The Fall of the House of Æthelfrith

by H A CULLEY

  ‘You’ll regret this, Behrtfrith,’ the boy hissed after the oath had been given.

  ‘I’m already regretting it, Cyning,’ the man replied.

  But it wasn’t forcing Osred to accept the oath that he was regretting. It was deserting Eadwulf for this brat.

  Chapter Twenty – Border Warfare

  712 AD

  When Wilfrid died at Ripon in 710 Osred still had a few months to go before his fourteenth birthday. However, the bishop had ceased to be an effective regent some two years previously after he suffered another seizure. When he recovered he retired to Ripon and never left again before his death. His death left Behrtfrith as the only regent so he called another meeting of the Witan, this time at Ripon following Wilfrid’s rather lavish funeral.

  The latter had expressed a desire just before his death for his chaplain, Acca, to take his place as Bishop and Abbot at Hexham. As the man had effectively been running the diocese and looking after the two abbeys during the last two years of Wilfrid’s life, it seemed a logical choice and the Witan approved his appointment on behalf of the king, who seemingly lacked any interest in the matter.

  However, that still left the matter of the regency. Behrtfrith had become increasingly powerful during the latter stages of Wilfrid’s life and the other nobles were anxious to find someone who could stand up to him. The Deiran ealdormen would have liked to nominate one of their number but no-one was willing to take on the responsibility, or else they were considered too weak to be able to cope with both the headstrong and unpredictable king and the equally difficult Ealdorman of Dùn Barra.

  Their eventual choice was Ælfflæd, Abbess of Whitby. She was the sister of King Oswiu and thus Osred’s aunt. Ælfflæd was a devout Christian and blessed with sound common sense; two qualities that could never be attributed to her nephew.

  As Osred grew up he became more stubborn and, lacking the ability to get his own way as a ruler, he started to behave badly. At first this amounted to a lack of courtesy towards his nobles and cruelty to his servants. When he reached puberty at around the time that Wilfrid died his interests became sexual. No girl was safe from his predatory desires. Matters came to a head when he visited his aunt at Whitby.

  He was particularly taken with a young novice who was a year older than he was. Despite Ælfflæd’s warning that her nuns were sacrosanct, Osred made his way to the nun’s hall when they had settled down to sleep after Matins. He quietly searched until he found the girl asleep on a simple platform with the other novices. Putting his hand over her mouth he pricked her neck with a dagger and whispered in her ear that she would come to no harm if she came with him quietly.

  He led her by one hand and held the dagger with the other until they reached his room in the guest hall. There he gagged her, ripped off her habit and raped her three times before he let her go.

  The poor girl was too frightened to tell anyone what had happened but six months later it was all too evident that she was pregnant. When she was sent to see the abbess she knew what would happen, but she was still too afraid to say that the king had raped her.

  ‘You cannot remain here, of course,’ Ælfflæd told her, ‘but I would like to know how you got in this condition. Was it one of the monks, or perhaps one of the boys being educated here?’

  The girl shook her head but said nothing.

  ‘If not one of them, then it must have been a visitor.’

  Ælfflæd noted the alarm on the girl’s face and, thinking back to her guests at that time, she suspected she knew who the culprit was.

  ‘I suppose it was Osred?’

  The look she received in return confirmed her suspicions. She sighed. Her nephew was getting a reputation as a letch and a rapist but this was the first time, to her knowledge, that he had abused a nun to satisfy his desires.

  ‘Did you go to his bed willingly or did he force you?’

  ‘He put a knife to my neck and threatened to kill me,’ she stammered, weeping.

  ‘Pull yourself together. It wasn’t your fault. My nephew will have to learn that he can’t get away with this sort of behaviour.’

  When the girl continued to sob the abbess invited her to sit down.

  ‘As you are the innocent party in all this, I’m going to make an exception in your case. I’m going to send you away to have the baby. Afterwards you can continue your training at the monastery at Coldingham.’

