by Joan Wolf
Halfdan looked at the jarl, his bushy gray eyebrows eloquent with surprise. “Why?”
Guthrum smiled, the smile Erlend always classified in his mind as his wolf smile. “They have admitted Erlend to their hearth. He has played for their king, and spoken to him as well. If necessary, he can play the harper again and gain access to their councils.”
Halfdan grunted. “A good thought.” He showed his own stained teeth. “Better, though, to finish our work at Wilton.”
“Yes, my lord,” uncle and nephew chorused in reply, then left the king to rejoin their own command.
* * *
Chapter 23
The May weather continued unusually fine and hot as the Danish host poured down the Roman road leading toward Wilton. It was late in the afternoon of May 28 when they turned west onto a local track that Erlend told them would take them directly to the royal manor of Wilton, behind whose palisade they expected to find the men of Wessex awaiting them.
A mile along the track brought them to a meadow situated right beside a stream that fed into the River Wilye. A sloping hill rose to their east, and the track to Wilton stretched before them. The river afforded drink for their horses and the meadow was rich with grass for grazing. Halfdan, whose army outnumbered Alfred’s by over four-to-one, confidently ordered his men to make camp for the night. The West Saxons would know he was coming, he thought. There was no hurry. Best to let them sweat a bit and think on the fate of Northumbria and East Anglia.
The light faded late. It was not until after midnight that Alfred was able to move his men from near Old Sarum, where the West Saxons had lain concealed all through the day. Old Sarum was four miles to the east of Wilton, two miles to the east of the meadow whereon the Danes were encamped.
The West Saxons had spent the early part of the night in prayer and in the hearing of confessions. It was a bold gamble they were taking, this meeting of the Danes in open battle, and all knew it. Their chances of success, however, greatly increased when the Danes decided to halt in the meadow instead of pushing on for Wilton. A fight in front of the walls of Wilton would not suit Alfred so well as the grounds he was now likely to get.
Alfred was gambling on several things in this particular venture. He was gambling on the overconfidence of the Danes, that they would not bother to post scouts to their east. If guards were indeed posted and sounded the alarm to Halfdan, it would be impossible for Alfred to gain position on the heights, and the surprise maneuver would end in disaster for the West Saxons.
A desperate gamble indeed, but no other course had been open to him that held out any hopes of survival. Alfred had never had any intention of trying to last out a siege within the walls of Wilton manor. His plan had been to fall on the Danes from the rear, inflict as much damage as possible, then withdraw into the forest of Selwood. But now … if the men of Wessex could gain position on the hill and stage a surprise attack at dawn, then perhaps they would even have a chance for victory,
All was quiet when Alfred and his men reached the far side of the hill that lay to the east of the Danish camp. The night was moonless, lit only by distant points of unusually bright stars. The leaders left their horses at the foot of the hill, and the West Saxon thanes, some fifteen hundred strong, began to climb the grassy slope. No cry of alarm disturbed their progress. The Danes, never dreaming that Alfred would have the audacity to offer battle in the open, had not bothered to post scouts.
The West Saxons took up their positions just below the top of the rise and settled down to wait out the night. All was silence. Finally, in the sky to their rear, the waiting thanes could see the sky turning to the light gray of dawn. Then shafts of red began to streak the heavens, and finally it was light enough to see.
All the eyes of the West Saxons were fixed on the slim, bareheaded figure of their king, who was leading the shield column on the right. It was the first time Alfred would be fighting under the royal banner of Wessex, not his own personal banner of the White Horse.
As the eyes of ealdormen and thane watched, the banner of the Golden Dragon was raised on high. The cry came through the early morning air, clear and thrilling. “Wessex! Wessex!” And the king was running forward.
His thanes answered him with a roar. “Wessex! Wessex!” Then the entire West Saxon army was over the top and thundering down the hill into the unprepared Danish camp below them.
