FumblingMusings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fumblingmusings) wrote2023-08-17 04:37 pm
fumblingmusings) wrote2023-08-17 04:37 pm
Entry tags:
Despite that Bravery
In 1069, following a failed attempt by the Scottish King to restore the Anglo-Saxon royals to the throne of England, William the Conqueror pillaged the North as punishment for the uprising. With a third of England starving and the House of Wessex once again in exile, Scotland's King elects to marry the last English princess instead, ending any chance of a reprisal.
A young and still not quite united Scotland is tasked with handing over his little sister to this new Norman King. They talk on the route to York on what is to become of them now.
“Ali?”
“Aye?”
“Are they really going to marry?”
“Think so. Your old King promised, remember?”
“Did he? He didn’t tell me. Edward promised a lot of people a lot of things and look where that has led me… But will he be nice to her? Your King?”
“‘Course he will. And we get a Queen descended from Gods.”
“So they say. Margaret is my last princess. Cristina wants to join an abbey. Edgar will never be allowed to marry. Margaret - ”
“I know. We’ll look after her. I promise.”
“Malcolm better treat her well or I will be very angry.”
“I believe you.”
Despite there being a perfectly suitable mule for England to sit on for this journey south to York, she had instead elected to be carried on her brother’s back. She was nuzzled into his neck, voice muffled against the thick wool of his cloak. She clung tightly, but her eyes were drooping from exhaustion. The road was barely maintained. A foul smell of burning, of acid, of burning peat and manure, had seemingly followed the pair since they had crossed the border into Northumbria. They were still a day’s walk from York, and the smell had not yet abated.
Eva used to insist that Yorkshire was beautiful - full of heather and gorse and sweeping greenery. Alasdair knew she was right, he had seen it himself many times.
It was almost impressive, if Scotland did not have the weak after-effects straddling his back, noting how destructive this new King could be. Would others imitate such tactics?
They had met very few people on the journey south. Those that remained did not have the strength to trip and rob a pair of children on a long road to York.
Eva shifted against her brother’s back.
“Ali?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you have any food?”
“You still hungry?”
Her tiny head moved against his shoulder. As if by magic, her stomach gave off a terrible rumble.
Alasdair stopped in his walk, bending down at the knees so the eight year old could slide off. He himself was not much older in appearance, a thirteen year old at best. His little sister took his hand, reluctant to let go. She would have to eventually. It had been a deal struck in recent months. The marriage between Margaret and Malcolm was to be accepted by the Norman King. He just wanted to finally see the little nation that he was now King of. No longer just a Duke loyal to a French King, but a King too in his own right. He was owed her.
Scotland did not have the will to fight for her. None of the siblings did. Wales was splintered once more, having cut his first and only King’s head off. Ireland was a sea away, watching and accepting those that came her way, but otherwise taking no action. Only Scotland, with some feeble attempts at pillaging an already broken land, had made an attempt to restore the Anglo-Saxons to the throne. It was not enough, so Eva had stared at her brother, watching as his King agreed, and simply asked that, if she were to return to her people, that Alasdair walk her halfway, to York.
He had agreed. Those big green eyes were a mirror of mother, and mother could have made him promise anything, if he thought it would have made her proud. Not the case with this wee one, who had the appearance of a small drowned rat. Pitiful, a little dirty, shining eyes.
In comparison to her brother, who was tall, strong, and with a King who retook the throne from usurpers with such comparable ease. Malcolm had done what Edgar could not. And now Malcolm was taking England’s last princess, the others married off to Kyiv or Scandinavia, in his efforts to put Scotland firmly on the map of Europe. It was pragmatic and rather ruthless, but Alasdair could tell he meant well. A strong king was a good king, even if it meant sometimes things got a little bloody.
Looking around the wasteland however, bloody and slaughter seemed as far apart as chalk and cheese. Alasdair could not shake the feeling that he was handing his sister over to her doom, but it was not for him to fight. A threat of invasion from Norman knights was not something he could face alone. One person in exchange for his own safety was something the siblings had all learned to accept. Mama told them: their people come first. Always.
“They burned it all. Everything. Poured salt on the earth and we cannot grow anything anymore,” Eva whispered, clinging tightly to his hand and peering upwards as he rummaged through the bags of supplies the mule was carrying.
