But if Alfred thought that was the end of the matter, he was wrong. That evening, as the apprentices were leaving, the master called him over and, hovering by the forge, asked him in a soft voice: “Why did you do that?”
“Do what, sir?”
“I’ve watched you. You hold a hammer as if it’s part of your arm. You deliberately made a mistake today. Why?”
Alfred looked at him carefully, then confessed. “I’ve worked at my father’s forge since before I can remember, sir. But I’m new here, and I nearly starved before Barnikel brought me to you. If the other apprentices get jealous, they could make my life hell. Even drive me out.” He grinned wryly. “So I want them to think they’re teaching me until we’re friends.”
He blushed, afraid this might sound conceited. “I’m only a smith, though,” he added quickly. “I want to learn to be an armourer.”
The master nodded thoughtfully. “Work hard, Alfred,” he said quietly. “And we’ll see.”
As the weeks went by, besides learning his craft, his work in the armoury taught young Alfred something of great significance for the Anglo-Saxon kingdom. If the fleet was readying itself to defend the island at sea, preparations on land were a very different matter. “We’ve been expecting an attack ever since winter,” he remarked in astonishment, “yet nobody’s ready.”
The English kingdom had no standing army, nor forces of hired mercenaries. Her army was the fyrd – a levy of landowners and peasants. Not a day passed without some flustered Saxon landowner appearing with equipment in need of urgent attention: a blunt sword or battle-axe; a heavy, round Saxon shield with straps on the back that always needed replacing. Alfred could hardly believe they were so disorganized.
Above all, they would bring in their armour.
The armour of the warriors of Anglo-Saxon England was the same as that used all over Europe: the coat of chain mail. Known probably since the Bronze Age, the principle of chain mail was simple and convenient. Small, riveted rings of metal, usually about four-tenths of an inch in diameter, were linked together to form a long shirt that reached past the knees. Being loose and flexible – unlike the later suits of plate armour – a coat of chain mail could be altered to fit different wearers. Many of the coats Alfred saw had belonged to the wearers’ fathers. They were valuable – ordinary foot soldiers could seldom afford them – and treasured accordingly.
But they had two disadvantages. They became worn and torn, and above all, the large surface area of so many links made them very prone to rust. As the most junior apprentice, Alfred was given the tedious job of cleaning them, so that soon, whenever the owners of these garments appeared, a cheerful cry would go up from the other apprentices: “Alfred! Rust!”
Still, he was happy. The other apprentices had quickly accepted him. Nor did Barnikel forget him. Every week he was summoned to the Dane’s hall for a hearty meal, and though he was only a poor apprentice in a rich man’s house, he felt almost part of the family. He also came to know Leofric’s daughter, who was often there, and so admired her gentle simplicity that by midsummer he was half in love with her himself.
It was towards the end of June that his life at the armoury began to change.
They had been told to produce a dozen new coats of mail. Alfred found this prospect exciting, though the master cursed the short notice and the other apprentices groaned. Before each coat of mail could be begun, however, there was one miserable task to perform, and this was to make the wire for the links.
How he hated it. A long, thin iron bar was heated in the forge to soften it, and then its end was worked through a steel draw plate with a hole in the middle. The heaviest apprentice would begin, dragging the rod through the plate; then repeating the process again with another plate which had a smaller hole. And again; and again, so that the rod was stripped and stretched as it came through. But once it was reduced, the later drawing out was done by Alfred. Holding the thick wire in gripping tongs attached to a broad leather belt around his waist, he would haul himself backwards across the workshop floor like a man in a tug of war, until his whole body was aching.
At the end of one day of this activity, the apprentices were leaving to go drinking together when the master called out: “I need help. Alfred will stay behind.”
There was a sympathetic laugh from the others as he brusquely ordered the boy to tend the bellows, and for another two hours he kept Alfred busy with menial tasks before sending him home.
A few days later the same thing occurred, except that this time the master made another junior apprentice stay too and kept them both occupied for three hours before letting them go.
The making of a coat of mail fascinated Alfred. It was so simple, yet so exacting. First the wire was formed into rings with open ends. This was done by winding it round a metal spindle and then making a cut down the length of the coil. The newly formed rings were then pushed through a tapering hole in a steel block to force one of the ends neatly to overlap the other. The rings were softened in the brazier and then, while hot, each was put in a mould and given two taps with a hammer to flatten the overlapping ends. Now, using piercing tongs, one apprentice punched a tiny hole through the flattened ends. “That’s where the rivet will go,” he explained. After that, another prised the ends gently apart again so that the rings could be linked together, and tossed them into a bucket of oil. “Always use oil,” the master admonished them. “If you put hot iron in water it cools too fast and becomes brittle.”
But what astonished Alfred was how at the end of this process, the work had been so precisely done that he could never see any difference between the rings. In fact the links rarely varied by more than twelve-thousandths of one inch.
The third time the master ordered Alfred to stay late, the other apprentices groaned, and two of them even offered to take his place. But the master only grunted, “The newest apprentice does the dirty work,” and waved them away.
