1066 Turned Upside Down Read online

  He strode further into the room, bowed to the queen, but addressed his mother. ‘We discovered the cook leaving via the herb garden gate. His attempt on my brother’s life was deliberate but we cannot prove it. He claims he knew nothing about almonds.’ Leofwine looked accusingly at the half-Norman bishop who shook his head in innocence. ‘He knew nothing, yet the abbey knows of the king’s abhorrence of them. You know of this fact.’ Leofwine smiled maliciously. ‘No matter. Your traitorous cook is safely secured in a monk’s cell.’

  Bishop Erwald seemed unruffled. ‘He will be returned to Italy in disgrace. He will face justice in Rome.’ He gave a cursory bow and swept from the chamber.

  ‘No, he will not escape that way,’ Leofwine said, as with his mantle flowing behind him he hurried after the bishop. ‘He will be boiled alive in a sauce of his choosing and you, my lord Bishop, will never be trusted again.’ Leofwine’s raging continued until the three women heard the outer door slam with a heavy thud.

  ‘There will be no proof of guilt, or of the bishop’s involvement in all this,’ Gytha said, ‘but, I vow, if Erwald has turned to support Normandy – and has sanctioned attempted murder, he will pay. There are ways to deal with treacherous monks.’

  Aldgyth raised her eyebrows and looked over at Thea. When she smiled, Thea found herself returning the smile. Grandmother Gytha could be trusted to guard her son’s interests and Bishop Erwald would not escape her wrath. Yet, whilst close to death, her father had whispered comforting words to her and she knew that in his heart he still loved her mother.

  Excusing herself, she wandered from the stuffy, foul-smelling chamber into the abbey cloisters in search of sweeter air. Although her beloved father was safely delivered from a terrible fate, what would happen if he died? Would the Witan ever accept her brother as father’s successor?

  The night sky was lit up with stars. A group of monks stood, staring up at a bright new star that had appeared as if summoned by a sorcerer. Some were praying, others were pointing as they clutched each other’s robes. Through the gaps in the pillars, Thea watched some of her father’s attendants also gathering – was that Earl Waltheof amongst them? She shook her head, no, her thoughts were no longer for him. Rather, they had settled firmly upon the importance of her father’s survival and his kingdom. She looked into the sky to the enormous star with a dragon-like tail hovering above the abbey church.

  Uncle Leofwine stepped beside her. ‘They say such a long-tailed star indicates great change in a kingdom. Let us hope it means that your father is to be promised a long and peaceful reign.’

  ‘Amen,’ Thea said softly. ‘May God protect all of us – my father, his queen and our people from the evil that lies across the Narrow Sea.’

  ‘And from the treachery of Norman-loving bishops,’ Leofwine said with not a little hint of cynicism.

  Author’s Note

  This story takes place in April 1066 after Harold has set aside his common law wife of nearly two decades who had six living children with him by 1066, two girls and four boys. How did his elder daughter feel when her father married a Northern noblewoman to gain support from her brothers, the Northern earls?

  I wondered what might have happened had Harold died before the Norman Conquest in October. It also seems obvious that the Normans had sympathisers and spies in England prior to the Conquest – just as Harold had spies in Normandy.

  The Comet (now called Halley’s Comet) is depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry, which doesn’t rank as a scientific paper, but we know a lot about the ‘star’ from astronomers in the Far East. For the Chinese, the sky was the mirror of the Earth, so any danger to the Emperor would be revealed in the heavens. Their records state: ‘In the third year of Ch’ih Ping, in the third month, on the day Ki Wei [2 April 1066], a broom star whose tail was about seven cubits appeared in the east sky in Pisces in the morning.’ After passing the Sun: ‘On the Koei Wei [26 April] the broom star appeared with the vapour like a pint of flour... After 67 days the star and the vapour all disappeared.’

  The Anglo Saxon Chronicle states: ‘At that time, throughout all England, a portent such as men had never seen before was seen in the heavens… It first appeared on the eve of the festival of Letania Maior, that is on 24 April, and shone every night for a week.’ This introduces an interesting debate. The comet would have appeared, its tail streaming one way, vanished as it passed the sun, then reappeared, its tail spreading in the opposite direction.

  Why has the ASC only mentioned it the once, as it left our Solar System, not when it first appeared? There is probably a very simple answer for early April …

  The English weather!

  Carol McGrath

  www.carolcmcgrath.co.uk

  Discussion suggestions:

  What must it have been like to fall ill in the 11th century – or at any time before the introduction and understanding of modern medicine?

  What was childhood like in the past? Did girls, and boys, have a chance to play? What sort of games or toys would they have enjoyed?

  MAY / JUNE

  1066

  For the ordinary people across England, summer 1066 must have unrolled as usual, but for those in charge things were starting to escalate – especially in the seas around her southern and eastern coasts.

  Tostig Godwinson harried the English coastline with a small fleet of ships launched from his father-in-law’s country of Flanders, sailing via the Isle of Wight up the southern coast before being seen off by Earls Edwin and Morcar and fleeing to Scotland to await his Viking ally.

