Winter of Discontent nc-2

by Iain Campbell

  “No. He and his family and Gilbert de Ghent were taken captive. Nearly all the rest were killed either in the fighting or afterwards. One of the informants I was pouring beer into kept carrying on about Waltheof and how he slew so many foreigners. It seems the damn man has hired a skald, Thorkell Skallason, to write an epic poem!”

  “Did the people of York join in the fight? And if so, on which side?”

  “Well, they’d just had their city burnt down by the Normans so I assume they weren’t very friendly to the king. But from what I hear those who hadn’t already left to live with relatives after their houses were burnt down just stood back and watched. When you have 5,000 men pour over the walls and swarm down two castles in a matter of hours, keeping quiet and out of the way is the best thing you can do!”

  “I suppose so. What of Ealdred, the Archbishop? How did he feel about the cathedral being burnt down? He’s been a staunch supporter of King William these last few years.”

  Sven gave a snort of amusement and replied, “You’d have to ask St Peter himself the answer to that one. Or Lucifer, depending in which direction he went! He died a week before the city was attacked, just a few days after the Danes landed on the coast.”

  “What’s the situation in York? Are there many rebels about?”

  “No. They took what little booty the fire had left and marched away. After all, who’d want to stay and defend a burnt-out ruin? I’m sure they thought that King William is welcome to what little is left!”

  “Were you able to find where they marched?”

  “Of course! They went where you’d think. The earls and their men went north-east, probably to Durham again. As to the Danes, well I’ve had conflicting stories about where their ships are, and you never find Danes or any other Norseman far from his ship. I’ve heard they’re south-east at Skegness or north-east at Hartlepool or Scarborough. North-east would make more sense as that keeps them close to the Aetheling’s men and we didn’t see any sign of them as we sailed north past Skegness. We were keeping a low profile and not looking for trouble on the way up here, but I’m sure we’d have seen some sign of the Danish fleet as we passed if they were at Skegness.”

  “How many are there?” asked Alan.

  “How many fleas are there on a street-dog?” Sven replied with a shrug. “Enough to take York anyway. The word in the city is there were about 3,000 Danes and slightly more Englishmen. A lot of men have come to join the rebels from the Midlands, East Anglia and the south, as well as the Northumbrians. At least that means so as long as we’re away from the ship we won’t need to pretend we’re all Norsemen!”

  “There’s a big difference in accent and dialect between Northumbria and Essex,” interjected Brand.

  “True,” replied Sven. “But there’re so many Saxons from the south in the rebel army, mixing with Midlanders, Northumbrians, Scots, Danes- even a few Welsh and a few Irish- that you’d really have to draw attention to yourself to be noticed. But we need to remember that not many men from Essex could explain why they’re on a Danish longship, and keep our mouths firmly shut when we’re close to the ships.”

  Alan nodded his agreement and said, “So, there appears to be no intention to either hold York against King William or attack him as he moves towards York, and that means we don’t need to try to make a report. So what do we do for the next week?”

  Lars scratched at the thick blond beard on his chin and replied with a question, “What are we supposed to be doing up here?”

  “A very reasonable question,” replied Alan. “One thing is to keep an eye on the Danes and let the king know whether they are. As Sven said they’re never far from their ships. If we know where the ships are, we know where the Danes are. As they’re half of the Aetheling’s army, the other half will be nearby. The other thing we do is to provide communication with the spies that the king has in the Danish and English camps. We’ll be quaffing ale in Durham, Hartlepool and Scarborough more often than in York, waiting for strange men in dark cloaks to approach us! One thing we need to look at is where do we base ourselves?”

  After a long pause Sven replied, “I suggest Flamborough Head, at the far end of Bridlington Bay. It’s half way between the Spurn at the mouth of the Humber River and Hartlepool. It’s a very distinctive formation with chalk cliffs 300 or so feet high. Bridlington is a very small village some distance from the Head itself. I know a cave… several caves… just north of the point of the Head. The whole of Flamborough Head is riddled with caves. Several are at sea level between outcrops of rocks that jut out and provide protection from the weather. The gaps are only 50 or so paces wide but a good captain will have no difficulty,” he said with some smugness. “You can row your ships right into the caves, at least on the top half of the tide.”

