The Swan-Daughter (The Daughters of Hastings) Page 10

  ‘When is your baby due?’ Gunnhild asked, noting mentally that war was what Ralph meant when he said he had allies.

  ‘By June, two more months.’ Emma was saying as she lifted the bowl of pears on to her lap and offered Gunnhild a silver spoon. ‘Let us enjoy this moment together, you and I, for too soon it will have gone.’

  As dawn began creeping through the shutters, Alan came to her and shook her awake. ‘Gunnhild, rise, dress, get ready to ride. It is not safe for us here.’

  ‘I know,’ she said sitting up in the bed wide awake. Though sleep had eluded her, Ann was snoring quietly in the cot beside her bed. ‘I shall waken her.’ She looked over at her companion.

  ‘Hubert is gathering the men. Earl Ralph’s visitors are arriving today and they are no friends of mine. He revealed as much when he was in his cups.’ She saw dark circles under his eyes and concern in them. ‘I do not trust him. He may not stop us leaving tomorrow but we must not give him the opportunity.’

  Gunnhild scrambled out of the bed, shivering in the early morning chill.

  Alan said in a low voice, ‘If we linger, we could find ourselves hostages, no matter what promises he gives regarding our safe passage. He will not expect us to depart so soon and if we go now we can get on the road before the morning light is full. Get dressed and wait here until I return. My men are retrieving our horses.’ He slid stealthily back through the doorway. Shaking Ann into wakefulness Gunnhild explained that they were riding to Dinan.

  ‘He will miss the Good Friday masses,’ she snorted. ‘Well, I, for one, have no desire to spend the morning prostrate in prayer.’ Ann clambered from her bed and eagerly began to ready their clothing.

  ‘He is just concerned for our safety. Hurry,’ Gunnhild insisted.

  As the bells in the chapel began to ring for Prime, Alan ushered the women through the guarded gate house. He called out that they were in a hurry to attend Mass in the bailey chapel and to let them pass. Moments later their own guard had retrieved all their horses and they were mounted again, riding down towards the bailey followed by their small escort. With their weapons recovered they were fully armed again. No one prevented their departure. Nor, thankfully, thought Gunnhild, did anyone rise to delay them.

  On the route to Dinan, Alan said, ‘There is the likelihood that he knows we have gone and intends to ambush us. He let us go too easily. Gunnhild, we are not riding to my father’s castle after all. We shall take the trackway south past St Malo to my own estates and get well away from here into Penthiévre. He does not expect that I would ride away from Dinan, not on Easter Friday.’

  ‘And will that be safe?’ Gunnhild asked, thinking sadly that she was sorry to leave Emma whose company she had enjoyed and with whom she had hoped to pass more time over Easter, though certainly not as a hostage. She looked down at Shadow’s hoofs. ‘He is shoed now but he is a tired horse.’

  ‘We are all of us tired, never mind our mounts. It is longer but safer than travelling the road to Dinan. When we arrive I shall send word to my father and he will send my troops south to us. I am afraid, my dear, you will find my castle is not as comfortable as Dol. I have not lived there for a few years.’

  ‘As long as it has food and a warm hearth.’

  ‘I am sure you will soon set about that,’ he replied. ‘It is for you to put it to rights. It needs a woman’s command and at last it will have it.’

  Gunnhild glowed with pleasure. Like Lady Emma, she was to be the mistress of a castle. She determined that she would make sure her keep was even more beautiful than that at Dol. It would be a place filled with romance and beautiful tapestries. Her solar, too, would be filled with sunlight and have a view of the sea. As they rode along the coastal route, bells for Easter Masses rang solemnly from distant churches and Gunnhild dreamed of a perfect future. Eventually, Alan slowed from a canter to a trot. He was certain that they had evaded pursuit. By midday a plump spring sun had broken through white puffed-up clouds and the day grew warmer. As they moved further along the coast, Gunnhild felt increasingly excited. Before night fell, her dream castle would materialise for her.

