Tim Severin - King's Man

'You may inform your lord that I agree to his proposal. My army will land on the south coast of England in the first or second week of September. The precise date will depend on the weather. My transport barges need calm conditions and a favourable wind to make the crossing. According to my information, Harold

Godwinsson has called out the English levies, and is presently holding his forces on the south coast, so it is likely that he will dispute our landing. Therefore it is important that King Harald keeps to his programme and opens a second front no later than mid-September.'

'I understand, my lord.'

'One more detail. You are to remain here with me. It may be necessary to communicate with your king as the campaign gets under way. You will act as our intermediary.'

'As you wish, my lord. I will prepare a despatch for King Harald confirming the details. If you can provide a vessel, I will send the message to Norway.'

That same day, feeling quietly satisfied that my mission had been accomplished so easily, I wrote out a summary of what had happened. To prevent William's secretaries tampering with my report, I hid my meanings in phrases that only those who knew the ways of skaldic verse would understand. Harald became 'the feeder of eagle of sea of carrion vulture' and the Norman invasion fleet was 'the gull's wake horses'. And when I came to write about William himself, I buried my meaning even deeper, because I was not complimentary about his character. He became the 'horse of wife of Yggr' because Harold would know that Yggr's wife was a giantess, and that she rode a wolf. Finally, to make doubly sure that the letter was treated as genuine, I folded the parchment, using the same system of secret folds which, in Constantinople, would prove that the despatch was authentic and which was known to Harald, and gave the letter to a mounted courier, who took it to the Norman coast. From there a ship would carry the despatch to Trondheim.

For the next five weeks my status at William's court was ambiguous. I was neither a prisoner nor a free man. I was treated as if I was a minor retainer in the service of William, yet everywhere I was accompanied by an armed guard. All around me the preparations for the invasion continued apace, and in early

August, when William moved with his retinue to Dives to begin the embarkation of his troops, I went with him.

The scene at Dives was the culmination of the months of preparation. The port lay at the mouth of a small river, and by the time I arrived almost the entire invasion fleet had mustered in the roadstead. I counted at least six hundred vessels, many of them simple barges specially designed to carry troops. Lines of tents had been erected on the beach, and the army engineers had built cookhouses, latrines and stables. Squads of shipwrights were putting the finishing touches to the transports, and there was a constant coming and going of messengers and despatch riders as the infantry and conroys mustered for their embarkation. I had wondered how the destriers, the heavy horses, would be loaded, and now I saw the method. The cavalry transports were brought up on to the gently sloping beaches at high tide, and anchored. The ebbing tide left the flat-bottomed barges stranded, and the carpenters then placed low ramps up which the horses were led — sometimes with difficulty — and then stabled in the barges with their feed and water. There the massive animals seemed content to stand and eat as the incoming tide refloated the vessels and they were warped out into the roadstead.

On the eleventh day of September the duke did have his 'devil's luck', because, just at the time he had promised his invasion, the wind turned into the south-west as a gentle breeze, and held. At dusk William summoned me to his command tent, and, in the presence of his commanders, gestured towards the northern horizon.

'Now you can tell your master,' he said, 'that William of Normandy keeps his word. Tomorrow we complete our loading and sail for England. You will be staying behind to make your final report.'

The following morning I watched the entire fleet raise anchor and, taking advantage of the flood tide, set out to sea. As I trudged back up the beach to where my guardian man-at-arms stood waiting, I felt I had served my liege lord well, and for the last time. When the opportunity came I would be king's man for Harald no longer, and I would return to Sweden and seek out my twins. I was feeling old.

The man-at-arms was content to dawdle. It was pleasant on the coast, and he was in no hurry to return to his barracks at Rouen, so we spent the next few days at Dives. The place, now that the fleet had sailed, had a slightly desolate atmosphere. The beach where the barges had loaded still showed signs of the departure, and there were traces where the tents had stood, piles of horse droppings, grooves left by the carts that had brought the stores, and charred marks where cooking fires had burned. There was an air of finality. The roadstead was empty. Time was suspended while we waited to hear what was happening with the invasion.

The weather continued fair, with bright sunshine and a light south-west breeze, and to pass the time I arranged with a local fisherman to go out on his boat each morning when he checked his nets. There, ten days after I had watched the Norman fleet depart, we were bobbing gently on the sea when I identified a familiar profile. A small vessel was beating down towards us. Hard on the wind, she was making slow progress, but there was no mistaking her origin. She was a small trading ship, Danish- or Norwegian-built. As she tacked her way into the roadstead at Dives, I was sure that she had come to collect me, and that Harald must have received my letter.

I asked the fisherman to row me across so that we intercepted the vessel before she made her landfall. Standing up in the fishing boat, I called out a greeting, glad to speak Norse once again. I was still wearing my stolen monkish gown, so the vessel's skipper must have thought it odd that a Christian priest spoke his language, but he spilled the wind from his sail and the vessel turned up into the wind so I could scramble aboard. The first person whom I saw on deck was Skule Konfrostre, the same young hothead who had boasted that the Norwegians would smash the English huscarls. I was perturbed to see that he was very agitated.

'Is everything all right with Harald's campaign?' I asked, alarmed by his manner. 'Has he landed safely on the English coast?'

'Yes, yes, our fleet crossed from Norway in late August and safely reached the coast of Scotland. When I left him, Harald was advancing down the coast. He sent me to find out what was happening with the attack that Duke William promised. He has heard nothing further.'

'You need not worry about that,' I said complacently. 'I watched Duke William's fleet sail for England ten days ago. By now they should be well ashore and advancing inland. Godwinsson is caught in a trap.'

Skule looked at me as if I had lost my wits.

'How is it, then, that only yesterday, as we passed southward along the coast, we saw the Norman fleet lying quietly at anchor some distance up the coast. The skipper knows the place. He says it is a port called St Valery, in the lands of the Duke of Ponthieu. They have not even crossed to England yet.'

I felt as if the deck had shifted beneath my feet. I, who had thought to deceive Duke William, had been the victim of a much greater deceit. Too late I thought back to the day that I had first suggested Harald's plan for a coordinated attack. I recalled the armourer who had met me at the practice ground and how he had been so eager to tell me that Dives was the departure point for the invasion, and how, once I had that information, I had quickly been brought before the duke. To my chagrin I realised that my disguise as a monk had been penetrated far earlier than I knew, and that William and his advisers had thought up a scheme to turn my presence to their advantage: I was to be used to conceal the true direction and timing of the Norman attack. After I had revealed myself as King Harald's envoy and suggested the coordinated campaign, William and his advisers must scarcely have believed their good luck. They had duped the King of Norway into landing on English soil to face Harold Godwinsson's army, while the Normans hung back and waited to make their landing unopposed. It would not matter who won the first battle — Harald of Norway or Harold of England — because the victor would be weakened when he came to face Duke William and his conroys.