by H A CULLEY
He therefore sent Uurad ahead with the warband to join Behrt whilst he set off for Alnwic on a dismal grey day in early July; a day which matched his mood. He rode beside the ten year old Swefred on his pony on one side and Sigmund, the captain of his gesith, on the other. Godwyna and Guthild travelled in a carriage made from a small cart with a hooped roof, which slowed their progress to a crawl. Osfrid was relieved that Eadwulf was still on Lindisfarne, though he would be returning next month to commence his training as a warrior.
He had only visited his eldest son once during his time at the monastery and he felt guilty about it. The boy had seemed meek and submissive but once Osfrid had seen him dart a look his way when he thought his father wasn’t looking. It conveyed resentment and even hatred. Osfrid couldn’t understand why he should feel that way; granted they had never been close, but he didn’t think he had done anything to cause the boy to be so antagonistic towards him.
Suddenly an idea struck him. He’d send him down to Alnwic to be trained. Perhaps he’d strike up a rapport with Eochaid as they were close in age. When he mentioned the idea to Godwyna she had supported the idea. Perhaps she was dreading the return of the surly Eadwulf as much as he was.
As they neared Alnwic towards evening the clouds broke and blue sky began to appear. The welcome from Edyth and Eochaid was warm but muted, given the circumstances of their visit. The meal that evening was a subdued affair and, out of respect for Conomultus’ memory, no one got drunk.
On the next day the sky was cloudless and it grew warm quite quickly. Osfrid had expected Eochaid to invite Bishop Eadbehrt of Lindisfarne to conduct the ceremony but he was apparently too ill to travel. Instead the local priest presided.
Osfrid was somewhat ashamed that he hadn’t known of Eadbehrt’s ill health. It had been some time since he had visited Lindisfarne and he resolved to go and visit him on his return. It would be good to see his brother, Alaric as well. He could tell Eadwulf about his military training at the same time. He was ruefully aware that one of the reasons for not visiting the monastery as often as he should have was his unwillingness to confront his son.
After the service Eochaid said a few words in praise of his mentor and guardian and then Osfrid asked to speak.
‘My father was a great man; born a Briton in Mercia he rose to be Ealdorman of Bebbanburg, the former stronghold of the kings of Bernicia. His younger brother Conomultus had no less an exalted career in the Church. From a poor monk he became a priest and then chaplain to King Oswiu of blessed memory. As such he was one of the king’s closest advisors and much of Oswiu’s success was due to my uncle’s advice and diplomacy. When his conscience wouldn’t allow him to support Oswiu’s actions during the invasion of Dalriada, he chose to retreat to Iona and become a simple monk again.
‘But it wasn’t his destiny to remain in obscurity. He was chosen to be the Bishop of Abernethy and became the spiritual leader of the Picts. No doubt he would have ended his days there if Bruide hadn’t expelled him during his ruthless campaign to establish himself as King of the Picts. As it was, he spent his final years administering first Bebbanburg and then Alnwic.
‘He was a strong character and both our family, and here I include Edyth and Eochaid, and the kingdom owe him a great deal. He may be in heaven now but let us keep him alive in our hearts.’
As he went to sit down again first Edyth and then Eochaid came up to him and threw their arms around him. Words were unnecessary.
After Conomultus was lowered into the ground in his simple wooden box Osfrid went to speak to Eochaid.
‘You know that your cousin Eadwulf and I don’t get on. He is due to leave Lindisfarne in a month or so and begin his training as a warrior. Godwyna and I think it best if he doesn’t do that at home.’
‘And you want me to train him with my young men?’ Eochaid cut in as Osfrid plainly struggled to find the right way to phrase his request.
Osfrid smiled in relief.
‘Yes.’
‘Of course, I’d be pleased to help. However, that’s on the understanding that he behaves himself and doesn’t cause problems. I hear that his time at Lindisfarne hasn’t been exactly trouble free.’
