TREASONS, STRATAGEMS AND SPOILS: Kings of Northumbria Book 6

by H A CULLEY

  I thought he was exaggerating but I later learned that all told their casualties that day were over two hundred against our twenty five dead and forty wounded, including me. Still, we couldn’t go on sustaining losses on that scale.

  A little while later my father came to see how I was. To my surprise Acwulf and Bryce came with him.

  ‘I see Seward is taking good care of you,’ he said with a smile.

  ‘Yes, he doesn’t even seem to mind when I puke all over him.’

  I tried to grin but stopped when I realised that any movement of my facial muscles made the pain worse.

  ‘Well, there is one consolation, I suppose,’ Bryce said with a smirk. ‘You’re so ugly that the scar won’t make it any worse.’

  ‘Might even make you slightly attractive to the ladies, God knows you need all the help you can get,’ Acwulf added.

  Their banter made me feel a little better. I tried to respond but suddenly I vomited again. This time I had regained some control over my neck muscles and, instead of Seward, my bile - for that’s all I had left inside me – splashed over Acwulf’s expensive leather shoes.

  Both Bryce and my father roared with laughter and even Seward couldn’t contain a chuckle. Acwulf looked as if he might hit me for a second, then he gave a rueful smile.

  I don’t remember any more and when I next woke up it was dark. I realised with a start that another, smaller, body was embracing me under the cloak which covered us both. Seward woke with a start and hastily scrambled to his feet.

  ‘Forgive me, lord. You were shivering and ice cold to the touch. It was the only thing I could think of to warm you up.’

  The boy was shaking with fear. I shivered and realised that, for the time of year, it was much colder than usual. Perhaps the wind had shifted to the north and was blowing down from the snow covered mountains of Alba.

  ‘Come back, Seward, I’m cold.’

  The boy scrambled back under my cloak and I put my arms around him.

  ‘Thank you,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘I couldn’t have a more caring body servant, but you had better be up and about before dawn or people will get the wrong idea.’

  He giggled and a few minutes later I heard him softly snoring before I drifted off again myself.

  I felt better the next morning but my head still felt as if someone was trying to drive a nail into it. With Seward’s help I managed to stand and go for a piss whilst he held me up. I wondered how I was going to defecate but he brought me a leather pail and a bench with a hole cut into it for me to sit on. How he managed to procure such an item I don’t know and I didn’t ask.

  I could hear the noise of fighting from where I lay and I felt guilty that I was unable to join my fellow warriors in the shield wall. After an hour or so relative quiet returned; only the distant cries of the wounded and the ritual exchange of insults between the two sides disturbed the quiet. Then, about noon, the din of battle resumed.

  ‘Go and find out what is happening,’ I told Seward.

  ‘I don’t like to leave you, lord.’

  ‘Put my sword in my hand and leave a tankard of water where I can reach and I’ll be fine.’

  He put my sword in one hand the leather tankard by the other before running off as fast as his legs could carry him. I smiled as I watched him go. He was in a growth spurt and his legs were disproportionately long for his body; so much so that he sometimes tripped over his own feet. He did so now, but he picked himself up and was off again so quickly that, had I blinked, I would have missed it.

  I tentatively pushed myself into a kneeling position and tried to stand, something that Seward would never have allowed me to do on my own had he been with me. I made it onto my feet but I felt so dizzy I immediately fell down again. In doing so I banged my head and I passed out again.

  When I awoke I found Seward fussing over me again. This time he was trying to get me to drink some broth.

  ‘If you’re determined to get back on your feet you need to get your strength back. This might make you puke all over me again but, if you can keep it down, it’ll help.’

