From my blog...

The Last Kingdom, Episode Five: Uhtred vs Ubba

Posted on November 9, 2015 by Patricia

Alternate Title:
UHTRED vs UBBA, ODDA 1, ODDA2, ALFRED, LEOFRIC, MILDRITH, OSWALD…oh heck.
UHTRED vs EVERYBODY

Episode 5 begins with shipwreck and concludes with a very different kind of wreck. In between, our hero Uhtred covers a lot of ground – he travels from Wareham to his farm, to Cynuit, to his farm, to Winchester, and back to the farm again. Just to give you some perspective, its 170 miles from Wareham to Cynuit to Winchester. That’s a lot of time on a horse. Ow.

But Uhtred covers even more ground emotionally this week. He runs the gamut of worry, jealousy, frustration, brash confidence, fear, desperation, pride, resentment, humiliation and anger until finally he gives way to uncontrolled rage. All in all, not a good week for Uhtred or his peace of mind.

Two scenes in particular give some insight into how, exactly, Uhtred’s mind works. The first is a brief negotiation scene in which he taunts Ubba. Uhtred understands Ubba. He knows how to get into his head and under his skin and he does it beautifully. He goads Ubba into frenzy and he loves doing it. Ubba’s manic response plays into his hands, and Uhtred knows just how far to go. He has tactical smarts that are part intelligence, part instinct. That doesn’t mean he’s not afraid of Ubba, and at the very beginning of the episode we are reminded of Ravn’s earlier counsel: Never. Fight. Ubba.

Unfortunately, for all the skill that Uhtred shows in manipulating Ubba, he hasn’t a clue when it comes to Alfred. Alfred’s mind works in ways that Uhtred can’t begin to comprehend. He is always a step (or three or four) behind. Alfred is a scholar and a thinker; he is not an action figure and he knows it. He confesses to Fr. Beocca that he does not inspire his men, and it obviously worries him. Uhtred, on the other hand, is all impetuous action, at least when it comes to Alfred. Thinking occurs after-the-fact.

Both Alfred and Uhtred are proud, and this inevitably pits them against each other. But Alfred is a king of Wessex while Uhtred is a landless Northumbrian who’s run wild from the time he was ten and who has no patience for the niceties of court behavior. Hotheaded, eager to demand the recognition that he sees as his due, he confronts Alfred in a church before a crowd of witnesses, sword ready to hand, and he cannot understand why a king might find this threatening.

Beocca, Leofric, even Mildrith try to get through to Uhtred, but his pride won’t allow him to listen, and Alfred’s pride and position won’t allow him to put up with Uhtred’s brazen behavior. It is a battle that Uhtred cannot win – will never win; but, being Uhtred, that doesn’t stop him from trying.

This tense confrontation between Uhtred and Alfred does not happen in the novel The Last Kingdom, but is one of the first scenes of novel number two, The Pale Horseman. In this second book Uhtred’s story continues to unfold, and new characters as well as new threats are introduced. But Alfred is a constant in Uhtred’s life. There are more fireworks to come between them, and a few unexpected twists and turns lie ahead – for everyone.

Posted in Anglo-Saxons, Books, Review, The Last Kingdom, UK, Vikings | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Last Kingdom, Episode 4: The Peace is Over

Posted on November 1, 2015 by Patricia

With Episode Four we have reached the half-way point of this season. A new woman has entered Uhtred’s life. Those of us who have read Cornwell’s novels have learned to not get too attached to Uhtred’s women. They come and they go, except for one very special woman, and she has not appeared on the scene yet. (In the novels she is first mentioned on the very first page of the very first book, but so casually that a reader might easily miss it.)

But back to Uhtred’s new woman, his bride Mildreth. Her face is covered when he meets her raising the question of what might be wrong about her appearance. I don’t know of any Anglo-Saxon tradition that would hide a woman’s face in this way, and it seems to me that the creators of the show have used this device as a kind of visual shorthand to put the audience in Uhtred’s shoes, raising the tension and misgiving – how ugly is she? – in the scene without the internal monologue that Cornwell used in the novel. And it works. And, as in the novel, the problem with Mildreth is not her appearance, but the burden of debt that comes with her.

A minor point: when we see Mildreth on horseback, she rides side-saddle. The concept of a side-saddle drives historical novelists crazy. When was such a thing first used? Not as early as the 9th century, I would hazard. But again, this is visual shorthand, differentiating the nobly born Mildreth from Brida who we saw riding astride. Nevertheless, in the 9th century women probably rode astride, or traveled in a litter, a cart, or a very cumbersome, uncomfortable – and slow – wagon.

Uhtred now has one good friend among the Saxons, and actor Adrian Bower is a marvelous Leofric. He is older, wiser, and more experienced, at least when it comes to the king, than Uhtred – a comrade-in-arms in a way that Uhtred could never be with Alfred. And it’s important to remember that Uhtred is not a man of Wessex. He is an outsider, a Northumbrian and, even worse, has been raised by Danes. It is not surprising that the men of Wessex don’t trust him.

Which brings me to Alfred.

And now we see just how ruthless a 9th century king had to be – willing to risk the lives of men he would have known personally to attain his ends. Alfred chooses the men who will go as hostages to the Danes, and neither he nor the hostages have any illusions about what this means. Poor Father Selbix (in the book he is Alfred’s cousin) is physically sick at the thought of the kind of death he may face if worse comes to worst.
I found this entire segment dramatic and moving, and viscerally representative of how terrifying that prospect must have been. David Dawson’s portrayal of Alfred continues to impress me, as the king becomes hardened by his experiences.

