From where I was in the thick of things I had no idea what was going on elsewhere, of course, but I later learned that the leading Norsemen had turned around when they heard the sound of battle behind them and charged into our left flank. They had nearly succeeded in routing them when our horsemen appeared somewhat belatedly and charged into the rear of the enemy vanguard, throwing their spears before cutting them down like stalks of wheat before a scythe.

  Our horsemen withdrew before they could be surrounded and pulled off their mounts and then they charged again. The Vikings weren’t used to fighting this way and tried to get out of the way of the oncoming horses. Had they formed a shield wall and used their spears to resemble a hedgehog they could have withstood our attacks, but they didn’t.

  From where I was I thought I could hear faint splashing sounds above the din of battle. We had forced the Norsemen back to the river bank; now some of them were either being pushed into the water or were trying to make their escape across the river. It wasn’t a formidable obstacle, not like the Tyne for example, as it was only six yards across at the narrowest point, but it was quite deep in the middle and fast flowing. Some men were swept away whilst those in chainmail sank. Most Vikings were good swimmers but not good enough once they were sucked into the current.

  By this time men on both sides were nearing exhaustion and I gave the order for my army to pull back a little. It took time for the order to reach everyone, but slowly our shield wall edged back ten paces or so and stood facing the Vikings warily, waiting for them to attack.

  Theobald, who I’d put in command of the horsemen, came riding up with a grin to tell me that the vanguard had been routed and were fleeing with his men in pursuit. I smiled back, albeit a trifle wearily, and congratulated him.

  It was difficult to estimate numbers, but I thought that there couldn’t be more than seven hundred Vikings left between us and the river. No doubt we had suffered a lot of casualties too, but looking along our line I estimated that we now outnumbered the enemy by more than two to one.

  One of their jarls stepped forward from their line and looked left and then right. Three more jarls went and joined him. I assumed that the others had fallen. Unsurprisingly, there was no sign of the archbishop.

  I too stepped forward and Ædwulf came and joined me. I had placed him in command of the rear ranks of the fyrd to keep him safe, but I noted that his byrnie, arms and face were covered in blood – thankfully not his. I was told later that he had pushed his way to the front rank and had managed to kill two men before someone realised that he was there. Two members of my gesith had unceremoniously pulled him back to the rear and kept him there, much to his fury.

  Karl appeared at my other side and faced the four jarls.

  ‘You invaded my land after you swore not to,’ Ædwulf said angrily.

  When Karl translated the four jarls looked at one another but no one replied to the accusation.

  ‘What are your terms for allowing us to collect our dead and wounded and return south of the Tees?’ one of them asked.

  ‘What do you think, lord?’ I asked Ædwulf.

  The angry look faded from his eyes and he looked pleased that I had consulted him.

  ‘If we let them go, what’s to say they won’t just come back some other time?’

  ‘We could take hostages, I suppose. They have lost a lot of men today and achieved nothing. I’m not sure that they’ll think it worth it to cross the Tees again in the near future. They will try again, of course, but not for a while.’

  He nodded.

  ‘I can’t think of any other options,’ he admitted.

  ‘Karl, explain that we will pick twenty hostages at random to guarantee a truce for five years. If they break the truce, or any of their men do, then the hostages will be hung and their bodies left to rot; and we’ll invade Jorvik. They will hand over their weapons and we will return them once we reach the far side of the Tees. If they agree to our conditions we will escort them to make sure no one gets, er, lost.’

  Once Karl had explained the terms the jarls withdrew and there was a heated discussion. Evidently the youngest one was in favour of fighting on rather than submitting. I decided that he would be one of the hostages. Eventually they came back to say that they accepted our terms.

  -℣-

  We took Egbert’s body back to bury it next to his brother in the deserted monastery on Lindisfarne, but we had to bury the rest of our dead near where they had fallen. We had lost just over three hundred, including six thegns. Another hundred were seriously wounded and we’d probably lose over half of those.

  The Norsemen had suffered far worse though. We calculated that they must have suffered between five and six hundred killed and some two hundred of their wounded were unlikely to survive the journey back south. In total they had lost a third of their army.

