Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [223]
“Bairn-ni-kel!”
The warriors paused and looked up. His order puzzled them: do not kill the bairns: yet it was not unusual to kill children on a raiding party.
“Bairn-ni-kel.” His voice was a deep roar so that the words sounded more like: Bar . . . Barn-ni-kel.
The heavy-set Viking marched across to where the children were standing. He stared around the carnage with a look of disgust. Then he allowed his large hand to fall on the head of Port’s elder son. It was clear that he was determined that the children should be spared. He gestured the two axemen away impatiently. They hesitated, but since he was known as a fearsome warrior, they reluctantly obeyed.
From the far end of the hollow, several voices began to laugh. It was not the first time that the gruff-voiced warrior had stopped such killing of children.
“Look,” one of the men joked, “it’s old Barn-ni-kel.” For similar incidents had already given him this nickname which his descendants would carry for many generations.
Now, under his watchful eye, they looted what they could, but the children were spared.
A few minutes later, when the marauders had left, Port’s two children stared at the bodies around them; then, not knowing what else to do, they climbed into the sheep pens to seek comfort where the familiar woollen bodies of the sheep kept them warm.
The journey of the people of Wilton lasted for five days. As they passed near other settlements, like the hill town of Shaftesbury, they were joined by others anxious to escape the Vikings. But as the days passed and no attack was made upon them, some of the farmers began to leave the cortège and seek shelter in the woods and valleys, reasoning that they were as safe there as in an armed camp which the Vikings might decide to attack. Aelfwald tried to dissuade them but Earldorman Wulfhere admonished him:
“Let them go. Fewer mouths to feed.”
The thane’s own people from Sarum however, stayed together.
The little party passed the southern tip of the great forest of Selwood and gradually the landscape began to change. There were more marshes and soon, Aelfwald knew, they would encounter the rich, red earth of England’s south-west. It was on the fifth day that they passed by the site of the ancient abbey of Glastonbury – where, it was said by the monks, there was a tomb of the legendary warrior Arthur, who had fought in pre-Saxon times. Soon after they passed this Wulfhere sent out scouts.
“My information is that the king is somewhere near,” he told the thane.
The next morning they found him.
The camp of King Alfred at the place called Athelney was a modest and hastily erected collection of tents, huts and reed shelters set on a parcel of land protected on one side by a hill and the other by a marsh. Though it was unlikely to be attacked, the site was cold and damp. Each day, small parties of men had been arriving as word filtered through the south that the king was there; they were still too few to accomplish much, but each of them was devoted to the cause of the beleaguered Wessex king.
The arrival of Wulfhere, Aelfwald and the other thanes was an important addition to their strength, and they were taken immediately to the king’s tent.
Alfred of Wessex was unremarkable to look at. He was of medium height and delicate health. In his youth he had suffered from piles and for most of his adult life he was subject to a nervous sense of his own poor health that came close to hypochondria. But whatever his psychological problems, it was his intense spirit and determination that carried him through and made him a remarkable monarch by the standards of any time.
When the earldorman and thanes came into his presence he embraced each one of them, and it seemed to Aelfwald, as the king gazed at him with his earnest pale blue eyes, that Alfred took his hand with a special fervour.
“You came. Faithful friends.” The thane was shocked to see that his blue eyes were sad, almost beseeching. “Most of my thanes probably think I’m dead,” he explained. “There has been no defence anywhere, you know: none at all.