Housecarl (35 page)

His face was filled with anguish
as he said, “King Harold is dead with all his Housecarls and many
lords.  Duke William and his Normans have won.”

“Sarah, get this man some
food.  Sit down, sir, before you fall.”

The man did so.  “I have
ridden all the way from London with the news and I fear that my
horse will go no further.” He greedily quaffed the ale and tore
into the leg of the partridge. He told us the tale through his
meal.  “The king and his Housecarls were on the top of Senlac
Hill, close by Hastings and the abbey.  The Normans charged
but could not even dint the shield wall and then the fyrd thought
that the Normans were retreating and chased after them.  They
were slaughtered and then the Housecarls were surrounded.  The
King and his brothers died but the men refused to surrender and
they died to a man.”

Wolf, Osgar, Ulf and Sweyn and
all our other comrades dead! I looked at Aethelward.  “What do
we do?”

Aethelward waved the question
away with an irritated flick of his wrist. “What of Ealdgyth and ,
Edgar the Aetheling?”

“They are safe and they are
heading for Jorvik.  The Queen has two young babes with
her.”

I saw the sympathy in Gytha’s
face. “Has a messenger also gone to Jorvik?”

“Yes my lord.  Those of us
who were guarding the Queen were divided into guards for the
Aetheling and messengers to spread the word north.”

Aethelward looked at me. 
“I will need to visit the Earls tomorrow.” To Aedgar he asked,
“Where is the royal party now?”

He shrugged.  “We rode hard
but I would imagine that they would be at Lincoln.”

“Aelfraed you will need to send
Osbert and your men to protect the Queen.”

“Of course.” There was something
else in his face which made me wonder for he had looked at me
differently. I knew him well enough to know that he would not speak
in public and I waited until we were alone.

He stood at the tower above the
gate and looked south as though he could see the battle. I joined
him.  “All our friends…”

“Yes Aelfraed but they died
protecting their lord; they will be with him now in the halls of
the heroes.” It was interesting that the veneer of Christianity was
just that for warriors, a thin layer which disappeared once they
died in battle. He looked at me. “It is what I dreaded.  If
only Morcar and Edwin had been better warriors then Harold could
have stayed in the south and defeated William on the beaches.”

Yes uncle but had you been here
with them then they might have had advice which could have saved
them.”

“Yes Aelfraed but I thought they
had you and you could have advised them.”

I was shocked.  “But I am
young and they would not have listened to me anyway.  I did
try.”

“I know and I am not blaming you
but the King and I hoped that your strength and wisdom, young as
you are would have been enough.  I am now worried that our two
young Earls will not listen to me either.”

“Oh surely not! Everyone knows
that you were the King’s right hand man.”

“Aye and the king is dead.”

“What of the Aetheling?”

“He may be the son of Harold and
a potential heir but he is still a boy.  The two Earls will
mould his destiny unless the Queen can use her influence with her
brothers.”

We stood in silence.  My
world had suddenly been turned upside down.  I had met the
Normans and they were a cruel race.  The battle had been lost
but there was a war to win. “Uncle, when the messenger gave his
news you gave me a strange look. There is something you have yet to
tell me is there not?”

He looked very sad and very old
as he put his arm around my shoulder and drew me to him. “There is
my sister son. Your father died at Senlac Hill.  Your real
father not the snake who had your mother killed for laying with
him.”

Suddenly many things became
clear; the way the Housecarls had accepted me, the ease with which
I had joined them.  “My father was a Housecarl?”

“No Aelfraed, your father was
Harold Godwinson, King of England.”

