The Fall of the House of Æthelfrith

by H A CULLEY

  ~~~

  It had taken months to make the necessary arrangements, including securing Ecgfrith’s agreement to his involvement and that of King Elfin of Strathclyde to establish a camp on part of his land opposite Man. It was early April before everything was ready, by which time the risk of winter gales had passed.

  Catinus had managed to gather together seven birlinns which had sailed north up the east coast of Pictland, passed south of the islands called the Orcades and thence down the west coast to Legacæstir in Mercia. From there they escorted Ethelred’s hundred warriors and Alweo’s gesith north, packed into two hired knarrs and landed them on the beach near the fishing village of Stranraer in Strathclyde where they made camp.

  They had been forced to sail past the Isle of Man but Catinus was confident that the Hibernians wouldn’t attack such a strong fleet. Now they waited.

  Just after dark had fallen Thored and four other men from Alweo’s gesith were landed by one of Catinus’ birlinns on a beach midway between the two main settlements - Rhumsaa and Duboglassio. Their task was to climb the highest mountain on the island, Snaefell, and kill the men who kept watch there.

  The pirates had a simple system for capturing the knarrs that carried merchandise across the sea between Hibernia and England. The lookouts on Snaefell would wait until a knarr had passed the southern tip of Man and then light a signal fire. The smoke would alert the birlinns at Rhumsaa and Duboglassio and those beached at the former would sail north whilst others from the latter sailed south to trap the knarr between them. Even if they tried to flee towards the Hibernian coast the sleeker birlinns with many more rowers would usually catch them up before they got there.

  Even if the knarrs sailed in convoy or were escorted by a birlinn the six ships on Man were normally more than a match for them.

  If the watch could be eliminated, then the Hibernians would have no warning of the approach of Catinus’ fleet. If they sailed close to the Rhins, the westernmost part of Galloway, they would be over the horizon from Rhumsaa and they could then land men on the beach which Thored had used.

  Thored led his small group up the hillside towards the peak of Snaefell. None of them were familiar with the island but they could see the top of the mountain when the clouds parted and its black silhouette stood out against the moonlit sky. It was harder going than they’d expected and he began to worry about getting to the summit and killing the watch in time.

  Then the man in front of him held his hand behind him and pushed Thored back. Thankfully it was a period when the clouds had parted so the others could see him gesture for them to hide in the thick gorse bushes which grew alongside the faint trail they were following. They ignored the painful picks and lacerations of the thorns on their bare arms and legs and waited silently.

  At first it was a faint murmur but they could distinctly make out speech and laughter coming from a little distance away. Thored felt a fool. Of course, there was no point in keeping a lookout at night; they were undoubtedly today’s watch heading down to either Rhumsaa or Duboglassio. Sensing the direction that sound came from at night was difficult and he had no idea whether the men were to his left or his right. However, it didn’t matter. He would never find them at night on the side of an unfamiliar mountain. He and his men would have to set up an ambush for the next day’s watch as they ascended the mountain.

  As a precaution they disassembled the beacon set ready to light and settled down for the night, leaving one man on guard. As soon as the rising sun gave him enough light Thored scouted the summit. Apart from the narrow trail they had followed there were two other tracks, but one showed signs of much greater use than the other. The grass had been worn away down to the bare earth and some branches growing on the shrubs beside the path had been broken at the end.

  Thored sent two men down the track to hide until the men had passed. Their task was to prevent any escaping back down the mountain. He and the other two hid just over the crest. The men climbing the mountain were quieter than those who had descended the previous evening, but that wasn’t surprising given the steepness of the slope.

  ‘Those bloody bastards have dismantled the beacon! Sod them; we’ll have to re-build it.’

  Thored supressed a chuckle. Evidently they thought that the previous watch had done it as a joke. He signalled to the two men with him and all three rose from the ground and walked a few steps up the far side of the summit until they could see the four men who had started to gather the scattered wood. All three had strung bows with an arrow nocked ready for use. Two of the Hibernians fell dead and the other was wounded in the shoulder. None wore any form of protection and, as they weren’t expecting trouble, were only armed with seaxes and daggers.

  The fourth turned and ran back the way he’d come, straight onto the spear of one of Thored’s men who was waiting a hundred yards below. Another of his men went to cut the throat of the one with an arrow in his shoulder but Thored stopped him.

  ‘Let’s see what he can tell us.’

