The Chosen Queen (37 page)

‘I must call up the fyrd now,’ he said. ‘We must protect our southern borders.’

Edyth rose at his side, determined to prove herself worthy.

‘I shall set the maids packing.’

She moved to leave but Harold reached out and clasped her arm, pulling her back to him.

‘Do, please,’ he said formally, ‘but you know, my queen, that we must go our separate ways now.’

She stared at him.

‘You are sending me away?’

‘No! Lord, Edyth, of course not, but you know as well as I that we are under threat on all sides. I must protect the south and you . . .’

‘Must go north. Of course.’ Realisation fell onto Edyth’s heart like a lump of lead. For six delirious months she had fooled herself into enjoying her marriage as a woman, but
now, like the harsh dawn over the blissful whirl of their Trimilchi night, she saw the reality of her position. ‘You married me for this,’ she said dully.

‘Not just for this, Edyth, truly, but, yes, our union has united the country, as it was intended to do, and we must exploit that now to keep it safe.’

‘Is it because she . . . ?’

He kissed her, hard and fast, stoppering her words.

‘It is not because of anything, my queen. It just
is
.’

His eyes were already darting sideways to his gathering commanders. She had become a part of the defence he had been elected to the throne to muster and she could not be petty enough to
protest.

‘Yes, my lord,’ she said meekly and fled.

York, September 1066

I
t was a long summer, bright with sunshine and hot with nervous tempers. Even Ewan, Morgan and Nesta, who had at first treated the journey
north as a great adventure, picked up on the mood and took to playing with the farm children as far from their mother’s tense court as possible. Torr’s ships full of mercenaries proved
an uneasy fleet and scattered in rough winds that tore their sails and ripped up their resolve. They crept back up the east coast where Edwin and Morcar, positioned to catch any sign of Vikings,
waited to pick them off. Harold mustered his fyrd at Chichester but contrary winds held Duke William in port and the camps grew as stale as the stiffing air.

Alone and afraid, Edyth yearned to write to Svana. The magic of their snatched night of hazy-edged friendship warmed her heart but every time she tried to find words to express that they seemed
to tangle the uneasy lines of their lives and, besides, it did not feel fair to burden her with the problems she had given Harold up for. Svana did not write either and Edyth’s only letters
were from Harold, terse, edgy notes about ship movements or rather the lack of them.

It was a curt, impersonal missive and she could not help a stab of disappointment but she tried to understand. Harold was frustrated; frustrated and afraid and bowed down by inactivity and in
that he had her sympathy. In the north, at least, they’d had more to do and she tried to put aside her peevish longing for endearments and respond in kind.

The letter was honest, if not eloquent, and Edyth held it close to her heart as she ran to order the packing of her household. Edwin was patrolling the Humber and Morcar the rough coastline
around Scarborough and she sent messengers forth to ask them to return to York and disband the five thousand troops camped out around its walls. Two days later, one of Morcar’s messengers
skidded into the city and she ran to meet him.

‘Is my brother on his way back?’

‘He is, my lady, and with all speed.’

The man’s words were hopeful but his eyes were fixed firmly on the floor.

‘Why such haste?’

He coughed roughly.

‘Scarborough has been under attack, my lady. It is the Vikings. Earl Morcar’s forces have repelled the first wave but they are moving down to the Humber. The beacons are flaring all
along the coast and they say more are joining the flotilla from across the northern sea.’

‘How many more?’

He swallowed and scratched his dirty toe into the packed earth of the hall floor.

‘They say there are nigh on three hundred ships, my lady, and they are heading this way. Earl Morcar says York has days at best.’

Edyth’s foolish hopes collapsed around her. The enemy, it seemed, had not been driven away by the storms but had been hiding on the back of them and now they were descending like a tidal
wave. Morcar had sent messengers to Harold who had kept his elite fighting force mobilised at Westminster but they all knew it would take days to reach them and even more for them to march north.
For now they were on their own.

Hardrada’s eyes haunted Edyth’s dreams in the few hours of rest she snatched as the invaders drew closer and she rose regularly to check on the children, sleeping obliviously after
their days in the hay. ‘Ruthless’ they called him and she knew it to be true. He could charm like a courtier but that was just a careful veneer stitched on top of a hardened and
determined core. He proclaimed himself a Christian but had little regard for the sanctity of life, including his own, and Edyth suspected Valhalla was still a place he held in whatever heart he
had. He would not surrender; this would be a fight to the death. She remembered Griffin’s decimated troops crawling over the horizon after facing Earl Torr on the battlefield, women calling
names desperately into the void, and her heart quailed.

