Senlac (Book One): A Novel of the Norman Conquest of England

By Julian delaMotte

Senlac is a two-part historical novel that brings to life the turbulent period leading to the Norman Conquest of England in 1066. A bloody war, fought at close hand and on horseback with sword and battle-axe, the English were forced to defend the kingdom against invasions by both the Normans and the Vikings. The book is named for the hill upon which the final defense was mounted. The results would dramatically change the course of history.

Senlac, Book One, opens during Christmas of the year 1065, a time of grave national crisis and disquieting omens, when the aged King Edward the Confessor, the seventh son of Æthelred the Unready, dies in the Palace of Westminster in London. He leaves behind no heir.

To fill the void, Edward’s brother-in-law, Harold, the Earl of Wessex and the greatest warrior in England, is hurriedly elected king by popular acclaim. Harold desperately seeks to unify a kingdom ravaged by the Danish occupation, and by unrest on both the Scottish and Welsh borders.

In order to ensure military support in the north, Harold must turn his back on his beloved common-law wife, Edith the Fair—also known as Edith Swanneck, for the graceful length of her neck—and their children to marry Aeldyth, the sister of both the Earl of Northumbria and the Earl of Mercia. Meanwhile, Harold’s mercurial younger brother, Tostig, is bitterly plotting a return from exile and revenge against the King.

Across the North Sea, the King of Norway, the aging and psychotic Harald Hardraada, who was said to be a full seven feet tall, dreams of a new Viking Empire on English soil, and strikes an alliance with Tosig. And across the English Channel, William, Duke of Normandy—the leader of a powerful yet unstable military state—plans his own attack, determined to avenge Harold’s broken promise to make England his.

Carefully researched and re-imagined by Londoner and first-time novelist Julian del la Motte, Senlac turns the dust of history into living flesh and emotion. “It might just be the best historical fiction you’ll ever read,” says Charles McNair, who was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel, Land O’ Goshen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Sager Group
• Release date: Nov 5, 2020

Julian delaMotte

Julian de la Motte was born in London. He graduated in Medieval History and Theology from SDUC Lampeter, University of Wales, and gained a postgraduate qualification in Medieval Art from the University of York. After spending three years in Italy as an English teacher he returned to the U.K. and worked as a teacher, teacher trainer, materials writer, and specialist in Cross-Cultural Training before becoming a Director of Foreign Language training to the U.K. corporate sector. This was followed by a career in International Sales and Marketing, involving extensive overseas business travel. Senlac is his first novel.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE:

A Blessing and an Anointment

Westminster: January 1066

Ever since they had come to this land, for far more years in the past than the ordinary man could possibly hope to fathom, the tribal Chiefs and Earls, the independent Kings and then, in their turn, the Kings of all the English had made their various exits from the world in a number of different ways. There had been very public deaths and those shrouded in mystery, never to be explained. There were deaths prolonged and deaths abrupt. There were deaths noble and deaths ignominious. Edmund of East Anglia, for an example, was tied to a stake and, famously, transfixed and martyred and taken to Heaven by the arrows of the northmen. An obscure King of East Anglia, on the other hand, had brained himself on a low-lying beam when leaving a latrine.

Edward, the uncle of the man now dying here, had been murdered by the followers of his own infant brother. Edmund, of course, was now with God, as was proven by the miraculous qualities of his shrine, to which the faithful travelled to worship and to petition in great numbers. Great cures and miracles had been seen to take place and had been duly recorded by the Chroniclers.

More recently, the two sons of Danish Cnut had, in their turn, died of drink and gluttony, with Harthacnut pitching spectacularly into the baked meats at a wedding feast. Edgar, called ‘the Peaceable,’ had died a long and gentle death surrounded by devoted family and friends upon whom he bestowed blessings, bequests and very sensible advice. Further back in time were those whose ends were not known and had thus become subject to the folklore of their descendants, yielding up a vivid and entertaining crop of legends. The generally favoured death, the stuff of songs, was death in battle, and with all wounds to the front, fighting against impossible odds and surrounded by loyal comrades.

The line of Cerdic had endured for over five hundred years. In that time, of course, Kings of England had died at all ages. Harald Harefoot had been only twenty-one, others even younger. Alfred, called ‘the Great’ had, against all expectations, seen fifty summers. Edward, the last of his line, had so far outlived Alfred by ten years. On this Twelfth night of the Christmas Feast and in his personal chamber in the Palace of Westminster Edward was now approaching his own end after a prolonged and extremely public illness.

***

In ordinary circumstances Edward and Edith his wife had always found the chamber much too large for their personal liking. It lay directly above the hall and to either side beyond the curtained entranceways there was a short and narrow corridor with small and Spartan cubicles for the servants. At both ends of the chamber wooden steps led to the hall below. To walk from one entrance of the chamber to the other was a matter of forty paces, between the two walls, twenty. The timber joists of the ceiling offered good headroom and not even the tallest of men would ever strike his head. Again, in ordinary circumstances, the room was of an impressive size. Both Edward and Edith shared intensely aesthetic and unworldly habits, largely unimpressed by the false glitter of the material things of the world. One of the richest Kings in Christendom, Edward’s furniture and visible possessions were more in keeping with those of a rather prosperous city merchant or a provincial nobleman with pretensions. More worldly visitors, princes of the Church and earls, sneered, though were at pains to never do so openly.

