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ALFRED'S DAUGHTER: THE TRUE STORY OF THE MEDIEVAL PRINCESS WHO SAVED ENGLAND FROM THE VIKINGS

The East Anglian Danes lurking just north of Essex, which was sandwiched between their territory and Kent, knew a golden opportunity when they saw one. The English were totally occupied in Kent. The Vikings reasoned that it would be a waste not to take advantage of this. So some of them broke their peace with Alfred and marched into Essex . It appears that these treacherous Danes were not led by Guthrum, because no mention is made of him in connection with this incident in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles or the contemporary biography of Alfred, but it is very hard to say which Danes they actually were. They may even have been Guthrum’s army after all, with the monks who were writing the histories reluctant to ascribe such shameful actions to Guthrum after he had been baptized and become a Christian king. Only pagans were supposed to act that way. And Vikings were completely capable of making a false peace with the leaders of a city, exchanging hostages in the common practice of the day, slaughtering the hostages the very night they took them and marching on the city anyway the next morning.

But Alfred managed to beat them off in Essex, too. Some of them gave up and returned to the easier targets of continental Europe, having to leave their horses behind for the English as they fled. But some of them remained. In 886, eight years after the surprise attack on Alfred at Chippenham, they besieged London, in Mercia. The Mercian king, Ceolwulf, had agreed to collaborate with the Danes a few years before, but had vanished now that things had begun to go bad. No one knew what had happened to him, and Mercia had no official protector.

London didn’t belong to Alfred and never had. But Alfred knew that a fortified London securely held by English troops, there on the Thames, would be a great help in keeping the Vikings out of not just Mercia but Wessex as well. So Alfred made one of the most important decisions not only of his reign but in all of English history. He decided to help Mercia. In doing so he gained not only Mercia but the credit for a farsighted policy of considering an attack on any Englishman to be an attack on all Englishmen, whatever their nation.

So Alfred and his troops marched on London to deliver it from the East Anglian Vikings. On his way, the Mercian Eolderman Aethelred, who had always been intrigued by Alfred’s ideas about uniting the forces of Wessex and Mercia, joined him with the private forces at his disposal. Within days, Alfred, Aethelred, and their men arrived at the old Roman walled city where the Danes were headquartered, just outside the town proper. They dismounted, sent the horses and wagons the rear of the line, and formed a wedge-shaped shield wall. Alfred was well protected behind the shield wall but still placed to be active in the battle — no honorable Anglo-Saxon king would have done anything less. At his order lower-grade fighters let loose a volley of arrows and throwing spears, sharp weapons designed to penetrate deep into the enemy’s flesh. Then, with a roar, the army drove forward toward the Viking stronghold.

They held the shield wall as best they could, trying to make sure it wasn’t surrounded, and did well. The element of surprise was on their side. Why, the Danes had thought, would the king of another realm have cared about London?

But Alfred did care. He roared his orders. It was important to keep up a stream of aggressive, blood-boiling inspirational words to his men, both to encourage them to keep advancing into the path of expertly handled spears and swords and to make sure that they knew at all times that he was still alive. The death of a leader could be the psychological factor that turned the tide of a battle. Alfred was not a brutal man, but he knew what had to be done. He called to his men to chase down and kill any enemy, slaughter the livestock, and burn the crops and supplies. The memory of the surprise attack at Chippenham still burned in his mind. He would give now as good as he got then.

As the Wessex army exploited breaches in the walls, the second phase of the battle began. The elite men fought it out one-on-one with swords and spears. Their wooden shields were hacked down to the metal bosses at their center, their ash spear shafts were lopped in half, their swords were bent and mangled as they hit gristle and bone. Alfred brought up the rear and slashed with his sword as he went, still crying out fierce encouragement to his men. He saw old friends and Danes alike take innumerable fatal blows to the head, to the neck, to the back and chest. Little by little, he was gaining ground.

