Read The Wind From Hastings Online
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
The Wind From Hastings (22 page)
“It was agreed that we should be sent straightway after the King,” Osgood concluded, “to accompany his body in this life and minister to it as is needed thereafter.”
If I had had any lingering doubts as to my own intentions, that put an end to it. Harold Godwine had been my father's enemy long before we were met, yet he was husband to me now, and father to the babe that was only just beginning to kick within me.
Once, obedient and compliant, I would have done as I was bid and suffered another long agony of waiting. But the submission was gone from me; whatever fate lay in store I would know of it myself. “I will no
longer be a piece in a chess game played by others!” I said to Gwladys in an attempt to convince her of the rightness of my decision.
longer be a piece in a chess game played by others!” I said to Gwladys in an attempt to convince her of the rightness of my decision.
She was not happy about it, but she worked in secret to prepare wardrobes for myself and the children; and she carried messages to Osbert for me.
On the morning of October twelfth, King Harold and a force of some four thousand men, including all the earls of the land save only my brothers, who had not yet reached London, marched out of the City and across London Bridge. In the wake of the fyrd came various parties of families, clerics and hangers-on, and a train of hastily assembled supply wagons too slow to keep up with the main force.
Farther back still, guided by the trail of dust that hung in the sky, a little family of freedmen rode on unusually fine horses. Osbert and several of his most trusted men-at-arms were the men of the family, Gwladys and I the women, and we were accompanied by two small boys and a tiny girl.
In my mind as I rode lay the great weight of all the things I had not said to Harold Godwine. Which is harder: to unsay the misspoken word or to replace the word left unsaid? Our official parting had been brief and correct, conducted in the presence of the entire court and a troop of waiting housecarles. Harold's last words to me had been: “If things do not go well with us in the South, take the children and go with all haste to the strong-hold of the Earl of Mercia. I will try to meet you there later.”
I could only agree, and say the formal words of “fare you well” and “God be with you.” There was no opportunity to tell him that I had been mistaken about the quality of the man, and that my hatred had been transmuted into something else.
I do not know if he would have even welcomed such news; it would probably have meant little by comparison with the Norman invasion.
After the battle there will be time, I promised myself again and again, like a talisman.
The fyrd was well ahead of us; I did not want the King to learn I had so thoroughly disobeyed his orders. But we did not travel alone. Down every crossroad and cowpath people came streaming afoot or on horseback, turning south toward the coast. Farmers set aside their harvesting and took to the road; Angles and Saxons and square-headed Jutes, freedmen and bondmen and squires, smiths and carpenters and swineherds and beekeepersâthe population of all southern England seemed to be on the move, drawn to the coast.
“This is a mistake, Your Grace: I regret letting you talk me into this!” Osbert gritted through his teeth as he rode beside me. Nesta sat before him on the saddle, playing happily with the hogged mane of her “father's” horse.
“Perhaps, Osbert, but I can do nothing else. Our world is changing hour by hour, can you not feel it? These people can”âand I waved my hand to indicate the scores of our fellow travelersâ“and like me, they must go and attend the birth of whatever is coming.”
“A free England is coming, united under the standard of the Fighting Man and safe forever from foreign intrusion!” Osbert prophesied with the ring of trumpets in his voice.
“God grant that you are right, good Osbert, but there have been so many signs ⦠the comet, the crucifix at Waltham ⦔
“Those things are open to different interpretations, my lady! Can you not see them as signs of victory? It was the Golden Dragon of Wessex that flamed across the sky, the same figure that ripples on Godwine's banner! And I doubt not that the Christ on the crucifix mourned the soldiers who will die in winning our victory! After all, the King destroyed the entire Viking force at Stamford Bridge; does that not prove that the heavens themselves are on his side?”
Mayhap. But if that were true, what voice had roused all these people from their farms and shops and set them on the road to Hastings, making the long journey in an eerie near-silence? If they had been going to see a great victory, would they not have been laughing and singing, making jokes and walking quickstep?
