“What are you saying, Runolf?” I asked, tired of the conversation. Exhaustion and sorrow threatened to overcome me.
He smiled and I wanted to punch him, but his words filled me with a surge of hope and excitement.
“If you wish to find Aelfwyn and this book you and Leofstan speak of,” he said in his rumbling voice like distant thunder, “I can build you a ship. I will leave finding the crew to you.”
Fifty-Nine
I am tired now. I have struggled to write these last lines and have been seeking a suitable place where I can pause and set aside my quill without leaving the tale in a state that would prove unsatisfactory for a reader. I may well not live to tell the rest, so I thought I should at least write to the end of the battle for Werceworthe.
I can scarcely believe how many days I have spent scratching away at these lamb hides. Foolishly, I had thought I would be able to tell the whole saga of my life in a matter of days. But the weeks have gone by and each day I have come here to this damp room as soon as there is light in the sky. Here, with my eyesight failing as much as my health and my strength, I have hunched over my writing desk, dipped my pen into the ink and the words have poured from me as I have looked back through the veil of time.
I have smiled to myself when thinking of friends I have not seen for many years, and I am not ashamed to say that I have wept too. That year, when the Norse first came to our lands and descended upon the minsters of the coast like so many savage wolves rampaging through flocks of sheep, was filled with darkness and despair. And yet there were flashes of light. As I have recounted the events of that blood-soaked time, when I lost so much and also, perhaps, found so much more, I have become lost in the very telling. With each passing day I have felt some of the burden of my sins and the crimes I have committed lifting from me. Perhaps this very account is serving as a confession of sorts; a confession of things I have never been able to put into words before.
To think that I began to write this when snow was yet on the ground and now midsummer has been and gone. If truth be told I am surprised that I yet live. I sometimes wonder if perchance God has spared me from the death I was certain would come back in the harsh bitter cold of winter so that I could finish this tale. But I know that is pride, which has been one of my many sins ever since I was that young man who became a warrior all those years ago.
And yet, perhaps it is the Lord’s wish that I complete the account of my time on this earth. I am filled with pride, I do not contest that, but I am no fool. I know that I am merely mortal, despite surviving many battles. I will die, as all men do. Sometimes, without warning, my guts remind me that death is waiting for me. My stomach twists with pain all of a sudden, causing me to gasp and pant like a dog. At those times, I am racked with a terrible biting agony and I cannot write for some time. And yet, the pain is more bearable than I imagined it would be. I sought out an old cunning woman in the village and she gave me a potion made of woundwort, mugwort, wormwood and honey. When I drink the foul liquid, the pain becomes dull, like a blunted sword pressed into my flesh, but the memories and dreams of my distant past become vivid and bright. They are so real and clear it is almost as if I could reach out and caress Aelfwyn’s cheek, or once again feel the heft of the sword I took from the dead man by the stream.
When I am not writing, my mind has often turned to the reason I yet live. I think back to Anstan, the old man on Cocwaedesae, and how, when he was given a purpose, his strength returned to him and he was able to remain strong enough to light the beacon that warned us of the approaching Norse. Like him, I have come to believe that the purpose of writing the history of my life has kept death at bay. I had thought I would be dead in days when I started to pen this, and yet I still live, clinging to this life as a limpet clings to a wave-washed rock.
Once again my thoughts smack of pride, for surely it must be God’s will, and His alone, that has allowed my heart to keep beating; for my mind to remain sharp enough and my hand steady, so that I have been able to fill these sheets of vellum with my increasingly crabbed penmanship. It must also be the Almighty who has kept Abbot Criba away from my cell. Not once has he been to check on the progress of the hagiography of Saint Wilfrid. Even when I sent Coenric, one of the young monks, for more copperas and oak apples, so that I could make more encaustum, the abbot did not question what I have been doing. I sent the lad for another stack of the expensive sheets of vellum, and still the abbot has not come to enquire as to my purpose for the materials. Criba must surely suspect that I have not followed his instructions, and I feel every now and then a slight pang of guilt at the thought of using valuable resources of the monastery for my own selfish ends. And yet, does not the monastery owe me a debt which could easily be valued at more than some calfskins and ink galls. Surely lives are worth more than the goose feathers I use for my pens. Without my intervention, all of the inhabitants of Werceworthe would surely have been slain or enslaved all those years ago. I’ve often wondered, in my darkest moments, when the light of Christ’s love has seemed as far away as the chill stars in a winter sky, whether I caused more deaths than I saved. Could it be that if I had not brought Hereward, Gwawrddur, Drosten and the others to the minster, that the Norse would have come and taken gold and silver and enslaved some of the younger people, but not have killed as many of the inhabitants who died defending the place?
