by H A CULLEY
‘If I made the threat I would have had to follow through or no one would trust my word again, lord.’
‘Remind me never to cross you, Uhtred,’ Edmund said with a grin.
Of course I would have had to carry out my threat or be seen as a windbag who didn’t mean what he said, but I would have hated doing so. No one was more grateful than I was that I didn’t have to make good on it.
The detestable Eadwulf was waiting on the steps of the hall to greet us, if that’s the right word. The expression on his face left us in no doubt that we were about as welcome as the plague.
‘Where is father?’ I asked without preamble, wondering if he had simply refused to come out to meet us.
‘In the ground,’ Eadwulf said without a trace of grief. ‘He died a week ago, just after getting a letter from that puppy there,’ he said, pointing at Edmund. ‘It broke his heart. I am now Earl of Bernicia, in accordance with his wishes.’
‘Did you not read my letter, Eadwulf? There is no Earl of Bernicia anymore. In view of your attitude I doubt that my father will even agree to you becoming Ealdorman of Alnwick. He and Earl Uhtred need nobles they can trust.’
‘Who is now the captain of Bebbanburg?’ I asked whilst my brother was still spluttering in protest.
‘I am, lord.’
The speaker was a large man dressed in byrnie and a helmet with a nasal guard and metal ear protectors. At first I didn’t recognise him. He’d been a young beardless warrior the last time I’d seen him. He removed his helmet and bowed.
‘Horsa? Man, you’ve changed. I nearly didn’t recognise you.’
‘Yes, lord. It’s good to see you again too. I’m pleased to say that your brother hasn’t yet asked for my oath of allegiance so I’m free to serve you, if you’ll have me.’
‘Of course, you are most welcome.’
After he had knelt and given me his oath he stood and we embraced. Eadwulf gave a snort of disgust and turned to go back into the hall.
‘Wait, brother. This is no longer your hall and Edmund and I are eager to get out of this accursed rain. Horsa, you first duty is to escort Eadwulf inside to pack up his belongings, only his mind, and then he is to depart immediately.’
‘Where do you expect me to go?’ he asked pathetically.
‘I don’t know and I don’t care, just so long as I don’t ever see you again.’
Shortly afterwards I went up to the ramparts to watch him take the road south. He had taken three horses, one each for him and his body servant, and a pack horse. Two women, who Horsa said were his favourite slaves and bedfellows, followed him on foot. Our paths were destined to cross again, but not for several years.
~~~
We left the next day. I put Horsa in command of Bebbanburg with twenty of my youngest and rawest warriors as his garrison. It was Horsa who had been responsible for getting the gates opened the previous afternoon, contrary to Eadwulf’s orders, and he had to kill two of the men who’d opposed him. The rest of the previous garrison of Bebbanburg joined my army as we headed for York.
I had been told that it had originally been a Roman fort housing a legion enclosed in stone walls. It had become the municipal centre for the north of Britannia: the Roman name for the province which would later become England. The Roman oppidum which had grown up around the fort had been unprotected. However, the population in those far off days must have been much larger. Now the civilian population and the garrison fitted within what remained of the walls.
These had fallen down in many places over the centuries and people had taken the stone for the foundations of their houses. It had been used to build the monastery with its imposing cathedral church; though not one as imposing as Durham. The walls had been patched with sections of palisade but, even so, I saw with dismay that these days there were several gaps in the defences.
A camp had sprung up outside the burh, along both banks of the River Ouse, for the army that was beginning to gather. Judging by the number of tents, there were at least a thousand men here already. Ulfric took the men who had accompanied me off to find a suitable site upstream from the rest whilst Edmund’s men headed for the banks of the smaller River Foss which joined the Ouse south of York. Once I had taken the oath of allegiance to him as the representative of his father he would be leaving without delay.
