The Chosen Queen (43 page)

‘Of course they do,’ Svana said. ‘And you, my love?’

‘I am done fighting.’

‘All done?’

‘Svana?’

‘I want to find him, Edie. I want to find Harold and bury him.
We
may not have peace, but I would like
him
to find it at last. Will you help me? Please?’

Edyth looked back to the soldiers in the scrub and to the ditch of death behind them. She looked to the dark trees beyond which the bloody battlefield lay, swarmed over by Duke William and his
carrion troops. Svana was right – they could not leave Harold to Norman mercies for there would be none. ‘I can fight for that,’ she agreed softly. ‘With you, Svana, I can
fight for that.’

‘
E
dyth Alfgarsdottir.’ Duke William looked down his thin nose at her as if at some amusing curiosity before adding, almost as
an afterthought, ‘Queen of England.’

Edyth acknowledged the title with a curt bow of her head but William’s thin lip curled.

‘You’re no queen. My Matilda, my wife . . .’ He glanced at Svana, stood behind Edyth, and added sneeringly, ‘My
one
, true wife, is queen now. She has been very
supportive of my campaign to claim my rights. Very supportive. She commissioned me a magnificent ship, you know, to carry me over the narrow sea, and she dedicated an abbey to our cause and now God
has smiled on her – as is only just. She will make a wonderful Queen of England – truly wonderful. I think you will like her. She is of very noble bearing.’ He squinted at Edyth,
dishevelled after her night in the wilds. ‘Perhaps you could be her lady-in-waiting.’

‘I’m no servant.’

The Norman lords looked at each other and sniggered.

‘You Saxons,’ William said indulgently. ‘In a civilised society it is an honour to serve a queen.’

‘That would depend on the queen.’

William growled and Edyth cursed herself; always she spoke too soon. She felt Svana’s calm hand in the small of her back and stared at the ground, willing herself not to cry. Edwin and
Morcar had begged her to retreat to Westminster with them but, with Svana at her side, she had been resolute. The men had ridden north before dawn had broken on their departure and at first light
the two women had walked onto the battlefield alone.

William had stationed himself beneath a golden canopy on Senlac Ridge where only this time yesterday the shield wall must have held him at arm’s length. He was sat on a golden throne he
must have brought with him in arrogant anticipation and had thrown a fresh scarlet cloak over his still bloodstained chainmail. His men had cleared back bodies as roughly as they might have swept
away rushes from a dance floor and Edyth could see them heaped all around the periphery of her vision. She fought to stay true to her mission.

‘I seek the body of my, my husband.’

‘How touching. You may find it, though, slightly . . . segmented.’

Edyth drove her nails into her thighs, digging down through the wool of her fine gown. She would not let him torment her.

‘But I may look, my lord?’

‘Sire.’

His eyes pinned her to the title. She thought it might kill her to speak it, but need drove her on.

‘Sire.’

‘King William – it sounds good, does it not? King William I, reigned the sixth day of January 1066 to . . . who knows yet?’

‘The sixth day of January? That is not correct. That—’

‘Oh, but it is, little Edyth. Harold had no right to be king. His reign must be wiped from the record – yours with it. No one will remember you as queen. Oh, and sadly that means
that anyone who fought against me in that period is a traitor.’

‘No! You cannot do that.’

‘Harold’s reign was false.’

‘Like your birth.’

The nobles sucked in their breath and William leaped to his feet.

‘My blood is true.’

‘Blood does not make a man, still less a king.’

William snarled under his breath and then smiled, a slow, triumphant smile.

‘Maybe not, but victory in the field does and victory, I believe, is mine.’

There was no more to say. Edyth dipped her head.

‘May we search for his body – Sire?’

‘
We?
You and his eastern whore?’

Edyth’s head shot straight back up again.

‘The Lady Svana is no whore.’

