And the Rest Is History(66)

Nope. I pulled out a map of the battleground.

‘Right. Mr Bashford, Miss Sykes and Mr Evans will be with me in Number Eight. I looked over at Dieter who gave me a confident thumbs up.

‘Mr Clerk, Miss North, Mr Atherton and Mr Keller will be in Number Six…’

Again, I looked at Dieter, whose thumb was slightly less confident this time.

‘Number Eight will be behind Harold’s lines. We’ll be a good way back with the Andredsweald Forest to protect our rear.

‘By the way, you will have noticed that Mrs Enderby is not present today. Hastings is a long and bloody struggle, people. The Saxon army will be almost obliterated. Even the Norman losses are not much less. This is a battle for a kingdom. To the death. Dr Bairstow has forbidden us to leave the pods, so no costumes will be required.’

‘Why do we need security then?’ enquired Atherton.

‘Insurance,’ said Evans with a grin, and whether they would be there to keep invaders out or us in was anybody’s guess, and Evans certainly wasn’t saying.

I was pleased with the way this briefing was going. We’d all suffered a huge personal loss – our hangar was wrecked, our pods destroyed or damaged, but we were still functioning.

‘The other pod, Number Six, will be situated just north of the Hastings Road.’ I pointed to the map. ‘You’ll be to the east of William’s army, again on a slight rise. You should have an excellent view.

‘Inside your mission folders you will find details of the composition of both armies, and a map of the battlefield and the surrounding area. Each team will focus on their own particular protagonists, while Mr Atherton will give us an overview of the whole battle. It’s going to be a long day, people, so team leaders make sure both pods are well provisioned.

‘Any questions?

There were none.

‘Right, we meet in Hawking at 09:30 Monday morning. Thank you, everyone.’



We arrived an hour before dawn on the 14th October. I called up Number Six. Clerk reported they were all present and correct. We wished each other good luck and closed the link.

Remembering the stuffiness at Stamford Bridge, we had the door open while we could, listening in the dark. In the distance we could hear the noises made by tens of thousands of men, their horses, the armourers, blacksmiths, cooks and so on. You can’t keep an army quiet. We could see their cooking fires dotting the landscape. An occasional voice was raised in song.

‘This time tomorrow it will all be over,’ I said.

‘It will all be gone,’ said Bashford. ‘A nation, a way of life, a culture, a language.’

‘Not so,’ said Atherton. ‘Yes, it all disappears for a while, but it’s the Normans who eventually vanish, don’t they? Swallowed up, you could say. And what emerges three hundred years from today, is England and the English.’

We stood quietly, radiating Englishness. Except for Sykes, of course, proud daughter of Caledonia, stern and wild.



The sun rose and we got cracking.

Admittedly, we were a long way off, but it did seem to us that it was William who made the effort to avoid the conflict.

We watched his envoys leave the Norman lines, unarmoured, cantering easily up the hill. A small force detached themselves from the Saxon ranks and met them half way. Harold’s personal banner, the Fighting Man, fluttered above them. His other emblem, the Red Dragon of Wessex, remained with his army.

If this was what we thought it was, then William was offering Harold all the land north of the Humber and promising to confirm him as Earl of Wessex. I suspected the Saxons would be informing the Normans that Harold already ruled over all the land north of the Humber, and was not only already Earl of Wessex, but King of England to boot.

The Normans would go on to remind them of Harold’s oath – his very public oath – to support William’s claim to the throne. They would go on to advise Harold that he was forsworn, a perjurer and that the Pope, Alexander II, had excommunicated him from the church.

This last was a big thing. The pronouncements of a pope a thousand miles away might seem unimportant to us today, but in this time, to be excommunicated was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Worse even than death. Because if you died then your soul went unshriven and you couldn’t get into heaven.

Harold would remind them the oath was extracted by trickery and therefore not valid. Neither side would budge from their points of view and the parley would fail.

The battle was about to begin.





We weren’t sure what to expect. All the primary sources contradict each other. We knew the battle started around nine in the morning and would last until sunset. We knew that it took place seven miles north of Hastings. And we knew that William won. Apart from that…

We were crouched at the console, cameras rolling already so we could identify which banner belonged to whom on our return to St Mary’s. We had the sound turned up, all ready to go. The uneasy calm dragged on. Both sides were contemplating the other. Horses stamped and snorted. Occasionally, one would rear up with impatience, unsettling those on either side of him. Their riders would haul them back under control again and the silence would resume. The Saxons were motionless, their banners hanging limply in the heat. If William though he could tempt them down from their advantageous position, then he was very much mistaken.

And advantageous it was. His men might be exhausted from their recent forced marches to and from Stamford Bridge, but Harold had commanded them to dig a ditch and embankment. Atop the embankment the Saxons had piled breastworks – a combination of thickly packed brushwood and outward-facing stakes to deter the cavalry. They looked impregnable.