The Forever Queen (28 page)

26 September 1009—Dunmail Raise, Cumberland

The people of the northern land of lakes and mountains began the long climb up the crag known locally as the Lion and the Lamb. It seemed a fitting place to conduct the Church-ordained ceremony of penance, perhaps the most fitting in all England. Even slaves, for these next three special days of prayer and fasting, were, throughout the land, exempted from their work in order to attend Mass.

Religious hysteria was mounting; the coming of Thorkell the Tall in the South, his plundering, killing, and burning the sign that had opened the sluice gates and released the flood of fear. This was it. The apocalypse had come in the form of a Viking army. God was nigh and was about to bring an end to those who had sinned. Evening had come upon the world, and there would be no tomorrow.

In the North, the motivation to seek God’s forgiveness had been slower to gather momentum, for the majority of farmsteaders were of Norse origin. Even the names of their settlements reflected their ancestry: Birkerthwaite, Dalegarth, Rosgill, Rydal, Threlkeld, Torver. The very hills themselves had lost their British calling of bryn, replaced by the Norse fjall, fell. Only a handful of the people who went further back into the past than the Saxons remained. They were the Wealas, the British of the old Brigantia and Strathclyde, but they were few and were scattered into lonely bothies.

What possible threat was a raiding party wreaking havoc more than three hundred miles away? Among the mountains and the lake-shimmering valleys, existence was from hand to mouth, every day was a struggle. If God ever remembered this harsh and craggy landscape, then He soon forgot it again. Only the sturdy mountain sheep and the copper mines were an asset up here.

Fear, however, was not bound by reason or distance. Archbishop Wulfstan was a man who clung to his conviction that the Antichrist had arisen and was peddling his evil. When the end came, Wulfstan would not be caught bowed by sin, and he saw it his untiring duty to ensure all others were equally ready to meet God.

In the meantime, there was the practical matter of funding his programme of repentance. Defence, whether against invading armies or unseen devils, drained coffers of gold and silver like water leaking from a holed bucket. A wide-held Church-engendered belief was that the wealthy saw to the poor, lame, and sick, while God saw to the wealthy. Wulfstan was different from his peers in that he was not so naive as to rely solely on God’s charity. Regular and appropriate finance came from taxation, and taxation came from labour. Honest or otherwise.

How much of the spreading fear was orchestrated? How much ran wild of its own generated accord? Thorkell was leaving behind him a trail of blood and murder in Kent, his eyes and spears set towards Hamp-Shire. Æthelred was barricaded in his Thorney Island palace, his various Ealdormen as resolute for their own domains. Only the cynical, men such as Athelstan, and Wulfnoth before he had died, queried the tally of things.

The coin minted after the spring council at Enham—a small, thin silver disc with the distinctive symbols of a dove on one side and a lamb on the other—had provided a great boost to a struggling economy. The Church’s command of three days of especial Christian worship was carried along with a compulsory levy for charitable Church purposes. Thorkell might be creating Hell in Kent, the devil could be riding with black cloak flying and red mouth agape over the entirety of England, but neither Crown nor Church would be suffering financially.

Wulfstan was also astute with the choosing of his suggested period of mass prayer. With crops and livestock to tend, matters of religious welfare often came a poor second, particularly if the weather and the crops were good, but September was a sublime month if all went well. The harvest was in and the barns were full. If ever there were a period of leisure, then late September fitted well. In theory, it was also the month when raiders sailed for home and the fyrd could put away their weapons until the next spring. Thorkell seemed to be ignoring the rule.

It had been the local priest’s idea to hold a Mass on the summit of Helm Crag, an idea that received approval throughout his scattered community and the personal blessing of York’s Archbishop. A bold, detached hill, Helm Crag rose above the Grass Mere, its sentinel rocks high on its summit looking for all the world as if carved by God, for, from whichever direction, the larger hump resembled a crouching lion with, between its paws, the unmistakable form of a lamb. God and Christ manifest among the majesty of His mountains.