But they were not. We, all of us, followed the fyrd to its destiny in quietness, our eyes fixed somberly on the far horizon.
W
E WENT THROUGH Crayford, with the rank smell of the river always in our nostrils; we crossed the Medway at Rochester and followed the south branch of the High Way. By the time we reached the outermost edge of the Andredsweald, darkness was upon us.
E WENT THROUGH Crayford, with the rank smell of the river always in our nostrils; we crossed the Medway at Rochester and followed the south branch of the High Way. By the time we reached the outermost edge of the Andredsweald, darkness was upon us.
“Even by day this is a dark and dangerous place, Your Grace,” Osbert warned me. “I strongly suggest we camp here tonight and continue at cockcrow.”
“Will we arrive in time?”
He smiled slightly. “For sure, my lady. Battles are rarely fought when the two armies first espy one another. There will be some negotiations, camps will be pitched and battle plans made, and a suitable battleground must be chosen. Even if the fyrd marches all night, it will be the day after tomorrow before both sides are prepared to take to the field.”
Osbert was right about the Andredsweald. A few yards inside the forest and you could not see your horse's ears in front of you. I was glad to wrap myself in my cloak and lie upon the earth at the wood's edge, where I could at least see the stars.
When the sky was still ashy gray, we were up and mounted once more. Rhodri was fretfulâhe had not slept enoughâbut Nesta was happy to continue her flirtation with Osbert and my brave Llywelyn was excited at being allowed to ride with Osbert's men, feeling very military.
The cold darkness of the forest closed over our heads. The air grew thick and heavy with the smell of living and dead things, green ferns and rotten wood. Even more ancient than Nottingham was the Andredsweald; the Romans had cleared only a part of it during their long occupation of our land, and the forest had relentlessly claimed its own and more, clutching at the hills and valleys with oaken fingers.
The coast road ran through the wood in a serpentine, so different from the broad High Ways of the open country. The way was still paved with Roman stone, though much broken now, and if we did not stray off into the trees there was no danger of getting lost. As the day progressed, dimly seen through the heavy foliage, we began to meet people coming the other way on the road.
They proved to be refugees, fleeing the burning and pillaging of the Normans on the coast. They had encountered the fyrd well ahead of us and given Harold's sentries news from the scene of the invasion; now they were passing their news to other travelers and doing right well at it. Each group they spoke with gave them food or ale or blankets; with luck they could replace some of their lost fortunes, such as they were.
At midday we shared our meal with a woodcutter who owned a small cottage on the southern border of the forest. “A fine little place it is, too,” he boasted, “all snug and out of the way!”
“If your home is so fine why have you deserted it?” I asked him. “Have the Bastard's men burned you out?”
“Not likely!” he laughed. “They could never find it, so well is it tucked into the hollow where I built it.
But they have done a goodly amount of damage to the countryside roundabout, raping and stealing and killing more cattle than they can ever eat! It sickens me to see, it does. I had my share of battles when I was youngâlost an eye to a spear and lived to tell of it!âand I want to see no more killing. I'm off to the North for a while until all of this is over.”
Osbert was indignant. “King Harold needs every man in the shire to join his armies and repel the invader. Do you not think it would be better for you to turn round and march the other way?”
Our mealguest looked at us through his one good eye. “If I thought so, I would do so, boy. But I will tell you a tale. When the Norman ships first came ashore it was at Pevensey, down the coast a way, and the shore where they landed was all mud.
“Men who were there say that the Normans waded ashore, carrying their armor with them, and among them was this Duke William. But as he reached the edge of the land the Duke put a foot wrong somehow and tripped, sprawling face downward in the mud.”
Llywelyn laughed aloud, Osbert and his men chortled, and even Gwladys gave a giggle. “It is not funny to me,” the old man continued, “and I will say why. It is told that when Duke William got to his feet his own men laughed, but he took no notice of them. He stood there, with his face all smeared and his hands covered with mud, and he held his fists up to the sky. âThus I take England in my own two fists!' he cried, and all his men cheered.
