Lord Alfred’s Homecoming
A historical treatise by Josephine Childress-Busey Published June the ninend, MMVII
St. Michael's Mount is a little island off the southern coast of Cornwall, on which a Catholic monastery was built sometime in the 900s. The following century, Pope Gregory guaranteed an indulgence to those who made a pilgrimage to the site, which led to the town of Marazion being built on the nearby coast.
In said town, on a muggy summer night in 1097, Alfred Codd came screaming into the world in a coating of amniotic jelly, and celebratory drinks were had among the local peasants. Legend has it that a sip of beer was given even to the newborn Alfred; if true, this answers a few questions about his life's deeds, but raises several more. He would leave Marazion at the age of four, his family being relocated to replenish the serf workforce at newly-conquered Rennes, but he never forgot his Cornish roots.
Codd grew up in a turbulent time for the Kingdom of England, for even as its foothold in northern France strengthened, ground was being lost on the isles of Britannia to a new wave of Viking raiders. His ambitions elevating beyond the mere plundering of English settlements for gold and slaves, King Snorri Ragnvaldsson of Norway was now dispatching warlords to claim Britannia's fertile land as well, rewarding those who succeeded with governance over the won territory.
One such Viking leader was Knut of Anslo. In 1113, embarking with a fleet of longships gathered from multiple coastal towns along the Skagerrak, he and his army rowed across the North Sea, then through the English Channel, and made landfall near Britain's southwestern tip. He swore on his arm ring (a bracelet traditionally worn by Norse pagans) that this land would be his, and when his raiders were successful in securing it, he became Jarl Knut of Cornwall. Finding St. Michael's Mount to be a fitting site for his throne, he enslaved the resident monks and repurposed their monastery as a mead hall.
In Rennes, a young Alfred Codd recieved this ill news. He simmered on it for years, pacified only by near-daily visits to the pub. Once he was adopted into the English nobility as a reward for his victory on the road to Caen, Alfred insisted upon having Cornwall's colors (a white cross against a black background) incorporated into his family's new coat of arms-- for, you see, he never forgot his roots. Nor was he of the sort to forgive.
Fortuitously, retribution was not far out of his reach; early in the year 1120, Lord Alfred was called across the Channel to do battle with the Norwegians once more. A collective of small earldoms swearing allegiance to the crown of Snorri Ragnvaldsson had perforated the isles of Britannia. Raids and even full-blown sieges were occuring with greater frequency across Enlgand and Scotland alike, and the kingdom of Wales was on the verge of collapse. Lord Alfred vowed that the English crown would reign supreme in Britain once more, and that the reclaimation would start with Cornwall, freeing the House of Codd's ancestral homeland.
Jarl Knut saw him coming. A well-placed spy in Rennes sent warning across the Channel, aleting the Norwegians occupying Cornwall to an imminent English attack. Knut consolidated his forces, gathering a total of about 830 Viking warriors in Marazion and sending 400 more to outposts along the southern coastline.
Lord Aflred made landfall in Britain quite some miles to the east of Marazion with a force of mailed knights, longbowmen and swordsmen that totaled a little over two thousand. The westward march to their destination would be a days-long slog through near-constant rainfall, and Jarl Knut laid multiple ambushes in the Britons' path. Yet Codd and his loyal subordinates were relentless. Despite the men lost each time, no Norwegian that lay in wait to hamper Alfred's army survived the Englishmen's wrath, and these victories spurred them ever onward.
On a rainy morning coming on the heels of a rainy night, Alfred Codd and his force regrouped outside of Marazion, reduced to about 650 men (mostly melee infantry), their tabards stained with mud and Viking blood, their chainmail rusting and their bellies growling, but their resolve little worse for wear. Inside the monastery at St. Michael's Mount, Jarl Knut heard a dire thunderclap and must have figured Thor was sending him a good omen, because he then casually ordered his second-- one Halfdan Nine-Fingers-- to assume command of Marazion's defenders in his stead.
Alfred's company charged forth into Marazion's streets, defying the armor that bogged them down in the mud and rain. Finding the opportunity ripe for a cavalry charge, Halfdan bade all of his mounted Vikings (a few hundred in total) to plow into what he assumed was a tired, vulnerable rabble of longswordsmen and archers.
Halfdan himself turned the corner to join his men and discovered, to his confusion and horror, that the aforementioned Norwegian cavalrymen were already decimated. The charge had broken against English shields. Alfred and his men clambered over the piled bodies of Vikings and their mounts as the few surviving horsemen fled in stark terror. Halfdan turned to make his own escape, but a yeoman's arrow found his back.
Leaderless, the remaining Norwegian forces fell back across the knee-deep strait between the Marazion mainland and St. Michael's Mount, so as to make a stand just outside the monastery. They hoped to use the strait as a chokepoint and rain down on the English with arrows, but did not take into account the superior range of their enemy's longbows, which thinned out their ranks before Alfred then ordered a charge onto the monastery grounds. By the time Lord Alfred captured the isle, his force was reduced to about 400 men, but the Norwegian defenders had been put to rout.
Inside his "mead hall," Jarl Knut listened as another thunderclap pierced the victory howls of his enemies. He was starting to think this weather was the omen of a different deity, particularly when Alfred Codd kicked open the door across from him and strode in, hair and tabard soaked but eyes ablaze with a terrible fury.
"This past year," said the English general, "When first I led the charge against Northmen, I expressed a degree of grudging respect for your kin. I reserve none of it for the Northman that now sits before me. For you walk on Cornish soil and call it your own, take Cornish monks and Cornish women as slaves, desecrate the house of God, and cower in it while your warriors fight and die!"
Knut disagreed. Accepting defeat, he stood up, arms spread out, and dared Lord Alfred to strike him down-- to send him to the halls of Valhalla, where he and his would drink in the company of the gods forever.
Alfred instead ordered him imprisoned. As the province came back under English rule, the Codds used their influence to ensure that the once and former Jarl of Cornwall would rot in a dungeon, denied the death in battle for which he had yearned.
And as Knut's long incarceration ensued, so did Alfred Codd's campaign to destroy the other Viking earldoms of Britannia.