The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  On his return, Niall swept them up as if he was the monastery’s custodian. ‘Come, my ladies. The abbot is waiting to greet you. He is a friend to Richmond and a distant relative to my own mother.’ Gunnhild had never asked him about his mother. He never mentioned her, but it was reassuring to her that Niall was not a full brother to Alan. Surely that made their sin a lesser offence in God’s strange reckoning?

  Early the next morning they met in the pilgrims’ refectory to break their fast on bread rolls and buttermilk. The abbot, an aged man whose face was creased like crumpled cloth, joined them. ‘So, my lady is to Canterbury? Did you know that the great Abbot Anselm of Bec has been in residence at the Bishop’s Palace in Canterbury since the calends of August? You will meet that noble and fine human, though he is made of such goodness he is more like an angel.’ He lowered his voice. His long face sank towards his dark chest. ‘He will be Archbishop after Lanfranc …’ He paused as if he was over-reaching himself. Then he threw caution away. ‘Lanfranc is well past seventy years. Anselm will be a breath of fresh air.’ He patted her arm in a fatherly manner. ‘And your mother, Lady Gunnhild, I met her a year since. She is a most gracious lady.’ He looked from Gunnhild to Niall. ‘Ah, how times have changed. I pray every day that this land will settle into a more comfortable age as King William himself ages. Ah, indeed, indeed, like myself, too.’ He let go a sigh.

  Niall lifted his cup, drained it of buttermilk, and said, ‘Abbot, we pray for peaceful and plentiful times too.’ He stood and pushed his chair back. ‘But we must be on our way if we are to be in Canterbury by St Calixus.’

  The old abbot studied Niall, his small inquisitive eyes steady below the ridge of his dark brow. He looked at Gunnhild again, then back at Niall. ‘Your brother is this lady’s husband is he not? Where is he? What nature of man is he who leaves a beautiful wife in another’s care?’

  ‘Alan has business in Normandy trading wool and then he intends visiting his estates in Brittany. There is a family land dispute we must discuss with Lady Elditha in Canterbury.’

  ‘I see. Ah, the great survey. The clerks have been to me as well. We have been counted, our goods and chattels outside the city, too. We have lost some lands and gained some lands.’ He sighed again. ‘It is God’s will. Fortune’s wheel is turning, I fear.’ Then he patted Gunnhild’s arm with his bony hand. ‘But may it turn in your favour, my lady.’

  They knelt for the abbot’s blessing, the others following their mistress’s direction, and the aged abbot made the sign of the cross over each of their heads. ‘May God and His holy angels be with you.’ When they rose, he once again looked from Niall to Gunnhild with a flicker of concern in his grey eyes. She silently whispered her own prayer to St Brigit, ‘Protect us all.’

  Hilde rode in the wagon with Emma and their maid. Her mare was in need of a new shoe and Niall said that once they were on the Canterbury road they would stop at a blacksmith’s forge that he knew from other journeys south. He tethered the mare behind the wagon and told the guard to watch it carefully. Gunnhild smiled to see Hilde peering out through the curtains as it rattled over the stony streets past churches and shops with opened shutters selling everything one could desire, saddle decorations, bridle ornaments, materials, leather goods, ribbons, silks, bobbles for the ladies. The girl exclaimed at the crowds of people, the knights with bright armour that gleamed rosy in the rising sun’s glow, the morning street traders with trays of bread and pies, the barking of dogs, shrieking of cats as they were kicked to one side, the chirruping of caged birds, the rat catchers, their poles strung out with their prey, and general toing and froing.

  Gunnhild stayed close to Niall as they rode on through London’s narrow streets until they were approaching the bridge that crossed the wide river. It was even busier here. Niall shouted back to his soldiers, ‘If we are separated regroup at the sign of The Hawk. It is the last inn out of Southwark. Do not take any side lanes, forge on straight.’ He reminded their guard, ‘Men, you must stay by the wagon. I shall stay with Lady Gunnhild.’ He took Gunnhild’s reins and drew Blackbird closer to his own horse, ‘Hold onto the pommel. I want your horse neck and neck with mine in case we lose you to the crowd.’ He touched his sword hilt as if to emphasise potential danger.