This time, however, after an hour, the master called Alfred to him. Speaking little, he made the boy perform each of the tasks – winding and cutting, overlapping, piercing and opening – correcting him when necessary, nodding quietly once he had got it right. Then, leading the boy to a large trestle table in the middle of the workshop, he instructed: “Now watch.”
The art of the master armourer was like that of the master tailor. First he would lay out the open rings in rows so that each could be linked to four others – two diagonally above and two below. The shape of the coat was like a long shirt, with elbow-length sleeves. The lower part was slit back and front for ease when riding. The top was formed into a hood that could be pushed back off the head on to the shoulders. The neck was slit like the top of a shirt and tightened with laces, whilst a flap, held in place with a strap, usually came across the front of the hood to protect the mouth.
Whereas a tailor could cut and fold his cloth, the armourer had to rearrange the rings geometrically, and this arrangement resembled nothing so much as a knitting pattern. Here, a link would be joined to five others instead of four; there, one would be left dangling loose. When finished, however, so close and intricate was the workmanship that it was almost impossible to find the different joins.
For several hours now, Alfred had watched enthralled as the master showed him how this was done, demonstrating the geometry, the lines of stress, the need for ease of movement in the metal shirt that had already protected fighting men for over a thousand years. As he worked by lamplight, the master explained: “Always rivet the same way, from the outside. You can feel why.” When Alfred ran his hands over the coat, he realized that the outside was rough, while the inside, where the rivets were flattened and which would rest against a leather undercoat, was smooth as cloth.
On some of the rivet heads the master would stamp his personal mark. And then the coat of mail was complete.
Or almost. One thing still remained. The iron used by the medieval armourers was relatively soft. To toughen it for battle, it had to be case-hardened. Now, therefo
re, the master rolled up the finished garment in crushed charcoal, packed it in an iron box, and put it into the forge. Soon it glowed red-hot.
“The iron and charcoal interact,” he explained, “and the iron turns to steel. But you must not heat it too long,” he warned, “or it gets brittle. You want the outside to be hard as diamonds and the inside to remain flexible.”
Then, having shown him these mysteries of his art, he let the boy go home.
From this time on, at least once a week Alfred was summoned to stay behind. And while the other apprentices supposed he was operating the bellows or pulling wire, the master quietly taught him the techniques that were normally reserved for the senior apprentices only. Often, they worked together late into the night, Alfred’s hammer and tongs and pincers flying to their task. They spoke to no one of these sessions, but the boy had an instinct that Barnikel was kept informed by the master, although he could not be sure that this was so.
The crisis broke in September.
The events that were to change the face of England for ever were made possible by a simple and regrettable fact. In September, it being the month of harvest, the men manning the English fleet announced that they had to go home. Nothing King Harold could say would stop them. Accordingly, Alfred, Barnikel and Leofric stood on the quay at Billingsgate one morning and watched the last of the little sailing vessels tie up. From which moment, as they all knew, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom lay open to invaders.
They struck almost at once.
The invasion planned by William of Normandy could hardly have gone better. His timing was perfect. Two weeks after the English fleet put in, the King of Norway led an attack on the shores of northern England and took York. King Harold raced northwards and, in a well-fought battle, smashed the invaders. However, he and his army were now two hundred and fifty miles away from the south coast – where William promptly landed.
His army was not large, but it was formidably trained. Some, the élite, were retinues headed by great magnates with famous names like de Montfort, but most were men for hire, landless knights from Normandy, Brittany, France, Flanders and even southern Italy. Thanks to William’s staunch support of the Church, they rode under the papal banner. On arrival at the bay of Pevensey, near the little settlement of Hastings, they built an earth and wooden fort and set out to reconnoitre.
In Alfred’s memory, the events of the next few days were forever blurred. The king returned to London. The city was arming. The Staller – the head of the city’s Defence Guild – and his captains were commandeering every able-bodied man they could find. Each day Barnikel stormed into the armoury with fresh demands, and they worked all night.
But one small scene always remained in the boy’s mind with clarity. It took place one evening in Barnikel’s hall, after the Dane and Leofric had returned from a big council meeting with the king. The Dane was agitated, the Saxon thoughtful.
“How can he hold back?” Barnikel cried. “Strike now!”
Leofric was less sanguine. “The army’s exhausted after the march south. Our London contingent is brave, but it’s no good pretending they’re a match for trained mercenaries. However, if we burn all the crops between here and the coast and destroy his transport, we can starve them. Then,” he added grimly, “we should kill them all.”
Barnikel grunted in disgust. “This family will fight.”
Yet, as Alfred subsequently learned, the more cautious advice was exactly the course that King Harold’s wisest counsellors urged upon him.
Soon afterwards, on 11 October, for reasons that are not entirely clear, before half the reinforcements he needed from the shires had arrived, King Harold of England marched out of London towards the southern coast at the head of about seven thousand men. In place of honour, by the king’s standard, marched the Staller, Barnikel and the London contingent. Barnikel’s son went with him. Leofric, because of his injured back, could not go. The Dane was carrying his two-handed battle-axe.
Despite all their efforts, young Alfred noticed that not all the London contingent were well armed. One man, wearing a foolish grin, was carrying a window shutter instead of a proper shield.
