Anarchy Read online

  But there is another revealing story in what I will send you. It is a tale of two families: one high and mighty, but flawed; the other more lowly, but courageous and noble in sentiment. They have lived, and still do, parallel lives, each providing central characters in the dramas of England and Normandy.

  I hesitated over the summer, but my declining health has finally prompted me to commit to record various accounts that you need to hear. Together, they represent a saga not only of England and Normandy, but also of Byzantium, the Holy Land and the Latin Princes. Needless to say, they tell us much about our human frailties, but also – thanks be to God – a little about our finer qualities.

  My monks are now writing furiously, driven by my burgeoning desire to finish what I have begun. So, henceforth, these letters will arrive with you habitually; treat them with care, for they contain much that could be incendiary in the wrong hands. I will leave it to you to decide where they should ultimately rest; perhaps the Vatican Library would be the appropriate place. I will also send you some important artefacts in due course. These should also find a safe haven, secure from those who would exploit their value, both tangible and spiritual.

  I will try not to meander too much, but it is a long story, told to me by a man who you will find intriguing. I first came across him in late June 1139, shortly after I was elected Abbot of Gloucester – so long ago, my friend, when I was in my prime. At the time, this first meeting seemed likely to be the only encounter between us, for he was badly wounded and near to death. He had been brought to me to hear his confession and for me to confer the last rites. As you well know, it is not unusual for us to be called on to hear the confession of dying warriors who, as death approaches, find their dubious deeds suddenly bearing heavily upon them. But this one was different, very different.

  I guessed his age to be thirty-five, perhaps a little older. He was dark of hair and olive-skinned, but with piercing blue eyes, and he had the handsome countenance of a courtier. He sported the usual scars of battle, most of which were hidden by a full beard, and carried an impressive array of the tools of his trade – an assemblage of lustrous weapons as fine as I had ever seen – but around his neck was a most remarkable object, unlike anything I have seen before or since. The size of a small bird’s egg and not dissimilar in shape, it was a large piece of smooth amber, which glowed balefully in the candlelight. Astonishingly, when it was held to the light, it appeared to contain the image of Lucifer. He seemed to be surrounded by his familiars in the shape of small flies and insects. It also had a blood-red splash running through it, which at certain angles obscured the image of Satan.

  I must confess it made me ill at ease. But I was determined to learn the identity of the man who wore what I feared was an evil charm. ‘Harold of Hereford’ was the name he gave me. I had heard it before, although I was not certain from where. Only over the coming months and years did the name become more and more familiar to me as the turmoil about to envelop England began to emerge. It has been called ‘The Anarchy’; the name is apt, because that is what soon came to pass. These were years of chaos and lawlessness, times I will never forget.

  Miraculously, proving my physicians wrong, Harold of Hereford not only survived after leaving my cloisters at Gloucester, but went on to play a significant part in England’s future affairs. Eventually, he returned – but not for almost forty years, in 1176 in fact – and when he did, it was to make his peace with God. By then, Harold of Hereford was an old man, in his late seventies, and almost everyone who had lived through the turbulent years of his life was dead. I suppose it was a confession of sorts, but perhaps more of a declaration: a testimony about his life and his fascinating family, and an avowal of his destiny and England’s cause.

  I remember the day well; it was a warm summer evening, the birds sang, and the insects hummed in the garden beneath my window. As I looked out, I saw him walk across the courtyard. My eyes were sharp then, a good ten years ago, and I could see that he stooped a little, but he still had the purposeful gait of a man of war. He had kept his hair and his beard was still full, but both were silver grey like a hoary frost on a winter’s morning. His weapons were as brightly burnished as I remembered them all those years before. I knew it was him, even after the passage of many years. I always thought that if he survived his injuries, one day he would return.

  He spoke of my reputation as an honest prelate and flattered my abilities as a meticulous chronicler. With that, and without ever receiving my agreement that I would act as his scribe – he was the kind of man who assumed that all his requests would be routinely granted and all his needs immediately fulfilled – Harold of Hereford began his story.

  Long hours turned into long days; then weeks passed, as his remarkable story unfolded in vivid detail. I have waited ten years to commit this to vellum, but now my own advancing years mean I can’t wait any longer. Fortunately, such is the drama of it, the story is as fresh in my memory now as it was then. I listened every day and he even accompanied me on my journeys to St Paul’s so that he could maintain the thread of his discourse. As a houseguest, he was charming and I came to realize that beneath his warrior’s gruff exterior, there was a man of great warmth and intellect. He began with his childhood and the astonishing circumstances of his birth and lineage. I sat to one side, as he stared out into my garden. His sun-burnished profile, deeply wrinkled but still handsome, broke into a smile. I smiled with him, sensing that what I was about to become privy to would be an illuminating and engaging revelation. I can still hear his melodious voice echoing in my memory.

