What Eadred did was to end the war between the Saxons and the Danes in Cumbraland, and he did it by choosing Guthred. Guthred, of course, was a Dane and that meant Cumbraland’s Danes were ready to follow him and, because he had been proclaimed king by a Saxon abbot, the Saxons were equally prepared to support him. Thus the two biggest warring tribes of Cumbraland, the Danes and Saxons, were united, while the Britons, and a good many Britons still lived in Cumbraland, were also Christians and their priests told them to accept Eadred’s choice and so they did.
It is one thing to proclaim a king and another for the king to rule, but Eadred had made a shrewd choice. Guthred was a good man, but he was also the son of Hardicnut who had called himself king of Northumbria, so Guthred had a claim to the crown, and none of Cumbraland’s thegns was strong enough to challenge him. They needed a king because, for too long, they had squabbled among themselves and suffered from the Norse raids out of Ireland and from the savage incursions from Strath Clota. Guthred, by uniting Dane and Saxon, could now marshal stronger forces to face those enemies. There was one man who might have been a rival. Ulf, he was called, and he was a Dane who owned land south of Cair Ligualid and he had greater wealth than any other thegn in Cumbraland, but he was old and lame and without sons and so he offered fealty to Guthred, and Ulf’s example persuaded the other Danes to accept Eadred’s choice. They knelt to him one by one and he greeted them by name, raised them and embraced them.
‘I really should become a Christian,’ he told me on the morning after our arrival.
‘Why?’
‘I told you why. To show gratitude. Aren’t you supposed to call me lord?’
‘Yes, lord.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Calling you lord, lord?’
‘No!’ he laughed. ‘Becoming a Christian?’
‘Why should it hurt?’
‘I don’t know. Don’t they nail you to a cross?’
‘Of course they don’t,’ I said scornfully, ‘they just wash you.’
‘I wash myself anyway,’ he said, then frowned. ‘Why do Saxons not wash? Not you, you wash, but most Saxons don’t. Not as much as Danes. Do they like being dirty?’
‘You can catch cold by washing.’
‘I don’t,’ he said. ‘So that’s it? A wash?’
‘Baptism, it’s called.’
‘And you have to give up the other gods?’
‘You’re supposed to.’
‘And only have one wife?’
‘Only one wife. They’re strict about that.’
He thought about it. ‘I still think I should do it,’ he said, ‘because Eadred’s god does have power. Look at that dead man! It’s a miracle that he hasn’t rotted away!’
The Danes were fascinated by Eadred’s relics. Most did not understand why a group of monks would carry a corpse, a dead king’s head and a jewelled book all over Northumbria, but they did understand that those things were sacred and they were impressed by that. Sacred things have power. They are a pathway from our world to the vaster worlds beyond, and even before Guthred arrived in Cair Ligualid some Danes had accepted baptism as a way of harnessing the power of the relics for themselves.
I am no Christian. These days it does no good to confess that, for the bishops and abbots have too much influence and it is easier to pretend to a faith than to fight angry ideas. I was raised a Christian, but at ten years old, when I was taken into Ragnar’s family, I discovered the old Saxon gods who were also the gods of the Danes and of the Norsemen, and their worship has always made more sense to me than bowing down to a god who belongs to a country so far away that I have met no one who has ever been there. Thor and Odin walked our hills, slept in our valleys, loved our women and drank from our streams, and that makes them seem like neighbours. The other thing I like about our gods is that they are not obsessed with us. They have their own squabbles and love affairs and seem to ignore us much of the time, but the Christian god has nothing better to do than to make rules for us. He makes rules, more rules, prohibitions and commandments, and he needs hundreds of black-robed priests and monks to make sure we obey those laws. He strikes me as a very grumpy god, that one, even though his priests are forever claiming that he loves us. I have never been so stupid as to think that Thor or Odin or Hoder loved me, though I hope at times they have thought me worthy of them.
