by H A CULLEY
I doubted that my warband would get there in time to be of much use. It was sixteen miles by land to the monastery. At least the tide was out which meant that Octa could ride across the sands to the island. If only my ships were here they could have crossed by sea, but they were all away at the moment.
My heart sank as Eafa called down sullenly that he could see a spiral of black smoke, and then another. By the time my son and my warband got there it could all be over. In a way I hoped that would be the case. He had taken every warrior who could ride with him, all fifty five of them, but they would be heavily outnumbered and I didn’t know what sort of fighters these raiders would be.
Less than an hour had passed when Eafa yelled that he could see something happening on the sands. At that distance, even though the air was crystal clear, it would be difficult to make out any detail, however good his eyesight. The disappointment disappeared from his voice as he got excited by what he saw.
‘I think it’s a group moving across the sands.’
‘Can you see if they are monks or islanders?’
‘Not at this distance, they’re just a blob, but they’re probably both. Oh!’ he exclaimed, ‘they’re being pursued by another group of men. I can see the sun glinting off helmets and weapons. It must be some of the raiders.’
‘How many?’
‘Difficult to say, grandfather. Perhaps a score or more.’
I grunted in satisfaction. Octa should be nearly at the point where the path across the sands started. He would be able to both save the monks and islanders and hopefully slaughter the enemy. That would leave fewer for him to tackle on the island.
‘I can see some sort of movement. It looks like a group leaving the mainland to cross to the island. I wish I could see more clearly. Yes! I can see the sun reflected off helmets now,’ he called down. ‘It must be father and his men.’
Although he couldn’t possibly be certain, it seemed most likely.
‘They should get there before the raiders catch up with the others,’ he yelled, his excitement palpable.
‘How many monks would you say there are?’
‘I can’t distinguish monks from islanders, or even see individuals, grandfather; they must be six miles away, but I’d say it’s a sizeable group.’
In addition to the sixty or seventy monks and novices, the bishop and few priests, there were over a hundred men, women and children who farmed the rest of the island. The group of escapees probably only represented around a third of the total.
‘The cowards are turning back,’ he shouted.
I couldn’t make out anything at that distance and was confused as to who he meant.
‘Our men?’
‘No, grandfather, of course not. The raiders, but they won’t get back to the island before father reaches them.’
Before long after that he told me that our horsemen had now merged into the other group with the sun glinting on helmets and weapons. I imagined the horsemen cutting down the fleeing enemy, but perhaps the latter had turned to make a stand.
‘I can’t make out what’s happening,’ Eafa cried out in frustration. ‘No, wait. I think our men may have overcome the enemy. At any rate I can’t see the sun reflected off metal anymore.’
‘What of the monks and the islanders?’
‘I can’t see any movement on the sand now grandfather. They must have reached the mainland.’
Then he shouted out that the longships were being pushed back into the sea.
‘I can’t make it out clearly but groups appear to be going to and fro between the monastery and the shore.’
More smoke snaked up into the sky and then he shouted with excitement that the raiders seemed to be lining up on the beach because our horsemen had appeared on the skyline above the beach.
‘I think that some must be trying to drag their ships back into the sea whilst the rest hold off father and his men,’ he said.
The beach was a mile or so nearer than the sand so Eafa could make out a little more of what was happening. Of course, the tide was going out still and so their ships would be further up the sand than when they’d beached them. I knew that, if it was our birlinns, their bottoms would be stuck fast and we’d probably have to wait until the tide came in, but these ships must have a protruding keel which acted like a sled because Eafa told me ten minutes later that they’d managed to float them.
‘Their shield wall has broken I think, at any rate they’re running for their ships. Father can cut them down before they can get there,’ he cried gleefully. ‘Oh, no.’
‘What is it?’
‘Our men have halted and they’re retreating. They must have archers on the ships and they’re preventing us from closing with them. In fact I think a few of our horsemen are down and the rest are retreating out of range.’