In Anglo-Saxon times a man swore
an oath on his testicles as in ‘to testify’.  The assumption
was, if you lied, you had your testicles removed. Certainly a
compelling argument for speaking the truth! So when Aelfraed swears
his loyalty, it is more serious and binding than we might believe
an oath to be. Harold did indeed capture and ultimately kill the
only King of the Welsh by sailing to North Wales and defeating him.
Cynan Ap Iago did regain his father’s kingdom.  I have no
evidence that he resided at Gruffyd’s court but it seemed a
reasonable idea. King Harold did marry Ealdgyth soon afterwards but
the way it has been described in the book is fiction.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was
a Norman as were many of the senior churchmen but, as far as I know
there was no attempt on his life but to the Saxons the Normans were
the villains!

The events at the Battle of
Fulford were as described. The two Earls placed immovable barriers
on their flanks and that cost them the battle. They allowed Hadrada
to claim the high ground and he fed in his troops piecemeal. 
The ones who arrived on the field first were lighter armed and less
experienced warriors and Morcar defeated them but pushed on too
much. When the better warriors arrived they attacked the two Earls
and both Earls fled to York.  It is estimated that there were
ten thousand warriors against the Earls’ six thousand.  The
two Earls retreated to York and were besieged by Hadrada. I do not
know who commanded the centre but it appears that whoever did
lasted a little longer than those on the flanks.

One aspect of the two battles,
Stamford Bridge and Fulford which has always puzzled me is how
close in time they were to each other.  According to the
Chronicles they were but five days apart and as it took Harold that
length of time to reach the north then he must have set out before
the battle which is why I created the scenario of a messenger
heading south as soon as the Norse are sighted.

As far as I know no one harried
the Norse fleet but Aelfraed, our hero was in the right place at
the right time and it is the sort of thing he would have done. As
for his promotion to be a Thegn; before the Normans came then
manors were given and taken by the king and his earls whenever they
saw fit. William carried on in the same way rewarding his knights
with the land occupied by the dead Thegns.

The battle of Stamford Bridge is
also as described in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.  The army of
Harold did indeed find the Norse sunning themselves by the river
and those on the west bank were slaughtered.  Between one and
three Norse warriors held off the English killing forty
warriors.  Some accounts have them as berserkers and I took
this as my model for it explained how they could continue to fight
even though outnumbered and wounded. Their sacrifice enabled the
Norse to form a shield wall even though few had had time to put on
their armour. The King did apparently offer Tostig his earldom and
the offer he made to Hadrada is, word for word, what the
Anglo-Saxon Chronicles at the time reported. Tostig and Hadrada
were surrounded and the Norse king killed with an arrow to the
throat. How Tostig died we do not know. Eystein Orri did indeed run
with his warriors all the way from Riccall- a heck of a feat! They
were in full armour and many did indeed drop dead of
exhaustion.  Their charge was known as Orri’s storm. The
survivors only needed 24 boats and they returned to Orkney. Hadrada
was called the Last of the Vikings and this was the last time they
posed a threat to the western world.

After the battle Harold heard
that William had landed and raced south but he had lost so many
lords and warriors that the army which faced William was a shadow
of its former self and as they had marched over four hundred miles
in a short time, they were exhausted. Even so I still believe that
had the fyrd not run then William would have been defeated for the
Housecarls were a fearsome force.

Aelfraed will return in Book Two
of the series, Outlaw, in early 2013.

Griff Hosker

November 2012

 
November 1066 Topcliffe in
Northumbria

I am Aelfraed of Topcliffe, or at least
I was for a while, and I fought with King Harold at the battle of
Stamford Bridge. Perhaps it was wryd or my dead mother watching
over me but I was not there, at Senlac Hill, close to the town of
Hastings when Harold and all my former comrades died in a final
shield wall.  I was recovering from a wound to my back, a
wound which almost cost me my life but perhaps, ultimately, saved
my life, for had I been with the other Housecarls then I too would
have died for we had all sworn an oath to protect King Harold and
my dear friends, Ulf, Wolf and Osgar, all died honouring that oath.
It was the mark of the Anglo-Saxons that warriors took oaths which
they kept until death. Ridley, the Thegn of Coxold and my oldest
comrade, also survived for he too was wounded and, like me he
mourned not only our comrades but the end of the finest fighting
force ever seen in England. I was just glad that my uncle,
Aethelward, who had been strategos and advisor to King Harold, had
also survived for he had been with me in my castle at
Topcliffe.