  “Where do we camp?” asked Brand.

  “In the caves,” replied Sven with a shrug. “They’re dry- chalk cliffs. The local pirates have built living quarters, although with our numbers we may need to expand them a little. There’ll be dry wood gathered ready for us, as is the usual practice of ‘the Brethren’, and we’ll leave it as we found it. I doubt very much that with the Danes about that the local pirates will be in occupation. We’ll be neat and snug, and very well hidden.”

  Alan was tempted to ask Sven about how he’d gained his detailed knowledge of the hiding places on the east coast. Instead he just asked, “How long to get there?”

  Sven looked at the early-afternoon sun. “Down the Ouse to the Humber and out past the Spurn. We’ll have the outgoing tide to help us. Then north to Flamborough Head. I’ll get us there just before dark. At worst we can heave-to off-shore and spend the night at sea, but I’d suggest we get moving now if we want to have a fire and a cooked meal tonight.”

  The sun was low in the western sky as Sven conned Havorn towards a gap in the chalk cliffs and gestured to Lars to take Alekrage into the darkness of the cave that loomed at the end of the narrow passage. The mast was lowered and Sven took Havorn a further thousand paces or so north and turned into another narrow passage. The tide was on the ebb and Sven shouted, “Pull you lousy bastards! Do just what I tell you or we’re all dead men! Larboard side, hold one oar-beat and resume! Hold! Row!” The ship passed into the darkness of the cave. “Now! Pull! Good! Good! Slow! Slow! Heave oars!” The ship grounded on sand inside the deep cave. “You and you, jump overboard and tie those ropes to the bollards over there. When the tide comes in later tonight, we’ll shift her further up. You lot, start carrying the bed-rolls and supplies over there. Light some damn torches so we can all see what we are doing! You! Run down the cliff-line to the cave Lars rowed into and tell him to come up here. No, you arsehole! It’s mid-tide so you can get there easily without having to climb the cliff! Just watch your step on the way back if it’s dark.”

  Alan sat back and watched as the ship was tied up, aware that he had witnessed a virtuoso performance over the last few hours and that Lars was worth every shilling he received in pay, and more. The Norseman had driven the two ships fast downstream on the Ouse, using what late-autumn river flow existed, supplemented by the men at the oars. When the Ouse had joined the Humber, he’d used the outgoing tide and a westerly breeze to speed them along, resting the oarsmen as he knew they’d be needed later. The flat muddy banks of the river had sped by, then after passing the low sandy spit of the Spurn at the mouth of the river they had rowed north up Bridlington Bay with the ships rocking in an easterly swell that made it hard for the oarsmen to keep their beat and the landsmen to keep their stomachs in order. Alan had spent nearly two hours hanging over the lee side feeding the fish. He’d learned from past experience to avoid the weather side, so that the vomit wasn’t blown back in his face.

  He took his pants and boots off before jumping over the low saxboard and onto the sandy ground to walk the few paces to dry land. Again, he’d leant in the past that a few moments of wind around the privates was better than hours spent wearing wet clothes. Boots took days to dry properly. You learn
from past mistakes.

  There was a small sandy beach inside the cave, now being lit by torches made of pitch-soaked moss held by the men. Beyond was a small area cut into the chalk walls of the cave. From what could be seen in the torchlight the cave appeared to be about sixty paces deep, twenty paces wide and thirty feet high. Just where sand met chalk, flame was being put to a pile of dried wood that had been left in place. Obviously the previous occupants had observed the usual local courtesies.

  Supplies were being broached, meat being placed in pots with vegetables and put above the fire to cook. Smoke rose to the ceiling of the cave above their heads before trickling out of the cave mouth. A barrel of apples was broached along with a cask of ale. A table was set up and loaves of slightly stale bread from two days before, together with cheese and slices of smoked ham and jars of pickled vegetables, were placed on it for men to help themselves. Men were quickly claiming the sleeping places that had been cut into the chalk walls one above the other, three places high. Alan noted that Leof had appropriated two places and put their sleeping rolls in place, standing guard to ensure that none usurped them.

  “Well done, Leof!” said Alan, giving the boy a gentle buffet on the shoulder.