But Guthred wanted the power of the Christian holy relics to work for him and so, to Eadred’s delight, he asked to be baptised. The ceremony was done in the open air, just outside the big church, where Guthred was immersed in a great barrel of river-water and all the monks waved their hands to heaven and said God’s work was marvellous to behold. Guthred was then draped in a robe and Eadred crowned him a second time by placing the dead King Oswald’s circlet of gilt bronze on his wet hair. Guthred’s forehead was then smeared with cod oil, he was given a sword and shield, and asked to kiss both the Lindisfarena gospel book and the lips of Cuthbert’s corpse that had been brought into the sunlight so that the whole crowd could see the saint. Guthred looked as though he enjoyed the whole ceremony, and Abbot Eadred was so moved that he took Saint Cuthbert’s garnet-studded cross from the dead man’s hands and hung it about the new king’s neck. He did not leave it there for long, but returned it to the corpse after Guthred had been presented to his ragged people in Cair Ligualid’s ruins.
That night there was a feast. There was little to eat, just smoked fish, stewed mutton and hard bread, but there was plenty of ale, and next morning, with a throbbing head, I went to Guthred’s first witanegemot. Being a Dane, of course, he was not accustomed to such council meetings where every thegn and senior churchman was invited to offer advice, but Eadred insisted the Witan met, and Guthred presided.
The meeting took place in the big church. It had started to rain overnight and water dripped through the crude thatch so that men were forever trying to shift out of the way of the drops. There were not enough chairs or stools, so we sat on the rush-strewn floor in a big circle around Eadred and Guthred who were enthroned beside Saint Cuthbert’s open coffin. There were forty-six men there, half of them clergy and the other half the biggest landowners of Cumbraland, both Danes and Saxons, but compared to a West Saxon witanegemot it was a paltry affair. There was no great wealth on display. Some of the Danes wore arm rings and a few of the Saxons had elaborate brooches, but in truth it looked more like a meeting of farmers than a council of state.
Eadred, though, had visions of greatness. He began by telling us news from the rest of Northumbria. He knew what happened because he received reports from churchmen all across the land, and those reports said that Ivarr was still in the valley of the River Tuede, where he was fighting a bitter war of small skirmishes against King Aed of Scotland. ‘Kjartan the Cruel lurks in his stronghold,’ Eadred said, ‘and won’t emerge to fight. Which leaves Egbert of Eoferwic, and he is weak.’
‘What about Ælfric?’ I intervened.
‘Ælfric of Bebbanburg is sworn to protect Saint Cuthbert,’ Eadred said, ‘and he will do nothing to offend the saint.’
Maybe that was true, but my uncle would doubtless demand my skull as a reward for keeping the corpse undefiled. I said nothing more, but just listened as Eadred proposed that we formed an army and marched it across the hills to capture Eoferwic. That caused some astonishment. Men glanced at each other, but such was Eadred’s forceful confidence that at first no one dared question him. They had expected to be told that they should have their men ready to fight against the Norse Vikings from Ireland or to fend off another assault by Eochaid of Strath Clota, but instead they were being asked to go far afield to depose King Egbert.
Ulf, the wealthiest Dane of Cumbraland, finally intervened. He was elderly, perhaps forty years old, and he had been lamed and scarred in Cumbraland’s frequent quarrels, but he could still bring forty or fifty trained warriors to Guthred. That was not many by the standards of most parts of Britain, but it was a substantial force in Cumbraland. Now he demanded to know w
hy he should lead those men across the hills. ‘We have no enemies in Eoferwic,’ he declared, ‘but there are many foes who will attack our lands when we’re gone.’ Most of the other Danes murmured their agreement.
But Eadred knew his audience. ‘There is great wealth in Eoferwic,’ he said.
Ulf liked that idea, but was still cautious. ‘Wealth?’ he asked.
‘Silver,’ Eadred said, ‘and gold, and jewels.’
‘Women?’ a man asked.
‘Eoferwic is a sink of corruption,’ Eadred announced, ‘it is a haunt of devils and a place of lascivious women. It is a city of evil that needs to be scoured by a holy army.’ Most of the Danes cheered up at the prospect of lascivious women, and none made any more protest at the thought of attacking Eoferwic.
Once the city was captured, a feat Eadred took for granted, we were to march north and the men of Eoferwic, he claimed, would swell our ranks. ‘Kjartan the Cruel will not face us,’ Eadred declared, ‘because he is a coward. He will go to his fastness like a spider scuttling to his web and he will stay there and we shall let him rot until the time comes to strike him down. Ælfric of Bebbanburg will not fight us, for he is a Christian.’
