[Norman Conquest 01] Wolves in Armour (7 page)

“Alan de Gauville,” answered Alan as he turned to walk away down the hill, slinging his saddlebag across his left shoulder.

A shout of relief arose from the Norman ranks as the golden leopard standard was raised again and William lifted his helm to allow his face to be seen by his men.

As Alan bent to clean his sword on the clothing of a dead man, he received a stunning blow to the back of his head and dropped to his knees; he’d been struck by a rock tied to a stick and hurled from the English ranks. He shook his head carefully and then pushed himself to his feet, using his sword for support and started to stagger off down the hill.

Watching where he was putting his feet, Alan saw a sword, one of the thousands of weapons now lying discarded on the battlefield. It was of a one-and-a-half hand design, plain of appearance and made of polished steel with a sharkskin hand-grip. On picking it up he found that the 31 inch blade had perfect balance. It was a pattern-forged sword of the highest quality, its acid-etched blade revealing the distinctive pattern which both resulted from its complicated manufacture and resulted in the name from which it was made. The sword was of such quality that only the most wealthy noble could commission its making, a sword that would require a master sword-smith a month to create. This was a blade that was forged from five-sheets of steel and iron, then twisted into a bar and re-forged and tempered time after time to a perfection of strength and flexibility. Looking carefully at the steel-blue pattern created by the forging Alan immediately dubbed the sword with the name Blue Fire, which came unbidden to his mind. Finding an unused scabbard was as easy as checking two or three bodies for a scabbard the correct size. After cleaning the sword and sheathing it, Alan tucked it under his arm and continued to walk down the hill.

He was exhausted and the blow to the head had made him dizzy and nauseous. As he now had no horse, and had no intention of struggling in full armour on foot back up the hill to engage the English line through the ploughed field that had now turned into a muddy morass, he walked up the hill towards Starr’s Green, dropped his saddlebag tiredly to the ground and used it as a seat as he sat and watched.

After a long while, as the sun was setting and the confused mass of men continued to surge and push on Caldbec Hill, Alan walked to the large tent that he recognised as belonging to Geoffrey de Mandeville. As he expected, it was overflowing with wounded. Roger of Caen, de Mandeville’s private churgeon, together with a monk and several assistants, were working on the wounded. The medical staff were all covered from head to foot in blood. Alan noticed Hugh de Berniers in the line awaiting attention, the small axe still buried in his thigh.

Removing his helm, mail hauberk and gambeson Alan stood in his sweat-drenched and rust-stained tunic. Placing his equipment where he could see it, including his shield and the two swords he now possessed, he poured a bucket of clean water over his head to refresh himself before moving to one of the tables to provide what assistance he could. Roger of Caen noticed him and nodded his appreciation for the assistance.

It was soon dark and they continued work by the light of rush torches. Word was brought to the tent that Harold had been killed, leaving the English leaderless- but still the thegns and huscarles fought on and refused to surrender or run. Later came news that the English line had been destroyed, but a band still stood firm around the body of their dead king.

The churgeon and his assistants were still working steadily through the range of wounds and cases of trauma when there was a stir at the entrance to the tent near midnight. Duke William walked in, striding alongside a blanket on which the recumbent Eustace of Boulogne was being carried. Alan called them over, “Vacant table here, this poor fellow just gave up the Ghost as Roger was removing his leg. What’s the problem?” he asked as he washed the blood off his hands.

“Blow to the back of the head, bleeding from the mouth and nose- and he hasn’t recovered consciousness,” said William, who then looked more carefully at Alan. “You again!”

“Yes, I thought that after I’d lost my horse I’d do better helping here,” said Alan as Eustace was deposited on the table. “I think you got your half-shilling’s worth from me today!”

After a few minutes of examination of the back of Eustace’s head, pupils and pulse Roger said, “Well, obviously he’s suffered blunt trauma to the head. The skull is probably fractured, but certainly isn’t crushed. He’s likely to be in a coma for some time, perhaps two or three days. After that his wits are likely to be muddled for some days, but he should recover from that well enough, in time. Firstly, he needs to lie quietly abed for a few days.”

