The Long Ships (30 page)

Jarl Byrhtnoth was unwilling to wade across the river, for the water was cold and he feared lest it might make his men’s limbs stiff and their clothing heavy. At the same time he was eager to join battle before his men should begin to feel tired and hungry. So he cried back: “I will give you ground here, and do not delay but come now to fight us. And God alone knows which of us will hold the field.”

And these are the words of Byrhtnoth’s bard, who was present at this battle and escaped with his life:

The sea-men’s army feared not the flood.
Blood-wolves waded west through Panta.
Clear through the current’s crystal water
Bore they their linden shields to the strand.

Byrhtnoth’s men stood awaiting them like a hedge of shields. He had ordered them first to cast their spears, and then to advance with their swords and drive the heathens back into the river. But the Vikings formed into battle-order along the bank as they emerged from the water, each ship’s crew keeping together, and straightway raised their battle-cries and charged, with the captain of each ship running at the head of his crew. A swarm of spears flew toward them, bringing many of them to the ground, whence they did not rise; but they continued to advance relentlessly until they found themselves shield to shield with the Englishmen. Then there was fierce hewing and loud alarums; and the Vikings’ right and left wings were halted and hard pressed. But Thorkel the Tall and the two captains nearest to him—Orm was one, and the other was Fare-Wide Svensson, a famous chieftain from Sjælland, whom King Harald had proclaimed outlaw throughout the Danish kingdom, and who had fought with Styrbjörn at the battle on Fyris Plain before Uppsala—assaulted Byrhtnoth’s own phalanx and broke it. Thorkel cried to his men to fell the tall man in the silver helmet, for then the day would be theirs. Straightway the fighting became fiercest in this part of the field, and there was little elbow-room for men of small stature. Fare-Wide hewed his way forward, slew Byrhtnoth’s standard-bearer, and aimed a blow at Byrhtnoth, wounding him; but he fell himself in the same instant, with a spear through his beard. Many of the chieftains on both sides were killed; and Orm slipped on a fallen shield that was greasy with blood, and tumbled headlong over the body of a man he had just slain. As he fell, he received a blow on the back of his neck from a club, but at once those of his men who were closest to him threw their shields over his body to cover him and protect his back.

When he regained his senses and was able, with Rapp’s assistance, to get to his feet again, the battle had moved away from that part of the field, and the Vikings had gained the upper hand. Byrhtnoth had fallen, and many of his men had fled, but others had formed themselves into a tight ring and, though surrounded, were still resisting valiantly. Thorkel shouted to them over the noise of the battle that he would spare their lives if they cast down their arms; but the cry came back from their midst: “The fewer we be, the fiercer we shall hew, and the shrewder shall be our aim and our courage crueller.”

They fought on until they all lay dead upon the ground, together with many of their foemen, about their chieftain’s corpse. The Vikings marveled at the valor of these Englishmen, praising the dead; nevertheless, this battle at Maldon, fought three weeks before Whitsun in the year 991, was a grievous setback for King Ethelred and a disaster for his realm. For now, far and wide about them, the land lay helpless before the fury of the invaders from the north.

    The Vikings buried their dead and pledged them and the victory they had won. They handed Byrhtnoth’s corpse over to the sorrowful envoys who came to beg for it that they might give it Christian burial; then they sent proclamations to Maldon and other towns in the district commanding that the inhabitants should pay fire-tribute and ransom without delay, lest a heavier penalty be demanded of them. They rejoiced at the thought of so much wealth lying in store for them, counting it already as their own; and their anger mounted as the days passed and no Englishman came with surrender and gold. So they rowed up to Maldon and set fire to the stockade on the riverbank and stormed the town and sacked it fearfully. Then they wept because so much had been burned that there was little left for booty. They swore that in the future they would be more sparing in their use of fire, for it was silver that they yearned for and not destruction, which swallowed up silver with all else; and they set to work to whip in horses from the whole district, that they might the more speedily descend on those parts of the land which reckoned themselves safe from the invaders’ wrath. Soon bands of them rode forth in all directions, and returned to the camp laden with booty; and there was now such dire panic throughout the land that no chieftain dared to emulate Byrhtnoth and challenge them to battle. Prisoners whom they took reported that King Ethelred was sitting pasty-faced behind his walls, mumbling prayers with his priests, wholly redeless.