‘He’s an untrustworthy bastard,’ I growled, and was ignored.
‘And we shall defeat Ivarr,’ Eadred said, and I wondered how our rabble was supposed to beat Ivarr’s shield wall, but Eadred had no doubts. ‘God and Saint Cuthbert will fight for us,’ he said, ‘and then we shall be masters of Northumbria and almighty God will have established Haliwerfolkland and we shall build a shrine to Saint Cuthbert that will astonish all the world.’
That was what Eadred really wanted, a shrine. That was what the whole madness was about, a shrine to a dead saint, and to that end Eadred had made Guthred king and would now go to war with all Northumbria. And next day the eight dark horsemen came.
We had three hundred and fifty-four men of fighting age, and of those fewer than twenty possessed mail, and only about a hundred had decent leather armour. The men with leather or mail mostly possessed helmets and had proper weapons, swords or spears, while the rest were armed with axes, adzes, sickles or sharpened hoes. Eadred grandly called it the Army of the Holy Man, but if I had been the holy man I would have bolted back to heaven and waited for something better to come along.
A third of our army was Danish, the rest was mostly Saxon though there were a few Britons armed with long hunting bows, and those can be fearful weapons, so I called the Britons the Guard of the Holy Man and said they were to stay with the corpse of Saint Cuthbert who would evidently accompany us on our march of conquest. Not that we could start our conquering just yet because we had to amass food for the men and fodder for the horses, of which we had only eighty-seven.
Which made the arrival of the dark horsemen welcome. There were eight of them, all on black or brown horses and leading four spare mounts, and four of them wore mail and the rest had good leather armour and all had black cloaks and black painted shields, and they rode into Cair Ligualid from the east, following the Roman wall that led to the far bank of the river and there they crossed by the ford because the old bridge had been pulled down by the Norsemen.
The eight horsemen were not the only newcomers. Men trickled in every hour. Many of them were monks, but some were fighters coming from the hills and they usually came with an axe or a quarterstaff. Few came with armour or a horse, but the eight dark riders arrived with full war-gear. They were Danes and told Guthred they were from the steading of Hergist who had land at a place called Heagostealdes. Hergist was old, they told Guthred, and could not come himself, but he had sent the best men he had. Their leader was named Tekil and he looked to be a useful warrior for he boasted four arm rings, had a long sword and a hard, confident face. He appeared to be around thirty years old, as were most of his men, though one was much younger, just a boy, and he was the only one without arm rings. ‘Why,’ Guthred demanded of Tekil, ‘would Hergist send men from Heagostealdes?’
‘We’re too close to Dunholm, lord,’ Tekil answered, ‘and Hergist wishes you to destroy that nest of wasps.’
‘Then you are welcome,’ Guthred said, and he allowed the eight men to kneel to him and swear him fealty. ‘You should bring Tekil’s men into my household troops,’ he said to me later. We were in a field to the south of Cair Ligualid where I was practising those household troops. I had picked thirty young men, more or less at random, and made sure that half were Danes and half were Saxons, and I insisted they made a shield wall in which every Dane had a Saxon neighbour, and now I was teaching them how to fight and praying to my gods that they never had to, for they knew next to nothing. The Danes were better, because the Danes are raised to sword and shield, but none had yet been taught the discipline of the shield wall.
‘Your shields have to touch!’ I shouted at them, ‘otherwise you’re dead. You want to be dead? You want your guts spooling around your feet? Touch the shields. Not that way, you earsling! The right side of your shield goes in front of the left side of his shield. Understand?’ I said it again in Danish then glanced at Guthred. ‘I don’t want Tekil’s men in the bodyguard.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I don’t know them.’
‘You don’t know these men,’ Guthred said, gesturing at his household troops.
‘I know they’re idiots,’ I said, ‘and I know their mothers should have kept their knees together. What are you doing, Clapa?’ I shouted at a hulking young Dane. I had forgotten his real name, but everyone called him Clapa, which meant clumsy. He was a huge farm boy, as strong as two other men, but not the cleverest of mortals. He stared at me with dumb eyes as I stalked towards the line. ‘What are you supposed to do, Clapa?’
