‘When Æthelwulf was killed storming the gatehouse the heart went out of the Saxons and they withdrew. I was one of the mounted scouts who monitored their retreat, but they didn’t go far. They took up a strong position on the top of a ridge in the Berkshire Downs with a solitary thorn tree in the centre of their line. I don’t know the name of the place but someone said it was called Æscesdūn.

  ‘What was apparent was that King Æthelred’s army had gathered reinforcements since the attack on Reading. I suppose that the Danish and Norse army now numbered two and a half thousand men but three hundred had been left to garrison Lundenwic and to guard the fleet.

  ‘Halfdan commanded the Norse warriors whilst Guthrum and Ubba led the Danes and Frisians. This time I was in the third rank at the junction of Halfdan’s wing and Guthrum’s. There was a slight gap between the two forces and so I had a good view in front of the Danes as we advanced together.

  ‘To my amazement the left wing of the Saxon army were still kneeling in prayer in front of a dozen priests. By this time we were only about a thousand yards from them. I felt like screaming at them to get up off their knees and form a shield wall. I had no more time to think about Æthelred and his kneeling army as our wing was hit by Prince Alfred’s wing. Instead of forming a wall in a line, they had charged downhill at us in a wedge formation known as a boar’s snout.

  ‘I was told later that Alfred had placed his fyrd in the middle of the formation, which was something like a solid arrowhead with blocks of warriors in line on the flanks. He had placed three ranks of armoured warriors at the head of the snout and both flanks were again formed from warriors in the first three ranks with the fyrd behind them.

  ‘The point, the snout, penetrated our shield wall and forced Halfdan’s wing apart at the centre. Consequently I was shoved to my right, across the gap between us and the Danes, and into their ranks. As you can image chaos ensued. Some of the Danes evidently thought that we were attacking them and fought back. I had let go of my spear as useless in the confined space and used my shield to defend myself. I managed to draw my sword after a few minutes and started to jab at the Danes with it.

  ‘I had been dreading having to fight Saxons but I set to with a will to kill the Danes. Of course, I couldn’t see what was happening around me, but suddenly the pressure eased and the Danes and Frisians fell back. Apparently Æthelred had finished praying and had led his men into the fray. Their charge must have had considerable momentum behind it and their enemy were distracted by the chaos on their left flank. They were forced back and back.

  ‘I went with them, those of us at the junction of the two wings were inextricably mixed together and, as we retreated, the bulk of Halfdan’s warriors were left exposed on the right flank. I later deduced that, with the snout forcing his centre apart and with the Saxons now attacking his exposed right flank, the whole of the right hand side of his army were being compressed into a block where none of the Norsemen were able to wield a sword, shield, spear or even a dagger in many cases.

  ‘It was then that Æthelred and Alfred pulled their masterstroke. Two hundred horsemen attacked the Heathen’s baggage train a mile to the rear of the battle. The Vikings had accumulated a vast hoard of treasure during their foray into Wessex and they feared that they were about to lose it. It was too much. Hundreds of men streamed away to protect the baggage train and this weakened the line further.

  ‘I had just killed a Dane when the advancing Saxons reached me. Not wanting to fight them, I turned and shoved my way to the rear, knocking men out the way as I went. Others were doing the same and I finally found myself in the clear. I joined those running toward the baggage train.

  ‘I had made up my mind to escape from the Heathens as soon as I could in any case and this seemed like a golden opportunity. If I could reach my horse I would join the retreat, but keep on going until I got back here. Alas, it wasn’t to be. As I ran something hit me on the back of my helmet and I knew no more.’

  -℣-

  ‘When I awoke my head felt as if it had been smashed with a hammer. My vision was blurred and I couldn’t move at first. That was what saved me. The Saxons were walking the battlefield killing the wounded Vikings and calling over stretcher parties to collect their own injured. I learned later that the Vikings had fled all the way back to Reading, pursued by Æthelred whilst Alfred had stayed behind with his men to deal with the dead and wounded and guard the considerable amount of plunder that the Saxons had recovered.