Clouds were obscuring the brilliance of sunshine and darkening the crag to a sombre blue-grey patchwork of shadow. Most of the inhabitants of the valleys had come, many from a prevailing fear of an uncertain future, a few from curiosity, most because it was reason for holiday. They gathered beside the shore of the lake, their chatter as high as their expectation. Several had camped in the valley overnight, would sleep there throughout the days of designated prayer. Leather and canvas tents dotted the water meadows, the blue smoke of hearth-fires fading as the wood burnt down to ash. Some, those who knew of it, making use of the wide-mouthed cave over the far side of the Rydal Water. Children walked with their parents and grandparents. Men, women, young, old, their voices raised in song as the priest lifted his staff and began the long climb, the procession of people snaking in his wake.

No Viking raiding party would bother with these people—the mountains were too high, the passes too steep, the reward too low—but Wulfstan’s word had been persuasive and insistent. If God no longer looked at the lakes and valleys, then perhaps it was because He was ashamed of their burden of sin. Thorkell might be many miles away, but the sheep still had lambs to birth each spring, the winter snows still brought death and hardship. For everyone, throughout all England, there were personal reasons to pray for salvation.

The sun went from the landscape, and a veil of rain swept with hissing speed across the forested slope of Helvellyn, skimming quickly down the raise and stinging across the surface of the lake, sending it shimmering and dancing as if it were a boiling pot. No one noticed the downpour, save for a few of the women who carried young babes in their arms, but even they merely pulled their shawls tighter and trudged on.

The path wound up the crag in a zigzag pattern, some places steep, others easier to tread. A beck, bridged by flat stones of slate, ran down through the mossy grass, eager and chattering, swelling and rushing faster from the sudden torrent of rain. In the distance, over towards the saddle-shaped ridge of Blencathra, thunder grumbled. In answer, the priest at the head of the column raised his voice higher in robust hymn.

As suddenly as it started, the rain ceased. Those at the head of the procession had reached the top of the crag, and there before them rose the black, towering solidity of the Lion with the Lamb tucked safe between his paws. From up close, the shape was not so convincing, but too many were familiar with its impression to notice or care. Below, a burst of sunlight illuminated the lake, and as the wind dropped away, the water reflected everything in its sudden calm surface, soft vertical bands of greens and browns shadowed by the dark grey of ghostly clouds.

And across the wide valley of Dunmail Raise, as if in tribute to the forgiving love of God, three rainbows arched, brilliant in their vivid, breathtaking beauty. God had not forgotten His flock.

November 1009—Bath

AEthelred was forced to swallow his pride and recall Athelstan to court. Worse, he had to be civil to him. Either that, or lead the fyrd himself; of the two evils, enforced civility offered the better option. Eadric Streona urged its doing, and Æthelred had formed a habit of following Eadric’s advice.

Aside, ordering Athelstan’s return could prove a suitable opportunity to teach the boy a lesson in humility. Graciously, Æthelred gave command of an army to his eldest son, with the specific order to send Thorkell and his Danes either back to their ships or to their gods. The fact that Athelstan had already raised a fair-sized army, he overlooked.

“Let him get on with it,” Eadric advised as he sat with his King, drinking the best imported wine. “Let him see it is one thing to brag and boast within the confines of a comfortable hall, and quite another out there, when winter is closing in.” Æthelred did not observe that his companion did more than his share of the bragging and boasting from within doors.

The Danes had grown bold, and Æthelred doubted his son could hold them now.

Although Thorkell’s own dragon ship was an enormous beast, the majority of his fleet comprised ships no more than seven and fifty feet in length by eight wide. Fully laden with a crew of six and twenty oarsmen, the shallow-drafted keels required only eighteen inches of water in which to sail. Thorkell could go anywhere he chose. From out of a dawn mist his ships would appear, silent and unexpected, the men pouring from the decks to loot and plunder and be gone before the sun gained strength. Kent was bled dry before autumn had flushed the trees into vivid colour. Hamp-Shire and Sussex faring no better as the reds, golds, and oranges withered to frost-tainted bareness.

Wherever a tributary ran as a meandering vein from a main arterial river, England slept uneasy. Splitting his army into three, with himself, his brother Hemming, and a trusted captain in command, the fellowship of Norsemen, the faellag, swept across southern England unchecked.

There was nothing Athelstan could do to be effective, for no one knew where next the sea wolves would strike. Again and again the war horns boomed the alert and the fyrd hastily assembled—but always, always, too late; the Danes had come and gone, as swift as a spring shower. Until they knew where and when Thorkell would appear, there was nothing the English could do as an opposing force. A fact Thorkell knew well.

