Of the Ring of Earls (Conqueror Trilogy Book 1) Page 21

  Looking into his fine-featured face and the large thoughtful grey eyes, Waltheof remembered the tales he had heard of Cnut’s popularity, his devotion to Holy Church, his constant kindness to the poor, and he wondered how one man could sire such a son among a brood of vipers.

  ‘I take your word,’ he said at last, ‘but you cannot stand surety for Magnus. One day he and I must settle our quarrel.’

  ‘I suppose it must be so,’ Cnut answered sadly, ‘and Edmund and Somerled are as hot for it as he. They say I am too soft,’ he smiled a little, ‘they say I should have been a monk.’

  Waltheof shrugged. ‘If all who felt compassion took the tonsure it would leave the everyday world to the worst of men, and I cannot think God meant it to be so.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’ Cnut straightened himself. ‘I must go back to my kin.’

  That evening in camp some ten miles from York a party of men came in and told the leaders that half the city was on fire.

  ‘On fire? Maerlsweyn exclaimed. ‘Who in God’s name set it afire?

  ‘The Normans,’ the spokesman told them grimly. ‘They know you are coming and they are burning some houses on the right bank near the castle because they think we might find cover there to approach closer to the walls.’

  ‘Fools,’ Magnus Carlson laughed scornfully. ‘Do they think that will stop such a force as ours?’

  ‘The citizens are ready to rise and fight with us,’ another man went on. ‘They only wait your arrival.’

  ‘Please God St Peter’s church is not burning,’ Waltheof said. ‘Let Aldred lie in peace.’

  ‘Peace is only for the dead.’ Asbjorn showed his teeth in a wolfish grin. ‘For the living there’s fighting and plunder.’

  ‘This is our land,’ Waltheof told him sharply. ‘Remember that, Jarl Asbjorn. We are not attacking an enemy city, only the enemy in it.’ But Asbjorn merely laughed.

  Gospatric rose. ‘We must attack at dawn, take whatever advantage the fire gives us and free the city before it is burned down.’ He did not ask if all were agreed. It seemed unnecessary to do so.

  That night, snatching a few hours rest beside Thorkel, Waltheof felt an anger rising and expanding within him, anger at their new allies who, he felt, had neither come in the right mood, nor brought their king with them; anger too at the thought of York, the city of his birth, afire this night; anger at the Normans who had caused all this, an anger directed against William both for the larger issues and the smaller personal one, and his anger went further back, to Sandlake and Stamford Bridge and even to King Edward who might have been a saint but who was also a fool to leave his kingdom in such jeopardy. His anger consumed him, burned in his mind, and when at last he slept it was an uneasy sleep, peopled by wild figures and wilder scenes. He awoke sweating, and could not wait to let the anger in him loose in a fight that would slake his desire for vengeance, that would be like the letting of poison from a wound. Before the first rays of light came into the sky he was arming himself in hauberk and helm, the timber-axe once more in his hand.

  Already the camp was astir, the Northumbrian men who this long winter past had disdained houses and lived in tents on Siward Barn’s land to harden themselves were up and preparing for a fight. The Danes, who had drunk deep the night before, were not in so great a hurry and came yawning and shaking their heads, but at last the army was on the move along the road to York, led by the English leaders, the Danes following with their emblems flying, a Christian Cross on one side, a symbol of Wotan on the other. They were half pagan still, Waltheof thought and remarked to Thorkel that their allies obviously did not intend to find themselves facing the wrong deity if they took the swan’s path. But he felt uneasy with that pagan symbol at his back and could not entirely free himself from the idea that Loki, the evil spirit remembered from the tales of his childhood, might be abroad in the land again.

  Breasting a rise the city came into sight, a pall of smoke lying over it. Waltheof cursed under his breath and dug his heels into Balleroy’s flanks in order to mount a little knoll that he might see better. There appeared to be burning houses on both banks and he could see flames about the tower of St Peter’s church.

  He wrenched the big horse round and galloped back to his companions. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said, ‘let us get on.’