  ‘Slowly my vision improved but then I felt very ill and turned onto my side to vomit. As I lay there, my stomach heaving out the last of its contents, one of the Saxon fyrd noticed me and came towards me with his dagger drawn. I was too weak to even get to my knees so I called out to him, telling him that I was a Christian and a Northumbrian.

  ‘It made no difference, even without my Norse helmet, which I must have lost when I fell. I was dressed as a Viking and the Mjolnir around my neck probably didn’t help. I told him again in English that I wasn’t an enemy and suddenly another voice told him to stop. He mumbled ‘yes, lord’ resentfully, deprived of any easy kill which he boast about to his friends, and bobbed his head towards whoever it was who had spoken.

  ‘I couldn’t see who had spoken so I turned onto my back to see a well-dressed young man in a rich, fur lined tunic worn under a polished byrnie dismount from his horse. His helmet had a gold band around it and, when he turned towards me, I saw that he was wearing a large golden crucifix studded with precious stones which hung in the middle of his chest from a gold chain.

  ‘‘Before I allow this man to kill you, prove to me that you are a Christian and no Viking,’ he demanded.

  ‘I asked how I should do that and he challenged me to recite the Lord’s Prayer, which I did. He then asked me what I was doing there. Unfortunately I retched again at that moment and I came close to losing consciousness again. However, he waited patiently for my response.

  ‘‘I serve Drefan, Ealdorman of Islandshire. I was sent to spy on the Vikings by Earl Ricsige of Bebbanburg, ruler of Bernicia,’ I added.

  ‘’Were you now?’ He looked at me speculatively then told the men with him to load me onto a cart and take me back to their camp. I spent the next few days recovering and telling Alfred what I knew of the Viking leaders and the strengths and weaknesses, as I saw it, of their tactics.

  ‘After that he gave me one of the captured Viking horses and sent me to Reading to find out what Halfdan and Guthrum intended to do next. When I got there, I told anyone who asked that I’d been lucky. I’d been knocked out and taken for dead. I’d bided my time whilst the Viking dead were being thrown into a pit and stolen a horse. No one doubted my story until Halfdan sent for me.

  ‘The size of the lump on the back of my head helped convince him, although he asked a lot of penetrating questions, especially about the Saxon losses. I thought it might be dangerous to lie and so I said that I thought from the bodies laid out for burial that they must have lost many hundreds. I had already learned that the Norse had lost over four hundred and the Danes nearly five hundred. Five jarls were included amongst the dead. It had been a bloody battle but it sounded as if the heathens had lost twice as many as Wessex had.

  ‘“Are you recovered enough to ride to Lundenwic?” Halfdan asked me. I was surprised to be chosen but I suppose he thought I wasn’t yet fit enough to rejoin his warband. I said I was and he handed me a sealed pouch. “Give it to Arne Bjørnsson. He is to send me all the men he can spare, including all the new arrivals.”

  ‘I asked him if I should bring the new men back with me and he nodded, saying that there should be at least three hundred of them, mainly Danes. Before I left I heard gossip that Halfdan and Guthrum had argued again. The Norse leader had wanted to wait for the reinforcements from Lundenwic but Guthrum was insistent that the Saxons wouldn’t expect another attack so soon. As I left the camp early the next morning it was obvious that Guthrum had won the argument. The Vikings were preparing to march again.

  ‘It was imperative that I reached Alfred in time to warn him so, I peeled off the road to Lundenwic and rode in a big circle to the north to avoid the Viking scouts. When I eventually found Æthelred’s army they had retreated into Hampshire to recover and muster more men. Of course the King of Wessex didn’t know me and it took some time to convince his warriors to let Prince Alfred know that I was here.

  ‘It had taken time to ride around the advancing Vikings and to reach Alfred. As soon as he heard my report he cursed his own lazy scouts and went to see his brother. By the time that the alarm had been sounded it was too late. The Vikings were close to the Saxon camp and I could see that defeat for Wessex loomed.

  ‘I was in a difficult position. I was dressed in Viking clothes and Halfdan had given me a Viking helmet to replace the one I’d lost. I was likely to be killed by the Saxons in the melee of battle and Halfdan would certainly kill me if he found me there. I decided the time had come to leave and I rode north out of the camp until I reached the top of a nearby hill.