‘I’ll make it clear to him that, if he doesn’t, then I’ll disown him and make Swefred my heir.’
‘I have a feeling that you’d like to do that anyway.’
‘Perhaps, but I can’t unless I have a good reason to do so; one that the king will accept.’
‘Very well, send Eadwulf to me and we’ll see what we can do with him.’
Osfrid was kneeling at Bishop Eadbehrt’s bedside with the prior beside him when his brother Alaric came in, ushering Eadwulf into the small hut ahead of him. The bishop was frail and could no longer walk unaided but his mind was as sharp as ever. Osfrid looked up and, as he’d expected, he saw the hostility in the glance his son gave him before he nodded perfunctorily to the bishop and then the prior. Osfrid got to his feet.
‘It’s good to see you again brother,’ he greeted Alaric. ‘How are you, Eadwulf?’
‘Fine, as if you’d care.’
‘Watch your tongue boy; the Bible commands us to honour our father and mother.’
Eadwulf stiffened before looking down at the ground in response to the bishop’s reprimand.
‘You’ll be leaving here in six weeks’ time when you turn fourteen, unless of course you wish to remain here as a monk?’
Eadwulf looked at Osfrid as if he was mad.
‘Why would I want to become a snivelling monk?’
Alaric cuffed him around the ear.
‘Show some respect in the presence of the bishop.’
‘I see that you haven’t learned humility whilst you’ve been here. You’re still insufferably arrogant,’ his father told him, not trying to hide his dislike.
‘What good is humility to a warrior? As I’ll be the next Ealdorman of Bebbanburg I have every right to be proud.’
‘I’m not dead yet, boy.’
Eadwulf looked down at the bedridden bishop before replying.
‘You’re no longer young either. Many men die in their thirties.’
Osfrid pursed his lips. His son was making no secret of the fact that he was looking forward to his father’s demise.
‘This squabbling is getting us nowhere. I’ve decided that you cannot be trained to be a warrior.’
He paused and took pleasure in the look of alarm that crossed his son’s face before he continued.
‘Not at Bebbanburg, at least. Your cousin Eochaid has kindly offered to take you in. However, he has warned me that if you give him any trouble he’ll send you back to me.’
‘Thank you, father,’ the boy replied with an ironic grin. ‘I’ll be sure to be on my best behaviour.’
~~~
At long last Osfrid was free to ride to join Behrt outside Caer Luel. The latter had driven the Strathclyde Britons out of most of Cumbria but they continued to hold the town. It was a strongly fortified place; the stone built walls around the old Roman town had fallen into disrepair in places but the Anglo-Saxons, not having the local skills to repair them, had filled the gaps with a tall palisade.
The Britons had been able to capture it with ease. The sentries had grown lax and hadn’t spotted the assault ladders that the invaders had placed against the walls until it was too late. Unfortunately the new masters of the place kept a much better watch.
However, the topic of conversation when the senior commanders met in Behrt’s tent that evening wasn’t about the siege. News had just reached them that the queen had been safely delivered of a baby son who Aldfrith had named Osred. The succession had been a concern for Northumbria’s nobles for some time now.
‘The question now is will Aldfrith live long enough to allow the boy to grow to manhood?’ Behrt said quietly to Osfrid whilst the others were busy getting drunk in honour of the new ætheling.
‘He’s sixty one; I doubt he will make it until he’s into his late seventies,’ Osfrid replied gloo
mily.
‘No, I agree. He’s already lived longer than his father did. But Osred is the only descendent of the house of Æthelfrith. Better to have him as king, even if he’s still a boy, than the alternative.’
‘Which is?’ Osfrid asked, puzzled.
‘For the various descendants of Ida through his other sons to squabble over the throne. Northumbria would descend into chaos and we’d be very vulnerable to attacks from the Picts, the Strathclyde Britons and the Mercians.’
Osfrid sucked his teeth. He knew that Behrt was right but he couldn’t see a solution.