Even my poor eyes could make out the two ships as their rowers turned them and headed back out to sea. The wind was against them now and so they their crews rowed them to the north east until even Eafa couldn’t see them anymore.
It was now late in the day and I expected Octa to stay the night on Lindisfarne. Eafa and I would have to wait until tomorrow before we heard more of what had happened. I fretted over how much damage had been done to the monastery and to the vill outside it. Most of all I wondered if Higbald was safe and how many monks had been slaughtered.
We got the answers to some of those questions earlier than I’d thought. A messenger arrived during the night to tell me something that broke my heart. We had lost ten dead and a dozen wounded, who would hopefully recover. However, one of the dead was Octa. He’d been hit in the throat by an arrow just before the raiders left.
~~~
We were all stunned by Octa’s death. I had always been closer to him that to Uuffa, who had grown to resent the fact that he wasn’t the first born. Now he would have to reconcile himself to seeing his fifteen year old nephew as my heir.
He wasn’t the only one who felt bitter. Cynewise blamed me for sending her husband to his death whilst I stayed safe and secure inside my fortress. I couldn’t really blame her. I felt the same way. I cursed my old age; it should have been me who died. I’d lived a full and long life and it was my time to go. For a while I sunk into a state of maudlin self-pity which Cynewise had no patience with.
‘You are his father, you need to get his funeral organised, and those of the brave men who died with him,’ she told me. ‘Bishop Higbald needs help to rebuild what the raiders destroyed, and you need to see what you can do about finding out who they were and how to contact them.’
‘Contact them? Why?’
‘They took six men hostage, four monks and two novices. Perhaps you could ransom them back.’
Much of the wealth of Lindisfarne had been stolen during the raid. Instead of being one of the richest monasteries in Northumbria it was now the poorest.
‘How can I find out who they were? No one seems to know.’
‘They were from the north, or at least that’s what everyone is saying. You have a prisoner. Find out from him.’
Suddenly I felt a fool. Cynewise was right. Instead of feeling sorry for myself I should be doing something. I was still the ealdorman after all. The boy my warriors had captured could tell us who he was and where he came from. The problem was language. There was the odd word he seemed to understand, but it was impossible to converse with him.
Then I had an idea. I needed to send a messenger to tell the king what had happened; he could also take a letter to Uuffa asking him to bring Wulfgang back with him. He’d had contact with the Danes when he lived in Bremen and, if the boy was a Dane, Wulfgang might be able to interrogate him.
It was nearly mid-summer and we couldn’t wait for Uuffa to arrive before we held the funeral service. Octa’s body was already beginning to smell. The other warriors who’d been killed had been brought back to Bebbanburg and buried there but Higbald had accorded my son the honour of burial in the monastic cemetery.
The shell of the church h
ad been cleared of the debris but work had only just started on a new roof, so the service was held in the open air. Higbald read from one of the beautifully illustrated copies of the Lindisfarne Gospels. The monks had carried them and other precious artefacts away when they fled. They may have lost the gold ornaments and the bishop’s hoard of silver, but those could be replaced in time. The gospels were irreplaceable.
After we had seen the coffin lowered into the grave and had each thrown a handful of dirt onto it, we returned to Bebbanburg. Cynewise had invited me to ride in the covered carriage with her, Osoryd and Odelyn but I was too proud to do so. I couldn’t mount on my own so my body servant cupped his hands together so he could lift my foot. Even so swinging my leg over the saddle was painful. Once there my joints still hurt, but at least I could ride back to the fortress with some of my dignity intact.
Four days later Uuffa and Wulfgang arrived.
‘The king has agreed to let me stay for a while to act as the shire reeve until Eafa has completed his warrior training and can take over.’
I nodded gratefully and told him in more detail how his brother had died. Wulfgang listened and asked questions about the ships the raiders had used.
