What Might Have Been, page 23
“That’s exactly what we are all doing,” grunted Ethelnoth.
“ ‘But know, O King, that we have heard from our most reverend and holy brother, the archbishop of the race of the English who takes his See in Canterbury, that in your folly you have oppressed upon his rights and privileges as a father of those committed to his care. Now, of all sins, the sin of avaritia, of greed is most foul and repellent among the rulers and protectors of the Christian peoples, most abominable and dangerous to the soul. We do most solemnly therefore advise, exhort, and command by this letter from our apostolic dignity that you do now cease and desist from all oppressions against the Church, and do restore to its rulers all those privileges and rights, especially in the matter of peaceful and untroubled and taxless possession of the Church’s lands, which were granted to them by your ancestors, as we have heard the most godly kings of the English race, and even by your contemporaries, such as the most pious and worthy gentleman ...” The scribe has written the name Bulcredo, my lord, but he must mean—”
“He means that runaway bastard Burgred,” snarled the scarred man, Wihtbord.
“Indeed that must be it. . . . Burgred, who now lives with us in our Holy See, in peace and in honor. So we exhort you to show due honor to your priests, bishops, and archbishop, as you wish to have our friendship in this life and salvation in the life to come.’ “
“It is the truth, God’s truth!” Daniel cried aloud. “Spoken from the throne of God on earth. Just what I said before the message came. If we fulfil our spiritual duties, our temporal difficulties will disappear. Listen to His Holiness, my king. Restore the rights of the Church. When you do this the Vikings will be destroyed and dispersed by the hand of God.”
Anger clouded Alfred’s face—but before he could speak Edbert hurried on.
“There’s another paragraph ...” He looked up from the paper to his master with a face of woe.
“What does it say?”
“Well, it says, it says—’We have heard also with great displeasure that our previous orders have not been obeyed. That in spite of the opinion of the apostolic See, the clerics of England have not yet voluntarily given up the lay habit, and do not clothe themselves in tunics after the Roman fashion, reaching chastely to the ankle.’ And then he says, well he goes on, that if this vile habit is given up and we all dress as he does, then God will love us and our afflictions will vanish like snow.”
A bark of laughter came from the red-faced Ethelnoth. “So that’s what’s been causing our troubles! If the priestlings all hide their knees Guthrum will be terrified and run right back to Denmark.” He spat, forcefully, on the puddled floor. The pope’s messenger drew back, not following the quick talk—but knowing that something was very wrong.
“You have no awareness of spirituality, lord Alderman,” said Daniel, the archbishop of Canterbury’s representative, pulling on his riding gloves with an air of finality, eyeing both his own long robe and Edbert’s short-cut tunic and breeches. “We were asking for a message to guide us, and one has come. We must take the advice and the instruction of our father in God. I regard that as settled. There is one other matter, lord King, trivial in itself, but which I see as a trial of your good intentions and sincerity. That man, that man who came in with the message, with the gold ring round his neck. He is a runaway slave from one of my own manors. I recognize him. I must have him back.”
“Tobba?” barked Wulfsige. “You can’t have him. He may be a churl, he may even have been a slave, but he’s accepted now. He’s accepted by the companions. The king gave him that gold ring himself.”
“Enough of this,” Alfred said wearily. “I’ll buy him from you.”
“That will not do. I must have him back in person. We have had too many runaways recently—
“I know that—and I know that they’re running to the Vikings,” shouted Alfred, goaded at last out of politeness. “But this man ran to his king, to fight the invaders of England. You can’t—”
“I must have him back,” ground on Daniel. “I shall make an example of him. The law says that if a slave cannot make restitution to his master, then he shall pay for it with his hide. And he cannot make restitution to the Church for his own worth—”
“He has a gold ring worth ten slaves!” “But since that is his possession, and he is my possession, it is my possession too. And he has also committed sacrilege, in removing himself from the ownership of the Church.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“The penalty for church-breach is flaying, and I shall flay him. Not fatally. My men are most expert. But all who see his back in future will know that the arm of the Church is long. He must be delivered to my tent before sunrise. And mark this, King.” Daniel turned back from the door. “If you persist in holding him, and in your other errors, there will be no passing of your messages. You will come to Edgebright’s Stone, and find it as bare of men as a nunnery’s privy!”
He turned and swept through the makeshift door. In the silence that followed all eyes were on Alfred. He avoided their gaze, rose and took up his long sword and strode from the room, his face set and unreadable. Wulfsige scrambled to his feet too late to bar the way.
“Where are you going?” called Edbert after him.
“Lord King, let me come with you,” bellowed Wulfsige. “Guards ...”
Behind, in the shelter, Osbert muttered to Ethelnoth and the others, “What’s he doing? Will he do what that bastard Burgred did? Is this the end? If so, it’s time we all made our peace with Guthrum—”
“I can’t say,” said the alderman. “But if that fool of a bishop, and of a pope, make him give up between them, then that is the end of England, now and forever.”