The royal bed, upon which Edward now lay, however, was impressive enough. To either side of it there were two large chests of finely carved oak, banded with iron and locked to keep prying eyes away from the more intimate possessions of the royal couple. Against the wall opposite the bed and placed between the two large, unglazed and curtained windows was a very large open cupboard containing possessions and trophies deemed appropriate for public view. There was silver and pewter plate and ornately hideous gifts wrought in fine iron and studded with gems that clashed and sparkled in the candlelight. There were objects of ivory and fine woods from monarchs and visiting dignitaries. Edward had never cared for any of them, either the gifts or their donors.

Below each window were two shelves of manuscripts and books, a chain with a lock securing them, once prized but now neglected possessions. The keys of the locks were in Edward’s purse and beneath the open windows and subject to the winter weather the documents had gathered mould and the once separate leaves were now stuck each to the other beyond salvation. There was a locked cabinet containing Edward’s precious writing things; parchment, ink, wax, sand, quills and seals. Here also he kept his sparse personal jewellery and spending money. Most of the available space was instead given over to an impressive personal collection of relics; the toe bone of this saint and the femur of that. From the smallest to the largest, these holy objects were contained in their own boxes, jumbled next to each other and each with a small personal prayer written by Edward himself to be read upon venerating the object. Above the bed and between the windows on the opposite wall were two large and skilfully sewn tapestries depicting the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. They brought no cheer or especial comfort to the majority of those there gathered.

Stacked along the walls in an untidy muddle was a clutter of late arrived Christmas gifts, too late arrived for the dying King to take any note of or to acknowledge. Fleeces, rugs and embroideries mingled with mysterious earthenware jars. There was amber from the north, a typically curmudgeonly gesture from Malcolm of Alba. The two Earls of Orkney, however, had shown greater goodwill, combining together to send a set of ivory chessmen. From the King of Dublin had come hack silver thieved from the Isle of Man and glassware carefully packed in straw. There were gifts from the earls and principal thegns of England of varying worth, use and attractiveness. More fabrics and fleeces, small bags of coin from Abbeys and Boroughs. From Durham had come the highly inappropriate gift to so unwarlike a monarch of a set of ten fine axes of Swedish make. The Abbot of Ipswich had sent the coffin lid of a dubious and obscure East Anglian saint.

More gifts lay in the outbuildings of the Palace. There were new falcons and peregrines and varieties of hawk dozing in the mews and fine gift horses stamped and snorted in the stables. Barrels of salt cod, wine, ale and mead and salmon in brine hindered and obstructed the kitchen workers as they carried in more humble local donations of cured hams, sides of beef and sheep carcasses.

***

If Edward, alternating between sleep and apparent lucidity, had not taken note of these tokens of esteem then the majority of his audience certainly had plenty of time on their hands to do so. Edward had been a long time dying and most present found it far more stimulating to make mental inventories, to eye one another furtively or to brood upon the embroidered Passion of Christ than focus upon the figure of the King. Vespers had come and gone and they had been there since noon.

It was bitterly cold and outside a strong gale was blowing, rattling and roaring through the close set tenements of Westminster. The curtains across the windows flapped and swayed and the candles on their stands set about the room flickered and guttered. Through some personal act of penitence, unexplained and typical of the man, Edward had always vetoed the fitting of shutters. A small boy, delegated the task, moved ceaselessly about the room with a taper relighting extinguished candles. The room had grown increasingly gloomy and with that dramatic alternating light and shadow which accompanies candlelight.

At each corner of the room a small brazier, prudently set within metal trays of water against the threat of fire, glowed white and red with Sussex charcoal, causing discomfort to those nearest and affording no benefit of heat to anyone else at all. The immediate space around Edward’s bed was crowded enough, but the rest of the room was packed and seething with spectators. In the close confines of the chamber they reeked of body odour and smoke and unwashed clothes. Earlier on that day the well born and the otherwise privileged had taken possession of the trestles and stools carried up from below and placed as near to the death bed as common decency allowed. All others there either leaned against the walls where the piles of Christmas gifts so permitted or else crowded around the two doorways.

Edward lay inert and breathing heavily. His old white head lay back upon the pillow and his breathing was harsh, half gasp and half snore. It had been some time since last he had spoken. At the end of the bed his wife Edith, a small and doll like figure, massaged his numb diabetic feet. Adelbert, his German physician, held Edward’s left hand for no apparent reason and with no apparent effect. Edward’s personal chaplain stood by the other side of the bed, muttering in reasonably good Latin. It was clear to all there present that Edward at his fine old age of sixty would not last the night.

There was a fine collection of representatives of the Church there to mark his passing. Pride of place on the front bench went to Stigand, the excommunicant Archbishop of Canterbury, flanked by the venerable and highly revered Bishop of Worcester, Wulfstan, and doddery old Ealdred of York. To either side was a huddle of clerics of varying rank and prestige. The equally ancient Abbot of Glastonbury was fast asleep, kept upright only by the press of the people to either side of him. Leofric, the Bishop of Exeter, was weeping openly. He was an old friend of Edward’s, ever since the King’s days of Norman exile. They had both been very young then. William, the Norman Bishop of London, had left on some unspecified errand an hour since. He was in fact to be found in his chambers, burning documents in a fire and instructing a hand picked team of couriers in their several tasks of relaying news to Normandy. Plans for his own immediate departure were well in hand. With Edward dead England would be no fit place for Normans.

