Queen Emma & Earl Godwin: Power, Love and the Vikings in Medieval Europe

Copyright © 2014 by Stephen Grant.

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CONTENTS

Preface

Part I Ethelred the Unready (978-1014)

1 Winchester, 1002

2 Rollo and the Normans

3 Winchester, 1009

4 London, 1013

5 Rouen, 1013

6 Canute and Elgiva, 1013

7 Winchester, 1014

8 London, 1014

Part II Civil War (1014-1016)

1 Winchester, 1014

2 Canute’s Gamble, 1014

3 London, 1014

4 Lincolnshire, 1014

5 A Gap in Hostilities, 1014-15

6 Sandwich, 1014

7 Winchester, 1015

8 London, 1015

9 Wessex, 1015-1016

10 Mercia, 1016

11 London, 1016

12 Nottingham, 1016

13 York, 1016

14 Mercia, 1016

15 Yorkshire, 1016

16 Nottingham, 1016

17 London, 1016

Part III Edmund Ironside (1016)

1 Edmund v. Canute, 1016

2 London, 1016

3 Ashingdon, 1016

4 The Kingdom Split, 1016

Part IV Canute (1016-1035)

1 Normandy, 1017

2 Bosham, 1017

3 London, 1017

4 Oxford, 1018

5 Glastonbury, 1019

6 Denmark, 1019

7 Cirencester, 1020

8 Winchester, 1020

9 Bosham, 1020

10 Bury St Edmunds, 1020

11 Winchester, 1022

12 Northampton, 1023

13 Bosham, 1023

14 London, 1023

15 Rome, 1027

16 London, 1027

17 Oxford, 1030

18 Bosham, 1032

Part V Harold I ‘Harefoot’ (1035-1040)

1 Winchester, 1036

2 Oxford, 1036

3 Winchester, 1036

4 Sussex, 1036

5 Guildford, 1036

6 Chichester, 1036

7 Glastonbury, 1036

8 Winchester, 1036

9 Bruges, 1037

10 Bosham, 1038

11 Bruges, 1039

12 Sussex, 1039

13 Bruges, 1039

Part VI Harthacanute (1040-1042)

1 London, 1040

2 Winchester, 1041

3 Winchester, 1042

4 Winchester, 1042

5 Lambeth, 1042

Part VII Edward the Confessor (1042-1066)

1 Winchester, 1042

2 London, 1042

3 Sussex, 1042

4 Winchester, 1043

5 Kingston, 1043

6 Winchester, 1043

7 Sussex, 1044

8 London, 1046

9 Abingdon Abbey, 1046

10 Winchester, 1049

11 Dover, 1051

12 Sussex, 1051

13 London, 1051

14 Winchester, 1051

15 Sussex, 1051

16 Winchester, 1051

17 Bruges, 1052

18 Southwark, 1052

19 Glastonbury, 1053

20 Winchester, 1053

PREFACE

Queen Emma is one of the most remarkable women in medieval history. Her quick wit, courage, and cunning, inherited from her Viking forbears, allowed her to overcome many cruel twists of fate and ultimately succeed in a world dominated by men.

A thousand years ago, this powerful woman-daughter of the duke of Normandy, wife of two kings of England, Ethelred the Unready and Canute, mother of two further kings of England, and great aunt of William the Conqueror—occupied a position right at the centre of European history. Books have been written about her but, to my mind, her story is still to be told.

Godwin was nine years Emma’s junior and shared her tenacious ambition, having risen up from the ranks of minor nobility to be earl of Wessex. He was for nearly thirty years, excepting the king, the most powerful man in England. His son Harold succeeded Emma’s son, Edward the Confessor, on the English throne.

My starting point is the known facts around the lives of both Emma and Godwin and of major historical events occurring in Europe in the first half of the eleventh century. Added to the mix is extensive research into living conditions at that time. The final ingredient is my understanding of what happened and why. Sometimes this is based on a rational extrapolation of the recorded facts, at other times on a more instinctive interpretation. In this last category is my assumption that Emma and Godwin, who of course would have had to know each other quite well, knew each other very well.

The main protagonists in the book are real historical characters with personas developed from what little is known about them. Their names and relationships to each other can be found in the family trees of Emma, Ethelred, and Canute shown on pages 11 to 13. The exception to this rule is the family of Godwin where, because of the lack of data, I have had to invent many of his relatives. If, like me, when reading an historical novel, you like to know which characters are fictional, you will find this indicated in Godwin’s family tree on page 14. I should also add that the relatives of Godwin that I have shown as real are also in reality assumptions but ones made by learned historians.

