by Justin Hill
‘Men shall sing of this day when we beat the Danes,’ Godwin said.
Edmund grinned but his eyes looked sad and weary. ‘I will miss you.’
Godwin turned his horse away.
Snow frosted the crowns of the Downs. The land was dressed in the drab winter garb of mud and twigs.
The hall was shut up. The paddock was empty, the flocks had been sent down to Harditone to escape the freeze. Only the brew house showed signs of habitation. Godwin tethered his horse and walked towards it. This place did not feel like home. Either he had changed or it had. Or both of us have changed, he thought, like young lovers who grow apart and lose their passion.
Kendra was not there and Godwin began to fret.
‘Hello?’ he called into the brew house. His voice echoed back.
‘Hello?’ it asked in a quizzical tone.
Godwin found Kendra in the bottom yard, herding the chickens out of their evening coop. She seemed taller and slimmer than before, and beautiful too, in her blue linen skirts. Her ankles were bare, and her shoes damp and muddy, the hems of her skirts worn and faded where she had scrubbed the grime from them.
The chickens ran through her legs and he clapped and laughed.
‘Godwin,’ she said, looking round and speaking as if he had just been down to the market to sell a cow, ‘you are here!’
He smiled broadly as another chicken escaped her.
‘Stop it! You’re encouraging them!’ she told him, but he did not move and he caught the last one in a flurry of feathers and handed it to her.
There was a hand’s breadth between Godwin and Kendra as they walked back to the bowyer. When they got to the door, Kendra put her hand on his forearm. Her touch was very light, but it relieved him and his unease settled.
Using Contone as his base, Godwin rode from manor to manor talking to the headmen and trying to gather a war band. They wanted to support Edmund, but they were fearful. ‘The chief men have gone over to Knut,’ they said. ‘They have betrayed us all.’
There was little disagreement, but when Godwin asked if they would ride when the beacons were lit, they were hesitant.
‘I cannot,’ the headmen said. ‘I have wife and children. What would they do if I was killed in battle?’
Godwin felt as though he was ploughing through stony and heavy clay soil.
It was weary and exhausting work.
One night Godwin came home drunk and despondent and he and Kendra held each other under the furs. Godwin lay with his head on her shoulder. If she still doubted the cause she did not let on, but bolstered his resolve.
‘If I foreswore Edmund, what would you think of me?’
‘You will not foreswear him,’ she said.
He nodded and she kissed him again to stop him saying any more and pulled his head back on to her shoulder.
On the night before Godwin was due to leave to rejoin Edmund, he and Kendra made love. First passionately, then desperately, and by the end of the night their lovemaking was tender – and as the night began to pale about them they clung tightly onto each other.
‘How go the preparations?’ she asked as the men gathered in the pre-dawn gloom.
Godwin forced a smile. ‘Well enough,’ he said. ‘More men have come than are obliged to follow. I could not have hoped for better.’
‘Do not waste their lives or their loyalty.’
He resented her words, but took her hands.
‘I will not,’ he promised.
The stable lads had spent all evening gathering in the horses. There were three for each man: one to ride, one for a change of mount and one to carry the fodder. The horses steamed in a thin and freezing rain, leaf-buds dripped under fat-bellied rain clouds.
Godwin’s war companions mounted up. They were quiet and grim and businesslike.
‘Is all ready?’ Godwin shouted.
‘Ready,’ Beorn shouted.
Kendra presented Godwin with a bowl of warm mead. ‘Do not forget that your father was Wulfnoth Cild,’ she called out. ‘God speed you all.’
The ground shook as the company heeled their horses towards the lane. Kendra stood for a long time after the silence had returned. She stood alone looking at the empty lane and the trail of churned up hoof prints.
It was past noon, and already the afternoon light was waning. Shadows gathered among the trees and the fading winter fields, the narrow coomb sloped before her to the black sea.
‘You’ll catch a cold,’ Agnes said, and bustled Kendra back inside.
The loom waited in the corner of the bowyer, the threads hanging slack, the pile of combed wool waiting to be spun.