  It was a heavy price to pay for peace – on both sides – but at least we had secure borders now; or as secure as they could be in these troubled times.

  As I rode back to Bebbanburg beside Ædwulf I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the most significant thing to come out of this campaign wasn’t the defeat of the Vikings, but the exchange of a petulant boy for a promising young man as the Earl of Bernicia.

  Epilogue

  Summer 927

  King Æthelstan sat under a specially constructed awning outside the gates of the city of Jorvik as Godfraid, a grandson of Ivar the Boneless, rode towards him accompanied by his jarls and a collection of Irish chieftains. Godfraid had seized the throne of Jorvik after the death of his brother, Sitric, killing Sitric’s sons, his nephews, in the process. Ever since 902, when the Norsemen of Duibhlinn had invaded and captured Jorvik, a descendant of Ivar’s had ruled the city and the surrounding territory, but no more.

  The struggle between the Anglo-Saxons under Alfred and then his son Edward and grandson Æthelstan, had continues sporadically for half a century. For decades England had been partitioned between the Danelaw in the north and Wessex in the south with the Earls of Bebbanburg maintaining their independence north of the Tyne. The struggle for the disputed territory between the Tees and the Tyne having finally been won by the Norsemen.

  Several of Æthelstan’s senior ealdormen sat with him for the negotiations with Godfraid but at his right hand sat Ealdred of Bebbanburg, Ædwulf’s eldest son and the earl for the past fourteen years.

  The past fifty years hadn’t been easy ones for Bernicia. The kingdoms north of the border had been united into one called Alba by Constantine, the son of Áed mac Cináeda, and his desire to extend his southern border down to the Twaid was no secret. Lothian had resisted up to now but Alba was growing increasingly powerful.

  Behind Ealdred stood his brother, Uhtred, Ealdorman of Islandshire. Drefan had died peacefully in his bed in 899, the same year as King Alfred. His son Edgar had succeeded him but his son had died childless. However, Edgar’s daughter had married Uhtred. Drefan’s male line may have come to an end, but his grandson would one day sit in his chair in the hall at Alnwic.

  The negotiations were protracted but in the end Godfraid agreed to return to Duibhlinn with his Norse and Irish followers. Æthelstan could at last call himself King of the English.

  One of the first things the king did was to reunite Northumbria and make Ealdred its first earl. No longer did it include the shires west of the Pennines – Cumbria was part of the sub-kingdom of Strathclyde along with the northern half of Luncæstershire; the area around Chester now being incorporated into the Earldom of Mercia. Nevertheless Deira and Bernicia were now one again.

  ‘Will you make Jorvik your capital now Ealdred?’ Æthelstan had asked before he returned to Winchester.

  ‘I think not, Cyning. Godfraid may have left with his heathens and, although Jorvik is now a mainly Christian city and the seat of the archbishop, it still reeks of its Viking past. No, I shall return to Bebbanburg and make Archbishop Hrotheweard governor here.’

  The king nodded before asking another question.

  ‘What about Lindisfarne? Now that the Viking menace has gone, will you encourage Bishop Wigred to move from Conganis back there?’

  ‘I suspect he wouldn’t want to, even if I asked him to. I believe that he’s more inclined to relocate his cathedra in Durham.’

  ‘It is more central to his diocese I suppose.’

  ‘What about you, Cyning, now that England is unified and pacified?’

  ‘Pacified maybe, for the moment, but far from united. My half-brother Edwin thinks he should sit on my throne and he has his supporters. Constantine is too powerful as King of Alba for my peace of mind too. You and your predecessors have done well to keep Lothian part of Bernicia. Make sure you keep it that way. Northumbria has other enemies too across the Pennines. You’ll need to keep your wits about you if you want to hang on to your earldom.’

  -℣-

  As Ealdred rode back to Bebbanburg a month later his people were harvesting the crops and the sun shone out of a clear, azure sky. Even the German Ocean looked a deep inviting blue instead of its normal steel grey colour. Birds tweeted and twittered in the trees and it all looked like an idyllic pastoral scene.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ Uhtred asked as he rode beside him, noting the happy smile on his brother’s face.