Minor nobility and commoners appearing in the book are largely invented as those sorts of folk tend not to make it into recorded history. To assist the reader, I have modernised some of the more unpronounceable Anglo-Saxon names, and let me apologise in advance that some of the characters annoyingly have the same name—Svein, for instance. If I am to be as faithful as possible to recorded history, that could not be avoided.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge the brilliant history books from which I drew my facts. Anglo-Saxon England by Sir Frank Stenton; Encomium Emmae Reginae, edited by Alistair Campbell, with an introduction by Simon Keynes; The Godwins by Frank Barlow; Cnut, England’s Viking King by M. K. Lawson; Edward the Confessor by Frank Barlow; and The Beginnings of English Society by Dorothy Whitelock. Many other books helped give me a feel for the period, most memorably Millennium by Tom Holland and The Year 1000 by Robert Lacey and Danny Danziger.

PART I

Ethelred the Unready (978-1014)

1

Winchester, 1002

The first time Godwin saw Emma, he was not quite seven years old.

It was a warm spring day, and the cavernous new church the Benedictines had built alongside their abbey in Winchester was full. Back then, churches had no pews, so people were pressed against each other right to the sidewalls. His family’s status allowed Godwin to be just one row from the main aisle.

He was with his grandfather Ethelmar, earl of Wessex, and one of the king’s trusted counsellors, although Ethelmar had the misfortune to be in the service of a king who usually ignored good advice. That was why he was called Unraed, which in Old English meant bad counsel—a pun on his name Ethelred, which meant noble counsel.

Godwin’s mother was already dead; he could barely remember her. His father, Wulfnoth, was off, fighting in a skirmish somewhere, one he had probably started. So it was Ethelmar who held Godwin in his strong arms, enabling him to take in the proceedings and to see, in one sweeping gaze, the cream of English nobility.

The boy looked up at the vaulted wooden ceiling and marvelled at its height, wondering how it had been built.

King Ethelred stood at the altar. He looked regal, every inch a king. He was wearing a long flowing cloak, the colour a deep azure blue like the summer sky at noon, fastened at the shoulder by a large gold brooch decorated with rubies. At thirty-five, the king was no longer a young man and was slightly stooped, but on this occasion, he held his head high. Sunlight from one of the high minster windows reflected off his crown and highlighted the red still discernible in his neatly trimmed beard. A slight movement in the lower folds of his long red tunic, caused by the vibration of his left leg, was the only indication of his nervous impatience.

Godwin saw her appear at the doorway. She walked slowly, proud and contained, her hand resting lightly on her brother’s forearm. He was awestruck; he thought the king was about to marry an angel. Her white gown brushed the floor. A girdle of pure gold was loosely tied around her hips. A white veil covered her head but did not entirely conceal her corn-coloured hair. Her head was tilted slightly backward; her bright blue eyes were fixed straight ahead and then moved slowly to the right to take in her husband-to-be.

Godwin was often to think back to that day. Later he was to imagine that he saw a glint of fear in those blue eyes, a slight slowing of her step so that her older brother, Richard the Good, duke of Normandy, had to provide the momentum.

With a hint of a smile, she took a determined step forward and was at Ethelred’s side. Emma of Normandy, just sixteen years old, was about to become Queen of England, England’s first foreign queen in over seventy years. Not that Emma was unprepared. She had grown up in the Norman court at Rouen.

2

Rollo and the Normans

The Normans or Northmen, as some still called them, were nothing if not adaptable and, in just two generations, had progressed from being feared barbarian Viking invaders to respected members of the French establishment.

A hundred years previously, Emma’s great-grandfather, Rollo, had been one of the most successful of the Viking raiders who had, with mad bushy beards pushed back by the wind, sailed their ships into the river mouths of Northern Europe. If you were unfortunate enough to be living close to a river selected by the invaders, the best you could hope to do was to hide out in a nearby forest while they helped themselves to your possessions and burnt what they could not carry. If you were found, then you most likely would be hacked to death, regardless of whether you made a fight of it or begged for mercy. Your wife and daughters would be either raped and murdered or carried off in fetters for the later enjoyment of the rampaging warriors. Younger children might be killed for sport, victims of the unstoppable bloodlust that fuelled such atrocities.

