Wulfric the Weapon Thane - Charles W. Whistler (best affordable ebook reader TXT) 📗

PREFACE.

A word may be needed with regard to the sources from which this story of King Eadmund's armour bearer and weapon thane have been drawn. For the actual presence of such a close attendant on the king at his martyrdom on Nov. 20, 870 A.D. we have the authority of St. Dunstan, who had the story from the lips of the witness himself.

But as to the actual progress of events before the death of the king, the records are vague and imperfect. We are told that, after the defeat at Thetford, the king had intended to seek safety in the church, probably at Framlingham, where the royal household was, but was forced to hide, and from his hiding place was dragged before Ingvar the Danish leader, and so slain.

The two local legends of the "king's oak" in Hoxne woods, and of the "gold bridge", may fill in what is required to complete the story.

The former, identifying a certain aged oak as that to which the king was bound, has been in a measure corroborated by the discovery in 1848 of what may well have been a rough arrow point in its fallen trunk; while the fact that, until the erection of the new bridge at Hoxne in 1823, no newly-married couple would cross the "gold bridge" on the way to church, for the reasons given in the story, seems to show that the king's hiding place may indeed have been beneath it as the legend states. If so, the flight from Thetford must have been most precipitate, and closely followed.

There are two versions of the story of Lodbrok the Dane and Beorn the falconer. That which is given here is from Roger of Wendover. But in both versions the treachery of one Beorn is alleged to have been the cause of the descent of Ingvar and Hubba on East Anglia.

These chiefs and their brother Halfden, and Guthrum, are of course historic. Their campaign in England is hard to trace through the many conflicting chronicles, but the broad outlines given by the almost contemporary Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, supplemented with a few incidents recorded in the Heimskringla of Sturleson as to the first raid on Northumbria by Ingvar, are sufficient for the purposes of a story that deals almost entirely with East Anglia.

The legend of the finding of the head of the martyred king is given in the homily for November 20 of the Anglo-Saxon Sarum Breviary, and is therefore of early date. It may have arisen from some such incident as is given here.

Details of the death of Bishop Humbert are wanting. We only know that he was martyred at about the same time as the king, or perhaps with him, and that his name is remembered in the ancient kalendars on the same day. For describing his end as at his own chapel, still standing at South Elmham, the fate of many a devoted priest of those times might be sufficient warrant.

As to the geography of the East Anglian coast, all has changed since King Eadmund's days, with the steady gaining of alluvial land on sea at the mouth of the once great rivers of Yare and Waveney. Reedham and Borough were in his time the two promontories that guarded the estuary, and where Yarmouth now stands were sands, growing indeed slowly, but hardly yet an island even at "low-water springs". Above Beccles perhaps the course of the Waveney towards Thetford has altered little in any respect beyond the draining of the rich marshland along its banks, and the shrinking of such tributaries as the Hoxne or Elmham streams to half-dry rivulets.

With a few incidental exceptions, the modern spelling of place names has been adopted in these pages. No useful purpose would be served by a reproduction of what are now more or less uncouth if recognizable forms of the well-known titles of town and village and river.

C. W. W.


CHAPTER I. HOW LODBROK THE DANE CAME TO REEDHAM.

Elfric, my father, and I stood on our little watch tower at Reedham, and looked out over the wide sea mouth of Yare and Waveney, to the old gray walls of the Roman Burgh on the further shore, and the white gulls cried round us, and the water sparkled in the fresh sea breeze from the north and east, and the bright May-time sun shone warmly on us, and our hearts went out to the sea and its freedom, so that my father said:

"Once again is the spirit of Hengist stirring in me, and needs must that you and I take ship, and go on the swan's path even as our forefathers went; let us take the good ship somewhere--anywhere to be on the sea again. What say you, son Wulfric?"

And at that I was very glad, for I had longed for that word of his. For never, since I could remember, was a time when I knew not all that a boy might learn, for his years, of sea and the seaman's craft; and the sea drew me, calling me as it were with its many voices, even as it drew my father.

