The crusades are said to have begun during the eleventh century at the instigation of such as Peter the Hermit. Actually the idea of crusading, going to war to aid fellow Christians against Moslems, had begun in Northeastern Europe well before that time. In the hundred years or so between the Moorish invasion of the Visigoth kingdom of Spain and beginning of the Viking raids after the death of Charlemagne, the sons of aristocratic families often travelled to Spain to fight for freedom of men of their faith.
These knightly pilgrimages, as they were called, were not recorded in the few histories we have from these times since they were actions of individuals and small groups. They were an important part of the education of hundreds of young nobles. Tales told of them by bards, tales now forgotten connecting them with the British King Arthur III, his knights, and Merlin, his magician may have fostered the impulse behind the later crusades. This is the story of a young man named Wulfred, one of the earliest of these, who left his home in Britain to go on a crusade, alone except for his servant, an old man he called Athrohen.
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Wulfred had been bred, born, and raised on the plain country in the south of Britain, the county we call Salisbury. His parents’ marriage had been arranged for the sake of a treaty. Pacts including the marriage of a prince or king also often included marriages of his lords. His mother was a lady from southern Wales, with bright red hair and an excitable but loving disposition. Her ancestors included a mix of Welsh and Saxon nobility. His father was an Earl whose father was West Saxon and whose mother was the daughter of a Kentish woman and a chief exiled from the island of Anglesey. The family still retained fair importance there because of landholdings to which they retained title.
In those days Britain was made up of a large number of petty rival kingdoms. War was very much a constant for the nobility. Whenever there was no war going on, someone was sure to find a reason to start one and nobody wanted to be left out of a good fight. The business of travelling about to these little wars and fighting in them took up the greater part of a young man’s time.
The wars were usually not particularly brutal or even dangerous. Battle was treated almost as a sport by many people. The peasants were only expected to take part in ”Wars of Necessity,” that is, those having a serious reason for being. ”Wars of Choice,” as the more common, relatively pointless ones were known, were fought only by volunteers with nothing better to do; usually sons of nobility. History has somehow lost reference to the distinctions between types of wars used in those days.
It really did not seem to matter much which side a young man took unless his family was directly involved. The knights moved about as their spirits led them, and often chose sides in some action simply because they had seen some pretty lady at one or the other side of the field or for some similarly trivial reason.
Battles in Wars of Choice usually consisted of skirmishes between individuals who made or answered personal challenges in a field between drawn battle lines. Either man could quit the fight at any time for any reason, though one who seemed to withdraw out of cowardice would get jeers from both sides. And so a battle could go on for days on end, possibly even without serious injury. Pauses in the action might take place so men could go to mass or even for lunch, and it was not uncommon for soldiers of one side to be invited by the other to dinner.
Fighting was often done from horseback when the battleground was suitable and when it was agreeable to both sides. The idea of formal jousting did not exist except in a primitive form, and that was entirely for the purpose of teaching young men. And yet, the battles in the Wars of Choice very nearly had the spirit, if not the formality, of the joust.
Make no mistake, however. Everyone knew the War of Choice took place primarily for practice. When the War of Necessity broke out, as it too often did, the men had to be ready and trained. At such times, the ladies were hidden safely in the countryside, the peasants were armed, and the fields left bloody.
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Athrohen was Wulfred’s instructor. He was an old soldier long accustomed to battle, who had gotten to the age that he was a bit too old to fight any. He was not a nobleman but a mercenary, a sort seldom seen and usually distrusted, though in his case, years of service to Wulfred’s father had proven Athrohen’s loyalty. He was tough, but as he approached sixty he had begun to slow down. His lord, Wulfred’s father, was glad to have him teach the young men of the area, including his own four boys, of whom Wulfred, at age nine, was youngest.
Athrohen was a hard master to the boys. They were not given soft treatment because of their rank; to do so would have seemed strange or even dangerous to both Athrohen and the boys’ parents. He had them up early each day, made them tend their own horses, made them run to the brook where they bathed each day – summer and winter, and fought with them with staffs or swords.
When they failed, they were not spared the pain Athrohen considered appropriate to their ages. Small boys got smaller punishment than large, but each got what bruises he needed to teach him to stay alive in heavy fighting. Athrohen would laugh a kind of triumphant but loving laugh when he got the better of boys who were doing well, and in time, when they came to be able to get the better of him, they gave him the same laugh too, which he returned with pride in their accomplishment.
