‘You fought well.’
His eyelids drooping, Redwald started at the familiar deep voice. The king strode over with the energy of a man half his age. Gathering all his strength, the young man pulled himself up the tree’s rough trunk and rested his back against the bark. ‘I wished to serve in a manner that would make you proud,’ he replied with an overstated flourish of his right arm. He put on a cocky grin.
‘And you did.’ The king removed his helmet and held it in the crook of his arm. ‘This was a great victory. All Englishmen should be proud.’ A shadow crossed his face as he glanced back to the western bank. ‘Tostig is dead.’
‘I saw your brother brought down in battle,’ Redwald said, the lie springing easily to his lips. ‘Who slew him I do not know, but I failed to prevent the killing blow.’
The king shook his head. ‘It was always a vain hope that Tostig would survive. He was a Godwin. He would fight until his last breath.’
‘Still, though we never met, I grieve for him, for he is your kin.’
Harold turned away to look across the field of the dead. ‘Our victory was hard-won. We have lost many men this day.’
‘But the throne is safe.’
‘For now, though I fear…’ He killed the words in his throat and pointed towards the Archbishop of Eoferwic picking his way through the corpses, his white tunic aglow. Five black-garbed monks accompanied him. ‘Ealdred looks for his pickings. The Northmen left behind a block of gold among their treasures as big as this.’ He put his hands a sword’s length apart. ‘Harald looted it from Greece on one of his raids. It was his talisman, but it failed him this day. That should buy my way to heaven.’ He grinned, his teeth smeared with blood. ‘I need no great churches to earn my final reward.’
‘And now?’
‘Now we begin the negotiations for surrender with Harald’s son Olaf. We will bury our dead, like good Englishmen, but we will leave the Vikings unburied. Their bones will be a warning to all who dare covet English soil.’
‘And then rest,’ Redwald croaked, overcome by weariness.
‘And feasting and drinking,’ Harold roared, grinning, ‘for we have earned it.’
The negotiations ended two days later and Redwald recovered his strength in Eoferwic with the king and the remnants of the army. Five days after that a mounted messenger thundered through the gates. Scared witless, the man struggled for long moments before he could babble his message to the monarch: the omens and portents had all come true. Two days gone, William the Bastard and his army had landed at Pevensey on the south coast. Villages were burning. Men and women lay slaughtered in their homes. The end was near.
CHAPTER THIRTY — NINE
14 October 1066
England was dying. Silhouetted against the blood-red setting sun, the tattered remnants of Harold Godwinson’s army clustered on the hilltop around the fierce Golden Dragon of Wessex. Beside the king’s once majestic gilded leather standard, a banner depicting the Trojan hero Ajax fluttered limply in a chill north breeze. Silence hung over all for the first time that day. A lull, not peace. Falling away below the warriors, butchered bodies obscured the hillside turf. Red streams bubbled down towards the foot where the vast Norman army washed all around like an iron sea. Beyond the invaders, shadows marched across the wooded slopes and lush valleys of southern England.
The eyes of the gore-spattered huscarls turned towards the king. Cuts slashed his cheeks and blood dripped from his right brow. He stood proudly, looking into the growing gloom, but his hand shook where it gripped his spear for support. In the exhausted warriors’ drawn faces, Redwald saw a pitiful acceptance. One by one, they raised their axes for their final stand.
And then the quiet of the late afternoon was shattered. The clatter of iron upon iron, a susurration of voices, low at first but growing louder. Norman nobles, troops from Normandy, Flanders, Brittany and France. Mercenaries from as far away as Rome. All of them joining together. Swords clashed against mail-covered chests, beating out the rhythm of their war chant.
‘What are they singing?’ Redwald asked, not really caring.
‘They are singing open the gates of hell.’ Harold’s voice cracked with weariness, his bravado disappearing into the wind.
Redwald felt bitter and fearful. How had it come to this, when only days before victory had seemed assured and all his careful planning was about to bring him his just rewards? Racing from Eoferwic after the messenger had delivered his disturbing news of William the Bastard’s incursion, the elite force of huscarls and mercenaries had attempted to raise a new fyrd along the way. But so many men had been lost at Stamford Bridge. Some villages in the east were near deserted, an entire generation lost. In London, Harold had attempted to rebuild his army, but old King Edward’s prophecy clung to every lip. As the coming battle neared, a steady stream of deserters fled the already depleted ranks. No support came from the Mercians or the Northumbrians. The Godwins had long since burned their bridges. And as the small army rode south to where William the Bastard’s men were stockaded, Redwald had sensed a draining of power from the once great king, a man now seemingly crippled and making one last desperate attempt to cling to the throne. But still Redwald hoped, for where else could he turn?
The king had arranged a Sussex levy to bolster his ranks, but the meeting place was the hoar-apple tree at the crossing of the old tracks where the London road emerged from the dense forest of the Weald north of Hastings. It was too close to the Norman encampment, and the noisy gathering of straw-hatted, terrified men had alerted William the Bastard’s scouts. The king’s plan to repeat his strategy from Stamford Bridge, of a last-minute race to a dawn raid, had to be abandoned. Redwald had cursed under his breath. Harold would never have made such an error before. But the long struggle to the throne and the months of battle to hold on to it had taken their toll. Now Redwald glanced down the steep slope at the chilling array of power and his heart felclass="underline" cavalry, the best in Europe, armed with lance and sword; missile-troops, swaths of archers and others armed with something he had heard tell of but never seen, the fearsome crossbow; troops carrying shield, spear, axe and sword, all of them heavily armoured in long ring-mail shirts and thick helms. Eyes like a winter heath, and hearts too.
Redwald gripped his spear more tightly and tried to drive that unsettling chanting from his head. The English had been too slow-witted, too lead-footed, and in their weakness they had sold England like a goose at the market, ready for the slaughter.
But still he hoped. Harold had never let him down before.
And yet why had the king not responded faster when he saw William’s scouts thundering back towards the palisade? Had he really expected the devious Normans to wait until the full English army had arrived and all their troops were in battle order? The Bastard’s rapid attack with his eight-thousand-strong army had devastated the ragged English ranks when they had barely reached half that number. Most of the levied English men had still been straggling along the London road. Harold had responded with the only tactic open to him, ordering his bloodied troops up to the high ridge and leaving the Normans to occupy the swampy lowlands. When the shield wall had locked into place, the king knew he had bought himself some time. Redwald cast his mind back to the Norman archers racing up to the English line and loosing flight after flight of arrows. The shafts had rattled into the huscarls’ shields, and been met with a hail of rocks, javelins and maces that stunned the enemy. And when the two sides had clashed together, the Normans had soon found their mail was no match for the huscarls’ axes. Yet this advantage had only been short-lived.