  ‘What will happen to the baby,’ the girl asked tentatively.

  ‘I’ll arrange for him or her to be brought up at the place I’m sending you to.’

  ‘Where’s that?’

  ‘Bebbanburg.’

  ~~~

  Swefred read the letter from Ælfflæd with a grim smile. He had stayed well clear of any contact with Osred since the Witan in 705, only attending further meetings of it when he had to, and then staying in the background and not drawing attention to himself.

  However, rumours about the king’s dissolute behaviour were rife throughout Northumbria. Hearing that he had managed to get a novice nun pregnant came as no surprise to him. That evening he told his wife about the letter and the request that they house the girl until her baby was born.

  He had married Kendra, the daughter of Behrtfrith, the previous year. It was far from the love match that his father and grandfather had enjoyed; it was a marriage of convenience. Knowing how much Osred hated him Swefred was apprehensive about the day that the king came of age. He had therefore deliberately sought out allies and Behrtfrith, being the most powerful noble in Bernicia, was an obvious man to cultivate.

  The girl had been fourteen when they wed, eight years his junior. However, she looked like her father and he was one of the ugliest men Swefred knew. Nevertheless, he found that they had much in common and the marriage had been a success. Now she was expecting their first baby.

  ‘What do you think, Kendra?’

  There was little romance in their lives and neither used words of endearment when talking to the other. Indeed the mere fact that his wife was pregnant came as something of a surprise to both of them, given how few times they had actually made love.

  ‘The abbess is one of the regents so it would be difficult to refuse her request, I suppose. In any case the child can be brought up as our son’s companion, if it’s a boy that is.’

  ‘And if the nun’s baby is male too.’

  ‘Yes, of course. But I have a feeling about this. I think it was meant to be. Of course, if I’m wrong and the two are of different sexes, then her baby can go to either Lindisfarne or Coldingham and be dedicated to the service of Christ.’

  And so the matter was settled. Kendra’s baby was born first – a boy they named Ulfric and a month later another boy was born. The mother was sent to Coldingham as soon as she was fit to travel and her son – who they named Æthelwald - was brought up with Ulfric.

  ‘You do realise that, as the king’s bastard, he’s really an ætheling,’ Kendra said to her husband one night.

  ‘I suppose so, after all his grandfather was illegitimate. However, no one must know. Not only would it embarrass Abbess Ælfflæd but it might put his life in danger.’

  ‘It would embarrass Osred more.’

  Swefred snorted. ‘Nothing would embarrass that reprobate.’

  ‘He’s deeply unpopular you know.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It will be interesting to see what happens when he gets to rule on his own.’

  That day was meant to be in December that year but the Witan, most of whose members dreaded the day that Osred was given power over them, decided to accept the recommendation of the two regents that the king should have to wait another two years, until he was eighteen. It didn’t come as a shock to the youth. His aunt had already berated him for raping her novice and warned him that he had to prove himself fit to be king before she and Behrtfrith would hand over power to him. However, her warning didn’t alter his behaviour, it just made him even more frustrated.

  ~~~

  In August 712, j
ust after the birth of Æthelwald and the departure of his mother to Coldingham, Behrtfrith called for a muster of the Lothian and Bernician ealdormen and their forces to repel yet another incursion by the Picts over the River Forth. This time they had come in some strength and shortly afterwards it seemed that the Britons of Strathclyde had also invaded Cumbria. It looked like a concerted effort to move the border south. Behrtfrith extended the call to arms to the rest of Northumbria and moved the muster point to Bebbanburg.

  ‘Do we know what their strength is?’ Swefred asked the regent as soon as he arrived.

  ‘Reports are vague and contradictory but they seem to be moving in three columns, each consisting of roughly two thousand warriors.’

  ‘Isn’t that rather stupid of them? We can defeat each in turn.’