Athrohen also instructed the boys in medicine, particularly in how to treat wounds and how to tend the medical needs of animals. Soldiers had their own ideas about medicine, since they had a more practical approach to it than people who had learned more formally. (This was a distinction that became much more important as the middle ages wore on, until there were, at least as far as the soldier was concerned, two schools of medicine, the empirical, which worked, and the academic, which did not.)
At meal times, Athrohen sat at the head of the boys’ table, usually outside or in a tent, unless they were eating with their father. They would, at feasts, be required to sing and play a harp; so Athrohen was required to teach music in addition to warfare, though music was not considered important and failure in that field brought no punishment. Music was just a treat at the end of a successful day when the pupil to teacher relationship was dropped and all could be merry together.
Each boy, on reaching the age to go afield, went to whatever war was handy for the next stage of his education, taking along a servant or two. It was never easy for Athrohen to see his pupils go away, and if one watched closely when they did, one could see a tear in his eye. At these times, he always made some reference to birds being pushed from the nest to teach them to fly. He was usually rather quiet for the next few days. When at last the time came for Wulfred to go, Athrohen suggested that instead of going to the minor wars in Britain, he go to real fighting to prove his abilities and gain the best experience. The idea appealed both to Wulfred, a young man too proud of his abilities, and to his father. Athrohen had no more work at home and longed once more to travel and would go with him to Spain.
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They landed on the continent in Brittany. In those days it was an independent nation more closely tied to Wales and Cornwall (which was illogically called West Wales) than to France. It was a place where young men of quality were sent to get schooling in literature, now that the schools of south central Britain had been destroyed in wars, and where young women went to be safe during times of trouble. Wulfred had not been here before, having gotten his little formal schooling in a brief stay in the schools on Iona, possibly the best in western Europe at that time. The culture was different from that of the island home of Wulfred, more inclined to peaceful pursuits and less restrained.
They had been in Brittany for about a week, a dalliance excused partly by their need to recover from their rough channel crossing, when the day of one of the festivals of that place came. They joined the happy milling throng in the streets of the town and danced through the afternoon, drinking the local beer and singing songs whose words were new to them. Athrohen wandered away from Wulfred, who kept on with the dance and drinking, and took a long nap in the shade of a large tree.
During the course of the afternoon, Wulfred several times saw a particularly attractive young woman and found he could not put her out of his mind. As the sun began to set and torches were lit he found himself face to face with her. He held out his hands, for she seemed unsteady enough to need some support. She looked into his face with some apparent surprise, laughed hysterically (at him, it seemed), and fell into his arms. That was the last he remembered of the evening. In the morning he awoke to find himself outside of town in a hay mound, and she lay next to him, softly snoring.
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Wulfred left the young lady asleep and went back into town, somewhat dazed and hung over. He wandered for a while through the market without any particular intent, but suddenly ran into Athrohen, leading a pair of laden mules and obviously in a hurry. ”I hope that girl was special enough,” he said, ”to be worth the trouble we’re in.”
”Athrohen, what do you mean?”
”That girl,” Athrohen looked around and lowered his voice. ”That girl was not some local slut, Wulfred. She was sent here to be prepared to marry the son of a king. Her father had just come to fetch her to him. I tell you, man, if his servants catch you, there will be no children in your house.” Athrohen looked up at a stranger passing by, smiled, and said, ”Good morning, friend!” with a wave. Again he lowered his voice, and he said, ”we have to get out of here!” He looked at Wulfred, and saw what was going on in the young man’s mind. ”I don’t care how good you are with a sword, boy, there are only two of us and God knows how many of them. There are times to fight, and times all you can do is leave as silently and quickly as you can.” They started down the way indicated by Athrohen, who measured their speed carefully to be quick without looking unusual.
”Damn!” said Wulfred under his breath. ”I didn’t know! How was I to know? Athrohen, I don’t even know her name!”
”Alienor. And do not slow your pace so. The man’s servants are already searching town for you. The only reason they haven’t yet got you is that a woman who saw you leave the party together gave a bad description. In fact, she described someone else. But we can’t be sure how long it will take for them to find out.”
”But Athrohen, how was I to know? My God! I don’t even remember what we did.”
Athrohen laughed. ”Now that’s something! Here we are in flight and you don’t remember! I say if she wasn’t very special, it wasn’t worth it. You don’t remember. Fourteen years I train you. The first thing you do is beat an escape because of something you can’t remember.”
