The Fall of the House of Æthelfrith: Kings of Northumbria Book 5

by H A CULLEY

  Neither were wearing mail or leather coats and the sharp edge cut through the woollen tunic as if it was made of paper. It connected with the side of his ribs, breaking two of them. One of the jagged ends punctured a lung and from then onwards it was only a matter of time.

  The captain was struggling now, both to breathe and to defend himself against Eadwulf’s increasingly aggressive attacks. Several of the men called for Eadwulf to show mercy but he had no intention of doing so. He wanted to take over the captaincy of the band and make them his men. To do that the old captain had to die.

  Shortly afterwards Eadwulf knocked his opponents sword aside and thrust the point of his own sword up into the soft flesh under his chin and into his brain. The captain was dead before he hit the ground.

  ~~~

  ‘Where do you expect us to go?’ Godwyna asked, trying to keep her temper in check.

  ‘I don’t really care, mother. I just want you, your brood and my father’s men out of here by nightfall.’

  Eadwulf had arrived on two hired knarrs that morning. He had brought fifty five Frisian and Frankish mercenaries with him who would form his gesith and his warband. Drefan and the remainder of Osfrid’s warriors weren’t needed. Even Morcar the Reeve was told to leave.

  ‘What are we going to do, mother?’ an angry Swefred asked, fingering the dagger at his waist. ‘I’d like to kill him.’

  He recalled that he’d promised himself he’d leave Bebbanburg if his brother became the ealdorman, but now it had it come to it he found that he was loathe to do so. It was his home.

  ‘That’s empty bluster and you know it,’ she replied tersely. ‘We’re all angry at the way that Eadwulf is treating us but he is the ealdorman now and he has the law on his side. As far as you’re concerned you can start your education early, that is if Bishop Eadfrith will take you. Your sister and I have no option but to seek refuge with Eochaid at Alnwic.’

  At this Guthild’s eyes lit up. Perhaps her brother’s return wasn’t such a bad thing after all.

  That afternoon Swefred set off for Lindisfarne escorted by Drefan and carrying two letters, one addressed to Eadfrith and the other to Alaric asking him to act as his nephew’s guardian. She explained that, once Guthild was safely married to Eochaid, she proposed to enter the monastery at Coldingham. She therefore needed someone to take charge of her youngest child for the next five years.

  Alaric studied Swefred when he reported to him after seeing Eadfrith and being accepted as a novice.

  ‘Do you want to become a monk, nephew?’

  ‘No!’ Swefred almost spat at him. ‘I want to become a warrior and Ealdorman of Bebbanburg, like my father.’

  ‘You know very well that’s not possible. Eadwulf is the ealdorman and, as he’s sixteen, the chances of his dying in the near future aren’t high. Besides he’ll doubtless marry soon and have children of his own. His son will inherit even if something did happen to him.’

  ‘Then I’ll have to pray that he dies childless, won’t I?’

  ‘Don’t be flippant, especially where religion is concerned. We pray for the good of others, not for ill to befall them.’

  Swefred merely grunted in reply and Alaric sighed. He couldn’t blame him for being angry at the hand that fate had dealt him.

  ‘If you don’t want to become a monk then, what do you want to do when you reach fourteen?’

  ‘Become a warrior, of course.’

  Alaric ignored the boy’s rudeness.

  ‘Who would you serve? Eochaid as he’s marrying your sister?’

  ‘No! He’s friends with Eadwulf.’

  ‘He might not be after the way he’s treated Guthild. Love is much more powerful than friendship.’

  ‘Perhaps. In any case I’ve got to wait for another three years before I need to make any decisions. A lot can happen in that time.’

  ~~~

  Swefred wasn’t the only one angry at events after the battle near Stirling. Aldfrith had taken the opportunity presented by Behrt’s death to reorganise Lothian. The king was dismayed at the eorl’s incursion into the Land of the Picts. He realised now that leaving him as the virtual ruler of the North had been a mistake. Consequently he’d divided Lothian into four shires instead of three and had made Behrtfrith an ealdorman, not an eorl.

