The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  For a moment, Gunnhild felt envious of Agenhart, a woman with her own business, and her own independence. Alan was staring at her as if he had noticed her for the first time since he had stormed into her still room. ‘You look in good health, glowing. Clearly travelling to Canterbury has done well by you.’

  She ignored his compliment. ‘How long are you with us, this time, Alan?’ She busied herself with jars, moving them around a shelf.

  ‘I shall stay in Richmond until after the Christmas feast, then I shall return to Normandy. There is a suspicion that in the spring Robert Curthose will march against his father again. This time Niall will accompany me. We need all the commanders we can muster.’

  She closed her eyes. Both of them would march to war and both could be cut down. Alan was experienced, but it had been years since Niall had been in the field. As the enormity of this sank in, she began to hurry about the still room repositioning small barrels. ‘How long do you think this war will take?’ she asked, turning to face him again.

  ‘We should be done by summer. Curthose will be firmly brought to heel this time.’

  ‘What about the estates here? Niall always acts as tenant in chief during your absences.’

  ‘Hubert will train the troops here and in my castles elsewhere in Yorkshire. If there is trouble he will see that Gregory and the other reeves do their jobs properly.’ He jabbed a finger at Gunnhild. ‘And you will preside over the manorial courts with Enisant Musard. This time you must do the task I give you properly. All disputes should be settled firmly and fairly. If there is to be a hanging you see to it that the twelve just men act as judge and jury. Enisant Musard of Brough Hall will act as seneschal of Richmond and Uhtred of Middleton will not be one of the twelve judges in the manorial courts.’

  ‘As if that man will ever sit in my hall,’ Gunnhild remarked with ice in her voice. She remembered how Lord Uhtred had hinted that he had knowledge of her liaison with Niall. Fearful of what he might know, she bit her lip. He must not accuse her. Thinking quickly, she said, ‘I want to visit the abbey of Mary Magdalene in Lincoln this spring, and also, Alan, I can visit our daughter at the same time.’

  Alan shrugged. ‘I have no objection. A month or two in an abbey will serve you well, wife. It will soften your sharp edges.’ He rose to leave. ‘I shall tell Enisant Musard that you will not sit in the shire courts with him during the spring sessions. He can have Father Christopher by his side instead. I trust the priest.’ He did not add that he never trusted her.

  In late January, a few days before Alan and Niall were due to set out for Normandy, they rode with Enisant Musard around the Richmond estates. To Gunnhild’s distress, they encountered Uhtred of Middleton, with a tattered-looking servant man, at the fork in the road over the dales, a parting where one track led towards Middleton, the other to outlying villages on the Honour of Richmond.

  ‘Good morning,’ Uhtred grunted, reining in his fine piebald stallion.

  Alan stared at him, his face darkening. Niall moved his gelding closer to his brother’s stallion. Niall spoke first saying, ‘You are no friend to us, Uhtred. Be on your way.’

  Uhtred looked from Gunnhild to Niall, then to Lord Alan and back to Gunnhild, more than simply a look; it was a penetrative stare by the time he had returned his attention to her. She wondered what he would say and prepared herself for the worst possible scenario. Her legs tensed around Blackbird’s girth as fear washed through her. She held his look, however, and did not turn her head away from it. He opened his mouth and closed it again. The soldiers with Count Alan paced forward and drew their swords.

  Alan lifted his hand to stop their progress. His words to Uhtred were clear and not intended to invite any communication beyond the necessary. ‘Whatever you were going to say, do not say it. Get back to your lands at Middleton and keep to them. And let me remind you that Enisant here will expect the full geld portion, paid on time, on rent day in April.’ He turned to Gunnhild. ‘Ride on, my lady; we do not waste our time with child abductors.’ With these words, Alan reached forward and took hold of the sagging reins which she, in the effort of gathering her self-control, had allowed to drop, and guided her mount onto the path leading away from Middleton and towards his other lands. ‘Good riddance,’ he muttered to Gunnhild as his guards sheathed their weapons. If Alan suspected her, he was clearly not going to punish her. Her grip around the horse loosened.