This was happening all over Northern Europe. England, in particular, had been victim to a number of ferocious Viking invasions. Since the first Danish raiders had arrived in Kent in the 830s, the sight of their dragon-headed boats appearing on the horizon had struck fear into the hearts of English men and women from the River Tyne in the north-east to the River Tamar in the south-west. In time, when the Viking raiders saw the rich agricultural lands available to them, they thought, Why go back to Scandinavia? It’s warmer here, and we can farm some land and raise a family.

So having slaughtered or chased off the local men, they took the local women as wives and settled. By the 870s, the Danes ruled over half of England, and if it wasn’t for the resistance of King Alfred and the men of Wessex, they would have taken over the whole country.

The Vikings were feared. Mothers told their naughty children that if they did not behave, the Vikings would eat them for dinner. Godwin’s mother would never have said that to her baby boy; she was Danish. She had been born near Oxford, but her father and mother had come from Denmark.

Many Viking warlords, like Emma’s ancestor, were cunning and accomplished leaders. Starting life as Hrolfr, he later became known as Rollo and later still, after a belated baptism, as Robert, Count of Rouen.

He left his native Denmark as a young man and decided on piracy as a career. He took part in raids in France, Flanders, and England and was obviously talented as he was soon commanding his own band of marauders. His river of choice was the Seine. Its estuary was in the English Channel and so was reasonably accessible from Scandinavia. It flowed through the prosperous cathedral town of Rouen and the rich pasture lands of northern France, eventually reaching the French capital, Paris.

For quite a long while, he played the game the usual Viking way: despoil the lands up and down the river, have your fun, take what you can, and then be paid off with a useful amount of gold. Two or three years later, you could show up again and repeat the whole exercise. Given Rollo’s growing reputation in the Viking world, he and his men had the hinterland of the Seine more or less to themselves. However, after about twenty years of repeated raids, Rollo decided that he’d had enough.

It wasn’t so much that by this time he was nearly fifty and looking to settle somewhere. It was more that after years of constant raiding, there were very few Frenchman left in the upper Seine basin—well, why would they hang around? As a result of the depopulation, most of the arable land had been deserted and it was difficult to find anything growing or moving that you could eat.

And there was also his dream. Ever since leaving home, Rollo had experienced a recurring dream. He would be flying at the head of a flock of magnificent birds of prey, each one a different breed and colour. Each bird carried the mark of a famous warlord on its right wing and had on its left wing the colour of blood. Rollo asked a wizard what the dream meant and was told that he was destined to found a new nation across the seas made up of warriors from different lands—a new nation whose leaders would be feared and admired and powerful enough to rule wherever they so chose.

So it was that in 911, Rollo took his, by now sizeable, band of Danish warriors away from the River Seine and headed south. Villages that had not experienced a Viking raid in a generation fled before his army, and, pretty soon, he was approaching the old Roman city of Chartres.

The king of France at the time was Charles III, known as Charles the Simple, not because he was particularly any more stupid than the rest of the runt end of the Carolingians, the progeny of the great Charlemagne, but because he had a reputation for seeing things in black and white terms. And the Northmen moving south was definitely black. Fortunately for Charles, he had a very able advisor, Robert Capet, Dux Franconum or duke of the Franks. Robert was in fact more powerful than the king he chose to serve. He had vast family estates, and his descendants were destined to succeed the Carolingians as kings of France.

So Charles and Robert decided that they were going to make a fight of it. A number of other French lords had decided that the Northmen had to be stopped, so Rollo found a large French army waiting for him near Chartres. His men fought well but lost. They headed back north. And then Robert had a good idea. Why not give the lands around the upper Seine basin to Rollo to keep? Of course, there would be conditions. He would have to recognise Charles as his king and overlord and agree to protect the people in his new domain, which in particular meant keeping out other Vikings. And, of course, if he was about to join the French nobility, he would have to be baptised as a Christian. That was how Rollo the Viking became Robert I, Count of Rouen, and founded the dynasty that would become the dukes of Normandy.

With Rollo’s blood in her veins, leaving her home to marry a man over twice her age, and of whom few had a good word to say, was something Emma could easily take in her stride. Besides, she was about to become a queen—queen of England, what’s more, one of the wealthiest kingdoms in the world.

3

Winchester, 1009

After what seemed like an eternity, the king spoke, ‘So, Wulfnoth, you are charged with mutiny and treachery. Last year you took twenty of my ships, built to defend the realm, and used them to persecute your own people and obtain plunder for your personal gain. What have you got to say for yourself?’

