by H A CULLEY
Eafa had chosen his ground well. He was defending a saddle high in the hills south of Caer Luel above a long lake. The summit of the two mountains to either side of his position were held by a mixture of spearmen and archers to prevent his position from being outflanked.
The Britons from Strathclyde appeared in dribs and drabs and started to hurl insults at the opposing army, occasionally bending over and exposing their naked backsides to the Northumbrians. Eafa and his men stood and regarded the capering Britons impassively. He began to wish that the enemy would attack, instead of taunting him, but he knew that was what Riderch wanted. A strong shield wall was difficult to break and, as he knew that Riderch had the advantage of superior numbers, for the Northumbrians to attack would be a disastrous mistake.
Just after midday two things happened. The Britons organised themselves into some sort of formation and just as the rain stopped falling Riderch sent in the first wave. What they lacked in terms of discipline they made up for in bravery. Many of them leaped clean over the first ranks of warriors and landed amongst the fyrd. Few of the Northumbrian peasants and artisans had encountered the fierce Britons before and they started to panic. It was only the fact that they were hemmed in by their fellows in the rear ranks that prevented some of them from fleeing. In the end most of the Britons were killed but they had wreaked havoc before dying and the morale of the fyrd had suffered a severe blow.
Meanwhile, the warriors in the shield wall were battling with the main body of the enemy and Eafa found himself hard pressed. Although he was wearing a helmet, a chain mail vest over a leather tunic and leather boots with metal bars sewn into them to protect his shins and calves, he still had a number of exposed areas. His large round shield covered his lower face down to his boots but his eyes were vulnerable, as was his head. A direct blow by an axe could split his segmented helmet asunder if delivered with enough force at the right angle.
He soon discovered that the Britons worked in pairs: one aiming an axe at his head, or else a spear or sword at his eyes, whilst the second man, often a young boy, tried to cripple him by wounding his legs below the shield. Not for the first time, he thanked the Lord God that he had gone to the extra expense of getting his boots reinforced.
The ground on which he stood was getting slippery with mud and blood, which made keeping his footing difficult, but the pile of bodies in front of the Northumbrian line now impeded the Britons’ attack. He knew that he was tiring and was about to step back and let one of the warriors in the second row take his place when the Britons decided that they had had enough and withdrew just as suddenly as they had attacked.
For a moment Eafa rested on his sword to recover his breath. Then someone tapped him on the shoulder and he stepped back to allow another to take his place. He looked along the line as he did so and was dismayed to see that a significant number of the first rank lay dead in front of the pile of enemy corpses. They might have won the first encounter but it had been at a heavy cost.
Eafa took the opportunity to re-organise his army so that there were two ranks of ealdormen, thanes and warriors now, instead of three. The archers had managed to kill a number of the Britons as they advanced. They had gone to the rear before they became involved in the close combat, so thankfully their numbers were undiminished.
Now Riderch sent his own archers forward. They were mainly equipped with hunting bows, which had a short range, but a number of Britons had war bows which had greater range and power. The enemy bowmen started to fire over the heads of the front ranks, striking the unprotected fyrd in the rear. At the same time those with war bows shot at the front ranks. The hail of arrows from the sky started to unnerve the fyrd but those at low trajectory didn’t do much harm to the armoured warriors behind their stout wooden shields, other than pepper them. One or two found unprotected feet or lower legs, but not many.
Then disaster struck. Eafa was watching through a narrow gap between the top of his shield and the brim of his helmet for any sign of a new assault against the shield wall when an arrow struck the metal rim of his shield and ricocheted off it before hitting the side of the nasal riveted to his helmet. It rebounded again and struck his left eye, the point entering his brain. As he fell, a groan went up from those who had seen him killed and the news of his death swept through the ranks of the Northumbrian army like wildfire.
If Rædwulf hadn’t stepped in to steady the army it could have all ended in disaster. As it was, he took firm control, backed by the other ealdormen, who put aside petty jealousies about seniority, at least for the moment.
An arrow had penetrated Garr’s shield and had injured his left hand, but he ignored it and rallied his warband. They had been the most shaken by Eafa’s death but, just as he thought that the line had steadied, he saw Iuwine of Luncæstershire go down on one knee with an arrow in his calf. He yelled at Iuwine’s gawping warriors and someone had the common sense to give the ealdorman his spear to lean on before helping him to the rear, where the monks had set up a makeshift infirmary.
With two ealdormen down things were not looking good, but at that moment Riderch’s archers fled, having been severely mauled by their Northumbrian equivalents. For a while nothing happened and then the King of Strathclyde decided to gamble everything on one last attack en masse in the hope of breaking the shield wall. If that happened the fyrd would be massacred. This time he sent the Norse settlers from his part of Cumbria forward as the point of a giant wedge.
There were about two hundred of them, nearly as many as there were Norse warriors left in the Northumbrian centre. Rædwulf watched apprehensively, wondering whether Norse would fight Norse or whether his men would suddenly side with their fellow Scandinavians. He needn’t have worried. It was the opposing Norse who suddenly switched sides and turned on the Britons. For a moment chaos ensued and then the Britons found their centre being carved asunder by over four hundred Norsemen.
