Elizabeth Chadwick - The Conquest

Rolf yielded ground to two Saxons who staggered past him into the abbey, bearing the weight of a bloodstained corpse between them. Although its face was badly battered, Rolf still recognised the armourer. He crossed himself, feeling a pang of shock and regret. He had liked the small, pugnacious Saxon from the little he had known of him.

It occurred to Rolf that someone would have to bring Master Goldwin home to his widow. She was but recently out of childbed and would not be permitted to enter a church until she had been cleansed. From what he knew of her background, she had no living relatives to perform the task for her. He wondered irritably where Aubert was. They had ridden to Westminster together, but had parted company shortly after their arrival. The onus, no matter how unpalatable, was upon himself to lay claim to the body.

Giving Sleipnir to one of his grooms, Rolf followed the Saxons into the abbey and waited until they had laid Goldwin on the floor beside the bodies of four others who had been trampled in the riot. More victims were still being brought in.

A middle-aged monk stooped over Goldwin and set about composing the dead man's limbs and straightening his garments.

'Do you speak Norman?'

The monk raised his head and fixed Rolf with a sad brown stare. 'I am Norman,' he said, 'although sometimes I come close to denying it.' His gaze wandered sorrowfully over the mounting toll of bodies. 'How can I assist you?'

'This man, the one you are attending – I know him and I will take the responsibility of bringing him home to his family.'

'You know him?' The brown gaze widened.

'He's a master armourer – my billet makes us neighbours.' Briefly Rolf explained why it would be best for him to claim the body and bear it home to the widow. 'It is such a waste,' he nodded with a grimace. 'He should have stayed at home, the fool.' Fishing in his pouch, he withdrew two silver coins. 'Will you have masses said for his soul? I would not want him to find a lesser place in heaven since he died unshriven.'

'It is not shriving or silver that places a man's worth in God's eyes,' the monk rebuked gently, but nevertheless he took the coins. 'If his heart and soul were true, he will find eternal peace. But I will have the prayers said. Take him now if you wish.'

With a heavy heart, Rolf lifted Goldwin's body, positioning it across his shoulders like a dead deer, and carried it outside to his horse.

Dusk was falling, the sky over the new abbey was a sultry pink hemmed by a border of ragged slate-blue. Out in her garth, Ailith shivered and rubbed her arms, but had no desire to return to the empty warmth of the house. She had fled its cheerful nothingness for the starker ruins of her garden which were far more in keeping with her state of mind.

Harold lay sewn in his shroud, his little body surrounded by myriad flickering candles. Tomorrow he would be buried and all her hopes and joys with him. Hulda had said that she would stay, but had been called away to a difficult birth. There was still no sign of Goldwin, and Ailith was growing anxious. She had heard rumours of violence at the Norman Duke's coronation; some of the onlookers had been trampled and killed.

At first she had convinced herself against the possibility of Goldwin being among the crowd, but the darker it grew, the more her confidence was shaken. I will go and make sure that the hens are properly shut in, she thought. And when I turn round he will be there.

But when she had checked the fowl run and for good measure had walked twice around her ruined vegetable plot, her eyes met only the encroaching darkness of the empty path. She walked slowly down to the road. Perhaps if she stared hard enough, she would see Goldwin coming towards her with that slow, halting gait of his.

At first the road was indeed empty. The Normans had imposed a curfew on the city and it needed a very good excuse to be abroad after dark without facing arrest and punishment. The wind was bitterly cold and the puddles bore diamond patterns of ice. Ailith shivered and tightened her cloak around her body. Her breasts ached. Hulda said that her milk would soon begin to dry up, but that was no comfort now.

'Goldwin,' she muttered through teeth that were clenched with cold, and stamped her feet. 'Oh, Goldwin, please hurry.'

And then, in the distance, she saw a man on foot leading a silver-white horse, its colour intensified to a gleam by the dusk. The man wore a frosting of chain mail and as he drew closer, the waxen glimmer of the rising moon gave her enough light to see that it was the knight Rolf de Brize.

Her stomach turned over. She wanted to run to him and at the same time she wanted to run away and between the two found herself unable to move at all. He came on and she saw that his expression was sombre. The horse bore a burden over its saddle — an indeterminate dark mass. She could not tell what it was, for it was covered with the Norman's cloak. As he drew level with Ailith she cleared her throat.

'God save you, Sir Rolf, have you seen my husband?'

He halted the horse, his hand sliding up the bridle to the curb chain. 'I am sorry,' he said. 'There was nothing I could do except bring him home.'

Ailith's glance flickered to the mounded bundle on his saddle and her unease intensified to become stark fear. 'What do you mean, bring him home? Where's Goldwin, has he been injured?'

'I am sorry,' he repeated. 'Some of the crowd at the coronation ran wild and the Duk… King's knights had to charge to disperse them. Your husband was trampled… He is dead. I am sorry.'

Ailith stared glassily at him. The chill of the night seeped into her mind, numbing it. The words trampled, dead, and sorry were laid across the numbness in thicker cords of ice.

'Shall I bring him to the house?'

She stood aside and gestured him to enter the garth. Her composure was solid enough to walk upon, but she was trapped beneath it, screaming.

He tethered the horse to a tree and unfastened the bundle. Ailith saw the dark smears on the cloak that could only be blood. In silence she watched him heft the bundle and carry it into the house. It could not be Goldwin, she told herself. The Norman had made a mistake, it was someone else. She followed him within to tell him so, but it was too late. He had set his burden down on one of the sleeping benches along the far wall, and the cloak had slipped from the dead man's face. Ailith gazed upon her husband's battered nose and mouth, the dead eyes and blood-caked hair. The ice encasing her thickened.

Wulfhild let out an enormous wail, and then stifled it with her fist. Sigrid, who had been kneeling in a candlelit corner, came forward. 'Master Goldwin,' she whispered, and her eyes flew from the body, to Rolf, to Ailith.

'Go and fetch the priest, girl,' Rolf commanded.

She looked at him blankly.

'Bringeth thu y preost,' he said in mangled English.

Sigrid grabbed her cloak from a peg on the wall and hurried out, a frightened look on her face and tears filling her eyes.

'It is too much,' Ailith said in a distant voice and knelt at Goldwin's side. 'My brothers, my baby, my husband. What more is there to take?' She stared up at the Norman, but he had no answer for her. A look of appalled comprehension dawned on his face and his eyes went to the corner where her baby lay, surrounded by lighted candles on his last night above ground.

'Christ have mercy, I did not know.' He crossed himself.

'I do not need your pity,' Ailith said, as she felt her frozen shell begin to crack under the pressure of his scrutiny. 'I want you to leave.' She touched Goldwin's cold, rigid hand.

Rolf de Brize remained where he was. Although Ailith did not look up at his face, she could see the firm stance of his legs. Her eyes fixed upon the toggles of rolled leather that fastened his nearest boot, upon the herringbone pattern on his twill cross-garters. She set her jaw. 'Please go.'

For a moment longer he held his ground. Then he said a third time, 'I am sorry,' and walked away.

The crack froze over and Ailith sank back beneath the protecting layers of ice, but with her she brought a shard of disappointment that he had not ignored her plea and remained to bring her kicking and screaming to the surface.