The Last Conquest
Authors: Berwick Coates
First published in Great Britain by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd, 2013
A CBS COMPANY
Copyright © Berwick Coates 2013
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.
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® and © 1997 Simon & Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.
The right of Berwick Coates to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
HB ISBN: 978-1-47111-194-5
EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-47111-197-6
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to
actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
To a lady whose name I cannot remember. In a remote country primary school, when I was seven, she gave me my first history lesson. I remember saying to myself, ‘Here
– there could be something in this.’ And, as Fate would have it, the lesson was about William the Conqueror and the Battle of Hastings. She would be pleased, I hope, to know that that
seed sown so long ago has at last borne some fruit.
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The only real point of writing this historical note is to say that there isn’t one.
A work of fiction is a work of fiction – anyone interested in finding out how a historical novelist gained his information, selected his facts, made his judgements, and produced his
interpretations, can go and read the same sources and form his own opinions. Indeed, the novelist can count it as a bonus that he has stimulated his reader sufficiently to make him want to do
so.
Nevertheless, a work of fiction can still have historical value. The historical novelist, like the historian, tries to arrange the evidence he collects into a pattern that coheres, that makes
sense, and that persuades. He hopes to re-create, and he hopes to ‘get it right’. He wishes, naturally, to entertain, to make the past interesting, but that does not necessarily imply a
disdain of cold fact. Within his academic and literary capabilities, he aspires to bring the past into focus, and to create sympathy for the people who lived in it.
The wise historian, in his tireless search for hard evidence, appreciates the value of the occasional leap of informed imagination; the sensible novelist should not be so bewitched by the
glitter of a good story that he consciously ignores the main body of accepted truth. Each, in his own way, if he works honestly, is serving the cause of history in general – and a very worthy
cause that is too.
Norman
William II, Duke of Normandy – the Bastard, later the Conqueror, William I of England
Odo, Bishop of Bayeux, half-brother to the Bastard
Robert, Count of Mortain, half-brother to the Bastard
Sir William Fitzosbern, kinsman, companion and chief adviser to the Bastard
Sir Baldwin de Clair, kinsman, companion and quartermaster to the Bastard
Geoffrey de Montbrai, Bishop of Coutances, in charge of military training
Sir Roger of Montgomery, commander of the Norman right at Hastings
Sir Walter Giffard, commander of the Norman centre at Hastings
Count Alan of Brittany, commander of the Norman left at Hastings
Robert of Beaumont, a junior commander at Hastings
Eustace of Boulogne, standard-bearer at Hastings
Crispin of Bec, a monk, chief clerk to Baldwin de Clair
Ranulf of Dreux, chief military engineer to the Bastard
Fulk Bloodeye, captain of Flemish mercenaries
Matthew, a doctor, companion to Fulk
Florens of Arras, sergeant of Flemish mercenaries
Rainald of Delft, corporal of Flemish mercenaries
Dietrich, a Flemish soldier
Ralph of Gisors |
| all three scouts in the Norman army |
Bruno of Aix | ||
Gilbert of Avranches |
Taillefer, a minstrel
Sandor the Magyar, chief horse-handler in the Norman invasion fleet
William Capra and
Ralph Pomeroy, soldiers of fortune in the Norman army
Brian, a Breton swordsman
Adele, wife of Gilbert of Avranches
The first eleven of the above people are specifically mentioned by name in the contemporary chronicles as having been present at Hastings. Taillefer’s name figures in
the later, more romantic accounts. There were also Bretons, Flemings, scouts, clerks, horse-handlers, engineers, and soldiers of fortune present. I have simply taken the liberty of giving names
to some of them, and of providing one of them with a wife.
English
King Harold II, Harold Godwinsson, King of England (Jan.–Oct. l066)
Gyrth, Earl of East Anglia, brother to Harold
Leofwine, Earl of Kent, brother to Harold
Edwin, dog-handler to the King
Gorm Haraldsson, a Sussex miller
Sweyn, Gorm’s son
Rowena |
| Gorm’s daughters |
Aud | ||
Edith |
Godric, Gorm’s foster-son
Wilfrid, a housecarl
A sheepman, one of the Berkshire levies who fought at Hastings
Owen, a Welsh archer who fought at Hastings
Of the English, only three have their presence at Hastings vouched for by the documents – Harold and his two brothers – all of whom died there. The remaining
characters are fictitious, but, I hope, not unlikely.
The Name of the Battle
It is a typical irony that the best-known battle in English history, and arguably the most decisive, did not take place at Hastings; it was fought on the ridge of a hill
about seven miles away, on the site now partly obscured by the modern town of Battle.
Some Normans later called it the Battle of Hastings, because the town of Battle obviously did not exist then. The name ‘Senlac’ appears in a Norman chronicle of the twelfth century,
and was adopted by the great Victorian expert, E. A. Freeman. It is suggested that the name may be a corruption of the sandy, marshy area at the foot of the hill – ‘Sandlake’;
even that the ‘Sen-’ of Senlac comes from the French ‘
sang
’ – ‘blood’.
The Saxon name for the area was ‘Caldbec’ – ‘the cold stream’.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle
says that the battle was fought ‘at the grey apple
tree’ –
‘aet haran apuldran’
.
I have tried to incorporate most of these ideas into the narrative, hoping that they add to the interest without blurring the clarity of the picture. In general terms, I have made the English
refer to it as Caldbec Hill, and the Normans as Senlac.
7 October
A buzzard lifted itself from the grey branches of a dying apple tree and drifted away westwards from the scrubby hill. It soared and circled above spreading woods, scanty
field-clumps, and shallow, south-flowing streams, scorning the element below, shunning the many beings who had so suddenly made it difficult to keep to regular habits.