Short Stories & Tall Tales

SAXON EVENING, VIKING DAWN

The untold testimony of Rose, the first lady of Hans Borough

I have set down all I can for you, the future citizens of my home village. My hope is that you will find some solace in the founding of our community and the part that peace played, rising as it did like a dove from the violence that consumed the seven kingdoms. Codex 19.4.870 – Bodleian library

I was just a girl when my father said we should load our worldly goods onto the back of the waggon and leave our village. On a dull, rainy morning, the mule was hitched and we threaded our way out of the marshes. My father, Edgar, said we could no longer wait. He said the Mercians would never come to our aid. He said that when the storm comes you run for shelter you don't stand and defy the lightening.

My mother, the beautiful Rosamunde would have stayed for her parents and her friends but father said we must learn to be pitiless if we wished to live beyond the next few days. Our friends prayed to the Christian god, the one that had come across with Augustine but father said it would do no good. Others cried out for the old gods to protect them; the ones who had been swept aside so easily. I knew little about gods only people and the need to keep living.

Our people, the Angles had worked this land since the time of the Romans when King Vortigern invited us across the sea to fight with his armies to quell local unrest. But father was not a warrior, he had never fought and saw no glory in it. Only shame. He had taught us, that's me and my brother Wilf, that real power lay in the earth and our weapons should be the plough and the scythe.

I remember clinging to the back of our waggon where we had piled everything we could carry and watched the villagers, our neighbours, going about their daily lives as if the black smoke rising beyond the woods were just rain clouds. Wilf said they would all be dead before night fall.

King Guthrum's Great Heathen Army had hit the shores of Anglia like hammers destroying everything in their path. Howling berserkers from Valhalla, scourging the earth with fire and fury spreading fear all along the East coast from Holy Island to Kent. Thousands of Danish warriors swept away entire villages merciless and unforgiving like Noah's Flood. Men, women, children and livestock were put to the sword for no other reason than they were there. Bells sounded the alarm then fell silent as the churches burned and villagers fought and perished.

The entire eastern seaboard was burning now. The Anglo culture, that had flourished here for nearly four hundred years was reduced to fields of ash and bone. The Wolves of Dene devoured and howled until the heavens shook and the land turned red. The Great Army swept inland like a furious storm, overtaking the slow and the weak. But father took us up onto the High Green Roads that had crossed the country since before the birth of Christ, before even the sundering of the coastline from the Eastern lands we had come from. The longest Green Road, the Ridgeway took us south west and from our lofty position we could see marauding Dene and pillars of ugly smoke where villages used to be.

My brother was almost a man and so would sometimes take the reins while I still neither woman or child cooked and sewed with mother. Father and Wilf would hunt and trap as much as they could, although pickings were meagre, we managed to stay alive. The going was slow but our resolve, our fear and our mule were strong. When we camped, we took turns to keep watch and when riders were nearby we froze like squirrels on a tree. But some evenings when I looked back I could see the glow of a fire. Someone else was up on the ridge, following us. Father said we should ignore them, what could we do anyway?

In time the road descended to run along the side of the River Temesis. There was a crossing point where we came upon the People of Gara, an old Saxon family who had put down roots where the river could be forded where they fished and farmed the Downs. We were welcomed by Gara's three sons who offered shelter and sustenance. They said the Dene had swept past further south. I remember father telling them that it was only a matter time before they came down the river itself. I remember him urging the brothers to bring their people with us but they declined. I wept at their fate and their defiance but they remained steadfast. Gara himself, now a greybeard in his declining years, blind and frail now came to the market square where he addressed his people in a weak but authoritative voice. He urged the entire community, some fifty souls to listen to us and to leave before it was too late. But he was met with a stubborn resolve to entrust their lives to the great Christian God. There was little more we could do.