  The food was nearly cooked when Lars arrived and he and Sven spent considerable time talking quietly mouth to ear in Norwegian, with Alan only able to catch the occasional word- just enough to annoy him that he was being excluded from the conversation.

  After they had finished eating Alan walked up to Sven and Lars and sat on a rock next to them, saying, “Right! The plan for tomorrow is we find where the Danes are. One ship goes north and one ship south. Rendezvous back here at night. When we know where they are we send a ship to sit and wait to hear from the spies. The idea is to have two ships, so that our ships aren’t hanging about like a bad smell and the spies aren’t seen talking to the same people all the time.”

  “And who are these spies?” asked Lars.

  Alan sighed. “Lars, you don’t need to know and you won’t know. If you knew we’d have to kill you! You’re ‘Transport’. I’m ‘Intelligence’- I hope. We’ll each do our own jobs, right? You and Sven put the ships in the right place at the right time. I’ll do the rest.”

  Alan spent an uncomfortable night lying on a shelf cut into the cliff wall, which had several lumps in uncomfortable places. As he rose stiff and sore in the morning he promised to get himself a well-stuffed mattress and blanket that day. He chose to accompany Sven north to Hartlepool as he also thought that the Danes were unlikely to be at Skegness.

  It was mid-tide and the ship had to be man-handled into the water using round logs of timber as rollers that were also apparently part of the fittings of the cave. With the ship safely afloat the twenty crewmen doubled up on the oars, using five oars a side, and followed Sven’s shouted instructions. Once out of the cave, even when still sheltered by the fingers of chalk that jutted out from the land and created a small natural harbour, the ship began to rise and fall in a heavy swell. As the southerly wind was trying to push the ship sideways some careful manoeuvring was needed to extract the ship from the narrow passage.

  Despite the stiff breeze the air was heavy with the smell of bird-droppings and the sound of thousands of birdcalls. Looking at the cliff and the nearby rocks it was hard to tell what was chalk and what was guano. Whole sections of the cliff were absolutely smothered in birds, raucously pushing and shoving each other. Puffins, with their distinctive large red and orange beaks, could be seen hopping comically about on the rocks and flapping their short wings at a furious rate as they flew low over the water. Gannets, kittiwakes and guillemots were present in their thousands. The dark-plumaged adolescent gannets showed clearly against the white of the cliffs, while the adult birds dove from the air from surprising heights to plunge deep into the water to seize small fish. The puffins and guillemots were more circumspect, flying low over the water or floating before disappearing below the surface to use their short wings to ‘fly’ underwater as they chased their prey. High above the cliffs, riding the up-draughts, were several larger raptors waiting to swoop down and take the smaller birds. These were too far away for Alan to be able to make out their species. Skuas in their dark-brown plumage could be seen harassing other birds, trying to make them drop their catch, so that the skua or its mate could snatch an easy meal. Alan found the highly eroded cliffs quite remarkable with their stratified horizontal layers and pitted weathered appearance quite dissimilar to the chalk cliffs he had seen near Dover.

  Just north of Flamborough Head, Filey Bay had a low coastline with a wide beach, open to the strong seas that swept in from the north-east, causing the coastline to erode westward year by year. Alan saw a small group of local people ‘bird fishing’ on the north side of the Flambourgh cliffs, standing on ledges below the cliff top and using hand nets a yard across and attached to stout poles to try to catch the low-flying birds.

  Alan pointed them out to Sven who commented, “They’re catching puffins. Quite tasty and cook up well. They can be smoked, dried or salted for the winter. The gannets taste like shit- they’re too fishy.”

  “Any risk of them locating our camp?”

  “No. There’s a walkway along the top of the cliff, but we’re several miles from both Bridlington and Filey. There’s no reason for the villagers to go there. The only way anybody could get down the cliff would be on the end of a rope. The climb would be too dangerous. They know that there’s nothing there for them and that they may meet some men using the caves who prefer to have their presence unknown. No, we’re safe enough.”

  The short voyage of about twenty miles north from Flamborough to Scarborough was quickly completed with a favourable wind filling the sail. As they sailed north they saw several snekke longships and the wider knarrer transports, mainly further out to sea. As they came up to the village they saw perhaps thirty snekke and knarrer drawn up bow-in onto the wide sandy beach.