  On the last day of January Gunnhild watched from the battlements as a troop of their best horsemen rode through a scattering of snow with the azure-and-gold chequered Richmond pennant flying before them, drooping limply as the snow-fall gradually increased. As she watched the column vanish into the snow she sank to the ground clutching the stone wall. Ignoring the chill on her knees she held up her sapphire cross and began to pray. ‘Dear God in Heaven, bring them both home safely. Forgive me Lord for my great sin. I care for my lord Alan because he is my lord and we are bound together in your sight and for Niall because despite my greatest will, I cannot stop loving him.’

  ‘My lady.’ The call came from the stairway. She rose to her feet. Ann was waiting with a woollen shawl. ‘My lady, come in from the battlements. You will catch a chill here.’ Gunnhild took the shawl gratefully and allowed Ann to help her descend the steep stone steps. She was at that moment very sad, for Niall, for Alan, and for what should have been between them as husband and wife. Yet she was happy that she had loved, too. When she contemplated the years she considered how life owned great complexities. She wondered if there was any possibility that this love and its accompanying guilt was what God had intended her to experience.

  26

  Spring 1087-1089

  He [King William] who was earlier a powerful king, and lord of many a land, he had nothing of any kind but a seven-foot measure; and he who was at times clothed with gold and with jewels, he lay then covered over with earth.

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, trans. and ed. by

  Michael Swanton, 1996, 2000

  The brothers returned safely despite Gunnhild’s concerns. King William had died in Normandy on the 10th day of September 1087. Bells pealed for a new king. Now, Alan and Niall found themselves fighting to protect their lands in Normandy from Robert Curthose who had not inherited England, even though he was William’s eldest son. The King had divided his kingdom. Curthose inherited Normandy. The dead King’s younger son, William, inherited England, which had brought about further strife. ‘I shall give William our loyalty,’ Alan insisted as he read yet another letter from Westminster, turned it over, laid it aside and continued his game of chess with Niall. He moved his bishop close to his king. Looking up he said, ‘He is a young cub, too.’ His voice turned bear-like, growling, ‘But Curthose is not acceptable to us. We have spent too many years fighting him.’

  Gunnhild glanced up from her sewing. ‘I am sure that is the best decision.’ Niall flipped over the queen he was playing, replaced her, slid her into checkmate and said, ‘Game over, new king, new ways.’ He lifted a pawn. ‘And here we are.’

  Some of the younger Norman barons supported Robert Curthose’s right to inherit it all, England and Normandy, and for years there would be skirmishes in the south. When a summons came to Richmond, Alan would say, ‘We go to our young King’s aid, Niall. To arms and to London.’

  Gunnhild kept a sad silence. Although she had become resigned to their many departures, she could not become resigned to Alan taking Niall away with him when they were summoned south by the new King, this time to fight rebel barons, supporters of Duke Robert, in the southern counties.

  During these years of rebellion, Gunnhild and Niall had no opportunity to meet in the barns or in the woods and certainly never in her chamber. By keeping Niall close it was as if Alan was deliberately blocking their liaison. She was always busy. When they were gone south and, later, after the baron’s rebellion was quelled, across the sea to Normandy, she helped the seneschal, Enisant Musard, in whatever way she could.

  She presided with him
in the hall court on rent days, sitting on the dais with one of her ladies beside her in discreet attendance. At the monthly judgement sessions she helped him and their clerks settle disputes. Together they worked in partnership and gradually she looked forward to Enisant’s visits. He was a red-faced man, now past his prime, a grandfather, squat, with a great beard and bushy greying hair. The tenants liked him and she recognised why Alan trusted him. For all his jovial behaviour his mind was sharp as a scimitar, and she recognised another reason for their friendship. Like Alan and Niall, he had fought at Hastings.

  ‘You killed my father,’ Gunnhild whispered in a serious tone before they began the first session in the hall. ‘Are you about to kill his people?’

  ‘No, lady, and I have wounds to show what a fierce fight your father’s army gave us.’

  It was true. Enisant could never go to war again. He had taken sword strikes to his legs that caused him to limp. As a consequence, he walked with a stick. His sword arm was weak. She observed grooms helping Enisant on to his horse by the mounting block, and, during the long, frost-rimmed, snow-filled winters he complained to her that his bones ached. ‘You are stiff again today, I see, my lord,’ Gunnhild said one February day. ‘Ann has a remedy, a new cure for your rheumatism. I shall ask her to give you the salve and a prayer.’

