[Norman Conquest 02] Winter of Discontent (43 page)

“
As to your question about who would fight William in the face of the risk of excommunication, I say e
nough would do so,”
replied
Edwold. “
These i
nclud
e
some amongst the clergy. Harold and his army fought under anathema at Caldbec Hill and it was not carried out. I doubt th
at the p
ope would excommunicate the king of Denmark
- and e
ven if he did the Danes wouldn’t care. They’re mainly pagans. We will see what we will see, but like Leofric I don’t intend to raise my voice to call for support for either side. But I will ride and with all my men to defend our lands against
any
who threaten us. Norman, Dane or English. Others will make other choices.”

Alan inclined his head in acknowledgement and
asked,
“How can so many be so free with breaking their oaths?”

“Very few are, as very few have made oaths t
o
break,” replied Edwold. Seeing Alan’s look of puzzlement he explained
,
“When you received your land from King William, you gave homage for it, did you not? You bound yourself to be William’s man, right or wrong. In England there were several hundred King’s Thegns who held land directly from the king and made oath to support him. Others, such as myself, hold land in
landboc
. We own it. We pay taxes on it. When we die our family pays a Heriot to continue to hold it, but we hold it as of right. We
may
commend ourselves to a greater thegn and obtain the benefit of his interest, but are free to choose which and to change
as we wish
. That thegn, the
ealdorfrea
, has no claim on us for military or financial support. Our only obligations are to the country, effectively to the Crown. Those who are not thegns- cheorls, sokemen and the like- may similarly own their land in
landboc
, or may hold it on
laen
for a period of time
- u
sually three lifetimes. In return they either pay rent in money or goods or perform services on the owner’s land. They are free to leave the land and take up other land from another owner. Cottars simply hold a cottage and a small garden plot in return for labour services.

“Neither myself nor my
ealdorfrea
made any oath to William. We do not, to use the Norman terms, owe either homage or fealty to him. We also do not owe homage or fealty to our
ealdorfrea
, so even if
he
does have such liability to either the king or some other noble, I do not. That is why many men see themselves as free to join those who oppose King William. In doing so, they act on what they see is their best interests or where their honour lies and are not foresworn by doing so.”

Alan frowned, trying to absorb what was to him a difficult concept. “That may well be the case, although the English earls
did
swear
formal
fealty to William in return for keeping their own lands, in the Norman manner. Whether they understood the basis and effect of the oaths that they swore at that time I know not, but if they oppose him they will find that what a lord gives he can also take away, at whim. As for the rest, those who oppose William will feel the might of his displeasure irrespective of what they see as being their legal situation. William isn’t going to make the distinctions you just explained. Those who support William will be rewarded. For those like yourself, well, we’ll see whether or not treading a path of neutrality is possible. For the sake of all of us, I hope that it is.”

*
*
*
*

Alan called a muster of all his own men at arms in
Tendring
Hundred, held at the New Hall. The political situation was explained to them and that
if they marched north
they would likely be required to take to the field against the Aetheling and the young earls, or at the very least
against their allies the Danes.

The response was less than enthusiastic, although the several of the leaders of the men made it clear that where Alan led they would follow
“
and kick in the gates of
h
ell
itself
and kill Lucifer himself if needed
”
as one man extravagantly explained. After the raid two years
previously
, nobody had any concerns against killing Danes- a number of the soldiers had been recruited from the displaced refugees from villages destroyed and looted by the Danes. The atrocities visited on the villages on the
south
side of the Coln River, particularly in
Lexden Hundred and Winstree Hundred, made certain that every man, woman and child would resist
the Danes
with every fib
r
e in their body and support the man who had given them victory on th
at
last occasion.

Brand made it clear
to his men
that he expected the huscarles, as professional soldiers, to follow their orders. Apart from himself, five other huscarles agreed to join an expedition force to be led by Hugh, as did three of the men in Hugh’s garrison at Great Oakley. Together with Roger
,
Baldwin and Warren from the garrison at Staunton-on-Wye that would allow Alan to meet his feudal quota, although he was sure that the king would
be less than happy that he was
n
’
t sending his full strength.
However,
Alan’s main concern was in protecting his estates and the villages of Tendring Hundred, and since the king had refused to build a navy to challenge the Norsemen that meant that the locals could expect no assistance in the event that the Danes descended in force. By the time that any relieving force arrived the Danes would have slipped back to their ships, leaving behind them villages of smoldering ruins populated by corpses.