Inside the walls of Wareham Uhtred is re-united with Ragnar and Brida, and we are given a small taste of what the Danes like to do for fun besides drinking, whoring, and torturing their enemies. (They also liked music, story-telling, and board games, but this is a brief foray into a camp of armed warriors, and one glimpse of their entertainments will have to do.)

Uhtred’s departure from Wareham closely follows the events in the novel, but the final scene – the lighting of the beacons which, I can’t help it, I just loved it – was original, and perhaps a nod to Tolkien’s lighting of the beacons of Gondor which was itself based on the system of warning beacons in Anglo-Saxon England. Oh, well done!

From "An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England" by David Hill

From “An Atlas of Anglo-Saxon England” by David Hill

Posted in Anglo-Saxons, History, The Last Kingdom, Vikings | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

The Last Kingdom, Episode 3: The New King of Wessex

Posted on October 28, 2015 by Patricia

Despite the fact that the main character of Bernard Cornwell’s books is our hero Uhtred, it is Alfred who is the focal character of this episode. Everything and everyone revolves around him, and actor David Dawson does a spectacular job of bringing Alfred to life. As the title of this episode suggests, the theme this week is kingship and what it means.

In the very first scene Alfred arrives in Winchester, tense and troubled after the battle of Æsc’s Hill. His brother, the king, is badly wounded, and Alfred is clever enough to foresee what his brother’s death will mean: he will have to take the crown, and the crown of Wessex will be a burden because Wessex is under attack. It’s the last kingdom to resist the Danish invaders.

But wait! The dying king has a son named Æthelwold. Shouldn’t HE get the crown? He certainly thinks so. The crown is mine; my birthright, he says. A son comes before a brother.

Actually, the concept of primogeniture doesn’t take hold in Britain until after 1066, and historically, long before Æthelred’s death, Alfred had been second in command in Wessex. The brothers had an agreement, approved by the king’s council (the witan) that Alfred would rule should his older brother die. The show is true to that historical fact. (And years later, a somewhat ruthless Alfred would prepare a will that would guarantee that his own son, and not the sons of his brother, would succeed to the throne of Wessex when Alfred died.)

We don’t know what Alfred’s nephew was really like, but the Æthelwold we see here rings true to Cornwell’s depiction of him. Our first glimpse of him this week is when he wakes up in a stable beside a sow, and he’s such an obnoxious little jerk that we feel sorry for the sow. He gives us an excellent example of what a king is not, in contrast to Alfred who is, at the very same moment, in attendance at his brother’s deathbed, taking care of business.

But this Alfred is no saint. We know this because he says so. He is tempted by the pleasures of the flesh, in the form of a pretty servant girl. You stand for everything that is precious, always to be cherished, he tells her.

Alfred isn’t quite as tempted by his wife, and we don’t blame him because Ælswith is exactly like Cornwell portrays her – pious, self-righteous, and spiteful. Nevertheless, Alfred treats her with courtesy and deference. She is his helpmate. It’s a pretty good picture of what a political marriage might have been like, although there’s reason to believe that there was personal attraction between the real Alfred and Ælswith. As for the pretty servant girl, she is his temptation, and Fr. Beocca, who interrupts him when he is trying to give in to temptation, is his conscience.

So what is Uhtred? Uhtred is Alfred’s Dane – his pet Dane, Brida would probably say – and his sword. Alfred needs to understand the Danes in order to beat them, and so he needs Uhtred. Despite the fact that Uhtred can be churlish, Alfred is patient with him, another mark of his kingship. The king never loses his temper, not even when he’s negotiating with the Danes and Ubba starts throwing things. Alfred is cool and collected, and he can talk rings around everybody, especially Ubba. Ubba is a raging viking, and actor Rune Temte is having a heckuva good time playing the role. I’m loving this Ubba. But, back to Alfred.

The bastard THINKS, didn’t I tell you? Leforic says of Alfred. And having seen the king in action, out-thinking, out-talking and out-maneuvering everyone, we absolutely believe him.

Posted in Anglo-Saxons, History, Review, The Last Kingdom, UK, Vikings | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Last Kingdom, Episode 2

Posted on October 18, 2015 by Patricia

At the beginning of this episode of The Last Kingdom, as scenes from the previous episode flash across the television screen and the voice of Uhtred summarizes his early life, he says, “Destiny is all.” This phrase appears in every one of Cornwell’s Saxon novels. It is Uhtred’s definition of how the world works. The Old English phrase is Wyrd bið ful āræd, from the poem, The Wanderer.

The loner holds out for grace
—the Maker’s mercy—though full of care
he steers a course, forced to row
the freezing, fierce sea with bare hands,
take the exile’s way; fate dictates.
Translation: Greg Delanty

This is a fairly accurate description of Uhtred’s situation just now. He is exiled from his father’s lands because his uncle has usurped him. The Danes hate him because he is a Saxon. The Saxons despise him because they believe he is at heart a Dane. His only friends are the priest who knew him as a child and his woman, Brida, who argues against every decision he makes. In this episode he first confronts the man who will offer him grace – although Uhtred doesn’t know it yet.