  ‘The salve might help but the prayer, perhaps not.’ He shifted his weight uneasily on his chair. ‘I have prayed enough for relief from the Devil’s stiffness. It has not eased in all these years.’ He twisted ungracefully into a more comfortable position. ‘It is worse.’

  ‘Then the salve without the chant.’

  ‘Maybe.’ He shuffled vellum scrolls around. ‘So, who do we have today, Gunnhild? Well, my, my, looks like Lord Uhtred wants to cheat us of two chickens, four turkeys, five sacks of wheat and by the Virgin’s veil, he has the audacity to withhold a pig.’

  ‘Alan insisted on firmness before they went to fight the new king’s enemies.’ Gunnhild said as she looked at the document. ‘Let us make Lord Uhtred pay.’ She glanced up and set her lips into a determined purse. ‘I know, let us tell him he owes us six hives’ worth of honeybees as well.’

  Enisant laughed. ‘Done, my lady. Six bee hives. I hope you intend to settle them in your orchard.’

  ‘I do, I do,’ Gunnhild replied. She looked to her other side where Hilde was stitching a hem on a napkin. ‘I think Hilde might enjoy learning a new skill.’

  ‘What me, my lady?’ Hilde glanced up from her lowly stool on hearing her name.

  ‘You will be mistress of my bees. How like you that, Hilde?’

  ‘Very much, my lady, if I am to be excused my lady’s chamber pot.’

  ‘Agreed,’ Gunnhild whispered.

  ‘Hush, ladies,’ Enisant Musard said. He banged his fist on the papers before him, making the ink pots jiggle in a dance as he called down the hall, ‘Lord Uhtred of Middleton, step up.’

  It was Uhtred’s reeve who stepped forward. ‘Uhtred,’ Gunnhild observed wryly to Enisant, ‘clearly has no desire to show his face.’

  ‘We are blessed.’

  They passed judgement and Gunnhild was half-a-dozen bee hives richer. She had once heard Hilde boast how she had a way with bees and so Hilde was made mistress of six hives of hibernating bees. When the other ladies asked her about the task she would undertake once the bees awakened, she insisted that she knew all about bee-keeping from her life at her father’s home in York where she had often helped their beekeeper when she was a young girl. She looked mischievously at Gunnhild and said she was very happy to be excused toilet duty in my lady’s chamber. ‘Clouts as well,’ she reminded her mistress.

  ‘Yes.’ Gunnhild glanced up from her inks and turned round to face the chattering maids. ‘Those, too.’ She waved a hand in their direction. ‘I shall choose one of you for that.’ Ignoring the mutters of complaint she returned to her manuscript.

  Each spring she set out for Lincoln and stayed in the quiet nun’s abbey, but often she would take a cubicle in the monk’s scriptorium sometimes helping with the abbey’s work of illumination and at others her own new work. She felt the seasons so keenly that she had introduced a calendar into her Book of St Brigit, carefully painting pictures to represent the seasonal tasks on their own lands – winter wood gathering, crafts such as weaving baskets from reeds that grew along the River Ure’s edge, the Christmastide feast, the snows and the frozen landscape. She outlined her ladies as they were bent over their spindles. For spring she drew her villeins sowing grain and planting cabbages. She depicted sheep on miniature hillsides, monastery fish ponds and fishermen netting salmon in the rivers. She carefully included the thatcher’s repairing of cottages and her ladies in the church procession at Eastertide.

  For summer she settled on her own garden fat with produce – salad, onions, beets, carrots and cabbages. Now her ladies were gathering herbs and flowers and in a later illustration seated on a bench under the plum tree stitching embroidery. There were tiny vignettes of haymaking and groups of cows and pigs in the field.

  Autumn was golden with beech and oak leaves, tiny grain carts, the mill at Richmond, the church and the priest, red berries, trees full of apples and miniature spiders making miniature webs on tiny neat hedgerows. She included her ladies in this scene dancing a roundel at the harvest feast.