  He propped me up so that I was sitting against a tree to keep me in position so that I could drink the broth. It smelt and tasted good and, much to my relief, I manage to swallow some of it without being sick. It took a long time but eventually I’d consumed all that was in the wooden bowl. He lay me down again, covered me with my cloak and I went back to sleep. As I drifted off I remember thinking that I hadn’t asked him about the fight at the bridge.

  ~~~

  I felt a fraud lying in the back of a cart with other wounded men as it trundled back towards Bebbanburg. Seward was riding my horse alongside the cart looking as proud as a lord, so much so that I laughed out loud when I woke up and saw him. He looked hurt, but then he smiled.

  ‘It’s good to see you with some colour back in your cheeks, lord.’

  ‘It’s good to be going back home,’

  ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he replied with a frown.

  It was only then that I realised that he probably regretted the end to the intimacy that we had enjoyed after I was wounded. Once back at Bebbanburg, my mother and her servants would take care of me and Seward would be reduced to the status of a lowly slave, cleaning my armour, looking after my horses and emptying my piss bucket every morning.

  His care of me when I was incapacitated had allowed him a degree of familiarity and we had become quite close. Now that was about to end. I was grateful to him but I failed to see it from his point of view. He was a slave, after all, and any form of relationship except that of master and servant was unthinkable. I put him out of my mind and found myself thinking about how the battle for the bridge had ended.

  We had all but lost by the time that Eadbehrt eventually arrived. Over half our men were dead or wounded and, to my intense sorrow, both Acwulf and Bryce were amongst the fallen. They had died bravely, one in the shield wall holding the barricade on the bridge and the other driving back a party of Britons who had finally made it onto our side of the river - they had been able to wade across a shallower stretch a hundred yards south of the bridge once the depth of water had fallen sufficiently low.

  Their deaths had broken Eochaid. He was an old man now but he had carried himself proudly up until then. He had doted on his sons and now he walked with a stoop, as if he was carrying a yoke weighed down at each end with pails full of iron.

  Our men were losing heart when, just in time, Eadbehrt’s scouts appeared and panicked Eardwine’s men. They had lost several hundred in their futile attempt to cross the Teviot and now they were faced with a fresh army coming up in their rear which was probably nearly twice their number. Furthermore, they would be trapped in the triangle of land bounded by the Twaid and the Teviot. They did the only thing they could do. They surrendered.

  Eadbehrt’s terms seemed reasonable. Eardwine and the Irish leaders were to become captives, the latter pending ransom, and King Tuedeber of Strathclyde swore to recognise the Cumbrian enclave in Galloway as part of Northumbria. He too would be held as Eadbehrt’s prisoner until his two sons were handed over, together with a chest of silver in exchange for his release.

  It was plain that the Irish weren’t happy about handing their leaders over but eventually Eardwine persuaded them that they’d be well treated until their ransom was paid. Once the enemy army had dispersed, Eadbehrt reneged on his promise and hanged the Irish leaders, together with Eardwine, from trees in a nearby copse.

  Of course, I knew little of this at the time as I was still drifting in and out of consciousness. It was Seward who explained to me what had happened later, supplemented by what my father told me. I came to the obvious conclusion that the king’s word was not to be trusted.

  It was two weeks after my return home that I was strong enough to venture outside the hall on my own. My mother and her servants had smothered me with attention until I found it stifling. Of course, I also had to tell an envious Renweard every gory detail of my experiences over and over
again until I was sick of it.

  I breathed the salty air outside the hall with relish. It was now early summer and the hall was stiflingly hot, even in the chamber set aside for my use. Cooking fires were needed all year round and the heat and the smell of smoke permeated every nook and cranny of the building.

  Slowly, and with many pauses to get my breath back, I climbed the steps up to the wooden walkway that ran just below the top of the palisade. I moved a little way along it and stared out to sea. The crests of the waves were white as the onshore wind whipped the spume away in streaks towards me. A mile away two knarrs, escorted by a birlinn, were making their way under reefed mainsails towards the new jetty my father had built in the relative shelter of Budle Bay just to the west of the fortress.