‘No? Sweet. Let us settle on bigamist then, shall we? How very pagan of you all. No wonder God gave the victory to me; someone needs to bring virtue to this land.’

Only Svana’s hand, still tight on Edyth’s back, gave her the strength to ignore his jibes.

‘May we search for his body?’ she repeated.

‘You may.’ Thankfully Edyth threw a curtsey and turned. ‘And when you have found it you may bring it to me.’

‘But—’

‘To me. I’m having no shrines, no made-up miracles around the tomb of an upstart pretender.’

Edyth’s blood foamed. She spun back to retaliate but Svana placed a gentle finger on her lips and faced William in her stead.

‘We will do as you ask,’ she said, ‘but know this – whatever else he may have been, Harold was no pretender. All he did was open and honest. He was King of England at the
request of his predecessor and as the choice of his people, and even if you wipe him from their records you will never wipe him from their hearts. Good day.’

They fled, trembling. Edyth was certain William was going to send men to clap them into irons but he just sat and watched them go. She could feel his eyes driving into her back and held tight to
Svana’s hand as they moved out into the mutilated mass of bodies littering the grass of Hastings field. She glanced at her old friend and a thousand words passed between them – waste,
greed, senselessness, madness – but they did not speak them aloud. There was no need; to them both they were as obvious as the scent of fresh blood was to the carrion crows scrapping noisily
over the corpses at their feet.

There were few other women for Harold’s brave soldiers had marched from all over England and many of their wives would not even yet have news of their loss. All around Norman foot soldiers
were carefully retrieving their own dead and carrying them to be laid out in honourable ceremony, but most of the poor English would have to trust to their home soil to take them bit by putrefying
bit to their final rest. Not Harold though, not whilst they lived to save him that ignominy.

They paced the field, seeking the clutch of armoured corpses that would signify the king’s last stand but the robbers had been out in force. Already many were stripped of anything of value
and all men looked the same naked before their Lord. Time and again they had to turn bodies over to look into the face of some other woman’s loss or, worse, into faces too cut up for anyone
to know who they were lost to. They moved fast, facing down nausea at the slashed and torn mess that battle had wreaked on Harold’s people in their quest for his dear body.

‘We will know him,’ Svana muttered, over and over.

At first Edyth had believed her but now, with blood seeping up her gown and flesh beneath her nails and glassy eyes following her every frantic turn, her foolish confidence was draining away.
They were where he had died, she was sure of it. The concentration of corpses was greatest here, to the east of William’s fluttering canopy, and the bodies, even hacked apart, were clearly
those of full-time soldiers – broad and hard. She turned one over and fell to her knees.

‘Garth!’

He had an arrow deep in his neck and a single line of blood had congealed all the way down to his heart. His body had been slashed but his face was hardly scathed. Edyth stared into it and felt
the truth of Hastings strike her full on, not a dull ache, not twists or knots, but a harsh, searing, battering agony.

‘No,’ she wailed, cradling him against her.

The Norman lords looked curiously over. They were eating and a sickening odour of elegantly cooked meat was threading itself carelessly amongst the stench of death below the barbaric new king,
but they paused now, regarding the two women like some sort of jesters. Edyth looked nervously to Svana and pulled her grief inside. Surely where Garth lay, his brother would not be far away?

Laying him gently down, they moved on but the Normans who had cracked this last noble stand of England’s finest commanders had cracked it with vicious ferocity. Limbs were mingled,
eyeholes gaped, hair was matted with blood. What did it matter, Edyth thought bitterly, whose blood was royal when it ran into the ground?

Tears blinded her, making her task even more hopeless, and as they sifted uselessly through the gruesome pile she felt she might be best just to lie down amongst them and die too. Then Svana
whispered, ‘He is here.’

She peeled back a body and reached out to the one beneath. It lay, one arm flung high, the fingers hacked away by blades hungry to feed on his poor face. A great wound gaped across one cheek.
The nose was cut away and one eye was gouged out. The lips were ripped but curved up in a tiny, secret smile and the one remaining eye, though swollen, seemed to look deep into the very
heavens.

