October 14, 1066, Hastings
Alaric’s horse staggered amid a sea of bodies covering the field. Exhausted as his destrier, Alaric struggled to stay mounted and awake. Beneath his mail, his quilted padding oozed sweat. He hurt all over. His head buzzed from the blows he had received, his left shoulder screamed when he moved it. After almost nine hours, the battle had ended. Alaric and his men had fought in the center with the duke’s brother Bishop Odo.
His sword, this morning smoothly sharpened, now hung in his loose grip, dulled, sticky with blood, as were his hose, boots, and horse, and his kite shield bore long gashes in the leather-covered wood. At a standstill, unable to rise in his stirrups for his trembling legs, he looked over the murky field.
A few isolated soldiers still fought on the edge of the main battle site. He watched a handful of knights chasing the enemy into a shadowed thicket, but he did not join this rout as he had the last, where William had nearly lost his footing in a hidden ravine. He nodded as sleep crept over him. Fear, simmering at the base of his spine all day, seeped through his pores. He jerked awake and vomited.
Swallowing thickly, he knew he would relive this day a thousand times. Already disjointed images and sounds echoed in his head: a restless night around the fire with the men who had followed him. They shared a fish broth, a little wine. They had agreed to rendezvous or leave word of their circumstances at Hereford when it became safe to do so. He had prayed with them, asking God to spare him from killing his own brother or father. He shaved his head for the helmet. He slept badly on a rocky bed. At dawn, a trumpet blasted. In the drowsy chaos, he faced the chilly wind, consuming a dry biscuit soaked in wine as they marched.
“Who goes there?” a voice in the misty morning demanded.
Alaric touched his chest where his mother’s crucifix hung beneath his quilted aketon. A trumpet blared.
“Whoa!” A pennon snapped.
“Have they come already?” queried a nervous knight.
When their forces reached the small rise near the village, Hastings, he donned his armor and strapped on his sword. Once mounted on his warhorse, his squire offered up his shield and lance.
“Advance!” The columns began moving.
Keep moving, Alaric thought, keep moving.
“Arrêtez! Stop!” With others of his company, he looked up the hill.
Harold’s warriors, fully assembled, had the advantage, surprising Alaric and the others, clustering in disarray. Waves of doubt rolled through him as the sun rose, as banners fluttered in the October wind. His gaze searched for and found Harold’s Wessex Dragon, and he recognized a few flags belonging to men he’d fought with, but he could not find his father’s or brother’s pennons among so many others.
“God’s sword! They’ve many more than we,” an awed voice quivered in French. Harold’s spearmen stood ready to hurl their weapons at William’s foot soldiers. Dogs barked, horses reared.
A bowshot away, thought Alaric, or three.
A deep, thundering rumble began as Harold’s men beat their shields.
William’s archers and crossbowmen loaded their weapons and paused. Harold’s troops fused into a solid wall, shields clattered and slapped into place. Alaric swallowed as a cloud of arrows streaked across the sky. Dull drumming, punctuated by sudden screams as arrows hit the shield wall and pierced exposed limbs. Blots flew wildly, splattering flesh, denting helmets.
“Foot!” called the order. Voices roared as under cover of arrows, they moved into position and ran up the gentle slope until the final clash when shields slammed against shields.
“Ut! Ut!” Out, out, the English chanted.
“Press them!” the command. Men pushed against each other hacking, stabbing blindly, a writhing blood-spurting mass.
“They hold, still!”
“Lances!” Banners snapped.
“Let’s go!” Alaric shouted. His unit galloped toward the wall sparkling with raised axes.
“Kill them! Kill them all!”
At the wall, he threw his lance at an unshielded face and wheeled his horse. A powerful blow struck his back. He drew his sword, then swung it, severing the arms raising an axe. Blood spurted over him. A large stone hit his chest, another grazed his head. Blinded, he wielded his sword side to side, clearing, slashing, one after another, barely missing the knight beside him. Trumpets blared conflicting orders. He shouted commands to his men and wrenched his weapon from a body. He turned his horse out of reach to sense the direction of the battle.
“Give no ground! Behind you!” He shouted. Gritting his teeth, he brought his sword down and crushed a helmet. He heard fresh knights join the assault as he turned his horse aside.
“Pull back! Pull back! This way!”
Horses neighed, some reared. Several stumbled and fell.
“Move!” he’d shouted. “Move!”
And Edo. Dear God, Edo had wheeled his horse away, turning his head back to meet Alaric’s eye. The axe came from behind. Blood spewed from his mouth as he went down.
