1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [50]
One moment the people are cheering the new king, the next their heads are tilted upwards at the night sky over Westminster, fingers pointing to the heavens in wonderment and awe [scene 29]. A strange celestial body, a glowing ball of fire with a long hairy tail, has appeared above the dark world. ISTI MIRANT STELLA[M] (These men wonder at the star). In the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (C and D), 'throughout all England, a sign, such as men never saw before, was seen in the heavens. Some men declared that it was the star comet, which some men call the "haired" star; and it appeared first on the eve of the Greater Litany, 24 April, and shone thus all week.' What they saw, in fact, was a comet and it was the same comet that was observed in 1682 by the astronomer Edmond Halley, and later named after him. Halley's Comet appears in a regular 76-year cycle, and it so happened that 1066 was one of the years when it was visible. It was last seen in 1986, but in 1066 it would have seemed much brighter to the eye, for on that occasion it passed between the sun and the earth rather than on the other side of the sun. The regular laws governing Halley's Comet were, of course, unknown in this prescientific age, and it is no surprise that people looked upon this strange fiery phenomenon in the night as a divinely ordained portent. It first appeared dimly above England in February, attained maximum brightness in April and was still visible well into May. It was observed elsewhere as well; chroniclers all over Europe reported its appearance and wondered what it might mean.16 In retrospect this became clear to the Normans. In words rhetorically addressed to Harold after his death, William of Poitiers notes coldly: 'The comet, terror of kings, which burned soon after your elevation, foretold your doom.'17
The hand of God has descended benevolently and blessed King Edward's church at Westminster. Now he has fired a warning shot across the heavens. This is the other side of God. This is God in the image of a truculent medieval monarch. His anger, already stirred by Stigand's presumptuous hold on the see of Canterbury, has now been truly roused by Harold's breach of oath. It would have been better for Harold to have chosen exile, imprisonment, slavery or even death in Normandy than to have made a sacred oath that he had no intention of fulfilling, for it now appeared, in retrospect, that in the eyes of God an oath made upon such holy old bones could never be broken, even if it had been made under duress. What else could explain the victory of the Normans in 1066? Harold had been crowned King of England in accordance with all the laws and customs of the land; he may have sat there enthroned, majestically, with all his regalia; but this was as nothing if he did not have the approval of his God.
Perhaps the underlying meaning of the Bayeux Tapestry, this mysterious and many-layered work of genius, is at last becoming clearer. It is not a monument of Norman triumph or celebration. Nor is it a work of Norman propaganda or justification. Rather, at the deepest level, it is beginning to appear as a work of explanation, seen from the tragic English perspective. The artist, working under the domination of the Normans, has succeeded brilliantly in deceiving generation after generation that he is telling the story from the Norman point of view. At another level, however, the Bayeux Tapestry is nothing less than the lost chronicle of the English. It is shot through