‘It is him,’ Svana said, running a soft finger down the line of his shattered jaw.

‘How can you tell?’ Edyth whispered fearfully.

‘His eyes are ringed with amber – see.’

She pointed and, sure enough, Edyth saw the palest ring of sunshine around the dark blue iris.

‘Ringed with gold,’ she corrected.

‘With gold too precious for me to keep,’ Svana said and sat back. ‘I suspected the very first time I looked into them that he would not be mine for long but it was too late for
that to matter, I had already fallen under his spell.’

‘It was not you, then, who bewitched him?’

‘Nay – quite the other way round.’

‘And now you have lost him.’

‘As have you, but, Edie, we cannot let the bastard duke claim him. We cannot!’

Her voice squeaked with grief and Edyth glanced over to the Norman camp. William had risen and was moving their way.

‘We will not let him,’ she said fiercely. ‘This one is a woman’s battle, Svana, and we will not lose it. Here.’

She tugged Harold’s mangled body out of Svana’s arms and pushed another into its place, then let her hair drop over it, weeping noisily.

‘You have found him,’ came Duke William’s voice above them. ‘Excellent. I will not have a martyr born of this insolent field.’

Edyth leaped to her feet.

‘You cannot have him.’

‘Oh, I think I can. I killed him after all. Stand aside.’

William pushed Edyth roughly out of the way and she stumbled to keep her footing as Svana stared up, her grey eyes awash. Edyth watched her nervously but Svana faced him unflinching.

‘You have England,’ she snapped, ‘you do not need Harold.’

‘But I will have him. Men!’

Two burly guards leaped forward. One wrenched the mangled body from Svana, the other clasped the women’s arms.

‘You bastard,’ Edyth spat out, but William just laughed.

‘How did you know him?’ he demanded of Svana, seizing her chin and yanking it up. ‘How?’

She pointed, slim fingers trembling.

‘By the mole on his shoulder.’

William looked suspiciously down at the dark mark on the torn skin. He traced the tip of his eating knife around it and then, in one sharp, dry motion, slashed it straight across. A memory spun
across Edyth’s mind – herself walking into Harold’s pavilion to find his steward, stripped to the waist to wash, his skin white in the gloom. She had been struck by the dark mole
on Avery’s muscular shoulder, a tiny personal dot on a man she had known only as Harold’s servant. Now it seemed a gift from God but William still hesitated so she pulled forward,
yanking her surprised guards with her.

‘How dare you desecrate my husband further?’ she demanded. ‘You have his crown – is that not enough for you? That was
my
mole. I used to kiss it.’

William half-smiled. Svana glanced at Edyth and then she, too, sprang.

‘I kissed it first,’ she spat at her. ‘You have no right to him.’

It was as much an act as her own, Edyth knew, but still she crumpled and William leaped forward, a predator sensing weakness.

‘Ladies, really!’ he cackled. ‘Little use fighting over a dead man.’ He nodded to the guard holding the body. ‘Bury the traitor on the cliffs so he can ever look
across to Normandy where he swore to uphold me as king. And let these cats go – we need them no longer.’

The men shook Edyth and Svana to the ground and William looked down on them.

‘I will expect you, Lady Edyth, to pay homage at my coronation. I can send men to accompany you if you wish it?’

Edyth shook her head.

‘I will be there, my lor— Sire.’

‘See you are.’

A trumpet sounded up the hill and William looked over. A richly cloaked rider was dismounting before his table and he smiled in thin approval.

‘Forgive me,’ he threw at Edyth and Svana. ‘I have important guests to attend to and can waste no more time on women’s business. You will not linger, will you?’

Then, with an amused sneer, he stalked off, dismissing them out of hand. The two women lay frozen until he was gone and then Svana reached out for Edyth’s hand.