Guthrum could not believe what was happening. They had attacked! He was scarcely out of his bed, had not time to don his armor, time only to grab sword and shield and race forward, his hird of followers at his back, to meet the onrush of West Saxons who had fallen upon them with the unexpected power of an avalanche.
Had the Danes been a less experienced army, Alfred’s charge would have curried the day. As it was, many of the Danish warriors, weaponless and unprepared as they were, fell in the first few minutes of the fight. Then they rallied, strong in their discipline to their leaders, strong in their sense of comradeship with each other.
The battle roared on amidst the tents and the cookfires of the Danish camp. The horses, which the Danes had hobbled and set out to graze the night before, went wild with the smell of blood, and the screaming of injured men was punctuated by the screaming of frantic horses fighting to get free of their hobbles.
The Danes struggled to form up into two rough wedge formations, Halfdan commanding one and Guthrum the other. Red streaks of dawn had long since brightened into the full light of day when the first sign of a break came in the deadlock between the two armies. Little by little, the Danes began to retreat.
Guthrum, who knew the mind of Halfdan very well, rallied his men to him and held them together as they slowly let themselves be pushed back by the West Saxons. Erlend, who had been as astonished as anyone by Alfred’s attack, and who had been fighting alongside his uncle’s hird, was surprised to find that their men were retreating. He said so to the man beside him.
“We’ll lure them out of formation,” the man grunted to him, his eyes on Guthrum, not on Erlend. “As soon as the jarl gives the signal, see …”
And all of a sudden Guthrum’s column broke. All around him Erlend saw men beginning to turn and flee. “Come along, you little fool!” someone shouted at him, and then Erlend too turned and followed the Danes as they raced from the field, evidently in fear of their lives.
Ethelnoth was commanding the men opposing Guthrum, though the fighting had been so haphazard and spread out over the littered field that it was truer to say that each man was commanding himself. Consequently, when Guthrum’s men turned to flee, there was little Ethelnoth could do to stop his own men from racing in hasty pursuit. After a moment’s hesitation, the ealdorman followed as well. Then Halfdan’s men began to run from the meadow, and the rest of the West Saxons, flaming with the fire of unexpected victory, tore after.
Alfred swore with frustration. But there was nothing he could do to halt his overeager thanes. In too short a time the meadow was emptied of all but the dead and the dying. All Alfred could hope for was that the Danes were indeed in flight, that this was not another ruse such as they had played on the West Saxons at Meretun.
Surely it could not be, he thought desperately as he stood on the battlefield surrounded only by his personal hearthband. The Danes had been thoroughly surprised. They had not had time to prepare any trick maneuvers. Surely this time they had really been put to flight.
“We beat them!” Edgar, the bearer of the dragon banner, was in no doubt about the outcome of the day.
“Do you not wish to join in the pursuit, my lord?” asked Wilfred, obviously fretting to join the hunt himself.
“No. The ealdormen will command their followers.” Alfred looked around. There were perhaps fifty of his own men left on the field. Many faces were looking openly disappointed at his decision. Alfred spoke very crisply. “We will load as many of our wounded as possible onto the Danish horses. Then I want you to ride for Dorchester.”
“Now, my lord?” Wilfred was clearly bewildered.
“Would it not be best to care for the wounded first, without moving them?”
“Now,” Alfred repeated. His face did not look triumphant; it looked worried. “I want the wounded away from here. And I want as many of the Danish horses as we can manage to take.” He looked from one dirt-and-blood-smeared face to the next. His own expression was at once both fierce and bleak. “Quickly,” he said.
The thanes moved, half going to find bridles from among the litter in the Danish tents, the other half beginning the gruesome job of sorting out those who were wounded but able to ride from those who would have to be left behind.
Within an hour they had mounted fifty men. Alfred sent the party off, escorted by twenty of his own thanes, each of whom was leading two more horses. Then Alfred said to the thanes remaining with him, “Catch and bridle as many horses as you can,” and they set to work.
