by H A CULLEY
It was just over forty miles to York and normally we would have stayed overnight at the monastery at Ripon en route, but I was anxious to reach the town and find out the current situation for myself.
We were tired and saddle sore by the time we arrived. Thankfully there had only been the odd flurry of snow during the journey that day, so at least we were dry. Within an hour of my arrival I had two visitors, the Abbot of York and Jarl Styr.
The abbot came first and handed me a letter he had received two days previously from Archbishop Wulfstan. I ignored the flowery greeting and polite preamble and cast my eyes down to the meat of the matter.
The king and Edmund Ætheling have both returned to London and I fear that Æthelred is not in the best of health. He is, of course, now forty eight and showing his age.
That gave me pause for thought. I was only three years younger but, apart from the odd ache and pain, I certainly didn’t feel at all old. I went back to reading.
Cnut and his army are in Gloucester. Edmund says that it makes sense as it is a good base for him. I’m told that from there he can strike south into Wessex or north east into Mercia once the better weather comes.
Cnut is a Christian, as are most of his men I believe, but it doesn’t stop them from pillaging monasteries and churches, raping nuns and killing priests and monks. I fear for what is going to happen to England until this struggle for the throne is over. I have pleaded with Æthelred to come to some compromise with Cnut for the good of the people, but he won’t listen. Edmund is, I believe, more flexible in his approach but, of course, he is not king.
Now I come to the point of my letter. Edmund has entered into negotiations with Earl Eadric to raise the Mercians to join him and I understand that Eadric has agreed.
I read that with some surprise. I had thought that Eadric was out of favour with his Mercian nobles, both Danes and Angles, and had joined Cnut. From what Wulfstan had written it sounded as if he had managed to wheedle himself back into power, though I was at a loss to understand how he’d managed that. I hoped that Edmund had more sense than to trust him. The man was more slippery than a viper.
If Edmund is going to succeed he will need the assistance of the Northumbrians. I’ve heard that Earl Uhtred is still at Bebbanburg in the north, but hopefully he will have returned to York by the time you receive this. Either way you need to prevail upon him to join forces with Edmund; send a messenger to find him if necessary. Time is of the essence as I expect Cnut to recommence his attempt to conquer England in March.
I handed the letter back to the abbot with my thanks and asked him to show me any further missives he received from Wulfstan.
He hadn’t been gone for more than a few minutes and I was still trying to collect my thoughts when Styr arrived.
‘You’ve heard the latest tidings, I assume?’ he said, getting straight to the point.
‘The abbot showed me the archbishop’s letter; I assume you know what it says?’
‘Yes, I haven’t read it but he told me the gist of it. I’m afraid that there is no hope of mustering the men of Deira to join Edmund. Nearly all of the jarls now openly support Cnut and, if you try to call a muster, it would just drive them into open revolt.’
‘I suppose that I could call out the fyrd of Bernicia but it’s been ten years since Durham and many a Scots boy will have grown to manhood in that time.’
‘You fear an invasion of Lothian if you take away its fyrd to fight in Mercia?’
‘Yes, in fact I’m certain of it. In any case, Cnut may decide to try and subdue Wessex first.’
‘I doubt it. Wessex is recovering from the mauling he gave it last autumn. He can be reasonably confident that it will remain quiescent whilst he deals with Mercia and Northumbria, especially as Wessex has no one to lead it at the moment.’
‘Æthelred?’ I suggested.
‘I doubt it. He’s too old and sick; in any case he’s no military leader.’
‘Sick?’
‘The rumour is that he’s returned to London to die.’
‘That could be a good thing. People will follow Edmund whereas their support for his father is lukewarm, at best.’
‘That’s true, but he really should have died last year, before Cnut invaded. Edmund might have been able to unite the kingdom then. It’s too late now.’
I was going to argue but I knew deep down that he was right. I felt impotent but all I could do was wait and see what transpired when campaigning started in the spring.
