The Cunning of the Dove Read online

  That was the end of the episode. The frightened yokel made himself scarce, and lived happily afterwards to tell the story of his encounter with the holy King. That was the point which struck me when I heard of it, as it struck King Griffith and Earl Sweyn who were present and saw the King’s anger. If either of these great men had been vexed by an unimportant farmer he would have ordered his followers to put a torch to the farm buildings without a moment’s hesitation; probably his men would have raped the womenfolk into the bargain. Our noble King was so eminently just that even in a moment of blinding rage he could not punish a rustic who had committed no legal crime. He did no more than warn the man that if ever he found himself before a tribunal he must expect a stern judgement. Has there ever been another absolute ruler who did not think of breaking the law of the land even when he was furious with anger?

  The campaign planned by Bishop Aldred had as much success as most of these expeditions against the Welsh. King Griffith of the North and Sweyn Godwinsson his ally plundered the lands of King Griffith of the South until the latter begged for peace and offered hostages. The Welsh, who are light-armed skirmishers, cannot face an army of English axemen, and always submit when the English march against them; but they do not scruple to break their agreements, and the hostages they offer are often inconvenient royal kinsmen whom they would be glad to see dead. After South Wales had submitted the allies separated, and on his march back to Gloucester Earl Sweyn committed a frightful crime.

  As I have said, he was a great breaker of hearts, and took pride in this manly accomplishment. He halted for a few days at Leominster; and when he left he took with him Edith, abbess of the local convent. Men still dispute as to whether he carried her off by force, or seduced her into following him of her own free will. It is not a question that can ever be settled, and in my opinion both views are correct; Edith was persuaded to follow the handsome scoundrel, but if his men had not held the town she could not have escaped from her convent.

  What was really revolting was that the faithless lover sent her back to her nuns as soon as he was tired of her. Even libertines were shocked at such callous selfishness. Of course the convent would not take her back, and I don’t know what became of her in the end, though I believe she soon died. Sweyn took fright when he saw how men despised him, and put it about that he was willing to marry her. Everybody knows that an abbess cannot marry, and everybody knew that Sweyn knew it; so his offer failed to impress public opinion. Mind you, if Sweyn and Edith had been deeply in love they would have found friends to shelter them, no matter how grave their sin; ordinary men in the world make excuses for genuine love, even if it happens to be adulterous. But by sending her off Sweyn proved that he regarded her merely as a whore, a body to be enjoyed and then tidied away to make room for the next one. Even Danes are not often so faithless.

  The King was very angry. For a moment it looked as though he might break with the whole house of Godwin; but he had no excuse, for the great Earl and his other sons did not attempt to defend the rascal. Harold, for one, seemed rather glad at the downfall of his elder brother. Sweyn was outlawed as soon as the Council could meet, and his great Earldom in Hereford and the midlands was divided between Harold and his cousin Beorn. Sweyn sailed off to Flanders, the refuge of every English exile.

  As always after great estates have been given to new masters, there was unrest among the nobles; presumably because great men were disappointed at their share of the booty. In the middle of the Christmas feasting Osgod Clapa was suddenly outlawed. His punishment was nothing graver than exile, and nobody tried to murder him during the days of grace while he gathered his wealth and prepared to leave the country; he was a Dane, who could live as happily in his native country as in England. But his fall caused great excitement. He was a very great man, and had been great for many years (King Hardicanute had fallen dead while drinking at his daughter’s wedding). No one could discover the nature of the crime imputed to him. I am still not sure whether he fell because Godwin was jealous of him, or whether the King tried to weaken Godwin by driving out another Danish Earl.

  Soon after Christmas began the coldest winter ever known in England; deep snow lay without thawing from January to March. Many of the poor died of cold, though the King was generous with firewood from the royal forests. Luckily frost so early in the year does not harm the harvest, which in 1047 was up to average. The snow must have been an omen to warn us of impending trouble, but the wise men could not agree as to which peril the portent was designed to foretell.