  Gunnhild bent over and grasped her saddle pommel. As if he spoke just in time, a procession of carts crossing the bridge stopped the wagon’s forward movement. Glancing back, Gunnhild saw their guard protectively gather around the wagon. Niall called to her, ‘They shall be safe. Wulfric will make sure the men stay with your ladies.’

  They clattered on over the bridge. About midway across a band of lepers surged forward from the shelter of buildings that ranged along each side, ringing bells and with streams of incoherent words pouring out of their ruined mouths. She loosened her grip on the pommel and dug into the purse she kept safely concealed below her mantle, but there was only a silver penny. ‘Niall help them, please. They are God’s chosen.’ Niall reached into his own purse and withdrew a handful of coins. He tossed them into the crowd of outreached fingers, crippled limbs and ghostly faces that had gathered around them. ‘Now go, and with God’s peace,’ he called down in a gentle voice. ‘Let my lady through.’ He caught her bridle, tugged on her reins, clicked his tongue at their horses and forced them both through the crowd. The lepers scattered, clutching the alms.

  Once they had come off the bridge she caught glimpses of the gleaming white tower rising on the other side of the wide river. It was the greatest symbol of the Conqueror’s power. It made her feel sad for a moment for all her people had lost. At last, they left it behind and were riding along the road that ran through Southwark’s huts, halls, orchards and copses, but every time they looked over their shoulders they still could not catch sight of their wagon or their guard. They were lost amongst the crowds that were still swarming in both directions. She felt Niall’s breath on her cheek as he bent down and released her reins. In that moment she glanced up at him and their eyes met. He took her reins back, drew her mare close again, bent his head to hers and kissed her on the lips, unconcerned that there were still carts and pedestrians passing them. She lifted her head to receive his kiss and then she returned his with one of her own that was equally as deep.

  ‘Look out!’

  At the shout, Gunnhild started and pulled away, though Niall, oblivious to the cry in front of their horses, held onto her reins with her hands folded into his own. She jerked her head up. There was something familiar about the sharp voice she had heard shouting at them. A monk was seated on the platform of a long wagon that was stopped ahead. Now that he had caught her attention he called up to her, ‘If you sin, you will reap God’s wrath.’

  His wagon was waiting by the left verge. Four dark monks in long habits were lounging by its side. One spat a huge green gobbet at Blackbird’s hoofs. ‘Shameless!’ the monk shouted up to her. ‘God will punish you both.’

  ‘What is going on?’ a harsh voice called from the apple orchard to the side of the track. Gunnhild and Niall together looked in the direction of the apple trees to where a group of nuns had gathered around a travelling screen. A trickle of yellow urine flowed from it, out and along a gully in the road. The owner of the harsh voice emerged from behind it, hurrying as if rushing from a storm, straightening her black habit. She paused, looked up at Niall and then at Gunnhild, her eyes widening with recognition. She studied them for a moment, her small beaded eyes still recognisable in her yellowing complexion. Just as Gunnhild recognised Christina of Wilton, Christina had clearly remembered her.

  ‘Lady Christina, my greetings,’ Gunnhild said clearly. ‘Are you well?’

  ‘As well as the good Lord permits. What brings you to London, King Harold’s daughter? I thought you to be in Richmond with that thief.’ She straightened her dark cloak and adjusted her wimple. ‘And who is this? Unless Alan of Richmond has grown younger and changed his appearance, he is not the one who holds your hands now.’

  ‘Whore,’ grumble
d the monk.

  ‘Be silent, Brother Francis, do you not recognise her? No, you would not. She is grown up since your time in her mother’s household.’

  Gunnhild glanced from Christina to the aged monk. ‘Brother Francis!’ she whispered, her words hardly audible. The last time she had seen this monk was at Wilton years before Aunt Edith had died. She was sure he had accompanied Alan when he had passed through the abbey on his way to Exeter in 1068. Since then she had changed from a ten-year-old girl into a woman approaching her thirtieth year but he was still the same, just older, but still thin and mean-looking.

  ‘You are clearly full of whore’s tricks. You deserve to be whipped naked about the churchyard,’ the monk croaked.

  Christina interjected, ‘Harsh words, Brother Francis, though certainly penance is in order.’ She turned her attention to Gunnhild. ‘You belong in Wilton,’ Christina said. ‘You are our property, do you hear me, you and your lands. You never belonged elsewhere and certainly not with that man who seized our rightful inheritance when he took you to be his concubine.’

