The Winter of the Danes

I headed due north that first day, skirting the edge of the Danelaw and keeping to the Mercian side. Mercia was all but a Danish fiefdom in those days but still Saxon enough to offer a mort less danger than the lands to the east. I made a cold camp outside Heoretford that night. The impulse that had driven thus far was still hot and bright in my breast but I needed more. The following morning I rode into the town as the gates were opened for the new day. The townsfolk stared, but not too closely. It was obvious I was come from the war with my shield and great axe slung on one of the led horses and a long dagger at my hip. I'm told I was fair of face in those far-off days of youth but that day my face was as thunder.

Townsfolk and farmers respect the warrior but do not wish his company unless the enemy is at the gates. This town was no different and I could almost hear the collective sigh of relief when I rode on. I had hoped for news but there was none. The Inn was crowded with drovers come from Warwickshire. They knew nothing of the Danish army that I had not seen myself. They walked carefully around me and said nothing untoward but spat when I said I was from Wessex.

These days, now that Ælfred is King of all the English Saxons, Wessex and Mercia are as one. It was not so in the days of turmoil. There were many in Mercia who resented him then, even if he had married their own King's daughter and come to their aid on more than one occasion. Some saw him as prolonging the wars. The Danes came like the plague and, like the plague, they passed on. Of course, it was easier to get rid of the Danes. All you had to do was pay them. As long as you could keep paying, they would pass. For Ælfred and Wessex, the days of danegeld were over. Now he paid them in a different coin - death.

The autumn was come to Mercia and with it foul weather. I struggled for the next few days through sheeting rain, driven hard by a blustery west wind. The tracks turned to streams and the winterbournes filled and became rivers again. Leaves snowed thick upon the trackways and my woollen cloak weighed heavy round my shoulders. The horses and I were all thoroughly miserable as we plodded, heads bowed, ever north and east.

The country changes after Heoretford. The hills disappear and the woods that cover much of the country to the south and west die out. What is left is heath land and vile fen, where strange lights flicker in the night. It's said these lights are the souls of the unshriven. I know not, nor wish I to discover. I crossed the Cam and came to the land of the North Folk. Angles, cousins to the Saxons, they speak our tongue with a queer lilt. I was now in the Danelaw.

There are some that suppose that only Danes live within the Danelaw. It isn't so. Most are Angles in the northern part and East Saxons in the south, in the country above London. Ruled by Danes they may be, but they are English still. They have no reason to love their new masters. They are little better than slaves but they live, at least.

My plan, such as it was, was to find a local with a knowledge of Theodford Camp. I reasoned that if I could pinpoint Ivar's quarters, I could get to the women under cover of night. The Danes wouldn't be alert, safe here in their heartland. surprise would be on my side and if challenged, well, I had my Danish.

We don't look so different from them; their clothes may have been a little different but that could be easily remedied. Now they had been here some years, even that distinction had begun to blur. At night and at distance, I reckoned I could pass for a Dane. I had just to get the women out of the camp and back to the horses. We would be away and gone before daylight and, with God's help, back into Wessex in four days, five at the outside. Truth to tell it sounded too simple even to my own credulous ears. And so it proved to be.

The first obstacle was to find someone who knew the camp. Theodford Camp sprawled upon the heath, a reeking scar on a rotten landscape. Everywhere was mud, thick and glutinous. A Danish army is not noted for its tidiness any more than for its mercy. The place was like a midden, no, it was a midden. I could discern no order in the camp. Man and beast conspired to produce a stinking chaos. Only God knew how the plague stayed away. The land in those parts is flat and open. There was no hill to provide a vantage point and the woods were sad, scrawny things, providing little cover now the leaves were gone.

I made my reconnaissance in the dawn, crawling through sodden bracken and couch grass. I was soaked to the skin before I got half way to the palings that surrounded the camp. These were designed more to keep the livestock in than to keep any invader out. I discovered nothing of use for my efforts. I found a slight depression in the heath to lie up in during the day. From there I could watch any comings and goings from the camp. There were precious few.