  In each seasonal picture Maud, too, had her place with the ladies. Smaller than the others, she wore a blue mantle like the Virgin’s cloak, her hair cascading in gold-touched curls down her back. The creamy pages of soft rich vellum grew over the two springs she passed in Lincoln – April in the abbey and throughout the month of May at the manor house in the country where she enjoyed Maud’s company.

  Maud was growing up. She had reached her eleventh year. The tumbling, loving family of daughters with whom she lived in the great manor house outside Lincoln became her sisters and from them she learned skills such as stitching fine needlework, opus anglicanum, churning butter and how to make new herbal remedies. By the time Gunnhild came for her third annual visit Maud was grown up. She had experienced her first menses, her flowers, and could now be considered a woman.

  Walter, her young husband, was learning the skills of war as he joined Niall and Alan to fight the young Norman barons who supported Curthose.

  ‘What household task do you enjoy best?’ Gunnhild asked one soft May afternoon as they were cutting out a tiny dress for the latest little sister to wear during the d’Aincourt midsummer revels. The child, Lady Alice’s last baby, toddled about the solar getting in their way, demanding her mother’s attention.

  ‘Go and play with your kitten.’ Alice shooed the toddler off, giving her a bobble on a string with which to tease the creature. ‘Well, Maud, what do you enjoy most of all?’ she asked, echoing Gunnhild’s question. Gunnhild smiled because Lady Alice was not just a good mother. She had become a trustworthy friend.

  Maud wrinkled her brow as she considered. ‘I enjoy making simples. I like to help sick people get well.’

  ‘In that, sweeting, you follow in your grandmother’s footsteps,’ Gunnhild said. ‘She had cures for everything. She still has.’ Elditha had written many times to Gunnhild since her visit to Canterbury, and sometimes sent her a recipe she had discovered to ease the discomfort of winter colds. Her newfound communication with Elditha compensated for the long years of silence. ‘Everything changed for my mother when King William died. She can write to me now,’ she voiced her thought.

  ‘Of course, everything must change, Mother,’ Maud said, glancing up from her stitching. ‘There is a new king.’

  ‘Well not just that, but there is something I must tell you, and Lady Alice, too.’

  ‘Oh?’ Lady Alice said glancing at her with an eyebrow raised. She bit off a blue thread.

  Gunnhild thoughtfully chewed her lip. This would be both difficult and joyful. She had received a letter from Alan when she was staying at the abbey. She began to explain. ‘My brother Ulf, your uncle, Maud, was King William�
�s prisoner and now he is set free. Alan has written to say that my brother is to be a knight.’ She looked at Maud and Lady Alice and continued, choking back her emotion. ‘Alan said that this is Robert Curthose’s doing.’ Maud’s face was wide-eyed, and the other women sat still, their scissors and needles at rest in their hands. Gunnhild swallowed as Alice leapt to her feet. ‘But Gunnhild, this is happy news. You will see him again.’ She placed an arm about Gunnhild’s shoulder. ‘When you least expect it he will ride into Castle Richmond with a sword in his belt and a squire by his side.’ She put her other arm about Maud’s shoulders. ‘And he will come to see you in Lincoln, Maud. Won’t that be a happy occasion, to see an uncle who has been lost to you?’

  ‘I shall pray for my Uncle Ulf. I hope he comes to see us,’ Maud said. It was obvious from her blithe tone that she could only feel for her uncle in a distant way. Gunnhild frowned. Maud was a new generation, half Breton and half English, and even though she was the granddaughter of a king, her daughter could never really understand how deeply her grandparents had suffered when the Normans came and conquered.

  Gunnhild said sadly, ‘Yes, but only after England and Normandy make peace and Curthose permits him to come here.’

  That night Gunnhild cried herself to sleep, for all that was lost, for her father, her brothers, her sister, her mother, for Niall and for Alan who had shown her kindness when he had returned to Richmond last Christmastide. He had, too late, presented her with her jewels on New Year’s Day. ‘My dear, forgive me. I should never have kept these from you. I am sorry I have not been a kinder husband to you.’ This was a strange change of heart. For a moment she scrutinised Alan’s face but she saw nothing untoward except that he had grown older and lined. It had all happened so slowly that she had scarcely noticed, but he seemed to be mellowing as age claimed him. She had set the box aside. She had no interest in the jewels now.