Authors: Stewart Binns
She rushed towards us and embraced us, while a young nun showed us the heavily swaddled two-year-old Harold of Hereford, who was smiling cheerfully. Sweyn beamed in delight at being reunited with Harry.
Estrith glowed with pride as we admired her young son. ‘He’s doing well. This is Mabel, who is helping me with him.’
Sweyn had a stream of questions – rate of growth, appetite, temperament – all the usual things that every father demands to know before deciding that, firstly, his son is just like him and, secondly, he has no peers in all the important gifts. Here was a boy who I felt sure was destined to live a life as remarkable as his parents and grandparents.
Mabel and I stood back after a while to let Sweyn and Estrith walk along the river, which was in full flow with the deep waters of a high tide, and enjoy a few private minutes with their son.
However, when they returned, Estrith’s happy demeanour in greeting us was soon gone.
‘We mustn’t be too much longer, we don’t have much time. Mabel, please take Harry for a while.’
Estrith took us across the great close between the cathedral and the palace and into the Benedictine infirmary
behind the cathedral cloisters. Dozens of sick and dying filled every available space of the long, rectangular room as the nuns and monks did their best to cope with what seemed to be an overwhelming number of patients. We went into one of the private bedchambers at the end of the room, where two nuns were leaning over a bed, tending to a patient.
‘It is Adela, she is dying.’
We rushed to her side, but the fragile figure of jaundiced skin and bone was unconscious and barely breathing.
‘I shouldn’t have done it, but when I returned to Rouen from the Peloponnese with Harold, I heard that Adela was with the nuns. When I went to see her, she bullied me into bringing her to England; you know what she’s like. The nuns said she had been fighting death for weeks, hoping that you two would return soon. She wanted to die on English soil and be buried at Bourne. I have no idea how she survived the crossing; I had to pay the captain a fortune to take her because he was certain she would die at sea and bring his ship bad luck. When we were on board, she just stared over the side, desperate for the first sign of England. It was sheer willpower that kept her alive.’
I took one of Adela’s hands and Sweyn the other. She was cold and her hands, almost without flesh on them, weighed no more than a goose feather.
Sweyn spoke to the sisters. ‘When did she become unconscious?’
‘Yesterday morning, sire. She is your wife?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry, sire, she is unlikely to see out the day.’
Sweyn let his head fall to his chest.
I spoke to Adela, hoping against hope that she could hear me.
‘I have some wonderful news for you. Rufus is dead, killed in a hunting accident. King Henry I, the new King, has put his seal to a Charter of Liberties for all Englishmen. It guarantees respect for the law and the right of everyone to be dealt with fairly according to the law. What was fought for at Ely has not been forgotten. We’re going to take you to the Fens to celebrate.’
She did not respond visibly, but both Sweyn and I were sure she squeezed our hands.
Adela of Bourne, Knight of Islam, died later that day without regaining consciousness.
We travelled to Bourne immediately with, to his immense credit, a royal escort provided by King Henry, where we intended burying her with as much ceremony as we could muster.
Bourne had sprung to life again, reborn after the dark days of the Conquest. The little Saxon church was being rebuilt and new houses were sprouting all over the village. Everyone knew of the tragic history of Bourne and welcomed the opportunity to meet Sweyn, one of their own, and Estrith, the daughter of the man whose deeds would make their village part of English folklore for ever.
At our request, Simon of Senlis, Earl of Huntingdon, sent four of his knights and a platoon of men to join the King’s men in an honour guard. The Abbot of Ely, Richard Fitz Richard, sent two monks to pray for Adela and a choir of six more to sing plainchant during the interment.
We waited until dusk and lit the road into the village with beacons so that we could bring her body home like the returning heroine she had become. Estrith, Sweyn and I, with Harold in his father’s arms, walked behind the cart that bore her body as it entered the village, and the entire community formed a cortège to accompany her to her grave.