Leofstan thought as much, I was sure. After the battle his eyes were bleak and I could sense his disapproval. He brooded with a simmering fury, as angry at himself as much as with me. More so, probably. He refused to speak of his past life, but it was clear that we shared more than a love of books and learning. I had witnessed how easily he rode a horse, how natural it had been for him to sit and riddle with bawdy warriors. And yet I had never imagined he might have once been anything other than the old monk I knew. That the events had forced him to once more take up a sword and shed blood filled him with dismay and I wondered whether he too, like me, felt a rushing joy when fighting. Was that sense of exhilaration something he had thought himself rid of forever? Whatever his past, he would say nothing on the subject, preferring his own counsel. But he did not hide his despair at the violence that had ripped the minster apart. He never said as much, but I believed he held me responsible, and blamed me for the lapse of his vows of peace. And yet he cleaned and bound my cuts with tenderness and skill, his actions speaking of his affection for me more eloquently than any words.
I remember all too well the smell of the land in the days after the fighting had ended. The lingering acrid stench of the smoke and charred timbers mingling with the metallic salty tang of slaughter and the sweet, sickening aroma as the bodies began to bloat and putrefy. For in the days following the battle, we gave good Christian burials to those of the defenders who had fallen. We had no time of the Norse dead, and we piled them together away from Werce’s Hall. Eventually, we buried them in a large pit, far from sacred ground. But not before they began to rot. Grief and sadness hung over the place like a cold dark shroud and it was in nobody’s mind to see to the corpses of the raiders who had brought so much sorrow to us all. It was only when the rain blew over and the days were hot once more, as summer had its final burst of warmth and light before the long, dark days of winter, that the smell of the dead drove us to dig, our faces covered by rags. When the pit was deep enough, we heaved the flyblown tangled mass of the dead into their final resting place. We gagged and puked at the stench and the sound of the gas and ichor oozing from their corrupting flesh. I sometimes dream of it to this day and awake drenched in sweat and shivering with the remembered horror.
There was so much death and boundless sorrow in those last bitter throes of summer.
I recall how I wept in those days for all I had lost. I cried for the young innocent monk I had ceased to be, and for all those who had given their life in the defence of the villagers and the brethren.
I can still see clearly the slender form of Eowils’ linen-wrapped corpse, being lowered into the earth.
We’d found the boy’s body, slumped beneath the great oak, his head split with a single slash of a Norse axe. Hereward had mumbled that he would have felt no pain from such a blow, but such words meant nothing to Eowils’ father and I can still hear in my memory Gewis’s shuddering sobs as he watched the earth shovelled onto his son.
My own tears fell without cease as we buried my friend, Cormac. I was glad that in his last moments he had known that his death was not in vain. He had sacrificed himself for his friends and it was a good death, but I still grieve when I think of what might have been, if he had lived. And yet such is the life of warriors. Death is ever lurking in their shadows, hounding their steps. But Cormac was young, like me, and his end, along with that of Eowils, made me confront the reality that even young men, and those with a talent for wielding a sword, are not immortal.
And I was further saddened that Cormac did not see that Aethelwig had survived. This was one of the only happy moments of those dreadful days. When the smoke cleared, Wulfwaru had found her husband was insensate and bleeding, but not dead. She nursed him to health and they lived happily together for many more years. They had three more children. A daughter and two sons. The first son they named Cormac. The second, Hunlaf. And for that I still feel a sliver of pride. I do not recall what they called their daughter. And for that I am ashamed.
