Hereward (47 page)
Authors: James Wilde
Dappled by the sun breaking through the branches, Hereward strode over. He eyed the monk with suspicion, as if he felt he were being judged. ‘They work well,’ he said. ‘We will have a camp here that will keep them through the hard months.’
‘Them?’
‘I return to Flanders tomorrow. Turfrida waits for me and I would bring her back to be by my side, and the two Siwards who guard her. They will make a fine addition to this rebel band.’
‘And then?’
Hereward smiled without humour. ‘You know what then.’ He looked past the monk to the sheet of shimmering water and the wooded islands rising from it, green ships asail upon a sea of glass. ‘The scouts have returned. The Norman reinforcements have arrived, and Harald Redteeth is among them. We will be ready for them. Our stock of spears and axes grows by the day. And every man and woman here will be trained in the bow, so that we can match the invaders shaft for shaft.’ A shadow crossed his face; a memory. ‘And then we will sweep out of the marshes, and strike like serpents, gone before our enemies even know we are there. We will scourge them with fire. We will take heads as prizes, and hearts and fingers, and over time they will know the dread that comes with the night, and they will know they can never escape its cold grasp. There will be terror, and I will be the king of it.’
Alric saw his friend’s eyes take on a strange cast, and heard his voice become like stone. The monk felt a wave of pity, and fear too, but he would not show it in his face. ‘God watches over you, my friend.’
And I do, too
.
Under the swaying branches of the ash tree, they embraced as brothers. And then Hereward walked through the milling crowd, oblivious of the hopeful eyes laid upon him, and into the trees. Alric watched until his friend was gone. But the monk knew it would not be long until the wetlands ran red with blood again. He would return.
The Devil of the Fens.
The Ghost who comes from the Mist.
Hereward, the greatest of the English. The King of Terror.
A Note from the Author
History is like an old movie with a degraded print. Scratches and crackling incomprehensible dialogue mar even the earliest scenes, and the further back you go, frames are burned out and sometimes whole reels are missing. Characters walk on and disappear a moment later, their story untold. Narrative jumps challenge even the most careful viewer, and meaning is lost or warped in the whirr of seemingly unrelated scenes.
Frustrating as this is for the historian, it provides an exciting opportunity for the novelist. The author can polish up what remains and fill in the gaps where something is missing, draw connections, perhaps, or search for that elusive meaning.
Decades of remarkable academic research has filled in a great deal of our understanding of the eleventh century, but so much of that era is still ambiguous or intangible. Heated debate rolls on about the politics and the motivations of the central figures; hardly surprising when the sources are so few and the propaganda so great. One thing we do know is that the men and women of those days were the same as us. The same drives, the same hungers, loves, flaws, ambitions and failings. We don’t need narrative sources to understand that. We know men who seek power sometimes do terrible things. We know that there are few heroes, few villains, but lots of people trying to get by as they become swept up in events beyond their control.
Our protagonist in this novel, Hereward, is an intriguing prospect. Few today know of him, although his exploits have attained a mythic power that make him one of the three great heroes of Britain, alongside King Arthur and Robin Hood. He shares many qualities of those other two legends, but Hereward is rooted in a harder reality. The archetypal warrior’s story is told in
De Gestis Herewardi Saxonis
and touched on in various monastic chronicles, and we are aware, in general terms, of the part he played in the English resistance to William the Conqueror. But even then the ‘truth’ – whatever that might be – is hidden by what appears to be fabulous invention as the writers of the time attempted to cast a mythic sheen on Hereward within years of his death. How much can be trusted? Certainly, the account in
De Gestis
is based in part upon an older version, and extracted from only a few surviving leaves, all of them mildewed and torn, so a great deal is missing. Timelines are confused, narratives conflicting. Yet it appears that Hereward’s story was part of a popular tradition and that he was regarded, even within years of his death, as a legendary hero.
The missing reels of the film of Hereward’s life are many. Historians have attempted to build a family background for the warrior from fragmentary evidence. Many accounts have veered towards the romantic and were common currency until recent times. But a detailed investigation by Peter Rex in his book
Hereward: The Last Englishman
demands a reassessment of much that was accepted about the warrior’s life, and it is this more convincing work that I have decided to use as the basis for ‘my’ Hereward. I am also particularly indebted to Elizabeth Van Houts, whose essay ‘Hereward and Flanders’ in
Anglo-Saxon England
28 (1999) provided the historical background for some of my account of the hero’s time in exile.
Two other notes: the dates used at the beginning of several chapters correspond to our modern calendar, for the sake of clarity. And while Hereward calls himself a Mercian, at the time of this story the old Kingdom of Mercia had become a part of England during the political unification of the country in the previous century. Hereward’s claim is purely a matter of cultural identity, based on the area where his father had his major landholding (even though he spent much of his childhood in the Fens). There was still a great deal of rivalry among residents of the old kingdoms, in the manner of the longstanding enmity between people of Lancashire and Yorkshire today.
In the end, Hereward remains only a ghost-image on the screen of history. His life story is fragmented and distorted. But the essence remains: a bloody warrior who used terror as a weapon; a flawed man, but a hero, perhaps, as great as any we have known.
About the Author
James Wilde
is a Man of Mercia. Raised in a world of books, he went on to study economic history at university before travelling the world in search of adventure. Unable to forget a childhood encounter – in the pages of a comic – with the great English warrior Hereward, Wilde returned to the haunted fenlands of eastern England, Hereward’s ancestral home, where he became convinced that this legendary hero should be the subject of his first novel. Wilde now indulges his love of history and the high life in the home his family have owned for several generations in the heart of a Mercian forest.
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First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Bantam Press an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © James Wilde 2011
James Wilde has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Version 1.0 Epub ISBN 9781409011088
ISBNs 9780593064887 (cased)
9780593064894 (tpb)
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