~~~
To Uhtred, my son in Christ, greetings, the letter from Wulfstan which arrived in the middle of March began.
As you may have heard, Edmund Ætheling was betrayed by Earl Eadric and he has been forced to retreat to London.
I hadn’t heard but it didn’t surprise me. Eadric was a weasel who would betray his own mother for a pouch of coppers. Edmund was a fool to have trusted him. Once Cnut had finished subduing Mercia I doubted very much that he would turn south to tackle London or Wessex and it seemed that Wulfstan thought the same.
The rumours here are that he will wish to finish conquering everywhere north of the River Thames before he tackles the much more difficult nut to crack that is London. I hear that the Danes of your earldom aren’t to be trusted so you have an impossible task if you wish to oppose Cnut.
I would tell you my own thoughts but I’m unwilling to commit them to paper. You can probably guess what my advice would be in any case.
I sighed. Wulfstan was a scholar and a law giver, not a soldier and he was against war on principle. However, he was no coward and, if he thought that there was a good chance that we would prevail against Cnut he would be in favour of resisting him. I knew in my heart that Cnut would be crowned King of England, if not soon, then eventually. The only way of stopping him was for him to die.
However, it wasn’t Cnut who died but Æthelred.
The news reached York two days after it had happened. A ship arrived from London and no sooner had the captain told the port reeve than it became common knowledge. It appeared that Edmund had been proclaimed king by the Witan, or by those members of it present in London, and he’d been hastily crowned.
My initial reaction was one of optimism. With Edmund now in charge at last we might have a chance of uniting the kingdom against the invaders, but it was a vain hope and it changed nothing.
By the end of April Cnut had finished subduing both Mercia and East Anglia. By then he was back at Gainsborough, where his father had died. Instead of taking his whole army north into Deira, he split in it two, sending Thorkell south to continue to siege of London whilst he embarked the rest of his fleet and sailed north up the east coast to land at Whitby. By so doing he had divided my earldom in two.
‘What do you think he’ll do?’ Ælfgifu asked me as the family sat gloomily eating a meal that none of us really had much appetite for.
Aldred was all for fighting, however hopeless our position whilst Eadulf just looked confused and frightened. Even the news that Ælfgifu was fairly certain that she was pregnant again did little to lift my spirits.
I had a stark choice. I could surrender to Cnut and rely on him being fair minded enough to protect me and my family from Eadwulf and Thurbrand, or we could flee into exile. Ælfgifu was the niece of Duke Richard of Normandy as her mother was the duke’s sister. However, grubbing out an existence dependent on the largesse of another held little appeal for me. I was also conscious that I had a duty to act in the best interests of my people.
In the end I decided that I would have to submit to Cnut and hope for the best.
Chapter Twenty – Treachery
Early May 1016
‘You can’t do it, Uhtred,’ Ælfgifu stormed at me. ‘You’ll be betraying my brother if you do!’
‘I’ll be betraying my people if I don’t,’ I said wearily. ‘Look, if I thought I had chance of defeating Cnut I’d summon every man who’d be willing to follow me and fight him, but he’s got over three thousand hardened warriors
with him and I’d be lucky to muster anything approaching that number. Besides, many of my men would be members of the fyrd and they would be no match for battle hardened warriors; and that assumes that the Danes in Deira remain neutral and don’t join Cnut.’
‘They would never openly oppose you.’
‘I’d like to think that you’re right, but it’s a risk. Then there’s Malcolm and the Scots to consider, not to mention Owain of Strathclyde. I daren’t take men from Lothian, or Bernicia come to that. The Abbot of Melrose wrote to me yesterday to warn me that Malcolm is almost ready to launch another invasion.’
‘You’d have thought he’d learned his lesson the last time.’
‘All our victory at Durham gained us was time. Malcolm has made no secret of the fact that he intends to conquer Lothian.’
We sat in glum silence for a while before she spoke again.