Gwawrddur too recovered from his wound. He always complained thereafter that his shoulder was stiff on cold days and that he had lost some of the lightning speed in his right arm. I could never notice any difference, and he was as deadly as ever for the rest of his days. Gwawrddur went on to send many other enemies to their graves before he finally met his end. It would take more than a Norse axe to slay the Welshman, but I will not recount that sad story here.
My tale has barely begun. But I will rest now, setting aside quill and ink for a day or two. The pangs in my gut have grown stronger of late. Perhaps it is enough that I have told of how we fought against the Norse, or maybe the good Lord will spare me a while longer and I will find the strength to tell of what came next. How Runolf built a ship the like of which no Englisc man had ever voyaged in before. And how together we sailed the Whale Road in search of something that perchance was already lost forever. With God’s grace, I will live long enough to write of the search for Aelfwyn and The Treasure of Life, and to tell the tales of other deeds that should never be forgotten. Adventures that took me to lands so far to the north that the sea is ice and the winter is one long night. And to distant southern deserts where the sand burns so hot you cannot bear to touch it, and your skin sears beneath the scorching sun.
If it is in the Almighty’s plan, I will live to write of these things and more, but for now I will close this book here. And yet, there is the matter of the title of this tome. It is not a hagiography, as I am no saint. No, I will call it an annal of my life. But what name should I use for myself, for I have gone by many names in many places.
The Türkmen clans of the Oguz il called me Ölümüğut, the Merchant of Death. A band of Nubian pirates off the coast of Ifriqiya knew me as the White-Faced Killer, in their impenetrable tongue. In Vestfold, the men of Halfdan the Mild gave me the moniker of Skjaldarhleypr, Shield Leaper, and in the realms of the Lombards and the Franks, I was known simply as the Warrior Monk. I have answered to all of these names and more, and yet, I think it would be seemly if I used the name that would be recognised by the brethren amongst whom I have lived the autumn years of my long life. Yes, it shall be so.
And thus ends the first volume of the Annals of the life of Hunlaf of Ubbanford.
Author’s Note
Like many stories, A Time for Swords started off as a “what if” question. What if the monks of Lindisfarne had fought back against the Vikings on that fateful day of 793 that is considered the beginning of the Viking Age? I have read tales which have warriors becoming monks in their old age, and my initial question then led me to ask “what if a monk became a warrior?”
My next thought was that if I had the monks fight and win, it would make the book fantasy. We know the outcome of the attack on Lindisfarne, and of the subsequent raids on monasteries around the coastline of Britain at the end of the eighth and beginning of the ninth centuries. I quickly decided that I did not wish to write a fantasy, or a story set in an alternate reality. I wanted to keep the novel grounded in historical fact, even if I needed to take some artistic licence. And so I asked myself how I could tell a gripping story about a group of monks defending a monastery against a vicious Viking attack without altering what we know of the period.
I’m a huge fan of westerns, many of which owe a massive debt to that master of film-making, Akira Kurosawa. Perhaps the most notable of these westerns is The Magnificent Seven, which is based on Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Seven Samurai. Another inspiration for me was David Gemmell, whose seminal novel Legend, features the ageing axeman, Druss, organising a terribly outnumbered force’s defence of a seemingly doomed castle against hordes of invaders.
And so the seeds of the idea for this book were planted many years ago when I first watched Seven Samurai and when I first read Gemmell’s Legend. I knew what I needed to do. I would create a motley bunch of warriors, who would stand against overwhelming odds to defend a monastery.
