this before, and my studies since have shown me the truth. This is what you must see now. In the ninth stanza: 'A fighting man takes/Noble elf-wise crown.' Elf-wise – Alfred.'
Shocked, Orm suddenly saw it. Harold's standard was the Fighting Man; the crown Sihtric urged him to take belonged to a king descended from Alfred. He felt cold at the Menologium's precision – and at the idea that a document drafted centuries ago had been designed to intervene in this moment, right here, right now.
And Godgifu looked shocked too. Evidently her brother had not shared this new interpretation even with her.
'I have thought this through carefully, lord,' Sihtric urged. 'You must do this. England requires it. Providence demands it. You know I have openly admired your honourable intentions towards the succession of the Atheling. But it is not a question of honour or dishonour any longer. You have no choice.'
Harold turned on him, his broad, handsome face twisted. 'Damn you, priest. You're always here, aren't you? Always darkening my soul. Always ready to lead me one step further towards perdition.'
'Harold,' Edward whispered. 'Do you hover over me to steal my throne?'
'No-this priest – that is not my intention-'
'I kept the peace in our shores for twenty years. Well, England is for the furnace now. All my life I have been stifled by you Godwines. You are a better man than your father, but now in this extreme you show yourself to be no more than he was.'
'Sire-'
'Your father blinded and slew my brother. I pray you see your brothers die before you, Harold Godwineson. I pray you see them all die, before you are blinded, and die in your turn.'
Harold's face hardened. Sihtric, wisely, said nothing.
Edward's breath rattled in his throat, once, twice, three times. Then came a final exhalation, almost of relief, as if he were laying down a heavy load.
Harold straightened up. 'The King recognised the threat to England. He vouchsafed the throne, and the safety of his queen, my sister, to me.' He glared around the room. 'You all heard it.'
Of course nobody present had heard any such thing. But no one challenged Harold's cold fury. Even Edith, his sister, the King's widow, would not meet his eyes.
IX
Harold Godwineson was crowned in the church of Westmynster, in the manner of the descendants of Alfred, with sceptre and battleaxe in his hands. Though the coronation was a great spectacle and the feasting that followed lavish, some muttered about unseemly haste, for the new King was crowned the very day after the death of the old. But with claimants brooding on every horizon Harold had rushed to secure his throne.
Immediately after the coronation he began work on organising the country's defence. He sent out orders to review the provisioning and summoning of the fyrd, and to ensure he had a navy good enough to protect the coast.
Godgifu hoped to spend more time with Orm. But Harold soon set off to the north to sort out Northumbria, with Sihtric and Godgifu in his retinue, and they were separated, not expecting to be reunited until March.
But Orm found work among the housecarls and the thegns. Under Edward's peace it had been many years since a major battle had been fought on English soil. Suddenly the nobles of England found themselves under a martial king, in a country under evident threat. There were plenty of sons to be trained in fighting, and Orm was kept busy. But because of his links with the Normans in the past he was treated with some disdain by plump, unhealthy thegns.
In Northumbria Harold had already made a tentative ally of Morcar, whom he had supported as the new earl over his own brother Tostig. But Morcar and his brother Edwin earl of Mercia represented the only significant dynasty in England outside the Godwines and the line of Alfred. So, just as his own father had married his daughter to King Edward, within two months of his coronation Harold married Aldgytha, sister of Edwin and Morcar. This was despite the fact that Harold had been married for twenty years to Edith Swanneshals, who had borne him six children. But Harold's marriage to Edith had been more Danico, a marriage made according to Danish customs, not sanctified by the Church but accepted within English society.
And within another month Aldgytha, though she was only thirteen, was pregnant.
'You have to hand it to the man,' Orm said to Godgifu, when they met in Lunden in March. 'Three months since Edward died, and Harold has already locked his only likely rivals in England into his brand-new dynasty. Although I can see trouble ahead when Harold's sons by Edith figure out what has happened.'
Godgifu was less impressed. She, or rather her father, had after all been allied to Tostig. 'It's another murky compromise,' she said. 'Mucky morals, from a man who got to where he is by betraying his own brother, bullying a dying king and lying about his last words – and breaking an oath made on a saint's relics.'
'Harold holds the throne. Nothing else matters. And you can't run a country without committing a few sins, I'm certain of that.'
Sihtric, meanwhile, took little notice of such detailed matters. His deduction that Harold should grab the throne – a deduction he had come to alone in his relentless study of the Menologium, a deduction he had not shared even with his sister before presenting it to Harold at Edward's deathbed – had raised his sense of his own self- importance to a new height. Now, as this critical year of 1066 unfolded, he withdrew even further from his sister and his bishop, and obsessed even more over his prophecy. He believed, he said, that a full understanding of it was tantalisingly close; and when he had decoded its message he would present it to the King, and so guide Harold's actions through the next crucial months. Godgifu found his grandiose strutting alternately comical and worrying.
But Sihtric had a credibility problem. March was the month in which the 'comet' was prophesied to appear, marking the transition from one Great Year to another. But as March wore on, the days lengthening and warming, there was no sign of a hairy star.
Sihtric showed his sister correspondence from a scholar based in Iberia, called Ibn Sharaf. It seemed this Ibn Sharaf had an ancestor of his own, one Ibn Zuhr, who as a slave in England had taken away a copy of the Menologium for himself, perhaps memorised.
'It's marvellous,' Sihtric said. 'This Ibn Sharaf is based in Toledo, the old Visigoth capital. Toledo is the world's hub of astronomy. Look – the Menologium describes nine visitations by comets, and the implication is that it is the same comet returning each time. Ibn Sharaf has checked records kept by Moor astronomers that go back centuries. There are observations that match all the dates embedded in the Menologium.
'Ibn Sharaf argues that a comet isn't a cloud, or a kind of star, as has been supposed by some. Some astronomers have seen the comets slide across the sky, brightening and darkening as they go. Ibn Sharaf says that comets ride on invisible roads between the spheres of heaven, brightening as they near the glow of the sun, diminishing as they recede. Ibn Sharaf is trying to establish the shape of such paths, for if one had that then perhaps one could explain the comets' strange periodicities. And perhaps one could know when to expect the next visitation.'
'As,' Godgifu said slowly, 'the drafter of the Menologium seems to have known.'
'To the men of the future,' Sihtric said pompously, 'the path of a comet in the sky will be a trivial puzzle.'
This irritated Orm. 'Well,' he said, 'even if that's so, they've got it wrong this time, haven't they? For March is nearly over, and your prophesied comet hasn't appeared yet.'
'It will come,' Sihtric promised. 'Ibn Sharaf and his astronomers are watching under the clear skies of al- Andalus.' But, a small man full of nervous tension, he was unable to sound confident.
X
That year, Easter fell in the middle of April.
