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The tapestry remained practically undisturbed at Sourches for another three years. It was not until 1944 that it faced renewed danger. On 6 June 1944 the great seaborne Allied landings on the coast of Normandy, years in preparation, finally took place. It was as if history had held up a great mirror to the events of 1066: a vast fleet of ships, packed with warriors, was crossing the Channel but this time in the opposite direction, from England to France, and it was intent upon a mission of liberation rather than conquest. Despite intense fighting, the Allies found it difficult to break free of their initial bridgehead. Sourches was over 100 miles inland, but evidently it was still too close for comfort, for on 18 June 1944 orders were given by the German authorities, with the agreement of the French minister of education, for the Tapestry to be taken for its own safety to Paris. It appears that the leader of the SS himself, Heinrich Himmler, was the impetus behind this latest move. Alone among the priceless artworks which were deposited at Château de Sourches, it was the Bayeux Tapestry that he insisted should be taken to Paris.
¹³
On 27 June 1944 it duly arrived, this time under SS guard, and it was placed in a dry cellar at the Louvre.

Ironically, long before the tapestry arrived in Paris, Bayeux had already been liberated. It was taken by the 56th British infantry division on 7 June 1944,
the day after the Allied landings. Bayeux was the first town in mainland France to be freed from the Nazi yoke and, unlike so many other old towns in Normandy, its historic houses and monumental cathedral emerged unscathed from the war. The British War Cemetery, just outside the town, now bears a fitting Latin inscription recording that those whom William conquered returned to liberate the land of the conqueror. Had the famous tapestry depicting William the Conqueror's invasion remained at Bayeux it would have fallen into the safety of the liberators'hands sooner than it eventually did. Now in Paris, however, it was to suffer another knife-edge encounter with disaster.

By August 1944 the Allies had at last advanced to the outskirts of Paris. Eisenhower, the supreme commander of the Allied forces, had been keen to bypass the city and push on towards Germany, but the leader of the Free French, General de Gaulle, feared that Paris would fall into the hands of the Communist resistance and insisted that the French capital be liberated as a priority. Eisenhower eventually agreed and the Allies were now moving in on the city. Sporadic street fighting was already taking place between the Germans and disparate resistance groups. General von Choltitz, the overall German commander of the city, had received orders from Hitler that if Paris were not defended it was to be utterly razed to the ground, an act of wanton vandalism that would, if carried out, have been unsurpassed by any in history. To this end, the principal bridges and buildings of Paris had been mined, and a tunnel under the city had been filled with U-boat torpedoes capable of causing tremendous explosions. Von Choltitz came from an old Prussian military family. To disobey orders ran against every fibre of his being, but he now realised that Hitler was a madman, or at least that Germany was going to lose the war, and he sought, during those tense August days, to play for as much time as possible in order to find a way to surrender Paris to the advancing Allies without either wanton destruction or loss of face.
¹⁴
Under these circumstances, on Monday, 21 August 1944, two SS men suddenly presented themselves at his office at the palatial Hotel Meurice.

The two men, elegantly attired in smart new SS uniforms, gave the customary 'Heil Hitler' salute. Von Choltitz may well have thought that his time was up, that they had come to arrest him for disobeying Hitler's orders, but what they actually wanted was rather more bizarre. They said that they had orders from Himmler to seize the Bayeux Tapestry and to take it to Berlin. In the curious logic of the Nazis, the city of Paris with all its monuments was to be destroyed but the Bayeux Tapestry was to be saved. What was to become of it in Berlin is not known. It would be naive to assume that it would have ever found its way back to Bayeux. The ultimate intention may have been to house it, along with other Nordic relics, at some quasi-religious shrine for the scrutiny and instruction of the elite of the SS.

