The coast receded slowly, as if it were swallowed by the sea. The white sandy beach, smooth, bordered by dunes crowned with dark green shrubs, which in the salty wind fluttered, gave way to the turbulent waves.
Edward remembered the day he arrived on the shores of Normandy, twenty-five years earlier. That country was disappearing over the line rippled sea had been his home for two thirds of his life ... A house is not his, he had always lived as a guest of the relatives of his mother after his brother was gone.
thought back to the day he arrived, twelve years old, his father Ethelred, his mother, Emma, his brother Alfred. They fled from one country to invade, in which there was no room for the royal family, unless they put in for better times. His brother Edmund had been in England, instead, to fight. They had only a few years apart, Edmund and Edward, but they were enough to make the first man and second a child.
Edmund loved to fight, he loved to be king. On the death of the Danish king Sweyn, who had invaded their country, Ethelred and Emma had returned and had taken their place on the throne of England, but the young princes had been in Normandy, safe, protected as small treasures.
Less than a year later, he died Ethelred and Edmund had reigned for a few months a kingdom tormented, struggling day after day against the Danish King Canute, until, exhausted, sick or poisoned maybe even Edmund was dead.
The news had come confused, too many events that occurred one after another. Three kings had succeeded in one year and the last was a Dane, one of the invaders for decades Ethelred tried to drive off the coast of his country, without success. For many years he had paid taxes on those marauders, until those people tired of the gold and had demanded a whole kingdom.
over that stretch of sea that separates England from Normandy, Edward had heard it all. He had mourned the death of his father, the flight that his wife Edmund had had to deal with the two infant children, to some obscure kingdom in the south east of the continent. He felt great anger when he heard that his mother had become the wife of Canute, making it legal, in a sense, the position of the foreigner on the throne.
time was spent in a hurry, Edward was a boy became a man and his sadness, for events over which she felt she had no power, made him want to enter the Church, leaving everything to his brother Alfred, forgetting the 'England, that distant country, now unknown, who had first cast and then had taken his entire family.
But he had allowed to follow his vocation.
His relatives who were waiting for the moment when he might return to England by King, and Edward could not help but understand that I also wanted to strengthen their position. And they did not think that was what he wanted.
His life was spent alone, surrounded by friends who tried to bring him to Norman hunts, parties and banquets, but they could not fully understand the heart of a man who looked at everything with a certain detachment. Edward seemed to wait for his destiny might be fulfilled, although he did not want it to be just that, even if it did not approve of the job that he had been given, the position he had inherited.
was thirty years old when killed his cousin, his mother's nephew, Robert, and King Canute.
The post of Duke of Normandy, in the absence of other heirs, he touched the bastard son of Robert, a boy of seven-year-old William, to whom Edward had never known existed. And suddenly he found himself forced to swear fealty to him, kneeling before him and kissing his sword, knowing that that child would depend on its future.
the throne of England, however, was given by the council of nobles and prelates, the sons of Canute, Harold and Hartacnut, brother of Edward. Hartacnut was only sixteen and was in Denmark, so it was Harold, a boy of twenty, sitting on the throne. No one came to call Edward and Alfred.
Perhaps distance had created a rift is too deep, it was not possible to heal for either party.
Some months passed, during which Edward retired to a monastery. She felt so many mixed feelings in his heart. The desire to return to the land that would govern in the name of God, for which so much he could do. A kingdom established, folded so many misfortunes, which he could bring light ... At the same time he felt the need to close almost life itself, to be alone with God, to forget everything that was out, all that was forced to face without feeling ready.
was at that time that his brother left for England.
When he heard, Edward rode to the pier, on a day of heavy rain, with just two friends in tow, who had warned. They reached the coast
muddy and cold, while the rain poured from the clouds low and black. The waves attacked the pier, covering water, and for a time, Edward found himself hoping that the time had prevented the ship from ... But it was not happened. The ship had set sail a few hours earlier, now disappeared over the horizon, perhaps in sight of England.
