November 1066, Eashing, Surrey
During the weeks following Hastings, William waited for the English to surrender. To encourage them, he sent troops out to plunder the villages east and west along the southern coast.
One cold November morning, the day after St Martin’s day, Malet and his troops joined Alaric’s company and brought stunning news. Of the nearly four thousand warriors who had fought with Duke William about a third had died at Hastings. Alaric had lost nine, including Edo, whose body Gilbert had found. Johan and two others were missing. “Harold lost as many?”
“Perhaps fewer. They would have held the day had they not broken ranks.”
Alaric nodded, remembering how William’s forces had become discouraged, how Dreux’s feint and chase finally opened the English to slaughter.
“There is more,” Malet said. “Two of Matilda’s ships landed at Romney instead of Pevensey. The villagers slaughtered everyone on board. William burned the village to the ground and killed every man, woman, and child he found there.”
Alaric’s stomach clenched. During his training years, he’d seen William unleash his savagery against small, unimportant Norman villages, which could ill defend themselves. He terrified his opponents by showing boundless brutality. He would have done far worse to the villagers who destroyed his wife’s ships.
“And?” Alaric asked, knowing the English would begin to capitulate.
“Dover and Canterbury surrendered.”
Alaric raised his eyebrows. He’d expected Canterbury to put up a fight. It annoyed him that the English had not offered greater resistance. “London?”
“Not yet. The Witan named Edgar the Atheling king.”
“He’s barely fourteen winters,” Alaric said, recalling the boy he’d seen once. The last heir to the Wessex royal house had no chance against William. “The Witan is stalling for time.”
“Yes,” Malet said. “William will force them. He is leading the army around London to isolate it and sends small companies to assault the surrounding villages. We are to remain in the south.”
Alaric recognized Malet’s set expression. Both had lived in this land. They knew the people, their customs, and the terrain. They had chosen William over Harold, and they dreaded the days to come.
They entered Eashing that afternoon. The day before, a company of knights had slaughtered all the oxen, stolen the pigs and chickens, and taken all the grain and loot they could carry before burning the village to the ground.
Riding through the charred ruins, Alaric saw only a handful of listless people. One woman, in torn clothing, with a bloodied face, wailed. She pulled at her hair and rocked back and forth on her knees before the still smoking remains of the church. Alaric sent Gilbert the Monkman to question her.
“She won’t speak,” Gilbert said.
“Our beloved homeland is smoldering, Alaric,” Malet said in Saxon, looking around in disgust. “Does it matter she does not speak?”
“No,” Alaric said. No one would be punished for these acts, for they obeyed William’s orders to harass the countryside. The occupation had just begun. In a matter of days, he and his men might very well do the same. Still, he could not fight the rage he felt for the slow hunger that would haunt the people this winter.
He knew this hamlet. It belonged to his brother’s wife, Leota. He and Rannulf had ridden here once to see if the old hill fort could be used. Alaric still did not know if brother or father had been at Hastings. It would be weeks before he could get a message to them at Hereford.
“Alaric,” Roderick, his second-in-command, said with a strangled voice as lightning flashed in the darkening sky.
“Yes?” He saw Roderick’s blanched face and followed his gaze to the small cemetery beside the smoldering church. Foreboding crept up his spine. Leota’s nurse, Goda, the crone who had hated Rannulf, who had begged Leota not to marry him, sat atop one of the burial slabs, staring at the ground.
Alaric and Roderick dismounted and approached her. A clap of thunder crashed over his words. “Goda,” he said. “Goda!” He shook her shoulder, commanding her attention. The lingering rumble stilled the air.
For a moment, her eyes blinked and when she saw him, she flinched, and covered her face. Then, as if recognizing him, she gave him a slow, toothless grin, and began to hum.
“Goda, what are you doing here?” he asked in Saxon, knowing Leota never went anywhere without her.
She shook her head back and forth vigorously as if trying to keep the sounds away. She stopped, her head bowed. Her shoulders began to shake, and Alaric put his hand on her arm in comfort. She lifted her face and cackled, squinting at him. He recoiled from her breath.
“Die, death, death, I say,” she sniffed. “Wed and bed, and live you’ll nay.” Flicking her hands at Alaric, she said, “Away you beast, this day you feast, upon your own you dine and wine, upon your blood, you raise a shrine.” She cackled again, clapped her hands and buried them in her skirts between her knees. She then grinned at Alaric and rocked back and forth. She pointed her nose at the charred ruins. “All, Normans, villagers, done by Normans torched for fun.”
“You make no sense. Is Leota here, you old witch?”
She looked at him coldly. “Aye, Leota, the babe, your brother too. And Simeon, his wife, that old fool.”
“What? Where are they, Goda, where?” Alaric growled, pulling her from the slab and shaking her hard.
She raised her arm and pointed a short, blunted finger to the church. Without another word, she glared at Alaric and twisted her mouth into a sneer.
Alaric staggered toward the church and pushed himself through the entrance still standing. He paused, bracing his bare hand on the hot stone. Ignoring the lingering heat, the smoke, and the smell of charred flesh wafting against his face, he stepped into the amorphous mass. An old man raked through the embers. Alaric searched among the shrunken, piled bodies still smoldering in the ashes. He could not tell men from women, although he could distinguish a blackened grimace, clawed hands, lumps of iron, part of a mail coat fused into a blackened body. His brother? His father?
He slowly dropped to one knee. His body trembled. His ears roared with the echo of one word: no, no, no, no. No! Dead? No! He remembered his family alive: his father clasping his arm in farewell, his mother holding back tears, his brother asking him to protect his pregnant wife. Looking at the twisted shapes huddled together, his gaze rested on one stiffened figure until he realized it crouched protectively over a charred infant.
Agony pierced him, stealing his breath. He pressed the heel of his palm on the searing mail rings to stop an anguished howl struggling for release. As the metal rings branded him, he hid the pain along with grief, his helplessness. His emptiness. A sudden gust of wind swirled the ashes and Alaric remembered the merciless irony of Leota’s words: May the wind blow your ashes away.
The old villager related that Harold had sent Alaric’s family to Eashing in the summer. Rannulf had ruled as thegn, Leota’s son had been born, and together with Simeon and Julienne, all had lived in peace until yesterday. William’s men had herded them and the villagers into the church and torched it. All but those who’d fled had perished.
Malet sent Alaric and his company back to their encampment and vowed to bury Alaric’s family. As Alaric approached the field of tents, three dozen knights sallied forth to harass other villages. Alaric watched, coolly. Who killed my family? How exactly will I avenge their deaths?