  ‘That’s probably true, but they are moving quickly and we’ll be pressed to assemble enough men and tackle each of them before they’ve made serious inroads into Lothian. The other problem is the harvest. The men who make up the fyrd are mostly farmers and those whose homes are threatened will be loath to leave their fields until the crops are in.’

  ‘They will have to be told to leave it to the women, children and their bondsmen then. We are going to need every man we’ve got to send this lot back where they came from. Oh, and another thing, Behrtfrith. We need to trap them here and kill them on our land. We’ve learned the folly of chasing them back into Caledonia twice now.’

  ‘You don’t need to lecture me on that point, Swefred,’ he replied with some vehemence. ‘You may have lost a father but I lost a brother at Stirling Bridge and my father at Dùn Nectain.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sorry. Just so we are clear that we need to do as much damage as possible to the invaders whilst they are on this side of the Forth.’

  ‘I agree.’

  Behrtfrith relaxed slightly before continuing.

  ‘The question is, how do we prevent them from fleeing back to safety?’

  ‘By getting behind them so that we attack each column from the north?’ suggested Swefred.

  A grin slowly spread over the other man’s face.

  ‘Brilliant! It won’t be easy to get behind them but cutting of their retreat will panic them too.’

  ~~~

  Eochaid said farewell to Heartbehrt with a heavy heart. They had become close friends in the time he’d been the former’s captain and Eochaid had come to depend on him. However, with the death of Coelred, Æthelbald had been elected as King of Mercia and his younger brother had been summoned home to become King of Man.

  Fortunately the summons to the muster at Bebbanburg had come the day before he left and he’d promised Eochaid that he would raid Strathclyde in force as soon as he was able to.

  ‘That should sent Beli scuttling back home,’ he’d said with a grin.

  ‘Won’t you have to get Æthelbald’s permission?’

  ‘Why? What will he do? Try to unseat me? Don’t forget the Mercian Witan could just as easily have chosen me or Thringfrith to be king. He’s not a direct descendent of Penda; we’re the grandsons of his brother Eowa who is still regarded as a traitor by many Mercians. No, he won’t feel secure on his throne yet awhile and I suspect that he’ll be anxious to mend his fences with me.’

  The news that he could expect raids to commence on the west coast of Strathclyde in a few weeks’ time came as something of a relief to Behrtfrith. He’d managed to assemble four thousand men at Bebbanburg, a thousand trained warriors and the rest from the fryd, and another four hundred from Luncæstershire had gone directly to the aid of Cumbria.

  ‘With any luck Beli will turn tail and head back to Strathclyde once the Manxmen start their raids. The men of Luncæstershire and Cumbria will harry them all the way with the aim of weakening them so much that they will be concerned about further raids and possible attacks from Dalriada to consider bothering us again,’ he told his commanders once they were all assembled in Swefred’s hall.

  Osred sat beside Behrtfrith, who had been appointed as the Hereræswa of Northumbria by the Witan. The king had refused to acknowledge Swefred when he’d arrived and had only nodded a greeting to Kendra when Behrtfrith had whispered in his ear that he would take it amiss if he snubbed his daughter.

  ‘The northern column is presently moving along the coast towards Dùn Èideann,’ he said pointing at a rough layout that his chief scout had sketched in charcoal on the wooden floor in front of the king.

  ‘It’s not clear whether they intend to try and capture the fortress or bypass it and continue towards my own stronghold at Dùn Barra. Either way we need to trap them between our army and the coast. The other column of Picts was last reported in the hills to the south of Dùn Èideann and I can only presume that they are headed for the valley of the River Twaid. Some of Swefred’s mounted warband are shadowing them so we’ll know more in due course. At any event I suggest that we forget about them for now.’

  ‘How will you trap the Picts in the north?’ Eochaid asked.

  ‘By blocking the road along the coast with half our force and then bringing the other half up behind them to prevent them retreating. My aim is to annihilate them, just as they did with Ecgfrith’s army twenty seven years ago.’