  It was enough, though, for King Harold to call out the ‘fyrd’ – the general army raised from service owed to the crown by a certain number of men in every town and village across the country. They were stationed on the south coast as clearly it was felt that the threat from Normandy was, if not greater than Norway, at least more immediate.

  They were in for a long wait.

  IF YOU CHANGED ONE THING

  RICHARD DEE

  What if someone, one day in the future invented a time machine and was able to go back in time? That person would need to be very careful because just one, small, thing could alter the history of big things…

  I liked to ask my senior class a question on a Friday, it was the end of the week and their concentration on work was fading with the prospect of two days off. History had to be made interesting, at least I had always thought so and I tried to make Fridays a bit different. We had been going through important events and had been discussing how small changes might have had big effects. The trivial things that would change everything, a lame horse, a shower of rain, someone who had lived or died differently.

  They were a lively group and we ranged through the ages asking what if? There was the usual frustration in the lack of good evidence for a lot of history and someone remarked that history would be so much better if we had a time machine and we could just go and have a look for ourselves. All the usual things, we could see if Jesus was real, maybe stop the slaughter of the First World War, or find out what really happened to the dinosaurs were the favourites.

  These were all good ideas but not my personal choice; I wanted to see if it was true about the Battle of Hastings. After all, in six months it would be the millennium of the event and it was in the public eye, the last time in our history that foreign troops had been on our soil in any numbers. A few had made it into Wales in 1797 but as far as I was concerned that didn’t count. And the outcome at Hastings, at least according to what we knew, rested on a sequence of small events and a trick. This particular Friday I raised the subject, handing out printed sheets with the historical facts as we knew them.

  We discussed the accounts, William of Poitiers, William of Malmesbury and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Each gave differing stories and we debated them. There was so much conflicting information that it was hard to summarise the events that really mattered. In the end, we agreed that th
e disbanding of the army on the south coast was the first step.

  ‘OK prof,’ said Martin, the most opinionated of the group, ‘This looks like another job for your theoretical time machine.’ I nodded my agreement. Martin continued, ‘If you could go back, what would you do?’

  ‘Any ideas?’ I threw the debate open to the class.

  ‘You could leave the standing army on the coast?’ and, ‘Split your force and send some north to Stamford?’ were a couple of the more sensible suggestions along with, ‘Send an expedition to France and destroy the ships.’

  ‘Not bad,’ I said, ‘but let’s think back to the comet, Harold took it as a bad omen, maybe you could convince him it was a good one.’

  ‘How?’ asked one of the girls, I decided to throw my curve ball into the debate.

  ‘I’d go to Winchester,’ I said, ‘to Harold’s court; before the invasion, I’d warn Harold of the danger from William and from the Scandinavians.’

  ‘Why?’ said Lydia, ‘surely that would change everything. If the army stays then they would not go to Stamford Bridge, maybe the Norse invasion succeeds and who knows what happens, we would be a different country, we might not even exist.’

  There was laughter from the group. Some of them suggested that they could think of a few teachers who wouldn’t be missed, I was pleased that my name wasn’t among them.

  ‘And this is the problem,’ I said. ‘If you change one thing then it changes everything.’

  ‘But what about the weight of events?’ asked Laura, ‘surely one little thing might change a few details but the effect would be local, there must be a collective inertia to major upheaval.’

  ‘You’re right, Prof,’ said Bryan, ‘you must be careful not to change anything.’ He stopped talking as the class realised what he had said and turned to look at him.

  Bryan, one of the quiet ones, there’s always one at the back, the girls ignored him, he was safe and therefore boring, they hung out with the risky lads, the loud and the brash attracted them but I could see that Bryan could change the world. He was a brilliant student and his work was insightful and well researched. A little over dramatic occasionally and sometimes he wrote as if he was remembering instead of describing, but I always thought that it was just his way of expressing himself.

  ‘Sounds like you’re an expert Bryan,’ said Greg, the class loudmouth, and Bryan coloured and slouched lower in his seat. ‘I meant that you would have to be careful,’ he muttered but by then everyone else was shouting about butterfly effects and the movie, how hot Ashton Kutcher had been and suddenly we were on to killing your grandfather.

  ‘Quiet,’ I shouted as it started to get out of hand. ‘Whatever Bryan said we all know what he means. Logically we can’t travel in time because of the paradoxes that time travel creates. No matter how we tried we would rewrite history, even killing an insect or saying hello to a man in the street might have consequences we couldn’t predict. We can theorise about how much things would change but we don’t really know. For the sake of this discussion let’s pretend. I said I’d warn Harold, how could I do it?’

  ‘Dress it up as prophecy, maybe as a monk travelling from the east who has had a vision.’ Helen, one of the girls and Greg’s number one fan, spoke up.

  ‘It would be too risky to tell him,’ I countered, ‘you might be thought of as a sorcerer, Harold could have you killed.’

  ‘They were a superstitious lot back then, it might be better to arrive on the battlefield and warn him there.’ This suggestion was from David, Greg’s foil.