  From St Malo they struck out onto a promontory. Their trackway narrowed and they were riding by cliffs that dipped steeply down to the sea. A wind had risen and it was no longer a warm afternoon. A squall of rain snatched at them and soon Gunnhild was chilled and wet. As she stared out of her hood to the sea lashing wildly against the cliffs she felt its desolation and wondered if this wild landscape could ever be kindly. The cliff road wound endlessly round inlet after inlet until at last she saw Alan’s tall grey stone castle rising out of the wooded landscape. The wooden stockade rose into pointed spikes interrupted by spaces from which archers could shoot down at any stranger who rode too close. Count Alan’s colours of azure and gold flew from the tower. He ordered his outrider to unfurl his matching standard so that anyone guarding the bailey would know that he was approaching.

  When they reached the lower palisade surrounding the bailey, she observed guards shrugged into their hempen cloaks against the biting wind. Closer to, she saw that they were desperate-faced men, who stood in an uneven row around the wall like penitents waiting to be permitted entrance to a shrine. They looked every bit as fierce as the soldiers who guarded Dol. At least they would have protection should Earl Ralph ride south to Penthiévre to harass them. Moments later, after they had passed through the gate, she realised that their castle was a place for soldiers. It was not a home.

  They avoided a pack of prowling miserable dogs that sloped around the yard looking for scraps by weaving to the left of them. Their train followed behind as they rode past soldiers’ barracks, a cooking house and a miserable-looking hall where ivy crawled up the lime-flaked exterior. It was an old feasting hall that lacked windows and it was clearly unloved since no smoke curled from the slatted roof above. They rode by a small chapel but there was no sign of a priest. Nor were people attending an Easter Mass. Surely it was already time for Vespers? Why did the church bell not sound? Alan was a deeply religious lord, yet this place felt terrifyingly heathen. In the corner of the bailey she noticed a stunted beech tree leaning against the palisade fence struggling to survive. As they passed a solitary tree on the path up through the motte she saw that clouts of white cloth were hanging from the tree’s branches, blowing wildly in tatty streamers.

  Alan said coldly, ‘Look away, Gunnhild. There will be changes here. These are tokens, scraps of garments worn by men and women tied onto that old beech tree intended to invoke the help of the old Celtic gods, maybe for the care of a sick child, or to announce a death. That pagan nonsense will be the first to go.’

  Repressing a shudder, Gunnhild rode Shadow behind Alan’s stallion as he followed a narrow lane that wound its way up the hill and entered the gateway into the upper courtyard that fronted the keep. Their soldiers filed after Hubert and Ann, cursing the dogs that seemed to constantly snap about their horse’s forelegs. Sadness clutched at Gunnhild’s chest bringing with it a deep sinking feeling that her new home was not to be the romantic castle she had imagined.

  8

  Castle Fréhel, Easter 1076

  Gunnhild took one look at the castle’s one serviceable bed chamber and choked at the smell of damp and dirt. ‘Do we have to sleep there?’

  ‘Yes, but not on that linen,’ he said. ‘There must be better somewhere.’ He opened a chest and allowed the lid to crash shut. The stench of decay clearly sickened him. ‘It has been years since I stayed at Penthiévre instead of Dinan. Had we journeyed to Dinan first I would have sent Hubert and Ann ahead with some of my troops to see how things were, that there was fresh linen for the beds, food for my table and the castle swept. This is worse than I could have expected. The steward here will have to go.’

  She surveyed the chamber. It was a mean room with bare plastered walls and little furniture, a cupboard of woven sallies, a dusty space with a clothing pole behind a dirty curtain, a chair, a long bench, a roughly hewn table and, in a corner,
a makeshift altar holding a crude wooden cross and the stinking linen chest.

  Leaving her alone, Alan thumped back down the stairs. She opened her bag and hung her few gowns on the clothing pole. A scruffy maid came up with a bundle of linen, stripped the bed and remade it.

  Alan returned and they went down into the hall together to a mean supper of salted fish and a thin, unpalatable gruel. Ann frowned throughout the meal. She was to sleep in a curtained alcove in the hall. Her bed was even worse, a straw pallet crawling with vermin.

  ‘There will be changes here,’ Gunnhild said to Ann. ‘The journey down here was better than such a filthy castle. Even a ship’s shelter is sweeter than this place.’