‘
Why must men ever make war?
’ Svana’s voice asked, creeping like a ghost into her head. Edyth tried to block it out but she longed too much to hear her old friend.
They had both looked for a woman’s year, but it had never come. Women, it seemed, were doomed to ever stand on the sidelines – of councils, of battlefields; even, perhaps, of their own
marriages – and she’d had enough of it.

‘I want to come,’ she told Edwin when he announced they were marching to Fulford to meet the advancing Vikings.

‘No.’

‘I am the queen.’

‘But you cannot fight and I cannot spare men to protect you. You have your children to care for and besides, sister, either you sicken more than most on war rations or you are carrying
something very precious to England. Am I right?’

Edyth flushed and her hand crept to her belly, still flat beneath her gown, though it would not stay so for long. She had not told Harold. There had seemed little place for such womanly news
amongst the sharp lines of troop movements and enemy positions but now the longed-for royal child might be threatened before his father ever knew he existed.

‘You are right, brother,’ she admitted, ‘but please keep it to yourself. It is early days yet and I have not had the chance to tell Harold.’

‘He will be delighted. An heir for England!
Everyone
will be delighted. Let me tell the men – give them something extra to fight for.’

‘No.’

‘But Edyth—’

‘Queen Edyth.’

She felt ashamed of herself for pulling her tenuous rank on her brother but it worked.

‘Later maybe,’ he said mildly, before leaning in to drop a kiss on her forehead and add, ‘but I am glad to know. Father would have been so pleased. A future king of our
bloodline. King Harold III perhaps?’

Edyth felt tears threaten and turned to hide them.

‘Let us not get too far ahead of ourselves, brother,’ she choked out.

‘No,’ he agreed gently, ‘there is much to do to secure all our futures, but we will do it. You must stay here, Edyth, and keep the city and prepare to accept Hardrada’s
surrender. Torr’s too.’

Edyth’s head snapped up.

‘Torr is with him?’

‘Of course. Treacherous bastard. It is good for us; the men are hot for his blood. He will not survive the day.’

Edyth clutched at her brother’s arm.

‘But you will, Edwin? Morcar too?’

‘We will, Edyth.’

‘How can you be so sure?’

He shrugged.

‘I cannot afford not to be. A man can only pick up his feet to charge if he is certain of victory.’

Edyth watched him move away and considered his words. That, then, was how men fought; they did not truly think about it. Maybe if they did, they’d all stay at home and enjoy their lives as
Svana had long advocated instead of sacrificing them to the battlefield like fools. Now, though, was not the time for such crazy wisdom. Her men were riding out and she had to see them go with a
smile and then she had to wait and wait to see which of them returned.

They heard the clash of steel on steel even from York. Edyth sent the children to play with the others in the hall and huddled with the great women of the north, not so great
now as they crouched, eyes shut against their luxurious bower so as better to hear the gruesome sounds of the battlefield floating in on a careless autumn breeze. Hours it endured. They were too
far away to hear the suck and spurt of flesh being ripped apart but they cowered from even the imagining of it. As the day wore on, though, they became dulled to the sounds and sat fixed, mute,
helpless.

In the afternoon the children crept in, seeking their mothers as the fear became too pervasive for even small minds to resist. Edyth drew Nesta and Morgan onto her lap as ten-year-old Ewan sat
pale as a spirit at her side. And still they waited. Every so often someone would sob, as if being stabbed by proxy, and the others would cross themselves and pray their intuition was
misplaced.

Edyth knew that in the city and in the villages all around, other women would be doing the same. She worried she should rise, speak stirring words, but the fools who listened to those were an
hour’s march away and their ears would be too full of blood to hear. She did not feel like a queen anyway, or like a wife, or even like a mother, just like a scared child. So she stayed,
crumpled in amongst them, and prayed.

‘Dear God, save my brothers.’

It seemed selfish but she could not pray for all the men out there; it was too great a task. The best they could hope for was that Hardrada lost more men than they did, but they would be lost
men still. All over Norway women would be waiting too; they would mourn in a different language but it would sound the same. And still they fought.

The sun was dropping when the noise ceased. Light slashed red across the sky, like a mirror of the ground below, and the women and children raised their heads in desperate hope. A trumpet
sounded a victory, shrill and arrogant but utterly without infection to tell them the nationality of the trumpeter. Edyth clutched her children close and, beneath her overgown, ran her hands over
her stomach again and again until she had to stop herself for fear she might wear Harold’s babe right away, yet still the note rang round. She rose.

‘To the watchtower.’

There was a tower above the main city gates, built into the Roman foundations some hundred years ago. It was not high enough to give a view all the way to Fulford but it would offer them early
sight of whoever came up the road from the south. Leaving the children in the bower with their nursemaids, they spiralled up the steps and stood on the top in the dusk and looked to the
horizon.