Conquest (32 page)

The knights made for the King. He had become completely isolated from his bodyguards as the massed Norman cavalry engulfed the English defenders.
Surrounded by four ferocious knights, three on horseback, he stood little chance.

Hereward’s companions had a simple choice: to attempt to protect the King or to save their friend and mentor. They did not hesitate and were at Hereward’s side in an instant. While Martin lifted and pulled Hereward’s shoulders, Einar and Alphonso used their shields and spears to lever the weight of the stricken destrier, freeing him from under the animal. Mercifully, he was unconscious, so they could act without regard for pain. Einar used his great strength to break off the head of the lance and pull out its shaft, while Alphonso dragged out the arrows, tearing flesh as he did so.

The day was almost done and it was all but dark. They took their chance to escape in the gloom and the growing hysteria of the victorious Normans. Einar hauled Hereward on to his shoulder, picked up his weapons and, with Martin and Alphonso providing protection from would-be assailants, they made for the distant undergrowth, where Alphonso had tethered their horses.

Despite a prolonged and valiant resistance, his housecarls dead or facing their own demise in small pockets around the last redoubt, the four Norman assasins showed Harold no pity. After bringing him to exhaustion by their onslaught, they taunted him with their lances, piercing his flesh as a hag would stick pins in a clay effigy. They smashed his head and body with their maces, and then impaled him on their lances as if they were skewering a wild pig. Finally, while he still lived, they hacked him to pieces with their swords.

Harold’s gruesome death did not have the effect anticipated by Duke William. Its savagery roused the remaining
housecarls to fight even more ferociously, until none was left standing. It was a scene of mayhem. Men, crazed by killing, screamed like animals as their horses trampled over the dead and the dying. Many of the Norman knights rode off in pursuit of fleeing Englishmen in order to commit yet more acts of brutality.

The Wyvern of Wessex was ripped to shreds and Harold’s personal standard, the Fighting Man, blood-spattered and torn, was handed to William, who immediately gave it to a messenger with instructions to have it delivered to the Pope in Rome.

In the murk of the autumn evening 500 housecarls drew close to the battlefield; they were the reinforcements for which Harold had prayed. Ashamed by the cowardly stance taken by the earls Edwin and Morcar, many of the younger thegns of Mercia and Northumbria had made the long march from the North. On hearing of the muster at Caldbec, they had ridden straight through London, picking up provisions as they rode.

It was an astonishing feat of endurance but, sadly for Harold and for England, they were forty-five minutes too late to save the day. When they saw the Norman knights hounding the remnants of Harold’s army in headlong flight, they formed up on a ridge above a narrow valley and ambushed wave upon wave of them, until several hundred bodies filled the ravine at a place the Normans immediately christened the ‘Malfosse’. Although the moment seemed sweet, the Northerners soon heard of the catastrophe at Senlac and the slaughter of the King. They had little choice but to melt away to avoid the main force of Normans.

After sounding a general recall to try and get some
discipline back into his forces, William and his high command, too exhausted to go anywhere, spent the night on the battlefield amid the bodies of the dead and dying.

Hereward’s companions escaped under darkness and took his shattered body westwards across the Downs as far as they could, before descending into a wooded valley to find water and a place to camp. Hereward’s breathing was shallow, his complexion ashen and his body temperature minimal. Death was near. Alphonso, the most knowledgeable about wounds and healing, faced a dilemma: should he cauterize the wounds with a hot blade to prevent infection? If he did, the shock might be too much in Hereward’s weakened state.

As his leader was still unconscious, Alphonso decided to sear the wounds. With Einar and Martin holding Hereward’s body, Alphonso applied a heated seax, making his leader convulse with shock. They dressed his wounds tightly and wrapped him in his warm winter cloak before carefully placing him close to the fire. Martin went off to hunt hare or rabbit, while the others took turns to stand sentry.

It was thirty-six hours before Hereward regained consciousness, and they immediately began to force food into his mouth. Alphonso’s worst fears were soon realized: he was infected. It was almost certainly blood poisoning caused by arrows dipped in some form of poison or human and animal faeces. It was a well-known trick of archers to add the insult of poison to the injury of the arrowhead. They needed to find a physician – not easy at the best of times, but with the country about to dissolve into panic
and chaos after a calamitous defeat, it might well be impossible.

