“As to your question about who would fight William in the face of the risk of excommunication, I say enough would do so,” replied Edwold. “These include some amongst the clergy. Harold and his army fought under anathema at Caldbec Hill and it was not carried out. I doubt that the pope would excommunicate the king of Denmark- and even if he did the Danes wouldn’t care. They’re mainly pagans. We will see what we will see, but like Leofric I don’t intend to raise my voice to call for support for either side. But I will ride and with all my men to defend our lands against any who threaten us. Norman, Dane or English. Others will make other choices.”
Alan inclined his head in acknowledgement and asked, “How can so many be so free with breaking their oaths?”
“Very few are, as very few have made oaths to break,” replied Edwold. Seeing Alan’s look of puzzlement he explained, “When you received your land from King William, you gave homage for it, did you not? You bound yourself to be William’s man, right or wrong. In England there were several hundred King’s Thegns who held land directly from the king and made oath to support him. Others, such as myself, hold land in landboc. We own it. We pay taxes on it. When we die our family pays a Heriot to continue to hold it, but we hold it as of right. We may commend ourselves to a greater thegn and obtain the benefit of his interest, but are free to choose which and to change as we wish. That thegn, the ealdorfrea, has no claim on us for military or financial support. Our only obligations are to the country, effectively to the Crown. Those who are not thegns- cheorls, sokemen and the like- may similarly own their land in landboc, or may hold it on laen for a period of time- usually three lifetimes. In return they either pay rent in money or goods or perform services on the owner’s land. They are free to leave the land and take up other land from another owner. Cottars simply hold a cottage and a small garden plot in return for labour services.
“Neither myself nor my ealdorfrea made any oath to William. We do not, to use the Norman terms, owe either homage or fealty to him. We also do not owe homage or fealty to our ealdorfrea, so even if he does have such liability to either the king or some other noble, I do not. That is why many men see themselves as free to join those who oppose King William. In doing so, they act on what they see is their best interests or where their honour lies and are not foresworn by doing so.”
Alan frowned, trying to absorb what was to him a difficult concept. “That may well be the case, although the English earls did swear formal fealty to William in return for keeping their own lands, in the Norman manner. Whether they understood the basis and effect of the oaths that they swore at that time I know not, but if they oppose him they will find that what a lord gives he can also take away, at whim. As for the rest, those who oppose William will feel the might of his displeasure irrespective of what they see as being their legal situation. William isn’t going to make the distinctions you just explained. Those who support William will be rewarded. For those like yourself, well, we’ll see whether or not treading a path of neutrality is possible. For the sake of all of us, I hope that it is.”
****
Alan called a muster of all his own men at arms in Tendring Hundred, held at the New Hall. The political situation was explained to them and that if they marched north they would likely be required to take to the field against the Aetheling and the young earls, or at the very least against their allies the Danes.
The response was less than enthusiastic, although the several of the leaders of the men made it clear that where Alan led they would follow “and kick in the gates of hell itself and kill Lucifer himself if needed” as one man extravagantly explained. After the raid two years previously, nobody had any concerns against killing Danes- a number of the soldiers had been recruited from the displaced refugees from villages destroyed and looted by the Danes. The atrocities visited on the villages on the south side of the Coln River, particularly in Lexden Hundred and Winstree Hundred, made certain that every man, woman and child would resist the Danes with every fibre in their body and support the man who had given them victory on that last occasion.
Brand made it clear to his men that he expected the huscarles, as professional soldiers, to follow their orders. Apart from himself, five other huscarles agreed to join an expedition force to be led by Hugh, as did three of the men in Hugh’s garrison at Great Oakley. Together with Roger, Baldwin and Warren from the garrison at Staunton-on-Wye that would allow Alan to meet his feudal quota, although he was sure that the king would be less than happy that he wasn’t sending his full strength. However, Alan’s main concern was in protecting his estates and the villages of Tendring Hundred, and since the king had refused to build a navy to challenge the Norsemen that meant that the locals could expect no assistance in the event that the Danes descended in force. By the time that any relieving force arrived the Danes would have slipped back to their ships, leaving behind them villages of smoldering ruins populated by corpses.
Alan had, several months previously, on receiving warning of danger from Bjorn, taken his own steps to protect what he had. As well as increasing the tempo of training and practice of his troops, he had also ensured that each man in the fyrd from his villages was properly armed, equipped and had at least the basic training that would give them a chance of survival against a professional warrior. He had increased the membership of the fyrd to include every fit free man, and many of the more willing lads, in each of his villages. In addition to a linden-wood shield that each man had himself made to a common pattern and the seax fighting knife each carried as of right as a free man, they had been provided with helmets of metal made in the English style and spears. Some wore byrnies of chain-mail for protection and carried swords- these taken from the Danes in their failed raid two years before. Most of the others wore byrnies made of scale-armour of boiled leather, with overlapping plates. These provided reasonable protection and, compared to chain-mail where each ring is riveted and joined to four others, the leather scale-armour was cheap and quick to make.
Alan’s armourer Gimm and his apprentice, with the assistance of the village smiths and their apprentices, had worked long and hard for several months. So had the fletchers- over 3,000 cloth-yard arrows, each 39 inches long, metal tipped and with flights of goose feathers, were sitting in barrels for use if required.
Not least amongst Alan’s preparations had been the work performed on the two longships which he still retained after their capture two years before. After sitting neglected on a mudbank on Alresford Creek near Thorrington for a year, they had been careened, suspect timbers replaced and recaulked with a mixture of moss soaked in tar hammered into the joints between the overlapping two inch thick planks that formed the strakes of the clinker-built hull. Both were typical snekke, with a length of about sixty feet and beam of about 9 feet. Being Danish ships they had a very shallow draught of less than 2 feet when unladen. If a man could stand with his knees covered in water, the ship would float. Norwegian ships were built with a slightly deeper draught, coming from a land of deep fiords rather than shallow sand flats.