But if I wanted to keep it historically true, or at least not alter the known history, where would I set the novel? It could not be Lindisfarne, or Monkwearmouth or Jarrow. Those monasteries were attacked, but there is no record of any spirited defence, only of destruction and death. And so I began to cast around for a suitable location for a fictional monastery, a site that would match the secluded spots chosen by the abbots and priors of the time. I soon found out that Warkworth in Northumberland, now the site of a village and an imposing Norman castle, was gifted to the Church by Ceolwulf, the king of Northumbria. In 737, Ceolwulf resigned his crown to join the community of Lindisfarne, and bestowed many properties on the monastery to mark the event. There is no evidence that a monastery or priory was ever situated at Warkworth, but with that piece of information, I had the link I needed to Lindisfarne, and the location is suitable for a monastery. Surrounded on three sides by the waters of the River Coquet, the tongue of land is the perfect setting for the novel.
As soon as I had the inkling of the idea for this story, I began to write, having done no real research. This is often the way with me, and the first few pages flowed easily until I suddenly realised I had to slow down and make sure the story I wanted to tell fit within the historical and geographical context. In those initial pages of the first draft, the Vikings attacked on a cold January day. I had read that the raid took place on 8 January, but I struggled to understand how and why the Norsemen would put to sea at such a time and risk the danger of sailing in the winter across the perilous North Sea. But the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle said January, so January it was.
And yet the more I wrote, the stranger that date seemed to me. Eventually I dug a little further and reached out to historian Matt Bunker and fellow historical fiction author Tim Hodkinson, both of whom know a lot more about the period than I do. It turns out I was right to be sceptical of the date. They both informed me that the attack actually took place in June and that it is widely accepted that the January date in two versions (D and E) of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are in fact a scribal error! Apparently, the June date is recorded in the Annals of Lindisfarne, and the brethren there should surely have known the correct date.
Throughout the novel, a running theme is Hunlaf worrying about his motivation and also why God has allowed the atrocious attack to take place. Other monks mention that perhaps it is a punishment for the sins of Northumbria. This idea was voiced by the most famous ecclesiastical figure of the time, Alcuin of York, who was then residing in the kingdom of the Franks, serving in the court of Charlemagne. Alcuin was worried about why God had allowed that most holy of places, Lindisfarne, to suffer so. He advised Hygebald to examine his conscience to see if there was any reason why God might have allowed such a
terrible disaster to happen. “Is this the outcome of the sins of those who live there?” he asked in his letters. “It has not happened by chance, but is the sign of some great guilt.”
It seems Alcuin thought he knew why God’s wrath had been visited upon Northumbria. The Anglo-Saxon chroniclers suggest that he perhaps had recent events in mind. The burial of Sicga on the island might have been one of the reasons for Alcuin’s belief that God was exacting a punishment on the brethren and the kingdom. Sicga was a rather unsavoury character who, in 788 had led a group of conspirators who murdered King Ælfwald of Northumbria. After his death in February 793, Sicga, who had supposedly committed suicide, was buried on Lindisfarne on 23 April, only a couple of months before the Viking raid.
This was not the only event that Alcuin would have seen as sinful and worthy of punishment from God. The king of Northumbria, Æthelred, had been involved in several plots and many of his rivals had died prematurely, probably on the king’s orders. Like many of the kings of the period, Æthelred seems to be little more than a gangster. The exiled king of Northumbria, Osred, attempted to regain the throne from Æthelred in 792, but he was defeated, captured and killed. That took place in September and so it was less than a year later when Lindisfarne was sacked by the Norsemen. Alcuin’s letters to Æthelred clearly pointed the blame for this on the sins of the king and his nobility.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle mentions the signs and storms of God’s displeasure in the months before the attack on Lindisfarne and a great famine in the same year. There is probably an element of artistic licence in that, and most certainly not a little hindsight, but tales of whirlwinds, famine and even fiery dragons in the sky, give an indication of the terrible impact the first Viking raid had on the people of Britain.
Throughout the book I have used the term “minster” and “monastery” interchangeably. Such places did not necessarily only house one gender at this time in history and there are female names recorded in the graveyard of Lindisfarne Priory. It was also usual for there to be a settlement of lay people attached to each minster. The people in such settlements would have helped provide necessary labour and certain goods for the minster, while the monks and nuns would provide for their spiritual wellbeing and also lend their own services, farming, healing, brewing and so forth.
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