  He jerked the arrow out and the Hibernian screamed in agony. Blood started to pour from the hole and Thored put his foot on it and twisted it, making the pain far worse. It was then that he realised that the captive was only a boy, fourteen at most. Looking around he saw that two of the others were little more than boys, only one was a man and an old one at that. Obviously the Hibernians used those who would be little use in combat as lookouts.

  ‘How many men are there at Rhumsaa and how many birlinns?’ Thored asked in Gaelic.

  When the boy merely glowered at him and spat Thored reapplied pressure to the wound. The boy screamed again and passed out. Thored grabbed the water skin he’d been carrying and splashed it over their captive’s face. The boy spluttered and stared at Thored with unfocused eyes.

  ‘Now we can do this the hard way and you’ll eventually talk before you die, or you can co-operate and I might even let you live.’

  He went to stamp on the shoulder again but the boy held up his other hand in a gesture of surrender.

  ‘That’s better. Now what’s your name?’

  ‘Padraig,’ the boy said sullenly.

  ‘Very well Padraig, how many birlinns are there at Rhumsaa and how many at Duboglassio?’

  ‘I don’t know about Rhumsaa; I live at Duboglassio.’

  ‘How many at Duboglassio?’

  ‘Three.’

  ‘Good. And how many warriors are there?’

  ‘Hundred? A hundred and fifty? I’m not sure. More than enough to kill you anyway.’

  ‘And how big are the birlinns? How many oars?’

  ‘Two have twelve a side and Lugh’s has fourteen.’

  ‘Is Lugh your chieftain?’

  ‘King of Man, yes.’

  ‘A hundred men to crew them would make sense.’

  ‘What about Rhumsaa?’

  Padraig shifted uncomfortably and groaned.

  ‘Answer my question and we’ll do something about that wound.’

  ‘Three smaller birlinns,’ he answered through gritted teeth.

  ‘How many oars a side?’

  ‘Ten, I think.’

  ‘What’s he saying?’ one of the other men asked Thored as none of the others spoke Gaelic.

  ‘It sounds as if he may be telling the truth,’ one of Thored’s companions said after he’d given them the gist of what Padraig had told him. ‘The ships at Rhumsaa are lighter and faster so that they can drive the knarrs towards the bigger birlinns.’

  ‘How many men at Rhumsaa?’ Thored asked, renewing his interrogation.

  ‘I don’t know, just enough to crew the three ships I think.’

  ‘Probably seventy or eighty then.’

  ‘Right lad. Drink this, go on get it down you. It’ll dull the pain.’

  So saying he gave the boy a leather flask full of strong mead. Padraig choked after the first mouthful but then managed to get half of the flask down before he passed out.

  ‘Aren’t you going to kill him?’ one of the men
asked, surprised that Thored was taking the trouble to deal with the wound in Padraig’s shoulder.

  ‘No, Alweo has promised me enough land to establish a vill once he’s king here and I’ll need slaves to work the land. This is the first of them.’

  ‘So you’ve ambitions to be a thegn? What about the rest of us?’

  ‘You can be my warband if you want,’ Thored replied, grinning at them.

  One of the men spat a gob of phlegm onto the ground.

  ‘I want my own farm thanks.’

  ‘You can have it and be in my warband as well.’

  ‘I’ll think about it. We’ve got to take the bloody place first. If this lad’s right, we’re facing nearly two hundred hairy-arsed Hibernians with half that number of our own warriors.’

  ‘Get a small fire going, just use dry wood though; we don’t want any smoke.’

  Thored watched until he was satisfied that what little smoke it produced was dispersed by the wind before it could be seen and then wrapped a cloth around the hilt of one of dead Hibernian’s seaxes. He stuck it in the hottest part of the fire and then applied the red hot tip to the boy’s bleeding shoulder. The smell that emanated from the wound was a mixture of roasting meat and acrid burning.

  He threw the seax away and then pissed on the cauterised flesh, both to take away the heat and to kill any infection. After binding the wound with a strip of cloth torn from one of the dead Hibernians’ tunics, he picked Padraig up and put him over one shoulder. The lad was thin and small for his age. Thored would have been surprised if he weighed more than six stone.

  An hour and a half later they were back on the beach where a fishing boat was waiting for them. They were too small to attract the interest of the pirates on Man and so it was the ideal boat to take them over to the Galloway coast where Alweo, Catinus and Ethelred met them.

  ‘What have you got there Thored?’ Alweo asked as they stepped ashore, Padraig draped over the muscular warrior’s right shoulder.

  ‘A Hibernian boy who has been very helpful, lord. I was going to kill him but I’ve decided to keep him as my slave.’

  ‘What did you learn from him?

  ‘There are three birlinns at Duboglassio manned by about a hundred men and three smaller birlinns at Rhumsaa crewed by about seventy. The watch party was composed of three boys and one old man so I suspect that no warriors are left behind when the birlinns take to the sea, just old men and warriors in training like this one.’

  ‘He doesn’t look like a boy training to be a warrior to me, more like an urchin whose scarcely been weaned from his mother’s teat,’ Ethelred scoffed.

  ‘I can assure you he’s like a wildcat when he’s awake, lord. Don’t underestimate the Hibernians, they’re doughty fighters.’

  The Mercian ætheling looked far from convinced but he said nothing more. By now it was mid-morning and they needed to put their plan into operation before the missing watch was discovered and the Hibernians were warned.