The ceremony would take place in the cathedral in the presence of Archbishop Wulfstan and the assembled nobles. It was intended to reinforce my status as Earl of all Northumbria. Afterwards all ealdormen, jarls and thanes would come forward in turn to swear to obey me as their superior. Needless to say, a careful note would be taken of all those who failed to appear to take the oath. I would have liked to have acted against them promptly, but their punishment would have to wait until the threat posed by the Scots had been dealt with.
To my surprise and pleasure none of the ealdormen and only a handful of the jarls and thanes failed to attend the service in the cathedral. The service, the homily and the administration of the oaths seemed to take for ever but at last it was over and we could start the real purpose of the meeting.
‘I’m delighted to see all but a handful of the nobles of Northumbria gathered before me.’
I let my gaze sweep over the rows and rows of men standing in front of me from my vantage point on the raised dais on which the altar sat. Wulfstan stood on the other side of the altar with Edmund beside him.
‘I don’t need to tell you that Malcolm and his Scots are advancing down the east coast. From the last reports I received from my scouts, he has diverted inland to cross the Tweed via the ford at Norham and has now entered Glendale, skirting the wilderness that is the Cheviot Hills.’
‘Of what concern is that to us, Uhtred?’ a voice called out from the midst of the Danish jarls. ‘It is a long way north of Deira. We don’t understand why you have allowed the Scots that far south without any attempt to stop them. Do you intend to hand all of Lothian and Bernicia to Malcolm?’
There was a murmur of agreement and then another of the Danes called out.
‘Is it your plan to allow him into our lands without opposition just so we are forced to fight for you?’
I held up my hands and gradually the angry voices died away.
‘There is no point in fighting a battle I am certain to lose. That would just open up the road south into Deira for Malcolm and his barbarians,’
I didn’t for one minute think of the Scots like that. Many were wild and ill-disciplined for sure, but they were Christians and as civilised as any Dane or Anglo-Saxon, except for the Highlanders perhaps. But it didn’t do any harm to let them think of the Scots as quite different to them.
‘That’s all very well but why should we follow you? You’re an Angle and the last one that was foisted on us as earl was useless, just like all of you.’
I was about to point out that they had just sworn allegiance to me but I realised that I was losing the argument as far as following me as their war leader was concerned, and so I looked towards the archbishop.
‘You have expressed your concerns and the earl and I have heard what you say. Allow us time to consider them. I suggest we meet here again in two days’ time.’
~~~
I was staggered by what Wulfstan had suggested to me within an hour of the end of the war council.
‘But to do that would make an enemy of the Bishop of Durham,’ I pointed out.
‘You told me yourself that you haven’t slept with Ecgfrida in years. Not only would you gain the support of the Danish jarls by doing as I suggest, but you would also gain the opportunity to sire more children.’
I sat back in my chair and thought about what the archbishop was proposing. Styr Ulfson was the Ealdorman of York and the most influential of the Danish leaders. Furthermore, he was extremely wealthy, having made his money as a merchant trading in gold jewellery. He had a daughter, Sige, who was fifteen. I didn’t suppose for one moment that she would welcome marriage to a man twenty years her senior, but this wasn
’t about personal wishes; this was about the survival of Northumbria as part of England.
It was also about my own survival, I reminded myself. I wasn’t so foolish as to think that Malcolm would let me live if he got his hands on me. After all, he had tried to have me killed before. If he succeeded in conquering even part of Northumbria and incorporating it into his kingdom, he knew that I would stir up trouble for him by whatever means I could with the aim of driving him back out.
‘How do I marry Sige, even if I agreed, when I am already married?’
‘You leave me to deal with that,’ Wulfstan said with a grim smile. ‘There are certain advantages in being an archbishop.’
‘Let me sleep on it,’
‘Very well, but don’t forget the war council meets again the day after tomorrow. Don’t take too long to make up your mind.’
Despite not sleeping together as man and wife for nearly a decade, I was still fond of Ecgfrida and if I divorced her I felt that I would be betraying her father as well, a man I liked and who had been my spiritual mentor for almost as long as I could remember. It wasn’t an easy choice.
