by C. R. May
As the last men leapt into the saddle and cantered away, Norman spears finally appeared on the road; Waltheof backed through an arc of flame, Brand, Cospatric and Swegn at his side, and slinging their shields upon their backs to guard against a last ditch spear or arrow strike they remounted and put back their heels. Once out of bowshot the little group drew rein, twisting in the saddle to look back at their handiwork. Directly ahead the first hint of dawn was breaking beyond Wallingford, the burning town creating a corona of light against a wish-wash sky. Waltheof looked across to the West hoping to gauge the success of the attack, but darkness still reigned there.
Cospatric hawked and spat as the first Normans appeared illuminated by the flames. ‘Do you think Wæcnan was successful?’
The earl shrugged. ‘We gave him every chance, kinsman. Let us break our fast and see.’
‘Ay up, here he comes — William the conqueror!’
Hoots of laughter came from the horsemen on the hill, and they watched the slow procession with unconcealed glee as the Normans crossed the bridge from the town and began to ascend the slope. Beyond the leading men the flags of Northumbria, Mercia and Wessex snapped taut in a freshening wind; above them dirty white clouds pregnant with the first snows of winter scurried away to the Northeast. Three days had passed since Ulfketil Wæcnan and his band of rustlers had chased away all but a handful of the Norman mounts, days in which the combined armies of the English folk had watched the trapped invaders frantically throwing up makeshift walls over the charred remains of Waltheof’s attack. They need not have hurried. Trapped far from the sea and with the great metropolis of London guarding the lower Thames they were beyond succour and going nowhere.
Oswulf Eadwulfson spoke again, the Bernician’s rough humour setting laughter ringing across the hillside once more. ‘I don’t know about you lads, but I always imagined him to be taller.’
The Norman leaders were almost up with them now, the fear and uncertainty about their own futures etched upon their features. Morcar edged his horse forward as the delegation drew to a halt, and Waltheof shared a fleeting look with his cousin and the Bernician at the presumption. His apparent leadership had been self-imposed, and although his brother Edwin showed his support, it was clear from the faces surrounding them that he was alone. Both men were Mercians, and the men of the North had not fought long and hard to throw off the yoke of southern rule only to have it reimposed at the moment of victory.
Morcar stole a glance at the trophy they had all come to see, before indicating that Stigand join him by the raising of a hand. ‘Your Grace,’ he said as the Normans stood in mute discomfort. ‘You alone have met the duke. Would you do us all the kindness of confirming that we have our man?’
The archbishop of Canterbury left King Edgar of Wessex’s side and walked his mount across. One glance was enough, and the old churchman gave a nod. Morcar spoke again. ‘Lift it high,’ he ordered, ‘and show it to the men.’
As the shamefaced Normans raised the head, Waltheof gazed upon the unseeing eyes of the dead. He felt no pity, the duke had brought it upon himself by his avarice; William had been tricked into his invasion by the promises of his kinsman the Confessor. Waltheof snorted as the poll of the duke was paraded before the victors and the ground shook with their cries and chants. How the old man had hidden his hatred of Godwin and his clan for so long was impressive, conniving with young Edgar and the old lords of Wessex even until the very moment of his death to rid them of the Godwinson upstarts. But the men of the North needed no lessons in feuding, and his face took on the mien of the wolf as he looked back at the Mercian earl of the Northumbrians. The man thought that he was returning to York to be crowned king, but he would be disappointed. He snorted again. The matter was already in hand — he was riding to his death.
