Of the Ring of Earls (Conqueror Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Waltheof watched him with wide eyes, too frightened to move, while Outy stood close to the Earl, vigilant, his hands ready to support him, to catch him if he should fall.

  The old man was shaking now, his legs like strong trees caught in a winter storm, but he looked round his assembled household and gave a triumphant laugh, his eyes glittering. ‘I will not die in bed,’ he said between clenched teeth. ‘Nor on my back with cow’s disease. I will die on my feet, as befits a warrior, in battle harness.’ He saw his son’s white scared face. ‘Waltheof! Waltheof Siwardson, bear my name well. My friends are your friends, my enemies your enemies. When you follow me down the swan’s path bring no stain upon your shield and God shall unite us.’

  He swayed, but as Outy reached for him he struck away the helping hand. It seemed then to the child that his father had become the old Siward again, a mighty man, unconquerable, part Viking but with something of an old pagan god about him. The scene struck such sheer terror into the boy that he never forgot it.

  For a moment longer it lasted, the final struggle, until the Earl reached up one hand, perhaps to cross himself. The axe crashed to the ground and he pitched forward, threatening to crush his son beneath his great weight. Waltheof screamed as Outy and some others sprang forward to catch their master.

  They laid him on the bed, lifting the helm from his head, folding his arms across his breast over the handle of his axe. The priest came forward to close his eyes and begin the prayers for the dead, and at that Waltheof realised the full import of his father’s passing.

  He was alone now, without father or mother or brother and he cast himself sobbing into the arms of Outy Grimkelson.

  BOOK 1

  STOUT SIWARD’S SON

  SEPTEMBER 1066 – DECEMBER 1066

  ‘Earl Waltheof, great in arms, in counsel wise,

  Stout Siward’s son . . .’

  Orderic Vitalis

  CHAPTER 1

  In the early autumn of the year of our Lord, 1066, Waltheof Siwardson, for the past year Earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, rode south to see his cousin Leofwine. The Saxon camp on the Downs was quiet, only a few men still remaining under arms, and on the first morning, Leofwine took him hunting in the forest that ran down to the edge of the cliffs not far from the little town of Dover.

  The sun was bright on this September morning, the rays slanting through the solid oaks and bronzing beeches. Waltheof drew a deep satisfied breath of the crisp air and laughed across at his companion.

  ‘A good morning,’ he said and Earl Leofwine nodded, his eyes on the undergrowth.

  ‘I’ll wager there’s a boar in those bushes. Fetch him out,’ he called to the dogs who were growling and sniffing round a clump of alders at the end of a clearing. There was a sudden squeal, a scuffle, and then a boar broke cover and ran headlong across the grass.

  Waltheof gave a yell and stood squarely in the path of the frightened animal. In a moment he had flung his spear. It caught the boar in the hindquarters and the animal ran, still squealing, into a patch of scrub.

  ‘Stay there,’ Leofwine shouted. Despite the fact that he was nearing forty he was still as agile as his young cousin. Gripping his weapon he ran down the side of the clearing and skirted the clump of bushes. ‘I’ll flank him and send him out.’

  Waltheof seized another spear from one of his men and began to move stealthily towards the cover.

  ‘Steady, lord,’ Outy Grimkelson said quietly, ‘the boar will be savage now.’

  Waltheof laughed again. ‘I know.’ This gave added zest to the chase and he waved Outy back as the latter came towards him. He could hear scuffling in the scrub and, though he knew it was foolhardy, he thought his first throw had probably disabled the animal and pushed his way through the entangling scrub. There he saw the boar crouched, the spear snapped off, the broken end sticking from its rump. The boar flung up his head, scented danger, stiffened and charged.

  It was so sudden that Waltheof was caught unaware. He sprang aside as the boar came for him, felt one tusk rip the skin from his leg and the next moment had driven the spear hard and true this time between the shoulders. The maddened animal rolled over, gave one last grunt and lay still.