  ‘We were married in God’s house, as you well know,’ Gunnhild said with courage, inwardly shuddering as passers-by were pausing to watch. Unless their guard caught up, the gathering crowd was capable of dragging her off her horse and marching her into the nearest churchyard for her penance.

  Christina ignored them. She shouted at Gunnhild. ‘God will be your judge. A flighty girl you were then and clearly you are a flighty woman. You still need the discipline of the convent and God’s forgiveness if you are not to burn in the fires.’ Christina gathered her cloak closer as if to shut out evil. ‘We must press on to Wilton to do God’s business. We have loftier things on our minds this day than a woman who has sinned and is still sinning.’ She could not resist the boast. ‘We have preparations to make for a visit from the eminent Abbot of Bec.’

  ‘Abbot Anselm?’

  ‘The same. I expect you are on your way to Canterbury. You will have no joy there if you are after estates in Kent and halls in Canterbury. They all belong to Wilton now.’ Christina curled her upper lip, stared for a moment from Niall to Gunnhild and added. ‘I shall pray for your redemption.’ Christina, still agile, climbed into the curtained wagon followed by her darkly clad nuns, all with a swish of dusty skirts and the wearing of sour faces, all except for one who paused and looked lovingly back at Gunnhild. She smiled and with that smile her face came alive. Gunnhild started. She could never mistake that wide-eyed look or the smile that lit up that gentle face. It was Eleanor. Memories flooded back. She opened her mouth and closed it as Eleanor mouthed, ‘God speed, Gunnhild.’

  The crowd began to disperse as Brother Francis climbed on to the driving board, took the reins of the cob, and flicked a hazel switch at its rump. At that the horse slowly moved forward. ‘Wait, brother!’ one of the armed monks shouted. The wagon halted further along the road. Two monks ran to the verge, folded the portable screen, hurried after the litter and loaded it into the back of the wagon. Without another word the group moved off. Eleanor glanced back at Gunnhild and lifted her hand in a small wave. They were gone, rattling along the road, mingling into traffic, vanishing into another crowd. Gunnhild lifted her hand and waved to the disappearing wagon. Eleanor’s life belonged in a place behind latticed screens, a life of prayer in candlelit chapels and contemplation in quiet cloisters.

  ‘What an unpleasant woman,’ Niall said to Gunnhild, giving her the reins again. ‘We should wait here and allow some distance between us and that parcel of bitterness. Thank the Virgin that they are not on the road to Canterbury.’

  ‘But they will have conversation with Abbot Anselm.’

  ‘There is little to tell.’

  ‘A kiss,’ Gunnhild said softly as Blackbird stepped through the drying yellow stream that Christina had left behind her. ‘A dangerous kiss. That crowd looked like they wanted fun at my expense. The priest had only to say the word and they would have had me out of my saddle.’

  ‘They would not dare. One precious kiss. Pray, my lady, it is not the last.’ He reined around. ‘Our guard is coming.’ She turned her head back towards the bridge.

  ‘Yes, they are,’ she said. ‘And lucky they missed the Wilton nun.’

  ‘Lucky for us, perhaps, that we did not need them.’

  On seeing them waiting, Emma shouted out hardly able to contain her excitement. ‘My lady, did you see the jongleurs on the bridge?’

  ‘They were dancing and throwing yellow balls into the sky. They were catching them even through the press of people and wagons,’ Hilde added, reminding Gunnhild that until meeting Christina the journey to Canterbury had been light-hearted, filled with new experiences for her maids. She determined not to darken their mood because of one unpleasant encounter on the road.

  ‘Indeed, and did you see an angel and the devil on a cart?’ she laughingly said back.

  ‘We did, we did and they said they were off to St Paul’s to cast judgement over the sinners. The devil chuckled and pointed his sceptre at us and we nearly tumbled from the cart in fright.’ Emma gave a little pretend shudder. ‘Then the angel leaned over, kissed my head and blessed me.’

  ‘So we are on the road to Canterbury,’ Hilde said, peering around at the orchards that opened up on each side of the road. She looked up at Niall. ‘My horse needs his shoe. Then I can be back riding alongside my Lady Gunnhild.’