In the church at Maldon, which was of stone, some of the English were still holding out. They had fled up into the tower when the Vikings had stormed the city, priests and women being among them; and they had drawn the steps up with them as they ascended, that they might not be pursued into their retreat. The Vikings suspected that they had taken much treasure with them, and strove their utmost to persuade them to descend from their tower and bring their treasure with them. But neither by fire nor by force of arms could they achieve anything; and the people had plenty of food and drink with them in the tower, and sang psalms and appeared to be in good heart. When the Vikings approached the tower to try to induce them by words to act sensibly and come down and part with their treasure, they cast down stones, curses, and filth upon their heads, yelling with triumph when any of their missiles met their mark. All the Vikings agreed that stone churches and their towers were among the most vexatious obstacles that a man could find himself confronted with.

Jostein, who was an old, hard man, very greedy for gold, said that he could think of only one way to break down these people’s obstinacy: namely, that they should bring their prisoners to within sight of the tower and there kill them, one by one, until the people in the tower could endure it no more and so would be forced to surrender. A number of the men agreed with him in this, for he had a great name for wisdom; but Gudmund and Thorkel thought such a plan unwarriorlike and were unwilling to be parties to it. It would be better, said Thorkel, to bring them down by guile; he added that he was well acquainted with the foibles of priests and knew how best to approach them and get them to do what one wanted.

He ordered his men to remove a great cross from above the altar in the church. Then he approached the tower, with two men carrying the cross before him, and, halting at its foot, cried up to the people there that he needed priests to tend the wounded and also, which was more urgent, to instruct him personally in the Christian faith. Of late, he explained, he had begun to feel strongly attracted toward the new religion; and he would act toward them as though he was already a Christian, for he would allow everyone in the tower to leave it unscathed in life and limb.

He had proceeded thus far in his discourse when a stone shot out of the tower and struck his shield-arm near the shoulder, knocking him to the ground and breaking his arm. At this the two men dropped the cross and assisted him to safety, while the people in the tower cheered in triumph. Jostein, who had been watching, curled his lip and observed that guile in war was not such a simple matter as inexperienced young men sometimes appeared to imagine.

All Thorkel’s followers were inflamed with fury at seeing their chieftain wounded thus, and flights of arrows were loosed at the loopholes in the tower; but this achieved nothing, and the situation appeared to be insoluble. Orm said that in the southland he had sometimes seen Almansur’s men drive Christians from their church towers by smoking them out; and they at once set to work to try to do this. Wood and wet straw were piled together inside the church and around the foot of the tower and were lit; but the tower was high and a breeze dispersed most of the smoke before it could ascend. In the end the Vikings lost patience and decided to leave things until the inhabitants of the tower should begin to feel the pangs of hunger.

Thorkel was dejected by the failure of his stratagem, and feared lest his men should taunt him on the subject. Apart from this, he was irked at the prospect of having to sit idly in Maldon guarding the camp, for it was clear that it would be some time before he would be able to ride out and plunder; and he was anxious that men knowledgeable in medicine should come and examine his injury. Orm came to commiserate with him as he sat before a fire drinking mulled ale with his broken arm hanging at his side. Many men thumbed his arm, but none of them knew how to put it in splints.

Thorkel groaned uncomfortably as they thumbed the fracture, and said it would be medicine enough for the moment if they could bind up his arm as well as it would allow, with or without splints.

“Now the words I spoke at the foot of the tower have come true,” he said. “I need a priest badly, for priests understand such matters as this.”

