Read The Wind From Hastings Online
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
The Wind From Hastings (24 page)
Osbert rejoined me then, but I impatiently pushed the waterskin away. “See, Osbert, see there!” I waved wildly to call his attention to the action before us.
Apparently the Bastard's men thought he himself had been killed, for now we saw him galloping into the mass of deserters, snatching off his helmet that
they might see his living face. Back and forth he rode, trying to rally them to return to the fight. It was a courageous act, for without his helmet he was a tempting target.
they might see his living face. Back and forth he rode, trying to rally them to return to the fight. It was a courageous act, for without his helmet he was a tempting target.
Seeing the Normans in flight, the Saxon line, which had stood like a rock until then, lost control. For three hours they had stood under a terrible attack; now they saw a chance to get revenge, and they broke ranks to race in pursuit of the enemy. Whooping with glee, our shire levies followed the Normans into the marsh to take terrible toll of them with club and spear.
I could see both armies breaking ranks and milling about in confusion. The only men who seemed to hold steadfast were our own officers, struggling to re-form the shield wall along the ridge. The frantic commands of the housecarles carried clearly: “Return to your posts! Re-form the line!
Re-Form
the
line
!”
Re-Form
the
line
!”
By now a great number of our soldiers had abandoned the ridge and were either in the marsh or beyond Senlac, out of my sight. But the terror which had unmanned the Normans seemed to be over. William's efforts began to succeed, and he and his officers stemmed the Norman retreat. His men turned back to stand and fight, now that the English had left their protected position on the heights. In hand to hand combat, our tired soldiers stood little chance against the fresh Normans and their superior equipment.
Most of what followed I could not see clearly, but I could guess at it from the maneuvering taking place around the command post under the standard of the Fighting Man. We had to be suffering heavy losses; the officers were desperate, and the trumpets blew Recall incessantly.
Harold galloped up the ridge, gave hasty orders to the thegns, and was gone again. After an endless time our men began to return to their places, but there were not nearly so many as had gone joyfully whooping after the Normans. The unarmored shire levies
who had gone into the marsh did not come back at all, nor did the King's brother Gyrth.
who had gone into the marsh did not come back at all, nor did the King's brother Gyrth.
“Why don't Edwin and Morkere arrive with reinforcements?” I asked Osbert time and again.
His answer was always the same. “I think they hang back, Your Grace, because their levies were so reduced in the campaign in Northumbria. But they will be here, surely!”
Under a sky as blue and tranquil as that of a May day, men screamed their lives away in that bloody place, trying to win a piece of land no victor could carry home with him. And when all these men are dead, their bones turned to dust and their names forgot, still the land will be here under other blue October skies.
I found myself exhausted, and when Osbert offered me a honeycake and ale I took them gladly.
When we finished our little meal, Osbert tried to get me to go back to the hut, but of course I would not. As he knew beforehand. While our decimated army regrouped, we, too, prepared ourselves for the next phase of the battle. On Gytha's hill I saw two tall women standing before her tent, waiting also.
At last the trumpets sounded Charge, and it all began again.
The afternoon became a long blur to me. The yelling was as dreadful as ever, but it came from fewer, tireder throats. The clash of arms and stench of blood seemed to have filled this place forever. Our men stood in their solid defense line once more, but the Normans broke through it again and again, and each time there were less shields on the wall.
Sometimes I could see the King's bare golden head and swinging ax. Once or twice I glimpsed Duke William, each time on a different horse. We were slaughtering his horses, at least!
Ansgar the marshal dragged a Norman knight from his horse not too far from where we watched among the trees. The two of them struggled on foot, each
man seeking an advantage that would allow him to kill the other. The Norman had lost his sword somewhere; all Ansgar had left was the broken shaft of a javelin. Neither wanted to get within the reach of the other and so they circled round and round, like chained bears put in the pit to fight.
man seeking an advantage that would allow him to kill the other. The Norman had lost his sword somewhere; all Ansgar had left was the broken shaft of a javelin. Neither wanted to get within the reach of the other and so they circled round and round, like chained bears put in the pit to fight.
Ansgar grabbed up some scruffy little bush and lashed the knight across the face with it, then jumped back. I saw his teeth gleam in a ferocious grin. The enraged Norman closed with him and was rewarded with a knee in the groin. Rolling on the ground, grunting and cursing, they looked much as my brothers had in so many childhood scuffles. Then a red pool began to leak out from beneath them, and when Ansgar stood up I could see the splintered haft of the javelin driven through the Norman's mouth and up into his brain. The man died so close to us we could smell the odor of his bowels opening. Ansgar reeled with fatigue above him, then righted himself and went off to catch the Norman horse.
My brain was scalded with the sights I saw.
