Conquest

The time passed quickly as the prospect of an adventure in a new land grew closer. The men practised their fighting skills every day in a gruelling series of drills and exercises, while Torfida’s charm and personality endeared her to the wealthy of Dublin and prompted many conversations with visitors to her employer’s home, one of the finest in Dublin. Guests came from many lands, and with news of turmoil throughout Europe. Henry of France had invaded Normandy, but had been defeated by the formidable Duke William. The Viking King of the Rus, Jaroslav I, had died early in 1055 and his lands, stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea, had been split between his five sons. The predictable civil war had soon followed.

Torfida absorbed everything she could from everyone she met: new languages and dialects; information about trade and prices; stories of pilgrimages and miracles; news about the building of new churches and castles; and confirmation that the schism between the churches of Rome and Byzantium, begun by a papal bull in 1054, had become permanent.

This last piece of news greatly saddened her: if men could not agree on God’s word, on what could they agree?

Hereward and his companions were ready to leave their temporary home in Dublin in March 1056.

Their captain on the journey to the west of Scotland was a Norseman. Captain Thorkeld’s trade was weapons — the finest a warrior could want. His home port of Goteborg, in the land of the Swedes, was a place renowned for forging the swords and axes of war. There was an ancient art to the folding and working of hot iron to make it both tensile enough to take a sharp edge and malleable enough not to break. The furnaces of Goteborg were known throughout Europe for the skill of their weaponsmiths.

Thorkeld had learned of Macbeth’s plans to raise a new army. Originally, his consignment of weapons was destined for a chieftain in Cork, whom he knew would pay well, but not as well as Macbeth. So Thorkeld had decided to turn tail and return northwards. He offered Hereward and his companions free passage to Scotland in exchange for service as men-at-arms on the treacherous journey to Macbeth’s garrison in the Scottish Highlands.

They made landfall at the head of Loch Linnhe, where they bought horses for the long journey into the mountains of the north. Thorkeld left his four sailors with his ship and set off with Hereward and his companions, accompanied by six fearsome henchmen. His cargo was very valuable and these men provided escort in exchange for a share of the profits. The cargo of weapons was carefully hidden within rolls of wool and flax and the group agreed that, if challenged, Torfida would purport to be a lady of the Earldom of Northumberland with her escort.

Hereward and Torfida had never seen a land like Scotland before. The further they travelled, the bigger the mountains became; snow still lay on the highest peaks; the streams and rivers were torrents from the melting snow of a long winter and, in the great forests of pine, the wildlife was beginning to stir again after its long hibernation.

The group finally arrived at Glenmore, a huge valley protected by the tallest of mountains. Here the locals confirmed that Macbeth was camped between two vast lochs, at the site of an ancient Roman fort dedicated to the Emperor Augustus. It was a place secure from attack, where Macbeth could be supplied from both the western and the northern seas. It took most of the next day to reach the first outpost of Macbeth’s camp. As they approached, guards stationed high in the rocks hurried towards them.

Communication with the guards was not difficult: their native language was a Celtic tongue that Martin could understand. When the Sergeant of the Guard was shown what the packhorses were carrying, he insisted that they wait for a mounted escort into the camp. When it arrived thirty minutes later, it numbered more than twenty heavily armed horsemen.

Hereward’s first impression of these men was that they were seasoned warriors but ill disciplined and dispirited. Their appearance was shabby, their weapons dull, their horses neglected. If these mounted men were from Macbeth’s elite housecarls, then the King had a dire military problem.

His initial assessment was not changed by the state of the King’s camp as they rode in. Few sentries could be seen, and men sat about idly poking their fires or snoozing on their sacks. Some looked up as the new arrivals passed by, but with a nonchalance not typical of a king’s army. Most disturbingly, a quick count by Hereward tallied no more than 400 men and perhaps 250 non-combatants; it was hardly an army to recapture a stolen crown.