Leofric hesitated. Could he bring himself to go in?
It was evening, the hour after vespers, and he had come to that important quarter on the western hill just below the quiet precincts of St Paul’s. Several days had passed since the king and the army had left. No word had come. The city was quiet, waiting anxiously for news.
Behind him, the long wooden roof of the Saxon cathedral loomed over the thatched houses. On his left stood the guarded courtyard of the London Mint. Ahead, the narrow lane, carpeted with yellowed leaves, sloped down steeply towards the river. A faint smell from the cathedral brew-house nearby mingled agreeably with the scent of wood smoke in the still, damp air. A church bell was tolling. And in the west, the sky was reddening, deep crimson like a rich man’s cloak.
The house of Silversleeves was quietly impressive. The stone hall facing him was not large, but well built, with an outside staircase leading to the main floor. Slowly and with misgiving, he went up.
Silversleeves and his two sons greeted him politely. It was strange how, inside their own hall, their clean-shaven faces and long noses seemed less out of place. Indeed, though his own, knee-length green gown was of the best cloth, Leofric could not help noticing that their longer Norman gowns were decidedly elegant.
A great fire burned at one end of the room. At the other, a tall window was filled not with oiled parchment like the windows in his own house, but with green German glass. The hangings on the walls were rich. On the table, instead of smoking lamps stood large and expensive candles of sweet-smelling beeswax.
Several other people were there – a Flemish merchant, a goldsmith he knew slightly, and two priests from St Paul’s. He noticed that the last two especially were treating Silversleeves with deep respect. There was also one other group, the reason for whose presence the Saxon could not immediately guess. Sitting on a small oak bench in the corner furthest from the fire, three poor and undernourished lay monks were watching the proceedings with mournful interest.
Excusing himself while he completed his business with the others, Silversleeves left Leofric near the fire with his two sons, which gave the Saxon some opportunity to study them. Henri, who at once began a polite conversation, seemed agreeable enough. His brother, Ralph, however, was not. Silent, awkward and sullen, nature seemed in him to have debased the family’s features. His nose was long, but also brutal; his eyes were strangely puffy; where his brother’s hands were long, his were gnarled and clumsy. He stared at Leofric suspiciously.
All Leofric knew, as he gazed at them, was that one of these two young men apparently wanted to marry his daughter.
So troubled was he by this thought that for a few moments he entered a kind of daze, and at first did not quite take in what Henri was earnestly telling him. “A great day for my family . . .” he was saying. “My father is building a church.”
A church! Now Leofric was all attention. He gazed at Henri in wonder. “Your father is endowing a church?” The young man nodded.
The Norman must be rich indeed, far richer than Leofric had realized. No wonder the priests were treating him with such respect.
There were already more than thirty churches in the Anglo-Danish city. Most were small Saxon buildings with wooden walls and earthen floors; some were little more than private chapels. But to found a church was a sure sign that a family had ascended to fortune.
Silversleeves, he learned, had just acquired a plot of land below his own holding. A good spot on Watling Street, above the area of wine warehouses known as the Vintry. “It will be dedicated to St Lawrence,” Henri explained. He smiled. “I dare say,” he coolly added, “that since there’s another St Lawrence nearby, they’ll call it St Lawrence Silversleeves.” This custom of double names commemorating both a saint and a founder was already becoming one of the features of London churches.
Nor was
this all. That very day, the young man added, another solemn consecration had taken place: that of the merchant himself. “My father has taken holy orders,” he said proudly. “So that he can officiate at the church.”
It was not uncommon. Whatever the piety of Edward the Confessor himself, the English Church during his reign had sunk into a complete and cheerful cynicism. True, the Church was still a mighty institution. Its lands were everywhere, its monasteries like little kingdoms. A man on the run could still seek sanctuary in a church and not even the king could touch him. But morality was another thing. Priests were frequently and openly living with, in effect, common-law wives, and left their church livings to their children or even gave them as dowries. Rich merchants took orders, as Silversleeves was doing, and might even, if they fancied the dignity, become canons of St Paul’s. Indeed, it was in the pious hope that William of Normandy might reform these abuses that the Pope had given the planned invasion his blessing.
Whatever the Pope may have thought, however, it was clear to Leofric that the house of Silversleeves was grown powerful indeed.
Several minutes passed before the priests and merchants left, then Silversleeves himself advanced towards Leofric.
“So that we can take our time,” he said pleasantly, “I hope you will sup with us this evening.”
From behind a screen came three serving women, who spread a large white cloth upon the table. They brought two earthenware pitchers, knives, spoons, bowls and drinking vessels. Once this was speedily and quietly done, Silversleeves motioned him forward.
It happened that this was a fast day in the calendar of the Church; at this hour, devout men ate only a light collation of vegetables with their bread and water. Since Silversleeves was now a priest, Leofric resigned himself to a harsh diet, but in this, too, he underestimated his host. At last turning his gaze upon the three depressed lay monks, who were still sitting on their bench in the corner, Silversleeves beckoned them to approach. “These good men fast and say penances for us,” he blithely explained. And giving to each of these worthies a silver penny, he waved them away and they sadly retired. Then he said grace.