“You’ll still be hungry even after this,” he explained, ignoring her statements, pulling out dried pears. When she tried to snatch one, utterly ravenous, Alasdair held his arm up high, far out of reach. She cried out, hopping from foot to foot.
“Gremlin!” she complained, headbutting him repeatedly.
“You need to ask kindly.”
She pressed her head deep into his gut. “Oh! Alasdair, please may I have some food.”
“Ah, there we are,” he tossed the pear slices up in the air, and she caught them with a squeak, stuffing her face with them and chewing loudly. Her brother was right however, and her stomach continued to cramp. She moaned, forever hungry and forever unsatiated.
Growling in frustration, she went to look through the bags herself. Effortlessly, Alasdair simply picked her up and tossed her back a few steps. She cried out, then ran straight at Scotland, once again ramming her blonde head into his stomach. He puffed out a breath, then grappled with her to stop the tantrum.
“Listen, listen to me.”
She paused her attack, and Alasdair urged, “Look around, alright? Dinnae forget what they did. When we get to York and I leave, promise me. Promise me that you will spit in his eye.”
“That is easy for you to say, you have lost nothing in this mess.”
Eva stared at the muddy road. Her blue dress was ruined at its hem, splatters all the way up to her waist. William would be disappointed, when she would finally reach York, at what his nation was. A little rat.
(A little robin bird, Æthelflæd had called her)
“They say he is a giant. A giant bastard,” England changed the subject with a hiss.
“Did you see him at Hastings?”
“No. I saw Harold’s eye be pierced, from atop the hill. I hid in the trees. They tossed his body out to sea. His mother had asked for it so he could be buried, and they just threw him into the water. I never saw the bastard.”
The bastard. That was all he ever was. Not the English William or the French Guillaume or the Norman Willelm. Just the bastard.
Smirking, Scotland said, “I heard he beat his wife to make her agree to marry him.”
“Ali!” she cried out, snatching another piece of pear away as he held out his arm. “I know he is a monster, you need not remind me.”
“Naw, listen. A man like that will hurt even the ones he loves, you cannae trust him. Okay? So there is nae point in appeasing him. He’ll treat you like nothing regardless. So make not a single effort to even try to be good for him, alright?”
Eva paused, chewing around the pear, then threw her arms around Ali’s waist. He knelt down, picking her up and placing her on the mule. She refused to let go, keeping her iron grip around his neck.
“What if they,” she sobbed, “what if they make me something awful? And everyone says I’m not like you or Rhys anymore but I… I cannot abide the thought of being French.”
Alasdair laughed.
“Come on hen, it’s nae that bad.”
“Look around! Everyone starved! He did not just kill on the battlefield, he did not execute traitors, he burnt and poisoned the land and left my people to rot. There is no honour in this… Ali I haven’t been this frightened since Mama…”
“Dinnae…” he moaned, extricating himself from her grip.
“I don’t want to be alone.” Huge green eyes blinked at the rejection, fat wet tears falling down her cheeks.
Unsure of what to do, he had never been very good at comfort, that was Rhys’ job.
“You remember, how dogs and cats get when cornered? They’re frightened but they still fight back.”
“I’m not a dog,” she whimpered.
“Naw. Too ugly for that.”
Eva sniffed, unamused. Alasdair tugged on the mule’s reins, and the two set off once more. England continued crying to herself. Quietly, pitifully, she sobbed, and Alasdair fought the urge to turn the mule around and go back from where they came.
It would fix nothing. There was nothing that they could fix.
“You gotta learn to fight back Eva,” he declared, listening to the squelch of mud as they walked along. “That is the only way. Didn’t Alfred teach you that?”
Her cries quietened, and Alasdair heard, rather than saw, her nod. He dared to smile.
“So be sure to spit in his face.”
“…Promise,” she whispered.
*****
History Notes:
So, in 1070, King Malcolm of Scotland, after a couple of failed attempts to get the last Anglo-Saxon prince - Edgar - back on the throne of England following the Norman invasion, married Edgar’s sister Margaret. Malcolm’s father, you may be interested to know, was Duncan, i.e. the King that Macbeth axes in Shakespeare’s play. Indeed, Macbeth was King before Malcolm killed him and Macbeth's step son (conveniently missing from the play...). The English, prior to the invasion of the Normans, had helped put Malcolm and his family back on the throne during this time, so the relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and Scottish royal families was quite close. The Normans saw an end to that, when a couple of years later they invaded Scotland and got Malcolm to swear allegiance to Willian and expel Edgar. This oath is the basis for future invasions by English Kings like Edward I and II.
