by H A CULLEY
‘Have you heard anything about the activities of my brother, Horsa?’ I asked the man I’d left in charge of Bebbanburg.
‘It’s said that he had killed the family who owned land in Ettrickdale and established a stronghold there. He’s gathered some hundred outlaws and leaderless warriors to his side.’
‘Why hasn’t Gosric done something about him, if he’s murdered this poor family?’
‘I suspect that Gosric supports him, lord,’ Horsa said, looking uncomfortable. ‘The family were Strathclyde Britons and he is worried about them encroaching into the west of his shire.’
It made sense. Gosric was the local ealdorman and he had raised his concerns about the expansion of Strathclyde with me before. But Gosric was being short-sighted. Stirring up trouble on his western border was likely to cause him more problems, not solve existing ones.
‘Select twenty of your best warriors, they can join mine when we leave tomorrow.’
‘Where are we going, lord?’
‘To see Gosric first and then on to see my troublesome brother.’
~~~
It may have been early April but it was bitterly cold when I walked out of my hall at Bebbanburg just after dawn, made worse by the biting wind whistling in off the North Sea. I wrapped my thick woollen cloak with the wolf skin collar tight about me as I made for the stables. Most of the escort I had brought with me and the warriors from the fortress were already there and each was similarly dressed in a warm cloak, except for my son.
‘Where’s your thick cloak, Aldred? You’ll freeze to death in that one.’
‘Thought it would be warmer, father. I only have this one with me. It is impregnated with lanolin so it’s good at keeping out the rain.’
‘It’s more likely to snow than rain today,’ I told him severely, then relented when I saw how miserable he was.
‘Wait here,’
I walked back up to the hall and searched through one of the coffers that contained clothes that I had worn as a boy. They had been kept for Waltheof’s future grandchildren but, of course, I had never lived there after my first marriage and my brother had never sired children as far as I knew, which was surprising seeing how many slaves and drabs he’d managed to bed. I found what I sought and retraced my steps to the stables.
‘Tie the cloak you’re wearing behind your saddle and put this one on.’
Aldred staggered under the weight of the one I threw him. It was made from the pelt of two bears and it had been given to me when I’d been twelve. It had been my father’s before me when he was just coming up to manhood. In the days when it had been made bears were becoming rare in this part of England, but were not unknown; now I didn’t think any were left.
‘Thank you father!’ my son exclaimed, beaming at me with pleasure.
‘Have you got gloves?’
He pulled out a pair of leather gauntlets and showed me.
‘Put them on, and wear your arming cap to keep your head warm too.’
We didn’t normally wear helmets when travelling, unless we were expecting trouble. They were uncomfortable and they made it difficult to see and hear properly. However, the leather or padded linen caps worn under them were useful for keeping one’s head and ears warm.
We rode out of the fortress just over sixty strong. I wasn’t expecting trouble, but at least I had the men to enforce my orders should it become necessary.
~~~
It was still unseasonably cold and we had just ridden through a light snow shower when the burh of Selkirk came into sight. Gosric came out of his hall with his wife and two daughters as we dismounted. The two girls were eleven and twelve and both of them seemed very interested in my son in his bearskin cloak. I glanced at Aldred and noted that he was studying them, albeit rather shyly. I tried to remember if I was interested in girls at his age and suspected that I was just becoming aware of them. I smiled to myself. My son was growing up.
‘Welcome, Earl Uhtred, this is unexpected. We thought you were visiting us in a month’s time.’
Selkirk, like all the seats of my ealdormen, was on the list of places to visit but I had changed the itinerary in order to deal with the problem of Eadwulf first.
‘My apologies, Gosric. I have come early because of disturbing tidings which have reached me, but that can wait until we are inside, away from this cursed snow.’
‘Of course, forgive me. Come into the hall.’
Once inside I greeted his wife, who I’d met before, and he introduced his daughters, Æðelhild and Hereswið. I in turn introduced Aldred and the two girls looked down demurely, simpering, before looking up at him coyly through lowered lids. I had a feeling that Gosric was going to have problems with those two. They seemed rather too practiced in the art of attracting boys, given their ages. Certainly Aldred couldn’t take his eyes off them, especially the elder of the two. I decided that it was time that I had a talk with my son.
However, that would have to wait. When we ate Æðelhild and Hereswið sat either side of Aldred and they vied for his attention. I could see that he was lapping it up until their mother scolded them for being brazen. I could tell from my son’s expression that he didn’t know what the word meant but he too curbed his high spirits when the two girls started to behave more demurely.
As soon as they and the women had left I leaned close to Gosric, hoping that he was still sober enough for us to have a sensible conversation.
‘I understand that my brother has been raiding the Britons who have settled to the west of here,’ I began in a conversational tone.
Gosric shifted uncomfortably in his seat before replying.
‘So I understand.’
‘What have you done about it?’ I said, keeping my tone neutral.
‘Done? Nothing, it’s outside my shire.’
‘You do realise the likely consequences of Eadwulf’s raids?’
‘It dissuades more settlers from encroaching into the disputed land between Lothian and Strathclyde,’ he said defensively.