  My friend, forgive me for imposing this long correspondence on you, but I am too old to travel. It is now the dark of the moon here in Fulham. I fear that with the shorter days have come the first cold winds of the autumn. I am not looking forward to the winter; it can chill a man to his bones down here by the river, and the damp air’s icy fingers make breathing troublesome. Still, to the matter in hand.

  I have made arrangements with my good friend, Henry of Chichester. He is Abbot of Waverley, a Cistercian house at Farnham, not far from here, that operates an excellent ecclesiastical courier service. He has agreed to make sure my correspondence arrives at the Vatican in Rome, which I know you visit every week. His messengers leave London frequently, and I hope the letters will reach you in regular batches.

  I trust this first letter has whetted your appetite. God forbid that I give you a sense that a chore is about to begin. Regardless, my course is set and I must go on. The story that I am about to tell you needs to be written down for posterity. Harold of Hereford’s story unfolds below. Keep it safely in your care until the saga is complete.

  Yours in God,

  Gilbert

  1. Birthright

  When I think back to my arrival on this earth, I still smile at the convoluted circumstances of my birth. I was born surreptitiously, in Constantinople, in the most auspicious of surroundings, in the Blachernae, the private palace of Alexius I, the Emperor of Byzantium. Strangely, I had two ‘mothers’: Estrith, my real mother, and Adela, who briefly performed the ostensible role of my mother to all but a few who knew the truth of my conception and confinement. Even more bizarrely, when Adela, my surrogate mother, died only a few years later, Estrith, my birth mother, adopted me in a pretence designed to protect her status as a nun. It was a charade that survived until her death.

  I arrived in the mid-summer of 1098, at the beginning of the Great Crusade. My two mothers were part of the English contingent to the Holy Land, led by Edgar the Athel
ing. Edgar was the rightful Cerdician heir to the English throne in 1066 – an inheritance first denied him in his tender years by Harold of Wessex and then by William the Conqueror and his Norman horde.

  Edgar had finally become reconciled with the Conqueror and had befriended Robert Curthose, William’s firstborn, who became Duke of Normandy when his father died. When the Great Crusade was called, Robert led the Norman contingent and asked his friend Edgar to join him as head of a small force of Englishmen.

  My father, Sweyn of Bourne, was part of Edgar’s contingent: a noble knight, of whom I have no real memory, only cherished stories passed on to me by my mother. He was killed when I was still a boy at the fateful Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106.

  The secret that disguised my birth was contrived to protect my real mother, Estrith. She was only allowed to be present on the Great Crusade because of her status as Abbess of Fécamp and through her role tending the sick and wounded. The fanatical leaders of the crusade, most of whom were Christian zealots, would not have taken kindly to an abbess of the Church conceiving a child and giving birth in the middle of the holy crusade to liberate the sacred places of Palestine.

  On the other hand, Adela was a warrior and an acknowledged Knight of Islam. But more importantly she was married to my father, Sweyn, and thus, as the spouse of a Latin knight, was allowed to accompany him on campaigns. Theirs was a marriage of convenience, never consummated, and agreed between them to allow Adela to fulfil her desire to fight as a warrior – a secret known only to those closest to them. They were more like brother and sister, and both hailed from my family’s ancestral home: Bourne in Lincolnshire.

  During a particularly treacherous skirmish with the Seljuk Turks in the Holy Land, Adela was badly wounded by an arrow, and Sweyn and Estrith became separated from the Christian army and had to hide in the desert. Estrith had also taken an arrow and had to be kept alive by Sweyn’s skills as a battlefield physician. It was during these days alone, when both thought death was imminent, that a tender moment became a loving embrace and, against all the odds, I was conceived. Amazingly, thanks in large part to Sweyn’s gifts as a soldier, both survived and made it back to the Christian camp.

  Sadly, Adela’s wounds were more severe, which ultimately led to her death. But she survived long enough to act out the role of being my mother and to make it back to England, before dying in desperate circumstances at Westminster. She was buried in Bourne; my real mother, Estrith, told me the whole story many years later, a beautifully poignant memory I will cherish forever.

  When it became obvious that Estrith was pregnant with me, a devious plan was concocted to protect her and maintain the facade of the ‘marriage’ between Sweyn and Adela. Adela’s wound was serious and would not heal, so it was agreed that both she and my mother would immediately return to Constantinople, long before her pregnancy could be noticed, where I could be born in secret in Emperor Alexius’ private apartments. When the three of us returned twelve months later, to all but a select few it seemed perfectly plausible that Adela, wife of Sweyn, had given birth to me and had returned with her husband’s child, both lovingly cared for by Estrith, whose nursing skills had led her to be christened the ‘English Angel’.

  Estrith, Sweyn and Adela were all part of a secret brotherhood, the Brethren of the Blood of the Talisman, formed in homage to all those who went before them and resisted the Normans in the final redoubt at Ely in 1071. The founding members of the Brethren were: Estrith of Melfi, Abbess of Fécamp; Adela of Bourne, Knight of Islam; Sweyn of Bourne, Knight of Normandy; Edgar the Atheling, Prince of England; Edwin of Glastonbury, Knight of England and my grandfather’s standard-bearer at Ely; and Robert, Sovereign Duke of Normandy.