King Ethelred stared steadily at Wulfnoth. His expression was a mixture of anger and disgust. The Great Hall was completely quiet—a rare event. It had been cleared of all but the king; Queen Emma; Edric, known as Streona or the Acquisitor, one of the king’s most powerful nobles and current favourite, recently created earl of Mercia; two of the king’s private guard; Godwin’s father, Wulfnoth; his grandfather Ethelmar; and, in the background, Godwin himself. The king was seated on an ornate wooden throne; Emma was seated on a smaller throne to his left, and Edric stood to the king’s right. Seven years had passed since the wedding, and Godwin was about to have his first conversation with Emma, not exactly in circumstances that he would have chosen.

By that time, Earl Ethelmar had three children still alive. His eldest son had died suddenly in 1005, leaving a widow and two children. Also in that year, he had been dismissed from the Witenagemot, or Grand Council, the group of nobles and bishops that met from time to time to advise the king.

His second and eldest surviving son, Ethelnoth, was highly intelligent but had early in life felt a calling to the church and was currently a monk at the large and prosperous abbey at Glastonbury.

Next followed a daughter, named Elfleda, a year younger than Ethelnoth, and married to Lord Ethelward, a wealthy landowner from an old established Wessex family with a number of estates, the largest being in Devon. Tall, lean and good looking with soft, light brown hair, he was traditional and straightforward in both his appearance and his values. They had two small children with another on the way.

Wulfnoth was the youngest of Ethelmar’s children, a great swordsman, brilliant on a horse, good company, and completely unreliable. He struggled to control his temper and, after a few drinks, was very likely to insult people he probably shouldn’t and seduce women he definitely shouldn’t.

When he was eighteen, Wulfnoth had spent a few nights with a pretty Danish girl from a relatively humble farming background. Some months later, her father turned up at Ethelmar’s manor to let him know his daughter was now carrying Wulfnoth’s child. When Ethelmar realised that Astrid was not only pretty but also had a sensible head on her shoulders and seemed to have some influence over his wild son, he insisted that they marry. As a wedding present, he settled on Wulfnoth his second largest holding, a big estate in Sussex complete with its own manor house. Six months later, Godwin was born.

For a while, it seemed to work. Wulfnoth and Astrid took on the challenge of running the estate and being leaders of the community. It was around this time that Wulfnoth was asked by King Ethelred to help develop his three eldest sons, Athelstan, Egbert, and Edmund, into warriors. The boys would have been ten, nine, and eight, respectively. Not surprisingly, they were soon worshipping the ground Wulfnoth walked on. He was generous in sharing his talents and skills and was always able to make the boys laugh, often at the expense of their tutors and servants. His task was made easier by the fact that all three boys were natural horseman and loved to play at mock battles, imagining they were fighting off hordes of Viking invaders.

Godwin was four when his mother Astrid fell pregnant again, this time with a baby girl. Neither survived childbirth. That was the end of Wulfnoth’s settled existence. With no wife to come home to, once again he was always the last to leave the tavern.

Godwin was quite happy being raised by his nurse and enjoyed playing games with his father when he was home and sober. When Godwin turned six, Ethelmar decided his grandson needed to be raised in a more stable environment and packed him off to the main Wessex estate. Wulfnoth did not offer any objections.

After that, Godwin had a relatively comfortable, if somewhat lonely, childhood. He grew up in the spacious manor house near Winchester which, although not as large as some of the houses he would one day own, was a substantial stone two-storey manor house with its own walled garden, a large fire always burning in the hearth and spacious enough for Godwin to be able to find a quiet spot in a corner where he could curl up on a straw mattress away from the assortment of fighting men, estate workers, retainers, and family members who might be sleeping in the house at any given time. Food was never in short supply, even in famine years or when Viking raiding parties were ravaging the land and most children would have been happy to get a piece of stale bread and a weak vegetable stew once a day.

What Wulfnoth craved was adventure. He wanted to be saving damsels in distress or recovering the Holy Grail, but the mythical era of King Arthur had long since passed and Wulfnoth had to make do with being a commander in King Ethelred’s badly disciplined army.