Two hours after the Danish retreat had begun, the tattered remnant of the West Saxon army began trickling into the meadow. The Danes had indeed waited until their enemies were hopelessly spread out, then gathered and turned and cut them down. Fewer than four hundred men made it back to the meadow, and they found their king awaiting them with a supply of bridled horses. “Ride for Dorchester,” each was told, and the West Saxon thanes asked no questions, but mounted and fled down the Roman road to the south.
Alfred waited until he could hear the war cries of the pursuing Danes before he mounted Nugget and galloped off after his men.
The Danes returned to the meadow, triumphant in the knowledge of a nearly total victory. Alfred’s army had been decimated in the pretend retreat. It was not until half an hour after they had begun the grim work of counting the dead and wounded that word came to Halfdan that they were missing hundreds of their horses.
“Alfred cut the hobbles and let them go,” Guthrum said to Erlend with faint scorn. “I did not see him among those pursuing us. He must have been busying himself with the horses. It is a nuisance, of course, but we will catch them. The sound of grain in a bucket will bring them running quickly enough.”
It was not until the bridles were missed that the Danes realized what had really happened.
“He stole our horses! Over five hundred of them!” Guthrum was scornful no longer. “We beat him into the ground, but he has five hundred of our horses! Name of the Raven, but he is a resourceful bastard.”
“He is clever,” Erlend said with narrow-eyed intensity. He was standing beside his uncle in the midst of their scattered belongings.
Guthrum pushed his bloody hand through the evenly cut bangs on his forehead. “We lost two jarls in the initial surprise attack. Two jarls and near a thousand men. We should have posted a guard to the east.” His brilliant blue stare was directed at Erlend. “You were the one to say he would try to defend Wilton, Nephew.”
Erlend was only too well aware of his own advice. “You outnumbered him over four-to-one,” he said. His eyes were very green. “None of you expected him to attack.”
After a minute: “That is so,” came the somewhat grudging reply. “It seems this Alfred is an opponent worthy of the name.”
“It might have been wiser,” said Erlend grimly, “to have left them Ethelred.”
“We must have a mounted fyrd,” Alfred said to Elswyth. “The Danes can move so much faster than we; it is one of their greatest advantages.”
It was a warm and hazy July day. Alfred had been away from Dorchester for weeks, and upon his return he and Elswyth had taken their horses and ridden out alone to Maiden Castle for the afternoon. “Do you mean a cavalry, like the Romans?” she asked. They had left their own horses to graze and were stretched out side by side on the grassy hillside where once those very Romans had defeated the native Britons, centuries before the Saxons had ever set a foot on English soil.
“No. The Danes do not fight from horseback, nor has it ever been a tradition of the Anglo-Saxons to do thus. But the Danes travel by horseback. And they move their supplies by river. We cannot hope to keep up with them, Elswyth, unless we learn to imitate them.” He punched the grass beside him. “They moved from Wilton back to Reading in a day and a half! It would have taken us three times that long, with our supplies traveling by ox wain.”
“They are also reinforced by ship,” Elswyth said. “How many more troops sailed into Reading this spring from Denmark? You need to be able to stop them on the sea as well as on the land, Alfred.”
“We have no ships!” he cried in frustration.
She shrugged. “You will have to build them.”
“We do not have the time to build ships,” he said. His voice was quiet now. Quiet and bitter.
She turned her head and looked at him. He was thinner, she thought, thinner and harder. He himself had been in the field almost constantly this spring and summer, leading his own hearthband and small groups from the shire fyrds on flying raids against the Danes, who had settled in at Wilton for a month before finally returning this last week to their base at Reading.
“They pillaged the country around Wilton pretty thoroughly,” she said now, “but they did not try to come further south.”
“Yet.”
She continued to regard him for a minute in silence. He was very tan, and his hair had streaks of blond amongst its usually darker gold. She said at last, her voice carefully neutral, “You know that you should buy them off”
“No! I will not stoop to Burgred’s level!” His usually controlled voice rasped raw with unsuppressed emotion.
