I Am the Chosen King (32 page)

Bosham

The rain fell in a vertical curtain, so heavy that the view across the deserted courtyard was almost obliterated. Edward closed the shutter with an exaggerated sigh of boredom. He had ridden south to Bosham for the purpose of hunting, but until this rain—so unseasonable for May—ceased he would not set foot outside. He sighed again as he turned away from the window and strolled across the chamber, his lips puffing, arms folded. Everyone else was content, but then, everyone else had something of interest to do.

This new upper chamber that Harold had built here at Bosham, Edward had to concede, was a most pleasant room, A first-floor solar giving views—huh, when there was a view—through four narrow windows of thick but small-paned glass overlooking the sea. It seemed remarkable, he thought, as he glanced about the recently completed chamber, that Godwine had never thought to extend his manor upwards into this more elegant and fashionable residence. But then Godwine always had been one for sticking like mud to the old, outdated ways. It must have cost Harold much in gold to have the manor rebuilt to such a fine standard. Bosham, Edward thought morosely, was more like a palace than a manor.

“They say,” Edward announced across the room to Harold, “that you are now almost as wealthy as myself.”

“Then ‘they’ are remarkably—but incorrectly—informed of private knowledge that is not ‘their’ concern.” Harold answered lightly, masking his annoyance. He doubted that Edward intended to be rude quite so often, but the man expressed himself so unfortunately, was so tactless, that he invariably set hackles rising.

Impervious to the signs of his host’s irritation, Edward plunged on in his familiar querulous whine. “Your taxable assets reach almost two thousand pounds, I believe. My own are scarcely more.”

“Did you know a slave-woman is expected to feed herself through a harsh winter on only three pennies?” Countess Gytha, seated on the opposite side of the cheerfully glowing hearth fire, glanced up from her embroidery, aiming to turn the conversation to more general discussion.

“As much as that?” her daughter answered scathingly. “Half would be adequate, surely.” She stood before the table by the wall surrounded by her clerk, two masons and an architect, the proposed plans for her rebuilding of Wilton Nunnery spread before them.

“Oh, do you think so, dear?” There were occasions when Gytha despaired of her daughter’s lack of compassion for those less fortunate than herself. God knew she had tried to instil it into her throughout childhood, but the girl had always been wilful and selfish. Harold and Edyth kept rein on their only daughter who, at eight, understood her manners. Her son Gyrth’s two young maids were also delightful children. With a grandmother’s pride she smiled at the group of grandchildren playing a boisterous ball and skittle game at the far end of the chamber, and laid her embroidery on to her lap to applaud as Algytha scored full points by toppling all six “men.” The girl’s yell of triumph and the echoing cheer from her brothers filled the room.

Queen Edith glowered at them. She had a headache and was trying to concentrate on what this fool of an architect was blathering about. It was all very well for Harold’s woman to allow the children in here, but their noise was becoming tedious.

“Did you see, Papa?” Algytha trotted to her father’s side, raising her arms for him to lift her. “Am I not clever?”

“You certainly are, my sweeting, but look, your young cousin Alfgiva has knocked one over too!”

“One!”

“She is four years old, half your age, one is an achievement.” Harold set his daughter down with a laugh and patted her backside as she went to rejoin her brothers and cousins. Gyrth’s other daughter, Gunnhild, a year senior to her sister, took her turn with the ball, screamed in frustration as she missed the target.

“For the sake of God!” Edith snapped. “Can we not have some peace in here?”

Like Gytha, Harold’s wife Edyth was enjoying watching the children. Considering the enforced confinement from the rain, they were all behaving well—but it wouldn’t last. She tucked her needle into the woollen sock she had been darning and set her work into the basket by her feet. “I will take them below,” she said, rising and ushering the youngsters to her side. “We can play better in the aisle of the storeroom.” She held her hands out to the younger girls, asking Goddwin and Edmund to collect up the gaming pieces.

“Could we set the men as a real army?” Goddwin queried as he tucked the wooden skittle pegs beneath his arm, his brother Edmund, five, solemnly holding the wooden ball between his clasped hands.

“I should think so—battle formation, perhaps a defensive wedge or a cavalry square? What think you?” Edyth’s voice drifted down the stairwell, the eager chatter of the children following in her wake like white-maned waves behind a full-sailed keel.