In 1008, an opportunity for advancement had arisen. Ethelred had finally listened to his advisors and had commissioned 300 new ships to bolster the fighting strength of the English navy and discourage the Viking raids that were again growing in frequency and intensity. Wulfnoth was given command of fifty of the new ships complete with the fighting men they contained. He was now in a position of relative power and was keen to play a lead role in the wars and politics of the day, a role for which he had the courage but neither the diplomacy nor the cunning. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try, and that was why Godwin, at the age of fourteen, found himself standing next to his grandfather at the back of the cavernous Great Hall of the large royal palace in Winchester as Wulfnoth was brought before the king to answer for his crimes.

‘Wulfnoth, has the cat got your tongue? You are charged with mutiny and treachery. What have you to say for yourself?’

Wulfnoth was faced with the dilemma that this kind of question creates when you don’t have a satisfactory answer. Do you make an abject apology, plead mitigating circumstances, and hope that you will be forgiven? Do you admit that you were wrong and hope to gain respect for your honesty? Or do you stand on your dignity, summon up all the bravado you can, and deny everything? Wulfnoth chose the last option.

‘Your Majesty, it is a complete untruth that either mutiny or treachery was my intention when I led the twenty ships out of Sandwich harbour, twenty of the fifty ships that Your Majesty put under my command.’

‘As part of the king’s navy, you scoundrel! Not as your own private war fleet.’

‘Of course, I understand that, sire, but please allow me to explain that I only had your best interests at heart.’

Wulfnoth hesitated and looked at Edric.

‘May I speak freely in front of Earl Edric? His brother Brithic is central to the story.’

‘You may speak freely, but if you value the tongue in your head, you will speak honestly.’

Wulfnoth nodded in assent.

‘For over a month, I drilled my men hard, at the same time ensuring that the ships were seaworthy and the captains sure of their craft. I was determined that when next the Danes approached our shores, my men would meet them with equal courage, match them in seamanship, and, if need be, fight them hand to hand.’

Wulfnoth paused to gauge the king’s reaction. His expression had not changed, but at least he was still listening.

‘Do we have to hear this?’ Edric asked.

‘Be brief, Wulfnoth. Brithic denounced you as a traitor, and you still haven’t answered the charge,’ said the king, looking angrily at Wulfnoth.

‘I shall do that, sire. The other commanders followed my example, and we were all of the opinion that we should sail out of Sandwich harbour and meet the next Viking invasion party at sea. We believed that they would have been so surprised that, rather than risk the loss of many men and ships, they would have either turned home or picked an easier target, perhaps on the French coast. Only Brithic, My Lord Edric’s brother and commander of the largest section of the fleet, disagreed and argued that we should remain safely in Sandwich harbour and only mobilise the fleet when the Vikings attacked the English coastline.’

‘Of course, he did,’ said Edric. ‘You could have sailed out into the North Sea to meet them only to find they had already landed in East Anglia and wreaked havoc and disappeared before you had a chance to turn the fleet around and engage them.’

‘Well, we shall never know that now, My Lord, but what we do know is that the decision to keep the 300 ships at Sandwich was a disaster. The ships were so closely packed together that when one night a dreadful storm came upon us, we lost almost half the fleet.’

‘Yes, yes, a terrible affair,’ said the king. ‘I sometimes wonder if our God and Saviour has not deserted these poor Islands, even though we must now number as many good Christians as any other nation.’

‘It was not just God’s work, Your Majesty. If Brithic had not insisted that we all stay put at Sandwich, those ships would still be available to fight our enemies. We said this to Brithic in strong terms. Eighty of his one hundred and twenty ships were still seaworthy, and he set off saying, To hell with the king’s navy. My men need food and provisions. We may as well get our share before the Vikings do.’

‘Only twenty of my fifty ships were seaworthy, but nevertheless we immediately gave chase to Brithic, appalled by his treacherous actions. Well, clearly his captains were not that well drilled in seamanship as part of his fleet ran aground on the Kentish coast, losing many men. Most of the survivors made their way back to their families and homes to ensure they had some crops growing to see them through the winter months.’

Wulfnoth sensed the king was somewhat swayed by his story. The knot in his chest loosened, and he allowed himself a confident smile. The king did not return it.

Edric could contain himself no longer.

‘Lies and more lies. Wulfnoth would not have the effrontery to tell such a story if my good brother Brithic had not passed away only last month, still broken-hearted at the cruel fate that had overtaken his precious command. The storm was a disaster, but what this idiot is either too stupid to understand, or too scared to admit because it proves his treachery, is that Brithic was following your orders to salvage what he could of the navy and return to London. And as Brithic himself reported to Your Majesty, it was actually Wulfnoth who deserted and my brother who gave chase. The ships only ran aground when harried by Wulfnoth’s fleet and then he set fire to them. Should they have expected that from their fellow countryman?’

