The Unburied (7 page)

Olaf sent a message telling Alfred that he would kill Wulflac unless the greater part of the gold and silver was surrendered to him and unless the king further agreed, binding himself by a solemn mass, to live at peace with the Danes. When Alfred replied that he had left his treasury in Exeter and that he would send some of his army to bring it, Olaf agreed to wait for ten days but said that if the gold was not handed over by dawn on that day, Wulflac would die. Now the truth was that Alfred had the treasury with him but had said that it was in Exeter in order to stall for time because the fresh levies should arrive within nine or ten days. In the witan, however, Beorghtnoth, supported by those among the thegns who wanted him to betray Alfred to the enemy, argued that the king should surrender the treasury. The king was in an agonizing dilemma and in order to resolve the situation he proposed a sudden and daring attack upon the town. The thegns refused to countenance this proposal, however, and insisted on waiting for the fresh levies to arrive. The days passed and the new troops did not appear. Finally, on the ninth day, Alfred told the witan that he would surrender himself in order to save his former tutor’s life. They were horrified – except for Beorghtnoth and his allies who were secretly delighted – and they argued with Alfred that the survival of the kingdom depended on his remaining in command. Alfred went to his private chamber and, accompanied only by his young chaplain, began praying to God to tell him what was the right course of action.

 

The king asked the priest for his advice and the young man, deeply moved by this mark of the king’s respect for him, and alarmed by what he suspected of Beorghtnoth’s treachery urged him to hand over the gold. After that he could attack the Danes as soon as his fresh levies arrived. The king objected that that would require him to break his solemn undertaking which would be a grievous offence to God. The young priest replied that no promise made to a heathen could be considered binding in the sight of God.

 

Alfred, however, insisted that his sense of honour would not permit him to behave thus. And so, after three hours of prayer and discussion, the king emerged to announce to the witan that he had decided that it was his duty to negotiate in person with the enemy and, if necessary, to offer himself as a hostage in place of the bishop. The thegns were furious and now it was the most loyal among them who shouted loudest that they would not allow him to do such a thing. Beorghtnoth spoke up and offered to go to Olaf in order to try to find a solution to the crisis and Alfred trustingly agreed to this. And so Beorghtnoth went to Olaf not in order to help, but to betray, his uncle. He told the Danish leader that since Alfred had his gold with him and was waiting for reinforcements, Olaf should force the king to settle the matter quickly. Now Wulflac was brought in with his two chaplains and Beorghtnoth, conducting himself with hateful duplicity, commiserated with him. The learned bishop, however, himself had a secret design – though one that was wholly honourable and benign – and this was to convey to Alfred a message which only he would understand. So the bishop said to Beorghtnoth
: Tell your uncle to be comforted and to think this very night of what the learned Pliny wrote:
A man who is truly wise will find even in a moment of darkness a light that obscures the sun; while the foolish man will be dazzled by nothing more than the mere dawn.
It is a passage that he will remember well.
He made the unlettered nephew repeat this message until he had it perfectly. This was the scholar’s secret design: because of his profound knowledge of the heavens and the movements of the stars therein, Wulflac knew that there was to be an eclipse of the sun at dawn on the very next day. And because he and the king had recently been reading together the works of Pliny in which those phenomena are described, he was sure that Alfred would understand. Unfortunately, however, Beorghtnoth guessed that he was trying to convey some hidden meaning and decided that he would say nothing to his uncle of the bishop’s message. So when he returned to the camp of the English he told Alfred and the witan merely that he had been unsuccessful in his attempt to negotiate with the Danes.

