The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  ‘When do we leave?’

  He took her face in his hands. ‘In truth, I expect Alan will not return before morning, if even then. You may come with us but only if you do exactly as I tell you. You are to stay out of sight when we reach the nunnery; at least until I know it is safe for you to approach. After that we can see.’ He stopped. She nodded. ‘Then, it depends on this. We have to return by daybreak whether we have Maud or not. Do you understand? Alan always has to be in control. I risk my brother’s anger for this and even more for taking you with me when he has ordered you to remain here at Richmond though if we do have Maud back with us perhaps he will be forgiving.’

  ‘Can I get out by the gatehouse and over the drawbridge without being seen? I am in confinement here. Alan is furious with me.’

  Niall thought for a moment. ‘I have a plan. During Vespers Ann will send your maids away. She will bring you one of Hubert’s mantles. In this weather you won’t be recognisable.’

  He was on his feet. ‘And you must eat first. I shall send Ann with sustenance and do not refuse it.’ He gave her a warning look. ‘This will not be easy.’

  She nodded. ‘I shall do anything if it helps to get my daughter back.’ She managed a weak smile. ‘Even eat.’

  As the chapel bell was ringing out for Vespers, Ann entered her chamber with a tray of food and a sack of clothing. ‘Hubert’s mantle and we have a tunic, belt and hose too, my lady. It was left behind by Hubert’s young nephew at Eastertide. Wear your riding boots.’ She drew the bed curtains closed and, turning round, saw that Gunnhild was picking at a slice of mutton pie. ‘By the Holy Virgin, wolf it down or else you are staying behind with me.’

  Gunnhild ate quickly. She lifted the clothing and ran her hand over the warm woollen tunic and mantle. They would be comfortable. When she pulled them on she found that they were a good fit, too. She drew the belt about her waist and fastened the wooden buckle. Lifting her silver looking glass, she loosened her plait to allow it to fall down her back, and twisting it tightly she looped it up with a length of cord that she generally used to keep her pens neat.

  ‘Good,’ Ann said, standing back to survey the result. ‘My lady, it will work. You look like a squire now but there is little time before the maids return from Vespers.’

  Without further hesitation, they hurried down the stairway past the bower into the hall and out of the back entrance. It only took moments to follow the muddy pathway around the chapel, from which they could hear Brother Christopher intoning the plainsong. Stumbling with as much speed as they could, down the private path that side-tracked the garden fence to the bailey hall, they found Niall waiting at the bottom with a roan for Gunnhild.

  ‘Your own horse, Blackbird, would be recognised. This is Argos.’ She patted the roan’s nose and stroked him allowing him to get her scent so he was used to her. A glint of humour flashed through Niall’s eyes. He touched her arm and gently pinched the thick wool of the tunic. ‘I doubt that you will be recognised in that gear.’ He grinned and helped her mount the brown roan. After he gave a low whistle, Hubert and Alfred emerged out of the drizzling rain leading the other three horses.

  ‘My lady.’ Alfred came close to Argos and whispered, ‘My lady, I had no knowledge of it before Sandi the miller warned us. He had his suspicions of those weavers. They were confirmed when he saw them talking with Uhtred of Middleton behind the mill that day.’

  ‘Pity we had not known sooner. What happened has happened. It is not your fault.’ She reached out and touched his mantle. ‘Do you really think she may be in the nuns’ house at Hallikeld?’

  ‘That Count Alan has not returned with her already makes me think that she is not in any of the Richmond villages. Count Alan has set himself up at the old hall in Achebe so he can cast his net wide through the meadow lands and woods. The villagers and the priest, Alfric, at Achebe are helping him.’

  ‘He could have sent word,’ she muttered below her breath.

  ‘Does Alan ever stop to send word?’ Niall said. The others mounted and she tugged on the reins and turned her roan towards the gates.

  Niall called out as they reached the gate-house. The soldiers on guard recognised the darkly-clad lead figures trotting through the bailey to be Lord Niall and Hubert. They shouted for the drawbridge to be dropped down, not daring to question Niall’s business outside the castle. It was none of their business, but just in case, Gunnhild and Alfred tugged their hoods over their heads and tried to look like servants falling in behind their masters.

