Godgifu herself had ridden with Sihtric, all the way from Lunden, just as they had ridden down from Stamfordbrycg to Lunden only days earlier. Every bone in her body ached from the jarring of the endless ride, and she felt so stiff she could barely lift her leg over the saddle and reach the ground.
In the failing light she looked back along the road. It was a Roman track that cut across the rolling green country, back towards Lunden. Long robbed of all its stone it was nothing but a strip of turf, but eerily dead straight. The bulk of the army, the troops on horseback and their baggage in carts, was strung out along the road. It might take them an hour to assemble here, or more.
This place was called Caldbec Hill, only perhaps half a day’s ride north of Haestingaceaster, where William was camped. This was Godwine country, which Harold knew intimately from a boyhood of hunting, and when in Lunden he had issued the order for his new army to be assembled at the old hoar tree, everybody had known what he meant.
The apple tree itself, thick with lichen, stood at the top of its hill impassively, silhouetted against the deepening blue of the sky. It was October. The summer had been wet, the autumn warm; the tree was still in leaf, but there was no sign of fruit. Godgifu wondered how old the tree was. She had heard that the Romans first brought apples to Britain; perhaps a legionary planted the tree when he passed this way, building the road. Impulsively she stroked the tree’s rumpled bark; it felt warm, solidly alive. It would stand here long after the events of the next few days were history.
Sihtric handed her a leather flask of flat beer. ‘Careful,’ he said. ‘Our pagan ancestors worshipped trees.’
She grunted. ‘Trees don’t make war on each other. Perhaps they are wiser than us.’
‘I’ll have to set you some penance for that.’
The first baggage carts drew up. The housecarls and the fyrdmen unloaded equipment and tents. Godgifu saw them lifting down heavy mail coats, so rigid they kept their shape, like hollowed-out men.
Godgifu asked, ‘What day is it?’
‘I’m not sure. Friday, I think.’
‘We’re all exhausted. All this damned riding.’ She worked her muscles and joints, twisting her arms, rocking her hips, trying to smooth out the aches.
‘Yes. But only the housecarls have ridden with us from Stamfordbrycg. The fyrdmen are local; they are fresh ...’ Troubled, he let the sentence tail away.
It was true that the fyrdmen were fresh, relatively. The King had sent fast riders to raise the fyrd of the southern shires, and as they rode down from Lunden it had been reassuring to see them gathering at their muster points, with their polished swords and gleaming mail. But there were fewer of them than Godgifu had expected.
After all this was the fourth such call-out of this extraordinary year. England, it was thought, could raise some fourteen thousand fighting men in total. Thousands had already been lost in the battles at the Foul Ford and at Stamfordbrycg, and many of these southern fyrdmen had already spent a long summer waiting on the south coast for the Norman invasion. England’s strength was being drained by this year of total war.
Godgifu looked to the south, wondering how far away the nearest Norman was.
Sihtric seemed plagued by doubt. ‘Some say Harold has marched to meet the Normans too hastily. He has allowed the Bastard’s violation of Godwine land to inflame his thinking.’
‘No,’ Godgifu said. ‘Harold has a plan. At Haestingaceaster William has a defensible position, but Harold has ordered his navy to cut off any Norman retreat by sea, and stationed here to the north we contain him from moving further inland. We have bottled up the Bastard. All we need is a few days for the northern earls and the rest of the fyrd to join us, while the Normans starve and die.’
Sihtric muttered, ‘Just a few days. But will the Normans give us even that much?’
‘Well, in the meantime, I’m hungry. I’m going to find some food.’ She walked off, looking for the first fires.
XX
Orm was wakened by a kick in the ribs. His hand went reflexively to his sword.
The kick had come from Guy fitz Gilbert. He carried a lantern so the men could see his face. All around Orm on the floor of this dingy mud-walled tavern, men under their cloaks were stirring, grumbling.
The window, just a hole in the wall, looked south, and the sky was still dark. Orm could hear the roll of the sea, and smelled salt and smoke. He remembered where he was. ‘Haestingaceaster.’
‘Yes,’ fitz Gilbert said. ‘You’re still here in this arsehole of a place.’
