This book was written partly to tell the story of what the Wolves’ part in the history of the Duchy of Normandy might be, and partly to explore the character of Ulfr and of Viking ships and shipbuilding. First, though, the Normans.
In Britain, we tend to compartmentalise our invaders. I remember my history lessons being at times almost a dizzying blur of successive invasions. There were the Romans, of course, and I tend to focus on them, myself. And then, during what are often called the Dark Ages, there were the Jutes, the Saxons, the Angles, the Danes, the Vikings and then the Normans. What we largely miss by separating out these invaders is that many of them were very much the same people, or variations on a theme. The Danes were Vikings. The Jutes, Angles and Saxons were all peoples from modern Denmark or Baltic Germany, and were close enough to Vikings in many ways that by the time you’d argued the difference, they’d have punched you in the face, burned your monastery and run away with your money and children.
And then there’s the Normans. We in Britain definitely see the Normans as different from the Vikings, and yet they were perhaps the closest connected of all. The Normans had only been in France for five generations between Rollo arriving on his dragon ship and bellowing about Odin, and William the Bastard fighting for his dukedom against the rebels. Five generations is not that long. The only real difference between Halfdan and William (aside from religion) is that William’s people had been in Normandy long enough to have assimilated some language and habits from the Frankish peoples. It would be doing a disservice to the Normans not to give them some credit, mind. In those five generations, they had developed socially, linguistically, religiously, politically and in many other ways, into a distinct people. But that distinct people was still surprisingly close to Viking in many ways.
So to some extent, after their time in the south, the Wolves are almost on home ground now, or at least familiar enough that they can relate.
Normandy had undergone several periods of aggressive expansion by the early 1040s, carving out a nation that the French and Burgundians would have loved to see the back of, and then annexing the Cotentin Peninsula from the Bretons. There had been an unbroken line of dukes, but suddenly, with Robert’s death, only an illegitimate son remained. William inherited his title and lands at an age so young he was probably seen as little more than an inconvenience by powerful lords. Yet he held on, he secured his throne, he survived a number of assassination attempts (lovingly portrayed herein), and finally, in 1047 (sadly a little after the scope of this novel) he led an army against a much larger rebel force at the battle of Val-ès-Dunes, and in doing so defeated them and secured his power for good. For your edification, be consoled that the rebel lords Neel de Cotentin and Ranulf de Bessin, along with many other powerful rebels, met their end at Val-ès-Dunes trying to bring down the duke and his new ally, the King of France.
Let us examine the story I have told, then, with this background in mind.
I suspect I have little to clarify from Part One of the book, which takes place mostly on the road with a last section at Pirou (of which more will follow in relation to Part Three).
The attack at Valognes is recorded in sources, though I have played with it a little. The original comes across as considerably more fantastical than my more prosaic version. I used a number of sources for the background to this novel, including Duncan’s The Dukes of Normandy, but the main source for this part, and the one that gives the best view of the rebellion itself is The Conspiracy of the Norman Barons Against William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy by Charles Edmond Prudent Le Cointe. Catchy, eh?
This work is the best source, and tells us of that first attempt on the duke at Valognes. In Le Cointe’s work, we are told that the conspiracy was born at Bayeux between four lords: Neel de Cotentin, Ranulf de Bayeux (Viscount de Bessin), Grimoult du Plessis and Hamon (or Hammond) ‘of the Teeth!’ de Evrecy, Thorigny and Creully. Le Cointe tells us that the four rebel barons came to Valognes to deal with William, and that on the night of the deed they prepared in a local house, where they were overheard by a fool called Gallet, who happened to be favoured by William, and who ran to the castle, raising the alarm in time for William to escape their clutches. The fool then held off the enemy and saved the duke, and William fled alone, crossing the tidal river and finding aid at the house of Hubert de Ryes, who led the enemy away and saved him. This is, of course, chivalric high adventure, and very unlikely to bear any resemblance to what actually happened. I suspect my version is probably actually closer to the truth than the sources, for all of its being fiction. The movements after their meeting with Hubert are my own interpretation, including a fight among the ruins of Vieux-la-Romaine. It is, in our sources, the attempt on William’s life at Valognes that triggers the full-scale revolt of the barons.
Of Ulfr’s shipbuilding in Part Three, I have been forced to make leaps in logic and judgement in many ways. Firstly in the construction technique. Much of what I describe comes from the Oseberg and Gokstad ships, which are considerably earlier, dated to the ninth century. By the time of the eleventh century, things had moved on in the world of shipbuilding. I have nodded to the changing times of Norse ships with the realisation that their first ship would have had the oarsmen seated on their own sea chests in old-fashioned Viking style, while now they are installing oar benches. But I hope you will forgive me my anachronisms, for there is a purpose. Ulfr is old-fashioned. He is building an old-fashioned ship in an old-fashioned way, and so it seems appropriate to have the techniques solidly anchored in an earlier century. Also, I have sped up production. Normally, of course, it would take a lot longer to create such a ship. However, when studies are made of Viking ship creation, there is always an assumption as to the level of effort and manpower that can be applied. A traditional longship’s construction begins with the shipwright walking the forests and choosing the trees for his ship, long before they are even cut and shaped. Given that Ulfr has ready-made parts, a vast workforce, and unlimited funds, I was forced to extrapolate as best I could how much faster work could be completed. The result here is not, I believe, outside the bounds of reason, for all its impressive speed. After all, the ship was not entirely finished!
