I Am the Chosen King (38 page)

Rhuddlan

This time, there was to be no waiting. Strike hard and fast. Unexpectedly. They left Gloucester soon after midnight, Harold riding north with those of his housecarls who had accompanied him to the Christmas Court, mounted on sturdy British ponies bred for their intelligence and endurance. Setting a steady rhythmic pace, they alternated a stout walk with a jogtrot that covered the miles easily as night lightened into approaching dawn. Once every hour the men—and Harold too—dismounted to lead the horses for ten minutes, reaching Shrewsbury, a distance of almost one hundred miles, by noon.

For one hour they rested the horses, watering them from the river Severn and feeding them corn dampened with ale. The animals rested, but not the men. A lame or sore-backed mount was of no use to anyone. Hooves needed tending, worn shoes must be replaced or clenches that had risen hammered in. Goose fat rubbed into any saddle or girth gall. The men ate their saddle-bag rations of cold meat and wheaten biscuits where they squatted beside their ponies. No time to waste on cooking.

Edward had been against a raid into Wales—Tostig had urged caution. Wait, they had both said. Spring would offer a better time for fighting—or summer, when troops could live the more easily off the land and daylight allowed for easy travelling. “Aye,” Harold had answered with impatient anger, “if by summer Gruffydd has left us anything on the land.”

Obstinately, the King had refused financial support, declaring, with what he had intended to be the final word on the matter, that if Harold wanted to waste his time and the lives of his men, then he could do so at his own expense.

Riding onwards from Shrewsbury, with a man who held a grudge against Gruffydd willing to guide them into Wales—the horses were tired but, brave, stout creatures that they were, had more miles in them yet—Harold recalled his terse answer to his king.

“Then it is agreed. Within four and twenty hours I shall be at Rhuddlan, outside the door of Gruffydd’s stronghold. When his castle falls, all of value will be for myself and my men.”

“Even my sister?” Eadwine had challenged.

“Aye, even your sister, were I not already married!” Harold had answered.

They doubted he could do it! Those poxed, cushion-using, courtly simpletons. Ride from Gloucester to North Wales within four and twenty hours? Your horses will be lamed, your men exhausted, they had jeered. Yet the Great King, Alfred, had once pursued the Danes one hundred and forty miles across land to Chester in such a time. Harold, his men and their horses, were muscle-fit and eager. Why could it not be done? All it required was determination and a worthy goal at the end of it all.

The English crossed into Clwyd and left behind the Saxon roadways, following instead rough, steep and twisting hill tracks that wound through closely wooded valleys. The pace slowed, the men dismounting often to lead their ponies in single file, their way, once darkness fell, lit by the wavering, tree-dappled light of a half-moon that sailed bright and clear in an unclouded, star-sprinkled sky.

***

Alditha lay awake, watching the narrow strip of moonlight lancing through the gap in the window shutters. Beside her, Gruffydd lay on his back, snoring; at the end of the bed his favourite hound scratched at a flea. Alditha disapproved of the dogs in their bedchamber, but Gruffydd always had his way and besides, at least the animal kept her feet warm. She could not sleep because she was cold and because her two-year-old daughter was ill.

Several times during the night she had gone to see Nest, padding in slippered feet down the wooden stairs, across the corner of the frost-frozen courtyard to the roundhouse outbuilding that was the place where the children slept, Gruffydd would not have the girl in their own chamber for fear of catching her fever, nor allow his wife to sleep curled with the children around the hearth fire because of his own needs. On her last visit, the girl’s sweating had eased, thank the Holy Mother, the swelling to her throat not so pronounced. Alditha had sat a while, the little girl cradled on her lap, while her nurse spooned more of the honey-sweetened mixture of feverfew, rue and coltsfoot into the child’s mouth; had cuddled her close until she had fallen asleep.

So cold! Alditha wriggled her toes beneath the weight of the dog, snuggled the bear fur tighter around her shoulders. From somewhere outside a wolf howled. There were not so many wolves wandering in the mountains as once there had been, nor bears. The fur for this bed had come from the wild highlands of Scotland. In the frozen islands out in the western seas there were great white bears, she had been told. Creatures that could knock a man’s head from his shoulders with one swipe of a paw. Gruffydd turned over in his sleep, grunting. She wished a white bear would come to take off Gruffydd’s head.

Sighing, sleep still refusing to come, Alditha slid from beneath the covers and, wrapping her thickest woollen cloak around her shoulders, went to the single narrow window, easing open the shutter to allow an inch or so of new-come daylight to peep through. As the pink and gold of dawn strengthened, the crisp silver-white rime of frost that clung to roof, wall and courtyard began to shimmer and sparkle. Tomorrow would be the first day of January. Another year gone, another mid-winter and yuletide festival finished and done with.

