Naked (7 page)

A cheer rang out.

“Good Saxons!”

Now I could see our forces, right to the rearguard, and they could see me. My legs locked strong and sure, Ebur rock-steady beneath me. To my relief, this time my words carried on the wind.

“We’ve come together to defeat a common foe, the Danish invaders. We will not let them spread their claws further into Engla-lond’s heart. This peril shall not cross the borders of the Middle Lands. Fight, today, to halt them in their path. Fight, today, to keep them from our homes, our goods, and our families. Fight, today, for Saxon lands and for the Saxon way!”

A deafening roar in reply.

“For the Saxons!” a man called out.

“For Lady Godiva!” Wilbert cried.

“For Lord Leofric!” Acwell, the Mercian warrior, shouted.

I slipped back into the saddle.

Edmund flashed me a smile. No longer angry.

Cheers rang as I sensed our men’s battle courage building. The Saxon drummers started as I rode with Leofric and Edmund to the rear.

Lord Leofric took his place beside me. “Ready?”

With a shaking hand I lifted my sword. “Ready.”

7

Made war upon each other …

—Tennyson (1842):
Godiva

“Shields up!” Leofric roared.

My heart pounded faster than the battle drums as the men on the front line hoisted their arms, their backs set as firm as the round shields they held aloft.

Surely such a wall of resolve would not break.

Then the stones came. Flung across the plain from massive catapults, they dashed across the sky, some small and sharp, some as big as boulders. Men began to fall like cut trees.

An anguished cry came from a man crumpled to the ground directly in front of me. Instinctively I let go Ebur’s reins to scramble down.

A glove clamped on my arm.

“Stay,” Leofric snapped. “If you go in now, your warriors will follow. Let the catapults do their worst.”

“But he’s hurt!”

“There’ll be many more hurt before this day is done.”

Rock after rock heaved back and forth, each a thud in my stomach. There must have been at least three of theirs to each of ours. Horror-struck I watched our shield wall begin to give way, gaping holes forming like jagged teeth. As one man fell another stepped forward to mend the breach, but our ranks were thinning at a hideous rate.

“How long will it hold?” Panic made my tone fretful. At least it disguised my terror.

Leofric threw me a brief glance. “As long as their courage.”

Courage had a scent, I learned, as I watched men collapse to their knees as the stones struck them down, only to haul themselves upright again. It rises, like yeast from new baked bread. Fear has a smell too, sour as cream gone bad in the churn. Both hung in the air above the battleground.

The yeast of courage I needed now. I breathed it in as the stones kept coming.

“Look out, Godiva!” Edmund shouted. A far-flung stone almost grazed the side of my helmet as it whizzed by. In time I ducked. Like relentless rain they pounded on, each strike a thud in my heart.

Too soon it rang out, the call I feared. “The shield wall has fallen! The Danes are through!”

“Now!” Leofric lifted his leather-clad fist like a flag.

With a roar, the foot-warriors surged into the fray.

The sign of the cross. My legs were weak as I slipped from Ebur’s back and sent her with a slap across the flanks to a serving boy. Too young to fight, he stood with mouth agape.

My own mouth had dried to sawdust. The Danes pelted across the plain as hard and fast as their stones. Our shield wall became a wall of men no longer, but a heaving mass of fighting, struggling bodies, of grunts and curses, and the thud of blade against shield.

The metal clanged in my ears as I stood there. I didn’t know what to do.

“Stay behind me, Godiva!” Edmund, shield-high and helmeted, thrust himself in front of me.

His words brought me to myself. I didn’t want to stay in the rear. “I came to fight, Edmund! Don’t try to stop me!”

Lifting my shield high, I dodged him and charged forward. My sword struck out, my aim uncertain.

Steady. Steady.

A shield edge caught me in the small of my spine and I whirled around, my sword at the ready. But it was one of our own men, a farmer I recognized from a nearby village. His eyes were glazed with an expression I hadn’t seen before, something between excitement and repulsion. Battle fever, I remembered my father called it. As if propelled by it the farmer pushed past without recognizing me, his lady.

When I turned back I could barely move. On four sides men fought hand to hand, blade to blade. Edmund disappeared as men closed in. The stench of sweat and blood filled my nostrils.

