The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings)

by Carol McGrath

  For an hour the sun rose higher and higher and as the noon mass time approached Gunnhild arranged flowers and shells around the narrow nave. She became absorbed in her task, but started at a sound. She heard the clink of armour and the neighing of a horse out in the bailey. It came closer. It grew greater, louder, filling the chapel with echoing sound. She spun around to see a grey-and-white stallion pawing the stone by the opened chapel door. Her eyes strained to see who it was. The sun was full and at first she could not make out the figure on the horse. Rays of sunlight caught at the jewels on the rider’s mantle. She withdrew to the altar, fearful now and about to shout out for help. The rider dismounted, leaving his horse by the door and approached her. Before she had time to speak or run behind the altar, he reached her and swept her up into his arms, lifting her so high she lost her breath. She looked down at her captor’s face, his dark eyes filled with laughter, his hair, which had been black, now sprinkled with streaks of grey, brushed against her face as he kissed her and released her again.

  His voice so familiar said the words she had clung to in her dreams. ‘I have come for you, Gunnhild, if you will have me, for I cannot live out the rest of my days without you.’

  ‘And I thee,’ she whispered into his cloak. ‘So you have come to me at last.’ She held on to his hands for a moment, tears of joy streaming down her cheeks. Together, hand in hand, they walked through the chapel’s nave and out of the arched door into sunlight.

  ‘Is all well, my lady?’ Just returned from the village, Fulk had come rushing into the bailey and was anxiously standing by the chapel doorway. Hilde stood behind Fulk, open-mouthed on seeing the familiar piebald stallion. Soldiers were moving through the yard ready to protect her.

  ‘All is well, Fulk, very well. Send the soldiers away. Tell the priest to ring the bells for St John’s Mass. Today we shall have a very happy feast to follow.’ She looked at Niall smiling widely. ‘This guest is most welcome.’ She sent the castle soldiers away, and seated high on Aragon she and Count Niall rode up the hill to the castle keep.

  The candles flicker. The yule log hisses softly. The people of the hall let their breath out in a collective sigh. It has been a long story of love and lovers and they always enjoy such stories of romance. After my tale is ended I lift my flute to my lips and play an older tune, one that holds long-ago memories, a soft lilting melody that belongs to the world of the English, before my father, King Harold, had lost his throne. Outside, snow bright as the white mink’s fur softly covers the land.

  Author’s Note

  There is little precise historical information about Gunnhild Godwinsdatter. What exists is intriguing. Most women from this early historical period are lost in the footnotes of history, even noblewomen. They are as shadows in a corner.

  Gunnhild was the youngest daughter of Harold II, who was defeated at the Battle of Hastings by Duke William of Normandy, and his handfasted wife Edgyth (Elditha). Just before the Battle of Hastings, Gunnhild was sent to Wilton Abbey for her education, as had been her aunt, Queen Edith, years earlier. I imagined that Edith the Queen was close to her niece as Edith also was Wilton Abbey’s patron. Dowager Queen Edith spent much of her life there after 1066. At Wilton a noblewoman’s education would have included reading, writing and the knowledge of languages.

  Norse languages as they were spoken in the eleventh century were very akin to Old English. People throughout the Northern world must have understood each other’s tongues. Gunnhild would have had a rudimentary instruction in French, Latin and Greek and would have practised embroidery, music and possibly calligraphy. Carola Hicks, one of the Bayeux Tapestry’s historians, believed that at least some of the Bayeux Tapestry panels were embroidered at Wilton as well as in Canterbury and that Queen Edith, a renowned embroideress herself, was involved in the Bayeux Tapestry embroidery. Generally, historians of the Bayeux Tapestry believe the fox and the crow image, which is repeated in the borders of the tapestry, to be deliberately ambiguous. I imagined in The Swan-Daughter that calligraphy and drawing, not embroidery, were Gunnhild’s favoured occupations. While we know that her aunt was a skilled needlewoman, we know nothing about Gunnhild’s talents.