Looking out across the wooden rampart walls to the rise of the winter-bare, snow-topped mountains, Alditha could almost believe that spring would never return. Leafless branches of tree and bush, flowerless, frost-glimmered, bracken-dead grass. A smell of smoke on the air, a rustle of noise and movement from the wattle-built settlement clustered against the stronghold’s outer wall.

A glint of light on something that shone…she did not realise what she was seeing…a standard lying limp at its pole in a breathless new morning, a man’s helmet, horses…fire crackling along the thatch of a house place, a woman screaming…And the night watch were running along the walkway, the warning bell clamouring its alarm. Men tumbling from the Hall, sleep-blearied, half-dressed, hopping on one foot while pulling on boots. Gruffydd pushing her away from the window, flinging the shutter wide, leaning out, cursing virulently.

“Get my clothes, woman!” he bellowed, tugging leather gambeson on over his undertunic, cursing as he searched for his left boot. Ednyved his seneschal burst into the room. “Sir—the English have come upon us! Christ alone in His Heaven knows how the Earl of Wessex has managed it—he surely could not have heard of Ælfgar any length of time before us; we only heard the day before yesterday. I have ordered the men to the ramparts—”

“Curse the sodding men—get a crew on to my ship!”

“But we can make a fight of this! Harold appears to have only a few hundred men. If we can hold him off—”

“If? What if we cannot? Have you looked out of that window, man? The settlement is burning, the rampart walls will be next—or the gateway. A few hundred men? Jesu wept, what chance have we if Harold should get inside? What chance have I?” Gruffydd buckled on his baldric, slid his sword into its sheath. “I have no desire to dangle from a roof beam or be taken in chains to Edward.” Brusquely he shouldered Ednyved from his path, ran through the door and started down the steps, Alditha behind him.

She caught hold of his arm, bringing him to an abrupt halt, her expression dark. “So you are to flee? Running like a hunted hare. What of us, my Lord? Of your men, of me and your daughter? Are you to leave us here to die?”

Gruffydd prised her fingers from his arm. “Only your modesty is in danger from Earl Harold, but once he discovers how ice-hard you are in bed he’ll soon leave you be.” He turned and ran on, out into the daylight, across the courtyard and through the water-door to Rhuddlan’s river-wharf, Alditha’s contempt ringing in his ears.

“You ball-less son of a heathen bitch! You cowardly dog turd!”

His own ship could not be made ready, too heavy in its ornamentation, too close moored to the river bank. He leapt for a trader’s vessel, already making sail at the first warning of attack, stood in the bows as the craft was taken to safety by the current, which, by his great fortune, was at full ebb. He left behind his fleet and his fighting men. Barely an arrow or spear was hurled against Earl Harold’s Englishmen; instead, the gates of Rhuddlan were opened to him.

Alditha waited, proud, on the highest of the Hall’s timber steps. With her, Ednyved, leaning heavily on his staff. Behind her a woman coddled a whimpering child, wrapped well in blankets.

Harold dismounted, handed the reins of his stallion to his captain and stood a brief moment regarding the lady, his hand resting casually on the hilt of his sword.

The geese in their pen were cackling and honking; overhead, a rabble of seagulls squabbled. The people of Rhuddlan, fighting men and their women, servants, craftsmen, the entire community of a stronghold, stood in silence apart from a few muffled coughs and the monotonous tears of a child. In turn, they steadily regarded the tall Englishman.

Sweeping the lady a bow, Harold mounted the steps, took her hand and laid his lips to its smoothness, his eyes not leaving hers. “I offer you condolences for the death of your father,” he said, “though if you cared for him as little as your brothers, you will not require sympathy.” Added, “I would ask why it is that the Lady of Wales greets me, not her husband, Prince Gruffydd.”

“The Lady greets you because her miserable husband is running like a whipped hound with his tail tucked behind his shrivelled manhood. Regrettably, you have missed the pleasure of his snivelling company.”

Ednyved stepped forward, bowed, introduced himself. “I would ask for the safe keeping of those within this stronghold. We offered you no resistance, we ask for your guarantee of protection.”

“You have it. No man, woman or child will be mistreated for I have no quarrel with the people of Wales, only with their coxcomb prince. I would have the place immediately cleared, however, for my men have orders to take what trophies they wish and fire everything remaining that will burn. Should Gruffydd return, all he will find of Rhuddlan is ash and smoke.”

