Since Port had left early that morning the day had been uneventful. The shepherd and his son had gone up on to the ridges, and though once or twice around noon he had noticed that some of the distant sheep by the edge of the valley were stirring uneasily, he had assumed that it was only a passing fox that had made them do so: A little later, he returned to the house.
It was in the afternoon that a group of thirty Vikings passed swiftly and silently across the grazing grounds, while their smaller scouting party was having its encounter with Aelfstan. Although the sheep farm was invisible in its declivity, a thin column of smoke from the fire told them where it must be. They swooped down upon it.
Aelfgifu and her party arrived at the other end of the hollow just as the Vikings were approaching the little farmstead.
Ahead of her, by the house, Aelfgifu could see Port’s wife and two children standing helplessly. Some of the Vikings already lay in her path, between her and the farm, and her two companions hesitated.
Quickly she measured the ground with her eye: it was a tiny chance, no more, but if she could just outflank the Vikings, if she could just, for a moment, get the horses to the farm, perhaps they might get Port’s family away.
Hardly bothering to see if her companions were with her, she seized the reins of the spare horses and dashed forward. Startled into action, the other two Saxons raced after her.
It was a daring move, and it almost worked; but before she could reach her goal, the Vikings moved swiftly to cut her off.
Frantically she tried to break through them.
In the fight that followed, futile though it was, the marauders were taken by surprise at the ferocity of the Saxons. Never had they seen a warrior fight more bravely or deal more telling blows than the splendid young Saxon who led the party. Dodging the fearsome battle-axes with amazing skill, cutting and thrusting powerfully with the short, single edged sword, this handsome mounted warrior killed four men without receiving a scratch while the other two Saxons, fighting hard, were holding their own. Admiring, but furious, a group of six Vikings made a concerted rush at them.
It was a glancing blow that knocked her helmet off, sent her hair tumbling down over her breasts, and caused the six Vikings to stare in astonishment.
“A woman!” one of them cried. A proud young Saxon woman had killed four of their number! They could hardly believe it. With a roar of fury and lust they rushed at her.
It was then that Aelfgifu experienced red anger: oblivious to all sense of danger, she struck right and left as if her rage alone could break through them and rescue the little family beyond.
So angry was she that she was hardly aware of the sudden arrival of her brother and the rest of the party. She was conscious that the Vikings were momentarily falling back; dimly she heard her brother’s voice crying – “Get her away.” But as she tried to strike at the Vikings again, she realised that someone was turning her horse’s head, and, it seemed only a second later, she found herself galloping away across the high ground, safely surrounded by the Saxons.
She turned, to find Aelfstan, riding close by her side, smiling at her.
“Port’s family,” she cried. “We must get them.”
But her brother only shook his head.
“It’s too late. We tried.”
And now, as they hurried her back towards the dune, she found that she was trembling uncontrollably.
It was fortunate that, in the heat of the little battle, she had not seen one thing; but Aelfstan had seen it, as he rode to her defence. By the farmhouse, three of the Vikings had seized Port’s wife. While two held her, the third, with a lascivious grin, was untying his belt. He was a large man, with a pock-marked face, which Aelfstan had committed to memory.
When the Saxons had been driven off, the Vikings turned their attention to the little group at the farmstead. After two more men had raped Port’s wife, they decided it was not very good sport, and killed her. The shepherd and his son were butchered too. There remained the slaves and the children.
The slaves ran to and fro, trying to escape: for three minutes the Vikings allowed them to do so in a scene that resembled a gruesome game of tag. Then they killed them. Now only Port’s two children were left. The elder was seven. Two of the Vikings stepped forward with their axes.
But they stopped at a shout from the ridge above.
The man who now appeared was huge; he was older than the other warriors and although on foot, he tramped down the slope with an air of authority. He had been scouting the area alone, but finding nothing he had come across to where he had heard the sound of fighting. Now his gruff voice echoed round the area.
“Bairn-ni-kel!”
The warriors paused and looked up. His order puzzled them: do not kill the bairns: yet it was not unusual to kill children on a raiding party.
“Bairn-ni-kel.” His voice was a deep roar so that the words sounded more like: Bar . . . Barn-ni-kel.
The heavy-set Viking marched across to where the children were standing. He stared around the carnage with a look of disgust. Then he allowed his large hand to fall on the head of Port’s elder son. It was clear that he was determined that the children should be spared. He gestured the two axemen away impatiently. They hesitated, but since he was known as a fearsome warrior, they reluctantly obeyed.
From the far end of the hollow, several voices began to laugh. It was not the first time that the gruff-voiced warrior had stopped such killing of children.
“Look,” one of the men joked, “it’s old Barn-ni-kel.” For similar incidents had already given him this nickname which his descendants would carry for many generations.
Now, under his watchful eye, they looted what they could, but the children were spared.
A few minutes later, when the marauders had left, Port’s two children stared at the bodies around them; then, not knowing what else to do, they climbed into the sheep pens to seek comfort where the familiar woollen bodies of the sheep kept them warm.
