The Handfasted Wife Page 34

  Two years ago, King William died in Normandy – cruel, old and despised by many. He divided his kingdom between his two sons, Robert and William the Red. Robert became the new Duke of Normandy. William, the favoured son, was crowned King of England. On the day of Duke Robert’s accession to the Duchy, he knighted two young men; both had been royal hostages, nothing unusual there. One was Malcolm, son of the King of Scotland, but the other was Ulf, the youngest son of King Harold. These young knights were no longer hostages. They could travel where so ever they wished. When Elditha heard that her son Ulf was with Robert of Normandy, she decided to make a journey. She left Canterbury and crossed the Narrow Sea to the Norman capital of Rouen.

  They met in the Archbishop’s palace. Ulf sank to his knees and kissed the hem of her gown. As she raised him up and looked into his face she saw the lovely features she had known in the child of six. Her green eyes stared back at her from a countenance that was studious and kind. She reached up and touched his hair, as thick and flaxen as her own had once been so long ago. Why, he had almost reached the age she had been when they were in Winchester, before he was stolen from her.

  That afternoon, Ulf and his mother sat together for many hours, eating honey cakes, sipping wine, remembering each other’s memories; memories that reached far back into his childhood years beyond the time at Reredfelle. The evening shadows lengthened as they talked, since there was so much to say. My sisters, let us leave them there. In any case, this is where our tale ends. We must leave them together, happily accepting of their lives, talking long into the night, for they cannot have possibly imagined when it all began that the spinners at the foot of life’s great tree had intended such a journey for them.

  Yet, in the end, the spinners have spun my fate kindly and I am thankful. Close the shutters, Sister Elizabeth, I hear myself say. For there is a draught and I do believe that there is rain in the air tonight.

  Author’s Note

  Edith (Elditha) Swanneck married Harold Godwinson circa 1050 when Harold was Earl of Anglia. There is no knowledge of who her family was and she could have been an heiress without brothers or sisters. They wed in a handfasted ceremony and may have been second or third cousins. This theory was explored by historian Frank Barlow. Marriage between cousins was not permitted by the Church. Equally, marriages between Danish families were often handfasted weddings in any case. Historians suggest that Harold married Aldgyth, the sister of the northern earls and widow of King Gyffud of Wales, in York during 1066. She is thought to have given birth to a child known to history as Harold. Since his marriage to Edith Swanneck was not sanctified by the Church, Harold, as had happened before with early medieval English kings, was able to make a politically advantageous marriage, by marrying a second time in a Church ceremony.

  Little is recorded on the historical record with reference to Edith Swanneck herself. There were five surviving children from this marriage and a little girl who died. Harold and Elditha’s sons were in Ireland at the time of the Conquest. Godwin, Edmund and Magnus used Dublin as a base from 1066 until 1069, from where they made raids into the inlets of Devon and Cornwall and stirred up risings. The historian Peter Rex considers that in the summer of 1068 their arrival with a fleet provided by King Dairmaid of Dublin was connected with Gytha’s Exeter rising and was also intended as part of a general uprising in the south-west. Magnus died in a skirmish during this period. After their failed expeditions of 1068 and 1069 Godwin and Edmund joined Gytha, now exiled to Flanders. They travelled with Thea to the court of their father’s cousin, Swein Estrithson of Denmark and unsuccessfully harassed the north-west of England during the early 1070s. They probably lived out their lives at the Danish court.

  I used the name Thea for Harold and Elditha’s eldest daughter, Gytha, because it is confusing for there to be two Gythas so close together in a novel. In reality Thea-Gytha shared her grandmother’s adventures. Saxo Grammaticus, a Danish historian (1150-1220) wrote that the young Godwin men travelled with Thea-Gytha to Denmark and that she was also chaperoned there by her Aunt Gunnhild, Hilda in the novel. Circa 1075 she was married off by King Swein to Vladimir Monomakh of Novgorod, Kiev and Smolensk. It would have been a fabulous marriage. They had many children, the eldest of whom significantly was called Harold. She died in 1107.

  John of Worcester writes in the 12th century that Ulf, the youngest son of Edith Swanneck and King Harold, was taken as a hostage into Normandy after the Battle of Hastings and that he was released in 1089 and after his release he was knighted by Robert of Normandy, King William’s successor to the Duchy. He may have accompanied Robert on his crusade to Jerusalem in the 1090s and not returned.