Von Choltitz took the two SS officers to his balcony and gesturing towards the Louvre told them that the tapestry was being kept in a basement there. Events were moving fast. It was clear that the Louvre was by now in the hands of the street fighters of the French Resistance. At that very moment stuttering machine-gun fire could be heard emanating from the portals of the museum. Von Choltitz suggested that five or six of his own men could provide covering fire, so as to enable the SS officers to storm the Louvre and seize the precious tapestry. The two SS officers withdrew for a moment to consider their position. One of them thought that he had found an honourable way out. Surely, he said, the French authorities must have evacuated the tapestry long ago and the assault would turn out to be pointless. Von Choltitz replied that he believed the tapestry to be still there. He asked for his artistic adviser to come into his office; the adviser duly confirmed that the tapestry remained at the Louvre. The two SS men reflected for a further moment before deciding that it would be better to depart empty-handed, for, as von Choltitz later remarked, the courage of their hearts did not quite live up to the brilliance of their uniforms. According to von Choltitz, the SS men had two lorries at their disposal and enough petrol for the return trip to Berlin. At a time when large amounts of fuel were almost impossible to come by, and the resources of the German army were in every way stretched, the length to which Heinrich Himmler was prepared to go in order to safeguard the Bayeux Tapestry for his own nefarious purposes is quite remarkable. Four days after this incident, on 25 August 1944, Hitler, holed up in his headquarters in the forests of east Prussia, finally lost his patience and snarled at his generals, 'Is Paris burning?'
¹⁵
Fortunately, on that very day von Choltitz surrendered, Paris was safe in Allied hands and the wartime dangers faced by the Bayeux Tapestry were effectively over.

The old mayor of Bayeux, Monsieur Dodeman, had received not a breath of news about the tapestry's fate since November 1943. He assumed, as did many, that the embroidery was still at the Château de Sourches, well out of harm's way; and he had no idea just how narrowly it had escaped the threatened destruction of Paris and the clutches of Himmler's SS. Likewise the first 'monuments' officer of the Allied force to arrive on Norman soil, a New York architect named Bancel LaFarge, notwithstanding that he was based in Bayeux, was at first unaware of the tapestry's precise location. It was only at the end of August 1944 that LaFarge was able to inform the mayor that the tapestry was not at Sourches at all, but in liberated Paris. Overjoyed to learn that the precious treasure was still intact, Monsieur Dodeman at once requested the authorities in Paris to return the tapestry to Bayeux, where, no doubt, British troops and Norman civilians alike would appreciate viewing a relic so redolent of their shared past. The roads of northern France were still vulnerable to air attack, and the Parisian public had not had the opportunity of seeing the tapestry in their own city since the days of Napoleon. The mayor was therefore persuaded to allow it to be placed on public exhibition for a few months at the end of 1944 at the Louvre, a repeat in rather different circumstances of the exhibition of 1803.

Finally, in March 1945, on the eve of peace in Europe, and following a successful showing in Paris, the Bayeux Tapestry was returned to Bayeux after an absence of almost four years - the longest known period that it has ever been absent from the town. The Tapestry was at last able to resume a more tranquil existence. The post-war years saw an enormous increase in tourism, and with the number of visitors increasing each year, it became evident in the 1970s that the building it then occupied in Bayeux was no longer adequate. A Bayeux seminary, built in 1653, was chosen as the tapestry's new museum. In 1983 the conversion of the building - renamed as the Centre Guillaume le Conquérant - was completed and Bayeux's great embroidery is now fittingly displayed there. Visitors of every nationality arrive each year in their thousands at the gates of this fine museum. Few know of the tapestry'sown eventful past. They come to admire this precious and unique survivor of the distant age of the eleventh century and to recall the deadly rivalry of Earl Harold of Wessex and Duke William of Normandy - a rivalry that shook their world, and still, in some ways, affects ours.

5

The Strange Journey of Harold Godwinson

The year is 1064 or early 1065 [scene 1]. The elderly king of England, seated on his finely made chair, is in a secret conference with two men. One of them is his brother-in-law, Earl Harold of Wessex; the other is unknown. The pale, full-bearded old king, known to history as Edward 'the Confessor', is a large, stooping figure in a long green robe. Now in his sixties, he has reigned over England for more than twenty years. The country is prosperous; its government, for the times, is sophisticated and efficient. The ability of the Anglo-Saxon monarchy to collect a nationwide tax is elsewhere unparalleled, and no doubt envied, in the other halls of European power. All, however, is not well. In twenty years of marriage Edward has failed to produce a single heir and this failure has inevitably caused an aura of uncertainty to hang over the delicate matter of the succession.