‘What do you suggest?’
‘We need to form a council of regency to rule the kingdom until Osred is old enough to rule unaided.’
‘Council of regency? Wouldn’t rule by several people with conflicting interests be too unwieldy?’
‘No, I’m not talking about some sort of Witan. I’m proposing three regents – a triumvirate if you like.’
‘And who would these three be?’
‘Myself, Bishop Bosa and yourself perhaps, if you are willing?’
‘I don’t know, Behrt. I’ll have to think about it. I agree with you that we need peace and stability - something that King Aldfrith has brought the kingdom after decades of warfare – but I’m not sure how acceptable this proposal would be to the Witan.’
‘Very well. Give it some thought. I’m sure I don’t need to add that you mustn’t discuss this with anyone, not even with Godwyna.’
‘You have my word.’
~~~
In the end the siege of Caer Luel came to an end rather more quickly than Behrt had anticipated. Beli had escaped back into Strathclyde after being defeated by Behrt leaving half of his raiders to fend for themselves in Caer Luel. He had raised a larger army as soon as he’d returned to Strathclyde and now he was marching to the relief of the Britons trapped inside Caer Luel. The first that Behrt knew of its advance was when a group of Osfrid’s scouts saw the vanguard crossing an area of open country called Solway Moss.
‘It was close to nightfall when we first saw them so the main body are likely to camp on the far side of the River Esk and cross it tomorrow morning,’ the chief scout told him.
‘Sketch me the land between the Esk and here,’
The scout drew his sword and drew several lines in the dirt floor of Behrt’s tent.
‘This is the Esk,’ he said pointing with the tip. ‘It’s possible to ford it here but then they’ll have to cross the Lyne three miles further on, here. Then they’ll only be about five miles from Caer Luel.’
‘Thank you; summon the commanders. Then you and your men better get ready to guide us into position during the night.’
That night Behrt’s men, all but five hundred members of the fyrd who were left to maintain the siege of Caer Luel, moved into position ready for dawn.
As the sun rose behind its blanket of cloud the following morning, Beli’s army rose to find that it had rained hard during the night. Most had slept rolled into their cloaks and, although the weather had now improved somewhat, they were wet, cold and miserable. Some tried to light a fire with damp wood to cook up a mixture of oats and water but most made do with bread and cheese. At this point the alarm was sounded. The enemy had appeared on the south bank of the Lyne, defending the ford.
Beli wasn’t too concerned. He’d expected the Northumbrians to become aware of his advance sooner or later and there didn’t appear to be more than hundred or two guarding the far bank. Then one of his men came running up to tell him that the ford across the Esk was similarly guarded.
‘What’s that bloody man Behrt up to?’ he asked of no one in particular. ‘I’m marching into Cumbria, not back the way we came.’
He had just ordered his men to form up when a man came running to tell him that an army had suddenly appeared from the east. Now Beli was concerned. It seemed that he was trapped in the triangle of land formed by the Esk and the Lyne.
~~~
Osfrid had been given command of the detachment with the furthest to go. His task was to prevent the Britons from retreating back into Strathclyde. Behrt fully intended to make sure that Beli would be in no position to trouble Northumbria again for years to come. He didn’t seek to merely defeat Beli’s army, he wanted to annihilate them, like the Picts had done to Ecgfrith’s army eleven years before.
Behrt was outnumbered, possibly by as much as two to one, but half his men were trained warriors who were better protected and better armed than the Britons. The other half were drawn from the Cumbrian fyrd who were equipped similarly to the majority of the Britons. He had left five hundred of the fyrd behind to keep the enemy bottled up in Caer Luel so he had no more than fifteen hundred men against Beli’s three thousand. He just hoped that would be sufficient.
The Britons charged towards the Northumbrian shield wall in a disorganised mass. However, Behrt had chosen his position well and the onrushing Britons found themselves floundering in an area of bog. As they struggled to wade through it flight after flight of arrows descended on them, shot from behind the shield wall. This enraged the Britons and they struggled even harder to force their way through the morass so that they could get to grips with their foes.