The man is Alfred, and the Alfred we see here is not quite the same as the Alfred in the novels. That Alfred is viewed through the eyes of a churlish, resentful, hot-headed, young Uhtred, who dismisses him as physically weak, way too pious, too trusting and too bookish. Because the reader knows what Alfred will eventually accomplish, Uhtred’s low opinion of him is taken with a grain of salt – even amusement.

The screen writers, though, have presented a more even-handed version of Alfred, drawn from tradition, history, and even Uhtred’s own words:

“I was to discover in time that he was a clever man, very clever, and thought twice as fast as most others, and he was also a serious man, so serious that he understood everything except jokes. Alfred took everything heavily, even a small boy, and his inspection of me was long and searching as if he tried to plumb the depths of my unfledged soul.”

I love Alfred as he’s presented in this show, who even manages to surprise Uhtred with his knowledge of events occurring in the north. “I have eyes and ears in each of the kingdoms,” Alfred says. And then he nails Uhtred with, “I believe you are here only to hide, to save yourself.” Which is exactly what Uhtred is doing.

In this episode the writers have inserted events that, in the novel, took place long before the hall burning that we saw in Episode One. Uhtred’s first encounter with Alfred, the forging of the sword Serpent Breath, the martyrdom of King Edmund, even the battle of Æsc’s Hill (which will not actually happen until next week), all took place when Uhtred was 12 or 13 and he was, heart and soul, a Dane. In placing these events here in this episode when Uhtred is nineteen or so and an exile, his character has been softened. We haven’t seen the life that he describes this way:

“I was a Dane and I had been given a perfect childhood, perfect at least, to the ideas of a boy. I was raised among men, I was free, I ran wild, I was encumbered by no laws, I was troubled by no priests, I was encouraged to violence, and I was rarely alone.”

“And I learned another thing. Start your killers young, before their consciences are grown. Start them young and they will be lethal.”

To some extent this violent life is implied as we see Uhtred and Brida make their perilous way from Northumbria to Wessex, but we do not see this Uhtred ravage East Anglia with the Danes, burn Saxon villages and plunder abbeys and convents. Yes, he is lethal. But this is Uhtred light. The Uhtred of the books is more like the Ragnar that we saw at the beginning of the first episode – a brutal warrior who gives no quarter and asks for none. There is a darkness in the Uhtred of the books that Alfred sees and mistrusts, but is not quite conveyed by the figure on the screen.

This is a quibble. I thought the show was wonderful. If you haven’t seen it yet, take notice of the setting, particularly the scrolls that surround Alfred, and the Roman villa where he and his brother reside. Winchester has stone walls (which it did), unlike the Winchester of History Channel’s The Vikings which I think had a wooden palisade.

I do question whether Winchester would have had so many stone buildings. Alfred is going to one day re-found the city, laying out streets and a network of channels to supply water, and building a palace complex of stone buildings. Yes, the wealthy will erect two-storied houses made of stone with slate or thatch roofs, in among timber dwellings. But that all comes later.

For now, Alfred is not yet king, the Battle of Æsc’s Hill has yet to be fought, and poor Uhtred is neither Saxon nor Dane. He is imprisoned, you might say, by his own fate. And we know that Fate is relentless.

Wyrd bið ful āræd.

Posted in Anglo-Saxons, The Last Kingdom, Vikings | Tagged , , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Last Kingdom, Episode 1

Posted on October 11, 2015 by Patricia

BBC America’s new series THE LAST KINGDOM is based on The Saxon Tales a series of novels by the brilliant and prolific Bernard Cornwell. I have been a fan of Mr. Cornwell’s books for many years, so I was excited about this series, and especially curious to see how closely this filmed version would follow the story line and capture the atmosphere of the novels. According to a book reviewer for The Wall Street Journal, “Mr. Cornwell writes as if he has been to ninth-century Wessex and back.” After seeing the first episode of THE LAST KINGDOM I would say that everyone involved with the series went there as well, and those of us watching are going right along with them. This was the 9th century brought to vivid, often horrifying life.

The show’s creators haven’t spared us any of the horror. Right from the start we are privy to the heightened sense of terror inspired by the sight of Viking ships gliding along Northumbria’s coast. The ealdorman of Northumbria and his retainers race back to their fortress to prepare for trouble from these “devil’s turds”, and the language alone is enough to convince us that we’re in another time and place. Village women are sent into the woods to hide while their men, armed and prepared to die, are summoned to the defense of their lord’s fortress, Bebbanburg. We witness this through the eyes of the lord’s youngest son, ten-year-old Osbert, later to be re-baptized as Uhtred – curious, mischievous, proud, and too fearless for his own good – traits that those of us who have read Cornwell’s novels know will define Uhtred for the rest of his life.

Cornwell’s use of Old English place names has been embraced by the series, and I was happy to finally learn how to pronounce EOFERWIC – it’s Efforwich in case you’re interested. The name appears in print on the screen, and then the letters cleverly arrange themselves into YORK. This happens as well with other place names, like LOIDIS (Leeds). By the way, I’ve read two reviews of the show that mistakenly claim that young Uhtred is taken to Denmark. Not so. He is taken to a Danish settlement in northern England, just as in the novel.

