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

  ‘They have gone home?’

  ‘Yes, with all their levies, but that was four weeks ago. If the Bastard attacks London we can hold out for a while, but to what end? He is at Wallingford, he crossed the river there with all his host.’

  In that one piece of news Ulfcytel seemed to see the end of all hope. Dover had yielded, and Canterbury, and Winchester too – now the enemy was on the north bank of the Thames, circling London, and none could stop him.

  ‘How could the Earls go?’ he demanded angrily. ‘It was base enough that they did not come south in time to aid the King; now they leave Wessex and London to the Duke’s fury.’

  ‘That is not the worst of it,’ Waltheof said slowly. ‘Archbishop Stigand has gone to Wallingford to submit to the Bastard.’

  ‘What!’ Ulfcytel rose to his feet and began to pace up and down the small room. For a while he did not speak. He had never had any liking for Stigand – loyalty to Canterbury he must have, but to his mind Stigand was no true primate, having taken the pallium that belonged to his predecessor, the Norman Archbishop Robert, when the latter had fled from the Kingdom in Earl Godwine’s time. The present Pope had refused him his pallium, but in office Stigand stayed – a cold man, but an excellent administrator who could deal with affairs more efficiently than any other man at court. But Harold would not be crowned by Stigand while the shadow of the Pope’s disfavour lay on the Archbishop and chose instead Aldred of York to perform this office. Now Stigand had thrown in his lot with Duke William – hoping perhaps because William had had the papal blessing on his enterprise, to win favour of the Holy Father, or at least ensure his continuance in office. In either case Ulfcytel was disgusted.

  A lay brother came in carrying dishes and he could make no comment until the meal was served and the brother gone from the room. Waltheof set to hungrily, helping himself to roast mutton and pigeon pasties. The Abbot ate sparingly.

  ‘Have any other men gone with the Archbishop?’

  ‘A few,’ Waltheof answered, ‘some thegns from north of the river who hope to save their lands, no doubt – but the Duke plunders everywhere to feed that host, though I hear he pays for any damage they do.’ He hesitated, staring broodingly at the pasty in his hands. ‘Yet there are good men who think we should submit. Even Archbishop Aldred, and Bishop Wulfstan think so, though it seemed to me that we could still unite in the north. We hold the land and many of the levies never got to Telham ridge and are fresh and ready to fight. Edric Guilda is in the west by Hereford, and with the northern Earls we could have kept the Norman south of the Trent at least. But then – three days ago, I had a message. That is why I am here.’

  ‘A message – from whom?’

  ‘Edwin and Morcar,’ Waltheof brought out the words with an effort. ‘They are coming south, without the levies – they are going to submit. Maerlsweyn too. Even – even my cousin Gospatric who is sick with a fever, sent word to me to make submission for him. They want me to join them in Peterborough the day after tomorrow and ride with them to meet the Duke.’ He put his head on his hands, the food forgotten, overcome by the despair, the shame of the last few weeks of chaos, and base bargaining, of near treachery. From the night when William Bastard stood victor on the hill above Sandlake, nothing had gone well and every day brought home what they had lost. ‘Oh God, that we should come to this. If Harold had only lived – or Gyrth – or . . .’

  ‘My poor child,’ the Abbot said gently, ‘I know Earl Leofwine was very dear to you.’

  ‘And I do not know where he lies,’ Waltheof broke in passionately. ‘Harold is buried under a cairn of stones on the cliffs above Hastings, by William’s decree in unhallowed ground, but he has at least a resting place while Leofwine – God knows where he lies – stripped and plundered and . . .’ He had not wept since that awful night in the ravine, but he wept now, because here there was understanding, not only for the loss but for the unknown, unhallowed resting place.

  After a few moments Ulfcytel said, ‘There are many good men who lack a grave but God is merciful. Is it not true that the lack of a grave hurts you more than it does Earl Leofwine whose soul had fled that body and is, I doubt not, in Paradise?’

  Waltheof drew a deep breath and wiped the tears from his cheeks with the edge of his mantle. It was a little while before he spoke. ‘How is it that you always know what words will comfort most? I would like Masses to be said for his soul – for Alfric too. You know he fell on Telham ridge, by the Standard with Harold?’

  ‘Yes, I had heard. Jesu, rest his soul in peace.’ The Abbot crossed himself.

  Waltheof repeated the sign before he went on, ‘I will send you the deed of gift for my vill of Bamack. There are good quarries there for your rebuilding.’

  ‘That is kind of you, my son,’ Ulfcytel answered warmly. ‘God will reward you for your generosity and you need not doubt that the dead will be remembered here.’

  ‘No,’ Waltheof said very low and silence fell, a silence during which Ulfcytel looked long at his face in the flickering firelight. He could see that the youth who had ridden away three months ago had not returned. In his place was a man who had been tried in battle and who had suffered wounds of the flesh and bitter grief of the heart. All this showed in the familiar features, strengthened now but still, as he raised his head and looked directly at the Abbot, humble enough to ask for advice and retaining that gentleness that so often went with a very large frame.

  ‘What am I to do?’ he asked. ‘I do not know whether to meet the Earls.’