  He remained as lord of Dùn Barra but the other fortress, Dùn Èideann, was given to the new ealdorman. This was another grievance which Behrtfrith nursed. He vowed to be avenged for the perceived insults the king had heaped upon him and so, when he was invited to Bebbanburg to go hunting with Eadwulf, it didn’t take much for the latter to recruit Behrtfrith as an ally.

  Eadwulf was busy forging alliances elsewhere too. Bishop Wilfrid was surprised to receive a letter from the new Ealdorman of Bebbanburg.

  My lord bishop, it began.

  I grieve for the wrongs that have been done to you and it is my most fervent desire that you should be restored to the Bishopric of Northumbria, not just of Eoforwīc, but of the whole kingdom, as used to be the case.

  If that is also your desire please let me know and perhaps we can work together to achieve this most noble of objectives.

  You will appreciate the sensitivity of the matter so I’d be much obliged if you would burn this letter as soon as you’ve read it. My messenger can be trusted absolutely, so please send your reply with him.

  Your servant,

  The letter was unsigned and bore no seal.

  Wilfrid sat contemplating the contents for a while before he threw it on the fire burning in the central hearth of the modest hall he occupied as the Bishop of Leicester. His most earnest desire was to return to Northumbria and claim the bishopric as well as recover his monasteries of Ripon and Hexham. However, he didn’t see how a mere ealdorman, and one who was still beardless, could help him achieve that.

  He tried to forget the tempting offer that Eadwulf had made but he couldn’t get it out of his head and two days later he sat down to write a reply.

  Greetings, he began,

  I was intrigued by your letter but I fail to see what influence you could bring to bear to get me reinstated. However, it may be helpful if we could meet to discuss matters further. It will need to be somewhere discreet where we wouldn’t attract unwanted attention. With that in mind, it is time that I visited a vill called Flichesburg which I have recently acquired on the River Trent in Lindsey. It is near the junction with the Humber. I suggest you could sail there in a small boat, perhaps disguised as a fisherman?

  I will be there for the first few days in September. Perhaps we will meet then?

  Your servant in God,

  Eadwulf grimaced at the thought of masquerading as a fisherman and he certainly wasn’t about to spend however long it took to sail from Bebbanburg to Flichesburg being buffeted about on the open sea in a small boat. In the end he decided to travel on a knarr carrying a cargo to Lundenwic.

  After four days of battling adverse winds the knarr entered the estuary of the River Humber and beached for the night on a sand spit between the mouth of the River Trent and Read’s Island. At dawn the next day Eadwulf and one of his men disembarked their horses and headed off to the south. An hour later they came in sight of Flichesburg, a small settlement sitting on a low ridge rising out the flat land bordering the river.

  Evidently it was good farming land, the soil below the settlement being enriched by alluvial deposits every time the Trent flooded. Eadwulf left his horse with his escort in a small copse half a mile from the settlement and walked from there.

  As the sun got higher in the blue sky the cold, damp autumnal morning began to warm up a little. The dew disappeared and Eadwulf’s initial sombre mood began to lighten. By the time he arrived at the outlying huts he was positively cheerful. As he entered the place the grassy track turned to alleys of churned up mud mixed in with detritus, animal and human faeces and the body of the odd rat. The sweet smell of plants and grass was replaced by a stench that he found worse even than that of a battlefield after
the conflict was over. He was amazed that the fastidious bishop could stomach it.

  It turned out that Wilfrid was even more appalled at the state of his latest acquisition than Eadwulf was.

  ‘The place is even worse than a dung heap, if that’s possible. I really must apologise. I’d no idea it was like this. I’ve told the reeve that the filth is to be removed and put at least a mile downwind from the village. The elders can pay for a man and a boy to collect the night soil every morning. I’m really sorry that you had to wade through it. Er, would you mind taking your shoes off before you enter the hall?’

  Eadwulf looked at the clean rushes on the earth floor and nodded. A servant knelt and removed the soiled shoes, taking them away to be cleaned. Eadwulf didn’t know why the man bothered; he’d have to walk back though the stinking settlement as soon as his business with the bishop was concluded.

