Not wishing to address Sulicena, he rode over to this second cart.
“Where are you going?”
“West,” they told him.
“Why?” he demanded. “Didn’t we just beat off the Saxons?”
The man shrugged.
“Until next time. But they burned down our farm.”
“Where will you go?”
“To the Severn. Maybe further.”
He nodded slowly. He could not blame them, though whether they would be any safer in the west than at Sarum, it was hard to know. He did not try to stop them. If they had decided to go, they would find a way to leave anyway.
“Good luck, then,” he said, and rode off.
Yet despite this discouraging sign, as he stood with his mother in front of the villa a few nights later, he felt a new sense of hope.
The Germans had deserted. The promised aid from the eager young men in the west had never come. Many farms had been burned. But they had survived, and he was sure they could do so again.
Opposite, the sun was sinking over the western ridge, but he could still make out, on the river below, the pale forms of the swans as they moved sedately about, and on the slopes behind he could see the tiny white patches of sheep in the dusk. Gently he took his mother’s hand.
“I’ll stay,” he promised her quietly. “And God will give Sarum a new dawn.”
Placidia said nothing. An instinct, which she did not share with him, told her that this was not a dawn, but a twilight, and she wondered bleakly what lay in the darkness beyond.
In the terrible times that followed, the young militiamen from the west never came to the aid of Petrus Porteus.
Others, like Sulicena, left him; it was the start of a long process by which, in the coming generations, many families would migrate south-westwards into the peninsula of Britain that would become western Cornwall, or across the Severn river into the hills of Wales – areas which the Saxons were never to penetrate effectively and which contain the ancient Celtic and pre-Celtic stock of Britain to this day.
As the coming of the Saxons and of their neighbour tribes of Angles and Jutes increased until they became a steady migration, the historical record almost ceases.
But the impetus of Romano-British people like Petrus Porteus and the young bloods who tried to start a militia did not die out without leaving an echo – an echo that gave rise to a legend which has grown greater with the passing of centuries.
For it was in the west, probably in the rich, rolling lands that lie between Wessex and the Welsh and Cornish hills, that about two generations after Petrus Porteus, a new and vigorous force arose. They were Romano-Britons and they seem to have been well organised. They were probably Christian; they won a great battle against the Saxons at a place, still not identified, called Mons Badonicus; and it is quite likely that they had a general named Artorius.
From references to these events in historical records, medieval historians and romancers began, some eight hundred years later, to construct a Christian and chivalric order of knights led by a king called Arthur.
Behind the legend of Arthur and the knights of the Round Table lie several elements of historical reality, however. The world of Arthur, though it is chivalric and romanticised in a way that belongs to a later era, is nonetheless a Celtic, Christian world, with ties not only to Wales and the west country but also across the English Channel to Brittany, to which, in the century that followed the end of Roman Britain, a number of British families emigrated.
The history of Sarum, too, enters an era of twilight at this point. It may be called the age of Arthur. It was the twilight, not of the feudal knight, who did not yet exist, but of the Roman world.
THE TWO RIVERS
A.D. 877
The year of Our Lord 877.
In King Alfred’s kingdom of Wessex, it seemed that winter that there would be peace.
The small, half walled town of Wilton, a noted royal centre, lay at the joining of two of the five rivers: the Nadder and the Wylye. To the east, just three miles away, stood the ancient hill fort of Sarum, which acted as a defensive outpost for the town. To the west, the broad valley stretched under the edge of the chalk ridges until both encountered, some fifteen miles away, the great forest of Selwood that blocked, like a wall, the sweeping open lands of central Wessex from the maze of small hills, woods and marshes that were the hinterland of the west country.
And in Wilton, resting between its streams, it seemed that the terrible darkness which had lain over the land had receded, like a threatening bank of clouds and that, this winter at least, there would be a period of sunshine.
Since the Anglo-Saxon settlement of the island some four centuries earlier, there had been many changes and disturbances. One kingdom after another – first Northumbria, then midland Mercia, now southern Wessex had become more powerful than its rivals. Independent tribes in Kent, Sussex and East Anglia had gradually lost their separate status. The Jutes of Kent and the Isle of Wight now acknowledged the west Saxon king; the old British Celtic tribes in Devon to the south west had become part of Wessex too; even distant Cornwall looked up to Wessex as a greater kingdom. Only Wales and northern Scotland had held aloof from Saxon settlement, and they would keep their isolated independence for centuries more.
But despite the rise and fall of these kingdoms, which seldom took place without some bloodshed, the Anglo-Saxon world, now converted to Christianity, had flourished for the most part in peace.
The conversion of the Anglo-Saxons had taken time.
In 597 the monk known as St Augustine, sent by the great Pope Gregory, had landed in Kent, whose pagan king and Christian queen had allowed him to make converts amongst their people. From there, the Roman Church had made steady progress in converting the Saxons, moving up the island and encountering the remains of the older Celtic Christian Church as they did so. And although the Celtic monks of Britain, many of them trained in Ireland, had drawn apart from the Roman Church of Europe, they too were finally brought into a cohesive whole, acknowledging the supremacy of the pope, at the great meeting of churchmen in 664, since called the Synod of Whitby.