  Once they were beyond the town they wove along the edge of the woodland, riding south towards Well. Hallikeld lay further to the south east. The rain ceased as they rode further from Richmond. Evening became night and a pale moon broke through the clouds lighting up tracks that were empty of humankind. Now and then overhanging branches caused Gunnhild’s roan to start as he sidestepped them. She mastered him easily and reined him in. A long-eared hare stood up in a field sniffing the wet night air, ears pricked in points as it watched them pass. Moments later a pair of stoats scampered across their path. An owl’s sudden hoot made Argos nervous again. He leapt up but Gunnhild found now that she could calm him with a word. She never once allowed herself to fall behind Alfred who was leading them. As they neared Well, they turned into meadowlands. The mill and the village church were just about visible as they splashed through the stream that turned the mill. She had no desire to encounter Alan and anxiously prayed to St Brigit that they would miss any of his patrols.

  ‘We must avoid my estate,’ Alfred said reading her thought, and dug his knees into his horse’s flanks pushing him into a canter. ‘Come on, my lady, let us get up a gallop here and see if we can make speed across country. It is all fields now in this dale, river and meadowland as far as the eye can see. The nuns’ house is hidden inside the Hallikeld woods. It will only take us an hour or more if we keep up a good pace.’

  They took his lead, dug their boot heels into their horses’ flanks and spurred them on. Gunnhild overtook them and easily galloped past Alfred, Alan and Hubert. Her seat bones would suffer in time but she didn’t care. She rode fast, easily managing her roan through the gorsy meadows and over the tracks that edged the fields. The rain kept off and the moon appeared to grow fatter as clouds dispersed. Great beams of moonlight now slid over the fields lighting their way forward and sheening the wet grass with a wet glow. God’s will was with her again. The faster Argos flew over the landscape the more she allowed hope into her heart. She would recover Maud.

  After a gallop through fields and over the stone walls that separated them, they began to find trees growing in dense stands. Gradually a wood closed in on them. They trotted in single file into a sunken lane where beach leaves reached over and sheltered them, a mixed blessing because this new growth also hid the moonlight. They hunched their shoulders and crouched low over their mounts, splashing through elongated puddles, riding carefully to avoid the water-filled tree roots that stretched across their path, attempting with difficulty to overstep them where possible. Raindrops wet her face as the foliage brushed past her. Gunnhild could hardly see Alfred in front because the darkness here had so completely closed out the moon’s glimmer but soon, thankfully, the lane finally levelled out and it became easier to ride towards where a track opened up to the left. Alfred halted at the divide. He pointed to the left. They grouped behind him. Riding very slowly now in single file, he led them into a glade filled with patchy wet grasses, nettles and bluebells.

  ‘This is where we tether the horses out of sight,’ he said, as he threw his leg back over his mount and slid onto the earth. ‘We keep our horses back and our voices low. Uhtred and his men could be close by.’

  ‘With luck, he is in the hall at Hallikeld tucked under a sheepskin, a skinful in his belly, a servant girl in his bed,’ Hubert grunted. ‘He will not be holed up in these damp woods tonight, you can be sure.’

  Niall said softly as he came off his mount, ‘Hubert, you will stay with Lady Gunnhild and
settle the beasts. You know this wood. Whistle twice, long and low if you hear anything that is not winged or small.’ He pointed to his right where the ground sloped up. ‘If you go up to the top of that bank over there by the oak trees you will keep dry.’ He sniffed the air. ‘There could be another downpour before dawn. We must hurry. Alfred and I will go ahead on foot.’

  Alfred beckoned Niall to a gap in the trees. ‘Look there, Lord Niall. The nun’s house is in the hollow down there beyond these trees. I can just about see it.’ He gestured back to Gunnhild who had come off her roan and was unceremoniously rubbing her backside. ‘Come over here and look, my lady.’

  She hurried to his side. She could make out the shadowy outline of a grassy roof rising above the treeline in the valley below. ‘It looks such a secret place, so well concealed in that wooded dip, it is as if no one could ever discover its existence,’ she said, putting a hand on Niall’s arm.

  ‘We shall be as stealthy as foxes on the prowl.’ Niall softly touched her back. ‘And return before their Matins bell sounds.’ He glanced up through the canopy. ‘There is enough of a moon again to see by, and enough to remain invisible, too.’