I could still see Leofric, taller than most. Like me he was now on foot. As I glanced toward him he swung his sword in mighty side-sweep, bringing down two Danes in a single blow.

He would stay near me, I knew. How did I know? When he didn’t even turn my way, as he slashed his way to the front? I can only say that the air between us wasn’t air, but something thicker, denser, an invisible rope that bound me to him as surely as if it had been tied around my waist.

Then I saw it. Wilbert crouched on the ground, the axe that Walburgha had been so proud of, cleft in two. Horror drained his face as a Danish warrior loomed over him, ready to strike. With a dreadful air of resignation, Wilbert covered his grey head with his arms.

“No!” Aloft I raised my sword, shoved my way through the shouting mass of men and leapt in front of Wilbert. My helmet slipped off with a clunk, but I paid no heed. No time to retrieve it.

My sword cut into the arm of the Dane.

Snarling he drew back, blood dripping from the wound I’d made. His thick lips formed a sneer as he sized me up. I gulped, beating down my instinct to turn and run. This was no ordinary warrior, his carved axe and heavy armor told my sinking heart. This was a warrior of Thurkill’s bodyguard; his most skilled and brutal men, trained not just to kill but to kill without mercy.

My sword met the slice of his axe just in time. We went to it, blade to blade. My father’s teaching reverberated as I fought. A strange calmness overtook me as I made nimble steps, thrusting and turning. Forward, back, in, out. I could have been in the courtyard of Coventry hall, so steady my weapon became.

Wilbert clambered to his feet and staggered out of the way. Part of me sighed with relief. He would be safe now. The other part of my brain stayed on my opponent, now using my sword, now parrying his axe, now keeping my shield high.

Never had I fought a man as menacing as this, even though he was injured. Built like a bullock, he doubled my size.

Size does not decide the victor
. It wasn’t my father I heard, I registered briefly with surprise, but the Earl of Mercia. The power of the words surged through my veins, spurring me on. Forward, back, in, out.

Too soon I began to tire. My muscles ached, the blade hung in my fist. No matter how hard I tried, each thrust I made became weaker, its aim less sure. He knew it, the Dane who fought me. It registered with malice in his leer when in a misstep I dropped my shield. Boots sliding in the mud the grassy plain had become, I tried to retrieve it before staggering up to face him again.

The warrior snatched his advantage. I had no chance. Giving up on my shield, I darted aside, but before I’d fully righted myself, his axe slit open my leather sleeve, and cut into my skin.

Pain sliced hot and hard. Then it became no more than a prick of a needle, as with all the courage left in me I hoisted my sword. At least he’d only caught my shield-arm. My other hand still defiantly clutched my sword.

Harder and harder our combat became. My fatigue became dizziness, dizziness a kind of drunken dance as my sword kept moving.

Forward, backward, in, out. Then I noticed. I rubbed my free hand across my face. Could my opponent be starting to tire, too? Was it possible? He’d been hurt by my sword cut, and from fighting others before me, I suspected, as he began to lumber like a wounded ox.

Size does not decide the victor
, the voice urged me again. Swiftly I shifted my feet into the special dodge move my father had taught me, to take advantage of my small size. Darting forward, I brought my blade upward between the Danish warrior’s legs, and struck.

With a roar of agony he crashed to the ground.

Leaving him there, I rushed to Wilbert. “Are you hurt? Let me get you to safety!”

His skin was as grey as his hair. “Save yourself, my lady!”

“No, Wilbert! Come on!”

Wincing as the movement tore the wound on my arm wider, I hauled him up. I had to get him out of the fray. A man his age should have stayed at home, not fought in open battle.

“Come with me, Wilbert! Think of Walburgha! She’ll refuse to forgive me if anything happens to you!”

“She—won’t—forgive—me—my lady, if you come to harm.” His lips were white-edged, speech an effort. “Leave me here, I beg you.”

“Come!”

I’d yanked him to his feet and laid his arm across my shoulders when I heard Lord Leofric shout my name.

“Godiva! Behind you!”

“Godiva!” Leofric’s bellow of warning came again. Letting go of Wilbert I spun on my heel and gasped with fear, the sour milk of it filling my mouth, coating my tongue. Bearing down on me with a vengeance, his brutal axe held aloft, was the Danish warrior I thought I’d felled.

I tried to move but my feet refused to respond. Nor would my arms. As my brain sent desperate messages to raise my sword, it slipped between my fingers.

