Uhtred the Bold

by H A CULLEY

‘Quickly, knock the two wounded out and hoist them over your horses. I want to question them.’

  Two men lifted each unconscious body onto the horse held by a third and then turned and sent two more arrows each into the crowd of yelling Scots running towards us. Seconds later we were all mounted and heading back to join the others of our band.

  The Scots gave up the chase and we trotted away until we were safely out of range. Then we dismounted and the abbot led us in prayers of thanks for our salvation. We let the horses graze and drink from the river whilst the wounds of our captives were roughly attended to. I wanted them alive but I couldn’t care less how much pain they would be in when they recovered consciousness.

  We tied them across two of the packhorses and set off again for Falkirk. Their interrogation could wait until we got there, but I wanted to be certain who had sent them. I was fairly sure it was Malcolm, but I needed evidence before I met King Kenneth.

  ~~~

  The King of Scots did not look in the best of health. His face was haggard and it had an unhealthy grey pallor. However, he held himself well and his voice was strong when he spoke. I hoped for all our sakes that he still had a few years life left in him. However, it was obvious to me that the day was coming when Malcolm would ascend the throne. I prayed that I had long enough to prepare for his inevitable invasion of Lothian.

  But that wasn’t my immediate problem. I had to convince Kenneth to keep the peace for now.

  ‘I’m told that you call yourself Bretwalda of Lothian,’ the king barked at me as soon as we came face to face on the wooden bridge over the River Avon at Falkirk.

  Drest mac Cináeda, who I had first met at Falkirk a dozen years before when Malcolm and my father had united against the Norse horde of Olaf Tryggvason, stood behind the king. I had thought that he was Malcolm’s man so I wondered what he was doing here. I later learned that, although he was Malcolm’s cousin, he was Kenneth’s champion first and foremost. He had a few grey hairs now and his face was more lined, but he was still a giant of a man and one who, from the expression on his face, still held me in contempt.

  ‘Not quite, lord king. The ealdormen and thanes of Anglian Lothian elected me as such. It was not an honour, or a burden, that I sought.’

  ‘Would you like to tell me why you slew Drest’s nephew,’ Kenneth asked.

  I was puzzled. Drest was Malcolm’s cousin but that didn’t make him Angus’ uncle. What I didn’t know until later was that the giant was married to Malcolm’s sister. However, my immediate concern was for our security. I wasn’t about to enter into negotiations from a position of weakness.

  ‘Before I say anything further, where is Giric?’ I asked. ‘I understood that he was to be surrendered to me as a hostage for my safety.’

  Kenneth pursed his lips then nodded.

  ‘Fetch my son.’

  Drest lumbered away across the bridge, making it creak in places, and came back with a boy of about nine who scarcely came up to the warrior’s waist. I had no idea if the lad was indeed Kenneth’s son but he was dressed like a prince. As he passed Kenneth he gave him a nervous look and the king gave him an encouraging smile so I thought that he probably was his son.

  The boy glared at me as he approached me and spat at my feet.

  ‘What a charming son you have, lord king,’ I said with a smile. ‘Now I have something for you.’

  I turned and beckoned towards Leland and he pushed our two captives forward. Their hands were tied and their ankles hobbled. Regrettably they looked the worse for wear. Quite apart from the bandaged wounds to their shoulder and calf respectively, their faces and torsos had taken a battering. Their interrogation had not been gentle.

  After a while Leland had discovered that, fortuitously, they were brothers. He had persuaded the older man to talk by the simple expedient of brandishing a flensing knife and threatening to peel the skin off the younger man strip by strip. The threat had quickly induced the older man to confirm that it was indeed Malcolm that had sent his followers to ambush us. Thankfully they had proved inept at the task, mainly because they had underestimated the speed at which our horses could gallop; something they had based on the smaller ponies that they were used to.

  ‘These are two of the hundred or so of your warriors who ambushed us yesterday.’

  ‘What? No, that cannot be. I would never be party to such a thing!’ Kenneth spluttered, furious at me for suggesting it.

  ‘I don’t think you had anything to do with it. This man confessed that it was Malcolm.’

  Kenneth turned to glare at Drest.

  ‘Did you know about this?’

  Drest shook his head but I didn’t believe him, and I don’t think his king did either.

  By producing the two captives I had wrong footed Kenneth and I now held the moral high ground. He had promised me safe conduct and he should have ensured that his promise was fulfilled.

