Havelok the Dane: A Legend of Old Grimsby and Lincoln

by Charles W. Whistler

“None. She has thrown in her lot with the Dane, and it is he with whom we will not deal.”

Then said I, “How was it that she had to throw in her lot with Havelok? He was Alsi’s own choice for her.”

“That is not what we have heard,” the spokesman answered. “Now it is best that you go hence, for you have the answer.”

“This means fighting for Goldberga’s rights,” said Arngeir, “and I will tell you that Havelok will not be backward in the matter.”

“In that case we shall meet again on the battlefield ere long,” answered the thane. “I will not say that Havelok is in the wrong, and things might have been better settled. Farewell till then. The Norns will show who is right.”

So we went, and I thought, as did Arngeir, that there was some little feeling among his men that Alsi was wrong.

Now Alsi set to work to gather forces in earnest, and he went to work in a way that was all his own: for, saying nothing about Goldberga, he sent to all his thanes with word that the Vikings had come in force and invaded the land, led by the son of Gunnar Kirkeban, whose ways were worse than those of his father, for he spared none, whereas Kirkeban harried but the Welsh Christian folk. He prayed them therefore to hasten, that this scourge might be driven back to the sea whence he came. And that brought men to him fast, for no Englishman can bear that an invader shall set foot on his shore, be he who he may. Few knew who the wife of Havelok was at that time, but I do not know that it would have made so much difference if they had. None thought that into England had come the fair princess who was so well loved.

Sorely troubled was Goldberga when she heard this answer, but it was all that the rest of us looked for. And the next question was how best to meet the false king.

In the end we did a thing that may seem to some to have been rash altogether, but it was our wish to compel Alsi to fight before his force was great enough to crush us. It might be long before Ragnar could raise a host and join us, for there was always a chance that he might have trouble in getting the Norfolk thanes to come to his standard for a march on Lindsey. If we had gone to Norfolk at once there would have been no fear of that kind, but the fighting might have been more bitter and longer drawn out.

We sent the fleet southward into the Wash, that it might wait for us at the port of the Fossdyke, on what men call the Frieston shore; and then we left Saltfleet and marched across country to the wolds, and southward and westward along them, that we might draw Alsi from Lincoln. And all the way men joined us for the sake of Curan, whom they knew, and of Goldberga, of whom they had heard, so that in numbers at least our host was a great one. Ragged it might be, as one may say, with the wild marshmen, who had no sort of training and no chiefs to keep them in hand; but I knew that no host Alsi could get together had any such trained force in it as we had in the fifteen hundred Vikings, for they had seen many fights, and the ways of the sea teach men to hold together and to obey orders at once and without hesitating.