Shield Maiden

by Stuart Hill

  This seemed to be confirmed for me when Edward and the mighty Ealdorman of Mercia fell into a weird sort of berserker dance, keeping step and leaping around me as they charged an imaginary Great Army. Mouse joined in with happy barking and capered about like a gigantic puppy as he chased along after the berserkers.

  “When you’ve all finished ...!” I shouted over their snorts and bellowing and they collapsed into their chairs giggling uncontrollably while Mouse settled with a happy sigh at my feet. I waited for them to shut up and then asked, “Weren’t you supposed to have a meeting with Father and Cerdic tonight?”

  Ethelred looked guilty for a moment. “Well yes. But it was only about supplies and stuff and we’ve been over it so many times, so I sneaked away.”

  “Supplies and stuff feed the fighters and keep them strong,” a voice suddenly said from the shadows and we all leapt to our feet as Ara stepped into the firelight.

  She did this so often that we really ought to have been used to it, but somehow we never were and she reduced us all to quivering wrecks every time.

  “Or perhaps the soldiers of Mercia live on air and water,” Ara continued.

  “Supplies are all arranged and the newest member of the fyrd eats as well as I do on campaign,” Ethelred said calmly.

  “I’m glad to hear it,” the wise woman said and her ravens added their own voices in agreement.

  “Have you come to tell us something important, Ara, or do you just want to torment us for your own amusement?” I asked coldly.

  “Both,” she answered, baring her strong teeth in a way that was as close as she came to smiling.

  “Well tell us then!”

  “There’s not much more to add to what you already know,” she said, squatting down between our chairs like an old peasant woman sorting winter turnips. “You’ll have half a month to rest and then a decisive battle that will settle things ... for a while at least.”

  “Where?” asked Ethelred.

  “When?” asked Edward.

  “Who’ll win?” I asked.

  “As for when, I’ve already said,” Ara snapped as she frowned at my brother. “But the battle’s outcome is shrouded as always in mist and mystery, and as for where, I’ve only been shown the shadow of a once-great city, built by the Romans and straddling a river at the widest point they could bridge its waters.”

  “Well that could be any number of ruinous dumps,” Edward moaned.

  “No,” said Ethelred. “The Danes want a strong base on a river that’s deep and wide enough to take their dragon boats and also their trading ships. And they want it within marching distance of East Anglia. That’s the Danish strategy for this part of the war. They already have the Humber and the Ouse and the Witham of Lincoln, and now after we stopped them taking Rochester on the Medway, where else is there, but the Thames?”

  “And London,” I added.

  Discussions went on for a while longer, but soon after Ara withdrew to ‘whatever slimy pit she sleeps in’ as Edward put it, and Ethelred and I then took our thoughts about the Thames and London to Father. But he wasn’t convinced we were right, and rather than commit the army to a march that may take it in the wrong direction he sent out extra scouts instead and waited for reports.

  We were disappointed, but there was nothing we could do: Father was senior king in the alliance between Wessex and Mercia, which meant he had full command and his word was law. Still, this meant we had our two-week break as Ara had promised. I spent a good bit of it training with the Mercians, as I was still expected to march and fight with them. But even the most battle-hardened and bloodthirsty warrior can’t train all day and some of the time I spent looking through the amazing library of books in the local abbey. I missed studying in the silence and peace of the great churches and I really enjoyed looking through the huge collection of writings the monks had made and copied over the years. They had almost forty books, more than even Father had, and he was known as a great scholar!

  But when I felt a need for sunlight and fresh air beyond the shadows and incense of the abbey, I went back to the house we lived in and sat in the ‘garden’. Well that’s what the ealdorman who owned the place called it, but I knew it was nothing like the amazing and splendid gardens of ancient Rome and of the far Orient that some of the books in the abbey library told of. But even so, it was pleasant enough with many pretty flowers and plants that had been transplanted from the woodlands and hedgerows of the countryside. There was even a tiny orchard of mixed pear and apple trees, and it was here that I sat one warm afternoon with a book I’d borrowed from the abbey. I’d almost had to promise a payment in blood to be allowed to take it from the library, but after I’d reminded the monk in charge of my royal status, he eventually agreed to let me take it until the bell for Vespers was rung. This was the last service of the abbey’s day and so I had a good few hours to read.