  One impending peril did not come to pass. At that time there was a great war among the Danes of Denmark, between Sweyn the nephew of Canute and a rival for his crown, Magnus of Norway. King Sweyn asked for help from the old subjects of his uncle in England; and Earl Godwin, who had risen by the favour of Canute, was eager to help the nephew of his old patron. But King Edward declared that Englishmen must not meddle in the quarrels of barbarous pirates. For the first time since this reign began Godwin was overruled in the Council. No help was sent to Sweyn of Denmark.

  Soon afterwards came news that Magnus was completely victorious; he now ruled the Danes as well as the Norwegians, and laid claim to the whole inheritance of Canute. He was fitting out a mighty fleet, and would invade us before winter. At that time, Pentecost, the court was in London, and all our Earls began to fit out their ships to oppose the barbarian invasion; but our navy was spared a useless and expensive muster because God revealed to His servant Edward that the Danish expedition would never set sail.

  It was the solemn crownwearing of Pentecost, and the King heard High Mass in St. Peter’s, the famous minster on the western outskirts of London. This was still the cramped dark church which had been built in the early days of the conversion of the English; but though dark and oldfashioned it was a place apt for miracles, since a miracle had marked its consecration. The story is well known: how the first Bishop of London went to consecrate it, and found the oil of consecration gleaming fresh on the floor; on the previous night St. Peter himself had come to hallow it, carried over the river in the boat of a poor fisherman.

  As the King stood in his stall during the long Mass all the monks noted that he was distracted; there was a smile on his face, as though he saw something pleasing. He was not following the chant, and at the consecration he was late in kneeling. All this I tell as it was told to me, for of course a youth of my rank had no place in the choir; but I was standing in the crowd by the west door, and I heard what King Edward said as he left the minster.

  Even in those days Westminster claimed to be exempt from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of London; and though the claim was not universally admitted Bishop Robert, to please his friend the King, had sat during the Mass in a choir-stall, not on a throne by the altar. Bishop and King walked out side by side, and Robert leaned over to speak familiarly to his old friend.

  He spoke in French, I suppose assuming that no one in the crowd could understand him; but thanks to my early training in the household of the Lady Emma I could follow a simple French conversation. ‘My lord,’ he said in a rallying tone, ‘is this the way to set an example to the uncultured English? The High Mass of Pentecost, with the King present in state; but when his subjects look at him they can see he is thinking of his hawks. Your smile showed that you were very far from Westminster, and that at the most solemn moment of the Mass.’

  The King smiled to prove that he was not angered by the rebuke. ‘I have been distracted from my prayers. But I believe that God, or at least one of the saints in Heaven, distracted me. No, I was not caught up into bliss – that comes to holy hermits, not to Kings who live in this wicked world. What I saw was secular enough. Yet I saw it only by miracle, and I believe that I saw the truth.’

  ‘What was that, my lord?’

  ‘I saw a great fleet ready to leave harbour. I knew it for the Danish fleet, though you must not ask me how I knew. In the same way I knew that the great lord whom I saw being rowed out to his flagship in a little boat w
as King Magnus, my enemy. He wore mail and carried a great shield; so that when he missed his footing, trying to scramble from the boat into his longship, he sank like a stone as soon as he splashed into the water.’

  ‘My lord, indeed God has favoured you. At dinner you must tell your vision to the Council. If King Magnus is dead we need not fear invasion.’

  ‘Of course I shall announce it to my Council. The trouble is that they may not believe me. Why should God send a miraculous vision to me, of all people? I am King of the English and one of the richest men in the world. Can you find me a very small camel, small enough to go through the eye of a needle?’

  ‘God has granted you a miracle, my lord. Such things obey God’s laws, not ours, and it is temerarious to try to explain them.’

  The King said no more. I could see that he was genuinely puzzled. He had absolute confidence in the truth of his vision, but in his humility he thought it strange that God should favour him.