  ‘An animal’s byre is better than this castle,’ Ann agreed. ‘You will have your work cut out bringing changes here, my lady,’

  Gunnhild repressed a sigh as she undressed by the light of a wax taper. Though Alan had demanded a brazier be set in their chamber, its glow was small and dull. They retired for the night with only the one thin candle, all that could be found spare. Alan fell to his knees before the small corner altar and bowed his head, rattling off prayers at speed before the candle burned down and they were cast into darkness. She wondered if he expected her to join him but he never spoke and she knew that he would resent her speaking to him as he prayed. It was Good Friday and she realised that, to his chagrin, the dangers presented to them at Dol meant that he had missed the services for that deeply holy day.

  She was so cold that as she lay down in her shift she thought that she would never get warm again. When Alan had finished his pater-nosters and Hail Marys he crawled in beside her but pushed her gently away when she tried to snuggle close to him. ‘Not now, my love, it would not be right, not on the night of our Lord’s agony.’ With those words, on that night in his chill castle, he began to shut her out.

  She lay back against her dirty pillow. The new linen was no better than what had covered the bed before since the sheets smelled of stale human sweat; as if they had not been laundered since last used. Alan turned over and began to snore. She lay on her back under moth-eaten covers and tried to sleep. She was tired but sleep eluded her. Fréhel was a sorry place, a disappointment. There had only been a few miserable servants to light the fire below and cook them a lukewarm meal of salted mackerel and the lumpy gritty pottage of peas and onion which she had picked through. Food was prepared here at Fréhel in the old style; everything was cooked over the long central hearth and as a consequence the hall below them reeked of fish. She was hungry, very hungry.

  As she could not sleep she lay still as a coffin under the musty coverlet and made a number of decisions. They must install a separate kitchen and a bread oven cut off from the hall. Their servants must be trained to dress neatly and they would care for the castle properly by washing linen and cleansing the living spaces thoroughly. No one should have to tolerate slovenly maids and such appalling cooks. Wilton was a paradise in comparison, even if after Aunt Edith’s death she had spent much of her time in the Abbey church in prayer.

  Alan had promised that in the morning he would send out to the nearby village for a priest. He had already ordered the clouts removed from the tree in the bailey. Before supper he had called their new household together, told them Lady Gunnhild was their mistress now; they must obey her. Then he said that after their priest arrived he would open the chapel. Everyone at Fréhel would attend at least one mass daily. Three masses would be conducted in the chapel– morning, noon and evening, and the serfs would have a rota. Hubert was to organise them.

  She lay awake for hours mulling it all over, stroking her grandmother’s small chain which she had securely kept about her neck since the Abbess of Wilton had returned it to her. Her grandmother had been formidable. She, Gunnhild, must be equally determined to rule. The sullen Bretons would do her bidding and she would only show them kindness once they improved their manners. On the positive side, she had Ann to help her. She was young. Counting her blessings, Gunnhild thought that, at least, she was not tossing in a ship at sea, though on the Mermaid her bed had at least been clean. Towards morning, as rain lashed the rattling, shuttered window she finally drifted into an uneasy doze.

  She dreamed of Reredfelle. Her father had granted them the old Godwin hunting hall after he had set Elditha aside for a new marriage and her mother had built up the estate in months. She had cleaned every building and won over the peasants who served it. They had been willing to obey the woman they saw as the king’s lady and within weeks of her changes they had admired her. She dreamed of her mother sitting in the upper chamber reading to her and her brother Ulf from a book of riddles that had belonged to her father. In her mother’s household everything owned its place, neat and cared for, as a hall should be. When Gunnhild awoke, her face damp with tears, she was not at Reredfelle. Her husband had already risen and Ann had not yet come to her. She examined her skin. Red welts were rising where she had been bitten. She scratched and then remembered why – the mattress had fleas. She leapt out of bed. There was a bowl of cold water waiting on a small bench and a cloth. Anxious that she did not scratch the bites into oozing blood, she dashed the water about her face and arms, glad that it was freezing since it eased the itchy bites. She examined the drying cloth for ticks, decided it was clean enough and dried herself off. Dressing hurriedly, she quickly knotted her hair under a veil and climbed down the narrow stairway into the castle hall.