  ‘Very well. I apologise for the unauthorised actions of my cousin. You may rest assured that I will hold him to account for this,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Thank you lord king.’

  I doubted he would do anything other than make his displeasure known, but I didn’t expect him to do more. He had enough problems without upsetting his heir unduly.

  ‘Let us return to the slaying of my cousin Angus. I expect blood money and the head of the man responsible.’

  ‘You know that Angus mismanaged the shire you gave him. What did he expect when he dispossessed so many thanes and drove them and their warriors out of their homes? That they would go quietly? No, they had a legitimate grievance and he brought their revolt on himself. He died in battle with them as a consequence. There is no blood debt due, nor was the man who killed him in fair fight a murderer.’

  ‘They were outlaws; he was entitled to eradicate them as they were condemned men.’

  ‘If they were outlaws, although no court had decreed that was the case, then he had made them so by acting unjustly. He was the cause of his own death.’

  Kenneth made an impatient gesture and I knew that he had conceded the point and wanted to move on.

  ‘I cannot accept the return of Edinburgh to the rule of your father, you must see that.’

  ‘Of course, lord king, and I don’t suggest it. He gave that to you in return for your help against the Norse. I have no intention of challenging that decision.’

  ‘Then what do you propose?’ he asked curiously.

  ‘That the rightful heir to the shire, Hacca, becomes ealdorman but that he swears allegiance to you. As to the vills, all of the thanes Angus appointed have fled and those who they had replaced have been restored to their lands; I suggest that we leave things as they are.’

  Kenneth paced up and down whilst he considered what I’d proposed. Finally he nodded.

  ‘Very well. Provided that Edinburgh remains subservient to me, I agree to Hacca succeeding his father.’

  ‘And his thanes are restored to their lands?’

  ‘You’re pushing your luck, Uhtred. You need to learn to be more cautious. Boldness is all very well but it can land you in an early grave.’

  He chewed his lip and seemed lost in thought as he stared down at the water flowing under the bridge. Finally he turned back to me.

  ‘On one condition; they must all swear fealty to me individually as well as to Hacca and pay me a tenth of the worth of their land.’

  It was a harsh condition but no doubt the thanes would be allowed time to pay, perhaps years. A lot could happen in that time.

  ‘It is for Hacca and his thanes to agree, but I will support such terms for the treaty between us.’

  ‘They are to come to my camp and take their oaths to me before sunset tomorrow. That should give you enough time to round them up. I will not bargain further. You have wrung more out of me than I intended to give and I blame Malcolm’s foolishness for that. Count yourself fortunate, Uhtred the Bold.’

  It was a sobriquet that was to stick to me.

  Chapter Ten – Sa
int Brice’s Day Massacre

  November 1002 to August 1003

  I stayed at Falkirk for three days until the treaty, drawn up by the Abbot of Melrose and the Bishop of Saint Andrews, was signed. Then I left to return to Duns. Kenneth’s men escorted us to the border of Selkirkshire and then returned, taking Giric back with them.

  Giric had ignored me for the first part of our journey together but our mutual loathing for his father’s heir thawed the boy’s attitude to me. Unsurprisingly he felt that it was his right to succeed his father; furthermore, even at his age, he knew that his cousin would naturally regard Giric as a rival and would no doubt seek his death.

  ‘When the time comes, you are welcome to seek sanctuary with me, Giric,’ I told him quietly just before we parted.

  He didn’t reply but nodded, smiled briefly, and rode away. If only he had lived how different things might have been.

  When I returned the council of ealdormen and thanes were generous with their praise and, modesty not being my greatest quality, I basked in their acclaim. But I wasn’t lulled into a false sense of security by the respite I had secured. We needed to maintain our preparations for the day when Lothian was invaded by Malcolm.

  However, it wasn’t the Scots who posed the next danger.

  Later that year I heard that Olaf Tryggvason had been killed; something that I paid scant attention to at the time. I hadn’t thought much about the Norse leader after we’d defeated him at Penicuik all those years ago and his death in battle seemed irrelevant.

  After he’d fled from England his luck had changed and in 995 he’d been crowned as King of Norway after defeating and killing his predecessor, Haakon Sigurdarson. However his reign lasted less than five years.

  He was sailing home after raiding Pomerania when his ships were ambushed in the Baltic by the combined fleet of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, Olaf Eiríksson, King of Sweden, and Eric Håkonsson, Jarl of Lade. Olaf was drowned and Sweyn Forkbeard appointed Eric Håkonsson to rule Norway as his vassal.