Primitive as the island was compared with its Roman past, the centuries when Northumbria and Mercia triumphed were great days. The splendid courts of the kings promoted the still more significant splendour of the great religious houses such as those in Northumbria that in the eighth century produced the great historian of the Anglo-Saxons, the monk Bede. Their arts flourished. The old Latin culture, though seen through the eyes of monks, grew once again. New bishoprics were founded and the archbiship received his pallium from Rome. The Anglo-Saxon island seemed blessed indeed.
Until the coming of the Norsemen.
They came from the great peninsula of Jutland, at the foot of the Baltic Sea. For some time, their raids had been held in check by the powerful and holy empire of the mighty Charlemagne, king of the Franks; but after his death early in the century, their activities had increased; and when a dynastic dispute in the Danish kingdom broke it up, a new and terrible age for Europe began: the age of the Vikings.
The term meant pirate – and despite the attempts of some modern historians to rehabilitate their reputation, the facts are still beyond dispute. The heathen Vikings were cruel, destructive raiders, whose main object was plunder. In a series of raids, stretching over two generations, they descended on the island like a plague. By the time that Alfred came to the throne of Wessex, England was in effect divided into two parts. Over the so-called Danelaw in the north – most of the land above the river Thames – the Vikings had supremacy, moving freely about and levying huge tributes which the native farmers and merchants had to pay to save themselves from destruction. When they had taken all they could get, they moved camp. But Wessex had held out. Though the Vikings had made several huge raids into the southern territory, they never mastered it. And in recent years this had been thanks to Alfred.
During the last three years, the growing Viking forces, havin
g taken all they could from the unlucky people of Northumbria and Mercia, had split into several sections. One party took over the territory in the north that came to be called Yorkshire; another annexed East Anglia. A third party, following their natural impulse, set off to raid Ireland, and a fourth, but still powerful force, moved once again upon Wessex. They swept down almost to the southern sea, but here at last they were hemmed in by the Saxon forces and a peace was arranged. In return for a payment, the Vikings swore their most solemn oath – on their holy armlet – that they would leave Wessex and trouble her no more.
They broke their solemn oath at once, and slipped west to the settlement of Exeter, where they waited for reinforcements.
But now it seemed that God had come to the aid of the people of Wessex. In sight of the shore, the Viking fleet of reinforcements was destroyed by a great storm and soon afterwards in the autumn of 877 the invaders moved back to the borders of Mercia to set up their camp for the winter.
Wessex had triumphed, and for the winter at least, it seemed there would be peace.
The eyes of the crowd turned upon the thin, grey-haired man who was standing, rather self-consciously but erect in the centre of the circle.
For a moment, however, he seemed to have forgotten them. Although everything depended on the outcome of the trial, Port could not believe that he would not win; and once it was over, he would have to make a decision about a matter that had been troubling him for the last two weeks. He shook his head in perplexity. Which course of action would bring most honour to his family? Should he please himself or his sister? Would either course bring him to the notice of the king? No decision in his life had caused him so much trouble and he knew that he must decide today.
A cough from somewhere in the crowd recalled him to the proceedings.
“Let Port make his charge,” the reeve’s gruff voice rang out.
Slowly and methodically he now unwrapped the bandage that bound his right arm, then held it up.
“Sigewulf smote me,” he accused.
The crowd stared critically: for where Port’s right hand should have been, there was only a jagged stump.
It was a frosty morning at the start of the two month midwinter period known as Yule; but despite the cold, the hundred court, faithful to its particular custom, was meeting in the open air of Wilton’s market place.
The crowd of about sixty were mostly freemen farmers and their families – the men dressed in bright woollen tunics that stretched to the knee and were belted at the waist, and thick woollen leggings, the women wearing longer, but similar clothing. Opposite Port stood three older men, who would officially witness the judgement. Presiding over the conduct of the proceedings was Earldorman Wulfhere: a large, grey bearded man whose deeply pitted face had long been flushed with too much good living and whose broad, bulbous nose gave him a look of brutality. His small, restless eyes flitted continuously from face to face, as though conscious of the fact that he was one of the least liked of the powerful nobles at King Alfred’s court. Since the business of the day might involve fines due to the king’s reeve, his presence in that capacity was important.
Now that Port had made his accusation, the court could move on to the trial.
In doing so, it would follow the traditional Anglo-Saxon procedure, hallowed by the centuries: there would be no advocates, no jury, and no examination of any evidence. Despite these apparent drawbacks, the system worked.
For the time being, all that mattered was that the extent of the injury should be known – a hand had been lost, but not a whole forearm; and this was important.
At a nod from the earldorman, Port lowered his arm and began to bind it up again.
“Have you any other injury?”
Port shook his head.
“But he struck me four times,” he added.
“The number of blows makes no difference,” Wulfhere reminded him.
“Four times,” Port repeated obstinately, and many in the crowd smiled; for his meticulous precision was so well known that there was a local saying: when grain is ground, Port counts each grain.