Meanwhile, acting on Beorghtnoth’s advice, Olaf gave orders that Wulflac be suspended from the West Gate of the city-walls in the sight of the besieging army. When Alfred saw this, he was filled with anger and grief and announced that he was determined to give himself up in return for the bishop. The thegns – joined by the hypocritical Beorghtnoth and his fellow-conspirators – pleaded with him in tears not to do so, arguing that it was certain that the Danes would kill him if he did. But Alfred answered that he was now using his authority to designate his heir and was choosing his nephew who, he was sure, would make a fine king if he himself were to die. Then the most loyal of the thegns, seeing that he was determined, went to the length of trying to thwart him by physically preventing him from leaving his private quarters.

The king, however, in the hours of darkness before dawn on this, the tenth day and the one on which Wulflac was to be killed, disguised himself as one of his own servants and managed to escape. Unrecognized, he made his way to where the army’s horses were stabled and found his own mount – the fierce Wederstepa, which nobody but he could ride. The horse resisted being saddled and mounted, but as soon as the king was astride, it recognized its master and grew still. Because of the noise the stallion had made, the young stable-boy was roused from sleep and as soon as he saw the horse’s gentle demeanour he knew that Alfred was the stranger in the saddle.

 

The boy seized the horse’s bridle and shouted until the rest of the household came running. The thegns were so moved by the king’s courage and determination that they now agreed to make an assault on the town without waiting for reinforcements. So the troops were quickly woken, mustered and drawn up facing the walls. The bishop could be seen still hanging above the main gate, and it was clear that he was close to death. Shortly before dawn the English army assembled and waited for the king’s signal to attack. At that moment the sun, which had just risen over Woodbury Downs, began to be swallowed up by a black shadow and the land grew darker and darker until within the space of a minute, complete darkness fell and a cold wind sprang up. Flames seemed to shoot out from the sun which was now hidden behind the disc of the moon. The horses neighed in terror and birds flocked together and wheeled about the skies in confusion, unsure if it was time to roost or not. This was something that nobody then living had ever seen and everybody imagined that it signified the end of the world. Only Alfred knew that this was an eclipse; and so he rode up and down the lines shouting to his men that the sun would return within a minute or two. But his explanation came too late and his troops fell into a state of complete panic. The Danes were overcome by the same terror and Olaf, who was standing atop the main gate, believing that Wulflac had summoned the darkness up by the use of magic, ordered that the ropes which were holding him be cut. The scholar plummeted to his death just as the darkness began to lift. Shamefully, the Danes then threw the martyr’s body into a well beside the Old Minster – now known throughout Christendom as St Wulflac’s Well. Alfred’s horror and grief may be imagined. And although he managed to regain command of most of his scattered army, there was now no possibility of launching an attack on the town with frightened soldiers, especially now that the element of surprise had been lost.

Fortunately, however, the new levies arrived the next day and Alfred immediately led an assault on the town and recaptured it, inflicting utter defeat on the enemy. At a mass in the Old Minster Olaf and his family and thegns were baptized and took the sacrament, and then he and Alfred exchanged rich gifts. With the capture of the town the treachery of Beorghtnoth was discovered for one of Wulflac’s chaplains, a man called Cathlac, revealed how the martyred bishop had tried to convey a message to the king about the eclipse. Beorghtnoth proved his treachery by fleeing to the Danelaw. Wulflac’s body was recovered from the well and buried in the Old Minster in a black stone coffin lined with lead and embellished with sculptures depicting ...
[et cetera, et cetera].
The body was washed and anointed and covered in a cloth of fine ...

 

The Old Minster had been looted by the Danes and now that its buildings were being repaired, a curious incident occurred. Cathlac found an old document hidden in a wall which had been laid open by the ravages of the Danes. This was a charter under which an earlier king of Wessex a hundred years before had granted certain rights to the Abbey. Alfred accepted the validity of the charter and confirmed these rights henceforth in perpetuity, further endowing the see as a tribute to his martyred friend and teacher. And from that time forth miracles began to occur in association with St Wulflac and in particular with the well into which his body had been thrown. For it was found that loathsome sores were healed by water from the well, trees that were nourished with water from the well bore fruit in the depths of the winter ...