‘They could be Danes but they could equally be Norsemen.’
‘What is the difference?’ I asked.
‘The Danes include the Angles and the Jutes, your ancestors, and the people who live in the archipelago of islands to the east of the peninsula north of Saxony. The Norse live still further north in a barren land of mountains and deep sea inlets they call fjords. Where is this prisoner of yours? Let’s see if we can understand one another, though the Danish I learned as a boy is a bit rusty now.’
When the boy was brought in it was evident that he’d been treated well. He was clean and wore new homespun trousers and a tunic. He stood sullenly between two warriors who towered over him. I put his age at twelve or thirteen. He had long fair hair but no incipient beard showed on his face as yet. I saw that his eyes, when he glanced up occasionally, were a vivid blue. He reminded me in many ways of Wulfgang when he was a boy.
The latter started to talk to him and the boy’s surprise at hearing a language he understood was evident.
‘He understands me, or enough for me to interrogate him,’ Wulfgang said after a few minutes of conversation. ‘He’s asking what will happen to him if he tells us what we want to know.’
‘First ask him his status. Is he a noble’s son who can be ransomed for the return of the monks they kidnapped, or a slave?’
Following a few more questions Wulfgang said that the boy was no thrall, what they called slaves, nor was he the son of a king or jarl. Jarl was apparently the equivalent to our ealdorman, but what it really meant was chieftain or leader. He was a bóndi’s son who was serving his jarl as a ship’s boy.
‘Bóndi?’ I queried.
‘Our nearest equivalent is ceorl; bóndis are freemen who are farmers or artisans such as smiths and merchants. However, the term also includes wealthy land owners who we would term thegns.’
‘And what sort of bóndi is the boy’s father?’
‘He’s a tenant farmer who pays rent for his land to a rich bóndi. The boy’s name is Erik, by the way.’
I was disappointed; the boy would be no use as a hostage who I could exchange for the monks. I remembered that I’d promised to decide the boy’s fate once I knew his status.
‘Tell Erik that I will spare his life if he tells me all that I want to know.’
‘He asks if that means he will become a thrall – a slave – if so, he would rather die.’
‘What is so terrible about being a slave? Tell him we treat our slaves well.’
‘He says that in his country thralls are forced to wear an iron or a wooden collar and are scarcely regarded as human. Even the dogs are treated better.’
‘I see. Very well, explain that I won’t enslave him but I expect him to become a servant.’
Then I had an idea. As a warrior in training, Eafa had no body servant of his own. My own body servant could train Erik so that he was ready to serve Eafa when the boy became sixteen in a few months’ time. I put the idea to Eafa who studied the boy, then smiled and nodded his head. Wulfgang then gave Erik the option of a slow and painful death or becoming my grandson’s body servant.
‘He agrees,’ Wulfgang said after a lengthy exchange.
‘Good of him,’ I muttered, annoyed at the time it had taken the boy to accept my offer.
‘Now ask him where he comes from.’
It appeared that Erik wasn’t entirely sure. He said he wasn’t a Dane, with some contempt, but Norse. He lived in a small settlement a few miles from the head of the fjord where the jarl who had led the raid had his hall. The place was called Hladir. His father and elder brothers worked a smallholding which they rented off the bóndi who owned all the land in the valley where he lived.
He was the youngest of six children: four boys and two girls. His mother had given birth to nine in all but three had died whilst still babies. This had been his first voyage as a ship’s boy and two of his brothers had sailed as warriors on his ship, which he called a drekar.
He explained that it was more properly termed a skeid, meaning that which cuts through water, and had roughly thirty oars a side. The term drekar came from the carved and painted dragon’s head which was placed on the prow before a fight.
He went on to say that there were other types of longship: the snekkja typically had twenty oars a side and the karvi was the smallest warship with between six and sixteen oars a side. Jarl Haraldr, the man who owned the two drekar used in the raid, owned two snekkja and several karvi as well. His jarl owed allegiance to a king somewhere but he didn’t know his name.
