Uhtred the Bold

by H A CULLEY

  ‘Have you heard who Cnut has left in charge here whilst he is back in Denmark?’ I asked.

  ‘Thorkell the Tall, or so I hear. He’d have been wiser to secure his position here and wait until after his coronation before tackling his brother. What will you do?’

  I thought for a while.

  ‘My oath was given to Sweyn, not Cnut and certainly not to Thorkell. It all depends on whether Æthelred has the guts to return and re-take his kingdom.’

  In March he did return but it was Edmund, his eldest son, who took England back for him, ousting the earls imposed by Sweyn and the jarls who’d been given his father’s lands. The Danes of Deira hadn’t profited from Sweyn’s conquest; indeed they were rather looked down upon by Sweyn’s nobles, and so I had little problem in persuading them to accept Æthelred again.

  By the summer Æthelred was back in charge of England and Wulfstan had been summoned south to crown Æthelred. It was unnecessary as he’d remained a king in exile in the eyes of nearly all his subjects, but it was done to mark his return to power.

  I was at Bebbanburg in the middle of July when two letters reached me. When I had left York Sige had been fit and well. It therefore came as a great shock when I read that one of her maids had found her dead when she went to wake her two days after I had left. It was sudden and unexplained. All the infirmarian at the abbey could say was that her heart must have suddenly stopped beating.

  I was devastated and immediately made plans for Aldred and I to return to York. My other son, Eadulf, would need me and there was the funeral to arrange.

  I didn’t open the second letter until we were just about to leave. Indeed I had forgotten about it until Aldred reminded me. It was a summons to London from Æthelred. He didn’t say why he wanted to see me and I assumed that I would be required to re-affirm my oath to him. Of course, it could be because I had submitted to Sweyn and was to be punished. I cursed. Whatever the reason, it was the last thing I needed right now.

  I reached York late on the third day, saddle sore and stiff having covered fifty miles every day. As Wulfstan was still in London with the king I asked the abbot to perform the service and we buried my wife in the monastery cemetery. Eadulf did his best not to cry but, at barely seven years old, it was natural for him to miss his mother.

  London was a long way away, some two hundred miles or more, but I decided that I would have to take him with me. I couldn’t leave him to be looked after by servants just after losing his mother. However, spending a lot more time in the saddle didn’t appeal to me and it was too far for Eadulf to ride his pony; I therefore decided to go by sea.

  I would have preferred to travel down from Bebbanburg by ship, but all our vessels were away trading at the moment. So I bought passage for myself, my sons, Uuen, Tonbert and seven other household warriors, or housecarls as they were now being called in imitation of the Danish bodyguards. It was a merchant ship called a knarr and, as we had a cabin, we were comfortable enough. However, I was a little concerned about pirates. Thankfully we were travelling in convoy and had a birlinn as escort.

  Eadulf suffered from seasickness a little, but otherwise we had a good journey until we were level with a place in Essex the captain said was called Harwich. Suddenly three craft emerged from the estuary of the Orwell and the Stour and headed towards us on an interception course. Two of the pirates were Viking longships and the other was a smaller boat that the captain said was called a karve. The two bigger ships had thirty oars a side or more but the karve only had eight, indicating a crew of no more than twenty including the steersman, ships boys and so on.

  We had eight seamen in addition to me and my men, making a total of nineteen, including Uuen. Numbers were therefore even and I was willing to bet that my warriors were more than a match for a few Vikings.

  They may have been Danes who had been left behind by Cnut but it was more likely that they were Norse or Danish raiders who had crossed the North Sea and then lain in wait for unsuspecting merchantmen. The birlinn escorting us had twenty five oars a side and was therefore slightly smaller than the two longships. Nevertheless it headed for one of the Viking ships which turned to meet it. The other longship headed for the rest of fleet, which scattered in panic. All except for our knarr.

  We headed for the karve, which turned to meet us. They must have thought us brave or stupid; they had no way of knowing that there were ten experienced mailed warriors on board.