  When the Earls heard the story they also were puzzled and doubtful; but they agreed to suspend the mustering of the fleet until news should come from Denmark. Within ten days the news came, that King Magnus was indeed dead; though, oddly enough, it was said he had been killed in a riding accident, not by drowning. That is not important. However he met his death it came opportunely for England, and our holy King had miraculous foreknowledge of it.

  That evening I overheard him as he argued the matter to himself, trying to get it straight in his mind before he dropped off to sleep.

  ‘Magnus was a Christian. As a rule God does not intervene in quarrels between Christian Kings. It’s not as though we had been saved from a heathen invasion. Why should God send a miracle to help me, Edward the son of Ethelred? My father was chased from his kingdom without anyone in Heaven lifting a finger to save him. The Cerdingas can claim no special protection from above. Perhaps God feels an affection for the English? That must be it. Come to think of it, we had a pretty creditable conversion; not a single missionary martyred, and most of the Kings baptised after a very few years. Whereas those Danes.… There are heathen among them to this day, and they have martyred thousands of Christians who wished them well and wanted only to convert them. The vision was granted to the King of the English, not to poor old Edward. I must avoid the sin of Pride.…’

  All the north made peace with England after Magnus was dead. His possessions were divided, Denmark returning to Sweyn the nephew of Canute and Norway going to Harold Hardrada, uncle to Magnus. These two fought a long and bitter war, and while it continued they were too busy to molest their Christian neighbours.

  There was war also on the other side of the Channel, where Count Baldwin of Flanders attacked the Emperor and sacked the old palace of Charlemagne at Aachen. But in England nothing happened that summer, except that Bishop Stigand was translated from East Anglia to the wealthy See of Winchester. That was Godwin’s doing, of course, though he could not have done it without the King’s consent. I suppose the King gave way because he owed Godwin some return for his loyal service, and anyway it was hard to keep down a man like Stigand. He was a competent administrator and an effective politician; and if such men happen to be clerks it has long been the custom to reward them with wealthy bishoprics. The King had a great dislike for Stigand, because he was a Dane who had persuaded the Old Lady to favour the Danish dynasty even against the claims of her own son. But the King was determined not to allow his personal dislike to be a bar against merited promotion, and at that time there was nothing to be said against Stigand as a clerk. His private life was regular and he was diligent in his pastoral duties; though, like many competent administrators, he cared nothing for forms so long as he could get speedy results. That carelessness of forms, which are important or they would not have been devised, was later to be his undoing.

  In the next year, 1048, the unwonted peace in the lands of the north brought renewal of an old trouble, one which we were beginning to think had passed away for ever. Since there was no fighting for them at home a fleet of Vikings came to plunder along our coast from Essex to Southampton Water. The fleet made landfall at Sandwich, the usual port of arrival for ships from the Baltic. I don’t know why this should be so; one would expect ships sailing from the north-east to reach Northumbria rather than Kent. Up in Jutland somewhere I suppose they have a set of sailing directions, telling them how to coast along the Frisian shore and then cross the Channel to England; that would be safer, though slower, than striking out across the North Sea.

  When the King heard of these ravages he decided that he in person would lead his navy against the Vikings. Of course Earl Godwin must come too, for he had commanded the fleet ever since it was formed in the days of King Canute; but the King did not wish him to gain more glory in battle. He was already too powerful; the Danish professionals who manned the longships must see that there was a King of the English to lead them.

  The whole court moved down to Sandwich, where our ships were gathering to pursue the Vikings. I was among the pages appointed to prepare the King’s armour, but I was not one of those chosen to go aboard the flagship. I was then just twenty years old, and as strong and active as I would ever be; but I was glad to avoid the campaign. I have never felt any desire to go to war; partly because I am awkward at sword-play and might be laughed at, partly because I do not want to be hurt even to gain glory. On this subject plenty of other men feel as I do, but few of them are sensible enough to keep away from armies.

  The King was as pleased and excited at the prospect of battle as if he had been a stripling instead of a middle-aged, white-haired and holy man. In his royal armour he made a most imposing figure; and all the time we were lacing him into his mailshirt he talked to us with the candid absence of selfconsciousness that was characteristic of him.