‘So why did you burn Brithic’s ships?’ asked the king.

‘To stop him giving them to our enemies.’

Even Wulfnoth himself was not convinced by that answer. He needed a better one, but he was starting to sweat and his throat was seizing up. Godwin took a slight step forward, desperate to intervene on his father’s behalf, but he knew he dare not say a word unless the king addressed him.

An awkward silence; a hint of a smile played across Edric’s face.

The king was about to speak when Emma, looking past Wulfnoth to his father and son at the back of the hall, spoke first.

‘You at the back, you look as if you are bursting to say something.’

Ethelmar stepped forward, not at all sure what he was going to say.

‘No, not you, Earl Ethelmar, the boy. Godwin, isn’t it?’

She called him a boy so that he would know his place, but she was thinking that he was in fact quite a handsome young man. Although never to grow above average height, Godwin at age fourteen had almost achieved his full stature and was starting to develop the broad shoulders and strong limbs of his adult physique.

He stepped forward and looked respectfully at the king.

‘Well, what have you got to say for yourself, young man? Think on, if you are old enough to talk at the king’s court and you are old enough to lose your tongue as well!’

‘Sire, clearly my father made a bad error of judgement.’

‘What!’ blustered Wulfnoth.

‘Quiet, Wulfnoth. I will listen to your son.’

‘However, no loss or harm was intended to Your Majesty, and his actions were not treasonable. Let us reconstruct the events. A bad storm had wrecked the fleet. It was open knowledge that the fleet was in a vulnerable position because Brithic had opposed any ships leaving the fleet to either head out to sea or anchor in a less sheltered position. Brithic, the commander-in-chief, was seen to head off with the best ships, leaving the other survivors to fend for themselves. It was then that my father made his error. Rather than send a messenger to receive orders from your good self, he rashly, but bravely, gave chase to Brithic whom he perceived to be a traitor.’

‘Bravely?’ shouted Edric. ‘What was brave about attacking a fleet about to run aground?’

‘A fleet four times the size of his own,’ said Godwin.

For the first time, Ethelred’s lip curled into a smile.

‘So why then did your brave father harry my coastline with his ships?’ asked the king, looking straight at Godwin.

‘His men had fought courageously and were hungry. Other than the food that his men consumed, I’m sure that the rest of the booty is stored at our house at Sussex awaiting your instruction. Of course, it is your property, Your Majesty.’

‘As is the entire estate if I so choose.’

Another awkward silence. Wulfnoth was glaring at Godwin but dared not speak again. Edric looked ready to pounce but kept his silence.

The king settled back in his throne and seemed to be enjoying himself.

‘Wulfnoth, I know you to be a brave man. My three eldest sons are grateful for the battle skills you have taught them. But you are rash and hot-tempered, and I am not convinced that you did not evilly and cynically take advantage of a natural disaster to further your own ends. However, given your past service to my family and your father’s years on my council, I will accept your son’s version of events. I will spare your life, but your estate and all that may be stored there is forfeit to the Crown, and you are banished from the kingdom.’

‘My Lord, that is most unjust!’ shouted Wulfnoth.

‘Leave now’, said the king, rising to his feet, ‘before I change my mind and have you fed to my dogs.’

Ethelmar led Wulfnoth out of the door, and Godwin followed. Edric and Emma were both staring thoughtfully at Godwin. Both were thinking of his future but with very different ideas as to what that might be.

As soon as they were outside the grounds of the Great Hall, Wulfnoth took a swing at Godwin and knocked him to the ground.

‘Because of you, you little turncoat, I now have no home or possessions and must roam around the Continent penniless.’

‘That’s hardly fair,’ said Ethelmar. ‘I do believe that without Godwin’s intervention, the king would have had you executed as a traitor.’

‘Ha, I should expect that from you, you old bastard. I had a good answer ready, and the king would have forgiven me entirely if this little fool hadn’t interfered.’

‘Well, now we will never know. But what the king takes away, he can also restore. The royal princes obviously like you, Wulfnoth, and we can use that to our advantage. I suggest you spend some time with our relatives in Ireland, and, within a year, I warrant you will be back in England with your estate restored.’