A quick note before we move on, on the lords and locations in the Cotentin. Firstly, the castle at Pirou remains, though the place that can now be visited is a much later construction on the same spot. A stone castle with a moat has replaced the timber palisade of early Norman days. But Pirou is a real place, as is Pirou Plage, where Ulfr built his ship. The place was indeed built to guard two small tidal harbours. I have used old names for them, but the one to the north from which Ulfr steals the oars is now Saint-Germain-sur-Ay, while the southern one is at Geffosses. My descriptions will not match up to their current visibility, for much has changed on the coast in a thousand years. The hazards that lie along that coast, which Ulfr braves in his new ship, are based on descriptions and maps of the local coastline in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the central clear channel named the Passage de la Déroule, the three hazards I name marked on maps as Banc Feli, Basses de Portbail, and Rochers de Taillepieds. The narrow defile where Ulfr rides out pursuit lies on the rocky north coast of the peninsula, just to the west of Le Landemer. My descriptions of Valognes, where the hunt is planned and the first attempt on the duke’s life takes place, are largely conjectural, based on other surviving Norman fortresses of the early eleventh century. Of the Valognes of William’s time, nothing remains. Even the medieval castle that followed was later demolished, barring one tower, which fell to bombing in World War II.
That Serlo de Hauteville, senior brother of the family, was part of the rebellion against William is again conjectural. However, Serlo’s date of death is not confirmed, and he is not named among the many companions of the duke during the invasion of England in 1066, just two decades later, which suggests that he did not enjoy favour or prominence in Normandy by then. I have killed Serlo off here, in the last chapters of the book, in the winter of 1043. Various sources give Serlo’s year of death as anywhere between 1027 and 1035, and yet he is also recorded as having inherited the family estate on his father’s death in 1041, and so an earlier date of demise seems unlikely, barring some kind of zombie activity. Thus I have him on record as alive in 1041, but unrecorded by 1066, and so I am unrepentant in placing his demise in 1043 at the hands of the Wolves.
I have left Beatrix’s fate outside the scope of this novel. Be assured that Serlo did let her live, for she ended up married twice, the first time to that very Armand de Mortain. The second may well be one Geoffroi di Conversano, who had been a companion of the other Hautevilles in Apulia. I have been vague in this, much like the sources. It is complex, as is so much in this era. The counts of Mortain and Eu remained William’s supporters, and so Beatrix must have fallen on her feet in the end.
Moving on to the final part of the tale, the siege I have described at Falaise is not recorded in texts, though the sources are scanty and tend to leap about and concentrate on the more peculiar events. William’s activity after the attempt on his life at Valognes and the outbreak of the rebellion, and his bringing on side of the French King and making the rebels pay for their actions are touch and go. The attempted assassination in his room there, which I have portrayed, comes from Duncan, though in that source it is the seneschal’s lieutenant who saves William, and the event takes place at Le Vaudreuil. I have conflated events for ease of description. Once again, the sources of this era and region are extremely vague, often contradictory, at best suspicious, and jump about, missing huge, important sections. The tithe barn at the village (now known as Épaney) still exists, as does the church, and it was, as described, subject to the monks of Ouche and Perrières.
As you may have already surmised, just as I introduced Beatrix in Iron and Gold as a hook to drag the Wolves into this new story, the presence of the Archbishop of Jorvik (York) at Falaise is clearly a link to what is to come in book five. There is no record of Ælfric being in Normandy, but then his movements between his part in the crowning of Edward the Confessor in the spring of 1043 and his death in 1051 are unrecorded. The former queen, Edward’s mother, is known to history as Emma of Normandy! She had blood ties to the dukes of Normandy, and when Edward stripped her of her wealth we know that she fled abroad to Bruges, not to Normandy, but she had ties to the archbishop, and there is no reason he could not have been used by her as an intermediary with her distant family. Certainly, she had her goods returned to her in due course.
So that brings us to the end of the fourth book in the series. With two books remaining in my plan, you will already have more than an inkling where the next one, at least, is set.
Halfdan and his friends have, in their journeys, lost almost everything, and yet now they have regained most of it, with an eye to settling the remaining scores, and have gained, to boot. They have some fame and infamy, great tales for the mead halls of their dotage, and a small fortune in gold, not to mention a new ship and a new crew.
Heaven help the enemies of Archbishop Ælfric.
See you in book five: Loki Unbound.
Simon Turney
April 2023