Horrors of The Harrying by Neil Kay EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
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- Author: Neil Kay
- Language: English
- Genre: Historical British Fiction
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Mercia, 1067 AD
Leowynne gave a glum sneer-like expression as she poked the fire. She
could still see smoke coming from what had been the village of Darbye
until that morning. “So where are we going to live now?” she demanded of
her husband. “It was out west that the revolts happened.” From her tone it
was as if she held Acwald responsible for the mailed man who had ridden
into the village at dawn sending the women who were up early getting
water scattering. Leowynne had been one of the first to get back to her hut
and warn her husband and his parents. They were now a few miles into the
woodland surrounding the village waiting out whoever it was that was
burning their homes and possessions.
“The Earl is out west with his men,” Acwald said. Their Danish earl
Arne commanded around thirty men from a nearby Roman fort and they
had been conspicuous by their absence from Darbye when reports reached
the village of uprisings in Hereford and Shrewsbury. Danes from East
Mercia, Saxons from West Mercia and even Welshmen from the kingdom
of Gwynedd had united to kick these Normans off their land. The fact that a
Norman knight was now destroying their homes aided by a gaggle of brutes
suggested to Acwald that things had turned foul out west and they wouldn’t
be seeing Arne again.
“It needn’t be so bad,” he told his wife, “just like in grandfather’s day
when the Danes came up from London and took the lands of the
Ealdorman. Nothing really changed for the villagers, someone’s got to get
the harvest in no matter what nobs are at the top.”
“Then why are they hurting us? I saw them cut down Aswig and she’s
never done anything to anyone, lazy cow never does anything! If she could
move faster, maybe she’d have got away.”
They waited for several hours before deciding to head back to the
village hoping the ransackers had tired and made their point. Their hut had
been torched but it was an overcast day, the rushes hadn’t been changed in a
while so were damp and the fire hadn’t spread far. The walls were charred
and part of the roof was missing but the hut was still livable. Acwald was
relieved that his tools and a small collection of coins were still buried in the
dirt.
A walk through the village emphasized how fortunate they had been.
Whole buildings had been gutted and three bodies lay in the mud. Aswig
and an elderly couple Acwald had known all his life. The church was the
only building intact but Father Alfric and his wife Neel had been severely
beaten. The priest had lost most of his teeth so a bloody and bruised Neel
told them, “New lord wants to address us in the village hall.”
Darbye’s population of fifty, now reduced to forty-seven, crowded into
the hall. At the entrance and leaning against the wall were grim-looking
men, not knights or even soldiers, merely hard men who relied on their
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