Their first thought was Torfida at Glastonbury, but that was too far. Their second hope was Harold’s manor at Bosham, but they thought it likely that William would soon despatch some men there to defile further the King’s memory. They decided that Winchester would be the safest option. Although Edith, King Edward’s widow, was thought to have conspired with Tostig against King Harold, she was, after all, a Godwinson and Harold’s sister. Surely, after the slaughter at Senlac Ridge, she would offer Hereward the assistance of her physicians.

The three men made a stretcher from branches and tied the head end to the saddle of Hereward’s horse. They then took it in turns to form a pair to carry the feet end, while the third led the horses. Hereward was over the initial shock of his injuries and the loss of blood. The first threat to his life, caused by the trauma of his wounds, had passed. But his body boiled with fever. Whenever he was conscious enough, they poured water or stew down his throat. Three times they opened his arrow wounds, cleaned them out and cauterized them again. Fortunately, the spear wound to his shoulder, although the most severe, had not become infected.

They made slow progress, taking almost a week to get to Winchester. When they arrived, the gates were closed and the sentries nervous. Only their bloodstained jerkins, easily recognizable as those worn by Harold’s elite hearthtroop, earned the four of them admission to the burgh. Several fyrdmen and a few surviving housecarls had made it to Winchester, so the details of the battle were known.

Before the three weary men made any attempt to seek help, they received bad news. William’s forces were on the loose, and Dover had been looted and burned. Part of the Norman army was approaching Canterbury and several squadrons were reported to be heading west towards Winchester. The old Queen had already made a hasty departure for the nunnery at Salisbury. Most of the garrison had left and were heading for Glastonbury; there would be little help for Hereward in Winchester.

Praying that Hereward would survive another long journey, his three companions bought a cart and oxen, loaded it with whatever supplies they could buy, and departed north-west for Glastonbury. They estimated they could be there by the eve of All Hallows, the agreed date set for their rendezvous. The roads and tracks were deserted, as people, paralysed by fright, ceased trading and sought refuge wherever they could find it. Winter would soon make it difficult for the Normans to rampage across the land; in the meantime, everyone hoped that they would be the fortunate ones and escape the ravenous eye of the new regime.

Torfida, Ingigerd and Maria had been sorely tempted to rush to London with their girls when news of the terrible defeat reached Glastonbury. The report said that all but a tiny handful had perished with the King. They were even more inclined to go when they heard that Earls Edwin and Morcar had belatedly arrived in London with a large contingent of housecarls. As England’s only surviving senior earls, they had called a Witan at which Edgar the Atheling had been elected King in succession to the slain Harold.

However, the three women had decided to wait until the date of their agreed rendezvous had passed before making
any journey. All logic suggested that their men were with Harold, lying dead on the battlefield, mutilated and stripped of anything worth stealing. Torfida was certain that Hereward would have fallen next to the King and also suffered whatever ghastly fate had befallen him.

The wisdom of their decision was confirmed only days later by the news that, two days after the Witan and the promotion of Edgar as King, Edwin and Morcar, whose treachery seemed to know no bounds, had decided that London could not be defended and had retreated to their realms in the North.

William had shown just one small mercy on Senlac Ridge.

Late in the afternoon, on the day following the slaughter, Edith Swan-Neck had arrived on the battlefield. She was accompanied by two housecarls and a monk from Bosham Abbey, Harold’s private chapel. Dressed in the sombre black of mourning, her dignified beauty shone like a beacon amid the lifeless flesh of the battlefield.

Immediately recognizing her status, William nodded politely as she approached.

‘How may I help you, my Lady?’

‘My Lord Duke, I am Edith Swan-Neck and I have come to collect that which is rightfully mine – the body of my beloved, the King of England, Harold Godwinson.’

William’s response was firm. ‘You may not have him, madam. I will not have him become a martyr to his people.’

‘He is already a martyr, no matter what you do with his body. I just want a Christian burial for my husband.’

