by H A CULLEY
The king arrived with nearly two thousand warriors two days after Ragnar had left and was furious to discover that he was too late.
‘Why didn’t you attack the pirates?’ Eanred demanded as he dismounted.
Without waiting for a reply he threw the reins at a stable boy and stomped off into the ealdorman’s hall. Edmund stared after him in amazement, then followed him, beckoning Cynefrith to accompany him.
‘Well?’ Eanred said after he’d seated himself in the chair where Edmund normally sat.
‘Er, well for a start there was a thousand of them and I only had a fraction of their numbers. Even if I had sallied out against them I’d have risked them capturing this fortress; I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted that. In any case,’ he went on before the king could say anything in response, ‘we did attack them and managed to destroy a third of their fleet. Cynefrith discovered ...’
‘But you then let them take your own ships so burning a few of theirs was immaterial, wasn’t it?’ the king asked derisively.
Edmund pursed his lips and tried to contain his anger at the way that Eanred was treating him.
‘I had a choice; either sail my ships out of harm’s way or man this fortress. I didn’t have the men to do both.’
‘And where were the ealdormen of Lothian? Why didn’t they come to your aid?’
‘Why don’t you ask them that? Perhaps they were worried about their own shires? One of the problems in countering these Viking raids is they strike swiftly and then they are gone. Unless you create a fleet capable of fighting them at sea, I can’t see how we can ever bring them to battle on land.’
‘But your captain did, didn’t he? Except that he ran away.’
Cynefrith stiffened at the king’s scornful tone. He wasn’t about to let the snide remark pass without comment.
‘Thirty men against over ten times that number, Cyning? I would have been throwing my men’s lives away for nothing. Besides, my orders were to locate the enemy, not fight them.’
‘I’m disappointed in you, Edmund,’ Eanred continued, ignoring Cynefrith’s outburst. ‘You were given the whole of Islandshire specifically to prevent these raids and you’ve failed. Not only that, but you allowed the holy monastery on Lindisfarne to be pillaged and destroyed. I knew it was a mistake to pardon you after your brother tried to kill me. I should have gone with my first instinct and killed you too instead of listening to my son. The Witan has been summoned to meet here in three weeks’ time to try you for cowardice and incompetence.’
Before he could protest, four of the king’s gesith seized both him and Cynefrith and disarmed them.
‘You will be kept chained until your trial. My men are already disarming your warband and expelling them from Bebbanburg. This used to be a royal fortress and now I’m reclaiming it.’
Edmund couldn’t believe what was happening but, before he could say anything else, he was half dragged and half carried out of the hall and thrown into an empty hut with Cynefrith. Ten minutes later the blacksmith entered and, with a muttered apology, placed manacles on both their wrists and ankles. The man couldn’t look his ealdorman in the eye and sobbed as he completed the distasteful task.
That evening they were given some bread, cheese and an apple each by two of the king’s gesith and Laughlin brought them a wooden pail in which to piss and shit. Edmund hoped that when he came to empty it he would be able to tell him what was happening, but a scruffy stable boy smelling of horse dung came to change the buckets over the next morning and he refused to say anything.
They couldn’t hear much of what was going on outside, but the hut was near the main gate and so they were vaguely aware of comings and goings. On the afternoon of the second day they heard an argument between the guards on the gate and Kendric, the Ealdorman of Dùn Èideann.
‘Only members of the Witan are allowed inside, lord.’
‘Where I go my captain, servant and an adequate escort accompany me,’ Kendric retorted. ‘Now stand aside.’
‘I’m sorry, lord. It’s the king’s orders.’
‘Does Eanred seek to alienate all the Witan? He’s already a good way down that route by arresting Edmund on trumped up charges. Where is he? I want to speak to him.’
‘I’m here Kendric. I’d advise you to keep a rein on your tongue if you know what’s good for you.’