“Now, I have lived long, mayhap longer than I should have, and I will tell you this. A man who can turn bad into good like that will not be easy beaten. It is a dark sign. The battle will be terrible, and I think I will take me up to some cousins of mine near Ox Ford until the thing is settled.
“By the by,” he left us as a parting gift, “you are well come to the use of my cottage if you like! It's a
goodly one, though hard to find; I'll tell you the way to it.”
goodly one, though hard to find; I'll tell you the way to it.”
So it was that Osbert was given careful and complicated directions to the woodcutter's home, and his description of it proved to be right in one respect. It was marvelous hard to find. But a filthier, damper, more uncomfortable dwelling I never saw in all my days. Had it not been so close to the final encampment of the English fyrd I could never have considered using it.
We slept that night wrapped in our cloaks and coarse blankets, lying on a dirt floor that smelled more moldy than the forest itself. I lay awake long and long, listening to sounds I could not recognize and wondering what thoughts were Harold's on this night.
The endless night did end. Light crept through the cracks in the flimsily built walls and the smoke hole and I could hear the first sleepy morning songs of the birds in the Andredsweald. Our daylong treck through the forest had left me sensitive to each separate little voice, and I lay awhile just listening. Then I rose silently, so as not to wake the others, and walked tiptoe from the hut.
The chill of the night had grown deeper with the coming of dawn, so I wrapped my cloak of coarse brown wool about me in the rustic fashion, pulling it over my head like a shawl. My identity well disguised, I climbed out of the hollow where the cottage nestled and looked about.
The place was some six or seven miles inland but quite high, for in the distant dawn I could see the gleam of the Channel. At my back and all about me stood the trees, joined by massive walls of rhododendron, their leaves dark and leathery with the approach of winter. Before me the forest opened onto a rolling, grassy upland. The air, though cold, was sweet. Unbidden, the thought came to me, This is a pleasant place to die.
At a distance I could see the ruins of several burned
buildings, a farmer's holdings put to the torch by the Normans. Directly ahead of me, toward the Hastings Road, lay a broad meadow unspoiled by frost but trampled and ruined by thousands of marching feet. The land rolled upward to a ridge in the distance, and fell away on one side of that to a low and marshy area. Between the ridge and the edge of the forest where I stood rose a little hill crowned with oaks.
buildings, a farmer's holdings put to the torch by the Normans. Directly ahead of me, toward the Hastings Road, lay a broad meadow unspoiled by frost but trampled and ruined by thousands of marching feet. The land rolled upward to a ridge in the distance, and fell away on one side of that to a low and marshy area. Between the ridge and the edge of the forest where I stood rose a little hill crowned with oaks.
On that hill, brightly colored in the morning light, stood a silk pavilion usually pitched for ladies of quality. As the day brightened I thought I recognized the pennon fluttering from the staff; it was Gytha's colors. I was not the only one of Harold's women come to see the battle.
Black-robed figures moved about the hill; monks, perhaps from Waltham. And then I saw that there was a second pavilion on the far side of the first, a tent which sported no royal flag. Was it possible that Gytha had brought the Swan-Necked woman with her?
My face flamed in anger, and I quite forgot the need to remain out of sight. I longed only to rush across the dewy meadow and up that distant hill, and rake my nails down the face of the woman in the second tent. How dare she come to this place!
Then my baby moved within me, and my anger sank to a bed of glowing coals. It was not the time for recklessness. I stepped back into the shelter of the wood's edge, and as I did so I heard Osbert say, “You are up early, Your Grace.”
“Not early enough, mayhap. I see the fyrd is already encamped along that ridge yonder; preparations for battle seem to be already made.”
“I stood watch by the road, Your Grace, while you slept. Men came through the forest pell-mell all night to join the King's forces; there may be seven thousand men with the fyrd by now. And the King has chosen an excellent position, as you can see.” He stretched his arm southward, pointing out to me those details
of military strategy I would not otherwise have understood.
of military strategy I would not otherwise have understood.