His housecarls, ranged on tired horses behind him, raised their war spears and axes with a shout of victory, then began to dismount and search through house place, bothy and barn for whatever there might be of value.

“And me?” Alditha asked as Harold’s men pushed past her to ransack the Hall “What do you intend to do with me and my daughter? She is ill, would you leave us with no roof over our heads and the frost so cold in the ground?”

“I would wager there is suitable shelter within a day’s walk of here, madam,” Harold answered, “but you will have no fear of muddying your skirts. You will be mounted upon one of those fine horses that I see being led from your husband’s stable and escorted with all courtesy back to England. King Edward and your brothers, I am sure, will welcome you.”

Alditha stared at the Earl in defiance, said, hardly believing her own words, “I thank you for the offer of one of my own horses, but if these good Welsh people must walk, then I shall walk with them. I have no desire to return with you into England.” What possessed her? She had no wish to remain with that coward of a husband a moment longer than necessary…yet she shared the heart of the people of Wales, could not turn her back on them.

Harold responded with a half-grin. “I am afraid it is not a choice I offer you. This is but a brief raid on Gruffydd’s pride. I intend, soon, to take all of Wales from him. I cannot leave you for Gruffydd to use as hostage against those of us in England who care for you.”

Alditha tossed her head. “Do you then care for me, my Lord? When last we met I was but a child. Now I am a woman grown with a child of my own.” She was indeed a woman, one of beauty; was wasted here beneath these cloud-shadowed mountains. Needed a better man than Gruffydd to share her bed. Harold felt his manhood stir, his throat run dry…were it not for Edyth, or that this dark-haired siren still had a legal husband…

“I could serve you the better here in Wales,” she said. “With my own hand I will cut out that bastard’s heart if he should dare come within close range of my dagger blade.”

Harold did not doubt her, but still he took her back to England.

North Wales—May 1063

Through the tedious grey of rain-laden winter months, Harold had set his mind to plan his conquest of Wales, strategy, options and tactics preoccupying his thoughts. That burning of Gruffydd’s ships and property at Rhuddlan had only been a sting in the tail for the Welsh prince; this time, when Harold was ready to take an army across the border, the spear must bite mortally deep. For one or other of them, there would be no second chance.

Tactics. Strategy. Constant, restless thoughts that had isolated his waking hours and invaded his sleep. Sleep that soon became clogged by red-misted dreams of battle and death. Muddled dreams where Harold wandered alone and confused on high, snow-clad mountains or found himself trapped by men pushing and crushing, their faces ugly, voices screaming for blood to be spilt. Death was there in the blades of red-stained swords. And with death, the woman. Always, somewhere in each recurring dream, the woman had been there, sometimes with a child straddling her hips, more often alone, but ever silent, no gasp or cry leaving her lips as she watched him die at the hands of those men that crowded so close.

As the hedgerows blossomed with the white-frothed, heavy scent of the hawthorn, Harold was ready and eager to enter Wales. The King was equally enthusiastic, for this time there was no doubting that Gruffydd would be defeated. It would deplete his treasury to finance a war, but the reward at the end of it would surely outweigh the expense. Wales would be his to command as he willed, the first English king to bring the Welsh under total English rule. Aye, he well liked the idea.

And Edyth? Though she said nothing, Edyth knew the meaning of Harold’s dreams. She knew that one way or another he would not be coming back to her. The stars wheeled in the sky, the sun chased the moon and the seasons turned. Babes were born and men died. Everything must evolve and grow. Nothing could ever remain static, for life—the world—would stagnate and begin to smell foul. For eighteen years had she been wife to Harold, her love for him never wavering, her need never diminishing. Six surviving children had she borne him: Goddwin, the eldest, nine months the younger than her marriage, now a man grown with a wife and soon-to-be-born babe of his own. Her last-born, Gunnhild, a girl of four years, Edmund and Magnus on the verge of growing up; Algytha, fifteen, ready to become a woman.

Wales had changed Harold; he had become single-minded. Determination to see an end to Gruffydd seared through him as if a dagger wound had penetrated his heart, stifling his good sense like a mould growing upon rotting fruit.

What would be harder to endure, Edyth wondered, as Harold mounted his stallion and rode out beneath the gate arch of their manor, a hand lifted in farewell: news that he had fallen in battle or that he had fulfilled his promise to that dark-eyed, half-Welsh woman?

Oh, Edyth knew who was the woman in those dreams. She had lain with Harold through those restless nights of winter, her arms clasped tight around him as he sweated and tossed through the night. Had heard the name that his sleep had whispered: Alditha.