  Outy came up to his master and stood looking down at the boar and then at his master’s bleeding calf. ‘That was foolish,’ he said without apparent emotion.

  Flushed with excitement and sheer pleasure Waltheof wrenched his spear free as Leofwine came bursting through the bushes.

  ‘Outy is right, you should have waited. But you made a good kill. Are you hurt?’

  He shook his head. ‘It’s nothing,’ and glanced down indifferently as Outy knelt to wipe the blood from his leg.

  Leofwine called to the dogs who were now sniffing eagerly round the corpse, the younger one sinking; his teeth into the boar’s fleshy hind leg. ‘Off! Off! Holy Cross, have I not taught you yet, Bors?’ He caught the dog, scarcely more than a pup, by the scruff of the neck and flung him aside. The bitch, more obedient, sat down and eyed her master who ruffled her head in approval. Bors, yelping in protest, went to Waltheof’s side and sat there, panting.

  Earl Leofwine laughed. ‘You are an undisciplined pair. I will give him to you, Waltheof, and you can learn caution together.’ He beckoned two of his men and in a few moments they had fastened the boar’s fore and hind legs to a staff and were shouldering it. ‘Well, I am for my dinner.’ He thrust his arm through Waltheof’s. ‘For all my teasing you are becoming a good huntsman and handy with a spear. If Outy has taught you to use that timber-axe of yours with the same skill the Normans had best look to themselves if they venture over the sea.’

  They rode together back to the camp and there ate their dinner in the open on the cliff top, the King’s standard, the Red Dragon of Wessex, flapping above their heads in the breeze. Waltheof was hungry and ate well of the roast mutton, washing it down with ale and breaking pieces of bread from the fresh baked loaf. There were pasties too and a cheese that he speared with his knife.

  Leofwine watched him amusedly. ‘I suppose you have a larger frame to fill than most of us, but I am glad I have not had you in camp all summer – it has been hard enough to feed the men.’

  Waltheof grinned at him. ‘Perhaps I should not have come. Harold told me to wait at home with my men ready to march north or south as the need arose, but it seemed as if once the harvest had come nothing would happen and I could not resist riding down to see how you fared.’ He finished the last of his meat and threw a few scraps to Bors. The dog ate eagerly and then sat by his new master, his yellowish eyes fixed on him. After a moment he laid his chin on the Earl’s knee.

  ‘He has taken you for his lord already,’ Leofwine remarked, ‘so your visit has not been without profit. Anyway I’m glad you came.’ He poured more ale into their cups. ‘Nothing is worse than being idle and for the last three months I’ve had naught to do but stare at the sea with no living thing on it but the seagulls. Gyrth has had his men further up the coast but he has been backwards and forwards to his own earldom and to London – and he is more content than I. As for Harold, he has busied himself with the nation’s affairs, and it is I who have sat here guarding my land and staring at that cursed blue sea and longing for something to fill the days.’

  Waltheof lifted a hand to shade his eyes from the bright sunlight. It sparkled on the calm waves that stretched clear and empty to the horizon, no signs of ships, of the long expected Norman fleet. ‘Will they come?’

  Leofwine laughed again but this time the sound had a grimmer note. ‘Oh, they will come. Duke William has not been building ships all summer for them to lie idle in his harbours.’

  ‘But it is September,’ Waltheof pointed out. ‘The winter will be on us soon and no one goes campaigning in a strange land in winter.’

  ‘The Duke cares nothing for that, or so I’m told. He will fight when and where he wants.’ Leofwine got up, stretching, and yawning. ‘If you’ve finished gorging yourself come and walk along the clif
fs or I shall fall asleep.’

  Waltheof stuffed the last piece of bread into his mouth, brushed the crumbs from his hands and rose. ‘Even I have had my fill of your good fare.’ And as they began to walk together along the cliff top where the grass grew thick to the edge of the chalk heights, he went on, ‘Why can’t the Bastard be content with his own land? Harold says he has made his duchy a good place to live in and rules it justly.’