That evening the hall was thoughtfully quiet. The hearth had been swept clean; an unlit fire stacked by the high seat where the Fighting Man would hang when the victorious men returned. The benches were stacked against the far walls; the tapestries were rolled up and wrapped with linen. How briefly it had gleamed, Kendra thought as she turned the hall key, how fleeting the bench-mirth.
Before she shut the place up again, Kendra walked along the hearth and tried to bring her memories back. She sat among the stacked up benches and tried to imagine smiling faces, and the longer she sat, the more she was aware of the new hall creaking and breathing about her. It was like a living thing, soaking up the lives of the people inside, taking on their shape and hopes and character, as a pair of new shoes bends to their wearer’s toes. She felt unbearably sad and did not know why, and laughed at herself. Silly girl! she told herself. You are a slave girl. You should be thankful you have a simple life here, safe from war and violence and lawlessness.
Kendra felt tears inside her, and took in a deep breath and stood abruptly up, stepped outside, let the latch drop behind her, left the hall to its dreams.
The cool night air felt good. A frost was falling. She pushed the hair back from her face and drew in a deep breath. Her footsteps took her slowly across the yard. The muddled hoof prints were hard underfoot. A shooting star curved through the eastern sky. She did not have any more wishes to make, and did not know whether this was a good omen or not.
What now? she asked herself as she lay down on her bed. There was no one to share her sheets or pillow her head, and she curled her legs up to keep herself warm.
‘Pray,’ she imagined her mother telling her, ‘and wait.’
‘Live, laugh and enjoy!’ she imagined Godwin telling her.
It was easy to leave, she thought; harder to be left behind. But when morning dispelled the darkness, she stood and shivered in the damp air. The sky was cloudless and a heavy dew dripped from the eaves. There was life in the tree twigs, just biding its time, and the first sign of shoots in the hedgerows. And despite everything Kendra felt strangely cheered.
Edmund’s warriors gathered in a secret spot along rich river meadows in the west of England. Godwin reckoned there were maybe five hundred men. They waited for a week and another three hundred joined them.
Beorn was unimpressed. ‘I’ve killed more men than this. Bugger me, I’ve slept with more women! And they could probably fight better than this rabble.’
Godwin trudged up to the top of the hill that looked to the south. The flattened grass shivered in the wind; the blades shone silver in the low dawn light. His oxhide soles squelched with grass-damp, his toes numb from the wet and the wind. He paused only to retie his leggings round his sky-blue woollen hose, to unpick his cloak from a patch of briars. His cloak had been torn on the ride and the one he wore now had been taken from a dead Mercian. There was the brown stain of blood on the hood.
Godwin had tears in his eyes. Edmund’s force was pitifully small. The country had failed them.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Siege of Lundenburh
Knut left his coronation and moved straight on Lundenburh, as his father had done three years earlier when he had driven Ethelred into exile. His host was vast, bigger than Swein’s Army. There were as many Englishmen as Danes. Their camp filled the fields where Edmund and Godwin had rac
ed horses. It stretched all the way up to the distant woods.
‘Lord King, there is your prize,’ Eadric said to Knut, as if it was his for the giving.
‘Ethelred’s treasury is there?’
Eadric nodded. The wealth of England – the mint, the royal scribes and chancellery, the crown, the throne, the archbishops of Euruic and Canturburie – were all there.
Memories of past days came to Eadric. Ethelred, you should have used those three years, he thought. His mind was much on the decision he had made to betray Ethelred, but God had clearly deserted the old man, and Eadric’s enemies had drawn close about him. It was clear whose side God was on and Eadric had the sense to listen to the Almighty.
Lundenburh was even bigger than Euruic itself.
‘How will we take it?’ Knut said.
‘How do you take any town?’
‘Force,’ Knut said. Eadric laughed. He knew Knut better than that. ‘Or hunger, or trickery.’
Eadric nodded. He didn’t have much time for frontal assaults and scaling ladders, and all the sweat and effort of dragging trees from the forests and battering down the gates. ‘I have always found,’ Eadric said, ‘that treachery was the easiest gate to open.’