‘Perhaps, but it is also likely to persuade Owain to take action to defend his people, and that could prove serious for you and your shire.’
‘But, like Malcolm, Owain lost many of his men of fighting age at Durham.’
‘Except that Owain himself and half of his army were away foraging at the time of the battle, so he can probably still raise the best part of a thousand fighters if he had to.’
‘Oh, I wasn’t aware of that.’
‘Nor was I until recently. A party of monks visited York from Iona and they told the archbishop.’
Like Lindisfarne, Iona had been abandoned in the ninth century when the monks who survived its destruction by Vikings moved to Kells in Ireland but, unlike the community of Lindisfarne, the monks had returned a few decades ago under the protection of Amlaíb Cuarán, the Norse King of Dublin. He was now buried there but the protection of the monastery had continued under the present king, Sigtrygg Silkbeard, who was said to a very devout Christian.
‘So you see it is very much in your interest, and mine, that the activities of my brother cease immediately. It might help if you sent wergeld to Owain.’
Wergeld was the payment made to the family of a murdered or injured man to stop a blood feud between the perpetrator’s and the victim’s family developing.
‘Wergeld, why me? It’s your brother who is the culprit.’
‘And you expect me to believe that he hasn’t been paying you part of the proceeds to turn a blind eye?’
Gosric refused to meet my eye and muttered something about any payment being part of his due as taxes.
‘Oh, and have these taxes been declared to my steward?’ I asked, knowing full well that they hadn’t been.
He sighed and scowled at me.
‘Very well, how much wergeld must I send?’
‘Everything that Eadwulf has given you. My brother will add the rest from what he has stolen.’
‘He has gathered a sizeable band of desperate men around him.
The men you have brought with you won’t be enough to overcome them, not without significant losses.’
‘In that case you had better summon your nearest thanes and their household warriors and muster as many of the fyrd as you can in the next two days.’
~~~
When I saw him at mass the next morning Gosric had evidently decided to cooperate fully with me and by dawn on the third day some thirty thanes and warriors had arrived, together with a hundred and twenty members of the fyrd. Added to Gosric’s own warband, I now had well over two hundred men with which to confront my brother.
We travelled slowly as most of my little force were on foot. It was obvious that word of our coming would reach Eadwulf and so I sent all those on horseback, some fifty five men in all, to circle around my brother’s camp on the Yarrow Water and stop him escaping into the vastness of Ettrick Forest.
We could see the hall built of wattle and daub with a turf roof half a mile away as we approached along the valley. There were a few outbuildings, constructed in the same manner, but no other dwellings. Presumably my brother’s men lived in the hall with him. When we got there, advancing in shield wall formation just in case of attack, we found the place deserted apart from a dozen slave girls and a few boys.
When Horsa arrived with the horsemen half an hour later we knew that Eadwulf had escaped my clutches.
‘Do you know where Eadwulf and his men have gone?’ I asked the slaves, who clustered in front of me like a flock of sheep penned in by a pack of wolves; that is all except one. She had fiery red hair and, as I soon discovered, a temperament to match. She glared at me defiantly and I addressed my remarks to her.
‘I’m not going to harm you. If you tell me the truth I’ll set you free.’
‘How do we know we can trust you? One of your men said that you were Eadwulf’s brother.’
‘I am and we couldn’t be more dissimilar. I’m Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria, and I’ve come to stop Eadwulf’s raids in the wild lands to the west. Am I correct in assuming that you are a Briton from Strathclyde?’
It wasn’t much of a guess. That had to be where these slaves had all come from and, although the redhead spoke good English, it was with an accent that indicated that her mother tongue was Brythonic, the Celtic language spoken by the northern Britons and similar to the tongue of the Picts.
‘That bastard Eadwulf killed my family and burnt our farm to the ground after pillaging it and taking our livestock. Then the turd forced me to share his bed.’
‘I take it you didn’t do so willingly?’
She spat a globule of phlegm onto the ground.
‘He raped me, not once but repeatedly, and he enjoyed it. If you find him give him to me and the other women. We’ll castrate him and laugh whilst he bleeds to death.’
I suddenly realised that Aldred was listening to this with a look of fascinated horror on his face. For a moment I considered telling Horsa to take him out of earshot, but then I reasoned he would be twelve next month and the whole point of taking him with me was to broaden his education. Well, this was certainly doing that.
‘Do you know where he is?’
‘No, they left yesterday morning to go raiding again. There is little left within a dozen miles to the west and the north-west so my guess is that he had headed south into the Craik Forest.’
‘Thank you. One further question. Why didn’t you run as soon as he left you?’
‘For the same reason we stayed when you appeared. The forest is full of wolves and we are a long way from our people. Two women did take their chances six months ago. Some of Eadwulf’s men found them a week later. They had been partially eaten and they brought their corpses back to show us. We decided it was better to stay here alive rather than run and die.’
I nodded and let the slaves go so that they could get on with their normal tasks of preparing food for us and looking after the camp.
‘What will you do? Gosric asked me when he, Horsa and the thanes were seated in Eadwulf’s hovel of a hall drinking possibly the worst ale I’d ever tasted.