William nodded solemnly and said to Alan, “Come and see me tomorrow at Sext at the abbey at Hastings. I’m likely to be busy so it may be some time during the afternoon before I can see you. I’ll have Eustace sent back to Hastings now.”

After William departed Alan decided that he’d also had enough, collected his gear and found his tent, which Gillard had pitched nearby. Robert de Aumale was asleep inside, wrapped up in his cloak. Hugh was lying unconscious on a straw mattress, his leg thickly bandaged. Gillard was just leaving the tent and admitted that he was dropping off a load of goods that he’d looted from the battlefield and asked Alan if he wanted to join him. Although somewhat repelled by the idea, Alan did have to admit that his purse was empty and as Gillard had urged, ‘if he didn’t do it somebody else would’.

A pale moon was rising as they walked back to the battlefield, Alan wearing his new sword. There were hundreds of men walking the battlefield, many working in pairs to strip the coats of mail off the dead. Gillard was disappointed that Alan wouldn’t help him remove coats of mail, but Alan pointed out the amount of time required and the weight of the resulting booty. Gillard was quite happy to rob any body, Norman, French, allied or English.

Alan restricted his activities to the English bodies and, working along the line of the shield-wall, was surprised at how many coins the English thegns and Royal Huscarles carried in their purses and how much gold jewellery they wore. Most wore gold torques, gold brooches to close their cloaks, gold belt buckles, gold arm rings and gold and jewel rings. Within half an hour Alan had collected a small sack of coins and jewellery and, feeling discouraged by his own wickedness, he decided that enough was enough and returned back to the tent where he then hid his hoard.

The next day hundreds thronged the battlefield. Edith Swan-Neck, Harold’s lover, had requested permission to inspect the battlefield near where Harold’s banner had flown, to locate and identify his body. Harold had fought in a hauberk of plain chain-mail and the many bodies around where the banner of ‘The Fighting Man’ had flown were much hacked-about- to the extent that Duke William had been unable to identify the body of his former friend.

Those Englishmen or women who came to the battlefield were allowed to take away their dead, most of whom by now had been stripped naked. Gytha, Harold’s mother, offered Duke William the weight of the body in gold for its return. William declined and after the body was located he handed it over to William Malet, a half-English knight, for burial- although much later William agreed with Gytha for her to receive the body for no payment and to bury it at Harold’s own church of Holy Cross at Waltham in Essex.

Alan spent part of the morning walking the battlefield picking up twenty swords and scabbards which lay around discarded by the dead and wounded in their hundreds, if not thousands.

The Norman dead were being placed in piles for honourable burial. The English dead lay where they had fallen, although William was allowing access by the families of the English warriors to the battlefield to collect and bury their dead. Dozens of English women and unarmed servants roamed the battlefield looking for lost loved ones.

Already the crows were busily picking at the corpses and the stench of corruption hung over the battlefield. At midmorning Alan took his bundle of weapons, armour, goods and possessions and loaded his mule. As he now had no riding horse, he walked beside the mule to Hastings along the dirt track that was busy with traffic proceeding in both directions.

After arriving at the small abbey building at Hastings Alan washed himself briefly in a trough of cold water and changed into his best tunic and hose before he sought out the duke’s steward. This was a harassed looking individual called Corbett, who arranged for Alan’s goods and mule to be taken care of, told him where food and drink were available and directed him to a large waiting-room thronged with people. After eating his first decent meal in six weeks and downing several cups of reasonable wine, Alan returned to the waiting-room, made sure that he notified his presence to the flunky who appeared to be in charge and sat down to wait. It was, as William had indicated it would be, a long wait; after the exertions of the previous day and night Alan was satisfied to lean against the stone wall and doze.