  I sat under one of the trees with Mouse in his usual place at my feet and opened the book. It was a piece of military writing called Anabasis by Xenophon, the Greek scholar and general. It was written in the author’s original language and after so many months of fighting and physical effort it was good to use my brain again. As a child I’d learnt to read and write Greek along with Latin and my own Saxon language, thanks to Father’s order that great works should be translated into the ‘tongue of the land’. But all of that seemed so long ago, in a distant time before Guthrum and his Great Army disrupted all of our lives. By reading now, I felt that I was defying the Danes and their threat to our civilised world just as much as I did when I stood in the shield wall and physically fought to defeat them.

  I reached the part in the book where Xenophon had proved his brilliance as a general by leading his soldiers unharmed through hostile territory, and couldn’t help repeating aloud the cry of his warriors when they realised they’d reached the sea and safety:

  “Thalassa! Thalassa!”

  “The sea! The sea!” a voice echoed, translating the words into Saxon.

  Mouse stood wagging his tail and I looked up from the page and saw Ethelred, dappled by sunlight and shadow, standing under a young apple tree. For some reason my breath caught in my throat and I coughed. But determined to seem relaxed I smiled in welcome.

  “You understand Greek?” I asked, surprised.

  “Of course: Mercia is a great centre of scholarship and as a son of the ruling family I was taught by the very best tutors.”

  “Of course,” I echoed.

  “And I never expected the daughter of Alfred of Wessex to be anything but a scholar herself.”

  “Who’s your favourite writer?” I asked, genuinely interested to know what made and moved this young fighting leader of the Mercians.

  “Well I prefer something with a bit of action, so Virgil’s Aeneid is the one I like best. I’m not really interested in the philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. They just seem to like tying everything in knots and proving that black is actually white just to show how clever they are with words.”

  I knew he was trying to impress me with his knowledge of books and the Greek and Roman writers, but I also thought he was being honest about what he liked best. A man of action like Ethelred was far more likely to enjoy reading about a hero like Aeneas, whose descendants would include the great general Julius Caesar, than sifting through the complex arguments of philosophy. Besides, if he was trying to impress me, he was succeeding. In fact he’d impressed me almost from the first time I’d met him.

  “And what about you?” he went on. “Who’s your favourite?”

  I held up the book I still had in my hand. “Xenophon. I feel the same as you: I’d sooner read tales about heroic deeds than the musings of any philosopher.”

  “Spoken like a warrior’s daughter,” said Ethelred with a smile.

  “Not like a warrior in my own right?”

  This time he laughed. He often laughed when we talked. “Oh yes! Spoken like one of the truest warriors I know!”

  I put the book down, ta
king care that it was on the blanket I was sitting on and safe from the damp ground. “There’s room here beside me,” I said patting the blanket.

  He sat next to me and after fending off Mouse’s slobbery licks of greeting he leant back against the apple tree I’d chosen for its shade, and he breathed in the scents of the flowers and growing things. “You can understand why the Christians depict heaven as a garden.”

  I looked at him in surprise. “The Christians! You speak as if you aren’t baptised yourself!”

  “Well of course I am!” he answered defensively. “I just meant ... I just meant ...”

  “You just meant that we Saxons have been followers of Christ for a few generations now, but we worshipped different gods for far longer, our own gods, not one shipped in like a batch of wine from warmer places.”

  “I wouldn’t let the bishops hear you speaking like that,” said Ethelred.

  I shrugged. “I was brought up by Ara. Talk of the old religion is nothing new to me.”

