The Burning Land

The wagon was first through the wide arch. Its holy banners swayed alarmingly as it lurched onto the rutted track, then my two hundred men, bright in mail, rode after it and turned westwards. We flew standards, braying horns announced our departure and the sun shone on the royal wagon. We were the lure, and the Danes had seen us. And so the hunt began.

The wagon led the way, lumbering along a farm track that would lead us to the Wintanceaster road. A shrewd Dane might well wonder why, if we wanted to retreat to the larger burh at Wintanceaster, we would use Æscengum’s northern gate instead of the western, which led directly onto the road, but I somehow doubted those worries would reach Harald. Instead he would hear that the King of Wessex was running away, leaving Æscengum to be protected by its garrison that was drawn from the fyrd. The men of the fyrd were rarely trained warriors. They were farmers and labourers, carpenters and thatchers, and Harald would undoubtedly be tempted to assault their wall, but I did not believe he would yield to the temptation, not while a much greater prize, Alfred himself, was apparently vulnerable. The Danish scouts would be telling Harald that the King of Wessex was in the open country, travelling in a slow wagon protected by a mere couple of hundred horsemen, and Harald’s army, I was certain, would be ordered to the pursuit.

Finan commanded my rearguard, his job to tell me when the enemy pursuit got too close. I stayed near the wagon and, just as we reached the Wintanceaster road a half-mile west of Æscengum, a slender rider spurred alongside me. It was Æthelflæd, clad in a long mail coat that appeared to be made from silver rings close-linked over a deerskin tunic. The mail coat fitted her tightly, clinging to her thin body, and I guessed that it was fastened at the back with loops and buttons because no one could pull such a tight coat over their head and shoulders. Over the mail she wore a white cloak, lined with red, and she had a white-scabbarded sword at her side. A battered old helmet with face-plates hung from her saddle’s pommel and she had doubtless used the helmet to hide her face before we left Æscengum, though she had also taken the precaution of covering her distinctive cloak and armour with an old black cape that she tossed into the ditch as she joined me. She grinned, looking as happy as she had once looked before her marriage, then nodded towards the lumbering wagon. ‘Is that my half-brother?’

‘Yes. You’ve seen him before.’

‘Not often. Doesn’t he look like his father!’

‘He does,’ I said, ‘and you don’t, for which I’m grateful.’ That made her laugh. ‘Where did you get the mail?’ I asked.

‘Æthelred likes me to wear it,’ she said. ‘He had it made for me in Frankia.’

‘Silver links?’ I asked. ‘I could pierce those with a twig!’

‘I don’t think my husband wants me to fight,’ she said drily, ‘he just wants to display me.’ And that, I thought, was understandable. Æthelflæd had grown to be a lovely woman, at least when her beauty was not clouded by unhappiness. She was clear-eyed and clear-skinned, with full lips and golden hair. She was clever, like her father, and a good deal cleverer than her husband, but she had been married for one reason only, to bind the Mercian lands to Alfred’s Wessex, and in that sense, if in no other, the marriage had been a success.

‘Tell me about Aldhelm,’ I said.

‘You already know about him,’ she retorted.

‘I know he doesn’t like me,’ I said happily.

‘Who does?’ she asked, grinning. She slowed her horse, that was getting too close to the crawling wagon. She wore gloves of soft kid leather over which six bright rings glittered with gold and rare stones. ‘Aldhelm,’ she said softly, ‘advises my husband, and he has persuaded Æthelred of two things. The first is that Mercia needs a king.’

‘Your father won’t allow it,’ I said. Alfred preferred Mercia look to Wessex for its kingly authority.

‘My father will not live for ever,’ she said, ‘and Aldhelm has also persuaded my husband that a king needs an heir.’ She saw my grimace and laughed. ‘Not me! Ælfwynn was enough!’ She shuddered. ‘I have never known such pain. Besides, my dear husband resents Wessex. He resents his dependency. He hates the hand that feeds him. No, he would like an heir from some nice Mercian girl.’

‘You mean. …’

‘He won’t kill me,’ she interrupted blithely, ‘but he would love to divorce me.’

‘Your father would never allow that!’

‘He would if I was taken in adultery,’ she said in a remarkably flat tone. I stared at her, not quite believing what she told me. She saw my incredulity and mocked it with a smile. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you did ask me about Aldhelm.’

‘Æthelred wants you to. …’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘then he can condemn me to a nunnery and forget I ever existed.’

‘And Aldhelm encourages this idea?’

‘Oh, he does, he does,’ she smiled as if my question was silly. ‘Luckily I have West Saxon attendants who protect me, but after my father dies?’ she shrugged.

‘Have you told your father?’

‘He’s been told,’ she said, ‘but I don’t think he believes it. He does, of course, believe in faith and prayer, so he sent me a comb that once belonged to Saint Milburga and he says it will strengthen me.’

‘Why doesn’t he believe you?’

‘He thinks I am prone to bad dreams. He also finds Æthelred very loyal. And my mother, of course, adores Æthelred.’

‘She would,’ I said gloomily. Alfred’s wife, Ælswith, was a sour creature and, like Æthelred, a Mercian. ‘You could try poison,’ I suggested. ‘I know a woman in Lundene who brews some vicious potions.’

‘Uhtred!’ she chided me, but before she could say more, one of Finan’s men came galloping from the rearguard, his horse throwing up clods of earth torn from the meadow beside the road.

‘Lord!’ he shouted, ‘time to hurry!’

‘Osferth!’ I called, and our pretend king happily jumped from his father’s wagon and hauled himself into the saddle of a horse. He threw the bronze circlet back into the wagon and pulled on a helmet.