  ~~~

  Leoflaed had watched her husband depart with misgivings. He was now in his mid-forties but he seemed to think that he was still a young man. He’d wanted to take Osfrid with him as a ship’s boy but she’d put her foot down. He was only nine and far too young to be risking his life in her opinion. It was bad enough worrying about Catinus without losing sleep over Osfrid as well. She thanked God that her elder son, Alaric, was a monk on Lindisfarne and out of harm’s way, even if she didn’t see anything of him now.

  Catinus had been gone a month when she realised that she was pregnant again. This would be her fourth child and she didn’t need anyone else to confirm what her body was telling her. In the past she had known she was going to have another baby about seven months before the birth and she didn’t think that it would be any different this time. That meant that the child would be born sometime in November. With any luck her husband would be back long before then.

  At least she wouldn’t have to undergo the rigours of pregnancy alone. When Alweo had left Tamworth for Caerlleon he’d sent Hereswith and their two-year old son Æthelbald to stay with her mother at Bebbanburg until Man was secured. The little boy was now walking and getting into all sorts of mischief. Much to her surprise, Osfrid made time each day to play with him for about an hour. Normally Anglo-Saxon boys refused to have anything to do with their juniors, let alone one who was seven years younger and barely walking.

  With the Picts subdued and a treaty with Mercia that seemed to be standing the test of time, Northumbria was prospering. Catinus had commissioned a number of knarrs and had built a small harbour a couple of miles south of Bebbanburg from which they could operate. The vill below the castle had expanded and now contained two blacksmiths, two armourers, a goldsmith, a leatherworker, a shoe maker, three tailors and a jewellery maker. The items they manufactured were exported down the coast to East Anglia, Lundenwic and Kent as well as across the sea to Frisia and Frankia together with wool and hides from the farms.

  The knarrs’ captains and the merchants who used them had grumbled when Catinus had taken all his birlinns for the invasion of Man because that hadn’t left any to escort his knarrs when they sailed across to the Continent, a journey that was dangerous without a birlinn or two as escort because of Friesian pirates. Nevertheless, the demand for weapons, chainmail, helmets, jewellery and leather goods continued unabated all down the East Coast of England.