One thing that did surprise him was the lack of monks moving about the abbey. In chatting with others in the waiting-room Alan found that the land and much of the village belonged to the Abbey of Fécamp, but had been seized by Edward the Confessor some years before and the monks had been expelled, some returning with William’s expedition.

Eventually, and before a surprising number of well-dressed and important-looking individuals in the waiting-room, Corbett summoned Alan into the small and sparsely furnished room which William was using as an office. The duke was sitting in a chair with a cup of wine on a small table next to him, well-dressed in a green tunic and hose. Apart from a slightly weary look about the eyes there was no indication that he had been awake for nearly all of the previous thirty-six hours, although he did look every one of his thirty-eight years.

William abruptly said, “It appears that I owe you thanks for several reasons. I assume you are the same Alan de Gauville who de Mandeville named to me as the man who charged the flank of the English when the Bretons broke?”

Alan shrugged. “It seemed a good idea at the time, and the obvious thing to do. If the second rank of horsemen had followed me we might have been able to have forced the shield-wall on that flank, weakened as it was.”

“If you’d tried that you’d be dead- rather than a live hero who stopped the rout,” replied William sardonically. “Not everybody can see the obvious. Fewer still are prepared to take a decision that involves risk, even those who have been soldiers for most of their lives. I assume this was your first battle? I thought so. Secondly, you saved my life. Having the only one life, that is something I on which I place a high value,” he continued with some jocularity. “And you loaned me your horse. You were right, he is a fine beast and he did only have the one more charge in him. He’s down in the stables being pampered, one of only two horses I rode yesterday that survived.”

He picked up a leather purse from the table next to him and tossed it to Alan. “Twenty gold marks as a token of my thanks. When I’m in a position to reward you properly with lands, come and see me again. That’ll depend on how matters go over the next month or so. We crushed the army that Harold raised here in the south and killed the best three English generals- Harold and his two brothers. The remaining earls- Waltheof, Edwin and Morcar- can still raise another army of perhaps 10,000 thegns and fyrdmen, so nothing is settled yet. That depends on my getting reinforcements, which are probably going to be mercenary infantry as I cleaned out most of the mounted men-at-arms before we landed. And I need more horses.”

“How many men did we lose?” asked Alan.

“The best guess at the moment is 1,500 dead and 750 badly wounded,” replied William. “Another 1,000 with lesser wounds, who will return to service in the next few weeks.”

Alan winced. More than a third of William’s army was dead or injured. They may have killed perhaps 3,000 or more Englishmen, but with the survivors of Hastings and the men of the North and West Counties the English could probably gather another 10,000 men- if they could find a general. A second English army would be virtually impossible for William to defeat with the men available.

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Following the meeting with Duke William, during the time the army remained at Hastings Alan was busy working the ‘black market’. With the town awash with looted jewellery he decided that his best option was to visit a money-changer in the town. Each gold mark was worth £12, or 240 shillings, a known and certain value. That was a value that with the duke present in the town the money-changer would not dare cheat. Allowing for a small commission he received 235 shillings for each of the two marks he changed.

With probably 3,000 illegally obtained suits of chain mail in the town, their new owners knowing that they would be marching soon and not wanting to carry forty pounds of metal on the march- and most of the looters having at least three or four such suits of mail which would be impossible to carry or hide once the army was on the move- the price of chain mail and other armour and weapons had dropped remarkably in what had become a buyer’s market.

With an eye to the future Alan bought twenty good quality (‘only a little repair needed, Sir Knight’) ex-Norman hauberks at five shillings each, and thirty ex-English byrnies at two shillings each. Another thirty good swords at one shilling to go with the twenty he had collected on the battlefield and fifty helmets (all ex-English, most with no nasal-piece) at ten pence apiece. A total of 231 shillings. With whatever land he might hope to receive for his services, Alan would be in a position to meet his future military obligations at the cost of a pittance paid now. Alan made arrangements with a local merchant for storage, paying three months fee in advance.