***

Packed together on a bench behind the Churchmen were no less than six Earls. The two teenage sons of Alfgar, Edwin and Morcar, represented the interests of both Mercia and of Northumbria. Prickly, adolescent and full of ill repressed energy and resentment, they muttered to each other from time to time in dialect undertones they hoped and assumed no other person there would understand. Harold of Wessex, so they maintained, had made them a promise, one they vowed to see fulfilled.

Acting as a barrier between the two surly Aelfgarsons, squirming and muttering upon the uncomfortable bench, and the all powerful House of Godwin sat Waltheof of Huntingdon, not yet twenty, upright, arms folded and staring into space. The twists and turns of the fortunes of his own northern house beggared description and his possession of the tiny earldom in place of that of Northumbria was a constant source of anger. Here, in this place and on this occasion and sitting next to his bitterest enemies, he held his tongue. Waltheof was wise beyond his years.

The House of Godwin had within its power all men and all things below a line that could be drawn between the Wash and the Bristol Channel. Within their combined possessions the dying King was a mere cipher. The three brothers were Leofwyn of Kent, Gyrth of East Anglia and Harold of Wessex, the oldest of the three. A key figure in the drama unfolding, Harold sat erect and unblinking, a large, well made and handsome man. He stared with absorbed concentration at the dying King, his attention absolute.

Less well regarded figures sat or stood behind and to either side of the two benches. Agatha, the widow of Edward’s nephew and the mother of Edgar the Aetheling, was placed upon a stool. In widow black, austere and angular, her attention too was rapt. Bloodline determined that the ten year old boy, nervous and withdrawn and prey to sudden fits, was a contender and possible heir to the Throne. He was largely held to be a halfwit and not fit at all to serve on a butcher’s stall, let alone be King of all the English. Leofwyn the Earl of Kent, had a fondness for all children. He had enticed the boy to come to stand by his shoulder. Quietly, and with knitting wool purloined from somewhere, he was teaching the boy a series of complicated knots.

There was a small gathering of Normans, straining to hear anything of note or value. Normans, never welcome in a land controlled by the Godwinsons, still maintained a tenuous position at Court. At their head was Robert Fitzwimarc. He was from Brittanny originally and his legally held lands in England entitled him to the title of Thegn and therefore the right to be present, albeit without benefit of seating. Fitzwimarc, William of Normandy’s principle spymaster and gatherer of information, was suffering from both cramp and a particularly vicious head cold. Loyalty to Normandy and an acute awareness of his own vested interests, however, required that he attend with a fierce concentration. Situated at the back of the chamber and in the gloom, he was able to stare and to take note with total impunity. Also lost in the gloom a number of others had bribed and insinuated their way in. Local Thegns mingled with foreigners. There were those there representing both Norwegian and Danish interests. There was a Fleming, two Alba churchmen, a merchant from Dublin and a brace of hostage Welsh princelings. All were calculating how long all of this was likely to take. Many of them were considering the weather and the sailing conditions, assessing their chances of being first home with the news.

Servants, suitably mute, solemn and unobtrusive, appeared with cold meats, bread and strong mead and expensive French wine. At the two doorways were a crowd of household servants and personal couriers to the quality awaiting their instructions, ready at a moment’s notice to speed messages along any of the major roads leading from the capital. A mysterious tonsured man in a hair shirt, presumably one of Edward’s many mystic waifs and strays, lay prostrate in a far corner muttering in a Latin much superior to that of Edward’s chaplain. No one, however, considered ejecting him. As an object of scrutiny he was a welcome change from the dying King, the Christmas gifts and the tapestries.

Without warning, and with no apparent effort, Edward King of England, suddenly sat bolt upright, staring about him. This was something new and the crowd of spectators strained forward. Perhaps this would be an end to all the discomfort and the waiting. Royal Westminster and the city of London to the east was packed and seething with visitors for the Christmas Crown wearing. The retainers, supporters, servants and the bodyguards, the housecarls, of those gathered in the chamber and down below in the hall jostled and squabbled in the crowded alleys, taverns and hostels of Westminster and London and the thin ribbon strips of slum buildings between. In the past week the city provosts had reported fourteen murders, eight of which remained unsolved.

Christmas, like Easter, was a traditional time for the worthy of the land to gather and meet in Council. The Witangemot, those Churchmen and regional noblemen appointed by their worth and degree to meet to discuss and agree upon policy, was an institution much envied by foreigners. It had gathered at Westminster two weeks past for the Christmas Crown wearing and for the formulation of policy. Beyond a shadow of a doubt on this occasion the assessment of a tax, the settlement of a land dispute, the conferring of a title or the stripping of another would come a poor second to the mourning of a dead King and the selection and acclamation of a new one. All, on their journeys of varying length to Westminster, had known this. For nearly three months Edward, hitherto in the best of rude health, had been in dramatic decline, a decline that had in fact commenced with the exile of the only Godwinson he had ever truly loved, Tostig of Northumbria.

Over the past weeks there had been any number of men of medicine bustling gravely around the Palace; those already attached to the court or else brought in or loaned by interested parties. Each of them had a favourite remedy and a set of suggestions. Edward had thus become an unprotesting battlefield over which they fought. He had been bled and blanched, starved and gorged, scorched, frozen and baked in turn. The time of the physicians had now passed. Edward lost all appetite and any vestigial interest he might have had in the governance of his realm, in reality a land controlled and governed by Harold Godwinson for many years past. Edward’s lifelong passion for the hunt, his love of hounds and falcons, withered and died as physical weakness and lassitude overtook him. One day he simply took to his bed and remained there. Before this final crisis he had observed and made his religious devotions with his customary zeal. A cause of mounting anxiety to him had been the progress of the building of his beloved Abbey on nearby Thorney Island and devoted to Peter the Apostle. his Saint of preference and who had personally instructed him to build the Abbey in one of Edward’s many visions. The Abbey was now in fact near completion and the actual consecration had taken place in Edward’s absence a few days since.

