Les Saxons dans la paix et la guerre

The Mead hall Coal and young Cadda, two thegns from downriver, have come early to the fortified hall. Their two wheezing huntceorls carry a huge stag on their shoulders, a gift of venison for the lord's table. They announce themselves at the timber gate, which swings open. Gladness for their gift fills the mead-hall. They trudge up the muddy ramp toward it. They announce themselves again at the rune-carved oaken door: proud words, proud welcome.


Inside, the hall slaves untie the thegns' wool cloaks -colorful shoulder-draped blankets, now dark and wet from the trip. The hunt ceorls untie their own hide cloaks, worn skinside out. Coal removes his helmet and Caddie pulls the twigs from his long brown hair; the ceorls remove their bell shaped snoods. All the men unwrap leather legbands, crusted with snow, from their plain trousers. They swap their leather shoes for baggy woolen soccs and accept fresh gray tunics -long, with gold-scalloped hems at knee level- and hand their weapons to the hall-ceorl who governs the hall slaves.


The timber hall is warmed by a fire pit running down its length. The pit is surrounded by a long "U"-shaped table. Around it, many benches are fixed to the floor, each one carved with runes from the theod that sent it here in submission. Coel and Cadda take their bench -not at the head of the table, where the lord's wife will serve his gesiths, nor not at the ends, where slaves bring chicken broth to tired ceorls, but in the middle. They drink spiced beer and praise the trophies (Pictish spears, elk antlers, an unusually wide browed skull) that adorn the walls. The lord's daughter, his sister-in-law, and his niece heat up cheese curd pastries in the fire pit, and ask about distant news and relatives.


The lord's red-braided daughter wears a simple green gown with silver hems, fastened by a saucer-shaped broach at each shoulder and cinched at the waist by a small belt hidden in its folds. The sister-in-law and niece come from a treaty marriage and have the strange ways of Kentish women. They wear Irish linen gowns under Saxon wool gowns, under blue-dyed shawls, clasped with cruciform broaches from Gaul. Both thegns and noble wives glint with jewelry: armbands, bracelets, buckles, breeches, and gift-rings on many fingers (the more rings, the more rewards). The women hang silver spoons and amber beads from their belts, and the Kentish wife hangs a crystal, to see her cynn's future.


At the doorway, an old heorthgeneat leans on his spear watching the men and women. Though crippled, and always drunk, he is still fast against troublemakers.


The welsh slave girl who tends the fire has a broken nose. Coef reminds his brother that, in Welsh courts, they allow love-talking -the women are not safe from flirting guests, even with husbands nearby! The Kentish daughter chastely picks away a curd from Cadda's drooping brown mustache, and another from his braids.
Coel, Cadda, and the ceorls drink silently, looking around. It is good to see fine things after a long, cold trip.


By day's end, ealdormen, thegns, and ceorls fill the hall. The deer is cleaned, cooked, and served with jelly. Some ceorls bring fennel and trout to grill, and the lord's wife pours mead after each boast, until it is half gone (but better to serve it at at once than to cheat guests with weak beer or berry wine). By midnight, the men cannot pronounce their praise-words, and many ceorls are snoring.


A song would serve well before bed, but this lord's scop was killed last year by a nithing. Cadda pulls a harp from his shoulder bag and sings staves he has practiced:
“Widsuth the Wanderer saw many mead-halls (the Scyldng's, the Volsung's, the Roman King's) but saw none so fine as this…”

After the song, the lord smiles, handing Cadda a silver ring, and the drunken men struggle to their feet in praise. Others try to sing, but the lord discretely yawns. Guests trudge off to the sleeping-benches that ring the walls. Two ealdormen stay up at chess, then draughts. A clutch of ceorls roll long, wand-shaped dice.


Tomorrow there may be a hunt or a swimming contest, if the snow lets up. If not, the warriors will wrestle, bolstered by boasts, trying to pull each other down by their belts. Then, another night of drinking by the fire. But soon the Glory-month approaches, and men already plan the first raid of spring.


The Raid Saxons raid by land, like other folk, but they are more feared for raiding by sea. Their targets are commercial shipping, harbor and river towns that have stores of goods and coins, and whatever Roman sites are still unpfundered. The rise of Christian monasteries provides them with new targets, both rich and defenseless. A boat can enrich the cynn that shares it, through raiding and trading.


Sea raiders hug the coasts by day and beach their boats at night. If they sail too near to land, they may be seen and met on the beach by soldiers; if they go too far from land they may lose their bearings, especially if hit by a squall. With luck, they might meet another boat of raiders or traders on the same route. They will close alongside the second boat; with their ceorls rowing, a thegn steering, and their leader and his heorthwerod crouched in the forepeak (the fighting platform at the front of the boat), ready to swarm over the target's sides.