Gytha, too, set aside her sewing to go with her daughter-in-law. Edyth’s presence among the family when Edward and Edith were guests was always fraught with embarrassment, for neither accorded her more than the minimum politeness. There was little their frosty reticence could achieve. Edyth was established as Harold’s consort, and Gytha was never averse to showing, in subtle ways, her approval of the sweet-natured woman who, although she was reluctant to admit it, brought more joy than did her own daughter, for all she had achieved the acclaim of a queen’s crown.

The chamber settled. A log hissed in the fire-grate, a blue-green flame dancing along the bark. Outside, and on the roof, the rain drummed, the occasional drip finding a way down through the two smoke holes in the apex.

Edward sat, his toes perched on the hearth, playing a simple finger game, matching each corresponding fingertip to its opposite partner, gaining speed with each round. When would it be time to eat? That would create some diversion, not that he was hungry and his stomach had been upset again these past few days. If only Tostig were here, there would be better conversation, Tostig was well gifted with the telling of amusing tales, was informed on so many subjects that Edward never tired of debating with him. He missed Tostig. A pure young man, fair of face and manner; had it really been a wise decision to send him north? If he had given it to Ælfgar or one of the others of the Godwine brood, then Tostig would be more often at court…Edward missed the mark with his fingers, tutted with frustration and refolded his arms, tucking the offending digits beneath his armpits. Ælfgar. Why had he thought of that wretched whelp?

“And how do we set our real army then, my Earl of Wessex? What of Wales and Ælfgar? May the devil take his hide and balls!”

Wales, a country of uncivilised, godless warmongers. Wales, a wretched land of mountains and fog; of rain and mud and lakes, goblins and hags and fire-breathing dragons. Few Englishmen held an unbiased picture of the Welsh, the King being no exception.

“The situation raises as many concerns now as when we discussed it at the Easter Council, my Lord,” Harold remarked, carefully choosing his words. Strange that he too had been pondering the difficult question of Wales.

In the early spring, Gruffydd ap Llewelyn, Prince of Gwynedd and Powys, had swept southwards into Deheubarth and, with apparent ease, killed his long-term opponent Gryffydd ap Rhydderch. Gwynedd now ruled all of Wales, a situation that posed a threat to the English border lands. Already Gruffydd had attempted a few minor raids on Shrewsbury and Hereford, and now that Ælfgar, exiled for his rudeness to the King, had allied himself with Wales…there was no understanding the man. It surprised Harold to admit that he felt sympathy for Leofric, Ælfgar’s father. He had always been a bitter opponent to the Godwines, but Harold knew the misery a traitorous son could cause a family. God’s patience, but Gruffydd himself had slaughtered Leofric’s own brother and his wife’s father back in 1039! Ælfgar was fighting alongside the murderer of close kindred in these tediously repetitive raids across the Severn river.

“Would it be prudent to consider calling up the fyrd and marching on Wales in a counter raid?” Harold had tried suggesting this before, had already encountered the prompt and curt answer.

“No. I cannot afford to pay for such an army, not at the moment.” Edward was walking around the room again. “Would it not be better to pardon Ælfgar and allow him home? You ought never have quarrelled with him in the first place, Harold.”

“He did not, husband,” Edith interjected. Her headache, despite the children leaving, was worsening, her patience withering. “The quarrel was with Tostig, not Harold, because you sent our brother into Northumbria.”

“Yes, yes,” said Edward tetchily, knowing she was right. “I regret giving him that earldom now. If Tostig were not in the North, we would not be in this cursed awkward situation.”

The Queen was as aghast at Edward’s statement as was Harold, for different reasons. Edith needed the North kept within the family’s control. With Harold overseeing the South, Wessex and parts of Herefordshire, Gyrth now proclaimed Earl of East Anglia in place of the disgraced Ælfgar and Tostig in Northumbria, only Mercia lay outside their influence…and Leofric was aged and ill. With Leofwine yet to come to an earldom, it was only a matter of time before all England came under the jurisdiction of the Godwine sons. Then let Edward ever try to set her aside! Not that he would, not now—but Edith was determined to ensure that he could never again publicly slight her.

She retorted, “With Tostig sorting out the disgraceful lawlessness that has been left to fester in the North by that old fool Siward, we at least have peace in that quarter. Had you given Northumbria to Ælfgar, who knows what chaos he and these Welsh friends of his would now be causing.”