‘Do you think Cnut will accept your surrender and allow you to stay as Earl of Northumbria?’
I shrugged. ‘He’s allowed that traitorous rat Eadric Streona to remain Earl of Mercia,’ I pointed out.
‘That’s true, though I don’t understand why.’
‘Probably because Mercia is far from accepting Cnut as king and Streona has been charged to wage war on those of his own people who have remained loyal to Edmund. I could never do that.’
‘Your mind is made up then?’
‘Yes, I’ll send a message to Cnut at Gainsborough saying that I will remain neutral in the struggle for the throne between him and Edmund on condition that he doesn’t pillage Northumbria. I’ll point out the threat from Scotland and say that we need to keep the earldom strong to resist Malcolm and Owain.’
‘I understand why you need to do this, but my heart is heavy with worry for Edmund. I can only pray that he prevails in the end, as King Alfred did.’
Everyone credited Alfred with beating the Danes and laying the foundations for a united England. In fact I believed that his only achievement was in preventing Danish conquest at that time by partitioning England between the Danes in the north and the Saxons in the south. It was his son, Edward, who united all of England, except for Northumbria, and it was Edward’s son Æthelstan who finally defeated the Danes of Deira. My great-grandfather, Aldred, was Earl of Bernicia at the time and he’d acknowledged Æthelstan as King of the English, thus extending the latter’s realm from the Channel to the Firth of Forth.
‘We can certainly pray for his success,’ I agreed, though I was far from sanguine.
I sent my messenger the next day.
~~~
‘I’ve had a reply from Cnut,’ I told my wife ten days later. ‘I’m to travel to Gainsborough to submit to him personally. He says that I am to travel to the confluence of the Humber and the Trent where a longship will be waiting to convey me down the Trent to Gainsborough.’
‘A longship? But there won’t be room on board for you and your housecarls as well as the crew will there?’
‘No, he must assume that I will come alone.’
‘You can’t go; you mustn’t. It’s a trap.’
‘Perhaps. So I’ll travel down the coast in my own birlinn, crewed by my housecarls. That way, if he does intend to ensnare me, we stand a chance of fighting our way clear.’
‘Why risk it?’
‘Because, having given me safe conduct, if Cnut breaks his word he will lose support amongst the Deiran Danes, to whom honour is more important than anything else.’
‘I still don’t like it.’
‘I’ll be careful, I promise.’
We made love that night, gently because of the baby growing inside her, and in the morning I, Uuen, Osric and forty housecarls set out in my largest birlinn. At the same time Ælfgifu rode away in the opposite direction, albeit reluctantly. I wanted her back in the safety of Bebbanburg, promising I would come and join her after my meeting with Cnut. I needed to return there in any case to coordinate our defence against the threatened invasion by Malcolm and his Scots.
~~~
The voyage down to the mouth of the Humber passed without incident. There was a stiff breeze most of the way and only one shower of rain so we arrived feeling fresh and ready for trouble. There was no longship waiting for us but I did spot a warrior on a horse on the south bank of the Humber who rode away as soon as we arrived inside the estuary.
We turned into the River Trent intending to sail all the way down to Gainsborough, some twenty miles away, but there was a chain across the river half way there manned by half a dozen surly looking Danes.
‘You’ll have to moor here and walk to wherever you are going,’ one of them called across to us.
‘I’m Uhtred, Earl of Northumbria, come to see Jarl Cnut, let us past,’ I shouted back in Danish.
‘It’s King Cnut, Saxon scum, and I don’t care who you are. No one goes further upriver without a pass from the king.’
I was surprised that Cnut was now calling himself king, but I supposed he could call himself whatever he liked; it didn’t mean anything. The only consecrated and anointed king in England was Edmund.
We found a suitable spot on the opposite bank to the Danish guard on the chain boom and moored the birlinn. Leaving the shipmaster, the three ships’ boys and two warriors to guard her, the rest of us set off on foot down the track that ran parallel to the river. It was now late in the afternoon and it would take us three or four hours to walk the rest of the way, crossing over to the east bank at Owston where there was a ferry.