Knut’s men laid siege to the city. They surrounded it with ditches and ramparts of stacked turf, then tied boats across the Temese and closed it to traffic.
Lundenburh would see sense. Knut seemed content. They were on high ground and could look down and survey the city.
‘So that is Crepelgate Palace,’ he said, as he made out the distinctive square walls of the royal palace. ‘And there is the bridge. What is the southern burg called?’
‘Sudwerca,’ Eadric said.
‘Imaginative. That is the weaker of the two?’
‘It is, sire. My men will show you where the weak points are.’
‘Show?’ Knut said.
Eadric nodded.
‘You will do more than show,’ Knut said. ‘You will lead the way.’
Eadric did not sleep well that night. Treachery was the key. Gold would open any gate. He had to prove his loyalty, and he would do it, even if it was with the blood of the Sudwerca men.
At dawn the next morning the Danes entered Sudwerca through an open postern gate. Offa Fox was with them. Eadric watched as they quickly filed inside. It was soundless. No one shouted. No swords rang out. The men lifted the gates from their hinges and let them crash down on to the floor. Eadric blew his horn. The way was clear.
Caerl was with the defenders on the north side of the river who watched with horror as smoke began to pour up into the air from the south side.
Shit! Caerl thought, and grabbed his sword and shield and ran to where the bridge crossed the river.
Edmund had left Eadwig in charge of the defence of the city. The bridge had been readied for this moment, so that they could cast it down if either burg fell.
Men were fleeing back over the bridge. Danes were pointing and shouting. The bridge had to be cut.
‘Break the bridge!’ Caerl shouted, but the men were in a confusion of panic.
No one seemed to be in charge. No one did anything.
Caerl sprinted towards them. ‘Break the bridge!’ he shouted, but Danish warriors were already on the far edge.
‘Bowmen!’ Caerl shouted. ‘Where is Eadwig?’
‘Fled!’
Caerl cursed. The defenders were simple citizens, standing because they had nowhere to flee to. In their terror they had forgotten themselves and no guard had been set.
‘Shoot!’ Caerl shouted.
‘But our own men!’ they said.
‘They can swim,’ Caerl spat. ‘Shoot those Danes!’
They quickly drew bows and there was a zing! as the arrows leapt out towards the enemy. The first flight drove the Danes back. Four of them fell off the bridge and disappeared under the slow brown water.
More Danes charged forward.
Caerl looked about him. Where were the men? he cursed. Damn Eadwig! Where were the men? Treachery, Caerl thought, and drew his sword with a great flourish.
‘Break the bridge!’ he shouted again.
The men began to haul on the ropes. The timbers creaked and the bridge began to sway. Caerl ran forward on to the bridge. It wobbled under him. He shouted behind him, ‘Pull down the supports!’
The first to be killed was a young Dane with blond hair and a blue cloak. Magnus was his name, and he had come a-viking from the cold villages of Jutland to earn the silver his father had done under Olaf Tryggvason. He lifted his shield and thought to drive Caerl off the bridge. It was the error all young men made. Caerl swung low and his sword bit deep into Magnus’s thigh and shattered the bone. Caerl kicked him off the bridge and Magnus drowned in the murky Temese water, and his mother waited for many years and watched the empty straights and wondered what had befallen her dear son.
The second to die was Stenkil, who sailed from Gotaland on Skoglar’s thirty-oared ship Sea Stallion. Caerl splintered his shield and shattered Stenkil’s collarbone. Stenkil fell and Caerl put his foot on his neck to hold him steady, clove in his skull with a single blow. Stenkil died clutching the hilt of his sword, so that he might fight at Ragnorok against the demons of Hell.
The third was an axeman named Skarp-Hedin. Caerl’s sword gashed his left shoulder, but Skarp-Hedin was foaming with battle rage and shrugged off the blow. He smashed the butt of his axe into Caerl’s face. Caerl staggered back. The Dane was upon him. He knocked Caerl from his feet.
Caerl spat out his shattered front teeth. He groaned as he crawled towards the side of the bridge.