The light of the sun hurt Wulfred’s eyes. Though the day was actually a bit cool, its heat seemed to make his head hurt. He felt dry as he walked on a dusty road which seemed to follow the coast. ”Athrohen,” Wulfred suddenly asked, as he noticed their surroundings, ”where are we going?” They were, perhaps two miles out of town.
”East.”
”East? How am I going to get to Spain?”
”By turning south. We have to go through France one way or the other. We’re just going farther east than we normally would.”
”Then why are we going east?”
”To give her father a trail he will follow.”
”Why . . .”
”He will believe we are heading to France in haste. He will be in haste to catch us and fail to see our turning.”
Just at that point, the two men came across a woman sitting at the side of the road. It was Alienor. She got up, and hailed them with the words, ”oh please! You must take me with you!”
Alienor was afraid of her father. Alienor was even more afraid of the man she was supposed to marry, who had a reputation as jealous and brutal. He’d been twice widowed. It was rumored that at least one wife had died by his hand, though rumors differed as to which one. Perhaps both, Alienor thought. She had no idea who it was she had spent the night with, though she knew by his manners he was of a noble family. She was able to recall that they had simply fallen into the hay and been too filled with beer to get up, so they had both fallen asleep right there. That was not a story that could defend her. She remembered his face clearly and had gone straight from the market to the road to France, taking advantage of confusion among her father’s servants while he angrily ordered them about, making them search the town.
”Did anyone see you coming here?” asked Athrohen.
”No, my lord.”
”I am not your lord, though this man may be,” said Athrohen referring to Wulfred. ”I believe you have met before.”
”Wulfred,” he said, awkwardly holding out his hand to the young woman.
”Alienor.” She was at least as awkward.
”My lord and my lady,” said Athrohen a bit sarcastically, ”this is not the time for civilities. If you have not been introduced before now, it is too late. We must be off. Go that way.” He pointed through a hedgerow.
”That way?” asked Alienor, pointing over her shoulder, looking innocent and a bit stupid. Like Wulfred, she was hung over.
”Just go,” said Wulfred gently. He sounded to her very knowledgeable and sure of himself.
Wulfred and Alienor climbed through, followed by the mules. This was not at all easy, though a place had been carefully chosen, for the hedgerow was formidable. It was a mound of earth about three feet high topped by a five foot hedge, which had to be cut down carefully in one place so it could be put back neatly after everyone got through. Athrohen followed, hiding their trail with great caution.
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The three came to be quite accustomed to climbing through hedgerows. They stayed off the roads until they had moved well to the south of the town they had started in. Once on the main road leading south, they called themselves father, daughter, and son-in-law, claiming to be merchants, and so got about four days ahead of the men following them.
Alienor did not talk to Wulfred about their night in the hay. She did not consider it important. She did not know Wulfred could not remember what had happened. It was several weeks before Athrohen and Wulfred both understood they had made assumptions about that night that were not true. In the meantime, Wulfred had a hard time figuring her out.
He found she was not the loose woman he’d first thought she must be. On the other hand, Alienor was not a soldier. She did not understand many things Wulfred thought should be obvious. He had been trained so carefully they were second nature to him. She had no knowledge of necessities of hard travel, and troubled the men quite a bit. When they bought horses the afternoon of the first day, she complained her saddle was uncomfortable. The problem was she was not used to riding in a saddle. Another time, she insisted Wulfred punish a man she felt had insulted her. But if Wulfred fought he would doubtless show anyone watching he was not a merchant, but a knight in disguise. The worst problem was that her shoes, which were thin slippers, were not at all suited to travel, so her feet had been hurt badly as she went through the the fields and hedgerows and from sharp stones in the road.
Wulfred tended her sores. Athrohen observed, still a teacher at heart. Putting salve and bandages on Alienor’s scratched, blistered feet, Wulfred began changing his attitude toward her, caring about her pains though he still felt she was foolish. Women needed good men. Alienor, for all her failure to understand things obvious to the soldier, was a good woman.
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They had traveled deep into the Aquitaine before they began to relax a bit and take a more leisurely attitude toward the trip. Athrohen would not allow Wulfred to give up his disguise, but they began to suspect they had gone far enough to find a place for Alienor to stay and be safe from her father. She could not go on with them to Asturias, the little Spanish Christian holdout territory where Wulfred expected to fight. Such an adventure would be very dangerous. There was some discussion about the idea that she might stay in one of the Gallic villages. Alienor had no one but Wulfred and Athrohen, and worried over being left behind, but she did not speak of it much.