She propped her chin on her updrawn knees. The day was very warm and they both were wearing short sleeves. His muscular forearms were as brown as his face. There was a pulse beating against the skin of his throat. She could see it clearly in the open collar of his shirt. “Wessex is exhausted,” she said. “You yourself have just said that you need to reorganize, to change the way you have been fighting. You need time to do that. Buy the Danes off for now, Alfred.”
“When I accepted the crown, I told the witan that I would never give up.” He reached for a small rock and threw it down the hill. After it had bounced to the bottom and lay still, he said, “How can I sue for peace, Elswyth? It is impossible.” He picked up another rock and threw it after the first.
“The Danes have not beaten you,” she said. “You are still king, you still have an army in the field. Buy them off and Wessex will still be an independent kingdom. The Danes could not do to you what they did to Northumbria and East Anglia. The folk of Wessex know that well. Their spirit is not broken. They will understand, if you buy a peace, that it is only for a while, that you are buying time to prepare for the future.”
“I sneered at Burgred when he bought a peace at Nottingham,” he said. She had scarcely ever heard him sound so bitter. “And now you suggest I do the same thing myself?”
She said, “It sounds to me like your pride is getting in the way of your good sense.”
There was a reverberating silence. Then, with a fierce lithe movement, Alfred jumped to his feet. He turned his back on her and threw another rock. It arced out into the air, soaring with the force with which it had been thrown, and Elswyth laughed. “Alfred, stop being so dramatic. Cry a peace. Collect more horses for your fyrds. Build some ships. Then, when they come back, we will be ready for them.”
He turned to stare at her. His eyes were blazing. “It is not funny!” He was furious.
“The situation is not funny,” she said. “You are.” Then, impatiently: “For heaven’s sake, Alfred, no one is like to confuse you with that fat slug Burgred. They are far more like to praise your good sense. Stop taking the situation so personally.”
An odd, arrested look came over his face. He said slowly, “I remember what my father said to me once. It was when he resigned his kingdom to my brother Ethelbald without a fight. He said, ‘A true king is one who ever sets the good of his kingdom above his own personal ambition.’“
“Very good advice,” Elswyth said.
“I thought then that he was wrong, that he should have
fought.”
“The Bible says that there is a season for everything,” Elswyth said. “A season for fighting and a season for peace. I think Wessex needs a season of peace, Alfred. Even if it hurts your pride to sue for it.”
Another silence fell, this one of a considering sort. He turned away from her again and stared off toward the north. “There are other things that need to be done,” he said. “We need to start to build fortifications for our people to shelter within. They are too vulnerable, left alone on their farms.”
She did not say anything, but her dark blue eyes never left the back of his head. “We need a better system of communication, also,” he said.
Silence fell again. The birds circled overhead, the insects buzzed. A white cloud very briefly blocked the sun. Alfred turned at last and looked at his wife, “You are right,” he said. His voice was quiet, but the bitterness had gone. “I must sue for peace.”
“You knew it all along,” she said. “You just needed a push.”
He held out his arms and she jumped to her feet and went to him. “I hate it as much as you do,” she said, her arms locked about his waist, her cheek against his shoulder. “I want them dead, every last one of them. But you cannot keep an army in the field long enough to finish the task.”
“Not this year,” he agreed with a sigh. “But I will never give up, Elswyth. They will have to kill me first.”
“We will none of us give up,” she answered, tightening her arms. “I am not so good a Christian as you, Alfred, but I can see that if we allow the Danes to triumph, we will have plunged England back into the pagan dark. We cannot allow that to happen.”
His mouth was pressed against the top of her head. “No.” His voice sounded muffled.
“You will have to teach many of the ceorls to ride,” she said. “I will be glad to help with that.”
He looked down into her face, and his own suddenly blazed with laughter. “The poor ceorls! The minute one jabs a horse’s mouth with the bit, you will murder him.”