The next day news arrived which made my mind up for me. The Scots had reached Durham and had laid siege to it.
‘Why would they do that?’ Ulfric asked me as we broke our fast together after hearing mass. ‘They have ignored Bebbanburg and the other major fortresses and now they are trying to take one of the most impregnable burhs. Is the man an idiot?’
‘Far from it,’ I replied, trying to chew a tough piece of mutton and sounding as if I had a cleft pallet.
I gave up on the meat and spat it out, only for one of the dogs that lived in the hall to snap it up. I kept my hunting dogs in kennels but my predecessor as earl had liked them to live with him and I hadn’t got around to getting a new home built for them as yet.
‘Malcolm is clever. By laying siege to the burh where my father in law is bishop he hopes that I will come riding to his rescue. That way he thinks he can defeat me in open battle.’
‘What will you do?’
‘Nothing in a hurry. Durham can hold out for weeks, months even and Malcolm won’t be able to assault the place, not without siege engines which he doesn’t have.’
‘Siege engines?’
It wasn’t a term that Ulfric was familiar with but I had studied old scrolls in Latin and had a modicum of knowledge about catapults, assault towers and the like. The trouble was they were not a great deal of use when the place you were attacking sat across a wide river and on top of a steep-sided hill.
‘Never mind. I’ll explain what they are later. My immediate task is to unite the fighting men of all Northumbria under my banner.’
‘And how are you going to do that? The Anglo-Saxons might all follow you but you need the Danes and, judging from the council meeting yesterday, few seem inclined to trust you.’
So I explained. Ulfric was against the proposal that I should divorce Ecgfrida at first; they were good friends and he was upset by the whole idea, but eventually he saw the sense of it from a strategic viewpoint. Not only would it identify me more with the Danes, but it would serve me in good stead once I took up residence in York as the ruler of Northumbria.
So, my mind made up, I went to see Wulfstan first so that he could dissolve my marriage to Ecgfrida and then went to call on Ealdorman Styr. Of course, Sige wasn’t with him; she was with her mother and other siblings in Leeds. However, I was pleased to find that I liked her father. Although rich and one of the most powerful nobles in Deira, he was unpretentious and down to earth. He dressed simply and adorned himself with just two gold arm rings and a gold crucifix around his neck. Most Danes were ostentatious about their appearance, wearing as much gold and silver as they could to advertise their wealth.
His one weakness was his desire to enhance his status and his wealth further. Allying himself with the new Earl of Northumbria appealed to his vanity and he readily agreed to give me his daughter in marriage. I couldn’t help but wonder what the poor girl would make of this when she found out. It seemed that that would be sooner rather than later as Styr sent a messenger off to Leeds with orders for his family to join him as soon as possible.
Things were moving at a pace that I was uncomfortable with. My poor Ecgfrida wouldn’t even hear that she had been divorced before I was re-married at this rate. Besides, I hadn’t yet seen Siga. She might be young but she might also be hideous. I wasn’t one of those men who could rut with anything with a hole between her legs. I prayed that she was attractive, but I wouldn’t find out until we met at the altar, or so Wulfstan informed me.
He had decided, with Styr, that the wedding ceremony should take place immediately before the war council, and then everyone could go off and get drunk afterwards at our wedding feast.
‘You didn’t think to consult me?’ I stormed at him when he told me.
Wulfstan shrugged, which annoyed me even more.
‘It seemed to me that it was an ideal way of getting the Danes on side before we discussed the relief of Durham,’ he explained.
‘You should have asked me if I agreed.’
‘Don’t be petulant, Uhtred. It doesn’t suit you. What would you have said had I asked you?’
He had a point, it was just that I didn’t like being taken for granted.
‘Very well. But in future don’t make decisions that involve me without discussing them with me first.’
‘I’ve got the message,’ he said stiffly.
It was obvious that he liked being told off even less that I liked being ignored.