As they passed through a tiny hamlet in southern Gaul (in the South, it was still called Gaul) they were stopped by an old woman who came up to them saying, ”Give me a silver penny, and I will tell you what you must know about your future!”
”Ha!” said Athrohen, ”what can you tell us, woman? Do I need a special charm to protect me from bandits? Will I meet a beautiful lady who will marry me if I have the potion to give her, or perhaps a witch who will cast a spell on me if I fail to smell sufficiently of the garlic you sell?”
”The silver?”
”If you are true I will give it.”
”Then you must know that the lady’s father is in the next town, only a day’s ride back. He is looking for her, and has her bridegroom with him.”
The three stiffened. Athrohen went to give the woman a coin, but accidentally dropped three into her hand. These she looked at closely for a moment, and said, ”you are most generous, my lord. I will keep these three together safely that you three also may be so. If you stay together all will be well. But do not separate or much will be lost. Go by boat.”
They took the old woman’s advice, taking passage on the boat of a silent fisherman, as he put to sea in the early morning. Alienor’s father lost the trail.
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They landed on the coast of northern Spain where the territory of Asturias had only recently proclaimed itself a center of resistance against the Moors. The Visigothic nobility of Spain, or that part of it that could do so, was gathering in the mountains for a stand. If unsuccessful, they knew, it would be their last. But their leader, a young chief called Pelayo, insisted on calling the upcoming battle a ”first stroke.”
Athrohen, Wulfred, and Alienor made their way into the mountains to join the Christian army. They found it still very confused, its headquarters in a wide-mouthed cave high in the mountains. The council of chiefs was gathered around a fire about thirty feet behind the entrance. They were engaged in useless argument over whether independence from the Roman Empire, declared forty or fifty years earlier when Arabic navies closed the sea-lanes to Constantinople, had been the a good idea. (Those people would have considered the modern belief that Rome had fallen over two hundred years earlier strange indeed.) The pilgrims were brought into the cave to be introduced. Then as Athrohen and Alienor left, recriminations and bickering began again in the council.
In a few moments, Wulfred arose. To the Spanish Visigoths he must have looked very much the foreigner. ”Gentlemen,” he said, speaking a bit hesitantly in Latin, ”I am a little confused. I came here to fight for Christianity against the heathen. You must tell me, however, since I am new here and not used to your ways, which of you are the Christian, and which the heathen. I wish to be done with my work here so I can be about the business of convincing that lady you just met to give me an heir. I am very good with a sword or lance or bow, but the business of talk does not sit well on me.”
The men about him went into embarrassed silence. After a moment Pelayo stood up. ”Now we make our plan,” he said. As Pelayo addressed his council, Wulfred reflected on his own words. In telling the council of plans for a future with Alienor, he had told a little lie to impress them, but the lie opened his heart to his mind. The little lie he told them was a great truth he had not told himself.
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The Moorish army was closing in on the Christians. A plan to establish a defensible national capital was given up for the moment. The immediate need was mere preservation of their small army. They chose a place called Covadonga to make their stand, a tiny village high above a deep valley and only approachable by a narrow road so steep it had to circle halfway round the village just to get there. Throughout the circle, the road was within range of the town’s defenders. The new army hastily built a wall with a gate, little more than a barricade, at a point particularly difficult to bypass. They did not form a complete defensive perimeter. The places where the defenders were atop a cliff were considered sufficiently safe without a wall.
They would defend themselves mostly with missiles thrown down on the passing army, stones, arrows, and catapulted bits of red hot iron for the most part. The drop was not sheer enough for such things as boiling liquids. Tons of rock were brought into the village and most put in retaining racks. Cutting a single rope would drop a rack’s contents on whomever was below.
Food was brought in, at the expense of any who could pay and for the use of all. Wulfred gave up the mules he had brought with him to be used as his commanders saw fit. (He had left the horses in Gaul.) He would have sent Alienor and Athrohen into the mountains around the town, but Athrohen insisted he was not to old to fight, and Alienor was superstitious about what the old woman in Gaul had said about keeping together. ”Besides,” she said, giving the first indication Wulfred might have any success in winning her affections, ”if the town falls, you will be lost, and what would I be without you?”