The low and muffled talk at that meeting would have proceeded against a very different background had Edward ever fathered a son; but his marriage with Edith, Earl Harold'ssister, had been completely barren.
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It was one of those political unions which kings are often constrained to make. In this case the political imperative in the 1040s had dictated an alliance with the powerful Godwin family, without whose support he would have found it difficult to rule England. We cannot know the true cause of Edward's childlessness - the secrets of the royal bed remain discreetly curtained off to history - but it is certainly not difficult to identify strains which may have affected the conjugal life of the royal couple. Long before they were married, before Edward was even king, a terrible crime had taken place which had touched Edward deeply. In 1036 his younger brother Alfred had been kidnapped, tortured and murdered by a rival faction during a period of uncertainty that had followed the death of King Canute - when, as now, there had been no single indisputable heir to the throne. Edward long suspected that Queen Edith's father, Earl Godwin, had been a party to the crime, but Godwin was the most powerful man in the nation and the case against him had never been proved. On Edward's accession in 1042 he had had little choice but to work with Godwin, to accept Godwin's oily hand of friendship and to harness his power as best he could for the governance of the country. He may even have married Earl Godwin's daughter on an optimistic note. The marriage was, after all, a potent alliance of blue blood and raw power; but it was not an amorous success and Edward soon regretted it.

He had made one abortive attempt to break free of the bonds, both political and matrimonial, that bound him to the Godwin family. In 1051 he acted with unexpected resolve and contrived to send Godwin and his sons into exile, and his unloved queen to a nunnery. The following year the Godwins returned. They were armed, angry and amply supported. The king's soldiers, fearing outright civil war, were reluctant to fight and Edward backed down. Godwin was restored to power; Edith returned to the royal household; and from that moment the king's authority was fatally weakened. Against this political and familial background, it is not entirely surprising that no children were ever born to Edward and Edith. When Earl Godwin died in 1053, having collapsed at an Easter feast given in the king's own hall, his mantle as England'sleading earl was inherited by the queen's senior brother, Earl Harold of Wessex.

Now, as they meet in that secret huddled gathering that opens the story of the Bayeux Tapestry, more than ten years have passed, ten years since Harold first stepped into his father'sshoes. In those ten years he has consolidated his position as by far the most important nobleman in the nation. Neither before nor since has any one noble ever been quite so predominant. With his brothers Tostig, Gyrth and Leofwine also holding key earldoms, and his sister Edith as queen, Harold's family appears, at least while it remains united, a more formidable entity than ever. Harold, then, is a man of stature, a sprightly, moustachioed figure in his forties, elegant of physique, noble in his bearing and enormously wealthy. To his friends he is handsome, open-hearted and clever. To his enemies he is beginning to be feared for his battle-hardened qualities as a war leader. Recently he has been campaigning on the king's behalf in Wales where King Gruffydd had been a thorn in England's side. Aided by Welsh rebels, Harold returned to England in triumph at the end of 1063, presenting the unfortunate Gruffydd's head to King Edward in person.
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Earl Harold has proved himself a worthy successor to his father's legacy and he has formed what, at the very least, seems to be a satisfactory working relationship with the king. From cool beginnings, the two men seem to have warmed to each other over the years.

The old king stoops forward as if speaking to Harold in a low voice; their forefingers touch. It is almost as if we are there, in this wispy opening scene, eavesdropping on history at one of its pivotal moments. Frustratingly, the inscription above tells us no more than that this is King Edward EDWARD REX - and the woollen figures meet in enigmatic silence. We must also remember that the Bayeux Tapestry was made ten or so years later. Like all historical sources, it has its own perspective and the temptation must be resisted of assuming that the events were recorded as they happened, like a film on a camcorder. What remains certain is that this meeting took place and its outcome set in motion a chain of events that changed history.