This series will actually cover two of Cornwell’s novels: The Last Kingdom and The Pale Horseman so it’s been necessary to collapse and condense some of the details to fit the demands of television. Many of Uhtred’s childhood experiences have been sacrificed, but the adaptation has been done with skill; the writers have kept the essentials and the set designers have recreated the era beautifully.

There were, as well, small visual touches added that I found particularly inspired:
A bit of humor in Uhtred’s baptism scene that helped alleviate some of the grimness of the situation;

The shell-shocked expressions on the faces of the children, Uhtred and Brida, as the world they had known was destroyed;

The method used to, all in a moment, illustrate young Uhtred’s relationship to his new, Danish father and at the same time skip forward nearly a decade;

The realistic, and heart-breaking, actions of characters trapped in a hall-burning;

The final scene of this episode that hearkens back to the beginning and at the same time moves the story into new territory.

That territory will be far to the south of Bebbanburg, Uhtred’s lost Northumbrian inheritance. It will be in Wessex or perhaps Mercia, where he will come up against the major figure of this period in Britain’s history, Alfred the Great. Alfred will challenge this young man, born a Saxon and raised a Dane, to decide who and what he really is.

Posted in The Last Kingdom | Tagged , , , , , , | 6 Comments

England’s First City, circa A.D. 1000

Posted on October 9, 2015 by Patricia

For centuries the city of London has been the cultural, political and financial center of the United Kingdom. Turn back the clock some 1200 years though, and you will find that the royal and religious center of England was farther west and south, in the heart of Alfred’s Wessex. The Anglo-Saxons called it Wintancæstir. We know it as Winchester.

The River Itchen today

The River Itchen today

Alfred the Great laid out and fortified Winchester in the 9thcentury on the banks of the River Itchen. The city was well designed and prosperous within its defensive walls. Channels were engineered to provide the streams that ran its numerous mills, and wells provided drinking water for palace and private homes. Royal officials, barons, nobles and wealthy merchants had town estates (hagas) within the city near the palace, and their homes would have been a mix of stone and wood, many of them two-storied, with roofs of oak shingles or thatch.

By the year A.D. 1000 Winchester had a royal complex that included a king’s palace, a bishop’s palace, two great abbeys – one for monks and one for nuns – and two massive churches, the Old and New Minsters, that stood side by side. The Old Minster was the largest church in England at the time, and recent renovations had added a marble baptistery and a six-storied bell tower. Its windows were made of colored glass, its walls were decorated with paint and sculptures, and even its floor tiles were multi-colored. The king had a special throne room in the cathedral’s upper level where he could be seen by his subjects, and the organ – yes, there was an organ! – needed seventy men to operate it.

Winchester Model - Under Glass, Alas

Winchester Model – Under Glass, Alas

If you lived in Winchester, life was varied and lively. The king, with his family and his court, was often in residence. (I’m willing to lay money that the palace as shown in the above model – lower center – was vastly more impressive than the creator of this model has imagined.) Pilgrims to the shrine of St. Swithun in the Old Minster came from all over England, and merchants from Belgium and Normandy came by ship through the city’s port of Southampton and then to Winchester via the River Itchen.

The major market was along the High Street, where food and raw materials were brought in daily from the countryside. Bakers, brewers, vintners, corn merchants, mead makers and herringmongers had shops in the marketplace. Shoemakers, tailors, hosiers, mercers and goldsmiths must have done a brisk business among the noble folk. Armorers, sword makers and shieldwrights serviced the warriors, while cabinet makers, laddermakers, painters and masons provided expertise if you needed some home repair. The housewife could find rush sellers, candlemakers and needlemakers, and on the outskirts of town the fullers, dyers and weavers represented the textile trade.

Godbegot House, Winchester. Photo: Wikimedia

Godbegot House, Winchester. Photo: Wikimedia

Queen Emma owned property in Winchester, in particular a haga on the High Street that would have provided income until the queen herself took up residence there late in her life. The manor, Goudbeyete,  was large enough that it included St. Peter’s church. A building still called Godbegot House survives from Emma’s time and she is reputed to have resided there.

It was Winchester that was the royal seat of Aethelred II, and once you could go into Winchester Cathedral and see Mortuary Chests that contained the bones of half a dozen royals, including Queen Emma. Today those chests have been moved to the Lady Chapel, where a team from the University of Bristol is examining the remains. Expect to hear more about that project in the future.

Winchester served as England’s royal city from the time of Alfred the Great until the reign of King Edward the Confessor. That was when the king turned his attention toward a marshy bit of land 2 miles southwest of London’s walls and decided to rebuild the abbey there that was called the West Minster. But that’s a story for another time.

The Great Hall of the Anglo-Saxon palace was torn down by pesky Normans in the 12th century. Now it looks like this.

Sources:
Winchester in the Early Middle Ages; by Martin Biddle, Frank Barlow, Olof Von Feilitzen, and D. J. Keene, Clarendon Press, 1976.
http://www.cityofwinchester.co.uk/history/html/god_begot.html

Posted in Anglo-Saxons, History, Research | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Shining Light On Our Ladies: A Tale of Two Queens

Posted on October 5, 2015 by Patricia

Light1Welcome to a weekly, October-long celebration of heroines in historical fiction. This month I am joining nine other historical novelists to highlight the women who are the central figures in our books, and I’m eager to begin!