Margaret is one of the most important Queens in Scottish history. She was canonised as a saint, and several towns and sites are named after her. The royal house Margaret came from held a lot of weight in its name - the family had ties to Scandinavia, Kyiv, Hungary, France and the Holy Roman Empire - marrying her gave the Scottish Crown a lot of symbolic legitimacy. They were the real inheritors of Britain, not the Normans. Margaret named her sons after her male relatives (English names mind you - Edgar, Edward, Edmund etc.,) or biblical names (Alexander and David). Not a Gàidhlig name in sight. Everyone thought she was the bees knees.
Wales at this time had splintered into smaller kingdoms following the death of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. His incursions into England had resulted in his own men turning on him, cutting of his head and posting it to Edward the Confessor. When Edward died and the Normans arrived, they found themselves with a disunited Wales, and in the following decades the invasions into Wales began in earnest. Many of the fleeing Anglo-Saxon or Welsh lords went to Ireland - this would contribute to later invasions by the Normans of Ireland.
The Normans in the winter of 1069/70 burned the land of northern England following months of rebellions up and down the country. From the River Humber to the River Tees, the Harrying of the North resulted in three quarters of the population either starving to death or being forced to flee north to Scotland or south to the Midlands. There’s records of people selling family members into slavery in order to survive, and when the Domesday book was compiled nearly twenty years later to calculate the taxable worth of William the Conqueror’s new kingdom, up to two thirds of Yorkshire (England’s biggest county by far) was noted as still being wasteland. On the continent we know that within Germany they spoke of a great famine in England resulting in cannibalism, and in Bohemia there was talk of the Norman barbarism, and finally the Pope received flack for signing off on the invasion in the first place, so even for the time people thought it was ‘too much’. Back home a chronicler at Evesham Abbey in the Midlands wrote of refugees arriving after travelling hundreds of miles, only to die after eating too much too quickly, stating, “Every day five or six people, sometime more, perished miserably and were buried by the prior of this place.”
So. Grim. Also yes William did beat up his future wife and threaten her into marrying him, or at the very least yanked her by the hair into the mud then rode off on his horse like a dick. Apparently they were very happy together so. No comment.
A young and still not quite united Scotland is tasked with handing over his little sister to this new Norman King. They talk on the route to York on what is to become of them now.
“Ali?”
“Aye?”
“Are they really going to marry?”
“Think so. Your old King promised, remember?”
“Did he? He didn’t tell me. Edward promised a lot of people a lot of things and look where that has led me… But will he be nice to her? Your King?”
“‘Course he will. And we get a Queen descended from Gods.”
“So they say. Margaret is my last princess. Cristina wants to join an abbey. Edgar will never be allowed to marry. Margaret - ”
“I know. We’ll look after her. I promise.”
“Malcolm better treat her well or I will be very angry.”
“I believe you.”
Despite there being a perfectly suitable mule for England to sit on for this journey south to York, she had instead elected to be carried on her brother’s back. She was nuzzled into his neck, voice muffled against the thick wool of his cloak. She clung tightly, but her eyes were drooping from exhaustion. The road was barely maintained. A foul smell of burning, of acid, of burning peat and manure, had seemingly followed the pair since they had crossed the border into Northumbria. They were still a day’s walk from York, and the smell had not yet abated.
Eva used to insist that Yorkshire was beautiful - full of heather and gorse and sweeping greenery. Alasdair knew she was right, he had seen it himself many times.
It was almost impressive, if Scotland did not have the weak after-effects straddling his back, noting how destructive this new King could be. Would others imitate such tactics?
They had met very few people on the journey south. Those that remained did not have the strength to trip and rob a pair of children on a long road to York.
Eva shifted against her brother’s back.
“Ali?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you have any food?”
“You still hungry?”
Her tiny head moved against his shoulder. As if by magic, her stomach gave off a terrible rumble.
Alasdair stopped in his walk, bending down at the knees so the eight year old could slide off. He himself was not much older in appearance, a thirteen year old at best. His little sister took his hand, reluctant to let go. She would have to eventually. It had been a deal struck in recent months. The marriage between Margaret and Malcolm was to be accepted by the Norman King. He just wanted to finally see the little nation that he was now King of. No longer just a Duke loyal to a French King, but a King too in his own right. He was owed her.
