Crusade

Only through a stroke of immense good fortune had his life been saved. A Norman knight who had trained with him in Rouen had recognized him, even though he was lying on the ground and his face was covered in blood. The knight’s quick reactions in stemming the flow of blood from his many wounds had prevented Sweyn from bleeding to death.

Adela had also been badly injured. Standing between Malcolm and several Norman attackers, her shield arm had finally succumbed to a rain of blows that left her body exposed. She was then struck by a sword on the left shoulder that had been so badly damaged in Sicily, and her chest was smashed by a mace, a weapon much loved by Norman knights.

Her collarbone was now shattered into even smaller pieces than before and she had broken several ribs down the same side. She was in great pain, breathing was a constant agony, and movement of any kind was impossible. There was also the likelihood of internal bleeding — something which, it was presumed, would soon kill her.

Sadly, an even worse fate had befallen Malcolm and Edward. The hearthtroop defending them soon dwindled to nothing as the Normans closed in. Eventually, they were the last men standing and, although Malcolm pleaded for his young son to be spared, they were hacked to pieces like cornered animals by a throng of Norman knights. At the vanguard was Robert of Mowbray — a tenacious warrior and Lord of Bamburgh, who had been asked by Rufus to lay and spring the trap to snare Malcolm — and Arkil Morael, Steward of Bamburgh, a huge man with a bloody reputation for wielding his battle-axe to murderous effect.

Robert of Mowbray was intensely loyal to King Rufus, having been generously pardoned by the King for his part in the rebellion of 1088. As we suspected, Mowbray had been tracking Malcolm’s progress and had waited until his force was small enough to be vulnerable. He had picked a moment when Malcolm was at his most complacent — when the Scottish King thought he had his quarry holed up in Alnwick and he was the hunter but, in fact, he was the prey.

Yves de Vescy, Lord of Alnwick, had been told to retreat behind the walls of his fortress, to offer no resistance, but to post look-outs on all routes to the settlement. As soon as Malcolm’s force was spotted, the look-out was to ride to Bamburgh to alert Lord Mowbray. Mowbray had his men ready to ride at an hour’s notice so, when he heard of Malcolm’s approach, they were able to cover the fifteen miles from Bamburgh to Alnwick in under three hours.

Malcolm did not stand a chance.

Worse news arrived from Dunfermline within a few days. On hearing of the deaths of her husband and son, Margaret had taken to her bed and, within three days, was dead herself. How she died immediately became the subject of rumour. Cynics suggested she took her own life, while romantics believed she died of a broken heart. Either way, my beloved Margaret was dead and Scotland had lost one of its most revered queens. I had suffered some dark moments in my life but, lying motionless in great pain, with my friends badly injured, and knowing the sister with whom I had shared so much during our traumatic childhood was dead, was almost too much to bear.

I thought back to our earliest years together in the royal house of Hungary, in a strange land and among people with an even stranger language. My father, the Atheling Edward, son of Edmund Ironside, had been exiled as a boy with his twin brother, Edmund, in the time of Danish rule in England. After a long and complicated journey via the courts of Scandinavia and Russia with Emma, King Cnut’s wife, constantly plotting to have them killed, they had arrived in Budapest to find a peaceful refuge under the benign protection of Andrew, King of Hungary.

Sadly, my uncle Edmund died shortly afterwards, but my father prospered and married my mother, Agatha, a first cousin of Henry IV, King of Germany and Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. Unfortunately, although their union gave us the distinction of a lineage stretching back to both Alfred the Great and Charlemagne, that was the extent of their contribution to the lives of their children.

Margaret, the firstborn, was seven years older than me, and the shy and awkward Christina was my senior by five years. While my parents enjoyed life at court, my father hunting and my mother embroiled in the romances and intrigues of the nobility, we were left to the care of wet nurses, nannies and governesses, none of whom spoke English.

Margaret was our saviour, constantly telling us stories about an England she had never seen, describing it as an idyllic kingdom where, since the Cerdician King Edward had replaced the Danish kings in 1041 and remained childless, I would one day rule. She taught us the basics of English and insisted that when we were alone we only spoke English together. As a result, when we returned to England in 1057, I quickly became fluent.