Alan had, several months
previously,
on
receiving
warning of danger from Bjorn, taken his own steps to protect what he had. As well as increasing the tempo of training and practice
of his troops
, he had also ensured that each man in the fyrd from his villages was properly armed, equipped and had at least
the
basic training that would give them a chance of survival against a professional warrior. He had increased the membership of the fyrd to include
every
fit free man, and many of the more willing lads, in each of his villages. In addition to a
linden-wood
shield that each man had himself made to a common pattern and the
seax
fighting knife each carried as of right as a free man, they had been provided with helmets of metal made in the English style and spears. Some wore byrnies of
chain-mail
for protection
and carried swords-
these taken from the Danes in their failed raid two years before. Most of the others wore byrnies mad
e of scale-
armour
of
boiled leather, with overlapping plates. These provided reasonable protection and, compared to
chain-mail
where each ring is riveted and joined to four others, the
leather
scale-
armo
ur was cheap and quick to make.

Alan’s armourer Gimm and his apprentice, with the assistance of the village smiths and their apprentices, had worked long and hard for sever
al months. So had the fletchers- o
ver
3,000
cloth-yard arrows, each
39
inches long, metal tipped and with flights of goose feathers, were sitting in barrels for use if required.

Not least amongst Alan’s preparations had been the work performed on the two longships
which
he still retained after
their
captur
e
two years before. After sitting neglected on a mudbank on Alresford Creek near Thorrington for a year, they had been careened, suspect timbers replaced and recaulked with a mixture of moss soaked in tar hammered into the joints between the overlapping two inch thick planks that formed the strakes of the clinker-built hull. Both were typical
snekke
, with a length of about sixty feet and beam of about 9 feet. Being Danish ships they had a very shallow draught of less than 2 feet
when unladen
. If a man could stand with his knees covered in water, the ship would float. Norwegian ships were built with a slightly deeper draught, coming from a land of deep fiords rather than shallow sand flats.

The oars, ten a side with two rowers per oar, had been checked and several replaced. The
oiled leather rowlocks for the oars
had all been replaced. The masts, some thirty feet high and carrying a sail nearly forty feet wide
,
had been checked and new
woolen
sails made. The shields had been removed from the ship sides as these were only used on land. Alan had
also
installed a ballista in the bows of each ship.

Bjorn, the captain of the
Zeelandt
, now on the northern run from Narvik to Oostend, had arranged for two experienced Norwegian longship captains to join Alan’s service
,
Sven Knutson and Lars Erikson. Both were nephews of Bjorn, who had attested to their ability
and
claim
ed,
“
T
hey can use their ‘sun stones’ and sail anywhere, and each have led nearly as
many raids as I have
.
” Each ship had its Norwegian captain, five English sailors to handle the steering oar and the sails, forty rowers, who doubled as swordsmen
,
and ten trained longbowmen.
There were also
five men to crew the ballistae. The ships were the
Havørn
, the ‘Sea Eagle’,
and the
Alekrage
,
the ‘
Cormorant
’
.
The crews had been training together for close on a month and were starting to have the instinctive understanding and a
ction needed in any situation.

When not in use the ships were hidden under a long row of weeping
-
willow trees on the bank of Alresford Creek, which acted as a living camouflage net.

Alan was again very angry with
Edsel, the King’s Reeve at Brightlingsea, who had once again refused to participate in the communal defence activity despite the very important strategic location of the village on the north shore of the approaches to Colchester. The men of Brightlingsea had been noticeable by their absence at the victory two years before at Wivenhoe
.
Alan had made it clear that this time, if they did not support his efforts, they would stand alone if the Danes attacked their village. Indeed, he was so angry as to almost be prepared to burn
the village
himself.

*
*
 
*
*

Two days later Alan stood near the steering oar of
Havørn
as the ship was
rowed quickly down Alresford Creek, followed closely by
Alekrage
. The captain was
Sven Knutson
,
who was acting as helmsman. The Norwegian, short and stocky for a Viking but possessing the usual long blond hair and beard and piercing blue eyes, was standing balanced on widely-spread feet. Alan allowed his gaze to rest on
Alekrage
, admiring the simple beauty of
her
lines and the precision with which the
ten
oars
a side
dipped and rose as one.
Lars Erikson,
Alekrage
’s captain
and a huge bear of a man, was clearly visible at the stern
of his ship
as he barked out instructions. Sven was a taciturn man, not given to idle chatter and his shouted instructions were as brief as possible.
Lars took a different approach to managing his crew-
volubly
chastising any infraction.

Looking forward
a
long the length of
Havørn
Alan was surprised at how crowded the ship was. Forty men were pulling steadily on the oars. They faced towards the rear of the ship, the tw
o rows of oarsmen occupying two-
thirds of the width of the ship and leaving a narrow aisle down the centre. The small ballista, unique to Alan’s ships and specially built by him, occupied most of the small space in the bow. Ten archers found what space they could, mainly sitting in the aisle with wet bottoms from the inch or so of water that had either seeped in through the caulking or was left ove
r from the last shower of rain.