  After the Battle of Hastings women who were widows and daughters of slain noblemen often disappeared into convents for their protection. The alternative could be marriage with the enemy. King William always considered himself the legitimate heir of Edward the Confessor. He favoured integration with the remnants of the English nobility. Even so, they were subservient to the conquerors. King William employed many English middling sorts of men as clerks. His regime included a system of English common law that came down from the tenth century with very few changes. In addition an emergent feudal system was already in place in England before the Norman Conquest and was systematically developed after it. The King ‘owned’ everything and everyone in the land, from barons to lowly serfs.

  Many noblewomen who fled to convents after 1066 never took vows. This became an issue in the 1070s as England settled into the new Norman-led regime. In 1073 Archbishop Lanfranc ruled that Anglo-Saxon women, who had at the time of the Conquest protected their chastity by retreating to convents, should make a choice to become professed nuns or leave the convent. Gunnhild would have been about fifteen years old when this was mooted. Her Aunt Edith, widow of Edward the Confessor and patron of Wilton Abbey, died in 1075. Therefore, I began the story of Gunnhild’s elopement in early 1076, when she was around eighteen years old and possibly about to profess.

  It is fact that Count Alan acquired many of Edith Swanneck’s lands. This can be traced through Domesday accounts for East Anglia. Those who owned a particular place in 1066 were recorded, as well as those who owned the same properties in 1086. This was a thorough investigation aimed at reassessing tax and I have no doubt that it was unpopular, thus the name Domesday. Can you imagine how this must have impacted on the population at the time? As a writer of fiction I wanted to explore the emotions and possible responses to the Domesday investigation on Count Alan’s lands. It is recorded that he was a fair tenant in chief and from Domesday evidence it is apparent that there were many men of Norse origin who were retained in important positions on his estates as well as Breton incomers. Thus, I invented the kidnap story to create drama but also to reflect the survey’s unpopularity with a population that had suffered horrific winters with famine.

  It is historical fact that King William dispersed armies of mercenaries around the country, billeting them in his barons’ castles – costly for his tenants in chief. Although the north was threatened by rebellions and by Scotland during the 1070s, one wonders how welcome all these mercenaries were.

  It is also fact that Gunnhild eloped from Wilton Abbey with Count Alan. There are two differing accounts of her elopement or, perhaps more accurately, two interpretations. These are as follows.

  First, it is recorded in Oderic Vitalis’s accounts, written within fifty years of the Norman Conquest, that Gunnhild eloped from Wilton Abbey circa 1089-1090. He refers to Archbishop Anselm’s letters to Gunnhild of 1092/93. I shall return to these, as it is a question of interpretation. In Oderic Vitalis’s account, Count Alan, veteran of Hastings and a second cousin of William of Normandy, who would have been at least fifty by this date, came to Wilton hoping to court and wed Matilda of Scotland. Matilda was the sister of Edgar Aetheling, daughter of Queen Margaret of Scotland, and also Christina’s niece. This princess, like Gunnhild, was educated in the abbey, except that Eadmer’s Chronicle suggests that Matilda was at Romsey, not Wilton. Eadmer was an eyewitness to the events concerning Matilda. Oderic Vitalis’s story suggests that failing in his venture to marry Matilda of Scotland, Count Alan eloped with and married Gunnhild. She would have been in her thirties by this date. Two dates are given for Alan’s death, 1089 and 1092. After his death Gunnhild lived with his brother Alan Niger whom I name Niall here to avoid confusion, and who inherited his brother’s estates circa 1089. In 1092 Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, intervened and t
old Gunnhild to return to Wilton. Anselm’s letters to Gunnhild apparently were resourced separately from all of his other correspondence and, although they are considered authentic, the non-inclusion of this communication with his letters to others could suggest the sensitive nature of the correspondence or his own lack of accuracy. Gunnhild had never professed, but in his two letters to Gunnhild, Anselm treated her as a lapsed nun and uses this as his reason for the choice of Wilton as her destination following Count Alan’s demise.