  Hubert tethered the horses to the heavy branches and efficiently hobbled them. ‘Come, my lady, there are none of Uhtred’s people out here tonight. There is nothing human besides ourselves but we had best climb up the mound and get under the trees like Lord Niall says. The horses are well hidden and up there we can discover if anyone has set up a camp nearby.’

  They climbed the bank and made themselves as comfortable as they could on damp grass. Despite her heavy mantle she shivered as they waited. Somewhere far out in the woods a wolf was yipping. The sound came closer, an eerie elongated howl, and then retreated. Moments later she started. Something shadowy was moving towards the horses tethered below them. At first she thought that Niall and Alfred were pushing through the brush again. But it was the wolf. He was moving silently, belly low, clearly intent on reaching the hobbled animals. She froze, but Hubert was quicker than the wolf. He lifted his hunting knife and slipped back down the bank, weaving in a silent zigzag so he did not slide. She saw the outline of the wolf turning and Hubert leaping forward. Without a moment lost Hubert had his knife in the wolf’s throat, before the creature could sink its fangs into him. There was a short struggle. The horses were snorting and pawing the earth. Hubert called up, ‘I got the bastard. Another moment and he would have got the horses there and maybe us, too.’

  Her heart raced and she wondered for a moment if it was madness to be out here in a strange wood, but as doubt crept in she felt as if the forest were speaking to her. She knew with certainty that Maud was close. She sensed it. Resolutely she stood up and leaned back against the tree trunk. The bitter tang of blood hung in the damp air. Hubert finished off the wolf and seemed to be murmuring into their horses’ ears. She leaned into the tree bark, trying to become invisible Wolves ran in packs. The dead wolf’s brothers could be close. And what if Uhtred of Middleton was somewhere in these woods, too?

  A new sound rustled from the undergrowth. This time it was Niall pushing through the foliage with Alfred at his heels. When he saw the wolf lying in a pool of blood he stopped. Hubert spun round.

  ‘By Christ’s holy bones did you do this work, Hubert!’ It was a statement not a question but Hubert just said, ‘Do we take the skin?’

  Gunnhild half slid and half tumbled down the slope landing uncomfortably close to the dying beast. She was never to be so glad to see another human again as she was to see Alfred and Niall return.

  ‘Pity not to,’ Niall replied to Hubert. ‘But, we had better make haste now in case there are more about,’ Niall was saying as he pulled out his sword and thrust it deep into the wolf’s heart. ‘They usually travel in packs. If we’re lucky this may be a lone one.’ He thumped Hubert’s back and said, ‘Good work. Are you willing to wait here with Alfred while I take Lady Gunnhild to her daughter?’

  ‘We’ll whistle if there is anyone about though I doubt you would hear it,’ Hubert said.

  ‘I’ve roused the nuns.’ Niall turned to her. ‘They have Maud safe and will give her up when I show you to them. So, as well you came.’

  ‘Uhtred, is he anywhere?’

  ‘We searched. He is not here. Come, I’ll help you into the lane.’

  They pushed through heavy foliage down the lane to the hollow below and squeezed through a small broken gate into a compound consisting of what seemed to be a tiny stone chapel and a tiled-roofed, two-storied timber building. As they approached the nun’s house the Matins bell rang. Four nuns stood waiting between the church and the hall. A thin boy scuttled from the church wearing a loose gown emulating a monk’s habit tied by cord around the middle, hood flapping behind him. He stopped beside the nuns, completing an odd convening, and stood beside them. Gunnhild crossed the yard in a bound and was about to demand her child but the four nuns of one accord pressed their fingers to their lips. One stepped forward, clearly the senior nun. She wore a threadbare but neat habit and wimple. Her bearing was proud. ‘So you are King Harold’s daughter,’ she said to Gunnhild. Indicating the scrawny waiting creature by her side, she added, ‘The boy will bring her. After he fetches her you must take the child and go.’ She gave Gunnhild a weak, thin-lipped smile. ‘And God go with you.’ She turned to the boy monk and said something in the Norse tongue. He immediately raced to the low building and disappeared through the doorway.