  They fell on the city with such ferocity that the Normans had little chance of holding them, even if they had remained behind the defences of their castles; but foolishly they came out to fight a pitched battle in the burning ruins of the houses by the river.

  Waltheof led his men against the castle on the east bank and fought his way through the lurid streets to the gate, all the anger of the night pouring from him in a wild strength such as even he did not know he possessed. Up by the castle he met more Normans head on as another detachment of them came plunging through the gate. He and his cheering men fell on them furiously, the emotions of months of frustration finding expression at last. Even young Ulf, who had never seen battle before, wielded his axe like a seasoned fighting man, shouting the Earl’s battle-cry, ‘For God and St Guthlac!’

  Amid yells and screams, half choking with smoke, the English annihilated the Normans. At the gate there was a sudden concerted rush by the enemy and Waltheof, watching them come, set himself in their path, his legs firmly planted, swinging his axe with deadly accuracy as they came through. One by one he severed heads from necks, limbs from trunks. The blood of his enemies spattered him from head to foot, but such was his skill and the wide swing of his arm that none touched him and he received not so much as a scratch.

  His men were cheering and crying out, ‘For Siward’s son! For Waltheof the Earl!’ and he grew drunk with the power of his own strength, inebriated by the cheers of his men. No more the shame of defeat – at last a battle, a fight to erase the memory of Norman arrogance, and Norman rape of the beloved land. He swung the timber-axe again, saw a head fall and roll away to lie against the wall, the lips drawn back from the teeth. He swung again, severed a man’s arm and saw him stagger, screaming, into a smouldering ruin where the fire caught him so that he was all alight.

  It was an hour of shrieking, burning horror and when it was over he led his men in under the gate and into the inner bailey of the castle. Here a nucleus of soldiers fought a last rearguard action, but Waltheof’s men fell on them with the confidence of victors. None should live this day, and Waltheof slew two who had leapt on to the outer stairway. A group of his men surrounded the last few Normans left in the bailey and as they dealt with these, he heard one shouting the Norman battle-cry, ‘Dex aie! Dex aie!’

  He went rigid with shock on hearing that voice and then ran, instinctively, not thinking, but bellowing to his men to let that man live, to take him alive. The Norman was struggling still, his sword red in his hand, but Waltheof’s men obeyed their lord and disarmed him, one seizing his sword, another pinioning his wrists, while a third flung an aim about his neck, half throttling him. They threw him to the ground and held him there as Waltheof burst between them.

  ‘Let him go,’ he shouted, ‘let him go. He is my prisoner.’

  He looked down at the half stunned and prostrate figure and then, putting out a hand, hauled him to his feet. ‘You are my prisoner,’ he repeated.

  Sweating, breathless, indescribably dirty and bloodstained, Richard de Rules took off his battered helm and flung it from him. He was furious for his men had run from the English. He threw off the Earl’s hand, cursing volubly. ‘I could not believe it,’ he said between his teeth, ‘when we heard you were with the rebels. Holy Jesu! What possessed you?’

  Waltheof ignored this. ‘Where is the Governor?’ he demanded. The poison, the fever, were out of him now, and there were Normans, after all, that he could not slay. ‘Where is Malet? For God’s sake, tell me. If he is not dead already he will be butchered unless I find him first.’

  ‘He is in the hall,’ Richard said grimly. ‘He went to find his wife and children – to protect them from your bloody
heathen allies.’ He jerked his head towards the door for Jarl Asbjorn had erupted though the postern gate, his sword dripping in his hand, his Danes behind him. Waltheof ran for the steps, his men hustling Richard between them, so that they were up and into the hall first, followed by a yelling crowd of Danes.

  On the dais stood Malet with the Lady Hesilia and two terrified little girls; he was ashen-faced, his sword in his hand, but when he saw Waltheof he gasped with relief and dropped the weapon with a clatter, flinging up his hands and shouting his surrender.