  The second interpretation may be attributed to the scholar Richard Sharpe who writes convincingly in Haskins Journal explaining, with sensible reasoning and evidence based on scholarly papers, how Gunnhild eloped with Alan of Richmond during the 1070s. One important piece of evidence cited is that in 1675 a head tablet was discovered near the west door of Lincoln Cathedral. It recorded the burial of a son of Walter d’Aincourt, a lord of Brittany and of Branston in Lincolnshire. The child who was named William was born of royal stock and died young while in the fosterage of King William Rufus. William’s mother is named as Matilda (Maud). Matilda bequeathed gifts of land to the cathedral. Sharpe tracks the relevant land history and is able to show how these lands are recorded in the Domesday Book as attributed to Count Alan of Richmond, but were previously those attributed to Edith the Fair, suggesting that Matilda was, in fact, Count Alan’s daughter by Gunnhild. Sharpe argues that the correspondence between Anselm and Gunnhild refers in the main part to her union with Alan’s brother rather than the previous union with Count Alan. Remember, the lands in question originally belonged to Edith Swanneck, Gunnhild’s mother. Was King Harold’s great-grandson the child buried by the west door of Lincoln Cathedral? Interestingly, Alan Niger’s death is recorded as 1098. There is no evidence that Gunnhild ever returned to Wilton Abbey. Her death is unrecorded.

  Eadmer of Canterbury’s Chronicle is contemporary with the events of The Swan-Daughter. He does not mention Gunnhild’s elopement with Count Alan, yet he goes into detail about the betrothal of Matilda of Scotland to Henry I in 1100. Henry I was the youngest son of William the Conqueror and succeeded the childless William Rufus to the throne of England. Gunnhild and Matilda are unconnected in Eadmer’s writings. Eadmer was an eyewitness, based at the heart of events, in St Augustine’s Abbey in Canterbury, so I suggest that Richard Sharpe is correct and that Gunnhild’s elopement from Wilton Abbey occurred during the 1070s.

  Sharpe’s interpretation of the elopement is the basis for the time span of The Swan-Daughter’s narrative. It is an interpretation liked by many scholars interested in this period. I used secondary research into the eleventh century to develop a sense of what married life might have been like for Gunnhild. The big intrigue for me was why she married his brother, which would have been frowned upon by the Church, therefore explaining Anselm’s letters to Gunnhild. I invented a love triangle. Both marriages may have been in truth handfasted marriages but there is no evidence for this either. In The Swan-Daughter, I emphasise Gunnhild’s claim to lands, under Anglo-Saxon law, that had once been her mother’s lands and estates and I integrate into the fiction what Domesday meant for ordinary people living and surviving in 1086.

  Count Alan was a soldier. He was utterly loyal to King William, taking sides with him against his rebellious older son, Robert, against Bishop Odo and supporting William Rufus when many barons rebelled after Rufus became king. He did not support the earls’ rebellion of 1075 after which Earl Waltheof was executed. The Breton earls who instigated the rebellion were imprisoned or fled England. Alan’s elder brother, Brian, was not involved either, but he left England during this period and returned to his estates in Brittany.

  The early part of The Swan-Daughter, set in Brittany, for the most part, follows historical fact, though I invented the castle of Fréhel. Count Alan died in Normandy around 1089. During his life he became one of the wealthiest noblemen in England with lands in Brittany and Normandy. As his obituary indicates he was widely respected at the time. In the context of this novel, which I emphasise is a work of historical fiction, I portray a man who was a soldier, a religious man but unfortunately one who was not compatible with Gunnhild and who in the end recognised this. He is depicted as not all bad, nor is he all good, yet he is human. I aimed to show the disintegration of a medieval marital relationship trying to keep this true to the period, with emotions that may, in truth, have often been repressed. Men had affairs without consequence and often they took long-term mistresses. Women, if they did likewise, had to be very secretive or the consequences would have been disastrous. This was a society that cannot be judged by today’s standards, no matter the universal emotions involved.

