Denise Webb is better known to crime fiction fans as Denise Danks, the author of the Georgina Powers series, and the first female winner of the Raymond Chandler Fulbright Award 1994/95 for most promising young crime/detective fiction writer.
The Legend of Herward is our esteemed columnist Mike Ripley’s second foray into historical fiction. The first was the excellent Boudica and The Lost Roman - a Game of Thrones narrative without the supernatural interventions but with a similar horror show of superb battle scenes and summary ‘justice’. His greatest contribution to my knowledge of these times was that Druids were not nice hippy bards but a bunch of bloodthirsty frauds.
So, to The Legend of Hereward, ‘a novel of Norman England 1063-1071 AD. As described by Thomas of Ely, of blessed memory, in 1107 AD. Suitably edited by Gerald of Wales in Lincoln 1205 AD’. The narrator, Giraldus - Gerald, his preferred name, despite being three quarters Norman - states from the outset that he is proudest of his quarter Welsh heritage.
It is a sign of the times.
King John has lost his lands in Normandy, defeated by the ‘insignificant’ Kingdom of France. Norman barons whose ancestors came over with William the Conqueror in 1066 now have to choose whether to be English or French. Giraldus the scribe is a renowned stylist, favourably reviewed, with books on history, philosophy and topography, selling in the ‘dozens’. He has been commissioned by Baldwin Wac, the new Lord of Bourne in Norfolk, for the humble talks of writing a family tree. Money talks in publishing, always.
Baldwin has a superior Norman Fitzgilbert lineage on his mother’s side. He rejects it despite his wealth having been ‘nurtured and protected by the noble Norman knights who brought order…to the Land’. Baldwin, spurred on by the ‘folly of youth and fashion’, has chosen Wac, a Saxon bloodline of much less significance.
Being a Ripley novel, jokes and sly reflections on the present abound. To please his generous sponsor, Giraldus must construct a heritage that chimes with modern ‘correctness politically and diplomatically’.
Unfortunately, Saxon lineages are hard to come by. They are mostly matrilineal. William the Conqueror dispatched English nobility when he killed the last English king. Fifty years on, street ballads sing of dispossessed, oppressed, Saxon nobility roaming the forests as hooded outlaws thanks to the Norman invaders. Giraldus is driven by necessity now to find a nobleman and an outlaw.
Thus, he stumbles on Hereward, Saxon and outlaw, with claims to the land of Bourne, and the last Saxon to successfully resist William of Normandy. Source material, however, is difficult to come by. Giraldus guiltily mines one - an almost contemporaneous narrative by Thomas of Ely.
However, Thomas presents a man who is not a hero, rather all too human with many flaws that are difficult to overlook.
He is not even an Anglo Saxon but an illiterate Dane with long golden ‘girlish’ hair, startling eyes, a vicious disposition and a chip on his shoulder. He claims the land of Bourne is his inheritance. It is not and he has been told over and over it is not.
He is Hereward the Twice-Outlawed (murder), Hard Man (mercenary and warrior), the Plunderer (everywhere and everything), the Berserker (see Viking Hard Man with added cruelty), the Firestarter (twisted), the Witch Killer, and, finally, the Always-Awake. Hereward The Stubborn would also be fitting.
Outlawed to Flanders for the first time, he makes himself very useful and trains the Count’s army. He is rewarded with a rich, clever wife, who is also described as a witch but is in fact a skilled herbalist. She coaches him in the art of love and soothes his headaches with her potions.
She also gives him a strategy to return to England and not only stake his claim but rescue her wealth which is at risk from the Normans.
Together with his sly friend Martin Lightfoot, a horse thief and local Fen man, Hereward raises an army of Fen folk farmers and fisherman Magnificent Seven-style. With guile and courage, they successfully defend the Isle of Ely from an onslaught of Norman military, who are trained and disciplined in modern warfare and have superior diabolical weapons.
(In many ways, Hereward’s attitude will not be unfamiliar to you. A modern equivalent might be one of Millwall FC’s Bushwackers - the most ferocious of football hooligans in the 70s and 80s whose motto was ‘No-one likes us and we don’t care’. Terrible, yes, but one day in London Borough Market during the terrorist knife attack of 2017, one stood up yelling ‘Fuck you, I’m Millwall’ and bravely charged at the knifemen entering a restaurant.)
To Giraldus’s despair, Hereward’s motivations are, in the main, pride, robbery and revenge, not liberation of the people. However, his skill with his firesteel sword, military strategy, personal courage and ability to instill loyalty in his followers is what cements the legend.
It is typical of the crime writer in Ripley, that there is a ticking bomb in this story. In the beginning, Hereward and Lightfoot rob a monk and disfigure him. It is something the victim does not forget.
Ripley’s crafty wit, descriptive prose and excellent dialogue drive this story. His observations of the time, and our time, are sharp. The detailed descriptions of the land, its people and 11th century mores are wonderful. The battle scenes are fantastic - and brutal. If you are an animal lover, look away.
Ever playful, Ripley also loves to bury movie references in the text e.g. ‘we’re going to need a bigger army’. Have fun finding them. Some are more obvious than others.