Afterword
The genesis of Wallingford Burh came from a remark, which I have italicised below, contained within the only contemporary English account of the Battle of Hastings to have come down to us today, found in the Worcester manuscript of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The final line of the entry for 1066 — ‘When God wills, may the end be good’ — the reference to William as king, and of course the fact that it was an ongoing annal of events within the kingdom, support the view that the passage was very likely written at the end of that tumultuous year, and as such it bears repeating here:
Then King William came from Normandy into Pevensey, on the eve of the Feast of St. Michael, and as soon as they were fit, made a castle at Hastings market-town. Then this became known to King Harold and he gathered a great raiding-army, and came against him at the grey apple-tree. And William came upon him by surprise before his people were marshalled. Nevertheless the king fought very hard against him with those men who wanted to support him, and there was a great slaughter on either side. There were killed King Harold, and Earl Leofwine his brother, and Earl Gyrth his brother, and many good men. And the French had possession of the place of slaughter, just as God granted them because of the people’s sins.
In the preceding tales I have taken the traditional view that England was united behind its king, but what if that is the perspective we ourselves have inherited as a result of Victorian romanticism in the nineteenth century, when the events of 1066 and King Harold’s plucky army first gained widespread popularity? If we look again at the origins of those men known to have fought at Hastings listed at the end of Hacon, we can see that they all came from south-east of a line drawn from the Wash to the Isle of Wight, in other words the earldoms of king Harold and his brothers Gyrth and Leofwine. This may well reflect the levy system operating in England at that time and the losses already incurred during the fighting against Hardrada in the north, but the fact that Abbott Leofric of Peterborough was said to have fallen ill during the march to Hastings and left Harold’s army would seem innocent enough until it is realised that he was a cousin of Edwin and Morcar.
Despite the fact that the earls of Mercia and Northumbria were referred to by Orderic Vitalis — who was born in England in 1075 and is viewed as a reliable source by historians — as ‘Harold’s close friends and adherents,’ Edwin and Morcar were in fact the sons of Godwin’s great rival Alfgar of Mercia. Alfgar actually gained the earldom of East Anglia for a short time from Harold Godwinson during the family’s exile in 1051/52 so they were dynastic adversaries. Even if the sons of Godwin and Alfgar had patched up their differences, there must have been plenty of others within England at that time who felt aggrieved at what historian Michael Wood described as a family of nouveaux riches controlling the kingdom. Godwin had risen from the thegnly class, and elites of any age seldom stand aside while their wealth and power are usurped by the lower orders, so it would be unsurprising if the leading families of Wessex would long for a return of the old order represented by Edgar ætheling.
This feeling must have been even stronger in the North. Waltheof, the hero of our tale, was the younger son of Siward Digri (Siward the Strong), the earl of Northumbria who had died in 1055. With the death of his elder brother in battle the previous year and too young to inherit his father’s title, the earldom had gone to Tostig Godwinson whose misrule had ended in open rebellion as already described in another of our tales, Peace Weaver. Waltheof is the only earl not mentioned in the fighting of 1066, and as Harold Godwinson’s route north to fight Hardrada passed through his lands we must assume that he fought there. He submitted to William following the defeat at Hastings and was confirmed in his earldom, but after continuous involvement in various blood feuds and uprisings, most notably the Revolt of the Earls in 1075, he managed to accrue to himself an unenviable claim to fame when he became the only Anglo-Saxon noble executed on king William’s orders.
Certainly the families of the leading men in the North, men like Oswulf Eadwulfson of Bamburgh and Waltheof’s cousin Cospatric, had seen invaders come and go for centuries without losing their hold on power. Only Harold Godwinson among the English leaders in 1066 had recent experience of continental warfare:
only he had seen the way in which land was taken and held by a system of castles and mounted knights, and it was the probable reason why he chose to move quickly against William’s invasion force before they could advance inland. That the northerners thought they could survive, and even reach a kind of power-sharing arrangement similar to the old Danelaw is reflected in their actions following Harold’s defeat at Hastings; but they were to be cruelly disappointed, the various uprisings and revolts only inviting the retaliation known as the Harrying of the North in the winter of 1069/70.