Alfred strode through the encampment, none daring to obstruct or challenge him, and out into the wet, dripping forest and marshland along the line of the flooded river Tone. But he was not walking completely at random. The thought had been growing on him for weeks that there might come a time when he had to be away from his men, from the crowds of faces looking to him for advice and orders, even from the silent pressure of his disapproving wife and the two coughing, fearful children at her skirts.
He knew now where he was going. To the charcoal burners. They had huts scattered all through the forests, coming out only when they needed to sell their wares, and then returning immediately to the thickets. Even in peacetime kings’ officers did not bother them much. People said that they carried out strange rituals and spoke an ancient tongue among themselves. Alfred had been careful to mark one encampment down when he stumbled on it in the course of one of the hunting expeditions he and his men carried out for food, before they had begun simply to levy toll on the peasants round about. He headed straight for it through the winter dusk.
It was dark by the time he reached the first of the huts. The large man in the doorway looked at him with grave suspicion and lifted his ax.
“I wish to stay here. I will pay for my lodging.”
He was taken in without fuss, or indeed recognition, when he showed them that he had both silver pennies to pay for his lodging, and a long sword at his side to resist secret murder. The man looked oddly enough at the king’s-head pennies when they were offered, as if wondering how long they would be tender. But the silver was good, and that was enough. No doubt they thought he was another runaway thane, deserting his allegiance, but not yet ready to go home or to approach the Vikings’ court and sue for amnesty.
On the evening of the next day, the king sat in warm, homely darkness, lit only by the glow of red coals. He was alone in the hut, while the few men and women of the camp busied themselves with the complex operations of their trade. The wife had slung a griddle over the low fire and put raw griddle cakes on it, telling him in her thick accent to watch them and turn them as they cooked. He sat, listening to the crackle of the fire and smelling the pleasant mix of smoke and warm bread. For the first time for many months, the king was at peace. It was a moment taken out of time, a moment when all the pressures outside balanced each other and canceled out.
Whatever happened now, Alfred thought comfortably and lazily, would be decisive. Should he fight? Should he give up and go to Rome? He no longer knew the answers. There was a numbness within where before a fire had burned. He looked up but felt no surprise when the door scraped quietly, and through it came the massive head and shoulders of the grim churl Tobba. He was no longer wearing his gold ring, but trailed his Viking ax at his side. Stooping beneath the low roof, he came over to the fire and sat down on his haunches opposite the king. For a while neither man spoke.
“How did you find me?” asked Alfred at last.
“Asked around. Got a lot of friends in these woods. Quiet people. Don’t talk much unless you knows “em.”
They sat a while longer. Absently, Tobba reached out and began to turn the cakes in his thick fingers, dropping them back on to the hot plate with faint hisses of steam.
“Got some news for you,” he offered.
“What?”
“Messenger come in from Alderman Odda the morning after you left. Ubbi Ragnarsson attacked. Took his fleet down channel, landed, chased off Odda and his levy. Reckoned they was only peasants, since they only ‘ad clubs and pitchforks. Chased ‘em into a hill forest by the beach, bottled ‘em up, reckoned that was it. That was a mistake. Come midnight, pouring rain, Odda bust out with all his men. Clubs and pitchforks they do all right in the dark. Killed Ubbi, lot of his men, took the Raven banner.”
Alfred felt a reluctant stir of interest, an emotion that penetrated the numbness that possessed him. But he still did not speak, only sighed as he stared into the fire. Tobba tried to catch his interest.
“The Raven banner, you know, it really does flap its wings when the Vikings are going to win, and droops them when they’re going to lose.” He grinned. “Messenger said there were some kind of arrangement on the back, so you could control it. Odda’s sending it to you. Token of respect. Maybe you can use it in the next battle.”
“If there is a next battle.” The words spoken with great reluctance.
“I got an idea about that.” Tobba turned a few more cakes, as if suddenly embarrassed. “If you don’t mind hearing one from a churl, that is, well, really, a slave ...”
Alfred shook his head glumly. “You will be no slave, Tobba. If I leave, you come with me. I can do at least that. I will not hand you back to Daniel and his torturers.”
“No, lord, I think you should hand me over—or the messengers won’t go out and there will be no army for you. But that will only be the start of it. I escaped before—can do it again. And there is something then that I could do . .
For several minutes the churl spoke on, low-voiced, clumsy, not used to ordering his thoughts and speaking in this manner. But he would not be stopped. Finally the two men sat and stared at each other, both in different ways awed by what they had come to.
“I think it could work,” said Alfred. “But you know what he’s going to do to you before you escape?”
“Won’t be much worse that what I’ve had to put up with all my life.”
Alfred paused one more moment. “You know, Tobba, you could just run to the Vikings. If you took them my head they’d make you a jarl in any county you wanted. Why are you on my side?”
