Let us Talk of Many Things; of Books and Queens and Pirates, of Mystery and Kings...: 1066 The Right Way Up and Turned Upside Down

A series of all things 1066

Within twenty years of the Conquest, after the North of England had been savagely razed and the Domesday Book compiled, King Harold II's reign of nine months and nine days was completely undermined. Despite legitimate crowning and anointing, therefore taken unto God in the newly built Westminster Abbey, he was systematically downgraded to his pre-1066 title of Earl and discredited. William's media managers had to justify political murder.
Harold, the rightful King of England was hacked to death on the battlefield, butchered by four of Duke William's men - to the great anger of William himself, for he needed the body to prove his rival was dead...

October 15th 1066
Seven miles inland from Hastings at the place of battle
(an author wouldn't normally use a final chapter as an excerpt - but I'm not exactly giving away any spoilers!)

The night had passed with bitter slowness for Edyth, known for all her life as The Swanneck. All those men who could walk, limp or hobble had drifted away, silent, into the darkness, making for their own homes, to try to forget what they had witnessed; to rest, to heal. To be ready to fight again, if they were wanted another day. Those who were left, the wounded who had no strength for walking, lay waiting for death. Most of them had not survived the night of cold rain. The women had made their way among them throughout the night, collecting up those they knew for burial, helping those few who remained alive to the tents in the woods to be comforted and bandaged as best they could.

Strange, but Edyth’s tears would not come. They were there, screaming in her throat, in her head, but they would not reach her eyes. And beyond that silent scream there was nothing else. Nothing, only a blankness and that last view of her Harold as he had stood beneath the trees, one hand raised in a salute of farewell….

The sounds of that ending had carried through the forest, tossed by the wind moaning through the autumn-coloured leaves of the trees. She had heard that last cry, that desolate howl of defeat, the bewildered silence that had followed.

They had gone up to the ridge, Gytha and she, with the other women, once the dark had settled and the Normans had gone back down to their side of the valley beyond the brook. Had carried a torch, eerie in the blackness, it had flared and hissed as the rain spat into the pitch. The rain… if only the rain had come earlier! They had looked for Harold, but had not found him.

She thought she would not be able to do this thing, to walk up and down the lines of what had once – only yesterday – been men. The Normans had gathered together those who had fallen beside the standards, laid them in a row along the gory ridge. So much blood, the rain had not yet washed it clean. They had all been stripped naked, their hauberks and tunics stolen, everything that belonged to one man of value to another. So many of them were without limbs or heads, their bellies slit open, their innards pulled out. She tried not to look at the details as she walked from one corpse to another. She recognised the faces, distorted in the agony or surprise of death. These were – had been – Harold’s housecarls, his loyal men who had given everything to serve him, some of them since he had become Earl of East Anglia, on through his being Earl of Wessex and King. Some had even served Godwine before Harold.

It was no use looking at those who had faces to recognise. She would not find Harold by his familiar face or by the colour of his hair. They had hewed his head from his neck. William, the Duke, had told her so as he had come up on the ridge escorted by that other man, fitz Osbern. How he had looked at her, spoken to her! As if she were something a boot had trodden in. He had stood, legs spread, fists resting on his hips, his head, with the hair shaven in the style of all his kind, tipped backwards, bloated with arrogance.

“So you are his whore,” he had said.

Edyth had looked at him, eye to eye, her pride the more dignified, the more honourable. “I would rather be whore to a good man like Harold than duchess to a man who commands murder to satisfy his ambition.”

She found Harold towards the end of the row. Recognised him by the faded, distinctive scar that swerved across his shoulder. And by the others on the upper arm, the right thigh, the small V shape on the hip. Scars, honourably won in skirmish and battle, in fight and feud. It was the one on the shoulder, though, that she reached out for. Her trembling fingers stretched forward but did not touch. She remembered her dog, his brother’s dagger making this wound. The killing of her dog and the kindling of their love.

“Is this it? Is this him?” The voice, the eager words in French, startled her. William stood behind her, ordering men to take away what remained of the body. His men began carrying it down the slope towards the Norman encampment.

“Monseigneur!” she cried, coming to life, running after William who was starting to walk away. She caught hold of his tunic sleeve; he snatched it from her grasp as if stung, a hiss of anger leaving his lips.

“Monseigneur, the body is for my lord’s mother! Did you not say she could take it? She is with the English wounded, not down yonder. We would give my lord proper burial.”

William glowered at her, unused to being questioned. “Do you think I shall not ensure it, Madame? He shall be buried, but where no one will know or tell of it. By the sea, I think. Oui, he can guard the coast he failed to defend.” He hurried the men forward, flicking his hand impatiently at the woman who stood stunned, disbelieving, as they took what remained of her beloved away.

The woman forgotten, William called to one of his lesser commanders, who was making his way obliquely across the sloping, scarred hillside. “Malet! William Malet!”

The man raised his head at the shout, trotted to meet his duke, listened gravely to his orders. Already he had been charged with the burial of all these dead – the Norman dead, the English could look to their own. Mass graves, he had decided, would be best, pits dug away to the east where the ground appeared softer. Now he had this other grave to dig. By the shore, the duke said. That would mean a journey back to the coast – as if he had not enough to do this day! But so be it. Duke - King - William had commanded it.

Edyth sank to her knees. There on the blood-mired trampled grass, she covered her face with her hands. He was gone. Harold, her lord, her lover. Harold, husband, father, earl and king, was gone from her for ever. The tears were coming and now that they fell, it would be so hard to stop them.

Down on the slope, a robin fluttered to the highest branch of a fallen tree. He lifted his head and sang, proclaiming his territory.

A far sweeter song than the bloodied one that had been carolled here but yesterday.