  As I watched, enjoying the wind on my face, I was conscious of someone at my side. Without looking I knew who it was.

  ‘Come to lend me the support of your shoulder, Seward?’

  ‘If you need it, lord, it’s always here.’

  ‘I know. I haven’t thanked you properly for looking after me.’

  ‘It was my pleasure, lord,’ he replied quietly after a pause.

  He seemed a little uncomfortable at being thanked and I was slightly surprised at myself for doing so.

  ‘I think you probably mean that, you’re not just saying it.’

  I glanced at him and he smiled shyly without replying.

  ‘Come on; let’s see if I can make it all the way round the palisade. If I stumble you can let me lean on your shoulder.’

  He looked at me in alarm. It was the first time I’d been outside and even reaching the palisade had been a strain. I laughed at the expression on his face.

  ‘Well, let’s see if I can make it to the next ladder at any rate.’

  I did but felt quite weak by the time we got back to the hall. My knees felt wobbly and I needed his help to climb the steps. Once back inside my chamber I lay down and he made to leave.

  ‘No, don’t go. Let me rest a while and then I’ll teach you to play nine men’s morris.’

  The smile that lit up his face gave me a warm glow as I drifted off to sleep. When I awoke I found that he had set up the board and was waiting eagerly for me to explain the rules to him.

  ‘It’s a simple game of strategy,’ I told him. ‘The game begins with an empty board. The players determine who plays first, then take turns placing their men in turn on empty points. If a player is able to place three of his pieces on contiguous points in a straight line he has formed a mill and may remove one of his opponent's pieces from the board. Each player moves a man in turn to an adjacent point, continuing to form mills and remove the other’s pieces. A player can break a mill by moving one of his pieces out of an existing mill, then moving it back to form the same mill a second time, each time removing one of his opponent's men. When one player has been reduced to two men, or can’t move a piece when it’s his turn, the other player has won. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so. Can we play and then I’m sure I’ll pick it up.’

  We did and, after a few games, he was winning more times than he lost. Far from being miffed, I was pleased to find out how bright he was. It was the beginning of a close relationship, albeit of master and servant, that would last until Seward died many decades later.

  Chapter Two – Two Invasions and an Execution

  750 AD

  Five years later I was about to be married when another man tried to seize the throne from Eadbehrt. This time it was Otta, King Aldfrith’s middle son. Both his brothers had been king but my father had told me that Otta was made in the same mould as his brother, King Osred the Wicked. Thankfully, the youngest brother, Osric, had been completely different. His reign was relatively peaceful and a time of prosperity for all. No one said that he was a good ruler though; he relied on others to manage the kingdom.

  Otta had fled abroad after he had murdered King Cenred – the cousin who occupied the throne between Osred the Wicked and Osric the Good – and nothing much had been heard of him since then. It transpired that he had been earning a name, and a fortune, for himself on the Continent.

  Now he was back, and with a warband of mercenaries numbering several hundred. He had landed at Beadnell Bay, midway between Bebbanburg and Alnwic. We felt safe within our fortress, but Eochaid’s hall was vulnerable, especially since a few years ago Eadbehrt had passed a law limiting the number of armed retainers that his nobles could keep.

  The king had never felt secure on his throne and, although he’d been unchallenged for many years, he had persuaded the Witan to approve a ruling limiting the number of armed warriors that a thegn could keep to six and an ealdorman to thirty. At the same time he increased the size of his own warband to three hundred. Furthermore, the fyrd could only be called out by royal decree. This meant that an internal revolt was unlikely to succeed, but it did make Northumbria extremely vulnerable to external invasion.

  Although Eoforwīc was his capital, all kings had to travel the length and breadth of their kingdom if they wanted to keep it together. As luck would have it, Eadbehrt was at Caer Luel in Cumbria when Otta invaded. My father sent a messenger to warn him as soon as he heard about Otta, but it would take him at least three days to get there, so it would be the best part of a week before the warrant authorising the ealdormen of Bernicia and Lothian to call out the fyrd arrived.