The journey of the people of Wilton lasted for five days. As they passed near other settlements, like the hill town of Shaftesbury, they were joined by others anxious to escape the Vikings. But as the days passed and no attack was made upon them, some of the farmers began to leave the cortège and seek shelter in the woods and valleys, reasoning that they were as safe there as in an armed camp which the Vikings might decide to attack. Aelfwald tried to dissuade them but Earldorman Wulfhere admonished him:
“Let them go. Fewer mouths to feed.”
The thane’s own people from Sarum however, stayed together.
The little party passed the southern tip of the great forest of Selwood and gradually the landscape began to change. There were more marshes and soon, Aelfwald knew, they would encounter the rich, red earth of England’s south-west. It was on the fifth day that they passed by the site of the ancient abbey of Glastonbury – where, it was said by the monks, there was a tomb of the legendary warrior Arthur, who had fought in pre-Saxon times. Soon after they passed this Wulfhere sent out scouts.
“My information is that the king is somewhere near,” he told the thane.
The next morning they found him.
The camp of King Alfred at the place called Athelney was a modest and hastily erected collection of tents, huts and reed shelters set on a parcel of land protected on one side by a hill and the other by a marsh. Though it was unlikely to be attacked, the site was cold and damp. Each day, small parties of men had been arriving as word filtered through the south that the king was there; they were still too few to accomplish much, but each of them was devoted to the cause of the beleaguered Wessex king.
The arrival of Wulfhere, Aelfwald and the other thanes was an important addition to their strength, and they were taken immediately to the king’s tent.
Alfred of Wessex was unremarkable to look at. He was of medium height and delicate health. In his youth he had suffered from piles and for most of his adult life he was subject to a nervous sense of his own poor health tha
t came close to hypochondria. But whatever his psychological problems, it was his intense spirit and determination that carried him through and made him a remarkable monarch by the standards of any time.
When the earldorman and thanes came into his presence he embraced each one of them, and it seemed to Aelfwald, as the king gazed at him with his earnest pale blue eyes, that Alfred took his hand with a special fervour.
“You came. Faithful friends.” The thane was shocked to see that his blue eyes were sad, almost beseeching. “Most of my thanes probably think I’m dead,” he explained. “There has been no defence anywhere, you know: none at all.”
The Viking attack had been a bitter blow to the ambitious monarch. For the seven troubled years of his reign Alfred had tried to give the rich lands of Wessex the security needed to undertake the great projects for which his heart and spirit yearned: the building of churches, the restoration of monasteries and schools, the revival in Wessex of the great Latin culture that had in past generations made the northern Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia amongst the noblest in Europe.
“We have our examples,” he would urge men like Aelfwald, “both in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of the past and at the Frankish court across the sea.” Two generations before the great Frankish Emperor Charlemagne’s court had been the most sophisticated centre of culture since the collapse of the western Roman Empire and Alfred was anxious to emulate it. But the invasions of the Vikings in the north, and a lack of ambition in the south had left the whole island in a state of cultural decline and the task he had set himself was huge.
None of his plans could be accomplished – his new kingdom would be stillborn – if he could not protect Wessex from the heathen marauders.
“There is so much to do. Our towns need to be fortified. We need ships to patrol the coast,” he would remind his thanes. “As for the army . . .”
The Anglo-Saxon fyrd, the armed levy of the thanes and their men from every shire and hundred, was an unwieldy and inefficient force. Each lord was only under obligation to perform a certain number of days fighting each year; it was hard to persuade the farmer warriors to fight outside their own shires, and often even loyal churls would suddenly leave to see to their harvests. In trying to make this a cohesive force against the freebooting Viking horde, Alfred was up against formidable obstacles. As for the fixed defences, the fortified towns known as burghs were the first consistent defensive systems since Roman times, and they were only just beginning to be prepared. Eventually, when it was complete, every settlement in Wessex would be within twenty miles of a burgh.
“We need four men for every pole of defended wall,” he had said. “That’s about a man every five feet. And if you reckon a hide of land supports one man, then we must assign land to support each burgh, according to the length of its walls.”
This was the beginning of the English system of Burghal Hideage which designated land for the support of each defended Saxon town. Wilton, whose walls would be over a mile around, was allotted 1400 hides.
He had tried also to plan a naval system to protect the coast and designed a sixty oar ship to act as a model for his new fleet.
But all these preparations were incomplete and the surprise attack in midwinter had found him powerless. His ambitious plans now seemed close to ruin.
“So here I am, hiding like a criminal in the marshes,” he said ruefully to the party from Sarum as they gathered round.
The news that came in during the following days was not encouraging. As further parties arrived with news, it became clear that the Vikings had free run of the whole kingdom.
“They could partition Wessex as they already have Mercia,” Earldorman Wulfhere confided grimly to the thane. “Then the whole island would be Danelaw.”
Although Aelfwald did not greatly care for Wulfhere or want to admit such a thing, he knew that unless they could mount an astounding offensive from the marshes, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom would be finished for ever.