  ‘About how lucky we are to live here. Now all we have to do is hang onto it.’

  The smile faded, to be replaced by a look of grim determination.

  ‘That might not be as easy as we thought, if Æthelstan is right.’

  ‘Why? What’s he said to you?’

  ‘We’ve always known that Constantine has his greedy eyes on Lothian. Now he has had word from his agents in Alba that Constantine is making preparations to invade.’

  Uhtred sighed.

  ‘Well then, we had better train the next batch of boys to be warriors then, hadn’t we?’

  THE END

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  This the last book in the series and so I have included a very brief synopsis of the history of Northumbria after the year 900 as well as an explanatory note about the period covered in this novel.

  865 to 900

  Ragnar’s Sons

  The main events following the invasion by the Great Heathen Army are fairly well documented; those affecting Northumbria, particularly Bernicia, less well so. The main events as depicted in this novel are based on what is recorded though, as is often the case for this period, there are conflicting accounts and not all records use the same names for what appear to be the same person. For example Halfdan may be the same person as Hvitserk, which means white shirt, so this may have been a nickname.

  Ivar’s own nickname, the Boneless, may be a mistranslation. Exosus could easily have been interpreted by someone whose Latin was imperfect as ex (without) os (bones), thus the Boneless. The actual meaning of exosus is the hated. He disappears from accounts of the Great Heathen Army in England in 870 when Halfdan takes over command. Some sources think he is identical to Ímar (Old Norse Ivar) in the Irish annals but this man may not have been a son of Ragnar. I have assumed that they are one and the same and that Ivar died in Ireland in 873.

  Ubba is another enigma. A monk writing in the twelfth century states that he was a son of Ragnar but a contemporary source describes Ubba as a dux of the Frisians, dux being Latin for leader or chieftain. Although not recorded by name it seems possible that he was commander of the fleet sent to land in Devon to trap the Saxons, acting in conjunction with Guthrum’s army, in a pincer movement.

  We do know that the Viking commander of this fleet was killed in a battle at Arx Cynuit. The exact location is unknown but it may have been Countisbury in North Devon. The Saxon commander was Odda, the Ealdorman of Devonshire, but the name of the leader of the Vikings is not recorded. However, there is a burial mound in Devon called Ubba’s Barrow. Ubba may therefore have been the leader of the defeated Vikings at Arx Cynuit. Other sources state that Ubba was killed in Yorkshire.

  It is unclear whether Ivar or Halfdan was the leader of the force that captured and destroyed the fortress of Dumbarton (Dùn Breatainn) after a siege of many months. Ivar married a princess of Strathclyde and had a son, Sigtrygg, by her. However, this was all supposed to have happened during 870 when the Viking army was in Wessex. If it’s true, Ivar must have left the army whilst it was in East Anglia over the winter of 869/870.

  After the fall of Mercia in 874 the Great Heathen Army split into two; the Danes under Guthrum headed back to Wessex and the Norse under Halfdan headed north. Some accounts say that he captured Caer Luel (Carlisle) and Hexham before laying waste to Bernicia. He may have also fought against the Picts. Other sources say that he didn’t venture north of the Tyne.

  In 875 Halfdan was apparently in Ireland trying to regain the throne which had been held by his brother Ivar before he was killed two years previously. In 876 he returned to Yorvik (York) to be crowned king there before returning the Ireland where he was killed in battle the following year.

  The Tales of Ragnar’s Sons record that Sigurd inherited Zealand, Scania, Halland, the Danish islands, and Viken from his father, Ragnar and that he later succeeded his brother Halfdan as King of Denmark after he was killed in 877. Sigurd married Blaeja, the daughter of king Ælle of Northumbria and they had four children. The records of Danish Monarchs of this period are unclear. Bagsecg is listed as dying in 871 and this is consistent with his recorded death at the Battle of Ashdown in 871. However, one list of Danish kings includes Halfdan from 871 to 877, but at this time he was in England and Ireland.