If there had been any degree of unity within the English nation following the defeat at Hastings, William’s crowning that year would have been unlikely. The Norman army was reduced first by losses in battle, and then the onset of dysentery while encamped at Dover. After a strong detachment of knights was repulsed when it reached London, the duke did undertake what in later centuries would have been known as a chevauchée, a destructive march through enemy territory, which skirted the city, captured Winchester, and crossed the River Thames at its lowest fordable place at Wallingford. In reality the fractured English opposition made its first submission here in the form of Stigand archbishop of Canterbury, as the Normans built a castle at the Northeast corner of the burh. A few weeks later William and his army were in Berkhamstead north of London where the remaining English leaders submitted, and on Christmas Day 1066, after a march which had covered more than 350 miles, William was crowned king at Westminster Abbey and the Anglo-Saxon age came to an end.
A BONUS TALE
11
THE YEAR OF THE RAVEN
Tytherley - Hampshire
Midsummer 1016
Hereswith paused at the threshold and cocked her head, concentrating hard as she shifted the weight of the bundle in her arms. All that carried to her were the muted sounds of summer: crickets rasping in the meadow; the cooing of a dove in the copse above the hall. Shaking her head, she chastised herself as she ducked inside and crossed to feed the hearth.
You are imagining things now, you foolish woman!
Setting the load down she picked out a stalk, poking about in the ash before adding more fuel as the logs settled in a flurry of embers. Flames showed as the bark caught, and satisfied with her efforts Hereswith straightened up and gave the pottage a stir. The vegetable content was diminishing by the day, soon they would be living on little more than a watery soup. High summer was the hardest season of all, a time when folk were scraping the barrel for the last of the previous year’s harvest as they prayed for the new. During the worst years it was common to find the old and the poor so weak that they could barely stand, and more than a few resorted to selling their children into slavery to ensure they survived at all. And now the Danes had returned.
Lost in her thoughts she failed to hear the approaching footfalls until a shadow fell across the floor, and she glanced up as the silhouette of her daughter filled the doorway. ‘Did you not hear it, mother?’
Hereswith was instantly alert. ‘I thought I was dreaming it. What did you hear girl?’
Edith beckoned her mother outside as the sound grew louder: ‘a horse.’
The group of riders shared a smile and urged their mounts down from the crest of the hill: another undefended farmstead. Was it any wonder that their kings and jarls had returned to the kingdoms in the West time after time, before the days of their grandfathers even?
At the foot of the slope a woman came from the building, reaching out to take her daughter’s hand as the four riders approached.
Starkad threw his friends a grin. ‘Is she going to run, boys? I say yes, the winner goes first: Skuli?’
The Dane craned forward in the saddle and studied their intended victim. After a short pause he shook his head slowly. ‘She’ll not run.’
Starkad’s face lit up. ‘We have a contest! Otkel?’
Otkel shrugged. ‘She looks a bit scrawny for me, but I will play.’ He sucked at his teeth as he studied the woman’s posture. He prided himself as a swordsman and he had learned long ago how to read the moment when an enemy decided to fight or flee. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘She will stay put.’
Starkad beamed and looked across the line of riders to the man on the far side. ‘It looks as though it’s between us then, Einar. Are you in this time or not?’
The big Dane shook his head. ‘The only part of me that needs feeding is my stomach. I will root around and see what I can find until you can spare the time to help.’ He cast a flinty look towards the leader of the party. ‘That is why we were sent out, unless our orders have changed?’
Otkel reached across and clapped him on the shoulder. ‘That must be some woman you have at home.’ He shot his friends a sly wink. ‘I promise to go and break the sad news to her when the English catch you one day.’
A chorus of laughter rose into the midsummer air, and Einar was about to reply but thought better of it. He was new to the group — not yet fully accepted. If they could not control their urges that was their problem.
Starkad slapped the neck of his mount in delight. ‘It looks as though I get to go first again after all.’
Skuli turned on him. ‘Why should you go first? She still hasn’t moved, and you said that she would be a runner.’
Starkad threw them a nonchalant shrug. ‘Einar is not playing and you two agree. You can’t both go first, so it looks as if it will have to be me. Besides,’ he continued with a sneer, ‘I am the leader of our little band. You two will have to take your turn.’