  “Ah yes, Ara,” said Ethelred. “If we had a few more like her in our ranks, we’d have defeated the Danes long ago. Perhaps the pagan Saxons were tougher than we are.”

  “Perhaps,” I agreed. “But we’re not doing so badly now. The pagan Danes ran from us fast enough at Rochester.”

  “That’s true,” said Ethelred. “But don’t let’s bring the war into this garden. Here and from now on, we’ll only talk of peaceful things.”

  This was worrying; the only thing we had in common, so far, was the war and fighting. Even the books we liked were about ancient wars. What else could we talk about?

  “Right,” I said determinedly. “Peaceful things ...”

  “Mercia, his palace.” The words came from nowhere. They just seemed to drop into my head. I’m almost sure they weren’t said aloud because Ethelred was still looking at me, expectantly.

  “Erm ... erm ... What’s your palace like? In Tamworth ... isn’t it?” I almost succeeded in keeping the squeak of desperation out of my voice.

  “Yes, that’s right,” he answered. “It’s said that Offa himself had it built. One wing is even constructed of stone.”

  “Offa?” I said seizing on the name of the almost mythical ruler of Mercia from the distant past. “I’d love to see the dyke he built ... clever ... the way it runs along the entire border with Wales ... In fact ... in fact it was built to keep the Welsh out, wasn’t it?” I could have wept with embarrassment. Of course it had been built to keep the Welsh out! The only reason anyone would build a defensive dyke along a country’s border would be to keep the people of that country out.

  “Keep going. Ask him about his hawks.” The words dropped into my head again, seemingly from nowhere.

  “Hawks!” I blurted.

  “Yes? What about them?” Ethelred said, looking politely puzzled.

  “You ... you train them.”

  He smiled brightly. “Yes, when I can. But since becoming Ealdorman of Mercia I’ve not really had time. You have to dedicate yourself entirely to the training of a hawk. I once had a beautiful peregrine though; she was fierce and brave and strong and, well, she reminds me a bit of you.”

  That was it! If I could have sunk through the ground and disappeared from view I’d have happily done so! My face was on fire and even though I wanted to run away from the entire ridiculous situation, I couldn’t, because my toes were too tightly curled with embarrassment in the depths of my shoes. They were the sort of dainty court shoes I wore when I wasn’t fighting the Danes. Somehow things would’ve been different if they’d been the tough, thick leather boots I usually wore on campaign. Then I’d be with the Ethelred I knew and understood, the Ethelred who was a war leader, a warrior, a comrade and a friend. Not this different Ethelred who was polite and socially nice and said pretty things in pretty ways that I just couldn’t relate to.

  “Tell him about the hawks your father’s trained. Keep the conversation going.” The words just dropped into my head again. It was almost as though someone was giving me advice. Someone who wanted me to make a success of this encounter with the new and different Ethelred. Then I understood. Then I understood completely and was annoyed enough to take back a little control.

  “Well thank you for comparing me to a bird with just about enough brain to kill things, but I hope there’s more to me than that!”

  “That’s not what I meant ...” Ethelred spluttered.

  “No. I know that. But there’s someone I need to see right now, so perhaps we’ll meet later at training.”

  He left. In effect I dismissed him, proving I was still in control of at least part of my life. “You can come out now, Ara,” I then said quietly.

  I watched as the wise woman stepped out of the cloaking shadow she’d woven. She briefly patted Mouse’s head as he bumbled up to greet her. “I was trying to help,” she said quietly.

  “Thank you, but I can think for myself.”

  “Perhaps, but when it comes to Ethelred you don’t think very well.”

  “It doesn’t matter if I think very well or not. When I have thoughts in my head, I want them to be my thoughts, not yours.”

  “Then make them the right thoughts; make them the thoughts of a woman with power and the right to rule; make them the thoughts of a queen.”

