The Lives She Left Behind (40 page)

‘So why was that a scam?’

‘That part wasn’t. It was what happened afterwards. All these abbeys needed a good story to draw the pilgrims in and get their money. Waltham was a backwater, falling apart, so when
peace came back and it was time to take it home again, some smart person saw a chance for a bit of marketing. Lo and behold, the blacksmith with the spade digs up the miraculous cross and
it’s not very surprising that the oxen take it to Waltham, because that was where it had come from and that was where it was always going back to. After that, the pilgrims came pouring
in.’

‘You’re a cynic,’ said Rachel.

‘Only when there’s reason to be cynical. Anyway, it doesn’t stop there. It was no coincidence that Harold took us that way and ran into a monk. Tovi’s estates including
Waltham Abbey and its miraculous Rood had passed to . . . can you guess who?’

Rachel and Mike glanced at each other and shook their heads.

‘To our King Harold, no less,’ said Ferney. ‘He owned the place but by that time the old Rood had gone a bit out of fashion with the pilgrims and it needed a shot in the
arm.’

‘So you’re saying Harold took his army to the Abbey as a publicity stunt for the Holy Rood?’

‘Not just that. What do you most need if you’re heading for a battle?’

‘A good army?’

‘An army that has God on its side and knows its leader is God’s chosen one. When Harold came out of the Holy Rood chapel, the monks blessed us and sprinkled us and leaked their
latest little miracle into all the waiting ears.’

‘Which was?’

‘The Holy Rood was a solid block of stone held up on the wall by iron bands but the monks all saw the Christ figure lean forward, hold out its stone hand and bless the king. That hit the
spot. The men howled their cheers. The whole army galloped off, out of sheer high spirits, and we watched them go like nobody could beat them, least of all a godless bastard.’

‘You watched them go?’

‘We’d been given another little job. Britnod volunteered us – him, me and useless old Dern. We had to load the Rood on a cart, find horses to draw it because oxen would be too
slow, and follow the army as fast as we could. Harold thought its presence might help swing the day.’

‘But it didn’t.’

‘It didn’t get a chance. It took us three days to do what the troops could do in one. We were struggling along south of London when we saw a procession coming towards us half a mile
away, horsemen surrounding a closed wagon, and they weren’t proud, brave, joyful men. They were shambling, sad and fearful and they looked behind them with every second stride, and that wagon
– oh, that was a pitiful sight. It was decked out with torn banners draped on broken spears, daubed with muddy charcoal to darken it. By the time it got to us, we didn’t need to ask
what it meant.’

‘Was it Harold?’

‘Yes, it was.’

‘They were taking his body back from the battle?’

‘Not just his body.’

‘What else?’

‘The breath that was still in it.’

‘He was killed, Ferney. Everybody knows that. An arrow in the eye.’

‘Not the Harold I saw.’

They were near Honiton when Rachel’s phone rang. She pulled over to take the call. Mike watched Ferney for signs of stress.

‘It’s good to stop,’ the boy said. ‘I’m not that happy with speed.’

‘She hasn’t been over eighty the whole way,’ Mike said mildly.

‘A gallop used to be the quickest I ever went, and that wasn’t often.’ He leaned forward between the front seats and tapped on the windscreen. ‘It’s all because of
sand, you know.’

‘Sand?’

‘Yes. Suppose when you melted sand, you didn’t get glass. Supposing you got something you couldn’t see through.’

‘Well?’

‘Then you wouldn’t have windscreens, and without windscreens you couldn’t go quickly because the wind would get in your eyes, so no fast cars. Better still, you couldn’t
have bombers and fighters and things. It’s all the fault of sand.’

Rachel got back in the car, looking cross. ‘That was the clinic. They say that Miss Driscoll’s mother insists that Miss Driscoll does not want me to represent her, and as Miss
Driscoll is in a fragile condition they cannot allow visitors from outside the family.’

‘Is that it then?’ Mike asked. ‘Do we turn round?’

‘No we do
not
,’ Rachel said. ‘We go there and we argue our way in, because once she says she wants me to act for her, they can’t stop her. Are you up for
that?’

Mike kept quiet. ‘Oh yes,’ said Ferney.

‘Are you all right?’ she asked, looking at him.