  We hid in the aft cabin until the Vikings grappled us and started to climb aboard. I admonished Eadulf to stay hidden and led the rest of us in a charge which drove half a dozen of the boarders back onto their own ship, leaving a few for the crew to deal with. I leaped down onto the smaller ship with Aldred on one side of me and Tonbert on the other. Vikings don’t like to fight at sea wearing mail in case they fall overboard so our opponents only wore leather jerkins as protection.

  A large man with a huge paunch faced me. He lifted his axe intending to split my head in two but I thrust the point of my dagger into his arm pit, forcing him to let go with that hand. The axe missed me and, before he could recover, I thrust my sword into his neck. He fell to the deck leaving me facing a Viking who couldn’t have been more than twelve; no doubt one of the ships’ boys who looked after the sail and acted as servants to the warriors who rowed her.

  He wore no more than a tunic and trousers but he had a sword in one hand and a dagger in the other. I didn’t want to kill a boy but he would have spitted me if I’d given him half a chance. He thrust his sword at me and I batted it away. The boy was quick and, before I realised it, he stabbed me with his dagger. Thankfully the blow lacked the power a man could have put behind it and it failed to part the links of my chain mail byrnie.

  I saw my chance and brought the pommel of my sword down on the boy’s head. He dropped like a stone. The blow might have killed him but I hoped that he was just unconscious.

  I turned to look for my next opponent but it was all over. The Vikings were either dead or too incapacitated to be of any further danger. I went to check on the brave lad who’d stood up to me and I was pleased to find out that he was still breathing.

  ‘Throw them overboard, I ordered, ‘except for this boy. He’s just unconscious. Tie him up.’

  ‘The wounded too, lord?’ Tonbert asked, unsure whether I really wanted to put the wounded over the side to drown.

  ‘Yes, cut their throats first though.’ I was in a hurry but there was no need to make them suffer. ‘Then let’s get this ship underway so we can go to the aid of the others.’

  There were two other ships boys, both a little older than my assailant, but they’d both been killed in the fight. Leaving the knarr behind we headed for the second of the longships which had grappled the largest of the merchant knarrs. By the time we got there the fight for her was over and the Vikings were throwing the dead sailors over the side. We tied our craft to the other side of the long ship and no doubt the few warriors left behind on her thought that we were their fellow Vikings come to help; until they saw our armour.

  By that time it was too late. Leaving the karve to drift clear, we swarmed aboard the longship and made short work of the six men and four boys left aboard. We cut the longship free and left the rest of the Vikings in possession of the knarr. Having only eight oars for manoeuvring in harbour, it relied on its sail for progress out at sea and thus it was much slower than the sleek longships. Aboard her the fifty or so Vikings were a danger to no one.

  Now we headed for the fierce battle that was taking place between the birlinn and the other longship. Once more we came alongside the longship and poured over the gunwale. The longship was deserted except for five ships’ boys.

  ‘Surrender and you’ll live,’ I told them in Danish.

  They looked a little puzzled so I tried again in Norse. This time they understood and reluctantly dropped their weapons. Leaving Uuen and one of my housecarls to watch them the rest of us jumped onto the deck of the birlinn. The deck was slippery with blood and
faeces where wounded and dying men had lost control of their bowels and I very nearly fell over as I landed. The crew of the birlinn were giving a good account of themselves and, from a quick glance around, I estimated that an equal number from each ship were out of the fight.

  Our arrival changed all that. We now outnumbered the Vikings and we set about trapping them between us and the birlinn’s warriors and then cutting them down. When there were barely a dozen of the pirates left they surrendered. We had lost men, of course. Two of my housecarls had been killed and another three had flesh wounds, but we had saved the fleet, all apart from the knarr the Vikings had captured, which was now sailing away, tacking to and fro as it headed for Norway.

  I gave the five ships’ boys a choice: they could be sold as slaves in London or they could join the birlinn’s crew to make up for some of our lost numbers. Wisely they chose the latter.