Outright battle was not what he wanted, or intended. That was for his King to do, for a united, disciplined army, not for a band of mercenaries out for the making of a quick and easy fortune. Deliberately, he kept his ships moving, never anchoring in the same place for more than the one night, never lingering along the reaches of the same river—his ships, the swift-oared, highly manoeuvrable craft of the í-víking. Thorkell adept at playing this game of cat and mouse.

By mid-November, Athelstan admitted defeat. The English army could not outwit the Danes, not unless they decided to make camp and stay put. And that, Athelstan began to realise, Thorkell would not do until he had destroyed England and undermined the military strength and authority of the King. Hah! And that, too, he was doing very well!

Æthelred, safely skulking in London, solidly blamed the cock-crowing, oh-so-certain Athelstan for always being in the wrong place at the wrong time. In turn, Athelstan blamed his father for providing poor information, useless spies, and slovenly discipline. With King and Ætheling fighting between themselves, what need had Thorkell to worry? Æthelred would not listen to excuses for a task he considered badly done, and Athelstan had been made to look the fool by both his father and Eadric.

The fool he might be, but he would not give up as his father had; would not shelter behind barred doors and allow the Danes to march unharried and unopposed.

As spring began to stir with a reluctant timidity, Thorkell reached Oxford and, in the name of Swein Forkbeard, burnt it to the ground. Athelstan chased after him, using his fastest horses and most experienced men, urging a forced march, struggling along the muddied highways by both night and day, barely stopping to rest, water, or feed the tired animals. As ever, they were too late. They reached Oxford’s smoke-blackened walls, footsore and exhausted, with lamed horses and dispirited men, and found the Danes to be long gone, heading directly to the coast, and as March blew with ragged, searing winds into a wet and miserable April, Thorkell ordered the sails set and disappeared over the horizon.

Athelstan was frustrated and disappointed at his failure, but England breathed a sigh of relief. The Danes, they thought, were gone, had taken all they wanted and were gone. Their Archbishop of York’s intervention of mass prayer had worked. God had forgiven them.

It was a broken sigh and a short relief, for Thorkell had no intention of returning to Denmark, not yet. He spent a month in safe harbour along the Normandy coast, a chance to rest, to repair ships and men from damage received, and then returned, sailing direct for Ipswich in Suffolk, the town discovering that his shallow-drafted keels could sweep like soundless, shrouded ghosts, upriver into their very heart.

As so often before, no Englishman had a chance to lift an axe or spear in defence. Ipswich fell to the lust of the í-víking, and it seemed there was not a soul who could stop them.

4 May 1010—Wretham Heath, Ringmere, near Thetford, Suffolk

Ulfkell Snilling, Ulfkell the Bold, had never professed to hankering after great ambition; he was a humble man who devoted his loyalty to God, King, and country. He had not hidden the smile of pleasure, however, when Æthelred had offered a daughter as wife, nor, at the last Christmas council, his delight in finally receiving the prestigious award of the ealdormanry of East Anglia. The wide space of the open fenlands of Anglia were vulnerable to attack, the pockets of enormous wealth, at the abbey on the Isle Ely and towns such as Norwich and Thetford, a profitable lure for any audacious Dane—and to Ulfkell’s certain knowledge there were those in plenty lurking off the Anglian coast.

He was now in command; his voice alone gave orders that, on pain of death, had to be obeyed. He was a warrior Lord who possessed the gifted instinct for battle; he put his faith first in God and then in his double-handed battleaxe. Under his command East Anglia would rise up and fight or die.

Under Athelstan’s leadership, Essex was on standby. Should the Danes, after loitering in Ipswich, decide to swing south towards London, the war horns were to sound the fyrd was ready. If they turned north, the Danes would meet Ulfkell. Only, the new-made Ealdorman of East Anglia made certain they turned northwards by offering Thorkell a challenge. He called out the entire levy of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Cambridge-Shire, and bade them wait a scatter of miles north of Thetford. Instinct, gut feeling—God’s protection—told him Thorkell the Tall, for his own honour, would not let the open defiance go unheeded. If he did, he would be marked as a coward for the rest of his life.