He described his drekar as being about a hundred feet long and eighteen feet in the beam. It was built of oak and, unlike our ships, it had an external keel. The mast carried a sail which measured some forty feet across and, like ours, was made from rough woollen cloth. They were woven as one piece and that made them stronger than ours, which consisted of several lengths of cloth stitched together.
Their voyage had lasted for nine days. They had followed the coast south for four days before they came to the tip of a peninsular dominated by a mountain the jarl had called Gullfjellstoppen. There they turned out to sea, leaving the coast behind. Their only guide was the sun, when it appeared. He didn’t know how it worked but the helmsman said that they were heading south west. The wind was variable; some days they barely seemed to moving through the water. On other days the wind whipped the crests of the tall waves into horizontal sheets of spume and the drakars flew along, almost leaping down into the troughs and shooting up the far side of the wave. Erik had found it exhilarating rather than frightening, which said something about the boy.
Then they sighted land and went ashore to find out where they were. They sought Lindisfarne because, even at Hladir they had heard stories of the wealth of the monastery there. The local inhabitants they had captured didn’t speak their language, of course, but at the mention of Lindisfarne they pointed south. They had taken a man who appeared to be a priest with them to guide them and then, when they had found Lindisfarne a day later, Jarl Haraldr had thrown him over the side to drown.
Erik’s tale rang true. A boy his age could hardly make up that sort of detail. At least now I had a rough idea where these raiders had come from. One other interesting thing the boy had said was that they called their piracy going a-viking. It appeared to be the common pursuit of their warriors in the summer months.
Normally they raided closer to home but this year Haraldr had been tempted to risk the long and perilous voyage across the open sea to find the fabled Isle of Lindisfarne. The men who came with him were all volunteers and all would share in the plunder, as well as the proceeds from selling the unfortunate monks as thralls.
~~~
The story of the attack on Lindisfarne spread throughout the whole of Christendom and men began to say that the
Northumbrians had been punished by God for their many crimes, especially regicide and the general fondness of the people for material wealth at the expense of their spiritual welfare. It was unfair as both Mercia and Wessex had experienced their fair share of infighting for their respective thrones.
In due course Eafa became a warrior and Erik became his body servant. The boy had learned English rapidly and he carried out his duties diligently, but he had a streak of mischievous which could have made him a nuisance; instead it made him interesting.
I spoke to him occasionally and grew more interested in these northerners. I learned that there were three distinct peoples, though they all spoke roughly the same language. They were the Danes, the Norse and the Swedes. His people, the Norse, lived along the coast which was dotted with fjords like his. He didn’t know how many there were but he did know that very few lived in the hinterland. They were seafaring folk who eked out a living from the land as best they could when they weren’t raiding.
He was adamant that they didn’t raid for pleasure, but because they needed to in order to survive. There was no overall king of the Norse but many petty kings, each of whom derived his power from the number of jarls sworn to him. Jarls in turn depended on their success at rewarding their warriors to keep their position. The more successful a jarl or king was at raiding and providing for his people, the more powerful he became.
Internal blood feuds and struggles for power were almost a way of life. The only thing that would unite them was the promise of plunder. Their class structure wasn’t as rigid as ours. Although kings tended to come from one family, that wasn’t always the case. A jarl would hope to hand over to his son when he grew too old or was killed but, if he lost his popularity any of his bóndis could challenge him for the torc he wore around his neck; the torc being the symbol of his status.
‘What about the Swedes?’
Erik shrugged and settled his bony posterior more comfortably. He was sitting cross legged beside the hearth whilst I sat on a chair covered in a thick fleece to give me some comfort. Normally a servant would never sit in the presence of his master but I found it more comfortable if the boy sat so I didn’t have to crane my neck when I looked at him. He was growing into a tall, if gangly, youth now he was approaching fourteen.