James Aitcheson - Knights of the Hawk

‘She was a good friend,’ came a voice, startling me. I turned in the direction it had come from, and had to raise a hand to shield my eyes from the setting sun, which was just above the figure’s shoulder.

My eyes adjusted, and I saw it was Eanflæd. She brushed her dark hair from where it had fallen in front of her face. I wondered if she had anything more to add, but when she said nothing, I looked away, embarrassed that anyone should see me so affected, and angry too that she had intruded upon me.

Eanflæd did not come closer, though, nor did she kneel down next to me by Oswynn’s grave, as I’d half expected she might, and I took that as a gesture of respect.

‘She had a child. A girl. Did you know that?’

‘No,’ I said, surprised. Oswynn had not spoken to me of any child, although in our haste to escape Jarnborg we hadn’t had the opportunity to exchange stories. ‘The child was Haakon’s?’

‘He certainly thought so,’ Eanflæd said. ‘He named her Alfhild, and doted on her whenever he returned to Jarnborg. She was born in the autumn after Oswynn came here, on the feast day of All Saints.’

It took me a moment to understand the import of what she was saying. The feast of All Saints took place on the first day of November, while the ambush at Dunholm had happened nine months earlier, in late January.

‘What did Oswynn think?’

Eanflæd shrugged. ‘She never liked to say what she believed, or if she did, not to me. As for the rest of us, we always did say amongst ourselves that the girl had more of her mother than of Haakon in her looks, but who knows? Oswynn certainly didn’t, no matter what she might have hoped.’

‘What about the girl?’ I asked, sensing the slightest glimmer of hope. If there was something that remained of Oswynn, even if she were not a child of my blood-

‘She died,’ the Englishwoman said. ‘She was a sickly thing from the day she entered the world, although God granted her the strength to see through her first year and more. But then the winter came, and the snows, and she caught a fever, and there was nothing that could be done for her.’

No sooner had that candle been lit, than it was pinched out. ‘And after that?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Did she ever bear Haakon a child after Alfhild?’

Eanflæd shook her head. ‘Nor did any of us, lord.’

‘None of you?’

‘Not one,’ she confirmed. ‘God alone knows why. Although that never stopped him from trying.’

I nodded, not knowing what to say. To tell the truth I wasn’t sure quite what to make of this new knowledge, or even whether there was anything to make.

‘She never stopped believing that you would come for her,’ Eanflæd said, and now at last she did come to kneel beside me, gazing down at the broken earth beneath which Oswynn lay. ‘Especially after she saw you at Beferlic. She often confided in me, and I in her. She told me you would come sooner or later, and I never had the heart to say otherwise. Every time we were allowed to venture beyond the fortress’s walls she was always looking to seaward. I knew she was hoping to spy a ship headed for the island, a ship of warriors who would kill Haakon and free her. She held on to that hope; it was what kept her alive through the dark nights, and there were many of those. It made her strong, and we in turn took our strength from her.’

Eanflæd stopped, for she was sobbing. Her hands covered her face and her whole body shook. I placed an arm around her shoulder in reassurance.

‘She was right,’ she said, between sniffs, as she wiped her sleeve across her nose. ‘In the end, she was right, and it shames me that I never believed in the same way she did.’

‘She always was strong,’ I replied, not knowing what else to say.

Someday, I resolved, I would come back here; I would make the pilgrimage north and find this island again. It didn’t matter that there was no shrine, no altar, no great minster church to mark the site where she lay in the ground. To me, if to no one else, this humble place would always be sacred: here, beneath the eternal yew, the tree of ages, where the leaves never fell or lost their shade, where life was ever-present. Wherever my travels took me in future, to whatever far-flung parts of Christendom, always I would hold this place in my mind, in the same way that my memories of Oswynn would never fade, but instead would remain as vivid in the years to come as they did now. That was the solemn oath I swore to myself, and it was a pledge that I knew I would have no trouble keeping.

As long as I lived, I would not forget her.

‘Where will you go?’ asked Eudo the next day. We stood on the sands beneath the still-smoking ruins of Jarnborg, listening to the waves lapping on the shore and gazing out over the bay, across the choppy waters sparkling beneath the light of the sun, towards the distant peaks thickly robed with cloud. We had done what we came here to do; now the time had come for us to part ways, and to venture where we must.

‘Not back to England,’ I said. ‘That much I know. There’s nothing left for me there.’

‘You can still try to make amends,’ Wace pointed out. ‘Robert might yet decide to accept you back into his service, if you come with us and seek his forgiveness.’

On that, at least, I had made up my mind, and I think they both realised it, even if they didn’t want to admit it.

‘No,’ I answered firmly. ‘He doesn’t need me, or my sword. Not any more. He’s made that clear enough. He will do his own thing, and I’ll do mine. Maybe in time these wounds will heal and we’ll be able to see eye to eye once more, but until that happens, no.’

I would not humble myself before him. I would not beg forgiveness. What respect I’d had for him, recent events had steadily ground down. Until he earned it again, I would not bend my knee nor offer my oath to him anew. I couldn’t. Not without losing all respect for myself.

I would not go back. I only hoped that Eudo and Wace understood, and did not think any less of me for that decision.

‘If not England, then where?’ asked Eudo after a while. ‘Back to Normandy, or to Brittany?’

I shook my head. ‘First of all I’m going to take Eithne home, to reunite her with her kin, providing they still live. I promised her that much, and it’s time for me to make good on that promise.’

Since Haakon and his men had no further use for them, I had claimed the largest of his four longships. It turned out that one of the slaves we had freed from Jarnborg, a lank-haired, bone-thin countryman of Eithne’s by the name of Domnall, had been steersman to a wealthy merchant from Haltland before he was captured by pirates and thrown in chains. He, together with a good number of the other former thralls, had agreed to join us, partly because they had nowhere else to go, and partly because I think they sensed with Magnus and Aubert and myself opportunities to seek out their fortunes anew.

‘And after you’ve taken her home?’ Wace asked. ‘What then?’

I could only shrug in answer. In truth I was in no mood to think about such things, although of course I would have to decide before long. A man cannot spend his life forever dwelling on the past, wondering about what might have come to pass that didn’t, and wishing things were different. Sooner or later he must turn his mind to what lies ahead.

Wyvern ’s crew, directed by Aubert, were loading supplies for the voyage back to England. The island folk had bestowed food and fleeces and other gifts upon us, which at the time I’d taken for tokens of their gratitude for ridding them of the Danes. Later, though, I’d wondered whether in fact they meant it as tribute, fearing that if they did not placate us, we would soon turn our attentions to their steadings and their homes, and raid them just as we had raided Haakon’s hall. However those offerings were meant, we’d accepted them with gratitude, adding them to what we had managed to recover of the jarl’s treasure hoard. For rather than immediately killing those who had surrendered to us, we had given them the chance first to show us where their lord had buried the chests containing all the silver and the gold that he had reaped on his expeditions. Only after they’d done so did we condemn them to the ends they deserved. Afterwards we shared the booty out as fairly as we could, so that both crews were rewarded and every man in our party, whether English or French, received a portion. Once divided out between so many coin-purses, it looked like a paltry amount for a warlord of Haakon’s repute to have amassed, and I suspected he had other hoards that his men hadn’t known about or else, if they had, simply hadn’t told us of, both here on this island and elsewhere. Nonetheless, it was hard-earned recompense for the men who had toiled so tirelessly in our cause with oar and sail, spear and sword, risking everything. But naturally there were many whom we could not reward: those who had lost their lives to Danish steel, far from any port they could call home. All we could do was honour them, as we had honoured Oswynn, and give Aubert money that he could pass on to their families.