‘But you are not his wife. His Queen is Ealdgyth; she awaits in London.’

‘She is his Queen in name only. By ancient custom, I am his wife and the mother of his children. You have no right to deny me this.’ She flashed a look of defiance at the Duke, sufficient for him to vacillate.

He turned to Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. ‘What is your advice?’

‘It is not a spiritual issue, my brother; it is a matter of common sense. You have to rule these people from now on, so it would be wise at least to allow their dead King a Christian burial.’

William thought for some time about Edith’s request. Like the English men he had just defeated on the battlefield, here was one of their womenfolk with the same stubborn resolve.

A gust of wind blew off the Channel, a breeze that had the chill of winter in it.

The Duke shivered. ‘Madam, if you can find it up there, you may take the body. My trusted friend William of Malet will accompany you. Harold must be buried in an unmarked grave on the shore he so dismally failed to protect. It will be done this night, in darkness, in a secret place, so that no one may return to dig his body up and make a sacred tomb for him elsewhere. See that it is done.’

The Duke would make no further concessions.

When she reached the place where William of Malet suggested the King had fallen, Edith took off her shoes, pulled her dress up to her thighs, tied it in a knot and strode into the heap of bodies. In the fading light, aided by a single lantern, it took them nearly an hour to find Harold’s body. Her mind set on her purpose, Edith paid almost no attention to the remnants of men beneath her feet. All weapons,
hauberks and valuables had already been removed, so it was difficult to tell one corpse from another, but Harold bore a telltale mark that only a few had seen, an emblem that Edith knew intimately.

Without hesitation or a hint of repulsion, she pulled at the tunics of body after body to reveal their belly below the navel. At last, she found what she was looking for and sank to her knees to touch him. He was tattooed just above his pubic hair with the Wyvern, the Dragon of Wessex, and coiled around the dragon’s legs was a phallic serpent, its head and protruding forked tongue pointing towards his manhood. Only the King’s torso was intact; his limbs had been scattered and his head, severed from his body and bludgeoned beyond recognition, was only discernible by his distinctive mane of golden hair.

Edith was sobbing profusely, her dress and cloak covered in blood. She turned to William Malet and screamed, ‘You cowardly barbarian! You bastard servants of a bastard lord, you’ve hacked his manhood from his body. May you and all Normans be cursed for ever!’

When William heard Edith’s accusations and learned that Hugh de Montfort had committed the crime, he immediately ordered that he be banished from Normandy for a year. Then, in front of Edith, he was stripped of his weapons and armour, tethered to a horse, and ridden out of camp.

There was a strange irony in the severity of William’s response. Warrior knights were expected to behave savagely in battle, but to castrate a man in death was the action of a heathen. According to a knight’s code of chivalry, men fought for honour or gain, where any level of brutality was
permitted, but only savages fought for barbaric prizes like an opponent’s manhood.

It had begun to rain heavily as William Malet’s men helped Edith Swan-Neck gather the parts of Harold’s body. They were wrapped in a plain linen shroud brought specially from Bosham and transported to the shore as William had instructed. A pile of stones to mark a grave was not permitted and while the monk from Bosham read over him, King Harold of England was interred in a shallow pit in the sand just above the high-water mark. Then, by following a circuitous route in total darkness, the Normans tried hard to ensure that it would be difficult ever again to find the King’s grave.

Nonetheless, Edith used every method she could think of to memorize the King’s last journey.

A few months later, in the dead of a January night in 1067, Edith was able to retrace her footsteps.

With the help of four monks from his abbey at Waltham, and after many hours digging in the sand, Harold’s body was retrieved. Later, in a clandestine ceremony, it was reinterred beneath the high altar of Waltham.

William and the Norman hierarchy never discovered the truth, but among the English people word soon spread about Harold’s final resting place and Waltham Abbey became a place of secret pilgrimage for all Englishmen from that day forward.

John Comnenus had grown concerned about Godwin of Ely. His vivid account had extended late into another night and, as he described the gruesome encounter of Senlac Ridge, his hands had begun to shake and perspiration had dripped from his brow.