Until my wife, Gytha, had finally
arrived from London, escorted by my soldiers, I had feared for her
life for she had been with Ealdgyth, Harold’s widow and her twins.
We had heard that Duke William had stripped Harold and his brothers
of all their land.  It had been an astute move for they had
owned most of the best parts of southern England. I did not know
what it meant for me. A few years ago, before the Confessor had
given me my land and before I had met Gytha then I would not have
worried about a new ruler but now I had responsibilities.  I
had a large estate and the people thereon, such as Thomas the
Steward and his wife, Sarah, relied on me to ensure that they could
continue to live and work the land.

As part of my regimen to improve my
health and recover from the almost mortal wound, I had taken to
riding my estate each day escorted by Branton, the sergeant of my
archers.  His brother Osbert, my sergeant at arms, was
training new men to replace those who had fallen fighting Hadrada
and Tostig. I enjoyed the exercise but it also gave me the
opportunity to speak with my people and discover their
feelings.  The land gave me an income but it also gave me
great responsibilities. Before we left the castle I called in upon
Ralph, the blacksmith.  He was like Thor himself in his fiery
smithy with two of his boys pumping the bellows for all they were
worth.  His knotted, heavily muscled arms, hammered out the
sword he was shaping.

“How are the weapons coming Ralph?”

He briefly paused and nodded to me,
holding aloft his latest blade, “Well my lord but we are running a
little short on iron.”

“I will send to the Tees for more.” I
leaned down to speak to him a little more intimately.  “I know
not when the Normans will come and what it portends but I know that
they will come and I would like all of us to be ready.”

He nodded and I could see that he
appreciated the confidence.  “Do not worry my lord.  I
have repaired all the armour and weapons you recovered from the
battle and we have fitted out all of your men at arms and we now
have enough for another ten warriors to be so armed.”

“Excellent.  You are a good man.”
He beamed and I thought back to my half brothers and the man whom I
had thought was my father until a week ago.  They would never
have praised any of the workers on the estate no matter what they
did or sacrificed.  Perhaps that was why he had had no loyalty
from any of them.

Branton and I kicked our horses and
headed south. “How many more volunteers Branton?” One advantage of
my fame, some might say notoriety, was that warriors sought
employment with me.  There were many, for most of the northern
lords had died at Stamford Bridge and Fulford whilst the southern
ones had fallen at Senlac. The disadvantage was that men sought you
in battle to gain honour from your death in combat.

“There are another fifteen my
lord.  My brother is assessing their worth and their skills
even as we speak.”

“Any archers?”

I saw the grin appear on Branton’s
face.  It had been a sore point to him that he commanded fewer
men than his brother.  I saw the value of archers, of which
Harold had not had enough numbers; in the battles I had fought they
had been crucial to success. “I think we have twenty altogether my
lord and some of them are good.  The rest, “he
shrugged. 

I understood what he meant.  Even
poor archers could be improved by a good trainer and Branton was
just that. The memory of Aedgart came to mine.  He had fallen
at the battle defending me and he was even better than Osbert and
Branton when it came to making warriors out of the rough clay that
arrived to fight for me. I turned in the saddle and regretted it
immediately as the pain lanced up my body but I continued my turn,
Aethelward had told me that I had to get the suppleness back into
my body if I wanted to fight again. The small motte and bailey
castle, one of the few in this part of the world made me
proud.  Built upon my uncle’s advice it stood protecting the
old Roman road and was a formidable obstacle to any invader, Norman
or Scot! True, it was mainly built of wood, but there was a
gatehouse and a couple of rudimentary towers; its key feature was
the river which provided good defence around most of its
perimeter.

Branton saw my look and smiled. 
“It is a fine castle my lord.  You should be proud.”