With a cry that sounded like outrage, Leofric vaulted between us and brought down the man’s shield with a crunching blow. His sword clashed with fire as if striking an anvil, as it met the Dane’s axe.

My shaking hands flew to my mouth to catch my escaping breath. The courage inside me collapsed as—transfixed with dread—I watched the warrior who had tried to kill me try to kill Leofric, Lord of Mercia.

But he’d met his death-match. Leofric’s sword arced through the air and split open the Dane’s head.

Stumbling away I clutched my belly, retching. Nothing came.

Leofric’s gloved thrust wrenched me out of the mass of heaving bodies and hauled me down behind the safety of a catapult frame. “Godiva.”

He crouched beside me. His breath battle-heavy, his face streaked with dirt and blood.

The sounds of the swords and shields stilled to a hum.

“You’re wounded,” he said.

The fight had made me shake. Nothing compared to what his nearness now made. He lifted my arm, peeling the sleeve to where the Dane had slashed his axe. I bit my tongue as the leather pulled on my torn flesh. He tore off his glove. His bare hand. Gentler than I ever imagined, he traced the lip-shaped wound.

“It’s not too deep.”

He kept hold of my arm. Impossible to pull away as he gripped me with an expression I couldn’t fathom.

“Godiva!” Edmund raced over, ducked behind the frame. Panting, he pushed his helmet from his sweating brow. “What happened? Are you all right?”

Leofric dropped my arm and turned on him with a face so furious I quailed.

“No thanks to you!” He shouted before I could speak. “You’re her bodyguard! A
cniht
! What were you thinking to leave her like that?”

Edmund’s jaw clenched.

“It wasn’t Edmund’s fault!” I cried. “It was mine. He tried to keep in front of me but I ran to help Wilbert.”

“Your bodyguard should defend you no matter what happens. It’s his Saxon charge.”

“Godiva, forgive me.” Edmund’s voice was hoarse against the clashing blades. “I looked and you were gone.”

“You ought never to have let her out of your sight,” Leofric said, taut-lipped.

He seemed to speak to himself as much as to Edmund.

“Take her to safety,” he ordered next. “She must fight no more.”

“No! I…”

“Lord Leofric!” A Mercian warrior rushed up. “Thurkill has fled!”

Leofric seized the man by his tunic. “What?”

“He’s vanished, my lord! He’s fled to the woods and his men are following him!”

He spoke the truth. Amazed, we watched as the Danes remaining in the field surged like a swarm of bees into the thick woods on the opposite side of the plain.

Bewilderment broke out amid our men in a babble of calls and jeers. “They’re running away!”

Acwell, the strongest of Leofric’s bodyguard, cried out, “Thurkill is injured!”

“Did you see Thurkill hit?” Edmund demanded.

Leofric scowled. “If I’d seen him injured he’d be dead by now.”

“You’d kill a man lying hurt?” The question tumbled from my lips before I could stop it.

“As you should have done just now.” The tenderness he’d shown me when he’d tended my wound vanished. “If you’d finished the job properly you wouldn’t have needed my aid.”

His words jabbed like spikes. “It’s dishonorable to kill a man who lies defenseless!”

“Death is a greater dishonor.” Without another word he stalked away.

“Victory for Godiva!” Edmund waved his sword toward the sky. In the distance I spotted ravens swooping in. “The Danes retreat! The battle has been won for Coventry!”

He flung his arms around me.

“The Danes retreat!” Whoops and yells rang out as another cry went up. “The Saxons! The Saxons!” Men of the Middle Lands and Mercia alike embraced each other. With relief I saw that Wilbert, hoisted, cheering between two Coventry men, seemed to have recovered from his fright.

Too numb to join the cheers, I clambered up from behind the catapult frame and stared.

Victory had come at a cruel cost. Sorrow flapped its black wings over the torn field where the killed and wounded lay in blood and mud. Choking on my tears, I registered familiar faces that would never smile again. The youngest of the miller’s sons. A farmer, still clutching his hoe.

Leaving Edmund, I hurried over to where a Saxon lay fallen, struggling to stay alive.

Blood gushed from a deep gash across his chest as I knelt down beside him. Aine, with her salves and herbs, might be able to save him, as she had done for many Coventry men before.