The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings) Read online

  The Swan-Daughter

  Carol McGrath

  A Marriage Made in Heaven – or Hell …

  1075, and Dowager Queen Edith has died.

  Her daughter Gunnhild longs to leave Wilton Abbey, but is her suitor, Breton knight Count Alan of Richmond, interested in her inheritance as the daughter of King Harold and Edith Swan-Neck ,or does he love her for herself?

  And is her own love for Count Alan an enduring love, or has she made a mistake?

  The Swan-Daughter is a tale of elopement and a love triangle, based on true historical events.

  Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2014

  ISBN 9781783753383

  Copyright © Carol McGrath 2013

  The right of Carol McGrath to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be copied, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, Ty Cynon House, Navigation Park, Abercynon, CF45 5SN

  For Tara and Tim

  Acknowledgements

  My sincere thanks to Stephanie, Alison, Bob and Hazel at Accent Press for bringing this novel to the reader.

  My thanks to jay Dixon , my indispensable editor who has been superb with this novel and to Nikki Fine who was my only beta reader and pre editing stage copy editor. Nikki you were a canny reader!

  The Benedictine Hours

  Les Heures Bénédictines

  Matins Between 2.30 and 3.00 in the morning

  Lauds Between 5.00 and 6.00 in the morning

  Prime Around 7.30 or shortly before daybreak

  Terce 9.00 in the morning

  Sext Noon

  Nones Between 2.00 and 3.00 in the afternoon

  Vespers Late afternoon

  Compline Before 7.00 as soon after that the monks retire

  Gloassary

  Hippocras – a sweet honey wine

  Thegne – an Anglo-Saxon nobleman of middling rank

  Villein – peasant

  House coerl – the elite corps attached to an earl’s household

  Palisade – the protective fence that circles the estate buildings

  Seax – a short Anglo-Saxon knife sometimes double sharpened

  Skald – a poet but one of Viking origin

  Relics – saints’ relics were an important part of Christianity from the seventh century onwards

  Old English riddles – short poems

  Burgh – town

  Handfasting – a secular and legal form of marriage universally used before the advent of church reform during the 11th Century

  Alan of Richmond’s Family Tree

  Gunnhild Godwinsdatter’s Family Tree

  Epitaph for Count Alan

  A star nods approval at the kingdom; Count Alan our companion is dying

  And England is saddened as its first leaders are now turning to ash

  Count Alan was the flower of the kings of Brittany,

  And that he, too, is dead, allows decay to threaten the order of nature

  With unsettled law.

  In the beginning the Conquest shone with the blood of noblemen.

  But this great lord grew strong as he followed our king

  So, listen to us, as we say, ‘May he have rest’,

  A great noble who has fought so bravely in Britain.

  Ascribed to a 12th-century monk who wrote it in his copy of work by the Irish monk Marianus Scotus (1028-1083) and translated from the Latin by Dr Mat Harris of Malvern College and loosely rendered more poetic by myself, while hopefully preserving the original meaning.

  Tristram and Isolde

  They both laughed and drank to each other; they had never tasted sweeter liquor in all their lives. And in that moment they fell so deeply in love that their hearts would never be divided. So the destiny of Tristram and Isolde was ordained.

  Tristram and Isolde , excerpt from The Death of King Arthur by Peter Ackroyd, 2011.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Part Two

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  Part Three

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Christmastide 1101 AD

  As the musicians’ music dies away I step up from my place below the salt. Sweeping back my cloak, I draw out my flute and play a few notes. I stop, and bending forwards say, ‘Listen.’ For a moment everyone shuffles on their haunches. The hall falls silent. They all love a story.

  ‘Listen well,’ I say, ‘for this is a true tale of elopement and a princess’s romance.’ The men and women seated behind the white cloth raise eyebrows. I now have their complete attention. ‘My lords and ladies, this story is about a great scandal, one that happened to Gunnhild, the youngest daughter of King Harold of England and his hand-fasted wife, Edith the fair, she of a swan’s neck white as the feathers on an angel’s wing. Ah, so you have heard of her beauty I see. Then fill your drinking horns, my friends. I shall be some time. For this tale we cast back to the year ten hundred and seventy-five when Gunnhild, a maid of eighteen, lived in Wilton Abbey, her hair hidden under a postulant’s cap – though she had no desire to take the veil, nor did she wish to live out her life amongst those who had fled into abbeys for care of their hymens after the great battle. No, once her aunt, the Dowager Queen Edith had died, this young lady wanted her freedom and she was determined to have it.’ I pause. The Yule log crackles and sparks in the hearth. ‘Perhaps this was a mistake, perhaps not. You can decide for yourselves.’

  Candles splutter and flicker in the recesses along the wall as I begin to recount my tale in a voice as clear as reliquary crystal.

  Part One

  St Margaret, the Virgin of Antioch

  (Picture from Wikipedia)

  1

  Wilton Abbey, December 1075

  It had been so easy to take it.