  The boy I’d knocked out didn’t join them. My sons needed a servant to look after them and so I gave him that option rather than the slave market in London. He gave me a murderous look but accepted. I made him swear an oath of loyalty on the Bible, once I’d confirmed that he was a Christian, and so Eirik entered my sons’ service.

  ~~~

  The captured Viking ships were designed for speed when rowed. The sail they carried could add to that speed when the wind was in the right direction, or it could propel the ship at a much slower pace when the rowers needed a rest. We didn’t have the manpower to row them but relying solely on the wind didn’t matter as the merchant ships moved at the same speed as a longship under sail.

  We arrived in London without further incident and the captain of the knarr on which we had set out volunteered to sell the three Viking vessels in return for a ten per cent cut of the proceeds. Meanwhile we made our way into the city in search of the king’s hall.

  Centuries ago the first Saxon settlers had shunned the old Roman city within its stone walls, believing it to be full of ghosts. They had established a Saxon settlement called Lundenwic to the west. However, when the Great Heathen Army had captured the place they had occupied the walled city, which became known as Lundenburgh. When they were driven out Lundenburgh developed into an important government and trading centre and Lundenwic was gradually abandoned.

  However, we weren’t bound for the city. Fifty years ago Saint Dunstan and Æthelred’s father, King Edgar, had established a monastery for Benedictine monks on the site of Lundenwic to the west of the city. Properly called the Monastery of Saint Peter, the locals called its church the West Minster to distinguish it from the cathedral church of Saint Paul in the city.

  We sought lodgings for the night as guests of the monastery. It suited my purpose to stay there rather than in a tavern in the city. Monks were great gossips and I wanted to pick up any rumours which might explain why I had been summoned.

  It seemed that Æthelred had been re-instated as king by the nobles of Wessex and Mercia subject to one condition: that the laws he had passed in previous years were repealed and a new code of laws instituted. This was why Wulfstan had been absent. He was charged with leading the team who were writing the new laws.

  Æthelred’s rule had not affected us much in Northumbria but it seemed that in the south the king had ruled haphazardly, to put it mildly. He enforced those laws which suited him, often harshly, and ignored those which might be detrimental to his interests. In other words he had ruled as a despot. It certainly explained why the nobles of England had submitted to Sweyn without much of a fight. They were glad to be rid of Æthelred, but then regretted it when the Danish king had placed his Danes in all the major positions of power.

  However, much as that enlightened me about the background to what had happened, it didn’t explain why I was here.

  ~~~

  The king’s hall had been a Roman basilica at some stage. It had fallen into ruin, like all the old stone buildings in the city, but Æthelred had employed masons to repair the walls with stone taken from elsewhere and had roofed it in timber overlaid with red tiles recovered from other buildings. It wasn’t overly large but it was impressive.

  What had been the nave many centuries ago was now the main hall and the three other sections of the basilica had been divided off to provide separate living accommodation for the king and his family plus a large room where those who administered the kingdom worked.

  Like all halls, there was a fire pit in the middle of the hall with a simple hole left in the tiled roof for the smoke to escape through. The floor consisted of small mosaic tiles. It had broken up in a lot of places, exposing the concrete floor beneath. It looked as if it had depicted people, perhaps saints, at some stage but now it was difficult to be certain.

  A lot of people stood around the hall waiting for an audience with either the king or his son, Edmund. Æthelred had sired eight sons and four daughters by two wives, the second being Emma of Normandy. The two eldest boys, Æthelstan and Ecgberht were dead, the former quite recently, and so Edmund found himself as the heir to the throne, something he hadn’t anticipated.

  To my surprise I wasn’t kept waiting; the chamberlain took me through one of the side doors into a small room as soon as I had made myself known to him.

  ‘Earl Uhtred of Northumbria,’ the man announced as he opened the door and stood aside for me to enter.

  ‘Uhtred, welcome. Thank you for coming,’ Æthelred said standing behind a small table covered in scrolls.