  ‘From there I watched the battle. The Saxons quickly formed into a shield wall but they’d been caught unawares and the terrain was flat. For a while the battle was evenly balanced. The Vikings had the most experienced warriors but the Saxons had the numerical advantage. However, the Danes on the right broke the Saxon shield wall and the men of Wessex began to give ground. It was far from a rout but in the end the Vikings drove the Saxons from the field of battle and captured their baggage train.

  ‘The last I saw was Æthelred and Alfred making a fighting withdrawal to the west.’

  Karl paused and gratefully took a flagon of mead from a servant. He quenched his thirst before speaking again.

  ‘I decided that it was high time I returned here, lord, and so I set off on the day of the battle, the twenty second of January. I avoided settlements as far as possible, obtaining provisions from isolated farmsteads when necessary. Often the inhabitants had fled before I arrived but I always left what I thought was a fair price for what I took.’

  Karl finished his tale and took another long drink of mead, smacking his lips and looking around to see if anyone had any questions. There were lots of them, of course and it was time to eat by the time he’d finished.

  ‘As soon as we’ve eaten we’ll leave to go and see Earl Ricsige. There is one question I have for your ears alone,’ I murmured in his ear as I took him to one side. ‘Did you hear anything about the heathens’ intentions towards Northumbria?’

  ‘Not much, lord. They seemed content to leave the rule of Jorvik to Ecgberht, although Halfdan did express disappointment over the amount of taxes he’d managed to send him.’

  I thanked him and Eadgifu joined us for our midday meal. Unfortunately it started to snow whilst we were eating and, by the time we went outside to mount our horses, a full scale blizzard was in progress. Snow whirled around, looking like inverted cones, and piled up in heaps against the sides of huts and the palisade. It didn’t look as if we were going anywhere that day.

  -℣-

  The snow lasted until the middle of the month and so it was late March before we were able to ride up to Bebbanburg. As luck would have it, Ricsige was out hunting in the Cheviots and planned to spend the night at Yeavering. I debated whether to go and meet him there, but in the end I decided to wait for him at Bebbanburg.

  He returned late the next afternoon, bringing with him six packhorses laden with dead deer, wolves, boars and even a bear. The latter were now very rare, almost extinct in England, and he was overjoyed at finding and killing one. His high spirits improved even more when he saw me.

  The earl was now nineteen and I suggested quietly at the feast held that evening that he might like to think about marriage. He’d pulled a face at the suggestion.

  ‘There’s plenty of time for that sort of thing,’ he replied. ‘I’ve a brother and a nephew who are five and eight. One or other can succeed me, if that’s what you’re worried about. I suppose that my brother is the obvious heir, so all I have to do is live another dozen years and Egbert will be old enough.’

  I thought that he was right at the time. Even if he married now, any son would be much younger than Egbert and his sister’s son, Ædwulf. The latter had gone with his mother, of course, when she married Theobald. Ricsige only saw the boy when he visited Dùn Èideann, which wasn’t often, and on the even rarer occasions when Theobald brought his family south to Bebbanburg. Consequently he hardly knew him.

  Karl gave Ricsige an abridged account of his adventures over the past year and a half. Ricsige listened attentively, but what he was interested in wasn’t the events - all but the last two battles he already knew about in any case. What he really wanted to know was what the Vikings intentions towards Northumbria were.

  ‘What does this Guthrum want? Is it plunder before he returns to Denmark? What about the sons of Ragnar? You say that only Halfdan remains with the Great Heathen Army. Why? And what are his ambitions?’

  ‘I can only tell you what the gossip in the camp was, lord,’ Karl replied hesitantly.

  ‘In my experience warriors normally know more than their lords anyway,’ Ricsige replied with a grin.

  ‘Very well. Guthrum has no intention of going back to his homeland. If he’d wanted to he could have seized the throne when King Bagsecg was killed. Instead he allowed Ragnar’s son, Sigurd, to take it. Ubba and his mix of Danes and Frisians go where Guthrum goes and do what he tells them. Halfdan is more complex. I’m fairly certain that Ivar’s driving motive was to outdo the feats of his father. He wasn’t satisfied with inheriting three petty kingdoms in Norway and Sweden from Ragnar; he almost treated his inheritance with contempt from what I was told.