As the highest-ranking Vikings were killed, Alfred hurriedly ordered the lowest ranks of his army (the peasant soldiers) to suspend the corpses on poles so all could see them. At this, the enemy lost heart and fled, mostly making for their ships in the Thames so they could sail out of the city as quickly as possible. Some of Alfred’s men chased them, but after a reasonable effort, Alfred called them off. He had reached the center of the old Roman city and taken possession of London. He did not want to leave his forces too depleted while the victory was still new.

Alfred promptly moved London’s population into the Roman walled city, which was a much more secure location than the open area of the Aldwych section of town, the “old settlement” along the river, where most Londoners had lived before. And in another brilliant public relations move, he rebuilt the city out of his own pocket.

Now he was faced with a diplomatic challenge. There was no question that the Mercians were grateful to Alfred for giving them back their city. But the Mercians were an independent lot. They liked Alfred, they liked him better than they had liked any king of Wessex before him. But that didn’t mean they wanted to take orders from him. Alliances by marriage were constantly being attempted to solidify some kind of cooperation between the new nations. Alfred’s mother was Mercian and so was his own wife. But conflicting interests still got in the way. For example, just before Alfred’s brother died and Alfred became king, the Mercian king Burgred, who was married to Alfred’s sister, had asked for help from Wessex against a Viking invasion. Alfred and his last living brother Ethelred dutifully made the dangerous march halfway across England, under threat of Danish attack almost all the way. But Burgred abandoned them when they arrived in Mercia. He made no use of the Wessex forces at all, deciding that it was in his own better interests to pay danegeld and allow the Danish army to remain completely intact. Alfred and his brother were disgusted; they could have taken the opportunity to inflict some real damage on the Great Army, maybe cripple it. A few years later the Vikings overran Burgred’s Mercia; Burgred ran away to Rome, where, after a privileged and comfortable life, he died.

So what was Alfred to do now? The Mercians would want to report to one of their own. Alfred’s eye lighted on Eolderman Aethelred. He was an experienced, respected statesmen and fighter about Alfred’s age, perhaps thirty-five. He was on board with Alfred’s master plan of a unified England, and he was always properly deferential. Ceolwulf’s disappearance had left the leadership of Mercia vacant. What if Aethelred were to be elevated to that role, and also to publicly “submit” to Alfred, never quite taking the title “king”? This could make Aethelred and Mercia Alfred’s closest ally. What if, to seal the bond, Alfred arranged yet another dynastic marriage between Wessex and Mercia? This could help to ensure that both nations understood the message: what was good for one was good for the other.

And so it was settled. Alfred would give his daughter Aethelflaed, a beautiful, intelligent princess, to Aethelred. She would become the wife of the noble Mercian. Now she was to step into her own peaceweaver role.

It was her mother who told her. Aethelflaed listened quietly. She had always known she would marry a king or nobleman. It could have been someone farther away, on the continent. She was glad at least that she would not have to go as far away as that. And Aethelred was a respected, high-ranking man. It was an honor to be betrothed to him. Aethelflaed had to admit the brilliance of her father’s arrangement. It rewarded a loyal follower; it guaranteed her father’s alliance with and control of an important nation; it established his sovereignty over the half of England not under Viking occupation; and all without in any way besmirching the honor of the Mercians. She could hardly help but be impressed and learn by example. Alfred was not only a great warrior, he was as good a peaceweaver as a woman.

Still, Aethelflaed fleetingly wished that she had been given to a Wessex thegn. She was used to traveling and enjoyed it, but the journey before her wasn’t the kind of travel she imagined. She had always envisioned being with her father and mother, her brothers and sisters, working together, as on Athelney. Her dreams of the future did not include going off somewhere where she had never been and knew no one.

But she drew herself up composedly, and before she knew it she was saying the proper formal words to thank her mother for such an honor as marriage to the great Eolderman Aethelred of Mercia. Hadn’t she always wished she could do something to help her father? This wasn’t exactly the way she dreamed of doing it. But if this was what he wanted, if it was this that would make him and his country just a little safer from the Vikings — well, then, that was what she would do.