  For one moment it seemed as it the Danes would not heed Waltheof and his hearth-troop, slaying the Normans where they stood, but Asbjorn bawled above the noise that the Governor would bring a good ransom, and Waltheof set his own guard about the prisoners. Of these there were few enough.

  Watching the wild men from over the north sea pouring into the hall and stripping it like locusts, Malet turned to Waltheof. ‘Are you mad, my lord, to have joined yourself to this rebellion? William will come and you cannot beat him.’

  Asbjorn, chewing the meat from a capon bone, two gold cups tucked under his arm and a costrel of wine in his hand, laughed loudly, boasting, ‘Let the Bastard come. We will deal with him. The Raven can match the Norman lion.’

  Waltheof said to Malet: ‘You do not know me if you think I would sit at home while my countrymen fight.’ But there was too much to be done to waste time in talk and leaving the prisoners in Osgood’s charge he went out to superintend the slighting of the castle. He could see Gospatric about the same work in the other bank.

  They burned the gates and everything that could be burned and dismantled as much as possible, breaking the walls and turrets with crowbars and hammers so that these should not again shelter the Normans. In the town the Danish soldiers had gone wild, plundering and seizing anything of value, so that by dusk York was a blackened, desecrated, smouldering ruin. What common folk had remained there, now fled into the darkening countryside for the fire and the Danes had taken everything. Even the church of St Peter was gutted. The city was destroyed, but the enemy had been swept from their native soil.

  Small wonder that Waltheof, Gospatric, Maerlsweyn and their men were drunk with joy and victory, and Waltheof, somewhat to his surprise, found himself the hero of the hour for his stand at the gate. As the leaders assembled under the broken walls, he was greeted with cheers and shouts, and one of Gospatric’s men called out that more than one hundred Normans lay dead at the gate where he had stood.

  ‘Feed their corpses to the wolves then,’ he said starkly, compassion forgotten in this heady hour that had fed his revenge.

  When the camp fires were lit Thorkel and other scalds from the Danish army made songs of his prowess, of how at the burning gate he had slain so many of King William’s host, and roars of acclamation greeted him. His own men set him on a mound of fallen rubble and cheering themselves hoarse, hailed him with flowing wine cups.

  Once he left them and went to the group of prisoners to speak with Richard de Rules. But when he stood looking down at him there seemed to be nothing to say. At last Richard spoke, ‘When I came to Deeping I thought we had peace.’

  Waltheof said, ‘Peace! If we had conquered your land, would that be peace?’

  Richard shook his head wearily. Then he added, ‘But for you I’d lie in a greater peace tonight.’

  ‘You are still my friend,’ Waltheof said. He glanced behind him at the faces of the Danes, the ground before each man heaped with plunder, and he wondered suddenly just whom he should call his friends. But it was no night for introspection and a moment later he was among his own people again, the men of Ryhall and Belmesthorpe, of Huntingdon and Northampton, all wild with pride and joy. Every cask and costrel of wine had been plundered from the city and there was drinking and singing and feasting all night long.

  Only the gruesome dismembered corpses were still and only the disconsolate group of prisoners, Gilbert of Ghent, Malet and his family, and Richard de Rules, sat apart, silent, guarded by the spears of Waltheof’s men.

  CHAPTER 3

  King William was hunting in the forest of Dean when a breathless messenger brought him the news of the sack of York. The man flung himself at William’s feet and poured out the tale of the Danish landing and the vast army that had attacked the city.

  ‘Every man from all the countryside came, lord King,’ he said. ‘They hate us there as nowhere else. Your castles are broken, your men dead. Only a handful of us escaped.’ William halted in the grey autumn morning. The air was crisp and his breath vaporised as he sat his horse, holding his bow in his hand. His brow darkened, and those with him saw the familiar tightening of that firm mouth, the twitching of a particular muscle.

  At last he asked, ‘What of my commanders?’

  ‘FitzRichard is dead, beau sire. William Malet and Gilbert of Ghent are prisoners with Richard de Rules and one or two lesser men.’