  ‘He has ambition and that, my child, is reason enough. I remember he once said . . .’

  ‘You have met him? I did not know that.’

  ‘It was more than fifteen years ago, when he came to King Edward’s court. He was about twenty-four years old then, as I was myself, but with an authority more than his years.’

  ‘Did you like him?’ Waltheof asked curiously.

  Leofwine considered this for a moment, staring into the distance. ‘I respected him, but as to liking him, no – no, I don’t think I did, but he always made one listen to what he said. When he came into the hall no man could ignore him. And he said – I recall it clearly – that we were fortunate in having a land guarded by the sea. They build great keeps in Normandy to hold their borders, you know, nothing like our homely halls.’

  ‘Do you think King Edward did promise the Crown to him?’

  Leofwine shrugged. ‘Even if he did he had not the right. The Crown is for the Witan to bestow. And it would have been more to the point if King Edward had spent less time on his knees and more in getting my sister with child so that there might have been a royal prince for them to choose. If ever there was a sterile union that was it. My poor sister had little joy of her marriage bed, and I’ve no time for holiness that puts one man’s sanctity before the peace of a nation.’

  ‘He was a very holy man, I suppose,’ Waltheof said. He had grown up at Edward’s court and had learned to love the saintly old man, but even he could see, young as he was, that Edward’s piety had an element of selfishness about it.

  ‘Anyway,’ Leofwine went on, ‘whatever Edward willed no one wants William Bastard here. We have our King, have we not?’

  ‘Of course,’ Waltheof agreed warmly. Leofwine’s eldest brother Harold, his own cousin, had been crowned King of England on Edward’s death in January and for him Waltheof had reverence and affection and something of a boy’s hero-worship, though it was Leofwine who had been father and brother and friend to him for the last eleven years.

  After Siward’s death he had returned to Croyland with Outy and for two years remained at the Abbey. The monks were indeed kind and he enjoyed his lessons with the Abbot. Outy took him hunting and fishing in the river Welland that wound round the outer boundary of the Abbey so that the claustrel buildings could only be reached by ferry-boat from the village on the far side. Outy taught him how to use a man’s weapons and fashioned a smaller axe for him to practise with until he should be grown enough to use the timber-axe, and they spent long hours together out on the fens or rode south to the forests.

  But for all that he was lonely. Most of his Northumbrian cousins lived far away in the north, and deeming him too young to rule so turbulent an inheritance the King had bestowed his earldom on Tosti, Harold Godwineson’s next brother, and all that Waltheof had left to remind him of the past glories of the house of Siward were the white bearskin, the timber-axe, his father’s robes of office and the less tangible legacy of a blood feud with the house of Carl. King Edward held in trust for him the lands of Huntingdon and Northampton, but with the Godwines ruling the country and glad no doubt that Tosti should have such a prize as Northumbria it seemed to the boy that he was forgotten and that he might after all become a monk. His life was bounded by the walls of the Abbey, lost in the loneliness of the fen country, marooned in the winter, swampy and fever-ridden in the summer.

  And then on a bright day in May Leofwine Godwineson rode into the courtyard and his life was wholly changed. He had been fishing with Outy and climbing along a bank to get a better position had fallen in the river. He had clambered out, laughing and spluttering, and they had returned to the Abbey, their rods on their shoulders, in high good humour. Entering the courtyard they had found the Abbot greeting a stranger, a handsome man dressed in a fine embroidered tunic with a blue mantle flowing from his shoulders and jewelled bracelets on his arms; he was bareheaded, his light brown hair thick and curling, and he had smiling blue eyes. He had taken one look at the bedraggled boy and flung back his head in a shout of laughter.

  Thinking of that day Waltheof said suddenly, ‘Do you remember when you came to fetch me to court?’