Again I saw the invaders break and retreat, much as they had done in the morning, and again the English ignored their orders and raced after them. The outcome was the same as before. The Normans led their pursuers some distance away, then turned on them and cut them down. In their reckless courage, the Saxons and Angles died, and fewer returned each time to Senlac Ridge. By now the Normans knew our men would follow, even to their doom, if they thought their enemy was retreating. A cold and calculating brain used this knowledge to great advantage, and the Saxon leaders were powerless to prevent the suicide of their own men. Each feigned retreat meant further casualties.
It was a pitifully small group by now, the English fyrd. Where just that morning they had stood in a grand army the length of the ridge, now they were a small knot of desperate men. Harold pulled together
what remained of his troops and formed them about his standard, with the remaining shielded housecarles along the front. They were the wall against which the Norman sea must break, and their steadfast courage was the King's last defense.
what remained of his troops and formed them about his standard, with the remaining shielded housecarles along the front. They were the wall against which the Norman sea must break, and their steadfast courage was the King's last defense.
Dead and gone were the shire levies who had rallied to Harold's standard from all the corners of the land. Men from York and Gloucester, from London and Lincoln and Lindsey, their broken bodies littered the Hastings Road. In their coarse peasant robes, the dirt from their fields still under their nails, they sprawled dead in the marsh and on the slopes. Some of them had been cowards, and many of them had been foolish, but their massed numbers had been the backbone of the army and now they were gone. The ceorls with their spears and their skullbreakers were gone. Even the Kentish men, famed for their skill in warfare, were gone.
All that was left of Anglo-Saxon England stood together. The standard of the Fighting Man still rode the summit; there were just not enough fighting men left beneath it.
But so great was their determination that they fought on, unslacking. They could not win, but they would not lose. Then William the Bastard bethought him of a new stratagem. Orders were shouted, and the archers were brought up again and massed at the foot of the ridge. But they did not shoot at an upward angle against the massed shields. No, they aimed their arrows almost straight up, so they flew up all at once in a dense black cloud, arched high above our line, over the protective shields, then fell swiftly down into the English ranks.
I do not know how many were hit, for I saw only one. Harold of England took an arrow in the head and fell, with a dreamy slowness, to the bloodsoaked earth.
His own men stepped back from him in shock and horror, and I could see clearly what happened next.
With his own hands, he grasped the arrow by its shaft and pulled it out of his eye socket. He writhed on the ground in agony, but before anyone could touch him he was on his feet again. Somehow he found the strength to shoulder his ax one more time, and he went between his own housecarles and met the Normans coming up the slope. His stunned troops followed him, but it was obvious he could not last long. The English line was broken completely now, and even Duke William had ridden to the top of the ridge. I saw him sitting on yet another horse, directing a group of knights to capture our standards and end the battle.
They carved their way with flashing swords to the King of England. I watched him fight, and go down, and struggle weakly to rise again. The hacking blades closed over him.
The war ended then, for England and for me. Sick to my soul, I turned my back on all of it and stumbled through the woods to my children. If Osbert accompanied me I cannot recall it; I neither heard nor saw anything.
The woods were black, as if the sun had set.
I
LAY ON the floor of the hut, only half-aware of the activity around me. Voices spoke, figures bent over me, but I could not answer them. Even the voices of the children were abrasive and unwelcome; I tried to push them away with my mind.
LAY ON the floor of the hut, only half-aware of the activity around me. Voices spoke, figures bent over me, but I could not answer them. Even the voices of the children were abrasive and unwelcome; I tried to push them away with my mind.
“Your Grace! Your Grace!” Someone had been shaking my shoulders for a long time. I fought to focus my reluctant eyes and saw that it was Osbert. Beyond him Gwladys hunched, crying into her apron.
“Night has come, my lady, and the Normans are scouring the countryside for survivors. What do you wish us to do?”
Osbert's tone was that of an uncertain child, seeking authority. At first I was puzzled to hear him thus; then I remembered. Authority was dead on Hastings field.
With great difficulty I forced my aching bones to sit me up. “The King, Osbert; what have they done with the King?”
There were actual tears in the housecarle's eyes, and I heard Gwladys sob aloud. “They cannot identify him, Your Grace.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked around the room, lit only by one feeble torch, as if hoping to find someone else who would say the words he did not want to say.
“The Normans stripped all the English bodies, my lady. And they are ⦠they are”âhis voice chokedâ“very badly hacked up. No one has been able to recognize King Harold.”
“Mother of God!” Bile flooded my mouth, and I retched onto the filthy floor.
But I could not afford the luxury of weakness. Harold was dead; everyone in that woodcutter's shack looked to me to tell them what to do. Our lives depended on it. The lives of the children of two kings depended on it.
I dug my nails into my palms until the pain cleared my head a little. “You say the Normans are searching for survivors? Is there a chance they will find us here?”
“I doubt it, Your Grace. Men have already passed by quite close without noticing the place; even at a little distance it seems part of the trees and brush. But if we took to the road now they would be on us in a twinkling.”
