could see he was assessing for himself just how hard his peasants were working along the mucky mire of the troughs. Sunlight broke through the morning mist and was glinting off helmets, their soldiers a warning to anyone who hindered their passage. Occasionally stands of beech trees rose up on the edges of the great wood, where somewhere deep inside stood a double oak tree that had sheltered Niall and herself during long, easy, summer afternoons. This same wood, once friendly, seemed to her now as if it could be a secret place for enemies to plot resistance. As they rode through it, conversation ceased between Gunnhild and Maud, drowned out by the raucous clamour of rooks in the trees above their heads, as if the creatures seemed about to swoop down on the moving column and as if the birds were intent on warning the village of Well of their approach.