  A second nun stared at her. Turning to the prioress she lifted a hand in a halting gesture and said, ‘Not so quick, my lady prioress.’ She addressed Gunnhild. ‘You are Gunnhild of the English?’ she said carefully. ‘Have you proof of it?’

  ‘Would you rather I sent for Alan and his army?’ Niall said in a firm voice.

  ‘Be silent, knight. Let the princess speak.’

  Proof she was a daughter of King Harold . Silence stretched between them all like an invisible thread. She had no seal ring, no jewellery, nothing left to her now of her old life except long ago memories of her father. But, of course, there was her mother, and this gave her an idea. Gunnhild spoke quickly in the English tongue in case the nun changed her mind and called the boy back. ‘When my father was slain at Senlac, it was my mother who knew him. She went to the grey apple tree on the ridge and saw that field of slaughter for herself. She recognised my father’s broken corpse by marks only known to her. I know them, too.’

  ‘And?’ a second nun finally spoke. ‘They were?’

  Without hesitation Gunnhild leaned over and whispered into the nun’s ear. The little nun stretched up her plump goose-like neck, listened, smiled and nodded. ‘My father was there that day. Though they took him for dead, he saw what Edith Swan-Neck saw and he lived long enough to tell us children.’ Her pale eyes became sorrowful. ‘I believe that you are the youngest Godwin princess.’ She added, choosing her words carefully, ‘It was a great wrong that my brother did to you when he stole your child away.’ She reached out and touched Gunnhild’s hand. ‘Forgive us, Lady Gunnhild, for we have no way of leaving this place as Uhtred well knows. We could not have brought the child to you had we wished to do so.’ She waved her hand towards the church. ‘We are solitary. People bring us food here and we have our church and our garden. We have prayer. Despite the great wrong my brother has done you, God worked a miracle tonight for he has brought the child’s mother to us. And,’ she added with emphasis, ‘rest assured that we have cared for her well this past week …’ She looked around. ‘But here she is. I can hear her footsteps.’

  Gunnhild peered into the space beyond the group of nuns. Maud was stumbling out of the hall’s gloom into the moonlight, her hand in the child monk’s hand, looking confused and very sleepy. She was wearing the same mantle as several days before, now mud-splattered and dirty, though her face was clean. Maud cried out one word, ‘Mama’ and ran the last few yards to her mother. Gunnhild knelt down and gathered her into her arms. Maud clung to her. For a moment, Gunnhild’s eyes swam with
tears of relief and looking up through a mist, she whispered to the nuns, ‘Thank you.’

  ‘We did our best to soothe her; we gave her a posset of camomile and honey to calm her, but I fear she is as frightened as a little doe,’ the prioress said, her voice sad. She looked away towards the chapel. ‘And now that you are reunited, my lady, we must go to our prayers.’

  ‘Not so fast.’ Niall’s hand caught the nun’s arm. ‘Where can we discover Lord Uhtred and the weavers he took from Alfred’s estate?’

  She shrugged. ‘Unless you have a guard with you, armed and fast, avoid him. He is at Hallikeld Hall. His men are out in the woods yonder. Now be on your way, Lord Niall, since you have what you came for. When my brother rides in here I shall say Lord Alan and his men came for the girl. Ride back to Richmond with as much speed as you can make. Get away from these woods, and God go with you.’ She shook him off and with agility beyond her years she whisked around and walked towards the chapel. The boy-monk and the three other sisters followed her through the arched low door. It was over.

  Niall walked quickly away from the hall with Gunnhild and Alfred following behind, Gunnhild clutching Maud’s hand, chivvying her forward. When they reached the broken gate Niall said firmly, ‘Maud, I am going to carry you. You are too heavy for your mother to lift.’ Maud clung to her mother’s mantle until Niall gently unpeeled her. He lifted Maud into his arms and carried her through the shrubbery and along a sodden track back to their waiting horses. Gunnhild hurried beside him. Niall said to Maud, ‘And everything will be fine now. You are safe. But we have to make speed. You will be back at Castle Richmond in time for breakfast.’

  Gunnhild rode with Maud before her on the saddle so that Niall, Alfred and Hubert were free to defend them should they encounter an ambush. Just as they came onto heathland edging the Bishop’s estate, they saw shapes etched on a hillside. As if they were moving as one great dark shadow, riders were coming down the slope towards them.