‘The story’s helping. Where were we?’

‘On a road south of London,’ said Mike, ‘meeting Harold coming the other way, and I think you’re about to threaten my understanding of English history by telling me he
was alive.’

‘Oh.’ It took him a while to pick up the thread again. Mike watched him out of the corner of his eye as he muttered and held something in his hands that was invisible in this
time.

‘The man in the wagon was still breathing,’ he said in the end. ‘Only just, though. He was wearing Harold’s surcoat. He had hair like Harold’s, what you could see
of it that wasn’t caked in blood. His face? You couldn’t tell. He had a dreadful wound half across it.’

‘The arrow in the eye?’

‘Nowhere near his eye.’

‘Ah,’ said Mike, as if that suddenly made sense. ‘William of Malmesbury says one thing, Henry of Huntingdon says another. You can’t trust the Bayeux Tapestry. It was just
a stick next to someone’s head until they added the flights when they were restoring it. But are you saying you couldn’t identify the man in the wagon?’

‘No, it was Harold. He still had the power, even though he was at death’s door. It’s like an aura, a bit like gold. It sticks to kings. All I’m saying is there
wasn’t much of his cheek or his nose left undamaged, and the nose was the first thing you always noticed about him. I was sure and it never makes sense to change your mind afterwards when
you’re sure at the time.’

‘Where were they taking him?’

‘To his grave. They weren’t expecting him to live. Two of the Waltham priests were there. They’d gone with him to sing about the Holy Rood and they were bringing him back to
bury in their abbey.’

That was when Britnod said ‘Why take him to Waltham? He’s not dead yet. Why wish it so?’

‘The Norman King gave us permission.’

‘Well, sod that. All the more reason to take him somewhere else.’

‘We swore an oath.’

‘You did. We didn’t. He’s our king, not Bastard Gwillam. The game’s not over yet. We’ll take him somewhere they won’t come looking.’

Britnod seemed to have grown taller now that he could aim his ill temper at a righteous target.

‘Where?’

‘Better you don’t know. We’ll take that cross of yours too. It hasn’t done him much good yet but there’s still time.’

‘It bowed to him,’ said the taller priest indignantly.

‘Oh really? I thought you told us it waved at him. Maybe it was waving goodbye.’

‘It belongs at Waltham.’

‘You won’t miss it.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘Because I happen to know you’ve got another one just like it.’

‘How dare you! There is only one Holy Rood.’

‘True,’ said Britnod, ‘but there is a hollow copy of it which you are in the habit of taking out in the annual procession so the pilgrims can be impressed by the miraculous
strength of the monks who hold it high above their heads.’

‘Who told you that?’

‘A drunk monk.’

There were a dozen soldiers in the escort and they liked Britnod’s idea. The priests could do nothing so they rode home to Waltham while the wagons turned westward. The king was groaning
in delirium but at Winchester the Bishop sent secretly for a woman with a precious knowledge of infected wounds. By the end of three weeks there, he no longer looked likely to die though he still
had little clear interest in life. In that third week, news came of the Norman King’s arrival in London and of the burial of Harold under the protection of the Holy Rood at Waltham. They
laughed and wondered what poor corpse had been elevated to royalty in death.

After Winchester the soldiers went home. Britnod, Ferney and old Dern, still enjoying his private world, took one wagon. The man on the straw in the back was in an even more private world, lying
inert beside his precious cross, his face swathed in bandages. They arrived at the ridge after a slow and careful journey and Gally knew they were coming. She came out of the cottage door with
Sebbi behind her and looked at the three men, then out at the lane as if a fourth might be coming in after them on foot. Then her eyes were dragged back to the anguish on Ferney’s face and
she knew. Tears welled up in her eyes.

‘We have an injured man in here,’ Britnod told her. ‘He needs your help.’ Then when he saw the flash of hope in her face, he shook his head. ‘No, I’m sorry.
It’s not your son. It’s only the King.’

Ferney went to her and held her, and she looked into his eyes then set her sorrow aside for later. She went to work, unwrapping the king with care, inspecting the wounds. It was a slow job.
Right through that winter and into the spring, she poured her grief into his care, nursing him with all the skills in her possession.

The word spread.