In that sense Harold agreed with her, but whether Tostig was actually bringing peace and prosperity to the northern moorlands…ah, but he was new to the career of earl, had yet to develop tact and diplomacy, and besides, there was Wales to consider at this moment. The North must look to itself for a while.

Edward sniffed, annoyed at Edith’s censure. His throat was dry, beginning to ache, and his eyes were watering. All this atrocious wet weather was starting another head cold; no doubt he would be laid in bed for the next few weeks nursing a fever. What was the wager that the rain would then clear and the weather turn suitable for hunting?

“I did not mean that I did not want Tostig as earl,” Edward grumbled. “I meant if Tostig were here, we would not be shuttered away bickering with each other. He amuses me. No one else bothers much with their king’s entertainment. It’s all war and fighting, tax and coinage.” He waved an impatient hand at Harold who had been about to speak. “Yes, yes, I know I have to decide on a new minting of coin of the realm. I have not forgotten.”

Edith closed her eyes in exasperation. Really, Edward was becoming more obtuse and perverse with each passing day. She selected a scroll of parchment from the table at random, spread it between her hands and, studying it briefly, nodded once, decisive. “This one,” she said. “I will have this design for my renovation of Wilton.”

Edward sauntered to stand beside her, inspecting the rough drawing. “Hmm, it seems appropriate. This window here, is it to be of glass?”

The architect scuttled to his side, eagerly answering, pointing with his fingers at the especial designs he had incorporated.

“If we do not act against Ælfgar and Wales soon,” Harold said with quiet menace, “we may come to regret it.”

No one was listening.

Hereford

When Harold had predicted an escalation of trouble along the Welsh border, he had spoken with the assurance of knowing the ill-tempered avarice of Ælfgar and the impetuous love of fighting of the Welsh. Gruffydd ap Llewelyn had no qualms about attacking the people whom his nation saw as foreign invaders, the Sassenach. The Saxon English had stolen the land of the British five centuries beforehand—and the Welsh had long memories. Even the term “Welsh” was anathema to Gruffydd and his people of the Cymry, an English word meaning foreigner. They needed no excuse to raid across the borders, but when one was so readily offered, why ignore it?

On 24 October in the year of Christ 1055, the King’s nephew, Earl Ralf, had drawn his army into battle formation two miles from the border town of Hereford. Facing him, the combined forces of Ælfgar’s mercenaries purchased from Ireland and the full ferocity of the Welsh. Before a single spear had been thrown, the Anglo-French cavalry that Ralf had taken so much pride in assembling had taken one horrified look at the mass of Celtic and Danish warriors, and fled. The Welsh that day had slaughtered almost five hundred of Hereford’s remaining defenders, among them Ralf de Mantes, and then, before autumn darkness forced them to retreat homewards, had sacked the town with a glut lust of killing and looting.

Before the doors of the Cathedral of Saint Æthelberht the clergy were murdered, their throats cut as they vainly attempted to defend the sanctity of their church; the building was plundered, desecrated and set to the torch. Women and children who had not been able to flee were defiled and taken into slavery, the old men butchered. Such was Gruffydd’s Welsh hatred and Ælfgar’s English desire for revenge.

Beginning to rely on Harold as his second-in-command Edward summoned his Earl of Wessex to raise an immediate army. With the practised and organised expertise of the English administrative system, the fyrds of Gloucestershire, Devonshire, Somersetshire, Wiltshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Shropshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire joined the survivors of Herefordshire at Gloucester. As the burnished golds and flaming reds of autumn trees began to be tossed aside by the bluster of the first frost-tainted winter winds, Harold led the army across the river Severn and entered Wales. Only to find that the Welsh, with their accumulated booty of livestock, slaves and treasure, had faded into the rain-misted hills, the sole sign of their passing the trampled, winter-wet ground.

For three days Harold sat encamped with his men, scouts returning as dusk descended with dispirited, cheerless faces, cold and sodden to the bone. Nothing. No sign of occupied habitation or human life, only the track of hare, fox and deer, the plaintive cry of a solitary buzzard. Though eyes had been watching for certain.

Did they chance moving further into unknown territory and, undoubtedly, a laid trap? Or retreat? Harold did not much like the latter choice, but common sense was a powerful persuader. The army could advance, shambling around those cursed hills, become weaker from lack of food, dispirited by overtiredness, never seeing the ambushes until the death sting of an arrow or spear announced their hidden presence. How deep into Wales would Gruffydd dare lead them? For how long would he play his taunting waiting game?

