Man by man the noble Saxons were hewn down as the Normans cut their way through them, no more able to drive them back than if they had been the trees of the forest. Gyrtha, the true-hearted and noble, fell under the sword of a Norman knight, Leofwyn lay near him in his blood, yet still Harold’s voice was heard cheering on his men, and still his standard streamed above their heads.
At sunset, that well-known voice was no longer heard, and the setting sun beheld Tunstan the White perform the crowning achievement of the day, uproot the standard banner of Normandy that the morning beams had seen committed to his charge. Not an earl or thane of Wessex was living; and heaps of slain lay thick on Heathfield hill, and the valley round a very lake of blood. Senlac, or Sanglac, was its old name, and sounded but too appropriate to the French ears of the Conqueror, as, in a moment of sorrow for the fearful loss of life he beheld, he vowed that here should stand an Abbey where prayer should be made for pardon for his sins and for the repose of the souls of the slaughtered. Darkness came on; but the Saxons, retreating under its cover, were still so undaunted that the Normans could hardly venture to move about the field except in considerable parties, and Eustace of Boulogne, while speaking to the Duke, was felled to the earth by a sudden blow.
In the morning, Gytha, the widow of Godwin, who had lost four children by the perjury and ambition of one of them, came to entreat permission to bury. Gyrtha and Leofwyn lay near together at the foot of the banner. Harold was sought in vain, till Edith of the Swan neck, a lady he had loved, was brought to help in the melancholy quest.
She declared a defaced and mangled corpse to be that of Harold, and it was carried, with those of the two brothers, to the Abbey of Waltham, where it was placed beneath a stone bearing the two sorrowful words, “Infelix Harold.”
Years passed on, and the people had long become accustomed to the Norman yoke, when there was much talk among them of a hermit, who dwelt in a cell not far from the town, in the utmost penitence and humility. He was seldom seen, his face was deeply scarred, and he had lost his left eye, and nothing was known of his name or history; but he was deeply revered for his sanctity, and when Henry Beauclerc once visited Chester, he sought a private interview with the mysterious penitent.
It is said, that when the hermit lay on his death-bed, he owned himself to be Harold, son of Godwin, once King of England for seven months. He had been borne from the bloody hill, between life and death, in the darkness of the evening, by the two faithful monks, Osgood and Ailric, and tended in secret till he recovered from his wounds.
Since that time he had been living in penitence and contrition, unknown to and apart from the world, and died at length, trusting that his forty years’ repentance might be accepted.
If this tale be true, what a warning might not he have bestowed on the young prince Henry, destined to run a like course of perjury and ambition, and to feel it turn back upon him in the dreariness of desolate old age, when “he never smiled again.” Had not the penitent Harold more peace at the last than the king Henry?
The same story is told of almost every king missed in a lost battle.
Arthur, borne away to die at Avalon, and believed to be among the fairies; Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, whose steed Orelio and horned helmet lay on the banks of the river, and whose name was found centuries after on a rude gravestone, near a hermitage; James IV., whom the Scots by turns hoped to see return from pilgrimage, and pitied as they looked at Lord Home’s border tower; the gallant Don Sebastian, the last of the glorious race of Portuguese Kings, never seen after his shout of “Let us die!” in the tumult of Alcaçer, yet long looked for by his loving people—of each in turn the belief has arisen among the subjects who clung to the hope of seeing the beloved prince, and dwelt on the doubt whether his corpse was identified. In the cases of Harold and Rodrigo—generous men tempted into fearful and ruinous crimes—one would hope the tale was true, and that the time for repentance was vouchsafed to them; nor are their stories entirely without authority.