I’d decided to go as far as I could down the west bank – the opposite side of the river from Gainsborough – just in case someone was waiting to ambush us. I had no intention of arriving at Cnut’s camp during the night and so I decided to head for a farmstead and spend the night in a barn.
When we got there we found that the Danes had been there before us. The bodies of three men, two women and six children lay in the open. The women and the girls, even the youngest, had obviously been raped and every corpse had been horribly mutilated. My blood boiled and I was on the point of turning around and heading for York to muster everyone to my banner who would fight against men who could do such a thing. However, Osric brought me to my senses when he said that this was what awaited our people if I didn’t submit.
We didn’t leave until mid-morning having dug graves for the dead family and buried them with due ceremony. It took us a long time to cross on the ferry as it could only hold half a dozen at a time, so it was well into the afternoon before we reached an extensive wooded area a couple of miles north of Gainsborough.
By then I had begun to relax. I reasoned that, it Cnut meant me harm, he would have arranged for me to be attacked well away from his location. My logic was probably sound and perhaps Cnut was acting in good faith, but a few hundred yards into the trees I became aware of movement on either side of the track. I know that we were in for a fight when Thurbrand, Styr’s estranged son, stepped out of the trees a hundred yards ahead of us.
~~~
He wasn’t alone. Men emerged to form a shield wall in front of him and then I heard the unmistakeable sound of shields banging together behind us. I looked to the sides and I could see several Danes in the trees as well. We were surrounded.
‘What do you want Thurbrand? I have a safe conduct from Cnut. Do you intend to dishonour him?’
‘He may have granted you safe passage but I haven’t, nor have I forgotten the way you humiliated me.’
‘I count thirty ahead of us and presumably there are the same number behind us,’ Osric whispered in my ear. ‘I’ve no idea how many there are in the trees but we’d stand more chance against them I think.’
‘I agree. Signal the men to break left, away from the river. Now!'
Our sudden move surprised the ambushers and for a moment I thought that we might be able to fight our way clear. I found myself up against a large Dane holding a two-handed double-bladed axe who brought it down towards my head. I sidestepped and held up my shield. The axe glanced off it, cutting into t
he leather covering and gouging a chunk out of the lime wood of which it was made. My arm went numb and I struggled to keep a grip on my damaged shield.
My opponent had expected his blow to meet solid resistance and, when it didn’t, he overbalanced, staggering slightly before he recovered. It gave me the opportunity I needed and I thrust the point of my sword deep into his thigh, turning the blade to and fro to worsen the damage before I pulled it clear. He howled in fury and pain and, as I stepped around him, he tried to follow me, but his leg gave way. Before he could get up I chopped down onto his neck, cutting the spinal cord and he fell to the ground.
I took the opportunity for a swift look around and saw a number of things. Uuen climbing a tree, a rider on a horse watching the fight but making no attempt to take part and the furious hand to hand battles, many of which my men seemed to be winning. As a Dane came running at me from my right hand side I turned to meet him. It was at that moment that I realised that I knew the watching horseman. It was my brother Eadwulf. I might have known that he’d be involved in trying to kill me and I wondered whether Cnut would make him earl instead of my son Aldred. The thought depressed me but I pushed it away. I needed to concentrate on staying alive.
My attacker was young and inexperienced. I thrust at his groin and he lowered his shield to protect the area by instinct. It was feint and at the last moment I brought my sword up and thrust the point into the soft flesh behind his beardless jaw. It met no resistance and travelled up into the soft tissue of his brain. He dropped like a stone, dead before he hit the ground and I pulled my sword free, not without a little difficulty.
Initially we had gained the upper hand as we were more numerous than the men in the trees, but now the groups who had blocked the track ahead and behind us entered the fray and we found ourselves outnumbered by two to one.