  ‘Isn’t it strange?’ he said, fingering his axe with a white, unweathered band; but though his hands were white because a falconer must wear gloves, they were the strong capable hands of a good horseman. ‘I am head of the house of Cerdic, a family who have been warriors for at least five hundred years. I am descended from Woden, a powerful and bloodthirsty demon. Yet purely by chance I have passed my forty-sixth birthday without ever striking a blow in anger. It is chance only. In Normandy I must avoid public notice for fear of Danish assassins, and since I became King of the English no foe has attacked us. At my age it feels queer to be a raw recruit. But I am confident that when danger appears I shall not disgrace my ancestors. If we were going out to make war on the army of some other Christian King I might not be eager to shed the blood of my fellow-men. But we are to hunt Vikings, enemies of civilisation, beastly robbers who would rather steal than plough their own land. Drowning is too good for such savages. I hope we catch some of them alive, so that I can hang them before a crowd of the peasants they hope to pillage. Even if I did not look forward to it I should be sure that I am doing the right thing. This is not like a war of foreign conquest; a King who defends his people from Vikings is doing no more than his duty.’

  After these high hopes the King was greatly disappointed when the pirates did not stay to meet him. When they heard that our fleet was ready for sea they at once fled to shelter in the harbours of Flanders. We expected that Count Baldwin would drive them out, so that our ships might still catch them as they fled. Then we heard with disgust that the Flemings had bought very cheaply the bloodstained plunder of England; and that the Vikings, rich and happy, had sailed home unmolested.

  The King was especially furious. After a long and stormy meeting of the Council he strode into his bedchamber still muttering with anger. He carried a roll of papers, and expounded it to me since it had not moved his advisers.

  ‘See, this is a map of northern Christendom, drawn for me by Bishop Robert of London. Here is the Baltic, where the Emperor is conquering the heathen Wends. Here live the Danes, who now call themselves Christians. All down here are the coasts of Frisia and Flanders, which have been Christian and civilised for the last three hundred years. And her
e, jutting out into the heathen north, is the island of Britain. Do you see how England is hemmed in by pirates on every side? On the west lies Ireland, where indeed the Irish are Christians of a kind; but their coasts are infested by Danish pirates, many of them still unbaptised. The north-west, is a scatter of islands, held by the same barbarians; and north beyond Scotland live the wicked Vikings of Orkney and Iceland, the most savage of all.’

  In his excitement he strode up and down the bedchamber.

  ‘When you were born, young Edgar, England was part of this barbarous northern world. Canute conducted himself like a Christian King, I grant you. But he was also a Dane, and all his dominions looked to Denmark as their centre. We English are in some ways very like Danes, though of course not so wicked. If the wide realm of Canute had endured this whole island would have become an imitation of the north. God saved us from that fate, because the sons of Canute were not worthy of their father. God Himself sent me to rule the English, the crown falling on to my head without any effort on my part. Thus God laid on me the duty of bringing England into the civilised and truly Christian south. And He has shown me the means, ready to my hand. For just across the sea from us, here to the south, are a people who prove that even northern pirates can be tamed by good priests and good rulers. I have lived among them, and I know them. The Normans are of the same stock as the English; their forefathers were pirates, like my ancestor Cerdic. Now they are the most civilised men in the world. I have brought in Norman Bishops to reform the English church; if I am strong enough I shall bring in Norman warriors to set an example to my unruly Earls. And it so happens that my nearest kinsman is a Norman, trained in all the arts of Norman civilisation. Ralph, my sister’s son, is old enough to show his mettle. If I name him as my heir perhaps the Council will obey him when I am dead. But first I must make him known to all my Kingdom. I shall try to get him some fragment of Sweyn’s Earldom; that is, if Sweyn’s bloody kinsmen, Harold and Beorn, will allow me to dispose of it. Everything was going smoothly, as indeed it ought to when what I do is manifestly the Will of God …