Orm sat up gingerly. His head was sore, his belly aching. Last night he had joined the men in drinking this miserable tavern’s stock of English beer dry. He could do with a bit more time to sleep it off, but that wasn’t to be. He got to his feet and looked for his boots. ‘I don’t even know what day it is.’
‘Saturday,’ fitz Gilbert said, glaring. ‘God’s teeth, Egilsson, I’m glad it’s not me paying your wages today.’
Orm scowled at him. ‘Why am I even awake?’
‘Because the Duke has had word, from Robert fitz Wimarc ...’ There were Normans in England before William’s landing - merchants, mercenaries, immigrants. This fitz Wimarc had been a court official under Edward, and had no love for Harold. Now fitz Wimarc had informed William of the events of the last few weeks: Harold’s victory at Stamfordbrycg, his rapid march to Lunden.
‘They’re trying to bottle us up,’ Orm said. ‘It’s what I would do.’
‘William is having none of it,’ said fitz Gilbert.
‘He isn’t?’
Fitz Gilbert grinned, wolfish. Aged about thirty, he was small, stout, balding. In Normandy fitz Gilbert had struck Orm as pompous, ambitious, an irritant who was never likely to achieve much. But in England he seemed to be growing in stature, assuming an air of command. Normans were natural warriors, and on this stolen patch of foreign soil, fitz Gilbert was in his element. He said, ‘We’re going out to meet them before Harold has time to get his wind back from his march and dig in.’
‘When?’
‘Today. This morning.
Now.
God’s teeth, Orm, find your wretched boots and come with me.’
Today was the day, then. The climax. Orm felt his heart thump.
Outside the tavern, under a pall of smoke from burning buildings, there was a stench of blood and shit. It came from the bodies of the tavern-keeper, and his wife and daughters. The women had been raped in the usual way, their lives ending with drunken impalings on swords and spears and axe-handles.
This had been a pretty place when they came here, like much of the country Orm had seen before, with sheep flocking in the well-kept fields, and bright new parish churches shining in the autumn sun. Now the sheep were driven off, the farms robbed and ruined, the people killed, even the churches burned out; this corner of England already smelled of blood and smoke, like Brittany and Maine and Anjou.
Riding with Normans, you got used to such things. Orm walked away, looking for the leaders.
Under the grey light of the pre-dawn English sky, William attended mass. Officiated by his half-brother Odo, a bishop in chain mail, it was held in the open so that as many of William’s men as possible could see him and join in his prayers. William had a reliquary around his neck, a gold box containing the saint’s finger on which Harold had sworn his broken oath in Bayeux.
At the end of the service William, stocky, bristling, stood before the restless ranks of warriors in their mail coats. ‘Do you expect a speech? You won’t get one from me. You all know what’s what. We’re stuck here, far from home. Death or victory, those are the only choices today. But if we win you will all soon be drowning in gold and women. Follow me, and it will be so. Let’s get it done,’ said the Bastard.
The men growled like bears.
William’s nobles quickly formed the men into a column. Orm heard it was going to take two hours’ marching to get to Harold’s supposed muster point. Before the sun was up they were gathering on the road, the infantry in their mail coats, their shields on their arms and their swords in their sheaths on their backs, the archers and crossbowmen and slingshotters with their complicated gear. They stuck to their national groupings and their lords, the Normans with William, and the Flemish and Frankish, the Bretons and the men from Maine marching separately. The cavalry would ride beside the road. Scouts on fast horses set off, riding ahead to work out the lie of the land.
As the infantry began to march, shuffling slowly before they got their rhythm, they sang psalms in Latin. Their thousands of voices, joining together, rose up over the ruins of the burned-out town and the ruined farms beyond. If there were any English left alive they did not show themselves.
Orm was carrying many pounds of iron in his mail coat and his weapons. The massive men around him, laden as he was, jostled as they walked, iron clanking on iron, and dust rose up from their footsteps. But the pace was brisk, the air fresh, and as Orm walked he swung his arms, opening his chest, and felt his heart pump faster. He would soon burn off the ale at this rate. It was going to be a good day, he thought, and he joined the Normans in singing their songs of their God’s mercy.
