Battles produce corpses, multitudes of them. In a mass killing such as the Battle of Hastings, almost 1,000 years ago, hosts of living humans were transformed into corpses, bodies were strewn across mud and grass. The rituals of treating the dead 1,000 years ago are not entirely known to us, but certainly, if we have to, we can visualise shapeless body parts scattered over the fields.
Hacked-off legs and arms, a chunk of flesh torn from the loins, the cleaved-open skull of a soldier or disembodied guts above which dance a murder of crows with their dagger beaks. Some body parts might have been identified right after the massacre. For example, a half finger that might have belonged to King Harold, or an ear from one of Harold’s brothers.
All lifeless, bloody, smeared with the black soil of East Sussex. A layer of acidic earth enveloped those bones and those strips of skin, still slightly warm after being torn from their hosts. But soon these membranes, the soft and hard tissues, lost their integrity in the cold rain.
Rats would have run around in ecstasy feasting on the fragmented flesh. Cats, foxes, weasels, boars, squirrels, worms, birds. It must have taken some time for the birds to figure out how they should proceed with the human remains.
Were they aware that there was no need for them to fight for their prey, at least not for some weeks or months? These days the field of the battle is serene and seemingly untouched by ancient agonies. It slopes gently down from the old.