  Edith Swanneck is recorded in The Waltham Chronicle as having identified Harold’s body parts on the battlefield near Hastings by marks known only to her. The vignette depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry showing “The House that Burned”, the firing of an estate before the battle and a mother and child escaping, was my inspiration for The Handfasted Wife. Interestingly, Andrew Bridgeford suggests in his book about the Bayeux Tapestry that the woman could be Edith Swanneck and the child, Ulf. The estate could, in fact, be Crowhurst. Only three women are shown on the tapestry and the other two are identified noblewomen. The theory carries weight. The estate at Reredfelle is to be found in the Domesday Book as a Godwin hunting lodge so I chose it as a location for the first section of my novel. It is recorded in Domesday King William holds in demesne Reredfelle of the fee of the Bishop of Bayeux. Earl Godwin held it and then as now it was assessed for three hides … There is a park. In the time of King Edward it was worth 16 pounds and afterwards 14 pounds. Now it is worth 12 pounds, yet it yields 30 pounds. A park at this time was woodland set aside for hunting. What a wonderful source Domesday is! Edith Swanneck may be Edith the Fair, as identified as a wealthy landowner in the Domesday Book. Alain of Brittany fought at Hastings and he did take title to a portion of Edith the Fair’s lands. He became very wealthy and was given the honour of Richmond after the northern rebellion. Count Alain was also related to William of Normandy through his mother, and also to the Breton duke who ruled from Nantes. His family lands were in Penthiévre, in the north-west of Brittany, and at some point during the decade before Hastings, his father, Count Odo of Penthiévre, had sent his two sons, Alain and Brian (who was Alain’s older brother), to Duke William of Normandy’s court to learn how to become knights. Alain had a half-brother, also called Alain, who has become known to history as Alain Niger, or Black, and who after his half-brother’s death inherited his Yorkshire lands, the Honour of Richmond.

  There is documentary evidence that Harold’s daughter Gunnhild eloped with Count Alain from Wilton Abbey and that this was a scandal at the time. The date of the elopement is shadowy but letters from Archbishop Anselm of Canterbury to Gunnhild suggest 1090. Recent research documented in the annual Haskins’ Society Journal suggests the 1070s for Gunnhild’s elopement from Wilton Abbey, which is a more realistic date. My second and third novels in this trilogy Daughters of Hastings will fictionalise Gunnhild’s elopement with Count Alain and Thea-Gytha’s marriage to her Prince of Novgorod.

  Now I come to where my imaginative speculation clearly exists within the pages of this novel. There is no evidence that Edith Swanneck, in actual fact, was King William’s prisoner before or after Hastings, nor is there evidence that she was ever wooed by Count Alain of Brittany. Equally, I invented her journey to Ireland. However, as mentioned above, her sons are documented as having dwelled in Ireland during the years 1066-70 so it was logical that she just might go there. Importantly, the fact that Edith Swanneck disappears from the historical record allows for a degree of invention. I aimed to create a convincing world that was inhabited by English women during the years following the Conquest – one of loss and instability and one where marriages were arranged between widows and daughters of Hastings and Norman knights, to further the Norman land grab and cloak it in legitimacy. Edith Swanneck’s story, as I have imagined it after the Battle of Ha
stings, becomes representative of what did frequently occur.

  Edith Godwin’s narrative and that of Countess Gytha follows the historical record because information is recorded in primary source material concerning them. The resistance of the women of Exeter is recorded by Orderic Vitalis. It also is mentioned in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that Countess Gytha went into exile from Exeter with a great treasure. The events of the siege follow Orderic Vitalis’ account, inclusive of the proposed taxation resisted by Gytha, “mooning” on the wall, the massacre during the storm, the hanging of hostages and the divisions that emerged within Exeter during the siege. Padar, Ursula and Connor of Meath are imaginary characters but they are as real to me as the actual historical characters in The Handfasted Wife. This is, after all, a novel.

  So what did happen to Edith Swanneck? A theory suggested by many historians is that she retired to a convent at some point after King Harold’s death and this is the one I ultimately chose. However, the history of women at this time is shadowy and it is never really possible to pinpoint the truth. In conclusion, where there is recorded historical fact I stick to it, and I do not claim to possess or provide any new theories. I am writing here as a novelist, not a historian, and this story is, indeed, a work of historical fiction.

  Bibliography

  In addition to sources mentioned in chapter headings and in my Author’s Notes I found the following particularly helpful when researching The Handfasted Wife.

  The Bayeux Tapestry: New Approaches , Michael Lewis, Gale R Owen-Crocker and Dan Terkla (editors), Oxbow Books, 2010

  The Bayeux Tapestry: The Life Story of a Masterpiece , Carola Hicks, Chatto and Windus, 2006

  The Hidden History of the Bayeux Tapestry , Andrew Bridgeford, Harper Perennial, 2004

  The Battle of Hastings, Sources and Interpretations , Stephen Morillo (editor), Boydell & Brewer, 1996

  The Godwins: Rise and Fall of a Noble Dynasty , Frank Barlow, Longman, 1992

  The English Resistance: The Underground War Against the Normans , Peter Rex, Tempus, 2004

  The Trotula: An English Translation of the Medieval Compendium of Women’s Medicine , Monica H Green (editor and translator), Penn, 2002

  Medieval Women: A Social History of Women in England 450-1500 , Henrietta Leyser, Phoenix, 1995

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