But Alfred was firm. “In the spring,” he promised them, “when we can rally our people, we will hit back.”
Two days after his arrival, Aelfwald received news that Aelfwine had been killed at Twyneham, and that young Osric was dead as well. The thane sought out the carpenter and his family and gave them comfort. Of the trouble between the young monk and the boy neither he, nor the carpenter, ever had any idea.
To his remaining sons he said:
“Now we have your brother to avenge. Nor shall we forget Osric or Port’s family. They are our people too.”
Three weeks passed. The force in the marshes slowly grew; but outside, nothing changed. The weather was relentlessly cold. And yet, in that ramshackle and informal camp, where the few thanes wandered in and out of the king’s tent as if it were their own, Aelfwald did not lose hope.
The king was extraordinary. It never ceased to amaze Aelfwald how, in the middle of his difficulties, Alfred’s active, urgent mind could switch to the higher matters that he considered so important.
“Look at these,” he would say to the thane, pointing to the pile of books that always lay on the table at the centre of his quarters. “I have once again been hearing my teachers read me the history of our people written by that great man Bede, more than a century ago.” He would sigh. “Why has our own century produced no such man?”
And more than once when he had confessed to Aelfwald – “I had hoped for so much. But now . . .” – and his head had dropped in despair, he would suddenly recover his spirits and exclaim eagerly: “This, my friends, is the answer to despair.” And he would tap a huge book. “Boethius gives us consolation. One day I will translate it from Latin into our own Anglo-Saxon tongue.” Then he would poke Aelfwald in the ribs and grin: “So I shall expect you to learn to read by then, my friend.”
For Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, written by the last great pagan philosopher of the Roman world as he awaited execution four centuries before, was so noble a book that few Christians had any difficulty in accepting its prescriptions – that peace of mind can only be reached by the contemplation of eternal truths – and together with the works of St Augustine it had become one of the best loved books of the Middle Ages.
“Boethius, Augustine, the laws of King Ine: these are the things every educated man should know,” Alfred often told the thane. “Through study, Aelfwald, we rise above our difficulties.”
By mid-February, another problem had arisen: the camp was short of food. Each day scouts were sent out to forage, but each day they came back with less, and it almost seemed that the little Saxon force might have to break up for lack of supplies.
It was then that Aelfwald formed a daring plan.
When the thane sent Tostig and the boats up river from Wilton, he had not held out great hopes that they would escape capture. But, under the supervision of his son Aelfric, the fisherman had done surprisingly well, bringing the six boats across a network of rivers, occasionally crossing small strips of land, and arriving at the marsh of Athelney only three days after the rest of the party, with all the goods from Wilton still intact.
Recent reports from the scouts suggested that while there were Viking camps along the Wylye valley near Wilton, the thane’s farmstead at Sarum had, so far, been left untouched.
One morning Aelfwald summoned the slave and told him what he had in mind.
He was a strange, disreputable looking fellow, the thane thought, with his lank, dark hair, his narrow-set eyes and long thin hands and toes. He reminded him of one of the long flies that lay on the surface of the stream. As Tostig listened to what was proposed, he stood in his customary attitude, his head staring at his feet, maintaining a sullen silence that might have been insolence, or might not. Whatever the slave’s true thoughts, Tostig had always done his work well when he was made to, and the thane’s table had always been liberally supplied with fish netted in the five rivers.
“Well, can you do it?” he asked peremptorily when he had finished.
Tost
ig did not look up.
“Maybe.”
“You may take any men you want. Aelfstan or Aelfric can accompany you.”
The slave shook his head.
“They’d only be in the way.”
“As you like.” This was, he knew, as much enthusiasm as he would ever elicit. “Good luck then.”
That evening he watched Tostig and his family push the six empty boats into the stream and paddle away. He wondered if he would ever see them again.
Ten days later, Tostig returned.
He had done brilliantly. Using his intimate knowledge of the waterways, he had brought the boats past every Viking camp, usually at night, without being noticed. He had slipped by Wilton and gone up the Avon to the thane’s farmstead without difficulty. There, as Aelfwald had hoped, he had found all the hidden stores intact. Having loaded the boats he returned, cleverly and silently, just as he had gone.
“Bring all the provisions you can find,” Aelfwald had told him. “You know what we need.”
The results, when Aelfwald led the king down to the banks where Tostig was unloading, brought a smile to Alfred’s face.
There were ten vats of honey, two hundred cheeses, forty sacks of flour, flagons of ale, both dark and clear, two hundred pounds weight of fodder and the carcasses of twenty sheep, which Tostig had managed to preserve in the cold.
With a proud smile the thane explained: “This is the feorm I owe you for my land.”
At this Alfred roared with laughter, then clapped the loyal thane on the back; but a moment later, it seemed to Aelfwald that he was close to tears. For the feorm, the tax in kind owed by a thane to the king or his superior lord, was a reminder of how far Wessex was from its normal state of order.