  Sigurd is variously recorded as king from 877 after Halfdan’s death but is also shown as king earlier than this. If Halfdan was king he seems to have been an absentee one and I have assumed that Sigurd left the Viking army after the defeat at Ashdown to take the vacant throne.

  Even less is known about Björn Ironside. According to the Hervarar Saga, the sons of Björn Ironside were Eric and Refil. The latter was a warrior-prince and sea-king. King Eric ruled the Swedish realm after his father and lived but a short time. Then Eric the son of Refil (i.e. Björn’s grandson) succeeded to the kingdom. This would tend to confirm that Björn was King of Sweden, or at least much of it, and didn’t take part in the invasion of England by the Great Heathen Army.

  The House of Bebbanburg

  According to Symeon of Durham in 876 the pagan king Halfdene divided between himself and his followers the country of the Northumbrians. Ricsige, King of the Northumbrians, died, and Egbert the Second reigned over the Northumbrians beyond the river Tyne.

  It’s not clear if Ricsige was king of all Northumbria between 872, when Ecgberht was deposed, and 876 when Halfdan Ragnarsson took the throne for himself. There seems to have been an interregnum between Halfdan’s death in 877 and the accession of Guthred in 883 to the kingdom of Jorvik, so it’s quite possible there was also one between 872 and 876 as well but I have assumed that Ricsige ruled over what was left of Northumbria for those four years.

  There is no reliable record of how Ricsige died. Roger of Wendover, an English chronicler in the 13th century, reports that Ricsige died of a broken heart after the partition (of the Kingdom of Northumbria), but that first happened in 866 and Roger was writing over three hundred years later.

  Ricsige was succeeded by Ecgberht II as ruler (called king, high reeve of Bamburgh and earl in various sources) of Bernicia in 876 and he died in either 878 or 883. I have used a simplified version of his name, Egbert, to try and avoid confusion with King Ecgberht, the Viking vassal.

  Egbert was followed by Eadulf, possibly a grandson of King Ælle. I have also changed his name slightly - to Ædulf - again to avoid possible confusion as so many names of this period began with an ‘E’.

  After 900

  England

  After the death of Alfred the Great on the twenty sixth of October 899, the conflict between the Danes and the Anglo-Saxons of Wessex, Mercia and East Anglia continued. During the lifetime of his son, Edward (899 to 924), that part of Mercia outside the Danelaw was merged with Wessex and Edward called himself King of the Anglo-Saxons. However, the first to call himself King of the English was Edward’s son, Æthelstan (924 to 939). By then England was more or less unified.

  A period of relative peace followed until the invasion of Sweyn Forkbeard, King of Denmark, in 1013. He defeated Æthelred (often called incorrectly the Unready, the correct translation being ‘the ill-advised’) and drove him into exile. Æthelred returned in 1014 after Sweyn’s death.

  When he died two years later his son Edmund Ironside succeeded him briefly until Cnut (or Canute) arrived to claim the throne. After a number of battles a truce was agreed but Edmund died shortly afterwards. Cnut became King of England and he was followed by two more Danish kings.

  When the last one – Harthacnut - died in 1042, Edward the Confessor, a Saxon brought up in Normandy, became the last king of the House of Wessex. The story of his death in January 1066, the election of Harold Godwinson to the throne and his subsequent defeat and death at the hands of William the Conqueror are too well known to require repetition here.

  Northumbria and Bebbanburg (Bamburgh)

  Eadulf (or Ædulf) ruled until 913 and was followed by his son, Ealdred. Some records imply that Ealdred only ruled part of Bernicia. Possibly the Picts had encroached into Lothian by that stage. In 933 Æthelstan, King of the English, is listed as the overlord of all Northumbria and so it’s probable that Ealdred was the last earl (or king?) of an independent Bernicia. In 934 Æthelstan invaded Scotland so this would tend to confirm his mastery over Bernicia by that stage.

  When Æthelstan conquered the Danes in the south of Northumbria and became King of the English, Ealdred – the king’s half-brother - was appointed Earl of Northumbria. Initially he faced some opposition from the Danes, but in 954 Northumbria officially became part of the Kingdom of England. However, the earldom seems to have reverted to Ealdred’s family at some stage.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22