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Some days after the preparations were complete, the Moorish army came into sight. Coming up the narrow valley below the village, they were in plain view. The defenders must have been as clear to them. They briefly halted, and their commander went among them shouting words of encouragement and giving orders. As the Visigoths watched, the Moors bowed to the ground and prayed for success in this battle. Then they arose. Those who had horses mounted them, and all prepared to charge past the cliffs, sure in the belief that they would either survive or go to eternal bliss. They could have starved the town into submission fairly easily, but they preferred a more glorious engagement. With a wave of his curved sword, the officer gave his signal; and the men gave a roar, crying ”Allah!” And they began their race up the steep, narrow road to the town.
”Now!” shouted Pelayo, as the invaders came in range of the archers, and a deadly hail of arrows was loosed on them. ”Now!” he shouted a second time, the ropes holding the racks of boulders were cut and all free hands began throwing stones, bricks, pottery, and whatever else was available onto the attackers.
Wulfred was among those who carried rocks to the cliffs and cast them over. As he did, he thought of the years learning to handle arms. He looked up and saw Alienor lift a stone bigger than her head and fling it off, as useful a soldier as he in this business. He bent down without saying anything to her, picked up another stone, and threw it. He wouldn’t have been heard even if he could have thought of anything to say. The world was filled with chaotic roar from which a nation was being born.
The mountainside below was soon obscured with dust. The archers soon could only take targets as they appeared at the edges of the field of battle. They couldn’t see anything at the center. As Moors appeared on the road, whether still charging toward the gate or trying to flee, they were quickly cut down. After a short while, these ceased to appear, and the defenders slackened their pace and slowly the roaring quieted. The Visigoths looked down on the scene of their first real victory. As the clouds cleared, they could see that the enemy had been decimated; only a very few who had fled straight down the steep slope amid rolling boulders had survived. They were at first dumbfounded, and then they cheered.
”My God in Heaven!” cried Wulfred suddenly, ”The gate!” He ran, to the surprise of the Visigoths, to the gate they had made at their little wall, convinced that the enemy could still get through there. But when he got there he found the men assigned to defend them had stood as ordered, and outside all was quiet. The Visigoths were amused at Wulfred’s nervousness, and Wulfred seemed a bit embarrassed at it, but indeed the town was safe.
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Wulfred fought in a few battles after that first one, mostly small raids in which he strove hard to show off his ability. But soon after the Battle of Covadonga, he was wounded, and had to recuperate for several weeks. During this time, while being tended by the Visigoth physicians, he was able to give them more and more help tending other soldiers. They were very surprised at his ability in medicine. It was more important to them than his ability with weapons.
He soon found that his value to the Visigoths as a soldier also lay partly in an ability he barely cared about; he was a good musician and could compose songs. Life had to be more than drill and battle, and the Spanish had little in the way of amusement available to them. Their wealth had been destroyed by the Moors. Theirs was one of the poorest and weakest countries in Europe, barely a country at all, and they had no luxuries. He was very proud of his ability with his sword, but they prevailed upon him to stay at home from the battles so he could comfort them when they returned, giving them salves to heal their wounds and music to raise their spirits. This was a great surprise to him, and seemed at first almost a blow on his honor.
Wulfred went to the leaders of the army and asked to be assigned to combat duty, but they said they needed him where he was more than another knight in battle. He ached to go into combat to prove himself. He talked to Athrohen, who had given him all he knew, about how he felt, and asked him to speak to the chiefs on his behalf.
”You want an opportunity to show your prowess,” said the old man. ”Prowess is cheap here. These people around us have all survived hard combat. But when they, who are all heroes, find one who is a hero to them, they celebrate his life with a ballad. There is not one of them who has a higher hope than to be honored by you in your songs. And what greater honor than that could you wish to have from them?”
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Pelayo was elected king by the chiefs and crowned about two years after Wulfred and Alienor arrived. This was an event not without sorrow: In creating the new Kingdom of Asturias and crowning their leader, the Visigoths acknowledged that their old kingdom would never recover. Nevertheless, it was an occasion of joy, especially for Wulfred and Alienor, who were married during the week of celebration that followed the coronation.
When the time came for Wulfred to take his wife and old Athrohen and return home, he made a good-bye speech to those he was leaving. ”You are my friends, my brothers, and my own nation whom I love. The heart of my hearts will be with you always. Until again I sing with you, my songs will sound hollow within me. So be assured – God willing, I shall be here once more with you.”
Lives Lost and Found 