  ‘Now, you said you had a plan to get me re-instated as Bishop of Northumbria, I think?’ Wilfrid said once they were seated on chairs in one corner of the hall.

  Despite the increasingly warm day outside a fire blazed in the centre of the room on which two of the cook’s boys were erecting a cauldron suspended from a tripod. The cook and another boy were busy chopping up vegetables and meat at a table nearby ready to put into the cauldron to make pottage for the midday meal. Eadwulf suspected that the meat would be spooned out later and set aside for Wilfrid; few apart from nobles ate meat very often.

  ‘Aldfrith is getting old. Oh, he may have a few years left in him, but not that many I suspect,’ Eadwulf began. ‘You must have heard that Queen Cuthburh is to retire to a monastery in Wessex. I gather that the birth of their third son, Osric, was another difficult one and she has refused to allow the king to sleep with her again. Although he’d had warnings of her intention, her rejection of him has hit him hard.’

  Wilfrid smiled inwardly at the assumption that Aldfrith must be near death because of his age. Evidently the young noble with him didn’t realise that Wilfrid had been born in the same year as the king.

  ‘What has this to do with my return to Northumbria?’

  ‘Aldfrith has invited me to become a member of his inner council. Previously Eorl Behrt had represented Bernicia but the family has fallen out of favour since the fiasco near Stirling. I could play on the king’s impending entry into Heaven to convince him that he needs to heed the Pope’s instructions and make peace with you or risk the fires of Hell.’

  Wilfrid looked at the young man, barely out of boyhood, sharply. The sneer which accompanied this statement had shocked him. Whatever else Wilfrid was, he was devout and he believed absolutely in God and his Son, Jesus Christ. He suspected that the cynical young ealdorman was a non-believer; an apostate who used the faith of others cynically to his own advantage. For a moment he considered sending Eadwulf packing.

  However, he desired above all else to be re-instated and, despite his disgust at what Eadwulf had said, he decided to pursue the conversation a little further.

  ‘And what would you want from me in return?’

  ‘Who said I wanted anything?’

  ‘Don’t play games with me boy, I’m not a fool. The Ealdorman of Bebbanburg doesn’t travel all this way at some discomfort and risk to himself to help an old bishop he hardly knows.’

  ‘Well, since you ask, there is something you can do for me.’

  ‘Come on, spit it out.’

  ‘Who do you think the next king should be when Aldfrith dies?’

  The question took Wilfrid by surprise. The succession wasn’t something he thought Eadwulf would be that concerned about. Then he remembered who his mother’s father had been.

  ‘Aldfrith has three sons so they are the obvious candidates.’

  ‘Boys of four, two and a baby? No-one will follow them unless their father lives long enough for them to grow to manhood. I don’t think that’s likely, do you?’

  ‘You may be correct, but then there are other Idings.’

  Ida, the first king of Bernicia, had many sons; the exact number was disputed but amongst them were Eadwulf’s great grandfather and another called Ocga. The latter’s son, Leowald, had two sons one of whom was dead but Cuthwin was very much alive and, at forty, he could well be an attractive candidate to the Witan. The fact that he already had two sons, Cenred, who was thirteen, and five year old Ceolwulf enhanced his prospects.

  ‘You mean Cuthwin?’

  ‘He is the most obvious one, yes.’

  But his grandfather, Ocga, was a bastard. My great grandfather was the son of Ida and his queen, Beornoch.’

  ‘Being a bastard didn’t stop Aldfrith from becoming king, and your claim is through your mother. Strictly speaking you are not an ætheling.’

  ‘You don’t seem to be on my side. Perhaps I made a mistake in coming here.’

  ‘Perhaps, but I’m only pointing out what everyone will be saying if you put yourself forward to succeed Aldfrith.’

  ‘Then I need to build up support in the interim. Will you support me when the time comes?’

  ‘If I’m Bishop of Northumbria, yes.’