In this time, while Edward gradually lost control of both his mind and his bodily functions, the chamber had teemed with physicians, clergy, architects and master masons. With the onset of fever and intermittent coma the artisans were ejected and the men of medicine threw up their hands in despair and withdrew. The Church assumed full control of affairs. It had been Adelbert, the only remaining physician, who had expressed the opinion that the end was now upon them, thus precipitating the unseemly scuffle for seating and a decent view all those hours earlier.

***

As Edward rose majestically in his bed everyone leaned forward expectantly. Over the past week they had endured platitudes and ramblings. More divertingly, they had also been provided with a number of interesting prophecies, Edward had always specialised in these. A series of bedside scribes had dutifully noted all of these down. The prophesies had been undeviatingly tinged with doom. These had been full of fire and famine, of a sickness that would strike down all the cattle, the swine and the sheep and leave them to rot in their fields and barns. Once more the Northmen would return to murder, rape and burn. In effect, the end of England.

Daughter, said Edward, he had always addressed his wife thus, and therein lay the core of the problem now facing the English. Edith gently lowered his feet and moved around the bed to take his hand from the ineffectual physician. Stigand of Canterbury was a fraction slower from his seated position on the front bench, though moving with impressive speed for a man in his mid seventies. He hovered over Edith’s shoulder and spoke urgently over the chaplain’s droning Latin. Lord, he said, What of the Kingdom?

Edward’s pink albino eyes swivelled and fixed upon him with a perfect clarity. The Kingdom? he repeated in a surprisingly clear voice. As I have said before. The Kingdom of the English belongs to God. He shall provide a King according to his pleasure. Stigand, sharing the frustration of most present, grew more insistent. Lord. Your time is come now. Edward nodded placidly and smiled. Thank you my Lord Archbishop. May God forgive me, but I never liked you, you know. But now the Lord bids that I should. Stigand, although discomfited by this observation heard by all, persevered nonetheless. Lord, there is no one to follow you that you have named. England would be rudderless and against the rocks.

Stigand saw no need to elaborate. All of the north, to put it mildly, was in ferment and barely on speaking terms with the south. On the Marches, the Welsh and the Scots were restless and cross border raids almost a daily occurrence. Alarming rumours circulated the Court concerning the intentions of Harald of Norway and Sweyn of Denmark. More to the point, there was Duke William across the Channel in Normandy. William, who would have news of all of this well within the week.

The Kingdom of the English belongs to God. I do not presume to dispose, only to suggest. The attention in the room was absolute, save for the prostrate mystic, the senile Abbot and the Dublin trader who also now, regrettably, was snoring noisily at the back. Let Norway and Denmark plough their own fields. They have meddled in our affairs for too long. Edward coughed and a thin stream of blood emerged from both nostrils, giving his physician something practical to do at last. A number of people were now off the benches, though Wulfstan remained seated. For so old a man he had extraordinary powers of hearing. Agatha was similarly gifted and remained where she was. Fitzwimarc, on the other hand, had moved to the bedside, though at great pains not to jostle Harold Godwinson. Harold knelt, his face inches from Edward’s. For twenty-two years Edward had reigned, but had seldom ruled. There had been occasional outbursts of petulance against those who had controlled him before and who would then go on to control him after. There had been occasional political whims, invariably leading to harm and damage to someone or other. For the most part, though, there had been only apathy and a resignation, an acceptance of the superior will and power of other forces, both temporal and supernatural.

Edward, the fruit of the marriage of Emma of Normandy and King Aethelred, a man satirically labelled ‘the Unready’ or ‘Poor Council,’ had been discarded only too gladly by his mother when she married his father’s successor, Cnut of Denmark. For over twenty years, and radiating out of his uncertain and impoverished place of exile in Rouen, Edward had travelled around and haunted the courts of relatives both immediate and obscure. It was an almost constant round of unwelcome visits and progresses and grudging hospitality. When Edward and his small and equally threadbare retinue arrived anywhere; be it in Brittany, Normandy, Flanders, Anjou or the Ille de France, his depressed hosts would immediately summon up a cleric to identify the Saint’s day. This would invariably be on or around when he had visited on the previous occasion and, armed with this information, they would then strive to recall how long he had stayed on the previous occasion. Be it a day or a week, to them, the time of the departure would seem an eternity, expensive and tedious in the extreme.

From a very early age Edward had always been a creature of strict habit. His stays, subject to weather, could range from an extended weekend to an entire winter. Owing to his blood ties and his potential political importance, Edward could never be turned away. The possible consequences of this might prove to be catastrophic.

Over six feet in height, skeletal and permanently dressed in black, the vegetarian Edward, for all his love of the hunt, was a truly disturbing figure; with his wild, white hair and staring pink eyes. His conversations were primarily on deeply mystical subjects, recent visions and the like. He would also veer without any prior warning into enthusiastic and unexpectedly earthy tales of the hunt, his only temporal vice and one at which he excelled. At table people made every effort within the decent bounds of decorum not to sit next to him. Hosts and fellow guests alike were both bored and repelled by him. They were also not a little fearful, for Edward had the second sight. Invariably, during a stay, he would predict a whole set of instances, none of them fortunate, that would have occurred by the time of his next visit. This was depressing for all concerned, particularly as it was common knowledge that he was so often right.