As the amber glints of the processional torches lit our tear-stained faces, the honour guards raised their swords in respectful salute and the monks sang their simple melodies. Sweyn and I lifted Adela’s body, wrapped in a simple linen shroud, and placed it in her grave. Her weapons and armour were laid on her body and we took it in turns to cover her with earth. Nothing was said; she did not want any words spoken or prayers read. She had asked Estrith for silence when the time came so that she could hear the sounds of the Fens drift over her on the evening air.
She had searched all her life for her destiny and had found it in many places (Normandy, Sicily and Palestine) and in many forms (as a Knight of Islam, as a leading proponent of the Mos Militum, as a founder of our Brethren and in the Charter of Liberties) and in love, generosity and devotion – the love she had shown to Sweyn during their phantom marriage, the generosity she had shown to Estrith in helping her to disguise her pregnancy, and the constant devotion she had always shown to all of us.
Now she had come home.
The journey back to Westminster was a time of sombre reflection for the three of us.
Adela’s death, coinciding with the King’s Coronation
Charter, seemed to bring to a close many of the paths we had each pursued. Estrith had turned forty, Sweyn was nearer forty than thirty and I would soon be in my fiftieth year. Yet, there were new challenges: Estrith and Sweyn had a two-year-old son to worry about and I, on a foundation of falsehoods, exaggerations and subterfuge, had built a concordat between the two most powerful men in northern Europe that one of them was totally unaware of.
We had much to think about.
Estrith had hardly spoken about her time with Hereward and Harold on his mountain. I wanted to know more.
‘What was it like?’
‘Just as he said it was: a lean-to at the top of a craggy mountain, bitterly cold in winter, hot as a blacksmith’s forge in summer. But it was a very profound experience for me. My father has become a perfect reflection of my grandfather, the Old Man of the Wildwood. He is totally at ease with the world around him, able to listen and dispense his wisdom. He seems not to need a woman, or any companionship. Of course, I couldn’t help living out the fantasy of being my mother, learning about the world at the feet of my grandfather.’
She turned away, paused for a moment, before continuing.
‘I don’t think he believes in God. I’m sure he thinks Christ was a great prophet, but I don’t think he accepts that He is divine. He may not believe in any kind of God, as we understand it. He talked a lot about the old religion and the truths of the ancients, like the Wodewose of the Forest, the Green Man, the guiding spirit of Nature. He also
mentioned the Talisman and how its messages had guided him and Torfida to their destinies. It gave us a lot to talk about.
‘Amazingly, at no stage did he ever tell me what he thought, and he certainly never suggested what I should think. He just kept posing questions. He kept saying that life is a search for more questions, not a search for answers.’
‘What will you do now?’
‘I don’t know … Sweyn and I have a decision to make about Harold. He thrived on his grandfather’s mountain. He never got sick, ate like a horse and slept like a baby.’
‘He is a baby!’
‘Yes, that’s what I meant. When he’s older, I will be able to tell him in the smallest of detail and hour by hour about his time with his famous grandfather in his mountain eyrie. I’m so glad we had that time together.’
‘It must have been difficult to leave?’
‘Not really – we were both content, and my father had spent time with Harold. He took us to Messene and we said our farewells. There were tears, of course, but he is happy reflecting on his past and searching for more questions to pose from his mountain top. He is fit and strong; I think he will live for many years yet. As for me, seeing him again and spending that time with him was the fulfilment of an impossible dream. I am very fortunate; I feel blessed to have had my time with him and privileged to have known him as a father.’
By the time we reached Westminster, Sweyn and Estrith had had their conversation and a decision had been reached about young Harold.
While in Bourne, the monks from Ely had told Estrith about a new church, only four years into construction, in the Burgh of Norwich. She reminded us that, when we first met, she had been about to start work on Durham Cathedral. Norwich, she said, was a good place to resume her career as a churchwright, make her hammer-beam roof a reality, and a safe place to raise young Harold. Sweyn would visit whenever he could, but the facade of the child being Adela’s would remain in that Sweyn would formally entrust the care of the child to Estrith.
