Stewart Binns - Anarchy

I trust this first letter has whetted your appetite. God forbid that I give you a sense that a chore is about to begin. Regardless, my course is set and I must go on. The story that I am about to tell you needs to be written down for posterity. Harold of Hereford’s story unfolds below. Keep it safely in your care until the saga is complete.

When I think back to my arrival on this earth, I still smile at the convoluted circumstances of my birth. I was born surreptitiously, in Constantinople, in the most auspicious of surroundings, in the Blachernae, the private palace of Alexius I, the Emperor of Byzantium. Strangely, I had two ‘mothers’: Estrith, my real mother, and Adela, who briefly performed the ostensible role of my mother to all but a few who knew the truth of my conception and confinement. Even more bizarrely, when Adela, my surrogate mother, died only a few years later, Estrith, my birth mother, adopted me in a pretence designed to protect her status as a nun. It was a charade that survived until her death.

I arrived in the mid-summer of 1098, at the beginning of the Great Crusade. My two mothers were part of the English contingent to the Holy Land, led by Edgar the Atheling. Edgar was the rightful Cerdician heir to the English throne in 1066 – an inheritance first denied him in his tender years by Harold of Wessex and then by William the Conqueror and his Norman horde.

Edgar had finally become reconciled with the Conqueror and had befriended Robert Curthose, William’s firstborn, who became Duke of Normandy when his father died. When the Great Crusade was called, Robert led the Norman contingent and asked his friend Edgar to join him as head of a small force of Englishmen.

My father, Sweyn of Bourne, was part of Edgar’s contingent: a noble knight, of whom I have no real memory, only cherished stories passed on to me by my mother. He was killed when I was still a boy at the fateful Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106.

The secret that disguised my birth was contrived to protect my real mother, Estrith. She was only allowed to be present on the Great Crusade because of her status as Abbess of Fécamp and through her role tending the sick and wounded. The fanatical leaders of the crusade, most of whom were Christian zealots, would not have taken kindly to an abbess of the Church conceiving a child and giving birth in the middle of the holy crusade to liberate the sacred places of Palestine.

On the other hand, Adela was a warrior and an acknowledged Knight of Islam. But more importantly she was married to my father, Sweyn, and thus, as the spouse of a Latin knight, was allowed to accompany him on campaigns. Theirs was a marriage of convenience, never consummated, and agreed between them to allow Adela to fulfil her desire to fight as a warrior – a secret known only to those closest to them. They were more like brother and sister, and both hailed from my family’s ancestral home: Bourne in Lincolnshire.

During a particularly treacherous skirmish with the Seljuk Turks in the Holy Land, Adela was badly wounded by an arrow, and Sweyn and Estrith became separated from the Christian army and had to hide in the desert. Estrith had also taken an arrow and had to be kept alive by Sweyn’s skills as a battlefield physician. It was during these days alone, when both thought death was imminent, that a tender moment became a loving embrace and, against all the odds, I was conceived. Amazingly, thanks in large part to Sweyn’s gifts as a soldier, both survived and made it back to the Christian camp.

Sadly, Adela’s wounds were more severe, which ultimately led to her death. But she survived long enough to act out the role of being my mother and to make it back to England, before dying in desperate circumstances at Westminster. She was buried in Bourne; my real mother, Estrith, told me the whole story many years later, a beautifully poignant memory I will cherish forever.

When it became obvious that Estrith was pregnant with me, a devious plan was concocted to protect her and maintain the facade of the ‘marriage’ between Sweyn and Adela. Adela’s wound was serious and would not heal, so it was agreed that both she and my mother would immediately return to Constantinople, long before her pregnancy could be noticed, where I could be born in secret in Emperor Alexius’ private apartments. When the three of us returned twelve months later, to all but a select few it seemed perfectly plausible that Adela, wife of Sweyn, had given birth to me and had returned with her husband’s child, both lovingly cared for by Estrith, whose nursing skills had led her to be christened the ‘English Angel’.

Estrith, Sweyn and Adela were all part of a secret brotherhood, the Brethren of the Blood of the Talisman, formed in homage to all those who went before them and resisted the Normans in the final redoubt at Ely in 1071. The founding members of the Brethren were: Estrith of Melfi, Abbess of Fécamp; Adela of Bourne, Knight of Islam; Sweyn of Bourne, Knight of Normandy; Edgar the Atheling, Prince of England; Edwin of Glastonbury, Knight of England and my grandfather’s standard-bearer at Ely; and Robert, Sovereign Duke of Normandy.

My grandfather, Hereward of Bourne, and my grandmother, Torfida of the Wildwood, were guardians of the Talisman, an ancient and mysterious amulet that many believe possesses great powers. My grandmother died shortly before Ely, but my grandfather survived the siege and lived on for many years. Before he died, he shared the details of his life with the two Johns of Constantinople: Prince John Azoukh and Prince John Comnenus, who later became the Emperor of Byzantium.

For many years, no one knew what had happened to Hereward after Ely. It was only years later, when the Brethren travelled to Constantinople with the Great Crusade, that his whereabouts became clear. He had made a diabolical pact with William the Conqueror after the fall of Ely, which forced him to leave England forever. He had to assume a new identity as Godwin of Ely and served with the elite Varangian Guard of John Comnenus’ father, the Emperor Alexius. After quickly rising through the ranks to become Captain of the Guard, he became the Emperor’s close friend and confidant.

When he retired, he chose to live in his own remote eyrie, high in the mountains of the Peloponnese in Greece, his whereabouts unknown to anybody except the Emperor Alexius and his local governor – that is, until the Brethren arrived in Constantinople with the crusaders. The Latin Princes and the senior members of their entourage were summoned to the Blachernae to swear an oath of loyalty to the Emperor, during which Estrith noticed that he was wearing the fabled Talisman, given to him many years before by its guardian, Hereward, a man he knew as Godwin of Ely. Later, in a private audience with Alexius, the link was made and a great circle of fate was closed. Alexius summoned Hereward back from his beloved eyrie and he was reunited with his family and the survivors of Ely.

Hereward became a member of the Brethren and accompanied them on their traumatic excursion to the Holy Land, after which he returned to his mountaintop. But to the immense joy of Estrith, she and I, still a babe in arms, returned with him, where we stayed for many months. Throughout my childhood, my mother passed on the minute details of our stay and the many stories of my grandfather’s deeds and those of his followers. They are wonderful memories, many of which I now pass on to you.

After the Great Crusade and our time together with my grandfather, we returned to England, where my mother rekindled her passion for architecture by resuming her career as a churchwright – a skill she had to hide behind the pectoral cross of an abbess. She worked for the rest of her life as one of the senior churchwrights on the new cathedral at Norwich, where I grew up. The building is finished now, but my mother only saw it half built; she died in 1126, in an outbreak of scarlet fever. Nevertheless, she saw the completion of the presbytery and its magnificent vaulted roof, her pride and joy.