No, Harold was not a man to fight in fruitless circumstances; the fyrd were only obliged to muster for so many consecutive days of a year, their commitment ought not be pointlessly wasted. Men’s lives were too precious to squander on a face-saving disregard for practicality. Better to withdraw, attempt at suing for peace and wait for a more opportune moment to finish Gruffydd and his ally, the traitor Ælfgar.

Harold announced the order to break camp on the fourth morning. A heavy frost had hardened the ground overnight and the mature warmth of a late autumn was giving ground to winter’s bite. With relief, the fighting men of the fyrd began to make their way home. Harold marched into Hereford with his housecarls and a few chosen regiments, leaving a suitable number to protect their rear should Gruffydd decide to come out from hiding. What they met in that devastated town sickened every man.

They rode in silence through the battered gates, which had been fired and rammed. The horses were uneasy, flicking their ears and snorting at the clinging scent. Fire had spread so quickly among the timber, thatch-roofed buildings which were close-built, wall touching wall. Where once the market streets ran in straight-laid patterns, charred beams and broken houses and shops lay in a higgle-piggle of debris, the acrid pall belligerently lingering over and through everything.

Some of those fortunate ones who had fled at the first alarm had returned in ragged groups. Women and children stood or sat dazed and silent, watching, almost aimlessly, as Harold and his men rode by. One man, his clothes torn and dirtied, stood before a heap of soot-blackened timber, head bowed. He lifted his head as Harold reined in.

“My wife was inside,” he said. There was no emotion in his voice, his tone as blank as his eyes, “she was about the birthing of our fourth child. I had to leave her for the sake of the other children.”

Harold nudged his stallion onwards, making no reply. What words could he offer? Words were futile—would they bring life back? Ease the horror, rebuild the devastation? As he rode, his fingers curled, tight, around the reins, his thoughts on Edyth and his own children. What choice would he have made? Abandon his woman to take the children to safety? Abandon them all to go, make a fight of it? Stay, and be killed with them? He swallowed hard to keep the vomit from rising higher into his throat, resisting the impulse to place his hand over nose and throat to mask the rancid smell of burnt flesh.

In the vicinity of the cathedral, virtually nothing was left standing. He dismounted slowly and stood, running his horse’s reins through his fingers, trying not to look but seeing all too much.

What remained of the clergymen was blackened and twisted, unidentifiable save for a single sandalled foot and a charred, eyeless and flesh-peeled skull. To the left, what had been a coppersmith’s shop—incongruous that, although fire-blistered and scorched, the painted sign of a copper jug still hung from a single standing post. Beneath, a pile of rubble. Harold turned away, closed his eyes, laid his forehead against his stallion’s crested neck. A hand showed from beneath the charred beams, the fingers clutching at empty air. Somehow the flames had barely touched it.

A young child’s pink and pudgy hand.

“My Lord? What do you wish us to do?” Brihtric Strongarm, Captain of Housecarls, spoke into Harold’s ear, his voice tight. Older than his earl by almost fifteen years, he had witnessed many atrocities and seen much death in battle, but he too had seen that hand…

“He will answer for this, my friend,” Harold vowed, clasping his fingers tight around Brihtric’s muscular forearm. “By God, I swear that Gruffydd will one day pay for this day’s work.”

“And Ælfgar?” the Captain asked, the quietness of his words betraying the rage that quivered in his throat and belly. “Did he not play his part?”

Harold made no answer, but his hand moving to grip the pommel of his sword spoke eloquently enough.

Little could be done for Hereford. Town folk salvaged what they could as they drifted back from their places of hiding, setting temporary shelters among the rubble and soot, finding unburnt wood to kindle fires for cooking and warmth. Harold’s men helped with the refortifying of the gates and the digging of a defensive ditch and earthworks. Some had wanted the cathedral cleared first, but Harold refused.

“God has compassion for His children. He knows we must offer hope and shelter to the living first. The needs of the spirit can be taken care of later.”

He would see to it that corn and meal were sent to ease the immediate problem of hunger—from his own granaries if necessary. Word was sent also to the brothers from nearby monasteries to come and tend the sick and wounded. And, aye, do what they could for the shattered souls that needed to be cleansed of the horrors that had been witnessed.