‘Stay close to the king, lord,’ he said with a puzzled look.
‘Good!’ I said, because that was the first and most important lesson that had to be thumped into the thirty young men. They were the king’s household troops so they must always stay with the king, but that was not the answer I wanted from Clapa. ‘In the shield wall, idiot,’ I said, thumping his muscled chest, ‘what are you supposed to do in the shield wall?’
He thought for a while, then brightened. ‘Keep the shield up, lord.’
‘That’s right,’ I said, dragging his shield up from his ankles. ‘You don’t dangle it around your toes! What are you grinning at, Rypere?’ Rypere was a Saxon, skinny where Clapa was solid, and clever as a weasel. Rypere was a nickname which meant thief, for that was what Rypere was and if there had been any justice he would have been branded and whipped, but I liked the cunning in his young eyes and reckoned he would prove a killer. ‘You know what you are, Rypere?’ I said, thumping his shield back into his chest, ‘you’re an earsling. What’s an earsling, Clapa?’
‘A turd, lord.’
‘Right, turds! Shields up! Up!’ I screamed the last word. ‘You want folk to laugh at you?’ I pointed at other groups of men fighting mock battles in the big meadow. Tekil’s warriors were also present, but they were sitting in the shade, just watching, implying that they did not need to practise. I went back to Guthred. ‘You can’t have all the best men in your household troops,’ I told him.
‘Why not?’
‘Because you’ll end up surrounded when everyone else has run away. Then you die. It isn’t pretty.’
‘That’s what happened when my father fought Eochaid,’ he admitted.
‘So that’s why you don’t have all your best men in the household guard,’ I said. ‘We’ll put Tekil on one flank and Ulf and his men on the other.’ Ulf, inspired by a dream of unlimited silver and lasciviously evil women, was now eager to march on Eoferwic. He was not at Cair Ligualid when the dark horsemen arrived, but had taken his men to collect forage and food.
I divided the household troops into two groups and made them fight, though first I ordered them to wrap their swords in cloth so they wouldn’t end up slaughtering each other. They were eager but hopeless. I broke through both shield walls in the t
ime it took to blink, but they would learn how to fight eventually unless they met Ivarr’s troops first, in which case they would die. After a while, when they were weary and the sweat was streaming down their faces, I told them to rest. I noticed that the Danes sat with the other Danes, and the Saxons with the Saxons, but that was only to be expected and in time, I thought, they would learn trust. They could more or less speak to each other because I had noticed that in Northumbria the Danish and Saxon tongues were becoming muddled. The two languages were similar anyway, and most Danes could be understood by Saxons if they shouted loud enough, but now the two tongues grew ever more alike. Instead of talking about their swordcraft the Saxon earslings in Guthred’s household troops boasted of their ‘skill’ with a sword, though they had none, and they ate eggs instead of eating eyren. The Danes, meanwhile, called a horse a horse instead of a hros and sometimes it was hard to know whether a man was a Dane or a Saxon. Often they were both, the son of a Danish father and Saxon mother, though never the other way around. ‘I should marry a Saxon,’ Guthred told me. We had wandered to the edge of the field where a group of women were chopping straw and mixing the scraps with oats. We would carry the mixture to feed our horses as we crossed the hills.
‘Why marry a Saxon?’ I asked.
‘To show that Haliwerfolkland is for both tribes,’ he said.
‘Northumbria,’ I said bad-temperedly.
‘Northumbria?’
‘It’s called Northumbria,’ I said, ‘not Haliwerfolkland.’
He shrugged as if the name did not matter. ‘I should still marry a Saxon,’ he said, ‘and I’d like it to be a pretty one. Pretty as Hild, maybe? Except she’s too old.’
‘Too old?’
‘I need one about thirteen, fourteen maybe? Ready to pup some babies.’ He clambered across a low fence and edged down a steep bank towards a small stream that flowed north towards the Hedene. ‘There must be some pretty Saxons in Eoferwic?’
The Warrior Chronicles Page 80