  Leofwine looked surprised. ‘Of course. You had fallen in the river.’

  ‘And the Abbot was angry that you should find me so.’

  ‘I was glad,’ the Earl said frankly. ‘I was afraid they would have turned you into a holy youth eager for the tonsure.’

  ‘I did think once . . .’

  ‘Not you,’ Leofwine interrupted, ‘not Siward’s son. Why, look at yourself! Do you think God gave you that frame and those muscles for you to hide them under a monk’s habit? For all you’re not twenty yet, you’ve the breadth of a warrior, little cousin – though I should hardly call you that any more for you top me by some inches now. I saw then how it would be and so did that fellow Thorkel Skallason that you stole from me.’

  Waltheof paused on the edge of the cliff staring down at the blue water, the rocks and sands below. ‘You said he would make songs for me and that first night when we set out for London he gave me ill dreams by singing of wood-fiends and evil spirits.’

  ‘A scald sings what he wills when the mood is on him, and Thorkel makes better verses than any I ever heard. I guessed you’d wean him from my hearth-men.’

  Waltheof glanced at the cousin so much senior to him in years and experience. ‘I thought you did not mind. Because he knew my father . . .’

  Leofwine took his arm affectionately. ‘I tease you – but I promise you I don’t begrudge you his company. Anyway he is the most independent of men. When King Edward gave you your earldom last year I thought you had need of Thorkel in your household but he’d not have heeded my wishes unless they had agreed with his own. I wonder what he makes of the news from the north?’

  ‘What, that the King of Norway has his fleet off the Scottish coast? I don’t know for I sent him to York last week on the matter of some land that my father always meant the monks of Jarrow to have, but I heard there were many Icelanders among Harald Sigurdson’s men and Thorkel once sang in his halls. Yet . . .’ he broke off momentarily, ‘I cannot doubt his loyalty.’

  ‘Which is more than can be said for my brother Tosti,’ Leofwine concluded. For once his expression was angry and disturbed. ‘God knows what has come upon him – he has played the fool and the tyrant and now seems about to play the traitor.’

  Waltheof’s face darkened. Tosti! He loathed Tosti Godwineson who had taken his father’s earldom and misused it to such an extent that the people rose as one and ejected him. Now Tosti was about to try to reclaim it, bringing in the Norwegian King Harald Sigurdson as an ally, in the teeth of his brother’s opposition. All spring Tosti had planned his attack, sailing up the coast, seizing men and plunder, so that Harold had to watch both the southern coast and the northern borders, menaced on both sides. No one knew whether Tosti and the Norwegian King, or Duke William of Normandy would strike first.

  In York Earl Leofric.’s grandsons, Edwin of Mercia and his brother Morcar, who now held Northumbria, had their forces mustered ready to deal with an attack from the Norsemen but Waltheof knew that Harold was unsure of them for all he was married to their sister, Aldyth – ambitious men both, but too concerned, he thought, with their own lands.

  Staring out to sea he wondered again if the Duke would come. His claim to the throne was based on his slender family connection with King Edward and a promise no one could verify, but last year by ill fortune Harold had been shipwrecked off the coast of Ponthieu and rescued by William; to regain his freedom Harold had sworn
an oath to uphold William’s claim, sworn it on holy relics and he was now crowned King himself and thus forsworn, for all he said the oath was forced from him. It seemed as if the whole of Christendom from Pope Alexander downwards condemned him.

  But in England a forsworn Englishman was better than a foreign invader, and all this long hot summer they had stood to arms waiting for the summons to drive off the Normans. News came of the building of ships, the forging of arms, the training of men. Mercenaries from all over Europe were pouring in to fight under the Bastard’s banner, blessed by the Holy Father himself – yet still the Normans did not come. At last Harold was forced to disband the fyrd, the militia men of Wessex, for the harvest was ready and they wanted to go home. He commanded the local sheriffs to be ready to summon the men back if the call came – but still they waited.