Early the next day I attended Lauds with the monks and the mass which followed it as preparation for my coming wedding. I ate little to break my fast as I was, I confess, nervous about marrying Sige. I had made a hash of my wedding night with Ecgfrida and I wanted it to go well this time.
It had rained overnight, making the path from the refractory to the cathedral muddy and I cursed as my new leather shoes and scarlet trousers, tied with yellow ribbons up to the knee, became splattered with brown splodges.
My bride wore a dark blue over-dress which only came down to mid-calf and so had escaped the mud. On the other hand the hem of the cream woollen under-dress was stained brown, not that I spent much time looking at Sige’s clothing. As an unmarried girl her hair was worn loose; it would be covered during the ceremony, but for now it cascaded around her face in a glorious mass of golden hair.
Her face was oval with a petite nose and a full, rather sensuous mouth. As she drew closer I could see that her eyes were a rather piercing light blue. When she smiled demurely she exposed even white teeth. She was the prettiest girl I’d seen in a long time and any guilt I might have felt at divorcing Ecgfrith disappeared as I grinned back at her like an inane loon.
I don’t remember much about the ceremony but I was sorry to see my new wife disappear with her mother when it was over. The realisation that the next item on the agenda was for me to convince the nobles of Northumbria to raise the siege of Durham hit me like a bucketful of cold water.
‘Yesterday some of you doubted my commitment to you. You saw me as a Bernician and not as a Northumbrian. Well today I stand before you as someone who has put aside his Bernician wife in order to marry one of you, a Dane from Leeds. My home is now in York.’
A great cheer went up from the Danish jarls and also from the Anglo-Saxon thanes of Deira, though they were in the minority. My own nobles from Bernicia looked less pleased, however.
‘That doesn’t mean that I have forsaken my countrymen north of the River Tees. I intend to rule all of Northumbria from the Firth of Forth to the Humber with fairness and justice for all. But first we have to rid ourselves of the Scottish scourge.’
I nodded to two of my men at the back of the cathedral who came forward carrying a wooden board which they set up on the altar facing the nave so that everyone could see what was drawn on it.
‘This is a map of Durham. The blue line is the River Wear; as you can see it curves aro
und the burh on three sides, making it look like a pouch of coins. The river is deep and fast flowing and the banks on which the burh stands are steep. At the top of the slope there is a tall palisade so it is virtually impossible for the Scots to assault it on those three sides.
‘They are camped here, to the north where the land is flat. The burh is defended by a palisade here,’ I said, pointing with my sword, ‘across the isthmus at the base of the hill on which Durham stands, and another here,’
I pointed again, drawing a line across the board where the distance between two parts of the river was narrowest.
‘This protects the steep slope up to the top of the hill where the thane’s hall and the monastery are located. So far the Scots haven’t even managed to breach the first palisade. My plan is to advance up the east bank of the Tees and trap them between us and the walls of Durham.’
I would still have to cross over the Wear at some point but I could worry about that later.
‘Have we enough men to defeat them?’ one of the thanes from Lothian called out.
‘Our numbers will be evenly matched, if the reports of their strength are at all accurate,’ I replied. ‘But they will be penned in without being able to manoeuvre. It’s where our archers will be able to reap a rich harvest. Few of the Scots own byrnies, or even helmets, and many use small shields called targes. That leaves them vulnerable to our archers firing over the heads of our warriors to strike at their rear ranks.’
‘Pah,’ one of the Danish ealdormen said in derision. ‘I’ve never found your bowmen much good against a shield wall.’
‘That may be so, I said trying hard not to lose my temper. ‘But the Scots don’t use the shield wall. They charge en masse and rely on the fight turning into a melee, where their superior numbers and energy can overwhelm their enemies.’
‘I doubt you will need all of us if what you say is true,’ he said doggedly.
‘Have you ever seen the Scots in battle? No? Well I have. I was fourteen the first time I witnessed how they fight and they destroyed a Norse army. I don’t want just to defeat them, I want to make sure that they never come south of the Forth for a generation, and that means annihilating them. To do that I need every single man.’