  Alan was seated at the bare board munching a hunk of bread with one hand and drinking a cup of small beer from the other. The Hall looked neater than it had on the previous night – there was no evidence of the sleepers; mattresses had been put into chests. She looked towards her feet. Dirty rushes had been swept away. The floor planks were bare and a team of four young girls had begun scrubbing them. Back and forwards they moved, their backs bent, their hair neatly tucked below tight linen bonnets, their hempen-clad skirts rising and falling in rhythm as they worked. She looked around her hall, pleasantly surprised. The central hearth had a fire glowing in it and an old woman was stirring something that smelled like a vegetable stew with herbs in the pot that hung from brackets above the blaze. Another was bent over what looked like griddle cakes. As Gunnhild smelled them, hunger rose in her belly.

  Alan stopped eating. ‘I have been up for hours but did not wish to disturb you. As you see I am beating changes into them already.’ He waved his hand towards the hearth. ‘However, even though they will do my bidding without question and I can order a clean-up of Castle Fréhel, it will be for you, Gunnhild, to manage the servants and see that they do not slide back into slovenliness.’

  ‘What tongue do they speak here, my lord? Will they understand me?’

  ‘They speak their own tongue amongst each other, just as they seem to want their old religion, but believe me, Gunnhild, they have French enough to understand you. Don’t take any of their dumb nonsense from them.’ He lifted an ash switch that lay on the bench. ‘Walk around with this and use it if necessary. Do you understand? Show them no weakness. They are horses to be commanded.’ His tone was sharp.

  She had never seen her mother carry a switch to beat disobedient servants. Elditha had won servants’ loyalty with firmness and patience. However, she remembered that Elditha had travelled to Reredfelle with a great household of her own and there was devotion in her peoples’ hearts. She must be a chatelaine as efficient as her mother and organise these sullen servants.

  Alan reached for her and seated her beside him. He placed a cushion at her back. ‘Now, tell me, what would my lady like today? How about griddle cakes with butter and a cup of warm frothing ale?’ Not giving her time to reply, he clicked his fingers at the women below and immediately they brought the cakes, butter and ale that he demanded. He smeared butter over a griddle cake and held it up to her. She took it and began to eat ravenously.

  ‘Better than last night, and I ordered this too,’ he said, lifting up the flagon of ale and pouring her a cup. ‘We have a brewery where
they make apple cider and beer. There is a buttery and a dairy. It is, without doubt, neglected but you will soon set it all to rights. ‘

  ‘But there is no separate kitchen or bake house?’

  ‘There are both kitchen and bake house down in the bailey, but up here, well, no need. We have a hearth.’

  ‘No, we must build them. I will not have cooking done over the hearth here.’

  He considered and said firmly, ‘That depends on the cost. It was good enough for our fathers and good enough for us if they cook over it with care.’

  ‘It is not good enough for me, Alan. There must be new furniture and a fresh coat of lime on all the walls.’ She pulled back her sleeve and showed him the bites. ‘I cannot sleep in those filthy sheets again.’

  ‘Then they must be boiled and dried today.’

  ‘They are past boiling. Burning would serve them better. And the mattress is full of vermin.’

  ‘I shall see it beaten and aired.’ He sighed. ‘Gunnhild, it is a woman’s work. After today I shall not organise any of the domestic arrangements in this castle.’

  ‘I shall,’ she said quickly. ‘Where is Ann?’

  ‘Ah, now there is a woman who can organise. I sent her down to the dairy and already she has sent these up.’ He pointed to the cheese and butter. ‘They are scrubbing the dairy clean.’

  ‘Good,’ Gunnhild said with a twinge of irritation that Ann was cleaning the dairy already at his behest rather than at her own. She drank a long draught of her ale. She might prove herself to be efficient, but he must pay for new things such as linens and furniture. The changes she planned would cost him and he had already indicated that he was tight-pursed. She surveyed the hall, recognising that once it was whitewashed it could be attractive. They could have scenes painted on the walls: ships at sea with borders of mythical creatures; mermaids and mermen frolicking in waves. Perhaps, too, they could commission a set of tapestries to hang in the hall and in the new solar that she intended to have as her bower. She made the suggestion.