‘Send out scouts to give warning of his return. Then we’ll ambush him and his men as soon as they enter this hall. I want him alive but the rest can die.’
The interior of the hall was lit only by the open door, two shuttered windows and the hole in the roof that allowed most of the smoke to escape. When they entered the gloomy hall from broad daylight it would take time for their eyes to adjust. All my warriors had to do was to stand still against the walls and then attack whilst the enemy was still blind. Those still outside could be dealt with by archers up in the roof and the fyrd concealed in the outbuildings.
Had it been a sunny day the plan might have worked perfectly, but the day they returned was gloomy and rain sheeted down out of the black sky. That meant that the contrast between outside and the interior was not as great as I’d hoped and the archers couldn’t use their bows to good effect. Wet bowstrings reduce their range and power significantly.
As soon as the first dozen men entered the hall, shaking the water off their cloaks and yelling at the slaves to get the fires lit so that they could dry out, they spotted my men and drew their swords. We outnumbered them four to one so they were quickly disposed of, the sole survivor being my brother, but there were far more still outside than I’d thought and they were all experienced fighters, unlike the fyrd.
The thirty five outlaws and mercenaries were heavily outnumbered by the fyrd but they started to cut them down with ease and Gosric’s men backed off. Unfortunately the rest of my warriors were lying in wait outside the settlement to cut off any who escaped. Therefore it wasn’t until I stepped outside the hall that I saw the raiders re-mounting their horses unhindered by the cowed men of the fyrd, a dozen of whom already lay dead, that I realised that we were in danger of allowing most of the murdering swine to escape.
True, ten of my men now barred the track to the west but they were there to kill the odd escapee. They wouldn’t be able to stop over three times their number mounted on horses.
‘To me,’ I yelled back into the hall and launched myself from the top of the steps outside the doorway onto the back of the horse nearest me. I punched my dagger into the rider’s neck and toppled him out of the saddle, then I used the sword in my other hand to cut at the head of the next man. It was difficult because the horse had panicked at the sudden change of rider and was being skittish. It wasn’t a good blow and it glanced off his helmet but it struck his shoulder, breaking it. He fell from his horse screaming in pain. Suddenly a boy darted forward and cut his throat with a dagger – a boy wearing a bearskin cloak.
Aldred’s valiant action gave the fyrd renewed courage and they rushed forward with a roar and started to drag Eadwulf’s men from their horses and butcher them. By the time that the rest of my warriors had rushed out from the hall there was little for them to do except kill the last few. Two managed to ride away but they would run into my cut-off group.
It had been a little perilous for a time, but in the end the outcome was all that I could have hoped for, apart from the losses amongst the fyrd. We put our dead in a store shed out of the rain for now and piled the outlaws a little away from the settlement for the animals to feast on. We now had nearly fifty more horses which I decided to give to Gosric so that he could train his household warriors to fight on horseback. The plunder that Eadwulf had amassed was divided, half amongst our men in the usual way, and half to go to King Owain, together with the released slaves, in recompense for the raids.
‘What did you think you were doing, Eadwulf?’ I asked my brother when he was dragged before me. ‘Trying to start a war?’
‘You left me with nothing. What did you expect me to do, become a sell sword?’
‘Hardly, no one would employ a mercenary who couldn’t win a fight with a ten year old boy,’ I scoffed. ‘No, I gave you a farm. I expected you to settle down and work the land for a living.’
‘I was born the son of an earl; an earl who left me his ear
ldom until you stole it from me. I’m not scratching a living in the dirt,’ he replied contemptuously.
‘I didn’t steal it from you,’ I replied patiently. ‘The king made me earl over all of Northumbria.’
I studied him for some time whilst he glared back at me.
‘I should send you to hell to join your companions. However, you are my brother and, much I might regret that fact, I won’t see you killed. I hereby declare you formally to be outside the law. I would advise you to go into exile. Give him a horse and let him go.’
To make someone an outlaw was the harshest punishment I could legally impose. No one was allowed to give Eadwulf food, shelter, or any other sort of support. To do so was to commit the crime of aiding and abetting, and the culprit would himself be subjected to the same punishment. Because Eadwulf was denied the protection of the law, anyone could now kill him with impunity.
‘Do you think it was wise to let him go?’ Horsa asked me quietly when we were seated around the fire pit drinking more of Eadwulf’s appalling ale. The only people within earshot were Uuen, who was drying my clothes, and Aldred, who was examining the sword I’d given him from my share of the plunder in recognition of his act of bravery.
‘Probably not. Let’s hope that he has the sense to stay out of England from now on.’
He did, for a while, but the next time I saw him I had cause to regret my decision not to kill him when I had the chance.
Chapter Sixteen – Sweyn Forkbeard
1013
In the four years after my brother went into exile we were left in peace in Northumbria. Owain accepted the restitution I made to him for Eadwulf’s depredations against his people and there was another positive outcome. Because of the fate he and his men had meted out to the settlers in the forested hills between Strathclyde and Stirlingshire, no one else seemed willing to risk taking their place and the borderlands to the west remained largely uninhabited.