  ‘Who will command which force?’

  ‘I will command the blocking force with the king. Swefred will command the army which will attack them from the west.’

  At the mention of Swefred’s name the king rose to his feet; his face dark with anger.

  ‘No, I forbid it! That traitor let his brother escape on the pretext that he would become a monk. Well, he’s betrayed you all. Eadwulf didn’t stay a monk for long did he? Now he has a son who could challenge me for the throne. The whole family should be executed!’

  ‘Including my daughter and grandson, Cyning?’ Behrtfrith asked coldly.

  ‘You should never have allowed her to marry a man I intend to arrest as soon as I’m allowed to rule as a king should.’

  A deathly hush descended on the hall as the two stared at one another, the elder calm but coldly furious, the younger beside himself anger.

  ‘I suggest that we need to consider what’s in the best interests of the kingdom,’ Eochaid said quietly. ‘I agree that Swefred is the most able military commander, after our hereræswa, that is,’ he added hastily, ‘and it is logical for him to command the other army, especially as it has such a difficult mission. He will have to get behind the enemy’s line of advance without being detected and then appear at exactly the right moment. It’s not a task I’d want.’

  There was a general murmur of agreement with the last point.

  ‘Cyning, your obvious hatred of Ealdorman Swefred is unwarranted. It was he who captured this very stronghold in order to deny it to Eadwulf and he was the person who defeated him with a mere handful of men and caused his army to disperse. With all due respect, that is not the action of a traitor.’

  ‘But he allowed him to escape and to breed to produce more pretenders to my throne!’

  ‘They are not a threat to you, Cyning; no more than Eochaid, Swefred or their sons are. You are born of the House of Æthelfrith, the first King of Northumbria. They are not his descendants.’

  Everyone turned to look at the man who’d spoken.

  ‘Bishop Eadfrith, I’d not realised that you were present at this war council,’

  ‘I’m here, Cyning, because I and some of my priests and monks intend to travel with the army to give you our blessing and the Holy Sacrament, especially just before you fight.’

  ‘I’m sure that will give our men heart, bishop, thank you,’ Behrtfrith said quickly, before the king could make some snide comment.

  If Osred wasn’t an atheist, he was something very close to it, and made no effort to hide the fact that he thought that the clergy were deluded fools.

  Later that evening Behrtfrith sought Swefred out and took him outside where they could talk privately.

  ‘That idiot will become our ruler in two and a half years’ time
and there is nothing we can do to delay it further. We were lucky the Witan didn’t decide to allow him to rule from this coming December when he turns sixteen.’

  ‘I’m even more concerned than you are, but there is nothing we can do about it.’

  ‘Isn’t there? Of course, one or more of us may die in battle this year, but assuming we all survive, we need to start planning for the day he’s let loose.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘I don’t know yet. Of course, there are some kings like Ethelred who were persuaded to abdicate and become monks.’

  ‘That didn’t seem to work too well with my brother.’

  ‘No, but he can never claim the throne again after breaking his vows as a monk.’

  Eadwulf had left Iona a year after arriving there and had married the daughter of some minor kinglet in Hibernia. He was now serving the High King as captain of his bodyguard. Swefred had heard that he had a daughter and a son called Earnwine but that was two years ago and he’d heard nothing since.

  ‘I can’t see Osred as a monk somehow.’

  Both men looked at each other and burst out laughing at the thought. After that they became downcast again.

  ‘It seems that there is only one solution.’

  ‘I fear so.’

  Both knew that they were talking about assassination.

  ‘Well there’s time enough yet, let’s see how things develop,’ Swefred said as they parted.

  ~~~

  As he led his small army through the series of hills that ran fifteen miles or so inland from the coast of the Firth of Forth, Swefred was only too well aware that they were a mere ten miles from the valley of the Twaid where the second half of the Pictish army were reportedly pillaging their way eastwards.