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HarperCollins edition, available in the UK & Australia

I would hazard that the pivotal moment in my writing career came on the day that I met Emma of Normandy. Not the actual Emma, of course. She faded from this middle earth nearly a thousand years ago. No, this was the day when I learned that she had existed at all, the day when I first read that name, Emma of Normandy. And what did I discover about this remarkable woman on that first day? That she had been married to two kings of England, that she was the mother of two English kings, and that she was the daughter of a Norman duke. It struck me that as a writer looking for good heroine material, I had just discovered a gold hoard.

Because historical novels by definition are set in a time period prior to the birth of the author, no historical novelist can possibly know or even truly understand the characters who people a given story. They must be fictional, and at the same time they must be as true as we can make them to the historical figures they represent. So how does an author accomplish this?

9780525427278_PriceOfBlood_JKF.indd

Penguin Random House edition. US & Canada

The best way to describe my own process is to say that I do it with mirrors. I have been living with two Emmas in my head for many years now – the historical Emma and the Emma that I’ve imagined. They are both real to me, one standing behind the other, and I can’t see one without the other gazing at me through time and space like an image reflected into infinity or, at least, into the 11th century!

And who is this heroine who lives in my head and in the pages of my books? She is Queen Emma – a woman made of pretty stern stuff because she has to be – and must have been. She lives in a violent England at a time when it is ravaged by war. The men in her world survive because they are ruthless, and Emma must find a way to survive among them. It is no easy feat, for she is wed first to a king with blood on his hands and then to a Viking war lord. She has to be a little ruthless herself, and she must learn very quickly to run with the wolves.

Emma in a 12th c ms. Note the turmoil going on behind her.

Emma in a 12th c ms. Note the turmoil going on behind her.

Emma is born of Norman stock so she is a skilled horsewoman. She has Viking blood in her veins so she is at ease on the deck of a ship. Does any of this make her a warrior? Not in the physical sense, although she witnesses battle. She does not carry an axe or a sword, but wields instead the power of a medieval queen – a power that hinges on alliances with powerful men. As a result she must tackle the same resentment and fear that women who aspire to power have faced through the ages, and she must find a way to succeed against overwhelming odds.

I’ve made her sound a bit like Wonder Woman, but she is not. She does not have the physical strength to resist brute male force and she is not always able to outwit her enemies. She makes bad decisions that she will come to regret. She is vulnerable, she succumbs to grief, and she falls hopelessly in love with a man that she cannot have. The life of a queen – or a heroine – has never been easy.

shadow2

The first book in the Emma of Normandy Trilogy. Available in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Russia

Like the Norman conquerors who will follow her, Emma has a keen sense of destiny – not so much for herself but for her children. She is a mother with children to protect, in a royal family with a nasty history of fratricide. She will sacrifice a great deal for her young because her strongest motivations are the love she bears for them and the duty she owes to England as its queen and queen mother.

How do I picture her? I see her on the street sometimes, and if you look at my pages on Pinterest you’ll find her lurking there. On the covers of my books she is almost always turned away, but if she were to turn around and face you, she might look like this:

My friend Arianwen, member of SCA & Emma inspiration

My friend Arianwen, member of SCA & Emma inspiration

The Emma in my novels is not yet the powerful queen that the historical Emma would one day become. A difficult road lies before her, but I have given her the strength, courage and intelligence that I believe the real Emma must have had – gifts that she would use to play a significant role in the formation of England.

And having shared my Emma with you, let me introduce you to two other writers on this tour. As part of the Shining Light on Our Ladies Blog Tour please meet authors Helen Hollick and Inge H. Borg.

Light3Helen Hollick lives on a thirteen-acre farm in Devon, England. Born in London, Helen wrote pony stories as a teenager, moved to science-fiction and fantasy, and then discovered historical fiction. Published for over twenty years with her Arthurian Trilogy, and the 1066 era, she became a ‘USA Today’ bestseller with Forever Queen. She also writes the Sea Witch Voyages, pirate-based fantasy adventures.

Light6As a supporter of Indie Authors she is Managing Editor for the Historical Novel Society Indie Reviews, and inaugurated the HNS Indie Award.

And Helen’s view of Emma… A woman married at the age of thirteen to a man she despised; when he died the only way to survive and retain her status was to marry the man who had been her enemy.

Read more about Helen’s Emma at www.ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.com

In contrast to Saxon England…Fancy a trip to Ancient Egypt? Let’s go there with author Inge H Borg.

Light5Inge H. Borg was born and raised in Austria. Spending many years all over the US, she now lives at a lake in Arkansas, devoting most of her time to writing.
Her “Legends of the Winged Scarab” series has grown to four volumes, with a fifth soon to be published. In this series, she combines the myths of Ancient Egypt with present-day adventure, even adding a bit of dystopian suspense following a (luckily fictional) eruption of Yellowstone Supervolcano.

A staunch supporter of her Indie-writer colleagues, Borg frequently highlights their books on http://devilwinds.blogspot.com/ and, those with pets and other animals, on Light4http://ingehborg.blogspot.com/
And Inge’s Shining Lady?

Nefret, Royal Daughter of the Horus-King Aha, Fighting Falcon of the First Dynasty of Egypt (3080 BC) Nefret, King Aha’s Royal Heiress, was still so young, but her eternal soul was already old for it was a reawakened Ba. This essence, having lived through paradise and cataclysms, was destined to live through many other storms for it was a sinner’s soul which had not yet found atonement on this earth. Got your passport to the past?