XXI
‘There,’ Sihtric pointed. ‘I see them. On that ridge to the south.’
Godgifu peered that way. The sun was up now, and she had to shelter her eyes.
She was standing on marshy ground at the right hand end of a low ridge, where the English army was hastily assembling. The ridge, which was called Sandlacu, ran east to west, and bordered a swathe of uneven land that fell away to the south before her. Harold had advanced here from Caldbec Hill on being warned by his scouts of the Normans’ advance.
And on another rise, further to the south, she saw a splash of colour: red, green gold, and what looked like stalks of wheat, waving in the slight breeze. Those stalks were spears.
‘The Normans,’ she said.
‘Well, this is the battlefield,’ Sihtric said. ‘Where the weaving of time’s tapestry will be completed. The Normans to the south, advancing from their ships and their base at Haestingaceaster. The English to the north, blocking their way to Lunden.’
‘Shield wall against shield wall.’
‘Ah, but it won’t be so simple.’ Sihtric pointed to bodies of horsemen, indistinct in the mist of morning, that rode back and forth before the Norman lines. ‘See that? Cavalry.’
‘So the Normans did not give us the days we needed to assemble our forces.’
Sihtric grunted. ‘No. The Bastard has come to attack. I suppose if I were William I would have hesitated, and lost. But I am not William.’
‘Then we must stand firm against him.’
‘It’s not impossible. The position is defensible.’
Glancing around, Godgifu saw that Harold, with an intimate knowledge of the country, had been wise to choose this green place, Sandlacu, to make his stand. To get here the Normans would have to cross rough, boggy grazing land. Godgifu saw English soldiers working their way across the field, hauling branches and building hasty mud dams to block streams, flooding the ground to make it even more difficult. And even when they got across the field the Normans would have to climb this ridge, which was guarded by steep drops with a patch of scrubby forest to the left and swampy land to the right.
On the ridge there was a churning grumble as thousands of Englishmen tried to find their place. At the centre Harold’s housecarls, several hundred of them, were taking their places in the front line, with their round shields held proud before them, their stabbing spears and axes in their hands. More housecarls, with the more able-looking of the fyrdmen, gathered into ranks behind, seven or eight men deep. Harold’s party, under his standards of the Wessex dragon and the Fighting Man, was at the back of this block of men.
His brothers took their places with their own men: Gyrth on the English right with the East Anglians, Leofwine on the left with men from Lunden and the neighbouring shires. As a fyrdman you always fought under your lord or your thegn or your bishop; neighbour fought alongside neighbour.
Almost all of Harold’s troops were infantry; he had few archers, for the archers promised from the land of the East Saxons had yet to arrive. But it might be enough. English armies fought only one way, like this, on foot, as a solid mass of shields and swords and axes.
Sihtric and Godgifu were outside the mass of fighting men, with other priests, clerks, and women. Now Sihtric led his sister back from the army’s flank, to the cart they had ridden on from Caldbec.
They passed close to Harold’s party under their standards. Even now the Godwines were arguing. Gyrth and Leofwine had urged patience, to let the northern earls come, to assemble an overwhelming force. But Harold seemed intent on a fight, on finishing this now.
The mood among the housecarls was fractious too. They were big men, massive and imposing in their mail coats, and in their restlessness and anger they were frightening. But rumours ran through the English camp that William had brought his white papal banner, and around his neck he wore a relic, a withered finger in a golden box: the relic on which Harold had sworn his perjured oath. Why, by leading his army in this battle Harold was perjuring himself again. Men even muttered about the curse the old King was said to have laid on Harold on his deathbed.
Everybody was intensely religious, and soldiers more than most. There was a sense of destiny hanging over the battlefield, of forces greater than human channelling through the bodies of the warriors: the will of an offended God, and at least in Sihtric’s head the manipulations of the Weaver. And a cloud of unease hung over the excommunicated King, gradually rotting his authority and his confidence.
Sihtric reached their cart and rummaged in the baggage. And he pulled a mail coat out of a sack.
Godgifu was astonished. ‘What do you think you are doing?’