1066 - Andrew Bridgeford [57]
This scene of feasting, observed in these threads, still holds many beguiling secrets. Odo's tonsured head rises above all the others in a carefully constructed composition. There is bread and fish and other food arranged about the table, which the diners eat with hands and knives (forks were not used in the eleventh century). Duke William is unnamed, but he may be the figure upstaged by Odo, seated on Odo's right and looking up at him. Another figure, an enigmatic, older man with a long, straggling beard, sits to the left of the 'duke' and, with his back turned, he rather rudely stretches across him in order to take a piece of bread from the table. At the same time he sips from a cup of wine. A further figure has engaged the older man in the eye and points to a loaf of round flatbread lying in front. It is as if reference is discreetly being made to the bread and wine of the Eucharist; but if so, it is an allusion that is completely ignored by Odo and the duke. At the other end of the table a man is about to eat a fish eye; mysteriously, he points to the vacant eye-socket in the fish. A servant at the front, with his knees bent, offers a bowl of water so that the party can clean their greasy hands and he also has a towel laid over his arm. There are parallels in the iconography of this scene with early medieval manuscript representations of the Last Supper, where the servant figure would be Judas and the man at the centre Jesus. It seems that at one level Bishop Odo is being flattered, not only by upstaging the duke, but more presumptuously by taking on the role of Jesus at this carefully embroidered repast. More discreetly, however, the reference to the bread and wine of the Christian Eucharist passes unnoticed and is ignored by him.
After the meal, Bishop Odo, Duke William and the Duke's other half-brother, Count Robert of Mortain, hold a meeting to take stock of the initial landing and the preparations for the fight with Harold [scene 40]. All three are shown seated on a cushioned bench and are named in the inscription, as if in a family portrait on the eve of the great adventure: ODO EP[ISCOPU]S, WILLELM, ROTBERT. William, as would be expected, is taking counsel from amongst his leading feudal vassals, but the highlighting of his kinsmen Odo and Count Robert, and no others, is noteworthy and it is Bishop Odo who once more takes the limelight. He appears on this occasion to be advising caution and William is evidently listening to him. A commander, presumably on Odo's advice, now orders a fortification to be built at the port of Hastings. Workmen duly take up their tools; but a disagreement arises between two of them and they are now hitting each other about the head with shovels [scene 41]. Whatever disorder occurred, it must have been quickly quelled for the workmen are now busy throwing up an earthen mound on which a makeshift timber castle is raised. The work passes without further incident, except that a stone falls off someone's spade and hits another on the head;perhaps this was the cause of the dispute shown earlier, or a continuation of it. The prefabricated wood necessary to build the castle would have been already prepared in Normandy and transported across the Channel. What is quite possibly the mound of earth that these querulous workmen built may still be seen, at the top of Hastings cliff, where pottery fragments have been found dating from the time of the Norman Conquest.10
William is next illustrated receiving some unspecified news of Harold [scene 42]. King Harold himself received the dire news of William's landing whilst still in