***

Perhaps this was second sight now, his dismissal of Norway and Denmark. Irritably, Edward waved the physician away.

You will do well to beware of Norway, he said. Edward sank back on the bed and closed his eyes. When next he spoke his voice was weaker.

Godwinson of Wessex is here. What of your promise to my beloved William, Harold? Behind Harold, Fitzwimarc smiled like a razor.

Edward sighed, still, that is a matter for you and my Lord Duke and for God, whose land this is. He paused to take breath.

Lord, hissed Stigand. Name your heir. Edward ignored him.

Godwinson, he said. Behold my wife, whom I call daughter and who is your sister. She is the greatest treasure I leave behind. Look after her and this land until God decides what is to be done.

Harold nodded silently. He stood and took in the others in the room with a slow raking glance. What was this but the naming of an heir? He wished, though, that it could have been said more plainly. God’s final judgement could wait.

Stigand whispered to the open-mouthed clerk, Note that. To the chaplain he said, I shall do this. He snatched the necessary things from the man’s hands and applied Final Unction. His lips and those of all the clerics there moved in unison. Harold stepped back and into Fitzwimarc, who uttered a brief yelp of apology. There was no triumph or derision in Harold’s voice as he spoke, instead a sadness and a fatalistic acceptance of the inevitable.

This is not an ending, Fitzwimarc. It is a beginning. God help us all. A good wind and tide to you on your journey to Normandy. Once they had been relatively close, they had shared travels and had on occasion come together at unexpected encounters on the road or at country homes. Fitzwimarc looked to be on the point of embracing the Earl. Instead he bowed formally and shouldered his way through the door. There followed a general exodus. Couriers were hurriedly briefed and then clattered and thumped down the wooden stairs, followed by the foreigners, anxious to have their affairs in order before the next tide. Below in the hall was an uproar. Only about twenty or so remained to hear Edward whisper daughter and to watch as, finally, he died.

***

Dry eyed and unprotesting, Edward’s strange wife Edith was led away to a separate place elsewhere in the Palace while servants finally succeeded in manhandling the protesting mystic up from his prostrate position and tumbled out into the bitter cold. Agatha stalked from the room with dignity, followed by her son and servants. Adelbert straightened the dead man’s limbs and closed his eyes, placing two silver coins upon them. Next he bound the dead man’s jaw with a strip of cloth, deftly securing it behind the head. All other servants not strictly necessary made themselves scarce, hurrying back to the lower echelons to spread the news of the King’s last words and moments.

As Stigand completed the Office of the Dead, Harold and his two brothers stood before Wulfstan of Worcester, the one man above all others whom Harold respected and revered.

Now what do I do? he asked. There was a slight edge of panic in his voice. Wulfstan smiled.

My son, he said, for years past you have been the master of your own affairs and of this land. Now, more than any other time, it is to you that the people will look for guidance and comfort. With effort he stood, leaning on his stick with both hands. Our Lord Edward, God rest his soul, spoke well. The Kingdom of England does indeed belong to God. As to its immediate disposal, that is a matter for the Council. There are in Westminster all those of rank necessary to arrive at a decision. Forgive my years. I think I shall sit. Stigand was now on hand to help him and, of course, to listen.

Brother in Christ, I thank you. And God’s blessings upon you, Wulfstan said.

Now, he turned briskly to Harold. Listen to me. Kings have passed on their estate to a son or to a stepson, to a grandson or occasionally a nephew or cousin. In all cases, though, a Council has met to agree upon the choice. That is as important to us as the say so of any King. You are not of the blood royal, to be sure, but we have his words and we all know the possible alternatives. Let the Council meet He looked at the bed, stood once more and then made for the door, pausing to bless the dead man. May the blessing of God be on all here, he said as he left. Now I am for bed.

There was space enough now for a quartet of monks, sinister and anonymous in their cowls, to take up position for the Vigil. Their voices began to rise and fall in plainsong chant. Edward’s chamberlain was conferring with two men at the doorway. Edward had long since commissioned his own casket and the three now discussed technical details. Stigand handed Harold a small calfskin wallet. Harold pulled the drawstring and tipped the contents into his palm. There was the key to Edward’s personal chest and his ring for the authorising of documents.

For your safekeeping, my Lord of Wessex, said Stigand, a man recognised as Archbishop of Canterbury in England alone. For his plurality and his venality he had long since been disowned by Rome. The scrawny old man was a long serving and veteran political survivor of extreme skill, one who had for years played a pivotal role in the many plots, coups and intrigues of the past quarter century and in the reigns of four kings. Increasingly, though, he was becoming a political and diplomatic liability, and Stigand himself knew it only too well.

For the moment nothing is changed, he said. You remain the Regent.

Yes, said Harold, thank you, I know. He beckoned over the Chamberlain and issued instructions for the following day. That done, Harold, King in all but name, turned to his brothers.

It is late, but there remain things still to be said.

Stigand agreed, here, or in your chambers perhaps? Harold eyed him coldly.

There is no need for your presence or your trouble. My Lord Archbishop, Goodnight.