Inside the hut where Edmund was chained up the voice sounded nearby and so he assumed that the king had come out of the hall and was standing on the wall overlooking the gates.
‘If you challenge me you may find yourself joining your friend,’ he continued.
‘Which is exactly what I’m afraid of, Eanred. I don’t trust you and so no, I’m not going to accept your invitation to stay in this place. I’ll camp with my men and I think you’ll find most of your nobles will do the same. The Witan will meet in the thegn’s hall.’
‘You’ll meet where I say,’ Eanred yelled, losing his temper.
‘No, we’ll meet where the Witan decide. It’s your choice whether to attend or not.’
Edmund heard several horses ride away to the accompaniment of threats yelled after Kendric by the king.
Presumably Kendric did his best to dissuade his fellow ealdormen and the senior churchmen from joining the king inside Bebbanburg, but it seemed that several of them had ignored his warning as the sounds of arrivals continued for three more days.
‘What do you think the king will do with us?’
‘I’ve really got no idea. From what he said I suspect that I’ll no longer be an ealdorman but, other than that, I don’t want to speculate. I’m sorry that you are locked in here with me. None of this is your fault; the king should be praising you, not seeking to blame you. I’ll do my best to make sure that you’re not punished.’
‘This is so unfair,’ Cynefrith cried out in despair, hitting his hand on the beaten earth floor.
He knew that he sounded like a spoilt child but he was past caring.
‘Kings are not known for their fair dealings. I suspect that Eanred is being blamed for the depredations of the Vikings and so he seeks to shift the responsibility elsewhere.’
On the fourth day the two men were escorted out of the hut and taken into the king’s hall. Without the means of washing and still wearing the same clothes they looked unkempt and filthy.
‘Shame on you, Cyning, for keeping a noble in such degrading conditions. At least allow him and his captain to wash and change their clothes before they appear in front of the Witan. And for God’s sake get rid of those chains.’
Edmund noted with pleasure that the speaker was Rædwulf, the Ealdorman of Cumbria. His quick glance around the room revealed that none of the Lothian ealdormen nor Ecgred, Bishop of Lindisfarne, were present, but the rest of the Witan seemed to be. Did he only have one friend present?
‘Very well. Take them away and get them cleaned up. We have other matters to discuss in any case, such as the disloyalty of Kendric and Ecgred.’
-℣-
Agnar and Eirik sat on stolen horses looking down at the bay where they’d beached their ships. They’d arrived with seven longships but now there were at least twenty more on the yellow sands. Warriors were disembarking and gathering on the beach. Eirik looked towards where the ships boys and the guard they had left to watch the ships had been and he saw several bodies lying on the ground. The rest of them were sitting in a circle being guarded by a score of spearmen.
‘It seems that Eystein has outguessed us,’ Agnar muttered laconically to his brother after a few choice oaths.
‘Do we fight him? He’s got twice the number of men we have.’
‘What choice do we have? The only way off this island is by ship and he’s just captured ours.’
‘There are ships at Visby.’
The brothers had pillaged much of the island but they had left the fortified port of Visby alone. Now it seems they had little choice but either face him in the open or attack Visby and capture its ships in order to escape Ey
stein’s clutches. Visby was not an inviting prospect; the palisade was twenty feet high.
‘We could try negotiating, I suppose.’ Eirik suggested.
Agnar snorted in derision.
‘In order to negotiate you must have something the other person wants. I suspect that the only thing we have that Eystein wants are our heads. At least we hold the high ground,’ he went on. ‘And we have archers. Come on we had better explain the situation to our men.’
At first it looked as if the two brothers might stand a chance. The Swedes advanced stolidly up the hill on which Agnar and Eirik had decided to make their stand. It was difficult to advance uphill whilst keeping one’s body protected by your shield and scores of the attackers were wounded or killed during the advance. However, as there were nearly a thousand Swedes the loss of a few of them only served to anger the rest.