Yet, all unlike Hengist and his men, we sailed but for peaceful gain, and very rich grew Elfric, the thane of Reedham; for ours was the only ship owned by English folk on all our East Anglian shores, and she brought us wealth year by year, as we sailed to Humber and Wash northwards, and Orwell and Thames to the south, as seemed best for what merchandise we had for sale or would buy. But, more than all, my father and I alike sailed for the love of ship and sea, caring little for the gain that came, so long as the salt spray was over us, and we might hear the hum of the wind in the canvas, or the steady roll and click of the long oars in the ship's rowlocks, and take our chance of long fights with wind and wave on our stormy North Sea coasts.

So we went down to the shipyard, under the lee of Reedham Hill, and found old Kenulf our pilot, and with him went round our stout Frisian ship that my father had bought long ago, and at once bade him get ready for sailing as soon as might be. And that was a welcome order to Kenulf and our crew also; for well do the North Folk of East Anglia love the sea, if our Saxon kin of the other kingdoms have forgotten for a while the ways of their forbears.

Not so welcome was our sailing to my mother, who must sit at home listening to the song of the breezes and the roll of breakers, with her heart stirred to fear for us at every shift of wind and change of tide. And fair Eadgyth, my sister, beautiful with the clear beauty of a fair-haired Saxon lady, shared in her fears also, though I think that she believed that no storm could rage more fiercely than her father and brother and their crew could ride through in safety. Once she had sailed with us in high summer time to London, and so she held that she knew well all the ways of the ship and sea; fearing them a little, maybe.

Yet there was another dread in the heart of my mother, for this is what she said:

"What of the Danes, Elfric, my husband? Surely there is risk--aye, and great risk--of falling into their hands."

Thereat my father laughed easily, and answered:

"Not to an East Anglian ship now; for they have kept the pact we have made with them. And they watch not our shores for ships, but the long Frisian and Frankish coasts. There need be no fear of them."

So my mother was reassured, and in a fortnight's time we had gathered a mixed cargo, though no great one; and sailed, with a shift of wind to the southwest, into the Wash, and so put into the king's haven on its southern shore, where we would leave our goods with a merchant whom we knew.

On the second day after we came the wind shifted to the eastward, and then suddenly to the northeast, and blew a gale, so that we bided in the haven till it was over. For though it was not so heavy that we could not have won through it in open water with little harm, it was of no use risking ship and men on a lee shore for naught.

Our friend, the merchant, kept us with him gladly, and there we heard the last news of the Danish host, with whom we had made peace two years since; for nowadays that news had become of the first interest to every man in all England; though not yet in the right way. For we had not yet learnt that England must be truly one; and so long as he himself was unharmed, little cared an East Anglian what befell Mercian or Northumbrian, even as Wessex or Sussex cared for naught but themselves. Wherefore, all we longed to know was that the Danish host was not about to fall on us, being employed elsewhere.

We had found gain rather than hurt by their coming, for we had, as I say, made peace with them, and, moreover, sold them horses. Then they had honestly left our coasts, and had gone to York, and thereafter to Nottingham. Now Northumbria was theirs, and Mercia was at their feet. And now again we learnt that they bided in peace at York, and we were content.

Three days it blew, and then the gale was spent; though the sea still ran high and swift. So we bade farewell to our friend the merchant and set sail, and if the passage homewards was rough, it was swifter than we had hoped.

So it came to pass that we reached the wide inlet of our haven at the Yare's mouth too soon for the tide to take us in over the sands which grow and shift every year, and must needs drop anchor in the roads and wait, with home in sight, hill and church and houses clear and sharp against the afternoon sky after rain; while past us the long surges the storm had raised raced in over half-hidden sands, and broke in snow-white foam along the foot of the sand dunes of the shore, sending the spindrift flying up and inland over their low crests.

Mostly the boats would have been out to meet us, and maybe to tow us in, sparing our crew a little; but today no boat might come, for the seas were too heavy over the bar, so that it would have been death to any man foolish enough to try to reach us; and we looked for none. So as the stout ship wallowed and plunged at her anchors--head to wind and sea, and everything, from groaning timbers to song of wind-curved rigging and creak of swinging yard, seeming to find a voice in answer to the plunge and wash of the waves, and swirl and patter of flying spray over the high bows--we found what shelter we might under bulwarks and break of fore deck, and waited.

My father and I sat on the steersman's bench aft, not heeding the showers of spray that reached us now and then even there, and we watched the tide rising over the sand banks, and longed for home and warm fireside,