***

The brevity of his own funeral service would have scandalised Edward, though in fact all appropriate formulae were observed with proper form and ceremony. It was the speed of it all that he would have objected to. Before the Altar of the newly consecrated Abbey two large flagstones had been levered up. A team of workers had dug in shifts through the rubble and the viscous London clay throughout the night and to a depth of ten feet. With immense effort and absolutely no blasphemy, they had manhandled and lowered an immense stone sarcophagus into the pit. Blasphemy would be reserved for when they could foregather in a tavern afterwards. Others, more fortunate in their tasks, placed a large wooden dais in the south transept for the high clergy and seating for the Council. Election and Accession would follow directly on from the funeral. Back in Westminster Hall the Chamberlain and his harassed staff worked feverishly. Time would be extremely limited between the exit of the old King and the entrance of the new in which to prepare a proper banquet that promised to be an uneasy mixture of mourning and celebration.

Edward, his face uncovered, was carried out of the hall on his bier. His hair had been combed and his long white beard teased into two strands. A golden fillet had been placed about his brow and his pale marble hands clutched an ivory wand surmounted by a golden rose, a gift from the Holy Father in Rome himself. Shrouded in fine purple, he was every inch the Biblical Patriarch and in life he had never smelt sweeter. Reverence and common sense had caused his wooden bier to be strewn with fresh rosemary and thyme cut from the Abbey gardens and fine linen bags of camphor packed the sides of the casket. Before and after came acolytes, coughing furtively as they swung censors of expensive incense. The short walk across marsh, mud and duckboards and across Tyburn brook between the Palace and the Abbey was swiftly made in swirling sleet. The more thinly clad shivered miserably and winced, those more blessed with greater wealth sought shelter within their furs and thick cloaks. The assembled men of the Church came first, the gathering of noblemen following after. Edward’s face was covered and once within the shelter of the half finished Abbey the wooden casket was lowered with black drawstrings into the sarcophagus before the Altar.

Many there were not old enough to remember or had been present at the last interring of a King of England nearly a quarter of a century before. The burial of Harthacnut had also been perfunctory. Totally unversed, the laity were content to follow the lead of the far more elderly clergy, manfully improvising as they went along, nodding, kneeling and rising as each occasion seemed to demand. Psalm One hundred and forty-six was declaimed with solemnity. ‘Put no faith in Princes, in any man who has no power to save. He breathes his last breath, he returns to the dust; and in that same hour all his thinking ends.’

Determined to make his mark on the ceremony, whatever the role he might be allocated at the next one, Stigand next spoke in a high and carrying voice, reading from the Gospel of John. ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. If a man believeth in me, even though he shall die he shall come to life.’ Another text from John, the assurance that those with faith would possess eternal life. In conclusion came St Paul to the Corinthians, with Ealdred of York striking a further optimistic note. "‘In Adam all men die. In Christ all are bought to life.’" There followed further blessings.

The stone lid was lowered and then the flagstones replaced and all present then turned smartly and made for the south transept and the second major event of the morning. There were a number of muted unseemly scuffles as the lesser fought for seating or at least some standing point of vantage. The women and their entourages, Edith and Agatha, were escorted from the Abbey through a side door in order to avoid the gathering crowds at the main entrance. No women for this occasion, nor Normans either. Again, missing from the clergy, was William Bishop of London. Even now he and his hastily assembled retinue were churning up the mud in great clods as they galloped across country in a furious race to the Essex coast where boats had long since been requisitioned.

***

Aesegar, Sheriff of Middlesex and of London, was also absent. After a chaotic night he was now experiencing an equally trying morning. Empowered by the Earl Gyrth, he was busying himself in organising raids on foreign wharves and lodgings throughout the city and over at the Southwark, sweeping foreign merchants and visitors into protective custody or else house arrest. It would take him and his men the best part of a week to throw an effective cordon around all those with known Norman sympathies. Those, that is, who had not taken immediate advantage of favourable wind and tide.

Those waiting in other parts of the Abbey and outside for news shuffled, stamped their feet and blew on their hands, it was a morning of eye watering and piercing cold. Events in the south transept proceeded at their own pace. Very few of the major figures present had slept at all, certainly not Harold. There had been a brief and confrontational meeting at dawn with the senior representatives of the Church. At this meeting Harold, in his capacity as Regent, had clearly left no room for doubt in informing Stigand that he would play no part in any consecration of the new King, whomsoever that might be. The eyes of Christendom would be upon England at this time, from furthest Norway to the Leonine City in Rome. Pope, Emperor, Kings and any number of lesser powers of Church and State throughout Europe would take full advantage of any dubious ceremony conducted by an excommunicant. Individually or in concert, they had the power to revoke existing ties of diplomatic or commercial alliance or else seek new partners and combine to England’s disadvantage. Any sudden shifts of power, opinion and influence and all would need to be built anew. No, the task of Consecration would fall to Ealdred of York. Stigand, his eyes hooded and feeling the sting of humiliation and salt tears, nodded and acquiesced. Perhaps his time would come again. There were, after all, any number of people he could contact. Ealdred, a genial figure and not of the greatest intelligence, enfolded Stigand in a canonical embrace. Stigand smiled brightly at him, keeping his own thoughts to himself.

In the Abbey the hasty Council took place beneath the half completed roof. A consensus of sorts had emerged with regard to the selection of the next King and the immediate future of England. Men vied with each other to take the chance to speak. This was the purpose of this particular gathering. If the Kingdom of England belonged to God then surely God helped them who helped themselves. The Church had had its say, its statements peppered and buttressed with texts from Holy Writ. ‘Woe to the land whose King is a child’ was the common theme. Thus had the young Aetheling, with his nervous tic, his slack jaw and open mouth, his stammer and his impeccable credentials of direct blood line, been swept from the board. Seemingly uncaring, surrounded by his three man bodyguard of devoted Hungarians, the boy instead fiddled with the yarn and the intricate knots taught him the night before by that nice man, Leofwyn Godwinson.