The axe! God’s breath, the axe!
Alaric blinked the specter away and glanced across the field to the campfires. Black smoke from the torches shimmered against a pale coral sky. Lances with streamers and arrows quivered in the breeze, stuck at awkward angles, skewering men and horses. Chargers with flailing legs tried to rise from beneath dead or wounded soldiers, others stumbled about riderless, their reins trailing. The sickly sweet smell hung low to the ground. Women picked their way among the fallen. Those detailed to collect armor threw shields, swords, mail, and helmets into the small carts they rolled up and over those they stripped. Victors, overcome by battle sleep, nested in groups among the dead. Separated from his men, he could not find Roderick or the others.
Despite excruciating pain at his left shoulder, Alaric relaxed his grip on the enarmes and let the shield hang to his side from the guige strapped around his neck. He wiped his bloody sword on a handful of his horse’s mane, and with difficulty sheathed his blade. He heard his name.
Turning, he saw Dreux atop his horse approaching at a slow walk. Bloodied, muddied, he reined in beside Alaric, head to tail, sword arm to sword arm. Dreux’s eyes still glazed in battle-lust, reflected the horror, the terror, the death surrounding them. Alaric clasped a firm hand on Dreux’s near arm and held him tight, feeling him whole. Alive. Dreux reached over and clamped his free hand on Alaric’s arm—strong, solid, steady.
With a nod, they broke off.
“Your . . .” Dreux’s voice cracked, and he began again. “Your father? Rannulf?”
Alaric shook his head. He glanced over the field where they might lie dead or dying.
Behind him, Duke William hailed them. Alaric reined his horse around to greet William, and Bishop Odo.
“The kingdom is mine, is it not, Alaric?” Duke William asked.
“It’s the first battle,” Alaric answered, looking around, not knowing how many more battles like this they would face.
William chuckled grimly. “My cousin is a prudent man, is he not Odo?”
“Prudent? Anything but!” Bishop Odo turned in his saddle and shoved his club into its girdle. “You should have seen him, Brother. He fought like Odin’s own—a black wolf, snarling and biting as if feasting on his prey.”
“Is that right, Black Wolf?” the duke said, appraising Alaric.
“My saints!” Odo grinned. “I’ve never seen anything like it. You saved my life, Alaric.” He shuddered. “The battle axe sliced through a man and his horse right next to me. I would have been next if Black Wolf had not come in for the kill.”
Alaric met William’s eyes, remembering he’d also blunted a sword aimed at William’s head.
“And Dreux,” Odo said, “led the feint, which turned the battle.” He gestured to Alaric and Dreux. “These men served you well this day.”
William smiled. “Remind me when I am crowned to enfeoff my most distinguished warriors,” he said, giving Alaric and Dreux a grand compliment and the promise of land. “But our work is not yet done,” he continued. “Odo, Dreux, send your companies to the nearby manors and hamlets. Burn them to prevent Harold’s remaining forces from sheltering or regrouping for a night attack. Confiscate the food and anything of value the enemy can use. Take hostages, men of rank or their kin.”
Alaric and Dreux exchanged glances. Go with care, Alaric thought.
“Come, Black Wolf. We must find Harold,” William said. “He fell up there.” The duke swept his gaze toward a pile of bodies.
Alaric spotted Malet waving at them. “There,” he pointed.
They climbed the hill where the ground seemed alive for the large mound of moaning, writhing bodies. Malet, looking far older than his fifty-some years, knelt beside a mass of flesh, akin to a flayed haunch of boar.
Harold’s head, without a nose, lay nearly severed. Among his dismembered limbs, a leg was missing, and a deep gouge marked where his manhood had been. Alaric and Malet exchanged dazed glances. Someone had mutilated an anointed king, God’s chosen majesty.
Malet explained. “Edith searching . . . My men took her back to Hastings.”
Duke William grunted and looked over the battlefield. Alaric followed his gaze seeing the bodies—English, Normans, and others, brave men all, had fallen this day, and many others would die tonight or the next. William turned to Malet and Alaric. “Once, you both served Harold. Bury him,” he ordered curtly. “Honor him. As a great warrior, a worthy adversary.”
Not as king, Alaric noted, catching Malet’s eye.
“I will speak to Edith,” the duke said. “It was a cruel fate for her to find him so.”
After William and his men left, Alaric asked in Saxon, “Who would do this?”
“Eustace did it,” Malet answered in French. “I saw him and others I cannot now recall. They’d dismounted and . . .”