  ‘That ship sailed a long time ago, Wilfrid and you know it. The most you can hope for is to replace Bosa as Bishop of Eoforwīc, or perhaps Lindisfarne or Hexham.’

  ‘Not Lindisfarne, the aesthetic lifestyle wouldn’t suit me; and I want my monasteries of Ripon and Hexham back.’

  ‘That may have to wait until I’m the king.’

  ‘Very well, arrange to have me reinstated as bishop with a promise to return my monasteries and you’ll have my support when the time comes.’

  ~~~

  ‘Gerrit, I have a sensitive task for you.’

  The Frisian mercenary who had waited with the horses whilst Eadwulf walked to Flishesburg grinned in anticipation. However, the scar which ran down his right cheek from close to his eye to his chin turned the grin into more of a leer.

  ‘Yes, lord. Does it involve killing?’

  Gerrit was only in his early twenties but he’d been killing since he was eleven and had developed a taste for it. He was quite without a conscience; he’d kill anyone from old men to young children and take pleasure in it.

  ‘Yes, the man I want dead is a thegn called Cuthwin. His vill is near Hexham, but you’ll need to be discreet. It must look like an accident.’

  ‘Does he have family?’

  ‘A wife and two sons, one thirteen and one five. If you can kill them as well and can still make it look accidental, then do so. But they’re not important so let them live if you can’t make their deaths look natural.’

  ’Perhaps I could cut their throats and burn down their hall so it looked as if they died in the fire?’

  ‘I leave the details to you. Here’s a pouch of silver for your expenses. Don’t go throwing it around and drawing attention to yourself.’

  ‘You don’t have to tell me how to fart and piss, lord. I’m a big boy now.’

  ‘Umm, don’t let me down. I’ll see you back at Bebbanburg.’

  Gerrit might think he knew how to remain unnoticed but Eadwulf’s experience of Frisians was that they liked to whore and get drunk as soon as they had any money to spend. Once in their cups they were prone to boast. He would just have to hope that the man had enough sense to stay in the background until the job was done.

  ~~~

  Cuthwin glared at his eldest son.

  ‘Why did you run away from Jarrow?’

  ‘It was boring,’ the boy replied defiantly. ‘Bede had me copying out all his research notes. That’s all I ever seemed to do.’

  ‘You’re still thirteen, you’ve another seven months before you’ll be old enough to train as a warrior.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because no-one will accept you until you’re fourteen, and then only if you’re big and strong enough.’

  He looked at Cenred. His size wouldn’t be a problem; he was already as big as most boys of fourteen and even some fifteen year olds. He was broad shouldered and his biceps
were developing well. He already looked like a warrior; well, except for his face. It was nearly pretty enough to belong to a girl. Framed by his long brown hair, it now scowled at him and his piercing grey eyes narrowed in speculation.

  ‘What if I could find a noble to accept me for training?’

  ‘Who do you have in mind?’ his father asked in surprise.

  ‘Eochaid, the Ealdorman of Alnwic.’

  ‘How do you know him?’

  ‘He came to visit Bede at Jarrow a few months ago and I was told to show him around the monastery. We got on pretty well.’

  ‘Very well. I’ll write to him but, if he doesn’t accept you, you’ll return to Jarrow until you’re fourteen.’

  ‘Thank you father.’

  Whilst they were waiting to hear back from Eochaid, Cenred started to train with his father’s small warband. As a thegn, he could only afford to keep five warriors. They were men who were too old to serve in a noble’s warband but that didn’t matter. Their duties were mainly to collect taxes, escort the odd criminal who was being taken to stand trial in the ealdorman’s court and to guard the gate to the hall compound during daylight. This was mainly to keep out animals and small boys up to mischief rather than a serious attempt at defence.

  One of them also trained the coerls, freemen who were members of the shire fyrd, how to fight. He was now given the task of training young Cenred. They had been working at his swordsmanship on a mild spring day in 700 AD on the open ground in front of the hall when a stranger rode up to the gate. Cenred and his instructor took a break and the latter walked towards him, sheathing his sword as he went.

  The sentry on the gate had asked him his business but the man looked towards Cenred when he replied.