Behrt was standing in the middle of the shield wall and he watched as the first few men struggled clear of the marsh. The man who rushed at him was clearly exhausted and struggled to raise his axe above his head. As he did so Behrt thrust his sword forward into the man’s exposed chest and he fell back. Unfortunately the sword was trapped between the man’s ribs and, in an effort to keep his hands on it, Behrt was pulled forward out of the line.
Another axeman seized the opportunity to swing his weapon at Behrt’s head and he was forced to block it with his shield. This left his chest exposed and a Briton with a pitchfork stabbed him in the chest. Fortunately the prongs were made of wood and made no impression on his chain mail clad torso. The spearman standing to Behrt’s right stabbed the man with the pitchfork and the latter joined the mounting number of dead in front of the shield wall.
A horn sounded repeatedly and gradually the frenzied attack on the Northumbrians petered out. Only a few were foolish enough to withdraw back through the bog and most of them were struck down by arrows. The rest found an easier path to the north and south of the bog.
Behrt, though shaken by his close shave, quickly assessed the situation. The Britons had lost nearly three hundred men – a tenth of their total number - in the mad attack, whilst his casualties numbered no more than forty, and many of those only had flesh wounds.
Beli was in a quandary. He was trapped with only enough food to last his men for a day or two at most. A frontal assault on the main Northumbrian army hadn’t worked and, even had it been more organised, the bog in the centre ground meant he could only attack on two narrow fronts. He therefore decided to cut his losses and retreat back into Strathclyde.
Osfrid saw the enemy massing on the opposite bank and readied his men to hold the ford. It was only wide enough for four men or two horses to cross abreast and, after the recent rain, the water was nearly waist deep and quite fast flowing. He placed his twenty archers in front of the shield wall so that they could pick their targets and do as much damage as possible.
The first two rows went down peppered with arrows, creating an obstacle for those behind until their bodies were pushed away to float downstream. Osfrid saw that his men were wasting their arrows and so he ordered the head bowman to detail off individual archers and give them their targets. This time another eight men went down but with only one arrow in each. The row behind were hit in similar fashion and, having lost twenty men with no result, Beli changed tactics and sent forward his own archers.
These were huntsmen and their bows were less powerful than the war bows of the Northumbrians. Nevertheless they started to inflict casualties and as there were over a hundred of them, Osfrid was going to lose a war of attrition. After he’d lost five of his men to fourteen of the enemy bowmen, he withdrew them behin
d the shield wall.
Immediately Beli sent another wave of his men across the ford. This time, firing at high trajectory, the arrows did little damage to the enemy. Several were caught on the small shields they lifted above their heads and only two men were hit, one in the shoulder and one in the face. The second volley had more luck and this time two men were killed and another three wounded, but the attack didn’t falter and now the Britons were only five yards from the bank.
Osfrid had packed the exit point with slippery, well-watered, mud and sunk pointed stakes horizontally every foot or so in three staggered rows, making it exceedingly difficult to clamber up to where the Northumbrians waited.
Naturally the Britons in the lead tried to avoid the sharp stakes but the pressure of those behind them, eager to get at the enemy, forced several on them onto them. Others kept slipping back into the water and the Northumbrians stabbed downwards at those who were trying to scramble up the bank.
For a moment it looked as if this attack would also fail, then a few managed to use the bodies of the dead to claw their way up onto level ground. At first these were easily dispatched by the waiting warriors but, as the pile of bodies mounted, the shield wall was forced back until the Britons had established a narrow bridgehead on the far bank.
Osfrid had been wounded on his left arm and was finding wielding his sword increasingly difficult when suddenly the pressure eased and the Britons started to retreat. At first Osfrid was at a loss to understand why Beli should halt his attack just when he was about to overwhelm Osfrid’s defences but then he saw the reason.