  Although Eadbehrt’s distrust of our family seemed to have been assuaged by the stout defence of the bridge over the Teviot, my father daren’t flout the law and call out the fyrd without the king’s agreement. No doubt the other ealdormen felt the same.

  However, the gesiths of the three ealdormen of Lothian and those of the shires of Bernicia within a couple of days’ march of us – namely Alnwic, Otterburn and Hexham – numbered perhaps two hundred and a fair number of those would be mounted.

  As we feared, our scouts reported that Otta’s small army had turned south and attacked Alnwic first. I was beside myself with anxiety. My betrothed was Hilda, the daughter of Alnwic’s ealdorman, Eochaid. I paced the walkway around the palisade in a foul temper, watching for the other ealdormen to arrive, though I knew it was too soon. Even Seward kept away from me and that wasn’t like him.

  I’d him freed two years ago when he reached fourteen but he’d remained my body servant. Over the years we had become close, something that was possible only because he never overstepped the mark.

  My father was now fifty and recently he had allowed me to take a bigger part in ruling the shire. My brother Renweard had stayed at Bebbanburg for a while after he became a warrior, but a few years ago he’d been invited to join the king’s warband. I was miserable when he left. I liked to think he was sad to leave me too but, if I was honest, I knew that I missed him more than he missed me.

  A year ago I’d visited Eochaid with an invitation for him, my aunt Guthild and his daughter to spend the Christmas season with us. Eochaid had been sixty nine at the time and his wife sixty four. Both felt that they were getting too old to travel, especially in winter, but fifteen year old Hilda had been visible disappointed.

  She and I were immediately attracted to one another. Of course, it wasn’t the first time I’d met her but the last time had been when she was a gawky child of eleven. The fact that I was ten years older than her didn’t seem to matter and in the few days I spent at Alnwic I’d fallen in love with her and she with me.

  Six months later we had been betrothed and would have married that autumn had not Guthild suddenly died in her sleep two weeks beforehand. After the funeral my father and Eochaid agreed to postpone the wedding until the following spring. We had waited impatiently through the winter and now it seemed that the wretched Otta would make another delay necessary.

  However, that wasn’t what worried me. Eochaid was now unable to ride and could only walk slowly with the aid of a stick. Hilda, assisted by the captain of his gesith, managed the shire for him and it had been agreed that I would take over that responsibility once
I married her. However, if Otta attacked Alnwic the sensible thing would be for everyone to flee into the hills; defending it against an army of hundreds with twenty five warriors wasn’t an option. Eochaid could only travel in a cart and that wouldn’t be able to outrun mounted mercenaries. I knew Hilda wouldn’t desert him and I had visions of her as a captive, or worse.

  Then, instead of the ealdormen and their warriors, a messenger arrived with disastrous news. Óengus, the King of the Picts, was ill and his half-brother, Talorcan, had taken the opportunity to seize power and invade Lothian. I doubted whether it was just coincidence that it corresponded with Otta’s sudden appearance on the scene. Whether that was so or just bad timing, it meant that no help would be coming from Lothian, nor from King Eadbehrt as he was rushing to confront the Picts.

  ~~~

  A few days later the messenger we sent to the king returned with authority to call out the fyrd to deal with Otta. During that time we had sent out scouts to track the Picts. Having sacked Alnwic, Talorcan was heading south towards Durham. Whilst we mustered our fyrd and sent messengers to Otterburn and Hexham for them to do the same, I was permitted to take ten men and find out what had happened to Eochaid and Hilda. It wasn’t much of an escort if I ran into trouble but it was all my father could spare from Bebbanburg’s small garrison. Not for the first time he told me that Eadberht’s paranoia about internal unrest put us all in danger.

  Seward had loaded provisions for three days and a small leather tent for me to sleep in onto a packhorse, but I told him to leave the tent behind. If my men had to sleep wrapped in their cloaks, then so would I.

  We rode out of Bebbanburg’s main gates on a sunny morning in early May traversing the fields of the vill being weeded by bondsmen, villeins and their families. Some straightened up to wave a greeting or to watch us curiously but most carried on working industriously, knowing that all free men would soon have to report to the fortress with their weapons leaving only the slaves, the women and the children to look after the crops and the animals.