Wulfnoth accepted the inevitable. ‘You’d better be right. I’ll leave tomorrow.’ Lowering his voice to an ominous murmur, he turned to Godwin. ‘And you, my son, had best keep out of my way.’

4

London, 1013

‘So you are just going to sit here and talk while the Danes take over your kingdom?’ Emma shouted as she burst into the council chamber where Ethelred had been closeted for many hours with earls and lords still loyal to him, including Thorkell the Tall, a huge and imposing Viking warlord, lord of the feared Jomsborg Vikings. Thorkell had been a supporter of the powerful Danish king Svein Forkbeard but had recently allied himself to the English king.

Ethelred was considering asking two of his private guard to escort her out, but all the members of his council had turned to look at her. Seeing how angry she was, they were waiting to see how far she would go. She didn’t disappoint them.

‘And even if the Witenagemot do want to take on the Danes, they all know that you won’t have the balls to fight. You never have!’

‘Calm down, my darling. You don’t fully understand the situation.’

‘Oh, don’t I? Then please explain.’

By 1013, Ethelred had a lot to worry about.

The previous year, his three eldest sons, with encouragement from Wulfnoth, now back in the country, had gathered an army to repel a large Viking raid. His third son, Eadred, had lost his life, and Athelstan, his eldest son and probable heir, had received a mortal wound. Wulfnoth had also died on the field, heroically defending Edmund from a group of Viking warriors.

Ethelred’s first wife, Elgifu, the daughter of a Northumbrian earl, had taken to childbirth like a duck to water. In the sixteen years that they were married, she produced eleven children, seven of them boys. She had died in 1001, allowing Ethelred to take his Norman bride the following year.

With seven boys, Ethelred had thought he had safeguarded the ancient Wessex dynasty made famous by Alfred the Great. Indeed, to make the point, he had named all his sons after kings from the Wessex line. Now, of the seven boys, only two seemed likely to survive, Edmund and Edwig, with whom he shared a mutual distrust. Emma had already produced two sons and a daughter, adding strong Norman genes to Ethelred’s obviously fertile Anglo-Saxon seed, but they were still children.

Of even greater concern to Ethelred as 1012 had drawn to a close and the Viking raids continued to intensify was whether he was going to have a kingdom to pass to a son.

It had cost Ethelred a huge sum, £48,000, to buy off Thorkell the Tall and a further £3,000 had been offered as a ransom to free Alphege, the archbishop of Canterbury, who had been captured by Thorkell’s men. Alphege had refused to have hard-earned English money spent on gaining his freedom, and a group of drunken Vikings, frustrated by his unselfishness, had decided to pelt him with ox bones. So vicious had been the attack that one of the Viking leaders had put the deeply spiritual archbishop out of his misery by ending his life swiftly with his axe. His last words as the Danes demanded money were, ‘The gold I give you is the word of God’.

Alphege’s murder produced one useful outcome for Ethelred. Thorkell, who was sufficiently powerful to make alliances with kings as he chose, was so shocked by the actions of his men and the resultant outrage across Christian Europe that he switched sides to Ethelred, bringing forty-five ships with him.

However, by this time, the tide had turned too far against Ethelred.

In 988, Svein Forkbeard had ascended the Danish throne after having fought and driven off his father, King Harold Bluetooth. Svein was a shrewd and ambitious leader, had consolidated his hold not only over Denmark but also over Norway, and had secured the support of the Swedish king. By 1013, he felt secure enough to remove Ethelred once and for all and thus to add the richest prize, the throne of England, to his Northern Empire.

Svein began his invasion of England by sailing his army into the Humber. He left his older son, Harald, behind to rule as regent in Denmark but brought his younger son, Canute, then about eighteen years old—the same age as Godwin—with him to England. It did not take Svein long to conquer both Northumbria and Mercia and start heading south to London, where Ethelred and Emma were situated and in grave danger.

‘It was not expedient to fight the Danes when they could be bought off with gold,’ Ethelred tried to explain to his excited wife.

‘Huh! A coward’s answer! Anyway, they always came back for more.’

‘That may be true, but the money we have paid them is still much less than the cost of raising a standing army, and you know very well that because of my family history I could never rely on the loyalty of my English earls.’