  As Wilton Abbey’s bell tolled for her dead aunt’s midnight vigil, everyone – priests, nuns, novices, postulants and girls – passed through the archway into the chill of St Edith’s chapel. Gunnhild hovered near the back of the gathering. When the nuns’ choir began to sing the first plainsong, she lifted a candle from a niche close to the doorway, cupped her free hand around it and slipped out into the cloisters. She hurried along a pathway through overhanging shadows until she reached her aunt’s apartment, rooms that were set away from the main abbey buildings, elegant as befitted a queen, albeit a dowager queen. Pushing open the doors, she crept into the reception hall, crossed the dead queen’s antechamber, the great bed-chamber and finally into Aunt Edith’s vast wardrobe. I must find it because when I do I shall have a suitable garment to wear when I leave this place. I must take it before it is given to that dwarf, Queen Matilda.

  Gunnhild set her candle in an empty holder on a side table a little distance from the hanging fabrics and stepped into the space between wooden clothing poles. Frantically her fingers began fumbling amongst Aunt Edith’s garments. Which one was it? No, not those woollen gowns, nor
the old linen ones either. No, look again. She moved along a rail by the wall fingering linens and silks until finally she found what she sought at the very end. Reaching out with both hands she touched the overgown, pulled it down and took it out into the candlelight. Its hem was embellished with embroidered flowers – heartsease or pansies – in shades of purples and blues with centres of glistening pearls. Her aunt had worn it when Gunnhild had first travelled to be with her in Winchester for the Pentecost feast of 1066, just after Aunt Edith’s husband, King Edward, had died and Gunnhild’s father was crowned king. Their family had risen and he had wanted his nine-year-old daughter to be prepared by her aunt for an education fit for a princess, to learn foreign languages, play instruments and embroider. She had remarked then to Aunt Edith that heartsease was her favourite flower and Aunt Edith had lifted her hand, smoothed it along the silk and said, ‘One day, this dress will belong to you.’

  Gunnhild peered closer, examining the clusters of tiny flowers, noticing how perfectly they were edged with gold and silver thread. Her eyes darted about the fabric. There were no moth holes. The green silk dress was as fresh as it had been ten years before. She laid the overdress on a stool, returned into the depths of the wardrobe and with both hands shaking lifted down its paler linen undergown. With a cursory glance she saw that it, too, remained in perfect condition. Make haste and hurry away. She folded the overgown into the linen shift and pulled her mantle over them both. Carefully closing the wardrobe’s leather curtains she blew out the candle and sped from the apartment, fleeing back through empty cloisters to the postulants’ building.

  Pausing to catch her breath, Gunnhild pushed open her cell door with her back, slipped inside and spun around. Her every muscle tensed with fear. Eleanor was standing in the middle of the room.

  ‘Christina sent me to find you …’ Eleanor, who had been her friend since she had entered Wilton Abbey, broke off. ‘What, by the Virgin’s halo, are you hiding under your cloak?’

  Gunnhild pulled out her bundle and dropped the garments onto her cot. Eleanor held up the silk overgown and then dropped it onto the tiles as if it were poisoned, her face pale with shock. ‘This,’ she gasped. ‘Where did you get it?’

  ‘I took what is mine by right,’ Gunnhild said in a quiet voice.

  ‘You stole it.’

  ‘No I did not. My aunt promised that one day this gown would belong to me. All her clothes will be shortened to fit the dwarf queen. And anyway …’ Gunnhild glanced down at her grey postulant’s robe and her hand flew to the hideous black cap that Christina, the assistant prioress, forced her to wear, ‘I need something better than these.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘You will know soon enough, Eleanor, I promise.’ Gunnhild scooped the gown into her arms, folded it and placed it back on her coverlet beside its linen undergown. Her mind working quickly, she searched around her chamber for a suitable hiding place. The garment chest had a strong barrel lock and a key, though she rarely secured it, but now ... She crossed the room, flung open the coffer’s lid and bent down. For a moment she inhaled the pleasant scent of cedarwood chips and felt around with both hands, rooting amongst her plain linen until she plucked out a green fillet embroidered with a golden pattern and a pair of red deerskin slippers decorated with twisting, fire-spitting, Godwin dragons. Both had been gifts from Aunt Edith for her sixteenth birthday. She lifted the head band, turned it around and around in her hands and faced Eleanor again. ‘These belong to the daughters of my family; my aunt gave them to me to keep, not to my mother who is in a convent, nor to my sister, Thea, who is far away in the lands of the Rus, but to me,’ she said, clutching her hands together so tightly her finger bones felt as if they would crack. ‘No, Eleanor, the real sin is to imprison one of us in this abbey, to expect her to wear dull gowns day upon day, and order her to wed with God.’

  Eleanor leapt up from the bed and pointed at the headband. ‘Where in heaven’s name would you wear that? Christina will find you out. No one is forcing you to take vows. You chose your own path. You have broken two vows already, obedience and poverty. If the abbess finds out …’ She caught her breath and rasped, ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Gunnhild, take them back to your dead aunt’s rooms and leave them there for Queen Matilda before you break the third.’