Orm nodded in agreement and said that priests were cunning doctors; after the Yule feast at King Harald’s he had had a much worse wound than Thorkel’s healed by a priest. Indeed, he added, he would welcome a priest no less than Thorkel, for the blow he had received on his skull from a shoed club was causing him incessant headaches, so that he was beginning to wonder whether something might not have come loose inside his head.

When they were alone, Thorkel said to him: “I hold you to be the wisest of my ship’s captains, and the best warrior, too, now that Fare-Wide is dead. None the less, it is clear that you easily lose your courage when your body is afflicted, even when the injury is but a slight one.”

Orm replied: “It is so with me that I am a man who has lost his luck. Formerly, my luck was good, for I survived unscathed more dangers than most men face in the whole of their lives, and emerged from all of them with profit. But since I returned from the southland, everything has gone wrong for me. I have lost my gold chain, my sweetheart, and the man whose company pleased me best; and as for battle, it has come to such a pass that nowadays I can scarcely draw my sword without coming to some harm. Even when I advised you to smoke these English out of their church tower, nothing came of it.”

Thorkel said that he had seen unluckier men than Orm, but Orm shook his head sadly. He sent his men off plundering with Rapp in command, and remained himself in the town with Thorkel, spending most of the time sitting by himself and contemplating his woes.

One morning not long afterwards the bells in the church tower rang long and loud, and the people there sang psalms very zealously, causing the Vikings to shout up and ask them what all the fuss might be about. The people had no stones left to throw down at them, but they shouted back that it was now Whitsun, and that this day was for them a day of rejoicing.

The Vikings found this reply astonishing, and several of them asked the English what on earth they could have to rejoice about, and how they were placed as regards meat and ale. They replied that in that matter things were as they were; nevertheless, they would continue to rejoice, because Christ was in heaven and would surely help them.

Thorkel’s men roasted fat sheep over their fires, and the odor of roasting was wafted up to the tower, where all the people were hungry. The men cried up to them to be sensible and come down and taste their roast, but they paid no attention to this invitation and began shortly to sing afresh.

Thorkel and Orm sat munching together, listening to the singing from the tower.

“Their singing is hoarser than usual,” said Thorkel. “They are beginning to get dry in the throat. If their drink is finished, it cannot be long before they will have to come down.”

“Their plight is worse than mine, and yet they sing,” said Orm; and he contemplated a fine piece of mutton mournfully before putting it in his mouth.

“I think you would make a poor songster in any church tower,” said Thorkel.

    The same day, around dinnertime, Gudmund returned from a-viking inland. He was a large, merry man, with a face that still bore traces of old wounds he had received when a bear had clawed him; and he now rode into the camp, drunken and voluble, with a costly scarlet cloak flung across his shoulders, two heavy silver belts around his waist, and a broad grin in the center of his yellow beard.

This, he cried, as soon as he spied Thorkel, was a land after his own heart, wealthy beyond imagination; as long as he lived, he would never cease to be grateful to Thorkel for having tempted him to come here. He had plundered nine villages and a market, losing only four men; his horses were tottering beneath the weight of their booty, though only the choicest articles had been selected, and following them were ox-carts loaded with strong ale and other delicacies. It would be necessary in due course, he added, to get hold of several more ships, with plenty of cargo-room, to take home all the booty that they would, in a short time and with little expense of effort, have gathered in this excellent land.

“Besides all this,” he concluded, “I found a procession of people on the road—two Bishops and their suites. They said they were envoys from King Ethelred, so I offered them ale and bade them follow me here. The Bishops are old and ride slowly, but they should be here soon; though what they can want with us is not easy to guess. They say they are coming with an offer of peace from their King, but it is we, and not he, who shall decide when there is to be peace. I suspect that they also want to teach us Christianity; but we shall have little time to listen to their teaching with such fine plunder to be had everywhere.”

Thorkel roused himself at these tidings and said that priests were what he had most need of just now, for he was anxious to get his arm set properly; and Orm, too, was pleased at the prospect of being able to talk to a priest about his sore head.