  She was right of course and though it had taken me a while to understand exactly why Father had insisted I fight alongside Ethelred and his Mercians, that didn’t mean I had to behave as if I was only a means of making an important alliance permanent. I could still be happy with my role. I could still actually like the man I was destined to marry.

  “I know what’s expected of me, Ara. But it will happen when I want it to and on my terms. Stay out of my head, and stay out of Ethelred’s too. Neither of us is comfortable with your idea of how relationships should develop. We both know what we want. At the moment we’re comrades and friends and when the time is right we will take it further, but not until we’re ready. Now go.”

  The old wise woman stood in silence for a moment, but then she finally bowed her head and walked away.

  When I could no longer hear Ranhald and Raarken mumbling to each other grumpily, I breathed a sigh of relief, picked up my blanket and went to get ready for training with Ethelred.

  XII

  The next day the scouts came in with reports of the Great Army’s movements. They were heading for London and would reach it before we had a chance to catch them. We’d been right all along. If Father had listened to us we wouldn’t now have the task of breaking into a city that would be defended by some of the best soldiers the land had seen since the time of the Romans. Of course, in all reality we could equally have been wrong and we could have committed our force to protecting London while the Danes attacked Tamworth in Mercia or even Chippenham in Wessex again.

  I was beginning to learn that this was the nature of war. Knowing your enemy’s plans was quite literally half the battle.

  Father demanded ‘Roman speed’ again, and the army was on the road and heading for London almost as soon as our warriors could pick up their spears. The supply wagons were already packed and waiting and everyone knew precisely what was expected of them and what they had to do. Fighting the Great Army had made us an efficient and seasoned military power. Something that I don’t think Guthrum and his generals had expected.

  We moved through the land like a gale and arrived in the valley of the great River Thames before the Danes had been able to fully consolidate their hold on the city of London. This was the first time that I’d seen the settlement that had been built by the Romans and in effect it was now two cities, with the new Saxon defences lying next to the crumbling walls and falling masonry of the ancient metropolis. There was a smell of burning in the air and some evidence that the population had resisted the Danes, but the broken gates and breaches in the wooden walls that lined the top of the steep defences showed that the fight to defend the city had been lost.

  In fact, we’d passed lines of wagons and car
ts on the road, as refugees fled from London with as many of their goods and belongings as they could carry. So at least we knew there’d be few civilians to worry about when we attacked the walls.

  “The Danes have not had the time to secure their new den,” said Ara, arriving as unexpectedly as she always did to stand with me, Mouse and Ethelred as we surveyed the city before us.

  “Shouldn’t you be with the army of Wessex?” I asked as sweetly as I could. “By rights you’re Father’s servant, not mine.”

  “I serve the gods first and people second,” Ara answered, not taking her eyes from the walls we’d soon be attacking. “Besides, you’ll be in conference with the king soon enough. He can see my pretty face then if he misses it so much.” Ranhald and Raarken cackled, obviously finding her words funny.

  “Then you’d better come with us now,” said Ethelred. “It’ll be quick enough: we’ve already agreed on a two-pronged attack. We just need to decide who strikes where.”

  The plan certainly was quickly agreed. We Mercians were to make an assault on the northern defences with the River Thames at our back, while Father, along with Edward, would lead the army of Wessex on the main gate on the eastern side. Simply said, but deadly to actually put into action when the defenders were the Danish Great Army.

  It was still early enough for dew to soak my boots as we marched on the walls. There was a smell of burning hanging over the city and the air was loud with birdsong, but soon the warning growl of the enemy’s war horns began to echo over the land as we were spotted by Danish lookouts. I could clearly see that the breaches in the city’s defences were blocked with stone-filled barrels and thorn brush and behind those was a wall of shields bristling with spears. This wasn’t going to be easy.

  My heart was racing as we walked forward, our own shields locked, while others formed a protecting roof against a hail of throwing axes and arrows. As usual the Danes were singing, their voices rolling around the sky fierce and heavy with the threat of their power.