  I deliberately created a ‘romance’ (romanz) out of Gunnhild’s historical story. Was it really a love triangle or was it simply survival? I am interested in the literature of the period, both chronicles, hagiography and prose poetry that is inspired by the poetic imagination and is linked to emergent concepts of chivalry. The earliest evidence of the troubadours’ secular treatment of romance appears in France with trouvères in Northern France and in England with a new Anglo-Norman literature which emerges in written form during the early twelfth century. Troubadour literature appears circa 1090 in Aquitaine when Eleanor of Aquitaine’s grandfather, Duke William IX, scribed stories of love and chivalry using the pseudo name of Guillèm de Peitus. The Occitan troubadour tradition was preceded by oral tradition and so I took the very old story of Tristan and Iseult as a parallel for the love-triangle, that of Gunnhild, Count Alan, and Alan Niger his brother, thus creating another layer in my telling of Gunnhild’s story. The Swan-Daughter is a work of fiction rather than historical biography.

  Ulf was imprisoned as a child hostage after the Battle of Hastings. According to John of Worcester, Ulf Godwinson was included in Robert of Normandy’s court. He was released after King William’s death and subsequently knighted by Duke Robert. He may have accompanied Duke Robert on the first crusade. I made him a troubadour in this work of fiction, although there is no factual evidence for it.

  Christina can be traced at Wilton Abbey and Romsey Abbey during this period. Christina’s personality is based on information concerning her in Eadmer’s Chronicle, in particular, where her harshness towards the young Matilda of Scotland is apparent. Many of the other characters in The Swan-Daughter are, of course, figments of my imagination. I do hope this Author’s Note clarifies not only how I discovered the narrative elements of this story and its personalities, but also how I used authorial license to elaborate on these elements and translate them into a work of historical fiction, albeit with a factual basis.

  For any reader who is interested in a further glimpse of this early medieval time, I was helped by Richard Sharpe’s article in Haskins Journal , by Henrietta Leyser’s Medieval Women, The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles translated by Michael Swanton, The Trotula edited and translated by Monica H. Green and Domesday Book, a Complete Translation, edited by Dr Ann Williams and Professor G. H. Martin, but there were many other books concerning the period as well as the chronicles of the period which I consulted in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. I have occasionally used The Death of King Arthur by Peter Ackroyd in chapter headings because I like the clarity of his unfussy prose translation of his chapter concerning ‘Tristram and Iseult’. In the final chapter of The Swan-Daughter I adapted Ulf’s oral version of Tristan and Iseult (old spelling) from the early version of the story The Romance of Tristan, a translation of Beroul’s original poem (Roman de Tristan par Beroul) first set down in the twelfth century. It is, if you are interested, The Romance of Tristan: The Tale of Tristan’s Madness (Penguin Classics) by Berol.

  The Betrothed Daughter

  First Chapter

  1

  A pale moon was reflected in the still water that lay along the island’s shoreline.

  Thea took a step closer to the water’s edge and for a moment glanced up at the night sky. Then she stared down at the reflection of the moon that lay on the surface of the sea. For a mome
nt all was silent. It was as if the world had paused to take a breath.

  Edmund touched her hand. ‘Hurry,’ he said. ‘Grandmother is waiting in the boat for us.’

  Accepting her brother’s help, his hand guiding her elbow, Thea ventured into the shallows. She lifted her skirts high in the hope that water would not drench her gown, and allowed Edmund to lift her into the skiff. Taking a place in the stern beside her grandmother, Countess Gytha, she leaned back against the last chest of Godwin treasure. A sense of relief swept through her. They were finally setting out.

  Thea’s grandmother sat stiff-backed and silent waiting for the boat to cast off, her stony gaze casting forwards towards the two dragon-shaped vessels that had remained out in the bay all day as the women made ready to leave the island. All that day Countess Gytha had not spoken, not since her grandsons had sailed to them in the shadowy morning light, and had told her about their defeat in Somerset and of her youngest grandson Magnus’s death in his first battle.