  “It looks like we’ve found the Danes,” commented Alan.

  Sven snorted derisively and replied, “Lad, if there are 3,000 Danes, that means probably 100 ships, maybe more. We’ve found some of them, but I expect most are at up at Hartlepool at the mouth of the Tees River, where there’s a good natural harbour. It’s close to the English earl’s base at Durham and the river gives them access by ship deep into Yorkshire. I think we’ve another sixty miles or so to sail yet, laddie.”

  And so it proved. As they sailed further north they saw more and more of the Danish warships and transport ships, so many and on such constant courses that Alan was sure that they were wearing a track in the sea between Hartlepool and Jutland. At Hartlepool the large natural harbour, one of the best on the north-east coast, was crowded with probably close on 100 ships.

  At Sven’s shouted command the men lowered the sail, unshipped the oars and rowed for the last few minutes of careful manoeuvring amongst the ships crowded into the harbour. Alan ordered the ship to anchor offshore and was rowed to the wharf in a small sunnmorsf?ring four-oared rowing boat by Sven and three other Norwegians.

  Once ashore he approached a fisherman who was sitting next to a small fishing boat. The old man, face weathered by years at sea and hands scarred by hauling on ropes, was mending his nets, dextrously weaving thick cord to repair the gaps torn in the net. He was happy to pass onto Alan the information as to where he may find ‘The Bull and Bear’ tavern, along with several recommendations as to which may the best tavern depending on whether you wished female company at a greater or lesser price, good food or a quiet place to drink good ale. None of these was ‘The Bull and Bear’, whose sole claim to fame appeared to be that it was the most expensive establishment in the town. Before entering under the sign of ‘The Bull and Bear’ Alan placed a red woollen cap on his head and a blue scarf about his neck before selecting a quiet small table in the corner, where he sat by himself.

  He’d drained his first quart of ale and was part way through the second, needed to ‘rent’ the table, when he w
as approached by a very comely and buxom young lass with her long blond tresses flowing freely. “May I join you?” she asked in an arch manner and husky voice. Alan would have politely declined, but she had pulled from her sleeve a red handkerchief, the recognition signal he’d been alerted to by Herfast.

  “By all means,” replied Alan, signalling to the barmaid for a pint jug of wine and two cups. When it arrived he poured, took a sip and shuddered, closing his eyes for a moment before saying, “I can’t recommend the wine, but the ale is reasonable. Would you like to eat? The serving-wench told me that they have roast pork and beef pies. Fine, we’ll have both. I’ll stay with the ale. You may wish to see what quality is the mead? No?” Turning to the aged serving-wench, who was wiping dirty hands on her apron as she stood waiting for an order, he instructed, “A quart of ale and a pint. Serves of pork and beef pie. Fresh bread and butter and cheese. Fruit.” He tossed her two silver pennies.

  “I’m Gundred. Skald Thorkell Skalleson’s woman,” she said placing her hand on Alan’s and stroking it with an apparent fondness that was totally absent from the business-like expression in her eyes.

  “My name is Alan. I’ve heard of the skills of your man as a bard, with his story of the exploits of Earl Waltheof.”

  Gundred gave a laugh of genuine amusement. “Thorkell is good. He could make a shepherd look like a hero, if you paid him enough. I know not why Waltheof paid so much to have himself immortalised in poetry for his blood-thirsty deeds. He’s young, good-looking and is in fact an excellent warrior and leader.”

  “Vanity, I suppose. It gets the best of many people. Now what can you tell me?”

  Gundred looked about and paused as the drinks were delivered together with the pork pies and braised vegetables on wooden platters. Satisfied that the table chosen was sufficiently private and that the buzz of conversation around them would hide anything said from unwanted ears, she replied with candour. “Nothing that you couldn’t find out for the price of a few quarts of ale in any tavern. Edgar the Aetheling is with Cospatric, Waltheof, Maerle-Sveinn and Arknell at Durham, together with the Danish King Swein’s brother Osbjorn and his sons Harald and Christian, the bishop of Aarhus. His son Cnut is here with most of the men at Hartlepool.”