“William would not treat kindly with me, as ⦠as Harold Godwine did. My children and I would doubtless live out our lives in some damp Norman keep.” There was nothing more I could do for Harold, but much I could do for his unborn child.
“The Bastard shall not get us, Osbert. We will stay here until his army moves on to enjoy its conquest elsewhere, and then we will go someplace where he will never send to look for us. Doubtless he does not know I am here now; even the King did not know. He will assume I have been left in safekeeping somewhere, for him to pick like a ripe plum at his leisure.”
My mind was churning, picking over the plans that had been forming beneath its surface even as we came through the Andredsweald. There had always been the foreknowledge of this moment within me, I think. All
that I had learned must come together and save us now, and chart a future for my children. A safe future. Free of the heritage of blood.
that I had learned must come together and save us now, and chart a future for my children. A safe future. Free of the heritage of blood.
I forced my voice to be brisk. “Gwladys! Compose yourself, woman, and listen to me. Have you still those relatives you once told me about, in the mountains of Snowdonia?”
She looked at me wonderingly. “Aye, my lady.”
“And they would well come you, and give you shelter?”
“Aye ⦔
“Think you they would also extend the Welsh hospitality to a family of poor English freedmen, fleeing the Normans and anxious to build a new life for themselves?
The woman stared at me as if she were simpleminded. “But, Your Grace ⦠!”
“Do not call me that ever again! I am no longer First Lady, Gwladys! I am no longer a Lady at all, just a simple lowborn woman with my husband, here”âand I took the arm of the astonished Osbertâ“and our children.”
“
And that is who I shall remain
; do you understand me?”
And that is who I shall remain
; do you understand me?”
I do not know who was shaken more, Gwladys or Osbert. But at last it was agreed. Such identifying belongings as we had with us would be buried forever in the dark of the forest, save only Griffith's ruby and the ring Harold had put on my finger in the York Minster. These I would hide on my person in such a way that they would not be found if we were robbed and searched. Osbert gave his housecarles, save only Merfyn, who had an eye for Gwladys, permission to leave us and make their own ways home. The remaining horses we turned loose; they were fine enough to give us away.
Osbert caught a farmer's nag running loose in the woods and tied it up at a distance for me to ride when
we left. “You cannot walk to Wales, my lady, not in your condition!” he said gently.
we left. “You cannot walk to Wales, my lady, not in your condition!” he said gently.
When the sickly dawn broke over Senlac Ridge, I bade Merfyn go as near as he dared to the battlefield and see if he could learn if the King had been found. When he came back he was dragfooted, and I thought the news was bad.
“No, King Harold has been found, my lady. Duke William has taken his body and says he will give it decent burial, but he will not return it to the English.”
Harold Godwine. Once more in William's custody.
“How was he identified, Merfyn?”
It was obvious that that was the part he was loath to tell. “I met one of the Earl Gyrth's men; he told me that the monks from Waltham went to Duke William and asked for the King's body. He sent them to try to identify it, but they could not. They went to Gytha, but she could not even try.”
Poor Gytha; I pitied her then as I had never done before.
“And so, who found the King, Merfyn?”
He footshifted and would not meet my eyes. “No one knew you were here, my lady ⦔
“Aldith! Call me only Aldith, Merfyn, and mind you do not forget!”
He looked most uncomfortable. “Yes, uh, Aldith. At any rate, no one knew you were here, and so, uh ⦔
“And so?”
“Edith Swanneshals went down to the field. The monks carried torches for her, and she walked among the English dead, bending over their naked and butchered bodies and going dry-eyed.”
I felt sick.
“At last she stopped, my friend said, and cried aloud, sinking onto the ground. She cradled what lay there in her lap and would not be comforted. It is said she recognized the King by signs none other would know.”
He did not have to add that. I did not want to know it!
“And so the King's body was wrapped in linen and carried to Duke William, but then he refused to give it to the monks after all. We can only trust he will treat it kindly; we are powerless to do more!”
Merfyn's voice rose in an agony of helplessness and regret. Behind our eyes, I think we all watched that woman moving slowly among the dead, her face ghastly in the torchlight.
The Normans have begun to pull out. Osbert has seen their divisions moving slowly up the road toward London, and I shudder for those who encounter them along the way.
We will not follow the London road but cut cross-country, as the local folk do. It will be a long journey, and the cold weather will reach us in earnest before we see the mountains of Wales rising ahead of us. But I feel my babe strong within me, and I know Osbert will keep his vow to the King and care well for us.
Along the way, to pass the time, I will begin to instruct my children in their new heritage. Can the sons of kings be taught to live without slaughter, to put aside ambition and forget the claiming of thrones? We shall see. I want my sons to live, for the sake of life itself.
I am coming home, Griffith.
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