At the time when Harold and Edward met there were several men who potentially had an interest in the English throne. Royal succession in Anglo-Saxon England did not solely depend on who had the closest blood kinship to the king, though this was undoubtedly a persuasive factor. The king retained discretion during his life to nominate an heir from among his eligible relatives; and it was also the custom that the heir should be approved by the Witan, a council of the great and powerful in the land.
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The question of inheritance was thus inherently fluid; and sometimes legal theory, such as it was, went entirely out of the window, and 'might' counted more than 'right', as when earlier in the century the country was conquered by the Danes under Swein Fork-Beard and was ruled, most famously, by his son King Canute (1016-35).

The Danish conquest had lasted little longer than Canute'slifetime; but it had shown foreigners what was possible: England was vulnerable. Nowhere was Danish success more envied than in the kindred land of Norway. King Harald of Norway's claim to the English throne was little more than a slender pretext based on an ambiguous treaty in the 1030s, but this mattered not to a man whose very
raison d'etre
was war and the warrior's way.
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The story of his life was already the stuff of saga.
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The nickname they gave him - 'Hardrada', the Hard Ruler - was an advertisement indeed, considering that it distinguished him as noteworthy even among the Vikings themselves. In his youth Harald had left Norway to fight as an axe-wielding mercenary in the Mediterranean lands for the army of the Byzantine empire. He quickly gained the reputation of being the most formidable warrior of his age. A coin was even minted in his honour. Then, one night in 1043, Harald of Norway hoodwinked the emperor and slipped out of Constantinople in a fleet of ships laden with an enormous treasure. He muscled his way back into Norway and by 1047 he had succeeded his nephew Magnus as the sole king of the country. He would have turned his attentions to England earlier had he not been embroiled in a long war with Denmark. In 1062 he defeated the Danes in battle and in 1064 he finally made peace with them at Gota. This last intelligence may not yet have reached England but its importance was paramount. Now that the Hard Ruler had a free hand it would take little to encourage him to turn his attentions to England where the incumbent king had failed to produce an heir of his own loins and men looked to the future with uncertain eyes.

Across the more even waters of the English Channel lay another potential claimant, Duke William of Normandy, a more unlikely one, perhaps, and something of an unknown quantity.
⁶
The Danish invasion of England fifty years earlier had forced Edward and his siblings into exile in Normandy, the homeland of their mother Emma. Edward's exile was long and listless. He spent almost half his life in Normandy, becoming in the process as much Norman as English, before peace ably, and somewhat unexpectedly, being invited to return and ascend the English throne in 1042 on the death of Hartha-canute, Canute's last surviving son. It was out of gratitude for his long Norman asylum that Edward chose to nominate Duke William, a distant cousin, as his own successor to the crown of England. That, at least, is what the Norman sources tell us; the English sources are entirely silent on the matter. Although the Norman accounts were written after the Conquest, and contain several untrustworthy embellishments, it is very probable that at some stage Edward did dangle the prospect of the English crown in front of William. The subsequent course of history is scarcely understandable if that were not the case. Edward may have dropped hints to this effect while still in exile, when Duke William was no more than a boy, and if the matter was ever taken up with greater formality after he became king, it was probably during that brief year in 1051-2 when Edward broke free of Earl Godwin. There is evidence in the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
that in 1051 'Earl William' paid a visit to England 'from beyond the sea', though for what purpose it is not stated.
⁷
The problem for William was that in 1052 the Godwins had been restored to power and they were implacably opposed to a Norman succession. Moreover at various times Edward seems to have made similar promises, or half-promises, to others; how seriously they were meant to be taken was a moot point. By the early 1060s Englishmen could be forgiven for regarding Duke William of Normandy to be the least of their worries. The real danger of invasion had always come from Scandinavia. Although the Normans were the descendants of Vikings, they had, for the most part, dismantled their warships 150 years earlier. By 1064 the prospect of a seaborne invasion from the duchy of Normandy seemed on the whole rather remote.