Tobba hung his head. “To tell . . . words, they don’t come easy. I been, my whole life, a slave, but my father, you know, he wasn’t, and maybe my kids won’t be, if I ever have any.” His voice dropped to a mutter. “I don’t see why they should grow up talking Danish. My dad didn’t, nor my grandad. That’s all I care about.”
The door scraped again, and the burners’ woman looked in, her face sharp with suspicion. “ ‘Ave you two forgotten them cakes? If you’ve burnt them there’ll be no dinner for none of us!”
Tobba looked up, grinning. “No fear of that, missis. You got two good cooks ‘ere. We been cooking up a storm. ‘Ere—” He scooped a cake deftly off the plate and popped it hot and whole into his cavernous mouth. “Done to a turn,” he announced, blowing crumbs. “I reckon them’s the best bloody cakes ever been baked in England.”
It was a reluctant army that gathered at Edgebright’s Stone. A smaller army than Alfred had ever led before. Before it grew even smaller word arrived that the Vikings were gathering their own army at Eddington. Alfred was determined to attack before the odds became even worse.
The Vikings had left their camp in the forest soon after dawn and were drawn up in the fields close by. Their berserkers, the fiercest fighters of all, were shouting curses at the enemy as they worked themselves into a rage of battle madness. But the English soldiers stood firm despite the steady rain that soaked their chain mail, and dripped from their helmets’ rims. They stirred and gripped their weapons when the wail of the lurhorns was carried by the damp air.
“They attack,” said Wulfsige, standing at his king’s right hand.
“Stand firm!” Alfred shouted above the thunder of running feet, the first crash of metal against metal as the lines met.
The English fought well, hacking at the linden shields of their enemies, holding their own. Men were wounded, dropped to their knees, fought on stabbing upwards under the pirates’ guards. While, from behind the fighting ranks, half-armed churls staggered up with the biggest boulders they could lift, and lobbed them over their companions to crash down on the attackers. There were cries of pain and rage as the stones dislodged helmets, broke collar bones, and fell to the ground to perhaps provide a tripping block for a straining foot.
Alfred stabbed out with his sword and felt it sink deep. But at the same time he saw that his lines were being forced back in the center. “Now!” he called out to Wulfsige. “Give them the signal.”
The enemy front rank shuddered and almost fell back when willing hands lifted the captured Raven banner high beside the Golden Dragon of Wessex. Now there was no flapping of jet wings to urge on the Vikings. Instead the Raven’s head was down, the wings drooped in death, stitched red drops of blood dripping down from each eye.
But the line held, fought back, pushed forward once again. While to their rear the berserkers gathered, foaming with rage and chewing the edges of their shields with passion. When they attacked together none could stand before them.
At this moment Alfred saw what his opponents could not see yet—and he shouted aloud. Behind the enemy, bursting out from between the trees, came a motley, skin-draped horde. They were waving clubs, crude logs of firewood, tent poles, iron pokers, tools, and weapons of any kind. They fell on the Viking rear like a great crashing wave, striking down and destroying.
For the first and only time in his life Alfred saw a heathen berserk’s expression change from inhuman fury to amazement and then to plain uncomplicated fear.
Within a minute the battle was over as the Vikings, attacked from back and front, broke lines, tried to flee, and were struck down. Alfred had to force his way through his own men and their dancing half-human helpers to throw a shield over Guthrum as he was driven to the ground, to save his life and accept his surrender.
That night was a night of feasting. Magnanimous in victory, Alfred sat the defeated Viking king Guthrum at his side. He was silent for the most part, drinking deeply and heavily of the mead and ale.
“We had you beaten, you know,” Guthrum finally growled. They were at that stage of the banquet when the politenesses have all been said, and men are free to talk openly. The kings’ neighbors on either side, Ethelnoth, Bishop Ceolred, Alderman Odda, and a Viking jarl, had ceased to listen to their leaders and were talking among themselves.
Alfred leaned over the table and hooked away the Viking’s wine cup.
“If you’d like me to stop feasting and carry on fighting, that’s all right by me. Let’s see, you must have three- or fourscore men of your army still alive. And as soon as the others know it’s safe to surrender they will all come in. When would you like to begin this battle?”
“All right, all right.” Guthrum retrieved his wine cup, grinning sourly. He had been in England thirteen years and had long since dispensed with interpreters. “You won, fair enough. I’m just saying that in the battle, in the real battle, we had you beat. Your center was caving in. I could see you standing in the middle, two ranks back, trying to rally them. When your line broke I was going to send a hundred berserks right down the middle, to get you. I reckoned we’d let you get away once too often already.”
“Maybe.” After the total victory Alfred could afford to be generous. But in spite of his experiences of losing battles, he thought this time Guthrum was wrong. It was true that the Viking hard core of veteran professionals had forced his men back in the center, but the English thanes had been standing well, with none of the dribble to the rear he had come to expect. Though their line was bent, they were still holding together.
Not that it mattered anyway who would have won. He still remembered and savored the moment when the ragged, badly-armed men had fallen on the Viking rear.