Skarp-Hedin made a great show of repeating the death blow that Caerl had just dealt. He stood over the crawling man, set his foot firmly in the small of Caerl’s back and pinned him to the floor. Skarp-Hedin roared with battle joy as he raised his axe. He brandished it in the air, lifted his head and saw men on the river bank stopping to watch. There was terror and horror written on their faces. The world paused for a moment to witness. He understood why they were transfixed.
Caerl did not see the blow that split his skull from crown to teeth. At the moment of his death the last post came free and the bridge timbers hung for a moment, and then crashed into the river.
Eadwig was found by Queen Emma, dressed as a serving woman, hiding in the Palace of Crepelgate.
‘Get up!’ she hissed. ‘Put on your arms. The bridge has been broken and the city is safe. Remember who you are. Get out there and show the people your face.’
There was wailing that night. It would not be long before Knut had taken the whole city. Queen Emma felt fear enter her as she had never felt it before, a cold rod of steel that left her calm and fierce and resolute. She had sons to lose, and if her sons went, so did her future.
Queen Emma called a council of all the important men in the city. She took her seat next to Eadwig. He bumbled and blathered, and all she could think of was him dressed as a girl hiding in Crepelgate. She stood abruptly in the middle of Eadwig’s speech.
‘Lundenburh will not fall!’ she told them. Her voice quavered, like a metal bar vibrates when the smith’s hammer strikes. ‘Listen to me, all of you. Put fire in your guts, revenge in your fists. King Edmund will bring a forest of spears, bright warriors in their hammer-knit war shirts, men of grim and warlike aspect. Stop this talk of defeat and slaughter. Edmund will bring relief. Alfred, Edward, come and sit with me. Look, Englishmen, the athelings are here. These are Edmund’s brothers. He loves them as dearly as life itself. Eadwig, don mail and helm and lead your men. Whose blood runs in your veins? Woden’s blood! No! If I was a man I would lead from the front and I would smite these Danes for daring to bend one blade of grass. I would summon rivers and storms to smite their camp. I call on Christ the Saviour to gnash their bones with teeth of plague. Edmund is depending on us to hold this city. He promised us all. Is he a man to swear false oaths? Do not forget that Edmund is king. He will come and he will bring all the brave men of England.’
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The assembled council met her assertion with stunned silence. No one dared to contradict her. Emma stood and looked each man in the eye. Few could meet her gaze and not believe her, such was her force.
They strode out that evening as different men. Lundenburh would not fall. Ethelred’s widow had made them swear, made them believe it themselves.
The Army camped on the north side of the Temese, on the high ground above the walled city. Spring was come and it felt like summer to the Norsemen. They stripped off and relaxed, and played summer games in the open spaces between the tents and banner poles. They were unwilling to risk their lives if the city could be taken by terror or treachery or the simple statement of overwhelming force. Some men wrestled; others listened to histories and sagas; a pair of braves knelt in the grass as a monk baptised them. Knut took a dim view on any pagans within the Army, and they would get a silver penny that night for converting to the White Christ.
But Lundenburh did not fall. Traitors were hung, the gates remained shut, and a steady stream of men and food found their way in through the leaky siege. Nevertheless the five weeks had taken their toll. No ship had entered the city. No reinforcements came, but Queen Emma paraded round the walls each day. She dressed all in white and rode a magnificent white horse, with golden bridle, and behind her came Alfred, Eadwig and Edward, followed by a procession of monks carrying some of her collection of reliquaries.
Men looked for her coming and cheered as she approached, then fell silent when she spoke, so that her voice carried far over them all. She lauded the defenders, left them in no doubt that God was watching them from the clouds above their heads, and that He expected them to protect this city against the Danish invaders. She gave the men hope and courage, and the jeering defenders bared their bottoms to the Danes and hurled insults and curses. Many of the insults were too obscure for him to understand, but Knut got the tone, and understood the hand gestures.
The defenders raised curse poles – horses’ heads stuck on to tall sticks – and turned them towards the Danish camp.
‘And they call themselves Christians!’ Knut swore.