  Two years later, in the summer of 1002, King Sweyn decided to raid the south coast of England. In the decades after the collapse of the Danelaw and the creation of a united England several Danes had risen to position of power and influence outside the old Danelaw. Amongst these was Pallig Tokesen, the Ealdorman of Devonshire.

  Pallig was married to Gunhilde, Sweyn’s sister, and he was suspected of assisting his brother-in-law’s pillaging of the south by providing him with information. The raids provoked a backlash against the Danes, and whilst those living in Deira and Mercia were too numerous to be attacked, outbreaks of violence against Danes elsewhere became more and more common. On Saint Brice’s Day in November scores were killed in London, Bristol, Gloucester and Oxford, which was the scene of the greatest atrocity. Amongst those killed was Pallig Tokesen and his wife, Gunhilde.

  Whether King Æthelred was behind the Saint Brice’s Day massacre, as was widely believed, wasn’t clear. If he was it was a remarkably short-sighted policy. At first I thought that it wouldn’t affect us in the far north of England, but I suppose I should have realised that the Danes of Deira would have had relatives who’d been killed and, in any case, they were incensed by the slaughter of hundreds of their compatriots.

  Of course, in the decades after the Danes initially settled in Deira, East Anglia and part of Mercia there had been a great deal of inter-marriage between them and the local Anglo-Saxons. This had mostly been between men of Danish descent and Anglian women, but not exclusively so. However, although they were now all Christians, men with Danish blood were proud of their Viking heritage and their culture remained different to ours.

  The real trouble in the north started with a quarrel between a Danish jarl and an Anglian thane over the ownership of land. The Dane had taken the land when the thane’s father had died and his son, being too young to do much about it at the time, had fled to Mercia. When he was seventeen he’d returned with a small warband and killed the jarl and his hearth warriors.

  The jarl’s brother had then tried to drive the thane off his land and the conflict had spread with other landowners taking sides. The Earl of Deira, Ælfhelm, had proved incapable of halting the escalating violence and King Æthelred had grown alarmed at the prospect of his kingdom descending into civil war between Danes and Anglo-Saxons.

  Because of sporadic Danish raids in Wessex and East Anglia he decided he couldn’t come north himself so he sent a messenger to me with a letter.

  ‘What does it say,’ Ecgfrida asked when she saw me frown deeply at the contents.

  She had been sitting playing a game with Aldred, who was now five and a half. Much to my son’s evident annoyance, she left him and came across to me. I handed her the letter to read for herself.

  ‘The king appoints you as Bretwalda of all Northumbria and charges you with the task of putting down the unrest in Deira,’ she exclaimed after scanning it. ‘How does he expect you to do that? You don’t have anything like the number of warriors the Danes have and the fyrd won’t want to get involved in a matter that doesn’t threaten them and their families. Furthermore, all you’ve done to secure peace with the Scots has come at a cost to us. I don’t see the king promising to recompense you for any expenditure involved.’

  ‘That’s true, and money is becoming a concern. Perhaps I need to raise the matter with him? He says I can call upon my father’s warriors as well but he cautions me against making the situation worse by using excessive force.’

  ‘What does he expect you to do? The situation is one of his making in the first place. He may be the king, but he has little or no common sense as far as I can see.’

  ‘This isn’t a problem that can be solved through fighting; it requires negotiation.’

  ‘You plan to talk to the Danes? They’ll kill you and leave me a widow and our son without a father to protect him.’

  I had the distinct feeling that my wife was more worried about her situation, and that of her son, rather than having any concern for me. I scowled at her, feeling resentful.

  ‘Not just the Danes,’ I muttered savagely. ‘I need to knock everyone’s head together and seek a reconciliation.’

  ‘What you need is a common enemy to bring them together. It’s a pity that the Scots aren’t a threat to them at present.’

  ‘Not the Scots, no,’ I said thoughtfully.

  I forgot her apparent lack of concern for me; a germ of an idea had begun to develop in my mind, prompted by what she had said.

  At first my father was unwilling to cooperate but, when I threatened to call a council of ealdormen and ask them to rule on the matter, he relented. Waltheof didn’t derive all his income from taxes and rents. For a long time our family had traded across the North Sea and we maintained a small fleet of birlinns – a type of warship not that dissimilar to the Scandinavian longships – to escort our trading vessels to and fro across the pirate infested North Sea.