However careful they were to keep him a secret Britnod was less so, and as life returned to the hedges and fields, small deputations of the Wessex Saxons came to see if it was true that not all
was lost. An appetite for resistance began to show its shoots around on the ridge. The news was bad. William was so sure of his victory that he had gone back to France, leaving his half-brother,
Robert of Mortain, to crush the west. In Somerset they soon came to hear that Robert was a vile man, and he began to ring their county with new fortresses. Montacute was one of the first and that
was designed to rub Saxon noses in the dirt. Robert knew what the legend of the cross of Montacute meant to the Saxons. Robert had faced the Saxon ranks as they howled the name of the Holy Rood. He
knew the legend of the blacksmith’s find on the steep hill and it pleased him greatly to defile that sacred Saxon mound with Norman walls.

Ferney fell silent. Mike prompted him. ‘So where was the Rood?’

‘We kept it in the church, under a blanket.’

‘And Harold? Did he stay in the village?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘Where exactly?’

‘With us.’

‘
Harold
was living at Bagstone?’

‘I told you, yes, but he was never going to command anyone again. He spent most of his days asleep. That didn’t stop them. They said he’d wake when the time came. They needed a
symbol.’

‘Who’s they?’

‘The Saxons. Hugo from Exeter way and his followers and all the other hotheads and tough guys who’d come to the west to bide their time. They were the resistance and Pen was the
place they chose.’

‘Because Harold was there?’

‘Because of that and because of the ridge, the best way through for an army and the best place to stop one – the same old damned reasons battles always came to the poor place.
Anyway, they gathered there. They marched on Montacute more like a gang than an army, planning to throw the Normans out so they could take the Rood back where it belonged. They got slaughtered of
course. Only half of them made it back to Pen, chased all the way, and that was where they made their final stand.’

‘Where were you?’

‘I stayed in Pen, looking after Gally, telling her it wasn’t her fault Edgar died, trying to find her some peace. I was glad when they marched away and not nearly so glad when they
came back, bringing their war with Robert’s troops at their heels. It was a running fight all along the western slope, in the trees and fields. We were digging a big hole when they arrived
– the deepest hole we could.’

‘What for?’

‘For the cross, the damned Rood, the cause of all the trouble. I didn’t want them to find it. I thought at least I would deny them that satisfaction.’

‘So you weren’t in the fight?’

‘The fight came to us whether we liked it or not. We could hear the shouts and screams. I turned back to get Gally and Sebbi away but then I saw Harold, standing there like a sleepwalker.
He’d followed us. He looked past me and began to shout and I turned round to see a dozen Normans coming up the slope at us. That wreck of a man rushed at them with nothing but my spade in his
hands. He went for them like a lion and he even got a blow in, just one, before they stuck their swords in and let the life out of him. They had no idea who they’d just killed. They kicked
him out of the way and came on after us and we had to stretch our legs to get away.’

‘But you did? You escaped?’

‘They cut my arm but I got Gally and the boy out of there. We knew the hidey-holes. It was Hugo and his remaining men who stood and fought and it didn’t do them any good. When it all
went quiet, we came back and we took what was left of Harold and we buried him in the hole we dug for his cross then we kept very quiet about it. We had to.’

‘Why?’

‘Word got round. The story spread that Harold was sleeping in a cave under the ridge, waiting to be woken – that same old story, just like Arthur. They came looking for anyone who
might be planning to have another go. Then they decided no Saxon should ever make a stand up there again, so the castles started going up. That’s why they’re there, you see. Three
castles to control the ridge, the rallying point.’

‘And afterwards? What happened to you?’

‘We got the Rood out of there in the end. If they had found it, we would all have felt the sword. Two slow nights on a wagon. Hiding in the day, then eight men got it up the hill and we
buried it where it belonged.’

‘Back at Montacute?’

‘On the terrace, right by our trenches.’

He looked bleakly ahead and his eyes began to shine with the trace of tears.

‘We were slave labour to the Normans. Everyone was forced to work. My arm made me useless but they took Sebbi, our remaining son, to build their castles.’ He sighed. ‘He was
weak and I went to take his place but they killed him anyway. They killed my son for not working and I tried to stop them and they killed me too. Both my lovely sons. That’s why we
don’t have children. We come back but they don’t.’