Let’s go with Inge… http://devilwinds.blogspot.com/

Next Tuesday some more Shining Ladies! For one, the man she most despises is the man who owns her heart. For another, a district nurse must cope with the tragedies of World War II, and another faces the horrors and tragedies of the American Civil War

Come back and join us! There will be new posts every Tuesday in October.
The Shining Light On Our Ladies Schedule and Links:
Light96th October
Hellen Hollick ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.co.uk/
Patricia Bracewell patriciabracewell.com/blog/
Inge H. Borg devilwinds.blogspot.com/

 

 

Light813th October
Helen Hollick ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.co.uk/
Regina Jeffers reginajeffers.wordpress.com/
Elizabeth Revill elizabethrevill.com/blog
Diana Wilder dianawilder.blogspot.com/

 

 

Light7
20th October
Helen Hollick ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.co.uk/
Alison Morton alison-morton.com/blog/
Sophie Perinot sophieperinot.com/blog/

 

 

Light10

 

 

27th October
Helen Hollick ofhistoryandkings.blogspot.co.uk/
Anna Belfrage annabelfrage.wordpress.com/
Linda Collison lindacollison.com/

 

To purchase THE PRICE OF BLOOD:
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Canada
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UK

To purchase SHADOW ON THE CROWN:
U.S.   Amazon   IndieBound   B&N   iBooks   Audible
Canada
Australia
UK

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Those Brutal Middle Ages

Posted on October 2, 2015 by Patricia
Bayeux Tapestry, image Myrabella, Wikimedia Commons

Bayeux Tapestry, image Myrabella, Wikimedia Commons

I read a scholarly article recently which suggested that medieval warriors suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, just as modern soldiers do. It also proposed that the fighting men of the middle ages were not the brutal savages that we imagine them to have been. They were just doing their job, and they did not do it without some psychological trauma.

Well, hmmm. I think it’s a lot more complicated than that.

My medieval knowledge, such as it is, is confined to England at the dawn of the 11th century, when the kingdom was under almost constant bombardment from viking raiders. As a result, the culture of late Anglo-Saxon England was steeped in violence (rape, murder, pillage – often coming at night with no warning) and in the suffering that resulted from it. At the same time, I do not doubt that the men who had to fight at the command of the king would indeed have suffered from post traumatic stress. Read any of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Series if you want to get an idea of what it would have felt like to stand in a shield wall. (Or watch it on Oct. 10: BBC-Amercia’s The Last Kingdom!)

Shield walls meeting…Battle of Hastings re-enactment

But there is another violent element to consider here, as well. And that is, the belief that physical suffering led to purification. A sinner (and everybody was a sinner) who endured physical suffering as penance, would be cleansed of his sins. In later centuries this would be used by the Church to fill the ranks of Crusaders: fight to free Jerusalem and go straight to heaven if you die. In earlier, Anglo-Saxon England, it meant that mutilation – the loss of a nose, a hand, an ear, an eye – as a punishment for misdeeds would do the miscreant far more good than a fine or even execution because penance, through suffering, would cleanse the soul. This was reflected in the laws of the time which specified what body part would be taken for what crime. (We saw this illustrated in a Vikings episode, Born Again, in Season 3. It was horrible.)

The murder of King Edward, age 16, A.D. 978

One has to draw the conclusion that life in early medieval England was, as the saying goes, nasty, brutish and short, particularly for the common folk but also for kings, almost all of whom were warriors as well. Of the 10 kings who ruled a united England from 959 to 1066, 4 were murdered or died under mysterious circumstances or of battle wounds; 3 died before they reached the age of 35; and 2 died before the age of 50. Only one, Edward the Confessor, made it to the advanced age of 60.

So I would agree that, yes, warriors probably suffered from traumatic stress, but I believe, too, that they would have accepted brutality as a fact of life.

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What Happened at Corfe in 978?

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Patricia
Corfe Castle

Corfe Castle ruins

Today, the chalk hill of Corfe on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset is crowned by the ruins of, for the most part, a 12th century Norman castle. But in Anglo-Saxon times a hunting lodge stood on the hill, and the story of what happened there on 18 March, 978, has been elaborately embroidered over the centuries.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough) Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Initial page of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Peterborough) Courtesy Wikimedia Commons

The first account appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:
“This year was King Edward slain, at eventide, at Corfe-gate, on the fifteenth day before the calends of April. And he was buried at Wareham without any royal honour. No worse deed than this was ever done by the English nation since they first sought the land of Britain.” (1)

After Edward’s death, his 10-year-old half-brother, Æthelred II, took the throne, and the Chronicle account quoted above may have been written during Æthelred’s lifetime. Note that there is no mention of how Edward was slain, or of who did it, specifically, although the murder appears to be laid at the feet of the entire English nation, which I find pretty interesting. Remember, the Viking raids began soon after this, and they were thought to be punishment for the sins of the people of England. Did that include the murder of a king?