  ‘And if you do not? What then? Could you stand alone against the Duke?’

  Waltheof laughed, but there was no mirth in the sound. ‘I? No, Father, and you know it.’

  Ulfcytel leaned forward, speaking earnestly. ‘Then you cannot contemplate a thing which would bring nothing but retribution and suffering on simple folk. If I could see any way for you to be instrumental in sending the Norman Duke back to his own land, I would urge it. But it seems that our great men think it best to accept William as King, and though he is a foreigner he is after all the late King’s cousin. Perhaps Edward did promise him the crown.’

  ‘Maybe, but it was not the King’s to give. The people elect the King as we elected Edgar at the Witangemot. But he cannot unite us. We need a Harold Godwineson now.’ He sighed and getting up began to pace the little room. ‘Father, you said to me before I left for York that well-armed is the man who knows himself. Well, I have learned two things – I can fight and lead men on the field of battle, but when it comes to affairs of state, to politic dealings, I am not the man for it.’

  ‘Then you have learned something of great value,’ the Abbot said. ‘No man can turn himself into something he is not. You look very weary, child. You will all sleep here?’

  ‘With your permission, yes, and thank you for your hospitality. Tomorrow I must go home and see to my affairs, then I must ride to Gelling. I promised Alfric his boy would be as my own should he fall.’ He paused for a moment and then said. ‘I would keep vigil for the dead in the church tonight.’

  Ulfcytel got up and snuffed a guttering candle. A wind had risen and sent a draught into the room so that the smoke from the fire eddied into the rafters. ‘No, my son, not tonight. I will rouse you an hour before Mass and you shall watch then. Now you need sleep.’

  The habit of obedience had lain too long on Waltheof for him to argue with Ulfcytel and he was indeed too weary to do so. He gathered up his mantle and wrapped it round him. ‘I cannot help recalling that it was here in this room that Leofwine came to fetch me to court. Do you remember – nine, nearly ten years ago?’

  ‘I remember it well,’ the Abbot agreed smiling, ‘and sad we all were to part with you. Now that you are Earl of these shires do not throw your life away on vain resistance. Indeed when Abbot Leofric lay dying he bade me say the same to you.’

  For an instant the dream that had accompanied Leofric’s warning came hauntingly back to Ulfcytel, but he thrust it from his mind. ‘Let peace retur
n, my son, but see that it is a just peace. This you can do.’ Watching the Earl’s face, he saw the yielding to weariness now that the decision was taken, and as they went down the narrow stair together he wondered if it was against his calling that he should love one particular young man so very dearly.

  Ryhall welcomed back its Earl with a warmth that at first surprised and then cheered him unexpectedly. It was obvious that the men who had come home after Stamford had brought a glowing account of their Earl’s battleworthiness and freemen and serfs ran along by his horse, cheering him home.

  In his own hall his steward and the rest of his household stood to welcome him, the serving women blushing and bobbing as he entered. He found it all oddly gratifying, and yet it was here at dinner that the empty places became obvious, and it was Alfric’s presence that was most missed. Bors leapt at him, delighted to have his master returned, but even he, as Waltheof bent to ruffle his head, was a reminder of loss.

  Thorkel busied himself during the first hour or two finding out what most needed his lord’s attention and presently brought him a list of tenants who wanted to see him, lawbreakers who came under his jurisdiction, the petty squabbles that need to be settled so that there was enough to warrant a court being held that afternoon. It dragged on until darkness began to fall, ending with two villeins quarrelling over the ownership of a pig – rather tersely their lord told them to slay it and divide it in half, there being higher things at stake at the moment than the ownership of a pig.

  At supper Waltheof feasted all the men who had fought with him and afterwards .Thorkel sang to them – first of the white ship with a swan’s head that bore the dead west to their eternal resting place, then an Icelandic song of the sea that set the wine cups banging; but when it was done he waited silently for the noise to subside, his face grave in the firelight, the long scar seaming his cheek. His fingers plucked a melancholy melody on his harp and when there was quiet he sang them the song of the Wanderer, the kinless man.

  ‘Where is the young man?

  Where is the giver of treasure?

  Where are the banquet benches?

  Where are the joys of hall?

  . . .How that time has passed

  Dark under the night’s helm, as though it had never been.’

  It was a sad haunting tune, and when he took his seat again beside the Earl, Waltheof said, ‘Do you miss your own country, Thorkel Skallason?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ The Icelander’s blue eyes were shadowed. ‘Sometimes, minn hari.’ He seemed not to notice that he slipped into his own tongue.

  Waltheof went on. ‘If you should ever want to go back, to leave my service . . .’

  Thorkel raised his head, his expression impossible to read. ‘Would you let me go?’

  ‘Could I stop you?’ Waltheof smiled a little. ‘You would do what you would, I think. But even if I could, I would not. A man must go his own way.’ He was conscious of repeating Ulfcytel’s words, yet at the same time wishing them unsaid.

  ‘You would not mind?’