“Lacking strength of numbers in both archers and mounted warriors, the King has spread his men along the top of the ridge to minimize the fire of Norman bowmen, who must shoot upward. That same position will make it more difficult for the Norman knights, who wear heavy armor and ride horses lacking in agility.”
“Does the ground drop sharply beyond the ridge, Osbert?”
“You cannot see it from here, Your Grace, but I have come this way before, and I can assure you it does. The King has been wise to come so quickly and get here first; he has placed his army directly across the road the Normans would take if they sought to reach London. They will have no choice but to stand below him and fight, for if they try to ride around him there is impenetrable undergrowth on one side and a marsh on the other.”
Directly athwart the road we could see the standards of Wessex and Harold Godwine, flickering in the rising breeze. Side by side the Golden Dragon and the Fighting Man guarded the way to the heart of England, and beneath them the tents of the nobles stood out against the skyline.
We could see, and smell, the smoke from the cooking fires; shouted orders drifted to us on the wind with the occasional whinny of a horse. But we were too far away to make out details; we might have been watching the scrunnage of a nest of disturbed ants. For a moment I envied Gytha her well-situated observation postâbut not her companion.
Osbert continued to point out the advantages Harold had acquired. “The marsh is called the Sandy Lake, and the ridge is named for it in the Saxon wayâSenlac. A quagmire lies hidden in that marsh, one which the King knows well enough but William's men may not have yet discovered. The land we protect will
protect us in turn, my lady; you will see. Many Normans may perish in that place before this day is through!”
protect us in turn, my lady; you will see. Many Normans may perish in that place before this day is through!”
One Merfyn, one of Osbert's men, came up to us then. As a man of Kent, he was quick to point out the Kentish flag at the west end of Senlac Ridge. The brave Kentish thegns had been honored to receive the Normans' first attack by way of their position. Were they tired, those waiting warriors? Or did they relish the killing light as it came in from the sea?
Never have I understood this about men. Taken one by one they do not want to die, they make a louder outcry than their wives at the smallest injury. But when they talk of battle while sitting safely before their own fires, their faces shine with love. What pleasure do they find in the stink of another man's blood? Those who kill can be killed, as every wife and mother knows. And when death comes in battle it is not glorious at all. It is hideous and vile and full of screaming, and men cry for hours for their mothers while their lives seep into the soil.
Yet a man will get up out of his marriage bed to go and seek that senseless pain, or to inflict it on a stranger who bears him no other grudge. I see nothing to recommend it.
Now we could see more men-at-arms coming out of the forest or running down the road, skirting Gytha's hill and hastening to join the English line. Shire levies, mostly, armed with their scythes and forks and clubs. No matter what happens, there are always those who arrive late. Griffith used to say that had the world ended in the year 1000, as the soothsayers predicted, some men would not have come to the Last Judgment until 1002.
“There is something strange about that,” I heard Osbert say to Merfyn.
“What is strange?” I strained my eyes to see the distant line of moving men.
“The sun is coming out of the Channel now, Your Grace, but it strikes no sparks from body armor!”
“Which means ⦠?”
“If a sufficient number of our men were equipped with ring mail and hauberks, as they were at Stamford Bridge, the sun would cast glints on the metal. But I see very few! I fear there is not enough armor to go around, and many just fight in only their leather tunics!”
My eyes were not so good as Osbert's, but I had detected another shortage. Even at that distance, the great Saxon shields of limewood should have been visible, their kite shapes outlined against the brightening sky. But there were not as many as there should have been. And the stragglers who were moving up to join the ranks carried simple planks, or even shutters torn from their houses.
“We had to leave too much armor in Northumbria,” Merfyn said sadly. “It was impossible to come back at the pace the King set and carry all of that as well.”
So that was the price of the victory at Stamford Bridge. Harold must lead his army to battle hiding behind their own shutters.
I left them and went back to the hut to see to my children. They were all awake, and Gwladys was feeding them a gruel of barley and honey, and some pounded nuts. I sat down on a small three-legged stool to warm my hands at the fire.
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