Detail of walls, Corfe CastleAn account in the Vita S. Oswaldi written about the year 1000 adds that Edward had gone to Corfe to visit his half-brother who was staying with his mother, and that certain zealous thegns of Æthelred’s killed him. (2) We’re also given a picture of the young King Edward’s personality when the writer claims that Edward inspired terror in all because he scourged them with words and even blows. (3)

Written in the late 11th century, The Passio S. Eadwardi, adds the detail that Edward’s stepmother, Queen Ælfthryth, actually plotted the killing so that her son Æthelred could be king. (2)

So, within 100 years of the incident, a picture is beginning to emerge of a disputed succession that ended in a brutal murder planned by Æthelred’s mother. In the 12th century, chronicler William of Malmesbury elaborately embroidered the tale:

Edward_the_Martyr_(W._Harvey)“The woman however, with a stepmother’s hatred and a viper’s guile, in her anxiety that her son should also enjoy the title of king, laid plots against her stepson’s life, which she carried out as follows. He was coming back tired from hunting, breathless and thirsty from his exertions; his companions were following the hounds where chance had led each one; and hearing that they were quartered in a neighbouring village, the young man spurred his horse and hastened to join them, all by himself, too innocent to have any fears and no doubt judging other people by himself. On his arrival, his stepmother, with a woman’s wiles, distracted his attention, and with a kiss of welcome offered him a drink. As he greedily drank it, she had him pierced with a dagger by one of her servants. Wounded mortally by the blow, he summoned up what breath he had left, and spurred his horse to join the rest of the party; but one foot slipped, and he was dragged through byways by the other, leaving streams of blood as a clear indication of his death to those who looked for him. At the time they ordered him to be buried without honour at Wareham, grudging him consecrated ground when he was dead, as they had grudged him the royal title while he was alive.” (3)

Corfe Castle

Corfe Castle

Now we have a full-blown, bloody scenario with a tragic, innocent young king, a wicked stepmother, Biblical allusions (a viper’s guile; a kiss of betrayal), a single murderer with a knife, and a pitiful, wounded victim trying to reach help to no avail. Wow. William could be a script writer for Game of Thrones.

William claimed that his History was based on earlier sources (now lost), as well as whatever version of

Malmesbury Abbey, courtesy Andrew Dunn

Malmesbury Abbey, courtesy Andrew Dunn (Wikimedia Commons)

the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle he had there at his abbey in Malmesbury. It was a famed center of learning in the Anglo-Saxon period, so it’s possible that William had access to many resources that have since been lost. (Thank you, Henry VIII.)

Some scholars, though, believe that William’s scurrilous portrayal of Queen Æfthryth is a reflection of events happening in Britain at the time William was writing his Chronicle. Henry I was on the throne then, but his only son was dead. The men of England were faced with the possibility of a woman succeeding to the throne, and that wasn’t sitting well with a lot of them. There were grave concerns about powerful women being in charge of the kingdom. At about this same time other sources vilify Queen Ælfthryth as lustful, a witch who dabbled in poisons, and a shape shifter, as well as the original wicked stepmother.

St. Edward, Corfe Village. Wikimedia Commons

St. Edward, Corfe Village. Wikimedia Commons

So, what is the truth? What do we know for certain, and what can be conjectured from the historical documents?

1. There was a significant faction that had wanted Æthelred, not Edward, to be named king. This same group was disgruntled by Edward’s actions once he had the throne.
2. Edward was murdered, and there was probably at least one knife involved.
3. His body was thrown into a nearby well, then moved to Wareham. Finally he was reburied with great honor at Shaftesbury Abbey, but not until after Queen Ælfthryth was dead.
4. No one was ever punished for the murder of the young king.

It may be that Edward’s death was unplanned, that it was the result of an argument spinning out of control. My own thinking, though, is that the queen had some involvement in his murder. There is just too much smoke for there not to be a flame at the heart of it, and the fact that no one was punished for the crime lends credence to the theory that the queen played some role. At the very least, she was there. Even young Æthelred was there somewhere, and who can say what he saw and heard, if anything? The murder may have been unintentional, a matter of an offhand remark, like Henry II’s ‘Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” But if Edward was the arrogant, cruel young man described in the Vita S. Oswaldi, there may very well have been a plot to rid England of an obnoxious young punk of a ruler and replace him with someone more pliant. (Anyone who knows the history of Æthelred’s reign knows that this did not turn out well.)

In my novels Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood, (following the suggestion of our favorite storyteller historian William of Malmesbury who writes that Æthelred was hounded by the shade of the murdered Edward), a guilt-ridden Æthelred is haunted by his brother’s wraith. Whatever the truth of Edward’s murder – and it remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of the Anglo-Saxon period – his death was a stain on Æthelred’s reign that he was never able to erase.

Corfe Commemoration. Courtesy Nicholas Mutton

Corfe Commemoration. Courtesy Nicholas Mutton (Wikimedia Commons)

(1) www.britannia.com/history/docs/973-79.html

(2) The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, Ed. Michael Lapidge, Blackwell Publishing, 2004.

(3) English Historical Documents, 500-2042, ed. Dorothy Whitelock, Routledge, 1996.

(4) The History of the English Kings by William of Malmesbury, edited & translated by R.A.B. Mynors, R. M. Thomson & M. Winterbottom, Volume 1 (1998), Oxford University Press.

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The Riddle of the Stones

Posted on August 10, 2015 by Patricia

RiddleStones1
They had arrived at last at a long, low ridge where the standing stone, its edges scored in primitive runes, pointed skyward. Athelstan checked his horse beside the ancient, lichen-covered stone. Gazing into the shallow vale beyond, he caught his breath at what he saw: a circle of what he guessed must be a hundred standing stones, each one the height of a man or a little more, mushroomed from the valley floor. Like monstrous, deformed fingers, black against the blanket of snow, the stones cast long shadows that speared, ominously, straight at him…He realized with a shock that what he had taken for another stone, standing in the gloom near the hut, was a living figure staring back at him.