  ‘And that is unlikely here,’ Gunnhild complained and tucked the fillet and slippers back in the coffer. ‘No, I shall risk Christina’s fury.’ She plucked the gowns from the cot, laid them neatly on top of the fillet and slippers and covered the lot with two everyday shifts. Turning back to Eleanor she said, ‘Christina must not find out. Please say you will not tell her. Besides, I have not yet taken any vows, nor shall I take them … I have changed my mind … My father, King Harold, remember, how he was once king of the English? Well, I shall never forget it, nor that the dwarf queen’s husband, that bastard, William, killed him on the field at Senlac. I shall never forget that King William stole our kingdom.’ She gasped for breath, almost choking with fury. ‘My father never intended me for the church. He sent me to serve my aunt, to learn to read, write and embroider. Now Aunt Edith is gone to God’s angels there is nothing left for me here. I intend to be free.’

  ‘Gunnhild, how will that happen?’

  Eleanor’s voice was very, very quiet. Gunnhild breathed deeply and said, ‘Eleanor, I am a princess. When my knight comes to claim me I shall be waiting for him in that dress.’ She climbed up on to the chest and slipped her hand behind the statue that sat in the wall niche above it. She felt around for a small key and grasped it. Carefully, so as not to knock over her plaster St Edith, she climbed off the clothing chest. Kneeling on the cold tiles she secured the barrel lock with a loud clink, stood on the chest again, replaced the key and set the statue back into its original position. Looking over her shoulder she called down, ‘Now it is hidden and only you and I know where. Promise me you will not tell.’

  ‘I will not. Gunnhild, your secret is safe, at least on earth if not in Heaven.’ As Gunnhild jumped from the chest Eleanor reached over and caught her hand. ‘Hurry or you really will be discovered and I hope God forgives you because if Christina finds out she will not.’

  ‘Bah, I am not afraid of Christina.’ Gunnhild hesitated momentarily, and added, ‘No, not a bit, even though I know she will beat me with her rod through the cloisters and lock me in the ossuary if she ever discovers my intention to escape.’ She reached out for Eleanor’s hand. ‘Thank you. You are a true friend.’

  Eleanor drew her close and whispered. ‘Be careful what you wish for, Gunnhild. Now let us slip back into the chapel before the dragon comes looking herself.’

  Hand in hand they sped back to the novice stalls in the chapel where they took their places amongst the other postulants and novices and bowed their heads in prayer. The vigil was drawing to its end. The bell in the abbey church was already tolling. It would only be a few hours until Prime. After morning prayers Gunnhild was to travel to the funeral in Westminster Abbey because she was the only surviving Godwin heiress dwelling in England, but once Aunt Edith’s royal funeral was over she would return to Wilton to be buried alive as deeply as the winter that was gathering about the cloisters.

  Touching the course hemp of her plain gown she sighed. No knight would ever look at her dressed in raiment as pale as the shroud that covered her aunt’s once lovely form. As Gunnhild’s eyes swam with tears, she wiped them away from her cheeks using a corner of her cloak. She whispered into the candle smoke, ‘Aunt Edith forgive me; I want to be of the world, not apart from it.’

  2

  Westminster, December 1075

  ‘And the Lady Edith passed away in Winchester 7 days before Christmas and the king had her brought to Westminster with great honour, and laid her with King Edward, her lord.’

  The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, translated and edited by Michael Swanton, 2000

  Their long wagon clattered into the palace courtyard, almost too late for Aunt Edith’s funeral. The palace of Westmin
ster was smaller than Gunnhild remembered. Even so, the new church still drew her awed gasp as she peered out at it from the nuns’ litter. She recollected how Aunt Edith’s smooth face had become riveted with anxious gullies on the night that the King, Gunnhild’s uncle, collapsed at the Christmas feast of 1065. He had lingered in a shadowy place between worlds for days, rambling terrible prophecies, foretelling, to those gathered at his bedside, of fire, sword and destruction.

  It was this fear that drove Uncle Edward to give care of his kingdom to Harold of Wessex, her father, who was the strongest of all the earls. After all, the other earls had elected her own father to be king because the obvious choice, young Prince Edgar, who had been born in exile, was foreign to their people and was inexperienced.

  During that long-ago Christmastide the freezing palace had seemed to creak and groan with the weight of her aunt’s sorrow. She remembered Uncle Edward’s funeral on the Epiphany and how, on the same day that he was interred, her father had been crowned King Harold II. On that day she had become an eight-year-old princess.

  Now, ten years on, she climbed from the wagon into the icy courtyard to stand in her thin woollen mantle amongst the nuns from Wilton waiting to join her aunt’s funeral procession. It would move in a stately manner out of the palace, across the snowy courtyard and into the long pillared aisle through the Minster’s west door. She was not a princess today, of course. As she surveyed the noble Norman ladies, clad in rich furs and gathering around the palace yard in elegant groups, she could not help but long for someone to love her, someone to free her from Wilton and sweep her into her own elegant existence in the world beyond abbey walls.