At their destination, the raiders steal horses near the landing site and raid deep into enemy territory. If opposed, they dismount and release the horses. A man is less likely to flee if he cannot ride, and if they win the battle they can always find more mounts. The raiders rarely find a coin hoard, but they can make off with furs, weapons, small luxuries like mirrors or candleholders, and yearling livestock or preadolescent slaves. They row quickly on the way home, and may even risk sailing in the dark, for fear that their laden boat will be caught by other Saxons like themselves.


War The theod is at war. The cyning plans to carve new land from Britain, so he sends gerefas to each folkmoot to muster the fyrd, called only for defense or for invasion. The news spreads from hearth to hearth within a day; by the next morning, all free men between 15 and 60 have grabbed spear and shield, kissed cynn goodbye, and reported to their ealdormen, who will lead them. Soon a great column of ceorls is tramping down the gravel of a formerly Roman road, heading west with the sun. It is a river flood that takes chickens, squealing suckling pigs, and all the able-bodied men from every stead it passes.


The army forms on a ridgeline to await its foes. Allied Lynings and aethelings, and their ealdormen, have joined the fight. They ride horses, the better to see and exhort their troops, but before the clash of arms they will dismount -to be dressed in coats of chain down to their thighs, don polished helms with hawkish face-guards, and unsheathe rune-carved swords. Beside each noble is his heorthwerod or hearth-guard of sworn men, some carrying theod banners -ravens, axes, wolves, boars- that flap in the sea wind. They are formidable men, fed from a lord's larder, equipped from his armory, and wearing his gold curled around their biceps. They will earn it. Thegns may make a fighting retreat, and ceorls can flee their lord's death, but heorthgeneats must win for their lord, die avenging him, or live as nithings. Many are violent madmen, kept by their lord as war dogs; some are full-fledged berserks.


Thegns have come from many theods. Strangers or old enemies, they eye each other weighing weapons in their hands. The Saxons carry the sword, the Angles the great axe, the Franks the francisca, the Frisians the bow, and the Jutes the spear -five hosts, five ways to kill. Each thegn carries a seax, or long-knife, to carve runes and gut pigs. Today six thousand seaxes will cut the throats of nine thousand fallen foes. The best thegns crowd near the byrdes they serve as gesiths, wearing chain tunics and simple helms; the poorer thegns, with their leather coats, shields, and spears, blend into the great fyrd -at its front rank to lead the ceorls forward, and in the rear to keep them from running away. On the army's flanks, spear-thegns stand ready to form wecg: a hero and his heorthgeneats at the tip of a triangle, with twelve thegns in column behind him; eleven, and then ten, and then nine thegns in receding columns to his left, and the same to his right: an arrowhead that will pierce the foe's ranks. A marm of Frisian bow-thegns skirmishes forward, shooting spite-arrows at the enemy and hoping to part a Briton from his horse.


In the middle of the army, countless ceorls stand in a scildburh (“shieldwall”), a waving sea of spears. They are five men deep but a hundred or more wide, and, when the Hel-horn is blown, a dozen such divisions rumble forward as one. Wearing only leather armor, or none at all, each ceorl crowds the man to his right, seeking the shelter of his friend's shield; without war skill, the whole host may slant right against the foe instead of forward. They know to advance, to about-face against an ambush, and nothing more. They have long spears for the charge and short spears to hurl at the charging foe (some are angons, with heavy barbs that weigh down a hostile shield). Each ceorl prays for fame in victory and for the favor of his lord -or, if it comes to it, for anonymity in retreat. The old and crippled ceorls, who will never be made thegns, trail beside and behind the scildburh armed with slings and rocks, or with rocks alone.


All men, ruler, thegn, and ceorl alike, calm their nerves with thoughts of loot but, by the chieftain's will, they will get none today. On a barren hill above the battle stand the ceorl-born scops, who will record the fight in verse, and the rune-wise goderes, seeking signs from Wotan in the distant clouds. Presently, a runner from the army gathers the goderes and leads them to the cyning on his steed.


The king will dedicate his foes to Wotan's favor. Every one of them must die, a sacrifice, and all their stock and women and lackeys and fine things must burn, break, or drown for the Lord of Battles. Wotan will bless the Saxons with great fury, but if a single foe lives, or if a Saxon takes a single coin from Wotan's hoard, the blessing runes reverse, to become dooms. A godere's symbolic runecarved spear is hured at the foe, for Wotan strikes them. At this sight, the Saxons feel fear -then war fury. Already, the war-wise ravens circle overhead.


Then he bade each man let go his bridle, drive away the horses and fare forward. Set thought to hand-work and heart to fighting. … Bryhtnoth addressed his hand of warriors from horseback, reminded each man of his task; where he should stand, how to keep his station. He bade them brace the linden-boards right, fast in finger-grip, and to fear not. When his folk were fairly ranked, Brythnoht dismounted where he loved most to be and was held closest to his heart – among his hearth-companions."

The Battle of Maldon