  My grandfather, Hereward of Bourne, and my grandmother, Torfida of the Wildwood, were guardians of the Talisman, an ancient and mysterious amulet that many believe possesses great powers. My grandmother died shortly before Ely, but my grandfather survived the siege and lived on for many years. Before he died, he shared the details of his life with the two Johns of Constantinople: Prince John Azoukh and Prince John Comnenus, who later became the Emperor of Byzantium.

  For many years, no one knew what had happened to Hereward after Ely. It was only years later, when the Brethren travelled to Constantinople with the Great Crusade, that his whereabouts became clear. He had made a diabolical pact with William the Conqueror after the fall of Ely, which forced him to leave England forever. He had to assume a new identity as Godwin of Ely and served with the elite Varangian Guard of John Comnenus’ father, the Emperor Alexius. After quickly rising through the ranks to become Captain of the Guard, he became the Emperor’s close friend and confidant.

  When he retired, he chose to live in his own remote eyrie, high in the mountains of the Peloponnese in Greece, his whereabouts unknown to anybody except the Emperor Alexius and his local governor – that is, until the Brethren arrived in Constantinople with the crusaders. The Latin Princes and the senior members of their entourage were summoned to the Blachernae to swear an oath of loyalty to the Emperor, during which Estrith noticed that he was wearing the fabled Talisman, given to him many years before by its guardian, Hereward, a man he knew as Godwin of Ely. Later, in a private audience with Alexius, the link was made and a great circle of fate was closed. Alexius summoned Hereward back from his beloved eyrie and he was reunited with his family and the survivors of Ely.

  Hereward became a member of the Brethren and accompanied them on their traumatic excursion to the Holy Land, after which he returned to his mountaintop. But to the immense joy of Estrith, she and I, still a babe in arms, returned with him, where we stayed for many months. Throughout my childhood, my mother passed on the minute details of our stay and the many stories of my grandfather’s deeds and those of his followers. They are wonderful memories, many of which I now pass on to you.

  After the Great Crusade and our time together with my grandfather, we returned to England, where my mother rekindled her passion for architecture by resuming her career as a churchwright – a skill she had to hide behind the pectoral cross of an abbess. She worked for the rest of her life as one of the senior churchwrights on the new cathedral at Norwich, where I grew up. The building is finished now, but my mother only saw it half built; she died in 1126, in an outbreak of scarlet fever. Nevertheless, she saw the completion of the presbytery and its magnificent vaulted roof, her pride and joy.

  Although I was intrigued throughout my childhood by the inexorable rise of the mighty walls of the cathedral, and despite being in awe of the skills of its masons, carpenters and churchwrights, my yearnings soon turned to more martial pursuits, especially when I began to approach adulthood. I dreamed of emulating the deeds of my father and grandfather, both of whose exploits were well known – especially those of Hereward, who was by then a legendary figure, spoken about with hushed reverence.

  No one in Norwich knew that we were related to Hereward and Sweyn; my mother preferred her anonymity, especially as she worked so closely with master masons and senior clerics, all of whom were Normans. Although the pain of the Conquest was becoming a thing of the past, resentment was never far beneath the surface within the English community and we had to be careful lest our lineage antagonize our Norman masters, or become a rallying call for our English friends. Still, my heritage resonated strongly in my heart.

  I first made contact with young Englishmen who were determined to keep alive the dream of liberty from Norman rule through some of the masons working on the cathedral. Although the senior masons were Normans, most of the junior ones were English. They were intelligent and articulate, but were denied further progress because of rigid Norman control of the masons’ hierarchy. This caused bitter resentment. Several of them w
ould meet in Lion Wood on Sundays. Their women and sisters would prepare food, and they would share stories of the English resistance from the past, air their grievances and talk about how England could plot a way to freedom.

  They were initially wary of me because my mother was one of the few prominent English people in Norwich and thus open to accusations of collaboration with the Normans. However, her deeds in the Holy Land with the English contingent nullified any suspicion and thus I was allowed to join the Sabbath gatherings. Sometimes I wished I could reveal my family history and so gain favour with them, but it would have put at risk my mother’s relationship with the Normans, so I chose discretion.

  Some of the men kept weapons in the wood and practised with them. They taught me many things about fighting, especially at close quarters, and how to survive in the wilderness – all of which was a useful supplement to my formal training to become a knight with Hugh Bigod, the Earl of Norwich.

  My Sabbaths in Lion Wood continued blissfully for many weeks. My fellow renegades were older than I was – I had just turned fifteen – and keeping their company led me to pretend that I was older than my tender years. There were the thrills of clandestine rendezvous to be savoured and mock fights to be enjoyed. I learned that there was still a secret network of similar young men and women throughout the land, many of whom were descendants of those who fought the Normans on Senlac Ridge, or were part of my grandfather’s resistance movement and the Brotherhood of Ely.