The injury had taken place two weeks before, in that very market place. Sigewulf, a local farmer, had left his horse straying in the street while he was drinking in one of the booths by the market. When he had reeled out in the dusk, he had seen Port, who was leading his horse to a post to tether it, and in his befuddled state he had decided that the fellow was trying to steal the animal. Furious, he had lurched towards him; there had been a scuffle; he had drawn his sword, waved it wildly, and as Port had raised his arm, the accident had occurred. He did not remember striking four times; but Port was adamant that he had.
Now it was Sigewulfs turn to tell his story. He was a short, thickset man whose sullen manner, even when he was sober, did not inspire confidence.
“Port attacked me,” he said. “I struck him once, not four times; it was self-defence. He tried to steal my horse.”
He finished. He knew the crowd was against him, but it did not matter; nor did it matter that his version of the events was improbable. For the Anglo-Saxon court took no account of evidence.
The trial had now reached its crucial stage. It was time to hear the oath helpers. At a sign from Port, three men stepped forward into the circle and announced their names and ranks. All were churls: small, free farmers.
“Upon the blood of Christ,” each repeated, “I swear that Port’s accusation is true.”
Immediately, three churls stepped forward and swore similarly on behalf of Sigewulf.
This was the ancient oath swearing upon which Saxon justice turned. No evidence was examined, no jury asked to decide on the merits of the case: but the number of oath swearers each side could produce, together with the rank of the swearer, decided the outcome. The oath of a slave counted for nothing; the word of a churl, as a free peasant, had weight. The word of a thane, a noble, outweighed that of any number of churls; an earldorman outweighed a thane; the word of the king, of course, could not be questioned.
The apparent stalemate between the parties was broken however, as a splendid figure now stepped into the circle.
He was a tall, well-built man in his forties. He had been standing quietly at one side of the circle with a group of young men and a girl whose strikingly blond good looks marked them out as his children. He carried himself with an air of easy authority; his blue eyes seemed amused, and as he came forward, Sigewulf’s face looked more depressed than ever.
“Aelfwald the thane,” he announced calmly. “I swear that Port’s words are true.”
There was a murmur from the crowd, followed by silence. No thane stepped forward for Sigewulf. The case was over.
Wulfhere looked at the three elderly men before announcing the verdict.
“The decision is for Port,” the three men agreed, without hesitation.
“So be it,” Wulfhere announced. “The wergild will be paid for his hand. His lord will be compensated accordingly.”
No system of law was more important than the ancient code of the wergild. Under the wergild system, every Anglo-Saxon, in common with other Germanic and Scandinavian peoples, knew the exact value of his life, and that depended on his rank. The life of a churl was worth two hundred shillings; that of a thane, like Aelfwald, six times as much, and the price to be paid for an injury, like the loss of a hand or a leg, was calculated in proportion. It was for this reason that it had been necessary for Port to show his injury to the court: the loss of a hand was one thing; but if he had lost his whole forearm, Sigewulf would have had to pay more. The wergild payments, codified in writing the century before by the great King Ine of Wessex, were essential to the ordering of society. Without them, any injury done to an individual would, under the strict code of honour of all the Germanic tribes, have meant that his family must begin a blood feud. But by paying a fixed compensation instead, most of these costly feuds could be avoided. It was a sensible system for settling disputes, which King Alfred encouraged.
The trial by open court was a primitive affair, but it had its benefits too. Since every man above the rank of slave had his individual wergild, no one, not even an earidorman, could attack him with impunity. The trial moreover, was a communal business, conducted by free men. The judgement was not simply handed down by Earidorman Wulfhere, but agreed and witnessed for the community by the three old farmers, learned in the law. It was in these quaint courts, deriving from ancient Germanic folk practice, that the common law of the English speaking people had its roots.
Under the judgement just given, Port and his family would be compensated by the family of Sigewulf, and since he was Port’s lord, Aelfwald would also receive a payment because his man had been harmed.
Sigewulf could only count himself lucky that the king had been absent from Wilton on the day of the incident, as otherwise he might have been judged to have broken the king’s peace and have had to pay a fine to the reeve as well.
Sigewulf shook his head sadly nonetheless. He had known the case would probably go against him, but the price he would have to pay was considerable. This was for two reasons: firstly because wergild payments were deliberately set high to encourage peaceful behaviour; and secondly, because Port belonged to a rare class in Anglo-Saxon society. He was what some folk called half a thane, and his wergild, though only half that of Aelfwald, was therefore three times that of an ordinary churl. For Port’s ancestors had been noble Britons.
The ancient Roman name of Porteus had been long forgotten at Sarum, and so had most of the remains of the Roman world. Many of the metalled roads were overgrown, and some had disappeared entirely; there were new pathways in the valleys, and on long journeys travellers might easily take the old, prehistoric tracks up on the high ridges. The towns, the temples and baths built of stone, had nearly all gone, except in the great port of London where the shells of some of the old buildings lingered on. In King Alfred’s new capital of Winchester, the old Venta, parts of the stout Roman wall remained; but the settlement of Sorviodunum was marshy grazing land and where the old Porteus villa had been, with its mosaics and its hypocaust, there now stood a fine timber barn with a steep gabled roof, and just below it, the sprawling farmstead and splendid oak-beamed hall of the family of Thane Aelfwald.