Scotland did not have the will to fight for her. None of the siblings did. Wales was splintered once more, having cut his first and only King’s head off. Ireland was a sea away, watching and accepting those that came her way, but otherwise taking no action. Only Scotland, with some feeble attempts at pillaging an already broken land, had made an attempt to restore the Anglo-Saxons to the throne. It was not enough, so Eva had stared at her brother, watching as his King agreed, and simply asked that, if she were to return to her people, that Alasdair walk her halfway, to York.
He had agreed. Those big green eyes were a mirror of mother, and mother could have made him promise anything, if he thought it would have made her proud. Not the case with this wee one, who had the appearance of a small drowned rat. Pitiful, a little dirty, shining eyes.
In comparison to her brother, who was tall, strong, and with a King who retook the throne from usurpers with such comparable ease. Malcolm had done what Edgar could not. And now Malcolm was taking England’s last princess, the others married off to Kyiv or Scandinavia, in his efforts to put Scotland firmly on the map of Europe. It was pragmatic and rather ruthless, but Alasdair could tell he meant well. A strong king was a good king, even if it meant sometimes things got a little bloody.
Looking around the wasteland however, bloody and slaughter seemed as far apart as chalk and cheese. Alasdair could not shake the feeling that he was handing his sister over to her doom, but it was not for him to fight. A threat of invasion from Norman knights was not something he could face alone. One person in exchange for his own safety was something the siblings had all learned to accept. Mama told them: their people come first. Always.
“They burned it all. Everything. Poured salt on the earth and we cannot grow anything anymore,” Eva whispered, clinging tightly to his hand and peering upwards as he rummaged through the bags of supplies the mule was carrying.
“You’ll still be hungry even after this,” he explained, ignoring her statements, pulling out dried pears. When she tried to snatch one, utterly ravenous, Alasdair held his arm up high, far out of reach. She cried out, hopping from foot to foot.
“Gremlin!” she complained, headbutting him repeatedly.
“You need to ask kindly.”
She pressed her head deep into his gut. “Oh! Alasdair, please may I have some food.”
“Ah, there we are,” he tossed the pear slices up in the air, and she caught them with a squeak, stuffing her face with them and chewing loudly. Her brother was right however, and her stomach continued to cramp. She moaned, forever hungry and forever unsatiated.
Growling in frustration, she went to look through the bags herself. Effortlessly, Alasdair simply picked her up and tossed her back a few steps. She cried out, then ran straight at Scotland, once again ramming her blonde head into his stomach. He puffed out a breath, then grappled with her to stop the tantrum.
“Listen, listen to me.”
She paused her attack, and Alasdair urged, “Look around, alright? Dinnae forget what they did. When we get to York and I leave, promise me. Promise me that you will spit in his eye.”
“That is easy for you to say, you have lost nothing in this mess.”
Eva stared at the muddy road. Her blue dress was ruined at its hem, splatters all the way up to her waist. William would be disappointed, when she would finally reach York, at what his nation was. A little rat.
(A little robin bird, Æthelflæd had called her)
“They say he is a giant. A giant bastard,” England changed the subject with a hiss.
“Did you see him at Hastings?”
“No. I saw Harold’s eye be pierced, from atop the hill. I hid in the trees. They tossed his body out to sea. His mother had asked for it so he could be buried, and they just threw him into the water. I never saw the bastard.”
The bastard. That was all he ever was. Not the English William or the French Guillaume or the Norman Willelm. Just the bastard.
Smirking, Scotland said, “I heard he beat his wife to make her agree to marry him.”
“Ali!” she cried out, snatching another piece of pear away as he held out his arm. “I know he is a monster, you need not remind me.”
“Naw, listen. A man like that will hurt even the ones he loves, you cannae trust him. Okay? So there is nae point in appeasing him. He’ll treat you like nothing regardless. So make not a single effort to even try to be good for him, alright?”
Eva paused, chewing around the pear, then threw her arms around Ali’s waist. He knelt down, picking her up and placing her on the mule. She refused to let go, keeping her iron grip around his neck.
“What if they,” she sobbed, “what if they make me something awful? And everyone says I’m not like you or Rhys anymore but I… I cannot abide the thought of being French.”