‘Dump it,’ I shouted to the wagon’s driver. ‘Take it into the ditch!’

He managed to get two wheels in the ditch and we left the heavy vehicle there, canted over, the frightened horses still in their harness. Finan and our rearguard came pounding up the road and we spurred ahead of them into a stretch of woodland where I waited until Finan caught up, and just as he did so the first of the pursuing Danes came into sight. They were pushing their horses hard, but I reckoned the abandoned wagon with its tawdry treasures would delay them a few moments and, sure enough, the leading pursuers milled about the vehicle as we turned away.

‘It’s a horse race,’ Finan told me.

‘And our horses are faster,’ I said, which was probably true. The Danes were mounted on whatever animals their raiding parties had succeeded in capturing, while we were riding some of Wessex’s best stallions. I snatched a last glance as dismounted enemies swarmed over the wagon, then plunged deeper into the trees. ‘How many of them are there?’ I shouted at Finan.

‘Hundreds,’ he called back, grinning. Which meant, I guessed, that any man in Harald’s army who could saddle a horse had joined the pursuit. Harald was feeling the ecstasy of victory. His men had plundered all eastern Wessex, now he believed he had turned Alfred’s army out of Æscengum, which effectively opened the way for the Danes to maraud the whole centre of the country. Before those pleasures, however, he wanted to capture Alfred himself and so his men were wildly following us, and Harald, unconcerned about their lack of discipline, believed his good fortune must hold. This was the wild hunt, and Harald had loosed his men and sent them to deliver him the King of Wessex.

We led them, we enticed them and we tempted them. We did not ride as fast as we might, instead we kept the pursuing Danes in sight and only once did they catch us. Rypere, one of my valued men, was riding wide to our right and his horse thrust a hoof into a molehill. He was thirty paces away, but I heard the crack of breaking bone and saw Rypere tumbling and the horse flailing as it collapsed in screaming pain. I turned Smoka towards him and saw a small group of Danes coming fast. I shouted at another of my men, ‘spear!’

I grabbed his heavy ash-shafted spear and headed straight towards the leading Danes who were spurring to kill Rypere. Finan had turned with me, as had a dozen others, and the Danes, seeing us, tried to swerve away, but Smoka was pounding the earth now, nostrils wide, and I lowered the spear and caught the nearest Dane in the side of his chest. The ash shaft jarred back, my gloved hand slid along the wood, but the spear-point pierced deep and blood was welling and spilling in the spaces between the links of the Dane’s mail coat. I let the spear go. The dying man stayed in his saddle as a second Dane flailed at me with a sword, but I threw the stroke off with my shield and turned Smoka by the pressure of my knees as Finan ripped his long blade across another man’s face. I snatched the reins from the man I had speared and dragged his horse to Rypere. ‘Throw the bastard off and get up,’ I called.

The surviving Danes had retreated. There had been fewer than a dozen and they were the forerunners, the men on the fastest horses, and it took time for reinforcements to reach them and by then we had spurred safely away. Rypere’s legs were too short to reach his new stirrups, and he was cursing as he clung to the saddle’s pommel. Finan was smiling. ‘That’ll annoy them, lord,’ he said.

‘I want them mad,’ I said.

I wanted them to be impetuous, careless and confident. Already, on that summer’s day, as we followed the road alongside a meandering stream where crowsfoot grew thick, Harald was doing all I could ask. And was I confident? It is a dangerous thing to assume that your enemy will do what you want, but on that Thor’s Day I had a growing conviction that Harald was falling into a carefully laid trap.

Our road led to the ford where we could cross the river to reach Fearnhamme. If we had truly been fleeing to Wintanceaster we would have stayed south of the river and taken the Roman road which led west, and I wanted the Danes to believe that was our intention. So, when we reached the river, we stopped just south of the ford. I wanted our pursuers to see us, I wanted them to think we were indecisive, I wanted them, eventually, to think we panicked.

The land was open, a stretch of river meadow where folk grazed their goats and sheep. To the east, where the Danes were coming, was woodland, to the west was the road Harald would expect us to take, and to the north were the crumbling stone piers of the bridge the Romans had made across the Wey. Fearnhamme and its low hill were on the ruined bridge’s farther side. I stared at the hill and could see no troops.

‘That’s where I wanted Aldhelm,’ I snarled, pointing to the hill.

‘Lord!’ Finan shouted in warning.

The pursuing Danes were gathering at the edge of a wood a half-mile eastwards. They could see us clearly, and they understood that we were too many to attack until more pursuers arrived, but those reinforcements were appearing by the minute. I looked across the river again and saw no one. The hill, with its ancient earthwork, was supposed to be my anvil strengthened with five hundred Mercian warriors, yet it looked deserted. Would my two hundred men be enough?

‘Lord!’ Finan called again. The Danes, who now outnumbered us by two to one, were spurring their horses towards us.

‘Through the ford!’ I shouted. I would spring the trap anyway, and so we kicked our tired horses through the deep ford which lay just upstream of the bridge and, once across, I called for my men to gallop to the hill’s top. I wanted the appearance of panic. I wanted it to look as though we had abandoned our ambitions to reach Wintanceaster and instead were taking refuge on the nearest hill.

We rode through Fearnhamme. It was a huddle of thatched huts around a stone church, though there was one fine-looking Roman building that had lost its tiled roof. There were no inhabitants, just a single cow bellowing pathetically because she needed to be milked. I assumed the folk had fled from the rumours of the approaching Danes. ‘I hope your damned men are on the hill!’ I shouted to Æthelflæd, who was staying close to me.

‘They’ll be there!’ she called back.