  ‘Are they still in York?’ William’s horse tossed its head restlessly and he curbed it with an impatient hand. The men about him sat tensely, waiting to see what he would do.

  ‘No, lord, the Danes have fortified the island of Axholme now and they hold our men there, with much plunder.’

  ‘And the Englishmen – who led them?’

  ‘Earl Gospatric, Maerlsweyn that was Sheriff of Lincoln, Prince Edgar and Earl Waltheof.’

  ‘Earl Waltheof?’ William repeated. A strange expression crossed his face, and FitzOsbern and Robert of Mortain exchanged glances.

  The messenger was continuing with his story, telling of local reaction, of how every village was feasting the conquerors, and William’s face grew hard again, was suffused with colour.

  ‘Splendour of God!’ he swore, ‘but they shall pay. This is my realm, my kingdom, and by our Lord Christ, I have been too lenient thus far. That land and those people will weep in blood for what has been done.’

  He flung his bow to an attendant, set his spurs to his horse and galloped away through the forest at such a pace that he had to duck low over the saddle to avoid overhanging branches. His men pelted after him, knowing him of old, and he did not draw rein until he had reached the town of Gloucester. To the sound of the masons’ hammers he rode into his half finished castle, and there in the hall listened to another messenger who had been about to set out for the forest to bring him the further news of a rising in the south west. There, insurgents were besieging Robert of Mortain’s new castle of Montacute, and there was also trouble in Mercia where Edric the Wild was attacking Shrewsbury. For the first time since the victory at Hastings his kingdom was in danger – in fact it became apparent that it had never been truly won.

  He held an immediate council of war.

  Mortain said: ‘My men can hold Montacute, brother, if you have other work for me.’

  William nodded. ‘You and our cousin of Eu shall go at once to Lincolnshire and keep the Danes from coming south of the Humber.’

  ‘Let me deal with Edric,’ FitzOsbern put in, ‘he is a lusty fighter but he knows no strategy. I’ll send you news when I have him.’

  The king himself moved with his customary despatch, indeed it seemed now as if he was possessed by a demon of energy. He swept up through the midlands, taking only cavalry with him, dealt with the rebels at Stafford and several other places, chased Danish raiding parties back over the Humber, and leaving Mortain and Eu to guard the Lincolnshire side of it marched on north himself.

  Intelligence reached him that FitzOsbern had been as good as his word and beaten Edric Guilda into submitting at last. The wild man had come into Shrewsbury and sworn himself William’s vassal.

  The King’s eyes glittered and he showed his teeth in a hard smile. ‘Now for York,’ he said. ‘As God sees me, I will wear my crown there on Christmas day.’

  It was easier than he expected. The large army he had thought to encounter had disintegrated. The Danes were penned in on the Isle of Axholme and aboard their fleet; the Northumbrians, following their usual custom, having
done what they set out to do failed to follow up their signal victory and returned home joyously, despite the blandishments of their leaders. They had their freedom, their plunder, and the Normans were gone – what reason to stay uncomfortably in the field instead of feasting in their own homes?

  William crossed the Aire and advanced unopposed. In Durham Bishop Aethelwine again fled to Lindisfarne accompanied by Gospatric who had been overcome by an attack of caution. The sons of Carl took their plunder home while Maerlsweyn and Edgar rode to Scotland for the nuptials of Edgar’s sister to King Malcolm, and only Earl

  Waltheof, William heard, with a considerable force of rebels remained in the field.

  He arrived in the desecrated city of York where the people were busy rebuilding their burned homes and there, sending to Winchester for his regalia, he wore his crown as he had sworn to do, in the gutted minster on the feast of the Nativity. When the feast and the ceremonial were over – carried out as they were to impress the people – he sent to Jarl Asbjorn and blandly offered to allow him to keep all plunder together with a further gift of gold if he would cause no further trouble and return home in the Spring. The wily Dane, happy enough with his stolen treasure, agreed without consulting any of his allies and handed over his prisoners. Only Richard de Rules, he said, had been taken north with Earl Waltheof.