We took steps to secure the boy’s future. Sweyn’s status at court meant that Harold would inherit his rank as a knight of the realm, subject to him passing the tests of knighthood at the appropriate age, and I bequeathed a few of my English holdings to him in a document that Estrith would hold until he reached adulthood.
She also took a casket, to be handed to him when he reached his majority. It contained a large purse of silver, ten gold Byzantine bezants, a vellum scroll with the Oath of the Brethren of the Blood written on it and the names of its founding members, and St Etheldreda’s rosary that Estrith had carried with her since the fall of Ely.
So, after our own fond farewells in Westminster, Estrith headed back the way we had come to Norwich, while Sweyn and I sailed for Normandy with all the panoply of the progress of a royal prince, but also with the onerous task of telling Robert the detail of the pact I had agreed with Henry on his behalf.
When we reached Rouen, Robert and his entourage had just arrived. They had received news of Rufus’s death while in the Rhône Valley but had not hurried back,
Robert preferring to show his bride the sites and introduce her to the lords and princes along the way. As I suspected and hoped, he had no real desire to claim the English throne.
Telling Robert about his agreement with Henry turned out to be no hardship at all. He laughed heartily at my cunning and thanked me for moving so adroitly. He was particularly pleased about the Charter of Liberties; as I had said to Henry, Robert was a changed man as a result of the Crusade and his single priority was now Sybilla.
‘We are going to Mont St Michel to pray for our firstborn. Sybilla hasn’t conceived yet; the sea air will do her good.’
Robert sailed to England in the summer of 1101 to formally ratify the pact with Henry. He took a large force with him, just in case his brother had had a change of heart, but when they met at Alton in Hampshire, there was an outpouring of what can only be described as brotherly love.
Robert renounced his claim to the English throne and each acknowledged the other as their legitimate heir until they produced a son. Henry renounced all claims on territory in Normandy and agreed to pay Robert the huge sum of 3,000 silver marks as an annual tribute, about one tenth of his royal budget. This particular clause brought a distinct smile to Robert’s face. He told me later that, with part of the first instalment, he was going to buy Sybilla the biggest jewel in Christendom.
Finally, they pledged their loyalty to one another and promised to come to one another’s aid. The agreement
was signed and sealed at Winchester, and Sweyn and I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
Henry and Robert travelled to London together, and they stayed together until Christmas – hunting, visiting the great Norman magnates of the realm, viewing their mighty churches and fortresses and reinforcing the power of Norman hegemony.
The sea air of Mont St Michel had not enhanced Sybilla’s fecundity, but England’s temperate climes had, for shortly after we returned to Rouen, she announced that she was pregnant.
Sweyn and I took great satisfaction in knowing that the child had been conceived in our homeland.
Robert and Sybilla’s child, William Clito, was born on the 25th of October 1102, in Rouen. It was an occasion of great joy throughout the duchy. The boy was a healthy young heir to continue Normandy’s powerful dynasty.
But prodigious joy soon turned to unbounded sadness.
Sybilla never recovered from the birth and her condition slowly worsened. There were rumours of poison but, in truth, the birth had been difficult and she had become septic. She fought the ever-tightening grip of the infection in increasing pain until it killed her in March 1103. Robert was unable to cope with her death and, like his legacy from Palestine, was changed by it ever after.
He had a white marble slab made for her like the one for his mother’s tomb, on which were carved the words:
No power of birth, nor beauty, wealth, nor fame
Can grant eternal life to mortal man
And so the Duchess Sybilla, noble, great and rich,
Lies buried here at rest, as ashes now.
Her largesse, prudence, virtue, all are gifts
Her country loses by her early death;
Normandy bewails her Duchess, Apulia mourns her child –
In her death great glory is brought low.
The sun in the Golden Fleece destroyed her here,
May God now be her source of life.
My niece, Edith, now Queen Matilda of England, also produced an heir for her husband, in the autumn of 1103. He too was given the name William, and the suffix Adelin, a corruption of Atheling, in recognition of his English pedigree.