Outside the wind continued to howl; it rattled the shutters and rustled the thatch. I stepped towards the priest, the floorboards creaking beneath my feet; he tried to edge away but I reached forward and grabbed him by the collar of his undershirt. He stared back at me for what seemed an eternity, trembling in my grip, and I saw the fear in his eyes.
‘It belongs …’ he said, his voice starting to quiver. He broke off, and even in the dim light I saw drops of sweat forming upon his brow.
‘To whom?’ I demanded.
‘It belongs’, he said, speaking slowly, ‘to the man who, three years ago, would have been king. To the oath-breaker and usurper, Harold Godwineson.’
Thirty
I STARED AT him for what seemed like an eternity. This wasn’t what I had expected to hear. Harold Godwineson. His was the body that Eadgyth wanted to see.
I let go of ?lfwold’s collar and stepped back; he sank back on to the bed. I glanced at the other two, and they back at me.
Wace frowned. ‘Is this true?’
‘It is the truth,’ the chaplain answered, eyeing us nervously, as if unsure what to expect from us. As well he might, for this was far larger than any of us had been considering.
Eudo held his sword out once more, towards his face. ‘If you are lying to us …’
‘By God and the saints, I swear it is the truth!’ ?lfwold said, his eyes wide, his voice trembling even more than before.
‘But why should Malet know where Harold’s body is?’ I asked.
Wace frowned. ‘I thought it had never been found. From what I heard no one could identify it among the fallen, so trampled and broken were all the corpses that day.’
I’d heard the same tale. We had all been there at H?stinges, but there had been so much confusion that few had known exactly when the usurper had been killed and the field became ours. Some said that he was already maimed when an arrow had pierced his eye; others that it took the efforts of four mounted men, Duke Guillaume himself among them, to defeat him as he fought on alone, clinging to the vestiges of his power to the very end. The only thing we knew for certain was that it had been done.
Of his corpse, however, nothing had ever been said. Like most people, I assumed it had never been found: that he had simply been left to be eaten by the wolves and the crows, no different from the thousands of Englishmen who were slain that day. For as long as he was dead, it did not matter what became of his body. In the eyes of God he was a perjurer and a sinner, and even had he been recovered, no Christian burial could have been accorded him.
‘That at least is the story as King Guillaume would wish it told,’ ?lfwold said. ‘But it is not what happened. The body was found – don’t you see that it had to be? Without it, he couldn’t be certain that Harold was truly dead. At first he called upon my lord to look for it amongst the slain, thinking he would be able to recognise him on account of the friendship he knew they had once shared. But when he was unable to do so …’
‘He sent for Eadgyth,’ I finished for him. Her words came back to me now, from that night when we had spoken in the church at Wiltune, and I understood what she had meant. She had been there after the battle, she had told me so herself. And she had seen her husband’s battered corpse. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
?lfwold nodded, still watching us warily. ‘They came to an understanding, that if she identified the body, in return she would be told where it was to be buried.’
‘That was the promise Malet made to her, then,’ I muttered. My heart beat faster; everything was beginning to make sense at last. ‘And she upheld her part of the arrangement?’
‘She did,’ he said. ‘She was able to recognise him by certain marks on his body: marks that only a wife could know. Though once she had done so, the resemblance soon became clear to the rest of us. His head had been severed, and was found some way from the rest of him, which even then was missing one leg, hacked off at the thigh. But it was him nonetheless.’
‘You have seen the body?’ I asked. ‘You were there as well?’ It was not unusual for chaplains to travel in their lords’ companies, even to war, but I had not thought ?lfwold would have the disposition for it.
‘I was,’ he said with a touch of impatience. ‘And I was on your side then, just as I am now.’
‘Perhaps.’ I wasn’t sure that I yet believed him. ‘What happened to Harold’s body after that?’
‘After that the duke entrusted it to Lord Guillaume’s safe-keeping. He was told to see to its burial.’
‘Except that he obviously went back on his word,’ Wace pointed out. ‘He didn’t tell Eadgyth where he was burying it, or else she wouldn’t be asking to see it still.’
‘Where is it, then?’ Eudo said. His sword was still in his hand, though it was no longer pointed towards the priest.
‘I cannot say,’ ?lfwold replied. ‘It has been hidden these past two years. No one knows where it is, save for the vicomte himself.’