Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [204]
“Never forget,” Port told his two young sons, as he pointed to the dune at Sarum, “when this place was taken, we were the lords of it and we fought bravely.”
This was true. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded for the year 552: “Cynric fought the Britons at a place called Searobyrg and put them to flight.” This was the dune, whose new Saxon name meant the place of battle. There the descendants of Petrus Porteus had fought bravely and lost; and the only survivor of the family, whose valour the Saxons admired, was honoured by them after the final surrender. It was because of this incident three centuries before that Port kept the last remnants of his nobility in the wergild which marked him out as, if not a thane, at least something more than an ordinary churl.
The old Porteus wealth was gone. The villa and most of its lands, were taken from them and given to the family of Aelfwald the thane. But not all. While the Saxons took the rich land on the lower slopes, the Porteus family was allowed to keep the bare land on the high ground; and here, in a small farmstead, sowing a little corn and pasturing the white sheep their ancestor had brought to the place, the descendants of Sarum’s ancient lords had lived for three hundred years.
But today, all this could change; and this was Port’s terrible dilemma. For today’s events had given him a chance to raise his family to a position it had not known in centuries.
“With the money from the wergild added to what I am holding,” he thought, “by sunset tomorrow I can be a thane.” And not for the first time that morning he shook his head in discouragement. Yes, it could certainly be done, but to do it, he must break his word: and the promise he had made to his sister Edith was a solemn one. Worse, now that the trial was over, he was about to have to confront her. If only there were some way out.
“Well, are you coming?”
The tall figure of Aelfwald was beside him. He was smiling broadly. The two men, so strangely contrasted, liked each other, and though Port’s secret ambition was to become a thane himself, he had no complaint to make about his lord.
Accompanying Aelfwald was a small retinue consisting of two of his sons, his daughter, a boy dressed in the habit of a novice monk, and a young man with a pinched, ageless face, whom Port recognised as the slave called Tostig.
Port nodded to them. It was clear from the grins on the faces of Aelfwald’s children that they regarded him as something of a joke, but he did not mind. The sons: Aelfric and Aelfstan – the repetition of the first syllable in a family’s name was a typically Saxon custom – were close in age. Aelfric, the eldest, was twenty-six; and the girl, Aelfgifu, was only eighteen. He bowed to her gravely. He did not dislike the cheerful, rather childish high spirits of the young men, but Aelfgifu’s wild, tomboy antics shocked his sense of propriety. It was of course this which gave the thane’s children such delight in teasing him.
Aelfwald looked at this little retinue contentedly. He was typical of the Saxon folk who had made the island their own: an easy-going, even-tempered man, with a mind that moved slowly, but steadily. He was not much given to argument or speculation, but once he had seized an idea that he believed in, he could be massively obstinate in defending it. The fiery Celtic peoples, who had held out in Wales, despised what they saw as the slow-witted Saxon settlers who had taken their lands; but their contempt was not necessarily returned, and the two communities had long since lived on the island with only sporadic outbreaks of violence over the border.
Aelfwald had good reason to take a comfortable view of life. The thane possessed estates in several parts of Wessex, including a fine area of woodland down at the coast. His eldest son was married and he had already been able to give him