The only building of significance was a hall at the centre. Not grand enough to be a true Great Hall, it still doubtless served that function for I could see the warriors gathering there as dusk began to fall. I dragged myself back to my camp in the thickest part of the woods thereabout. I was cold, wet and disheartened. As far as I could tell, all within the camp lived there. There were no day-labourers I could woo to point out Ivar's hut to me or say where hostages might be held. As I made my bed of sodden ferns and bracken, all I could do was pray that the morrow might bring hope.

At least it brought an end to the rain. A watery sun rose with the dawn as I crept once more to my lookout place. The wind too had died.  The camp woke slowly. The sun must have been up two hours and more before the first bleary Dane emerged from the poor Great Hall. It was then that I noticed the girl. She was a skinny, slatternly thing but she was outside the palings. She was rolling a small water butt down to the bourne that skirted the southern side of the camp. It was the kind of stream we call a winterbourne - dry in summer but full throated now with the autumn rain. I guessed it drained into that nightmare of swamp and brackish ponds called the fens. I hadn't noticed it before from where I lay. The land was flat and the cut of this ditch could not be discerned from ground level. If it hadn't been for the girl I wouldn't have seen it at all.

She looked to be an Angle from her dress. I didn't think there would be many Danish menials in the camp. I slithered over the wet couch towards her. She didn't see me coming, intent as she was on filling her barrel. Slipping quickly over the edge of the bank, I was suddenly beside her. I covered her mouth with my hand to stop her crying out.

"No, master," she cried in Danish, "Please, no more. I am hurt." I hushed her with a gesture. She couldn't have been more than twelve or thirteen. The bloodstains on her skirts told their own story. "Quiet, girl!" I murmured, for sound travels far in still air. She gasped. "You're Saxon, I took you for one of them." She almost spat this last.

"I am Hereward, son of Edmond of Sceaftensbyrig and King Ælfred's man," I told her. By the effect this had I might have well said I had just fallen from the moon or hailed from farthest Tartary. Her eyes grew round and her mouth opened like a trout catching mayflies.

"Wessex?" she said at last, "You've come from Wessex?" I nodded my assent. "Great merciful God has heard us! Where is your army? Are you a scout for the King's host? Will you kill them all?" The questions were tumbling from her, words scrambling over each other in their rush to be heard first. I held up my hand for silence.

"I come alone," I said and her faced collapsed in misery. She made to turn from me and I grasped her arms and shook her. With a weary gesture she began to remove her skirt.

"What are you doing? In Christ's sweet name, I mean you no harm."

"Dane or Saxon, it's all one to me now."

"I want your help, girl, not your cunny."

"And what help can I give?"

"Let me explain."

And explain I did. We were crouched at the stream's edge, out of sight from the camp as I told her my story. She still had that mooncalf look in her eyes but I could see she was taking it all in. When I mentioned Ivar's name she looked terrified and began to sob. I gentled her with my hand upon her hair, as one would quiet a foal. After a little, her chest ceased heaving and she told me all that had befallen her.

Her name, she told me, was Beate. The Danes had taken her that summer with her younger sister from a village on the Medway, far to the south. She was 18 years old, her sister three years younger. On the first night of her captivity, Ivar had taken her to his bed. She had been too old for the Boneless man. He had stripped her and, on seeing her forlorn little bush of hair, howled like a rabid dog. He raped her then with the hilt of his dagger before casting her, naked, to his men. Since then, they had used her every night. She had fallen pregnant but miscarried three weeks before. I thought her lucky to be alive; doubtless she thought differently.

Ivar had taken her sister in her stead. The child had died after a couple of months. Ivar had hurt her until she bled. The bleeding had never stopped. A single tear welled her in her eyes as she remembered. I was moved beyond tears, beyond words. I snarled and spat and cursed his name to Hell. And then I swore a deep and solemn oath. Ivar would die by my hand; there would be no mercy.