‘Oh, no, not that nonsense again! Everyone knows that you were just a child when your brother was murdered, so you couldn’t have done it. Even if you had, you’re a king, might is right. Do you think the dukes of Normandy, or the kings of Denmark for that matter, go around, apologising to everyone for their past sins? Of course not! It is a matter between you and God. You humbly ask His forgiveness, build a church or two, make sure your nobles are well rewarded, and move on. And to do that, you need to be conquering fresh lands, not giving away what you already have. Aargh, you are so weak!’ she screamed in frustration.

Ethelred glared at her with barely disguised hatred. Thorkell was the only noble with enough courage to speak.

‘Madam, we have been trying to persuade the king that the time for ransoms is past and that we need to assemble an English army to meet the Danes before all is lost.’

‘All is already lost,’ said the king. ‘Mercia has already declared for Svein.’

‘That rat Edric Streona. I told you again and again not to allow him to gain ever more possessions and power! You are such a bad judge of character. Can you not see that he loves the Danish raids? He complains to you about the disruption and his poor tenants and then buys up all the land he can from distressed estates for a fraction of the true value. After the last invasion, the abbot of Sherbourne told me how the monks had to buy back their own farms from Edric, land taken by the Danes that somehow found its way into Edric’s possession. That man would sell his own mother to the highest bidder!’ Emma thundered.

Thorkell cleared his throat.

‘Yes, Thorkell, and well might you be embarrassed sitting in this chamber. What your men did to our poor archbishop was an outrage. You will probably rot in hell as a result. Switching sides will not save your soul. You would have done better to go to Rome and beg forgiveness.’

Thorkell’s ruddy complexion had turned as white as his hair at the mention of hell. Heaven and hell were very real entities to him as they were to virtually all Christians at that time, and the courageous Dane could vividly imagine writhing in flames and being whipped by demons with forked tongues. He made no reply to the queen.

‘And don’t think the Danes will forgive you that easily.’

Emma turned to the king again.

‘You still have Wessex. That was enough for your glorious ancestor, Alfred.’

‘Perhaps not. Our latest news is that Ethelmar has recognised Svein as king.’

‘That sweet old man? That would never have happened if you hadn’t treated him badly in the past and if you were there in Winchester, showing your supporters that you aimed to fight. The men of Wessex love your family, even you.’

Ethelred looked thoughtful. Emma kept centre stage.

‘Anyway, whether you aim to fight for your kingdom or give it away is for you to decide. I came here to tell you I’m leaving London within the hour with the three children. My brother Richard has sent a ship to bring us to Normandy. It is waiting on the south coast, ready to sail. He has asked me to tell you that you are also welcome in Rouen. He clearly knows you too well to imagine that you would stay and actually defend your kingdom!’

Emma and her three children, Edward, Alfred, and Godgifu, boarded the ship the next day and were able to set sail immediately for Normandy. Less than a week later, Ethelred joined them in Rouen.

London held out for a time and then submitted. Svein became the first Danish king to rule all of England.

5

Rouen, 1013

‘So, baby sister, pleased to be back in Normandy?’

‘Yes, of course, but I’m no longer the innocent virgin you sent to that godforsaken country to ensure their old king didn’t cause you any trouble.’

Emma had secured an interview with her brother, the duke, at the earliest opportunity. They sat opposite each other in Richard’s private study. He was tall and fair like his sister, although his eyes were not blue like hers but grey-green, like the sea on an overcast day.

‘Oh, come now, Emma. Young and chaste you may have been—and, if we are being truthful, quite spoilt—but I knew you could take care of yourself. Rollo’s blood flows in your veins as much as it does in mine.’

‘I’ll take that as a compliment, Richard! I was young and did enjoy being your favourite, your baby sister. Certainly my dream was not to marry an old man with a dozen children, all of whom resented me.’

‘Yes, I can understand that. But he was not that old—thirty-five at most?’

‘That is very old when you are sixteen. And besides, he thinks like an old man, is slow to make a decision and scared to offend anyone.’

Emma had always been close to her brother Richard, perhaps because of the age difference, he being the oldest and she the youngest of the siblings. Their father, Duke Richard I, ‘The Fearless’, had seen to it that they had received the best education available and instilled in them a love and respect for power, justice, and Jesus Christ.

He had been literate, had spoken fluent Danish and French, and had developed Normandy as a Gallicised, Christian state with one of the most efficient feudal systems in Europe.

Richard and Emma had been raised as members of the French aristocracy but with a strong sense of duty and religion, which they both took seriously. There had been much love in their childhood home, and they were also close to their mother. Not long after his first wife’s death, their father had