  ~~~

  A week or so later I was heading north along the coast of Scotland feeling wretched and being constantly sick as the birlinn he had reluctantly lent me charged down one wave and rose up the next. The wind howled in the rigging and the rowers strained to keep her on course. I had been warned that to set out in February was foolhardy as it was still the season of storms, but I couldn’t afford to wait. Once winter was over fighting between Dane and Anglo-Saxon would recommence in Deira.

  My destination was Caithness in the north of Scotland. The Norse had settled in the Orkneys and Shetland Isles centuries before and eighty years ago they had invaded the north of Scotland, wresting control of Sutherland and Caithness from its Scottish mormaer. Now Sigurd the Stout, Jarl of Orkney, ruled the far north of the Scottish mainland from his base at Thurso - my destination.

  Eventually the gale abated and we were able to raise the sail. Four days after we set out from Budle Bay near Bebbanburg we rounded Duncansby Head and headed west along the north coast towards Thurso Bay.

  The settlement itself lay at the
mouth of the river of the same name, but soon after we had rounded Dunnet Head half a dozen longships put out from Thurso and surrounded our Birlinn.

  ‘Who are you and what is your business here?’ a voice called out in Norse.

  ‘I am Uhtred, Bretwalda of Northumbria, come to seek an audience with Jarl Sigurd. Is he here?’

  I was thankful that Borg had been able to teach me Norse before he had been killed.

  ‘Bretwalda? It’s not a title I know,’ the voice called back.

  ‘It means war leader.’

  ‘You come here for war?’

  The man sounded incredulous.

  ‘No, to discuss something to our mutual benefit with Jarl Sigurd.’

  ‘Very well. But only you and a servant will be allowed ashore, and you must come up to the hall unarmed.’

  My body servant, Cædmon, didn’t look happy at the prospect of accompanying me into the lion’s den, but he didn’t have much of a choice. I did and, as we were marched up to the jarl’s hall by a score or more of fierce looking Norsemen, I wondered if my decision to come and see the Viking lord who ruled the north and the islands with an iron fist had been a wise one.

  Jarl was a Scandinavian term for which the nearest English term was earl. However, many who called themselves jarls equated to no more than thanes, but this one was more like a minor king. Sigurd sat in a carved throne on a raised platform at the far end of his dimly-lit hall. At first I couldn’t make out his features but as I came closer I could see a heavily bearded face marred by a scar which ran from his right eye across where his nose should have been and ended on the left hand side of his jawbone. No hair grew on the puckered scar tissue and the absence of a nose gave him a look that would give children nightmares.

  His biceps were hidden by silver and gold arm rings but his forearms bore several scars. This man was a warrior of some experience – and luck to have survived such wounds. I half expected to see Thor’s hammer, the charm worn by many Vikings, hanging around his neck, but instead a large silver crucifix lay on his chest suspended from a gold chain. Then I remembered hearing somewhere that Olaf Tryggvason had converted to Christianity at some stage and he had imposed the religion on his subjects, including the inhabitants of the Orkneys and Shetlands.