As the first men of the Swedish shield wall reached their enemy they tried to stab upwards with their spears but found that they were at a considerable disadvantage. The Norse held their shields low to protect their legs and stabbed downwards at the faces, necks and torsos of the Swedes.
When Eystein called off the first wave of the attack the Swedes left behind a pile of dead and wounded all along the Norse front rank. In contrast only about thirty of their opponents were casualties. Eystein might want to punish those who had had the effrontery to raid his lands, but he wasn’t prepared to lose hundreds of men doing so. At this rate of attrition he would lose half his warriors before nightfall.
His solution was to send three hundred of his best warriors around the hill to attack up the far side whilst he assaulted the front of the hill again. That way the Norsemen would be fighting on two fronts.
‘You command the rear, I’ll hold them off here,’ Agnar shouted to his brother as the two halves of the Swedish army advanced again.
This time the Swedes held their shields above their heads as they advanced and used their spears to stab at the exposed legs of the man standing next to their immediate adversary. This tactic was much more successful and the numbers of casualties were more evenly matched. The Swedes main problem was the wall of dead between them and their enemy.
Agnar thrust his spear into the neck of the man in front of him. The Swede collapsed but the spear point remained stuck in his neck. Agnar struggled to free it for a second or two before realising how vulnerable he was. He let go of the spear haft and went to pull out his sword, but it was too late. The Swede to the rear of the one he’d just killed took advantage of the moment and brought a battle axe down on Agnar’s shoulder, slicing into the chain mail and the leather jerkin below it before breaking his collar bone and three of his ribs. One of the broken ribs pierced Agnar’s right lung and he fell to his knees.
The warrior next to Agnar in the shield wall thrust his spear into the axeman’s chest, but it was too late. The wound that Agnar had suffered was fatal. Word spread that he had fallen and the heart went out of his men. Eirik continued to fight on with his warband but defeat was only a matter of time now. When he was struck on the helmet by a sword, knocking him unconscious, his men surrendered along with those of Agnar’s who had not already done so.
Eystein now found himself in something of a quandary. As king he’d been forced to defend the territory of one of his jarls or he’d have looked weak. However, he was loathe to antagonise Ragnar. Both men were powerful but he secretly thought that, if it came to war, Ragnar would probably win. Agnar was dead, and that couldn’t be helped, but Eirik was his prisoner and he didn’t know what to do with him.
If he released him he could expect Ragnar to be grateful, but his own jarls would consider it the action of a weak man. If he killed him in cold blood he would rise in their estimation, but would alienate Ragnar even further and that was the last thing he wanted. Agnar’s and Eirik’s men had fought hard and bravely until the last and his Swedes had suffered a lot of casualties, including the death of three of his jarls. He was in no position to fight Ragnar at the moment, despite the losses the man’s sons had suffered.
As rain began to spit down he surveyed the battlefield. His men were stripping the enemy corpses of anything of value and killing their wounded. His own dead were loaded onto carts ready for burning on pyres, but that would have to wait until the rain stopped. Their armour and weapons would go to their relatives and they would die fully clothed. In contrast, the enemy would be buried in a pit naked and then covered in lime before it was filled in; all except Agnar who would be cremated separately as befitted his rank.
Leaving his men to their grisly task, he took Eirik with him and returned to Uppsala.
-℣-
Edmund stared gloomily out over the calm sea as the knarr made its slow progress over the German Ocean. The Witan had been a farce. It turned out that Bishop Ecgred had suffered a heart attack and died in the night; thus he had escaped whatever punishment the king had in mind. No appointment had been made before Edmund left but he expected it to be Eanbehrt, the Prior of Hexham, who was a second cousin of King Eanred and who could be depended upon to support him.
Kenric had decided that it was better not to attend the Witan and had shut himself away in his fortress at Dùn Èideann, daring the king to cross into Lothian and try to evict him. Eanred was no warrior and he had listened to those who cautioned him that a war with Lothian would merely be an open invitation for the Picts, the Britons of Strathclyde and the Scots of Dalriada to invade. He had therefore decided to pardon Kenric.