There was loud and outspoken defiance to the Kings of Norway and Denmark. There was neither right nor reason to offer England as a hostage to the uncertain mercies and justice of either of these alien Kings. England had suffered enough at their hands in the past and the Council thus rejected any spurious claims of old promises or tenuous marriages.

Harold, stepped up to the hastily arranged wooden dais. which creaked alarmingly beneath his feet. He was flanked by his two brothers to one side and his nephew Haakon, once hostage to the Norman bastard, and his uncle Aelfwig, Abbot of New Minster Winchester, on the other. Below and before him stood a group of determined looking Wessex men, arms folded and looking out with belligerence at the convened Council.

Briefly Harold outlined once more his support for the young Aetheling, his words echoing around the cold stone walls. He spoke, it seemed, with conviction and sincerity. Let the Aetheling be crowned. He, Harold of Wessex, would stand as Regent until the boy reached his coming of age. Let all take witness that he had stood as Regent time enough in the time of Edward, God rest his soul. Until the boy assumed full power he, Harold of Wessex, would take on all governance and defence of the English. When the time was right he would then seek a justified rest in his own lands in his declining years, subject to the demands of his new King.

Predictably, for the point had been arrived at, the men of the south shouted and bayed. Harold for King, no other. Testimonials of his past and future worth reverberated around the Abbey. Edwin and Morcar, Earls of Mercia and Northumbria, with very few of their own Thegns on hand for support, held their peace. Finally Wulfstan raised his hands for silence and, into that silence, came the timorous and aged voice of the Abbot of Glastonbury. And Duke William? My Lord of Wessex, you made a promise to our Lord Edward and to the Norman. You swore. You swore on Holy Relics in Normandy before the Duke himself. It was a wholly unexpected and courageous act on the part of the old man. There was a moment of shocked silence. It had been hoped by most that the subject of Harold’s supposed recent promise to the bastard of Normandy would remain undiscussed. The clamour broke out once more, Leofwyn’s voice rising above it all in a roar. Oaths and promises, extracted through trickery and threat. They hold no force for us. We shall have no Normans here. Young Waltheof of Huntingdon pushed forward, puffed up with rage and the charged intensity of the occasion. There is no other choice. Let Harold be King. Gyrth, in the ordinary course of events an unimpressionable man, shouted his own support. Let any come against us if they will. We shall be ready.

Stigand remained impassive, looking out through his heavily hooded eyes. Ealdred beamed amiably, not having fully grasped the flow of the discussion. It fell to Wulfstan to bring matters to a head. He sighed and rose to his feet. It was time for the meeting to be brought to order once more. As he stood the shouting subsided. Harold, he said. It is the view of this Council that you be elected King. I hear no dissent from any quarter. So, how say you?"

The two gazed at each other for a short while. Then so be it, said Harold finally. And may God be with me. Wulfstan nodded slowly. May he be so indeed, and all of us. He turned to all those assembled. "It is the will of all of us here. Let Harold be King. Vivat Rex."

The repeated shout of ‘Vivat Rex’ from within the Abbey was heard outside by the crowd. People began to emerge from the Abbey, shouting aloud as they stood on the still incomplete steps, now made more treacherous with ice, with positive confirmation of the choice. As the Council returned once more to the Altar for the ceremony, and then throughout it, the continued cry of ‘Vivat Rex’ rolled and reverberated from the growing and jubilant crowd outside.

While the Council had met all the necessary preparations had been made at the high altar in their absence. Ealdred took up position before it as the hastily assembled choir sang Psalm thirty-eight. ‘Let thy hand be strengthened and thy right hand be exalted. Let justice and judgement be the preparation of thy seat and mercy and truth go before thy face.’ As they progressed uncertainly onto the hymn of Consecration, the ‘Te Deum Laudamus,’ Ealdred turned to an acolyte and lifted the Crown of England from a costly silk cushion. With an almost casual gesture he requested Harold to kneel and he lifted and placed the Crown upon his head. Harold’s written oath to keep true peace and dispense true justice could wait for later. With his shaking thumb, the venerable Archbishop of York then anointed the new King’s brow with holy and sanctified oil. With an admirable enthusiasm but sadly less skill, the choir launched into a further anthem as priests handed Ealdred in turn the other symbols of earthly power; the ring, the sword, the sceptre and rod. Harold took and held them clumsily. God save him if he should drop anything. There must be no chance of ill omen here and at this time.

Unexpectedly, it was Edwin of Mercia who stepped forward with the cloak of purple, having wrested it out of the hands of an unprotesting servant. His words were lost to all but Harold as the Choir sang on. We have a promise of you my Lord, my brother and I, and we seek its honouring, Edwin murmured. The expression on his young and handsome face, marred by the blemish of acne, was bland. He was referring to Aeldyth, his sister. Aeldyth, now the widow of Gruffyd of Wales, whose death Harold had engineered. It was a promise to their house, the huge Earldoms of Northumbria and Mercia which he and his brother controlled, a promise which in return would bring the support of the north lands. There is a time and a place for all things, Edwin, said Harold brusquely. You may be certain that we shall speak of this later.