There had been another development, too. Following the restoration of the Godwins, King Edward was prevailed upon to prefer an authentic prince of the Anglo-Saxon line, a prince who, unlike that Norman duke, could command general support among the people. According to English custom, the king was perfectly entitled to do this. He was entitled to revoke whatever promise he had made to William, or to anyone else. What mattered was his last wish before dying. It must have been clear by the 1050s that the marriage with Edith was going to be barren but far away in eastern Europe there was, so it was said, a half-nephew of the king who was still alive and who might be persuaded to return. The same Danish whirlwind that in 1016 had forced Edward into his Norman exile had propelled a second branch of the family to distant Hungary in equal fear for their lives. That branch was now represented by another Edward, known to the English as Edward the Exile. The Exile was indeed still alive; he had grown up in Hungary, married a local princess and, better still, he was now a father. The quest to find him began in the year 1054. It took three years of diplomatic soundings, patient negotiation and perilous journeys across the face of Europe but finally, in the spring of 1057, the difficult project to bring the Exile home came to fruition. When his longship docked on the southern coast, the exiled prince gingerly placed his first foot on England's shore. Behind him followed his exotic wife Agatha and three little children, and strong men carrying his great chests of Hungarian treasure. The England he stepped on to was a strange land and it was inhabited by a people he did not understand; for he had been no more than a babe in arms when hastily carried away from these same shores forty years earlier. His return had been long, slow and reluctant. It was duty, more than enthusiasm, that brought him back; but what mattered was that he had arrived at last, and there was now a new optimism in the air that the problem of the English succession could peaceably and lawfully be resolved. A few days later Edward the Exile dropped dead.

'We do not know for what cause it was arranged that he might not see his relative King Edward. Alas! that was a cruel fate, and harmful to this nation, that he so quickly ended his life.'
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In these sad words, the writer of the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
for 1057 laments the tragic turn of events, hinting darkly at foul play - poison slipped, perhaps, into Edward the Exile's food or drinking cup, even before he had met with his older namesake. The circumstances of this sudden death are undeniably suspicious but it is impossible to discern on whose behalf the murderer (if murder it was) was working. With the Exile dead, the hope of many now rested on the immature shoulders of his son Edgar, a toddler recently carried across a continent and now inextricably caught up in the vicious power games of the adult world. It was decided that Edgar should be taken into the care of the royal household. Such fostering of children in the household of a superior lord was not unusual; but in this case it was also hoped, no doubt, that it would protect the little princeling from further danger. Edgar was brought up under the direction of Queen Edith and he was given the title of
Ætheling
showing that he was considered to be throne worthy.

To the improbable trio of Harald of Norway, William of Normandy and little Edgar of England could be added the name of a fourth contender for the English throne: Harold Godwinson himself. Though related by marriage to the Danish royals through his mother Gytha, Earl Harold had no blood link to his brother-in-law the king. What he had in abundance, however, was wealth, power and supporters. An uncharitable view would take Harold as scheming to seize the main prize all along, for he must have realised that it might one day fall within his grasp. That view would probably be wrong. It is not supported in the threads of the tapestry, where, if we observe closely, we see a more sympathetic portrait of the man. The Bayeux Tapestry is far from a work of Norman propaganda and in its threads it is often silently more revealing than the slippery post-Conquest apologetics of William of Poitiers. Harold comes across as essentially well meaning, a man racked by dilemma, one who, when he does become king, only does so at the behest of others and in a procedure that is depicted, in its fundamentals, as scrupulously legal. At the time of his meeting with Edward, Harold's policy must have been to favour the succession of young Edgar. Harold seems to have been involved in, and may even have been one of the prime movers of, the project to bring the Exile home.
⁹
The Exile was dead; but his line continued. If little Edgar succeeded to the throne whilst still a minor, Harold was well placed to rule as regent. In that capacity he could further consolidate himself as the real power behind the throne. What is more, in the longer term, another chance beckoned to ally the blood of the Godwins to England's royal line. Earl Harold, though well known for having an eye for the ladies, was not yet married. His father's scheme had drawn a blank but if Harold were able, in due course, to marry off a lawful daughter to Edgar, success might at last be achieved. All this he may have planned; events were to take a different and more rapid course.