Edmund wasn’t so fortunate. At least his fellow nobles had prevented Eanred imposing any greater punishment than exile on him and he was banished to the Continent. The king had confiscated everything of his at Bebbanburg, including his coffers of silver and gold, but he was allowed to take his warband and servants with him.
Fortuitously a knarr and its escorting birlinn had arrived at Bebbanburg from Paris in time for him to embark with his men and sail away, leaving his home in the possession of the king.
He was headed for Caracotinum before going on to his base in Paris. It had been nearly two years since he last saw Bastiaan and, more importantly, his sister Joscelin. He wondered how much she had changed over that time and his excitement at the thought of seeing her again mounted the nearer he got. He was therefore unprepared for the shock that awaited him when he docked.
Caracotinum was far busier that it had been the last time he’d been there. The port was positively bustling and the number of huts ashore seemed to have grown too. As soon as the ship’s boys had secured the mooring lines, a self-important official accompanied by three burly looking guards bustled up to the two ships and haughtily demanded to know their business.
Edmund was about to say that he was the Ealdorman of Bebbanburg come to visit the viscount when he realised that he was no longer entitled to call himself that.
‘I’m Edmund of Bebbanburg, the betrothed of Joscelin, the sister of Viscount Bastiaan.’
The man looked at him suspiciously before replying, somewhat impatiently.
‘I don’t take kindly to jokes, whoever you are.’
‘I’m not joking, now go and tell Bastiaan that I’m here,’ Edmund said, getting annoyed.
‘You do know that the Lady Joscelin was married to the Count of Amiens seven months ago.’
‘What? Married?’
Edmund was stunned. He knew that he should have returned, or at least send a messenger, but he’d been so busy since the killing of his brother that time had flown by and now he’d left it too late. Not only had he lost his home and his shire, now it seemed he’d lost his love as well. He sat down heavily on the deck with his head in his hands. After a few moments he was gently lifted up by Cynefrith and Laughlin and helped into his small cabin.
‘What’s going on,’ the official demanded, bewildered by the effect that his news had had.
‘If what you say is true,’ the captain told him, ‘I suspect that we won’t be staying, but you had better inform the viscount that Edmund of Bebbanburg is he
re.’
When the information that Edmund had arrived eventually reached Bastiaan he rushed down to the port, only to see the two Northumbrian ships heading back out to sea.
‘Do you know where Lord Edmund is going?’ he asked the port reeve.
‘The captain of the knarr told one of my men that he supposed that they’d now head for Paris.’
Bastiaan sighed. He had liked Edmund and would have far rather that he had married his sister instead of that elderly oaf, the Count of Amiens. However, his father had insisted on the match. Louis of Amiens was a powerful man and he was close to the king.
‘Why didn’t you come back sooner, Edmund,’ he muttered to himself as the two ships receded into the distance.
-℣-
Ragnar was in a foul mood when he arrived back at Arendal. Not only had the raiding season provided little in the way of plunder when divided amongst his jarls and warriors, but his eldest son and his wife weren’t waiting on the jetty to greet him as they should have been. Instead little Ivar and Bjorn stood side by side with their two younger brothers standing behind them. Where were Agnar and Aslaug?
Then a horrible thought struck him. Perhaps Aslaug had died in childbirth? But that didn’t explain Agnar’s absence. As his drekar nudged the jetty and the ship’s boys secured her, he jumped ashore and strode towards his young sons. It was only then that he noticed Edda, the thirteen year old son of the jarl of the region surrounding Arendal, standing next to his boys.
As Ragnar reached them and was about to demand an explanation the two youngest boys, Sigurd and Halfdan, threw themselves at him and hugged his legs. He was astounded. Vikings didn’t display affection in public, at least not like that. A hearty punch on the arm between friends was about as affectionate as they got. Even children were taught that at a young age.