With the flanks also under pressure from the Northumbrians, the lightly armed Britons gave ground and then their whole army melted away. First a few fled, then more joined them and minutes later it became a rout. The Britons didn’t stop running until they were back across the River Lyne north of Caer Luel.
Chapter Ten – Death at Whitby
842
Of course Ilfrid mourned the death of his father but, if he was honest, he was more upset by his mother’s death a few months later. She’d been unwell for some time and her slow decline had been pitiful to watch. For the last two months of her life she was bedridden and, although he never admitted it to himself, subconsciously Ilfrid had found her death as something of a relief. However, he tried to put the loss of both his parents behind him as he began to think about the future.
Edmund had returned the previous year and, at the age of sixteen, he was now a trained warrior. He took over the duties of shire-reeve, a role that Ilfrid had carried out until their father’s death. He had been home for the last few months of his mother’s life and, although he put a brave face on it, Ilfrid knew that the gradual deterioration in her health had distressed his brother even more than it had him, if that were possible.
The two brothers had been forced to grow up suddenly and, at twenty, Ilfrid had been faced with the responsibilities of an ealdorman. He realised then what a shock it must have been for Kendric when he’d become an ealdorman at seventeen, only a year after he’d finished training as a warrior.
If King Eanred had been pleased by the recovery of Cumbria he never said so, not to Ilfrid at least, nor did he commiserate with him over the death of Eafa. He appointed the Ealdorman of Loidis as his new hereræswa, a man who hadn’t even taken part in the Cumbrian campaign. More and more the king’s attention was focused on the south of his kingdom and in more than ten years he had never come north of the Tyne. It was almost as if he were just King of Deira – the old southern kingdom that had united with Bernicia to form Northumbria two hundred years previously.
‘I want you to go and visit our business in Paris,’ Ilfrid to
ld Edmund on a fine spring day in 842.
Edmund was glad of the break from what had become a rather boring and mundane life. All he seemed to do was collect taxes and deal with disputes between the thegns of Islandshire. He was also responsible for training the fyrd but, after the recovery of Cumbria, it was difficult to motivate freemen who were far more interested in tending their crops or carrying out their craft than they were in training for war.
He decided to take one of the skeids that Thorkel and his Norsemen had built for his father twenty years before. These were normally employed patrolling the coast of Islandshire and escorting the fleet of knarrs on their trading missions. The one he chose was named the Holy Ghost. It had just been re-caulked and the rigging had been renewed ready for the new sailing season. It required a crew of nearly seventy, but he had no trouble recruiting forty young men eager for an adventure to supplement the twenty warriors that Ilfrid had given him from his warband.
In addition to the crew who manned the oars and fought when necessary, there were six others: the captain - a man named Nerian, Ryce the helmsman and four ship’s boys who varied in age from twelve to fifteen. It was the job of the latter to look after the sail, feed and water the rowers and generally clean and maintain the ship.
The weather changed the night before they set out and they had to contend with a strong headwind and a heavy sea as soon as they left Budle Bay and the fortress of Bebbanburg behind. Even those who had rowed before found it hard work after a winter spent largely indoors. Those who were new to the sea were soon complaining about aching arms, sore backs and blistered hands.
Edmund, who had been standing in the prow by the crucifix, which had been placed there instead of the dragon’s head typical of Viking ships, reluctantly stepped down and took the place of the youngest rower. He’d been enjoying the wind in his long brown hair and the salt spray on his face but one thing his father had drummed into him was the need to lead by example. When they saw their shire reeve pulling at his oar for all he was worth the moaners shut up, too ashamed to complain further.
Thankfully the wind backed from south east to north east after an hour and Nerian ordered the boys to pull up the sail. Ryce brought the Holy Ghost around so that the wind was abeam. That made it easier for the ship’s boys to raise the spar to which the sail was attached. Two held the halyard around the cleat near the base of the mast whilst the other two pulled it out from the mast to create some slack. As soon as they let go the other two pulled a foot or two of the halyard in around the cleat. That way they sweated the spar with its flapping oiled woollen sail up the mast. It was slow work but eventually Nerian was happy that it was far enough up the mast for such windy conditions and the boys made the halyard fast before reefing the bottom of the sail.
That done, Ryce brought the ship back on course and they set off once more, this time travelling at twice the speed the rowers could manage. As they sped along, the bow cutting through the choppy sea, more than one of the new men began to feel queasy now that they didn’t have rowing to concentrate on. The old hands called out ribald comments as several brought up the contents of their stomachs.
Most had the common sense to spew over the leeward gunwale but two of the younger men made the landsman’s error of retching into the wind. They soon learned their mistake as their vomit blew back into the faces and soaked their tunics.
The wind held, albeit decreasing somewhat as time went on, until the third day. By that time they were off the coast of Kent. They were about to cross the open sea to the coast of Frankia at the narrowest point between England and the Continent when the lookout up the mast called down that three ships had emerged from the old Roman fortified port of Dovera and were heading their way.