***

Gruffydd ap Llewelyn had overreached himself. He had made the mistake of all who wanted too much for themselves and took it without regard for others. There were those in Deheubarth who resented the killing of his rival, Gryffydd ap Rhydderch, and not a few ambitious kindred, men pleased to accept the opportunity to be rid of him—even at the high price of bowing the knee to the representative of an English king. It had ever been a weakness of the Celtic peoples, their inclination to fight among themselves, rather than unite against a common enemy. Earl Harold of Wessex took full advantage of it as he sailed his fleet of ships along the rugged southern coast of Wales where he landed, encountering only token gestures of defiance from the Welsh who had no desire to shed blood for Gruffydd, a man who had fled with a sheathed sword from attack. The Welsh respected a warrior, scorned a man who pissed himself as he ran. Those who nursed a grudge against the North welcomed Harold as his longships beached on the shore; others needed convincing with sharpened blades. Harold made war in the time-honoured method of Saxon, Viking, Irish—and Welsh—alike. Ravage the land and plunder for valuables until the victim found it cheaper to agree to a treaty rather than be ruined. Treaties, after all, could always, when it suited, be broken. An economy was not so easily rebuilt.

Tactics. Strategy. Therein lay the vulnerability of the disunited Welsh. No tactics or strategy. Their warriors were brave and skilled, but their leaders did not look beyond the winning of each single battle. Harold did: he had planned throughout those long dark days of winter. This was what all those hours of training as a boy and young man had been for. This also was the blossoming of a natural talent as a commander of men.

With his own men raised from Wessex, augmented by those of his brothers Gyrth’s and Leofwine’s southern earldoms, he set Wales scurrying by campaigning from the sea, while Tostig marched over the border from Chester, driving the land-folk before him, leaving nothing but destruction in his wake. The Welsh, caught between the two brothers and the inhospitality of the mountains, had nowhere left to flee.

July was drawing to a close when, as planned, Harold joined with Tostig near the stronghold of Caer yn Arfon on the Gwynedd coast, with his army, several thousand strong, overlooked by the majestic sweep of the mountains of Eryri, the Snow Mountains. The Welsh had already decided their course. Tostig had come through the high passes and winding valleys, the sails of Harold’s dragon-prowed warships filled the horizon. They did not want the English destroying their land, nor did they trust Gruffydd to stand and make a fight of things. A man who could show his spine to an enemy once could as easily bare his back again. The solution was simple.

On the fifth day of August, two months after Harold and his brother began their combined harrying of Wales, Gruffydd was slain by his own people and his head presented in surrender to the Earl of Wessex.

Whether Gruffydd’s two half-brothers had a personal hand in his ending Harold did not ask. Better, perhaps, not to know. Both of them laid down their swords at Harold’s feet and swore an oath to the Earl of Wessex, paying homage as vassals to the English King, surrendering hostages to ensure continued peace. Over and finished, as simply as that.

Harold ensured Wales would remain divided—and therefore impotent—by slicing her administration back into pieces, north divided from south, coast from mountain, split into small areas each with one leader who must kneel to Harold. The fighting would continue, the agreements would be broken—but not yet with England. For a while the Welsh would be too busy bickering among themselves, each clawing back what he thought was his above another’s, to bother the English on the eastern banks of the river Severn.

Word was sent ahead and they were all there at Winchester to welcome the two brothers and the army home. In triumph they entered the town, parading their hostages and plunder before the cheering townsfolk. The King waited on the steps of his palace, his queen and clerics beside him, with the younger Godwinessons and Eadwine and Morkere, sons of Ælfgar, to welcome home the warrior heroes.

Only one woman noticed the change in the Earl of Wessex. Edyth, waiting with his mother to the left of the King, knew that the man she had loved for what seemed all her life, her Harold, was not the same man who had ridden away from her at the manor that sun-dappled morning in late May. Acknowledging the crowd as they cheered and tossed rose petals before his side-stepping stallion, leaning down to kiss the young women who ran to touch his hand or knee, he was more self-assured, more ambitious, and, alarmingly, more ruthless in his determination to do what he felt was right, regardless of the opinion of others.

Only Edyth noticed how he had dismounted and walked, almost before acknowledging his king, straight to the Lady Alditha. He had taken her hand and removed Gruffydd’s wedding band from her finger. Had lifted from its basket the head of a prince of Wales and presented it to her as gruesome fulfilment of his promise. Only Edyth had noticed how his eyes had lingered that moment too long on Alditha’s.

Only Edyth, for no one else cared enough to notice, saw that more had happened to Harold, Earl of Wessex, than the mere conquering of Wales.