  Niall waved them forward. ‘The blacksmith’s dwelling is less than a furlong away.’ He lightly tugged his horse’s reins and set him off at a walk with Blackbird following.

  25

  In the city of Canterbury King Edward had 51 burgesses paying rent and 212 others over whom he had sake and soke, and 3 mills rendering 40s. Now there are 9 burgesses paying rent. Of the houses 11 are waste in the city ditch, and the archbishop has 7 of them, and the Abbot of St Augustine’s 14 others in exchange for the site of the castle … Ralph de Courbepine has 4 messages in the city which a certain concubine of Harold held, the sake and soke of which are the king’s; but hitherto he has not had it.

  The Domesday Book , a Complete Translation, ed. by Dr Ann Williams and Professor G. H. Martin, 2003

  When the ancient city walls of Canterbury reached up before Gunnhild, she turned to Niall and said, feeling uncomfortable and anxious, ‘My mother owned houses and weaving sheds here. Now she is a nun. How everything changes.’

  ‘If she is content, that matters,’ he replied, putting her at her ease.

  They rode through a high archway and found themselves on a long cobbled street. The town had grown over the eighteen years since Gunnhild had last seen it as a child and had become a spider’s web of lanes and streets. Even so, it was not difficult to find their accommodation since it was one of the most elegant buildings in the town, set in its own courtyards, surrounded by pollarded trees. The bishop’s palace stood close to the new castle that overlooked the town.

  As they rode into the palace lane and crossed a rushing stream, a gatekeeper popped up behind the thick wooden bars of a gateway and asked their business. When Niall said that Lady Gunnhild, wife of Alan of Richmond, daughter of Harold of Wessex, was expected, he bowed low and had his boys rush to open the entrance gate. ‘God bless the lady,’ he said, bowing again as they rode in, followed by the wagon with Gunnhild’s ladies and the inquisitive wide-eyed maid who stared all around as their driver guided the cart towards the palace buildings.

  They were welcomed by Bishop Odo’s steward, a tonsured, plump, smiling man, who, when he realised that the visitors from Count Alan’s Honour of Richmond had arrived, welcomed them with warmth and told them that their chambers were prepared. He showed the women their sleeping chamber and immediately disappeared with Niall back down the wide stone stairway. Clearly Niall was to sleep in a distant part of the palace.

  Gunnhild directed their maid to unpack her travelling coffer in the large room where the ladies had beds with feather mattresses. She remarked to Hilde, ‘We should be grateful. In compari
son to the beds we have been sleeping in, this is luxury.’

  ‘It is heaven.’ Hilde bounced on one of the two beds and fingered the rich curtain.

  Gunnhild supervised Grete’s unpacking of her travelling chest. Her clothing included her aunt’s green silk dress. She would take pleasure in wearing it when she visited her mother. Retrieving it from the deep leather coffer, she held it up, asked Hilde to brush it and hang it on the clothing pole by the window. Hilde dutifully set to work, hanging it where light shone on it. The gown looked beautiful, still not a moth hole in the silk. The flowered hem with its pale jewels glowed in the beams of patterned light. Gunnhild sank onto a cushioned bench by the large bed and stared at it and then at the undergown hanging beside it. The longer she looked, the more convinced she was that the small darn which, though it had been carefully mended with the tiniest of stitches, remained visible, a reminder of a long-ago midsummer’s eve.

  That evening she walked in the cloisters with Niall. Hilde walked behind at a distance, looking down at a small book which she held opened as she followed them. Anyone watching would suppose that they were all slipping quietly to prayer.

  Niall spoke in a low voice. ‘Your accommodation, Gunnhild, is it better than the flea-ridden hole we slept in last night?’

  ‘It is a great chamber, and its windows are set with coloured glass.’

  ‘Good. Now, tomorrow, when you visit St Augustine’s, do you want me to accompany you? The land problem could be difficult to explain.’

  ‘No, I must do this alone. I shall take Hilde. She will enjoy meeting Abbess Elizabeth.’

  ‘Of course.’ He glanced over his shoulder. Hilde had paused at a statue of the Virgin. Her head was bowed and her lips moved as if in prayer. Niall clasped Gunnhild’s hand into his own. ‘Tell me, truly, was your mother as beautiful as they say?’