  Jayne was not so sure, ‘Of course, the trouble is that if you managed to warn him, and save him, what would happen to your time? Would you even be able to come back if the conditions that let you build the time machine never existed?’

  Now we were getting into the paradox situation again. Everyone started shouting, drowned out by Greg, dripping with sarcasm,

  ‘Well Prof, I guess we’ll never know, cos no one’s ever built one.’

  The bell sounded for the end of the day and before the scramble to leave I shouted, ‘For Monday; I want all of you to read the notes, think of a single moment in the event. Tell me about how it affects the whole story and how if it changed it would change the whole outcome, tell me all about it.’

  ’Can I have a word?’ Bryan, as the class filed out into the corridor, hung back. His face was screwed up as if he was struggling with his conscience and I wondered why.

  ‘Can I tell you something in confidence?’ he said.

  I sat on a wooden desk, ‘Of course you can.’

  ‘I’m going to do it,’ he told me.

  ‘Do what, Bryan?’

  ‘Go back like you said and have a look, I can come back and tell you on Monday.’ He said it in a matter of fact tone as if it was a perfectly natural thing to do.

  ‘But Bryan, that would mean…’

  He nodded, ‘That’s right Prof.’

  ‘You mean there is a real time machine and you’ve used it?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, ‘a simple one, it’s my father’s invention really, he works for the government as you know, well they’ve been developing one and they’ve got it working. It’s supposed to be a secret but I know where it is. On Sundays I can get into where they keep it. I’ve done it several times and not been noticed.’

  I was staggered. I knew that Bryan’s father was a scientist but it all sounded a bit too improbable. I decided to play along.

  ‘So where have you been?’

  ‘All the places you’ve talked about on Fridays, I’ve seen them all.’

  ‘Have you any proof?’ He was different now, animated and enthusiastic, an expert sharing his knowledge.

  ‘Well, you can’t take anything in case you drop it. Imagine if archaeologists found a phone that was hundreds of years old. You wear the control on your wrist like a watch. You only stop for a few minutes and it pulls you back automatically. The vital thing you mustn’t do is leave a trace or change anything so you have to be really careful.’

  It sounded to me like he had thought about telling me this, there were so many questions I wanted to ask but Bryan was still talking.

  ‘I try and keep in the distance, the machine isn’t that accurate anyway, so I try and arrive miles away from the action but at least that way I’m not noticed. All my clothes and everything have to be right as well, you can’t stand out. They’re a suspicious lot in the past, everyone’s a witch or everything is an omen. But I will go and I’ll tell you what I find.’

  There was more, he looked over my shoulder and wouldn’t meet my gaze. ‘What else is there Bryan?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he mumbled, ‘I have to go.’

  I stood between him and the door. ‘Bryan, I know there’s more, just tell me, I can help you.’

  He swallowed, wrestling with his conscience, ‘You won’t believe me, you can’t, nobody does.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ He wasn’t making any sense.

  ‘It sounds so stupid and there’s no proof, but I think I have changed something already. You know our house?’

  It was a grand one on the seafront, in a row all painted in pastel colours. Bryan’s was palest blue. ‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘it’s the blue one.’

  ‘No!’ it was an anguished cry, ‘when I went last time I remember our house was yellow. When I came back it was blue. I’m the only one who remembers.’ He pushed past me and ran down the rather revolting lime green corridor, his footsteps echoing on the tiles.

  I spent all weekend in a panic, had Bryan gone? Could he go? Perhaps he was messing me around, playing a trick on me? Maybe he was delusional. I felt tense, expecting to see everything change around me as it all went wrong. In the end everything was quiet, I spent the time marking work, had leisurely meals on my own, and a Sunday afternoon stroll along the cliff path and seafront. It was irrational of cours
e. Thinking logically about it, Bryan had said he had gone to lots of places and we were all still here, life was carrying on as normal as far as we could tell. The paint colour had to be a mistake, I saw it at least once a week and it had always been pink.

  Sunday night I couldn’t sleep, in the end I got up and paced, willing the hours to pass. And I got angry, angry with Bryan for leading me on, angry with myself for letting a student sucker me. I turned the conversation over and over in my head until finally at four a.m., I slept.

  I got up again at seven and prepared for another day. I had the history class after the first break and now felt that the joke was on me. Nothing had changed in the world. There were still wars; destruction and the same old political squabbles dominated the news. In a way it felt so comforting.

  The school building was the same red brick, the blue corridors and white plastic desks, just like they always had been.

  Bryan was first in after the whistle. ‘I’ve been,’ he said. He was subdued, his face lined with worry.

  ‘What happened, why do you look so frightened? You changed nothing, look we’re all still here, everything is normal.’

  His face was a terrible sight, ‘You don’t remember do you?’ he asked.

  ‘Don’t remember what? Bryan, you’ll have to explain.’

  He took a deep breath, ‘All right, I went back on Sunday morning, I used the machine and found myself in some woods. I could hear the sounds of a battle quite close, shouts and clanging. There was a whistling in the air, arrows I guess, and I crept closer for a better look. The grass was damp, it was a cold day.’

  ‘Go on.’ This was amazing, either the product of an overactive imagination, or a real experience.