  There were three other people in the room. The Lady Emma of Normandy sat on a chair in one corner of the room and the other two people stood between her and the desk. I recognised Edmund but the girl who stood by his side was unknown to me. She appeared to be about fourteen or fifteen and looked so like Emma that she had to be her daughter. Like her mother she was very pretty.

  ‘You will know that Sweyn’s son, Cnut is gathering men in Denmark and Norway for another invasion,’ the king said without preamble. ‘As he is the elder brother, I had hoped that he would contest the throne of Denmark seized by his younger sibling, Harald. Instead it seems that Harald is assisting him to raise an army whilst Cnut’s brother-in-law, Eric of Hlathir, who rules Norway on behalf of Harald, is apparently helping him to fund this new invasion.’

  ‘We need your help to resist Cnut and drive him back into the sea,’ Edmund put in. ‘You rule all of England north of the Humber and your Danes seem loyal to you. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of the ones in the former Danelaw area of Mercia.’

  I didn’t hesitate. With my wretched brother and Thurbrand close to Cnut, I didn’t imagine that he would hold me in high regard.

  ‘Of course. What do you require of me?’

  ‘Just be ready with your nobles, warriors and fyrd to come to my aid when I send for you,’ Æthelred told me.

  ‘On another matter,’ he continued. ‘I was sorry to hear about the death of your wife. I understand that you only have two sons and no daughters?’

  I wondered where this was going. He can have only just heard about Sige’s death and I was surprised that the news had reached London so quickly, unless one of my men had been talking in the taverns.

  ‘I want to both reward you and bind you to me more closely, Uhtred. I therefore propose to give you my daughter, Ælfgifu, in marriage.’

  To say that I was stunned would be an understatement. It was the last thing I expected him to say. So much for thinking that I might be out of favour. Then it occurred to me that he must have decided on this before he heard about Sige. He’d presumably expected me to put her aside in order to marry Ælfgifu. I was extremely glad that I hadn’t been put in that position. Quite apart from my personal feelings, the Danes of Deira would never have forgiven me for casting Styr’s daughter aside, especially if it was so that I could marry the daughter of the unpopular Æthelred. It illustrated once again how thoughtless Æthelred was. He should have realised that, instead of making the north more secure, it could have made the situation far worse.

  ‘I don’t know what to say, lor
d king. I am overwhelmed by your generous offer,’ I temporised whilst I gathered my thoughts.

  I snuck a glance at the girl, wondering how she felt to be given like a prize heifer to a man in his mid-forties. Perhaps I expected her to look horrified at the idea, or to be looking demurely at the ground, but she wasn’t. She was looking at me quite boldly with half a smile playing around her lips. Perhaps she wasn’t as averse to the idea as I had supposed. Certainly the thought of bedding her created a feeling of pleasurable anticipation in my loins.

  However, the king seemed to have assumed my reply meant that I had accepted.

  ‘Good. Well, you won’t want to come back all this way again so soon, and I don’t have the time to escort my daughter to York, so I suggest we arrange the ceremony for the day after tomorrow. I presume you’d like Archbishop Wulfstan to officiate?’

  I had a feeling that things were getting a little out of control. Before the silence got embarrassing I nodded and confirmed that I would.

  ‘I’ll ask my son, Aldred, to be my groomsman,’ I added. ‘Where will the service be held?’

  ‘Not in Saint Paul’s; that damned man, Bishop Ælfwig, will insist on conducting the ceremony. No, in the church of Saint Peter in the monastery.’

  Ælfwig had been appointed by Sweyn and had been confirmed in post by the Pope in February that year, just before news of Sweyn’s death had reached London. Æthelred hated him for no other reason than Sweyn had selected him but there was nothing he could do about it.

  ‘As to groomsman, I think that my son Edmund would be more appropriate, don’t you?’

  I bit back an angry retort and nodded curtly instead. I had nothing against Edmund; in fact what I’d heard about him had all been positive, but I didn’t know him personally.