Kent was under the control of Wessex and, although Northumbria and Wessex weren’t at war, neither were relations between them all that friendly. However, the ships heading towards Edmund’s skeid were smaller and he didn’t regard them as much of a threat. With the wind now coming from the north east, the Northumbrian longship slowly pulled away from its pursuers. By the time that they spotted land dead ahead of them again the Kentish ships had given up the chase.
Nerian altered course so that they now had the wind directly behind them and, although the Holy Ghost wallowed a little, rocking from side to side as the waves passed under her hull, they continued to make good progress. After a while the Frankish coast turned and headed due west. Ryce put his steering oar over without having to be told and the ship’s boys rushed to trim the sail for the new heading.
They had been travelling parallel to the coast for a couple of hours when the lookout called down again.
‘Ships putting out from the Frankish coast.’
‘How many?’
‘Four, no, wait. Five.’
Edmund could now see the Kentish warships as they emerged over the horizon. That meant that they were only about three miles away as visual range from the deck was much shorter than it was from the masthead. He still couldn’t see the Frankish ships and he asked the boy up the mast to point in their direction.
‘Head where he’s indicating,’ he told the steersman.
Ryce nodded and put the steering oar over to take them south west again whilst Nerian yelled for the ship’s boys to tighten the sail on the new course. Edmund had decided that, as he was heading for Paris, it made more sense to tell the Franks who he was than to try and avoid them.
As the Holy Ghost bore down on the five ships, they started to spread out into a line abreast, presumably ready to come alongside the longship and board it.
‘They think we’re Vikings,’ Edmund said with a grin.
‘Then they must be bloody blind,’ Nerian replied. ‘Can’t they see the cross on our prows?’
‘Probably not at this range.’
The five ships were now hull down on the horizon but making slow progress as they were rowing into the wind. In contrast the skeid was flying along under sail at six knots.
‘Get ready to lower the mainsail,’ Nerian yelled as they neared the other ships. ‘Rowers to your oars.’
The warriors, who had been lining the gunwales to gawp at the strange Frankish ships, scattered and sat on their sea chests before picking up their oars from where they lay. They pulled out the plugs, which stopped the sea slopping into the ship when under sail, and thrust their oars out, holding them above the waves and waiting for the next order.
‘Drop the sail, down oars and pull together,’ Nerian called. ‘One, two, three,’ he called out with a long pause between each one.
The sail fluttered down the mast to be gathered up and secured by the boys whilst the rowers picked up the rhythm being called out by the captain. Once they had settled into it, he stopped calling it out. By then the approaching ships were no more than half a mile away.
Once they were within hailing distance Nerian gave the order to stop rowing and, apart from the odd adjustment to maintain the ship’s heading, he let the longship drift towards the five Frankish ships. Now he could see them clearly, Edmund realised that they were similar to an illustration of a Roman galley that he’d seen whilst he was on Lindisfarne. They were almost float bottomed, having the shallow V shaped hull designed for coastal craft in the Mediterranean. They were quite unsuited to the rougher waters of the German Ocean.
‘Greetings, I’m Edmund of Bebbanburg, a merchant of Northumbria, heading for our trading post in Paris,’ he called across the water towards the central ship in Latin. ‘We are Christians from Northumbria and we come in peace,’ he continued as there had been no response to his first hail.
‘How do we know you’re not Vikings trying to trick us?’ someone called back in Latin.
‘How many Vikings do you know who speak Latin and display a cross as a figurehead?’
‘I’m coming alongside. Don’t do anything stupid or my other ships will attack.’
Nothing more was said until the galley came alongside and the ship’s boys caught the two mooring lines that their
counterparts on the other ship threw to them as well as a third rope to serve as a spring. This ran from the stern of one ship to the prow of the other to hold them together without one hull rubbing constantly against the other.
The man who clambered down onto the deck of the skeid was in his thirties. He was six inches taller than Edmund and broad chested. His carefully washed and combed hair and beard contrasted with the faded leather armour he wore. The way he smelled reminded Edmund of his mother; quite unlike the way he and his men did. Their prevailing odour was a mixture of sweat and salt.
‘Greetings, I’m Bastiaan, the viscount of this coastal region and the younger son of the Count of Arras,’ the big man explained.
Edmund knew that a count was a man appointed to govern a region, very much as an ealdorman governed a shire in England. A vice-count, or viscount, was a deputy who was responsible for helping the count by enforcing the law and collecting taxes in a sub-division of the province. In this case, it looked as if Bastiaan was also responsible for the defence of this section of the coast.
‘I’m Edmund, the brother of the Ealdorman of Bebbanburg and the Shire Reeve of Islandshire in Northumbria,’ the young Northumbrian replied.
‘I thought you said that you were a merchant?’ Bastiaan replied, giving a suspicious look around him. ‘This doesn’t look like a trading ship, more like a Norse raider.’
‘That’s because she was built for my father by a crew of Norsemen who he captured.’
‘Are these them?’ he asked in alarm, indicating the rowers.
Edmund gave a short laugh.
‘No, that was twenty years ago. These men are all Northumbrians.’
‘You still haven’t explained why you claimed to be a merchant.’
‘That’s because my family own a warehouse in Paris where we trade items such as wool, jewellery, weapons and leather goods that we export from Bebbanburg.’