As the others argued over the woman Einar remained watchful, his eyes scanning the valley as he looked for any signs that men were about. For all the fools knew the barn ahead of them contained a dozen armed rustics, or even the local thegn and his men. If that was the case they were probably already dead. Not for the first time that day he cursed the man whose sickness had caused him to become attached to Starkad’s ragged band of cutthroats.
Einar raised his eyes as the quartet clicked the mounts on, searching the furthest slopes of the valley as they came up to the outbuildings. If he was going to be the only one in the open, it was as well that he ensured that the tree line was not about to disgorge the men of the local fyrd. Even country boys armed with scythes and sickles could be dangerous to a man whose trews were around his ankles. The twin figures seemed transfixed by the sudden appearance of four horsemen in the valley, and Einar felt the familiar sinking feeling in his guts as they fanned out and dropped down the bank into the yard which stood before the hall.
Slipping from the saddle the Danes drew their swords with a flourish, sweeping them in a circle as they asked the usual question. ‘Menn?’
The woman cast her eyes to the ground and shook her head sadly. No, there were no men to come to her aid. Starkad grunted with satisfaction. If there had been he would have had to kill them, and it always seemed to spoil the moment. Sheathing his sword he indicated a rickety enclosure which in happier times must have held the family horse. The English woman’s gaze flicked from her daughter to the corral and back to the Danish leader, and Einar watched in admiration as she cleared her throat and glared: ‘just me.’
Starkad looked the girl over and seemed to be considering taking them both. The girl was pretty; hair the colour of damp hay was gathered together by a strip of blue linen. The summer sun had blushed her cheeks and nose, and Einar knew that it was only the fact that the girl was barely six winters old that would save her. Even Starkad appeared to set some limits to his debauchery, but even so he tapped out a beat on the hilt of his sword as he fixed his part-time leader with a stare. Starkad’s eyes widened in surprise as he recognised the implied threat, but although he snorted in derision the hostility in his eyes revealed his true feelings, and Einar knew that he would have to watch his back for the remainder of the time he was with the army of Cnut. Starkad reached out to tousle the girl’s hair as he and Einar held each other’s gaze, but he finally nodded his agreement to the woman’s request, and Einar watched as her shoulders sagged with a mixtu
re of relief and dread.
The English woman turned to her daughter and raised the girl’s chin until their eyes met; holding her gaze she stroked her hair and spoke in the tone which Einar recalled his wife use with their own children. It was the voice of a woman who would brook no argument and it was instantly recognisable to any parent or child, regardless of the language used. ‘Go inside and remain there until I come to you.’ The mother leaned forward and kissed the child lightly on the forehead before they locked eyes once again. ‘Do you understand me?’ The girl nodded sadly as her mother attempted to introduce a note of cheeriness into her final words. ‘Off you go then.’
As the young girl disappeared into the shadowy interior, Einar took up his spear and began to cross to the small barn. Taking a backwards glance he was just in time to see the woman bend forward across the fencing, the full moon of her buttocks stark in the sunlight as the Danish leader made a bundle of her kirtle and tossed it onto her back.
Edith turned back and shaded her eyes against the glare as she searched out the source of the oncoming hoofbeats. Her mother crossed from the hearth and ducked back into the sunlight. ‘What can you see?’
The girl shook her head and chewed her lower lip in alarm. ‘It’s not coming from the lane,’ she said finally. ‘It sounds like it is coming from the rear of the hall.’
Mother and daughter shared a look of unease. Nobody came across the fields unless they were unfamiliar with the local roads or there was trouble in the Hundred. Either way, both of them quickly realised that the day which they knew could come at any time had finally arrived. Instinctively, Hereswith slipped her hand into her daughter’s as they rounded the angle of the hall and walked to the rear. Edith was the first to clear the woodpile, and the girl let out a squeal as the rider hove into view. ‘It’s Aldwulf!’