Alaric recalled the blood pouring from Eustace’s nose and ears after taking a hard blow. “It is sacrilegious to mutilate a king, anointed and consecrated by the Church.”
“Silence!” Malet ordered in Saxon, grabbing Alaric’s arm and looking around to see if anyone had overheard. “We will never acknowledge Harold’s reign. He usurped the throne. To William and the Pope, he was a lowly ruffian, a commoner who broke a sacred oath—a heinous crime deserving a heinous punishment. Take care with your words, lest others think you loyal to Harold instead of William.”
Alaric nodded.
Malet crouched beside the remains of a man he had respected and honored. His shoulders stooped, his head swayed slowly from side to side.
“I’ll get my men to help,” Alaric said, a hand on Malet’s shoulder. He scanned the field and saw Eustace’s man, Brian le dogue Dubec. He sat atop his horse with his helmet off, laughing with his companion amid the dead and dying.
The sky glowed a pale salmon as Dreux and fifty knights rode into a nearby village and found it almost completely deserted. The few who remained lay bleeding in the streets or hobbled away in flight. Dreux dispatched his troops to begin firing the cottages. He and a handful of men walked their horses through the open gate of a compound enclosing a large, well-built house, a tower, and outbuildings marking a thegn’s manor. Others had been here before him, as evident by the people slaughtered in the courtyard, the open hall doors, and the scattered goods dropped by fleeing looters.
He reined his horse around the remains of a woman distinguishable from her rich clothing as the manor’s lady, killed—perhaps worse. He and his men dismounted and, with swords drawn, entered the hall. There, they discovered a cowering servant who could not answer their questions spoken in French. His men began grabbing plates, candleholders, weapons, and anything they could find. Others emptied chests, sliced through screens, overturned pots looking for coins and jewels.
Searching the loft, Dreux burst through the door onto a lookout deck ahead of his men and stopped, blocking his men with one arm. A young woman stood gazing at the field as if mesmerized by something in the distance. She did not turn her head to look at them. The wind pressed her tunic against her small body and teased her uncovered brown hair.
“A tasty morsel, this one,” snorted one of his men, moving against Dreux’s shoulder to reach her. Dreux shoved him into the others.
“Mine,” he growled, daring them to contradict him.
They grumbled and, as one, turned and left him alone with her.
From three strides away, Dreux studied her expression and wondered what she contemplated.
“Are you cold?” he asked, his Saxon clumsy.
As if the gentleness of his voice surprised her, she turned to him. “No,” she said.
Her hazel eyes glowed from the last rays of the sun blushing her face. Several shades of red and gold sparkled through her hair as the wind blew a loose strand across her cheek, across perfect, delicate skin, on a face as innocent as a child’s, as wary, knowing, and proud as a woman’s. A noblewoman, he thought, noting the gold and amethyst necklace, the garnets on her jeweled belt, and the elaborate gold brooch clasping her mantle.
“I’ll take you with me,” he said, informed by her gaze of the gore splattered over his body and face. “You’ll be fed, protected, and when it is decided, ransomed to your family.”
“My family has fallen this day,” she said quietly. “I am your slave now, to sell or use as you wish.” She turned again to look out at the valley as if seeing it for the last time.
“By English law, yes,” Dreux said. “Not by Norman law.” He sheathed his sword and stepped beside her. She stood no higher than his chest, yet she did not shrink away from him. “What do they call you?” he asked.
“Clare. Clare of Wolenbroth.”
“Come, Clare. This place is to be torched.”
“May I stay here?”
“And burn in the funeral pyre of your ancestors? No, little one,” he said. Taking her arm gently, he led her down to the ransacked hall and issued orders to his men.
Leaving the hall, she cried out and tried to reach the dead noblewoman. Dreux pulled her away and lifted her atop his horse. Mounting behind, he blocked her view, and when she turned to see, he pulled her against his chest and spurred his horse out of the compound.
“What happened here?” Dreux shouted to a villager, sweeping his arm toward the hall.
The villager said soldiers from the battle reported that Clare’s father, the thegn, and all her brothers were killed. Her two older sisters had escaped with the retreating warriors, leaving Clare’s mother to protect their home from looters. The villager refused to say if the men who dragged her into the courtyard and cut her to pieces were English or Normans, soldiers or townsmen.
“She sent me to the loft,” Clare said, choking on her words.
“She saved you,” Dreux said, his head bent to hers. “I shall have her buried properly in consecrated soil.” He found the priest, tossed him a few coins for the burial, and left the flaming village, taking Clare with him.