  ‘Whatever his motivation, Ivar has abandoned them and Harald Fairhair has now incorporated two of them – Agder and Vestfold - into the kingdom of Norway. His brother, Bjorn, has also taken Alfheim from him and added it to his own kingdom, which covers much of Sweden. Both are too powerful now for Ivar to challenge them.

  ‘For Halfdan this means that he won’t get many Norse reinforcements from his homeland. Any Norse who are seeking new lands tend to head for the west coast, by that I mean from Orkneyjar down to Cumbria, or else for Duibhlinn on the east coast of Ireland.

  ‘Guthrum doesn’t seem to have any interest in the north of England as far as I can tell. He is ambitious, of course. His father was a mere Danish bondi who was made a jarl by Lagertha.’

  Karl paused and looked at me for an instant. Evidently he’d heard the story that I’d been the one to kill Lagertha when I was a boy hiding in an oak tree with a bow.

  ‘He wants to be a king, but over East Anglia, Mercia and Wessex I think.’

  ‘Thank you, Karl. That was informative and I think you have the right of it. Halfdan is alone now and won’t want to squabble with Guthrum over the south, especially as his numbers dwindle through death and disease and Guthrum’s increase. That makes Halfdan the one who is a threat to us. What do you make of him?’

  Karl thought for a moment about how to reply to Ricsige.

  ‘He is ruthless, of course, like all Vikings. He is also clever. He will, I think, be open to negotiation to get what he wants, rather than fight for it come what may. I have to say I rather liked him and admired him, but I preferred Alfred. Alfred is religious, fair, just and honest, as well as being determined and clever. He would, I’m sure, prefer to be a priest than a warrior, but he will do what duty demands of him, and do it well.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you about Alfred, besides he’s a younger brother and King Æthelred had two sons, or so I’m told.’

  ‘Yes, Æthelwold and Æthelhelm, but they are still young boys.’

  ‘Boys grow up quickly. Alfred is irrelevant.’

  Ricsige was wrong. In June we heard that Æthelred had died suddenly on the twenty third of April at the young age of twenty four. At first it was rumoured than he’d been poisoned by Alfred, who’d succeeded him as king, but few believed that. It seemed more likely that his heart had just given out for some reason.

  Worse news quickly followed. Whilst Alfred was attending his brother’s funeral the Vikings attacked his army and it was defeated, fleeing to Wimborne in Dorset. King Alfred made a stand there in late May and drove the Vikings back. He pursued them, hoping to secure a decisive victory, but the Danes launched their own counter attack and managed to end the day in possession of the battlefield.

  The Battle of Wilton proved to be the last conflict between the two sides that year. Both had suffered heavily, losing many men and, significantly, several Saxon ealdormen and Viking jarls. By the autumn negotiations had resulted in a truce and, in return for a payment of silver, which became known as Danegeld, Guthrum and Halfdan retreated to Lundenwic for the winter.

  Chapter Ten – Return to Eoforwīc

  872

  ‘Where do you think Halfdan and Guthrum will attack next?’

  Ricsige and I were sitting in my hall at Alnwic during one of his rare visits. It was a year after Karl’s return; a year where little had happened of significance. The Vikings had stuck to the truce they had agreed with Alfred after the stalemate at Wilton but we now knew more details. The Danegeld paid by Wessex was enough to make every man in the Viking army wealthy but, in return, the two leaders had agreed a five year truce.

  I considered the earl’s question carefully before replying.

  ‘Well, not Wessex if they abide by the terms of the treaty and they already hold East Anglia. I think it might well be Mercia. It’s the biggest kingdom and Burghred isn’t in a strong position. Many Mercians blame him for allowing the heathens to escape from Nottingham and he is unpopular, thanks to his uncanny knack of upsetting his nobles.’

  ‘It would seem logical. Let’s hope that you’re right – although, if they capture Mercia there is little hope for Wessex, or Bernicia come to that.’

 

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