  ‘Mind?’ He had not thought the conversation would take so serious a turn, and he wished he had not suggested there might be a parting. Yet Thorkel must have ties of blood, of home, of race. He might call him ‘my lord’, but still occasionally the words came out in his own Icelandic tongue. Waltheof looked directly at him in a manner that had become peculiarly his own. ‘It seems now that I have no friend left but you – yet you have travelled so far, seen so much, there is no reason why you should stay always . . .

  ‘There is one.’ Thorkel’s swift brilliant smile lit his face. ‘I have no desire for another master. I am your man, my lord, until your death or mine.’

  A flush of pleasure warmed Waltheof’s cheeks. After a moment he said, ‘Now we must both serve another master. How will you like that, my scald?’

  Thorkel shrugged. ‘I have served many men. If I am yours now, and you become Duke William’s it will make small odds to me. You will still be Earl here, please God, for the Bastard must want to keep some good will, and from most reports he is a just lord to those who obey him.’

  ‘I suppose I must do it,’ Waltheof said, ‘but God have mercy on our poor country.’

  Later that evening when he went to his chamber he found Outy, as usual, laying out a pallet bed at the foot of his own, and he remembered how he and Alfric had talked here on the night before they marched for York. Alfric had sat on the bed and spoken of his son, and Waltheof seemed to hear his voice saying, ‘let them not burn Gelling . . .’

  A dozen other memories of Alfric came to him; days they had spent hunting, a Christmas feast at Gelling, a midsummer fair at Deeping, and he knew that he did not want to spend this night alone with such memories.

  He turned abruptly to Outy. ‘Go down to Hardynge and bid him send his daughter to me.’

  With his usual grunt of assent and without comment Outy dragged his pallet out through the door and disappeared.

  Waltheof went to the window, threw back the wooden shutter and stood leaning against it. It was not a cold night, the December air mild and a bright moon riding high in the starlit sky. From here he could see the outline of a clump of trees against the sky, fir trees whose shape remained unchanged summer or winter; peaceful in their natural setting as men were not. For it seemed to him that the whole course of his life was about to change, that so many familiar things had gone, so many friends lay dead. Now the pattern would be different, there would be a new King, a strange court, men of another land to know, and nothing would ever be the same again. But he did not want to think about it tonight; he wanted to forget, to lose himself in a physical release that would blot out thought.

  Presently there was a tap on the door and Elfgive stood there. He had changed so much since he had last been her lover that he almost expected her to have changed too. But she was the same, and he knew that all that had happened to him had made no difference to Ryhall and its people.

  She was wearing the blue dress he had given her, her hair hanging in long fair braids bound with blue fillets that he had bought her last summer when the chapman came.

  ‘My lord,’ she smiled up at him. ‘I am so happy that you are come safe home.’

  He touched her cheek. ‘Have you missed me, sweet?’

  She turned to rest that cheek against his hand. ‘Yes my lord.’ She stood on tiptoe to reach her aims about his neck and suddenly her eyes filled with tears. ‘I thought – I thought I’d not see you again.’

  He closed his arms about her and bent his mouth to hers. For all she was a peasant girl, she kept herself clean and fresh and her hair smelled sweet. It was good to hold her thus, to feel desire flooding into him, warmth in his body and a release from tension, from strain and grief. Heavy burdens had lain on him during the last two months, but now he could be young again and he realised with sudden amusement that he had forgotten that on the morrow he would be twenty years old.

  ‘Kiss me,’ he said, laughing, ‘for tomorrow is my birthday.’ He put his mouth to hers and felt her respond in a manner that sent his blood racing; lifting her dress from her shoulders he untied the ribbons that bound her hair so that it fell in a fair mass about her shoulders. Then he carried her in his arms to the bed. As he did so she cried out at the sight of the long red scar on his thigh, and even though he assured her it was well healed now she clung more tightly to him as he laid her between the fine sheets he had brought back from London last year. Then drawing the bearskin over them both he propped himself on one elbow that he might look into her face.

  Tonight he would not think of Leofwine, nor of Alfric, nor any of the men of these shires who had not come home. Lying in his own bed with a girl’s warm body in his arms he could be aware only of life, not death. Tonight then he would make love and forget.

  He kissed her again, his hand on her breast, his mouth wandering from her lips to her eyes and cheeks and throat and then back to her mouth again. She put her hands about his neck and then touched the amulet she had made fo
r him. ‘You must never take it from your arm, lord – that would break the charm – a wise woman told me it would keep you from harm.’

  ‘I’m sure it did,’ he said lightly and she glanced up at him, all her simple love in her rosy peasant face, her arms tightening protectively about him. ‘Dear lord,’ she whispered, ‘dear lord,’ and her breath was warm on his cheek.

  His passion rose, burning away all sorrow, and for a little while the ghost of Alfric receded.

  Later, lying with his arm about her shoulders, and his cheek against her hair, he said, ‘You have done more for me this night than your amulet could. Did you know you could exorcise, my love?’

  She said, ‘Eh, my lord?’ And then after some thought, ‘tis the priest that do exorcise.’

  He laughed and kissed her forehead, but at the same time he thought how pleasant it would be if a woman of his own degree lay in his bed, if he had a wife to whom he could confide his inmost thoughts, who would understand and share. It was the first time he had contemplated marriage.