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 fell: 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.
Less disciplined than the elite force, the fyrdmen and the levied troops broke ranks to pursue the Normans, and William the Bastard saw his opening. When he ordered in his cavalry, the men had been slaughtered, the ranks fragmented, and Harold’s own brothers Gyrth and Leofwine left lying among the dismembered corpses.
Redwald thought back to the shattered look that had flashed across the king’s face. Did Harold realize then that the age of the Godwins was truly over? No longer able to hold the ridge, he had withdrawn the standards to the top of the hill.
The harsh beat of iron and the full-throated singing ebbed away. Only the moan of the wind with its whispers of the coming winter drifted through the stillness.
Harold peered down to the long Norman line without expression. ‘We are English,’ he called in an unsettlingly calm voice. ‘When death looks in our face, we kick it in the balls. Come then, Norman bastards. Run up this hill in your heavy armour and meet our axes.’ The king looked round at his huscarls. ‘For every whoreson you slaughter this day, you will be rewarded with gold. We have the high ground. The Normans must come to us… to die. Kill well, my men, and by the end of the night we will be raising our mead-cups to victory.’
Redwald felt his heart stir. Was there yet a chance? When he glanced around the English, he saw there was no shield wall left. No defence. Harold was right; killing was all they had.
The red sun edged towards the horizon, the shadows pooling around the huscarls. The Norman horn sounded, low and mournful.
Harold turned to Redwald, clapped a hand on the young man’s neck and pulled him in close to whisper in his ear. ‘You have been more son to me than adviser,’ he said, ‘and you have made me proud. This day make me prouder still, and if die you must, do it with honour.’ He looked Redwald deep in the eye with an unflinching gaze, and for the first time the younger man thought he saw a hint of tears there. But then the king snapped back to the Normans and the final battle began.
The cavalry charged. Behind them, the archers raced in waves. The sky blackened with arrows.
‘Shields up,’ Harold bellowed.
Driven to his knees by the thunder of shafts, Redwald saw a score of tips bursting through the splintered wood. Fear gushed through him. With so many Norman archers, the high ground meant nothing. The realization had only a moment to sink in, and then the storm broke upon them. Redwald glimpsed mere flashes in the whirl of his panic. The huscarls stood their ground, swinging their axes in furious rhythm. But the arrows flooded down upon their heads as the Norman archers fired over the top of their own cavalry.
Madness, madness, Redwald thought.
Shafts burst through faces, rammed into chests and shoulders. Heads leapt from necks. Arms fell still twitching. Grey chunks of brain sprayed from split skulls. A mist of blood descended on them all.