Alasdair laughed.
“Come on hen, it’s nae that bad.”
“Look around! Everyone starved! He did not just kill on the battlefield, he did not execute traitors, he burnt and poisoned the land and left my people to rot. There is no honour in this… Ali I haven’t been this frightened since Mama…”
“Dinnae…” he moaned, extricating himself from her grip.
“I don’t want to be alone.” Huge green eyes blinked at the rejection, fat wet tears falling down her cheeks.
Unsure of what to do, he had never been very good at comfort, that was Rhys’ job.
“You remember, how dogs and cats get when cornered? They’re frightened but they still fight back.”
“I’m not a dog,” she whimpered.
“Naw. Too ugly for that.”
Eva sniffed, unamused. Alasdair tugged on the mule’s reins, and the two set off once more. England continued crying to herself. Quietly, pitifully, she sobbed, and Alasdair fought the urge to turn the mule around and go back from where they came.
It would fix nothing. There was nothing that they could fix.
“You gotta learn to fight back Eva,” he declared, listening to the squelch of mud as they walked along. “That is the only way. Didn’t Alfred teach you that?”
Her cries quietened, and Alasdair heard, rather than saw, her nod. He dared to smile.
“So be sure to spit in his face.”
“…Promise,” she whispered.
*****
History Notes:
So, in 1070, King Malcolm of Scotland, after a couple of failed attempts to get the last Anglo-Saxon prince - Edgar - back on the throne of England following the Norman invasion, married Edgar’s sister Margaret. Malcolm’s father, you may be interested to know, was Duncan, i.e. the King that Macbeth axes in Shakespeare’s play. Indeed, Macbeth was King before Malcolm killed him and Macbeth's step son (conveniently missing from the play...). The English, prior to the invasion of the Normans, had helped put Malcolm and his family back on the throne during this time, so the relationship between the Anglo-Saxons and Scottish royal families was quite close. The Normans saw an end to that, when a couple of years later they invaded Scotland and got Malcolm to swear allegiance to Willian and expel Edgar. This oath is the basis for future invasions by English Kings like Edward I and II.
Margaret is one of the most important Queens in Scottish history. She was canonised as a saint, and several towns and sites are named after her. The royal house Margaret came from held a lot of weight in its name - the family had ties to Scandinavia, Kyiv, Hungary, France and the Holy Roman Empire - marrying her gave the Scottish Crown a lot of symbolic legitimacy. They were the real inheritors of Britain, not the Normans. Margaret named her sons after her male relatives (English names mind you - Edgar, Edward, Edmund etc.,) or biblical names (Alexander and David). Not a Gàidhlig name in sight. Everyone thought she was the bees knees.
Wales at this time had splintered into smaller kingdoms following the death of Gruffydd ap Llywelyn. His incursions into England had resulted in his own men turning on him, cutting of his head and posting it to Edward the Confessor. When Edward died and the Normans arrived, they found themselves with a disunited Wales, and in the following decades the invasions into Wales began in earnest. Many of the fleeing Anglo-Saxon or Welsh lords went to Ireland - this would contribute to later invasions by the Normans of Ireland.
The Normans in the winter of 1069/70 burned the land of northern England following months of rebellions up and down the country. From the River Humber to the River Tees, the Harrying of the North resulted in three quarters of the population either starving to death or being forced to flee north to Scotland or south to the Midlands. There’s records of people selling family members into slavery in order to survive, and when the Domesday book was compiled nearly twenty years later to calculate the taxable worth of William the Conqueror’s new kingdom, up to two thirds of Yorkshire (England’s biggest county by far) was noted as still being wasteland. On the continent we know that within Germany they spoke of a great famine in England resulting in cannibalism, and in Bohemia there was talk of the Norman barbarism, and finally the Pope received flack for signing off on the invasion in the first place, so even for the time people thought it was ‘too much’. Back home a chronicler at Evesham Abbey in the Midlands wrote of refugees arriving after travelling hundreds of miles, only to die after eating too much too quickly, stating, “Every day five or six people, sometime more, perished miserably and were buried by the prior of this place.”
So. Grim. Also yes William did beat up his future wife and threaten her into marrying him, or at the very least yanked her by the hair into the mud then rode off on his horse like a dick. Apparently they were very happy together so. No comment.