  Of course, there were many other centres of craftsmanship but Bebbanburg had established a reputation for quality. In return, they imported iron, silver, gold and cloth. Bishop Wilfrid had even ordered a new jewel encrusted gold cross and chain from the Bebbanburg jewellery maker. It was so heavy that everyone wondered why a man would want to wear something like that around his neck.

  Leoflaed didn’t understand why her husband had felt it necessary to take charge of his fleet himself. There were plenty of other men who could have commanded his ships. She didn’t think it was because he wanted to get away from her; if anything they were more in love now than they’d been when they’d first wed. Their relationship had matured and deepened over the years.

  She had asked him about it before he’d left but all he’d said was that Alweo needed him and he felt duty bound to help his friend. It was Hereswith who told her why he’d gone.

  ‘All men need some excitement from time to time to make them feel alive,’ she’d said, and then added, ‘except monks and priests of course.’

  ~~~

  Alweo led his gesith and another forty men provided by Ethelred north from where they’d landed towards Rhumsaa, whilst the main body set off towards the south and Duboglassio. Meanwhile Thored and his three men took the path back up Snaefell to the summit.

  By the time that they had gathered the wood and lit the beacon it was early afternoon. As expected the six Hibernian birlinns set out from their respective harbours into a choppy sea with a brisk wind blowing in from the west. They expected to sail around to the west of the island to trap some unsuspecting knarr or two. Instead they were confronted by Catinus and his fleet.

  The three smaller birlinns from Rhumsaa were the first to realise that they’d been tricked. As they headed for the northern tip of Man they saw three much larger birlinns waiting for them. The wind was from the west so neither fleet had an advantage as far as that was concerned, but the smaller birlinns were faster. They tacked through one hundred and eighty degrees and headed back for the safety of Rhumsaa.

  Meanwhile Alweo and his men had arrived at the northern settlement and had entered it without any resistance. The Hibernians had felt so secure in their base that they hadn’t bothered to repair the palisade when parts of it had fallen down. A few old men and boys had appeared with weapons when the alarm had been sounded but they’d been quickly killed or captured.

  The local populace had welcomed the new arrivals as their saviours. It was evident that the Hibernians had treated them as slaves, or worse. Leaving six men to search the place and make sure that there were no Hibernians in h
iding and four more to guard the captives, he led the rest to the quayside just as the three birlinns returned.

  The leader of the pirate ships was now in a quandary. If he tried to tie up and disembark his men he would be attacked by Alweo and his fifty men. Although he had more warriors, they would be disorganised as they tried to get ashore, whereas Alweo’s men were already formed up as a shield wall. On the other hand, if they tried to go back out to sea the three large birlinns would be waiting to grapple their ships and board them.

  Further south things were not going so well for Ethelred. He had arrived at Duboglassio to find that the settlement was surrounded by a tall palisade. He had expected the gates to be open at this hour so that they could rush them as soon as the beacon was lit, but they remained firmly closed. When people arrived seeking admittance, or when someone wanted to leave, the gates opened for them and were then shut again.

  When he saw the smoke from the signal fire he waited enough time for the Hibernians inside to have left in their birlinns, and then he led his men forward to assault the settlement. He’d hoped that he could get his men over the palisade by the simple tactic of two men lifting a third up so that he could pull himself over the top, but the palisade proved to be too high. Furthermore, there were several archers on the walls and, after losing several men, he retreated.

  Half an hour later he returned to the attack; this time using a felled tree as a battering ram against the gates. Whilst some used their shields to protect those carrying the makeshift ram, his archers tried to keep the heads of the Hibernian bowmen down. The gates were stout and at first the ram made no progress. Ethelred began to worry that the pirates would have encountered Catinus’ ships and fled back to the settlement, in which case he would be outnumbered.

  He need not have been concerned. Lugh, the Hibernians’ leader, didn’t flee at the first sight of Catinus’ ships. However, the Ealdorman of Bebbanburg hadn’t let Lugh see that he was opposed by four birlinns; he’d only sent two forward initially to draw the Hibernians into a trap. As the three pirate ships closed on the two Northumbrian birlinns, the other two of Catinus’ ships appeared, one from the east and one from the west.