Hundreds had now gathered outside, drawn by the death of a King and the appointing of a successor. The out of town followers and servants of the great and mighty drawn to the occasion mingled with the people of London and Westminster. Alongside the outsiders were tradesmen with their families, artisans and apprentices, Flemings and lowlanders drawn from the wharfs and barges and the usual array of harlots, cutpurses, sneak thieves, food vendors and beggars.

As Harold emerged into the dismal freezing early morning and onto the steps of the Abbey the acclaim and the enthusiasm of the crowd hit him like a wave. His head and his heart were pounding. He was cold, but also in a high sweat. He was hungry and he had not slept for two days or more. A combination of high elation and exhaustion made him both acutely aware and yet curiously detached from all these things that were happening around him.

The new King of England raised his hand to the growing, chanting, screaming crowd to acknowledge them. At that very moment, and as he raised his head to the leaden skies above Westminster, his shoulder was struck by the droppings of a circling gull, driven inland by the bad weather. It was obviously a very large gull. His brother Leofwyn, ever enthusiastic and affectionate, was standing next to him. He smiled and hugged Harold fondly, embracing him on both cheeks. And there is luck indeed for you, brother, he said above the screams and shouts of the crowd.

CHAPTER TWO:

A Time of Interrupted Leisure

Rouen: January 1066

It was good to be alive on such a day as this. A glittering frost lay on the thick carpet of leaf mould covering the incline between the riverbank and the forest’s edge, snapping and crunching beneath the tread of men and horses. Their breath rose in the air like steam. A pale winter sun lay low in the east, its light already causing the lazy drift of the Seine to sparkle and glitter. The sky showed an early promise of a brilliant blue and a piercing cold.

It was less than an hour since dawn. Without the benefit of either Mass or a swift snatched breakfast, the hunting party had assembled in the dark, leaving their various quarters and lodgings in the over-crowded city of Rouen to converge on the quaysides at the appointed hour with horses, hounds and puffy eyed servants. Flat-bottomed barges waited there to convey them across the river to the forest of Queville and the much anticipated hunt. That previous evening the Duke’s foresters and verderers had promised much and both hunting spears and bows would be required. There were reports of a six point stag and of at least two rogue male boar.

On this still and glorious morning sound carried far. A cough, the staling of a horse or the occasional excited yelp and whine of a hound could be heard from a long distance. The murmured conversations of men a stone’s throw away were all audible to William Duke of Normandy as, with a small group of companions, he crouched before an open fire. In a companionable silence they roasted lumps of pork and mutton, onions and winter preserved apples on metal skewers over the fire. Freshly baked bread lay warming on a griddle on the edge of the heat.

William took a fortifying gulp of mulled wine laced with expensive cinnamon and even more expensive nutmeg imported at God knew what cost and effort and gazed about him with an immense satisfaction. He ran a hand over his face, taking pleasure in the feel and rasp of the stubble of his freshly shaven and pumiced chin. Body of Christ, but it was good to be out of Rouen. He had no fondness at all for the city. It held too many associations with unhappier times. For the best part of a month now he had been confined to the capital. On each and every day, or so it seemed, he had convened and presided over one dreary court, council or tribunal after another. On each day a host of litigants and appellants, from the great to the humble, had appeared before him in his upper hall and demanding vengeance for this and redress for that. In the space of a fortnight he had caused seven men to be hanged and their bodies displayed from the gates. Others he had caused to be blinded or otherwise mutilated for a range of lesser misdemeanours. Much to his annoyance a monk and a clerk, both claiming benefit of clergy in separate cases, had escaped secular punishment for the sin of sodomy.

William was thoroughly sick of it all, sick also of the endless religious ceremonies, sick of the carping and whining of churchmen buzzing in his ears like the sound of annoying insects. Equally irritating had been the constant obligation to house, feed and entertain a whole host of relatives and regional magnates and their followers, men whom for the most part he neither liked nor trusted. Now, with the Christmas Feast over and most of his unwelcome guests departed, William was serving notice with this hunt that Christmas was at an end and that he wished to take up his normal life once more. He had never liked Christmas. Gathered here for the hunt were people that he liked and trusted, or that at least he was prepared to tolerate.

Next to him at the fire, seated precariously upon a log, was his most trusted friend, comrade and advisor since earliest childhood. William FitzOsbern, ‘Fitz’ as William habitually called him, was a tall and vulpine looking man, dark and with every bone and angle in his face stark and prominent. He had deep set and glittering eyes and his prominent jaw, like that of his Duke, was blue from the early morning shaving and pumicing.

Squatting on their haunches nearby were the Lords Beaumont and Montgomery, both named Roger. Now heads of their houses, they were the first of their turbulent and aggressive families to offer nothing other than a total obedience and personal loyalty to their Duke. Each was fiercely protective of his own interests and they had never seen eye to eye. Both understood fully, though, that this came second to William’s basic requirement of the unswerving loyalty of his inner circle, however much mutual dislike and antipathy might exist. There was further proof of this around the fire this morning. Roger of Montgomery, whose father had murdered FitzOsbern’s, passed him a wine flask. There was no room for blood feuds in William’s court. Montgomery had the look of a fighting man, well built and powerful. His forearms, unprotected by the mail of a hauberk in battle, were a grid of wound scars both ancient and recent. A wit and raconteur, he was also said to be much given to drink and appeared to have started especially early today.

In his time Roger of Beaumont, the oldest of the group, had suffered far worse than the occasional cut and bruise. He was beyond doubt an unstable man and ever since his