Edward dismounted, and only Robert mighty arm held him by the approach too much to the fury of the waves. The rain hid her tears, but the trembling of her shoulders hunched openly showed his sorrow. The knowledge that he would never see his brother.
England, with its wars and its intrigues, had taken him well.
He dropped to the ground and just felt that Guillaume covered him with his coat and was back riding. That night they slept in an inn on the road and all the time Edward had nightmares in which Alfred was murdered in horrible ways.
He could not explain the reason for his confidence, but when the news came, a couple of months later, the actual death of Alfred Saxons invited by one of the accounts and then imprisoned in treason, then blinded and mutilated and left to bleed to death, Edward felt that part of his heart had died with him.
There were wars in Normandy, at the time, because of the barons who refused to recognize the power of little William. Edward felt something every now and then, from his residence in the country, his gilded cage, as he called it with a mixture of sadness and sarcasm.
Despite the French king, Henry I, had accepted the boy as the successor of Duke Robert, others did not want to do. Edward prayed for William, aware that the child was all that left, his only family in Normandy. He hoped to grow, it became an able man, a good man ... and meanwhile, wondered what would have happened if he had been killed. The Normans were sold to Danish kings Edward?
In one way or another, for God's help or the power of man, William was able to grow and the time came when he prepared to become a knight, and himself taking the reins of his duchy .
Edward had had the opportunity to know him enough, a fifteen-not very high, from a rough voice, the way a bit 'too much small change for someone who, like Edward, he was accustomed to the silence of the cathedral, but was raised for war, and No wonder. He was intelligent and mentally ready, already capable, despite his youth, to understand a person with a simple glance.
When it was made a knight, Edward, Prince of England, offered him the gift of a cross of gold, set with precious stones. And he said that one day he would know more worthily repay all that the family of William had always done for him. That summer
two ships arrived in Normandy Saxon, with noble ambassadors. They came to bear the news that Harthacnut had died at only twenty-four years, Harold and his brother before him. And they were also looking for the new king, Edward, to return to England The lineage of Alfred the Great.
Saying goodbye to William, Edward promised him that he would not forget him and that the illegitimate child who had been able to become a duke, would one day become king.
The sea raised high waves meet the ship, the bow by the slender neck of a swan cut through the water with the decision, driven by the wind that fills the large triangular sail.
Edward could not take his eyes from the frothy wake of the ship being left behind, still a track that seemed to tie him to Normandy, but that was quickly vanishing.
His friends Norman, who would accompany him on his return in an unknown country, surrounded him, smiling and talking lightly than the start, but Edward felt a profound sadness before the uncertainty of the future that awaited him. He saw around him, beyond the small group of Norman, faces many strangers, people who knew him and that he did not know itself. Customs that he did not remember, as the native language, which had almost lost control.
He was afraid and his faith in God was not enough to comfort him.
"E 'disappearance is now the Norman coast," said a voice behind him.
Turning, he recognized the Edward Earl Godwin, one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in England, came personally to bring the king home.
Godwin was older than Edward, but looked younger, perhaps because of his strong constitution, the red color of his face, his booming voice. He seemed to radiate an energy entirely foreign to Edward, who did not fail, however, to appreciate that Danish Saxon race, which seemed so eager to be estimated by the new king.
Edward smiled, savoring the feeling of the salty wind in his beard have grayed with age.
"Yes," he said, "and my heart is sad"
Godwin's eyes had a glow. Perhaps it was only the light of the sun struck them at the time, but Edward would remember that look, in the years to come. He would come to mind, not long after, when he discovered that Godwin was right to order to kill his brother Alfred.
At that time, however, seemed to him only beautiful and proud. Eyes that told the story of a people to whom the same belonged to Edward, but he had never known.
"My king," Godwin said, "It is sad that you feel in your heart, but happiness. Sometimes it also provides us with tears. Now, stop looking back at what you have left, and look forward to what awaits you! "
With a sweeping gesture of his arm, pointed to Edward the bow, the high slender neck of the dragon, which ranged waves and, in the distance, barely visible, the gray line the coast of England.
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