She had been waiting for them, then.

from Shadow on the Crown

When I first began thinking about the story that would become Shadow on the Crown, I had in mind a scene in which the king’s eldest son would consult a seeress who would predict that he would never be king. Once I started gnawing on this idea, I began toying with a dramatic setting for their meeting, and that started me thinking about Britain’s stone circles.

Many years before, I had visited a stone circle, Castlerigg in the Lake District, in Keswick. My companion and I had been following a footpath, the signs leading us through a forest and then a field until the stones appeared in front of us, looking eerily out of place there – as if they’d been dropped from outer space. It’s difficult to put into words how moving and strange that experience was.

Castlerigg Stone Circle

Castlerigg Stone Circle

But I couldn’t use Castlerigg in my novel because it was too distant from Wessex where I knew that most of my story would take place. The stones had to be further south. I turned to the internet for help, and that’s when I found the Rollright Stones and the setting for what turned out to be several scenes in both Shadow on the Crown and The Price of Blood.

RollrightPat4

The King’s Men

The circle, called The King’s Men for centuries, dates back to at least 2000 B.C., and it probably looked somewhat different in the 11th century than it does today. Whether it looked the same then as when it was first erected – archaeologists speculate there were 105 stones standing shoulder to shoulder, with a narrow entrance way flanked by two stones on either side of it – well, that’s anybody’s guess.

A 17th century painting by Joan Blaeu. The artist has taken liberties with distances. (Image: Joop Rotte)

A 17th century painting by Joan Blaeu. The artist has taken liberties with distances. (Image: Joop Rotte) (Wikimedia Commons)

A short distance from The King’s Men is a single standing stone called The King Stone, probably placed there a thousand years after the circle was erected.

The King Stone

The King Stone

Today, if you stand at The King Stone, as Athelstan does in the quote above, you cannot see the stone circle. There are trees in the way. I’ve imagined the scene without the trees. That’s poetic license, I confess, although, again, who can say what the flora was like there in the 11th century? The runes that I describe carved on the stone are poetic license as well, although because the stones are now so worn and bits of them chipped away by souvenir hunters, once again we cannot know what it looked like a thousand years ago.

There is a third megalithic monument in the immediate area and it is within sight of the stone circle, although distant enough that today it looks like a pile of boulders. When I visited the site there was a field of grain separating The Soldiers Men and this group, called The Whispering Knights. The Whispering Knights group is probably the most ancient of the monuments, dating back to perhaps 4000 B.C. It consists of five massive stones that once were part of a burial chamber, or dolmen.

The Whispering Knights

The Whispering Knights

Originally there were more stones, and it would probably have looked something like this one in Wales. (Pentre Ifan)

Pentre Ifan dolmen, Wales. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

Pentre Ifan dolmen, Wales. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)

No one can say when the capstone fell or when the missing stones were hauled away and put to some other use. In my story, Athelstan is too focused on the woman standing near the stone circle to even notice the dolmen, even if it was there intact.

The Whispering Knights. (Image: Dennis Turner)

The Whispering Knights. (Image: Dennis Turner) Wikimedia Commons

Would there have been a seeress at the site of the Rollright Stones in the 11th century? I don’t know. The wise-woman who speaks to Athelstan in my book was my own creation, but such women did exist then. Pagan beliefs still lingered in England, although they were frowned upon by the church. In Archbishop Wulfstan’s most famous sermon he claims “here there are witches and sorceresses”, and during Æthelred’s reign at least one woman was drowned in the Thames for witchcraft.

A recent discovery, though, suggests that the stones were a sacred site well into the Anglo-Saxon period. Recently an ancient grave was discovered near the King Stone. It contained the remains of a 7th century Saxon woman. The grave goods buried with her included silver coins, a large amber bead, and a rock crystal amulet on a chain. The Anglo-Saxons believed that amber was a talisman against evil. Rock crystal, too, had special properties and was a symbol of clarity and light. It’s early days yet, but the experts studying the site believe she was someone of substance, and the position of the grave near the King Stone and the amulet-like nature of the grave goods suggest that she may have been a wise woman. So, quite possibly, there was a seeress at the stones, at least in the 7th century.

In writing historical fiction an author sometimes walks a very fine line between truth and fiction. Research into the period and events causes us to speculate about what might have been, and to turn possibilities into story. It seemed to me that if today we are awed by the sight of an ancient circle of stones, people who lived a thousand years ago must have experienced that same awe, probably to a far greater degree. So, settling a wise woman beside the stones in this place that we still regard with wonder, struck me as logical and perhaps even accurate. As it happens, such a woman did dwell near there, at least in the early Anglo-Saxon period. Perhaps, during a time of turmoil and trouble, a warrior sought her out, gave her silver, and bid her look into her crystal stone and speak to him of destiny.

The Rollright Stones. (Image: The Locster)

The Rollright Stones. (Image: The Locster) Wikimedia Commons

Read a news item about the grave of the Saxon woman HERE.
Read an earlier post about the Rollright Stones, Standing Stones & a Witch.

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