by Katy Moran
Anwen smiled. “Are you brothers?”
Both outriders smiled at her. They each had the same wide, square-toothed grin.
“Aye, lady,” said the elder. “Godsway and Godsgift, house of Ad Gefrin.”
“What’s left of it,” said his brother, and his bright face darkened.
“That’s Godsgift, though they call him the Fox, he’s that cunning.”
A smile flashed across Godsgift’s face, but Essa was watching him closely and he could see it had not reached his eyes. He’s a deep one, all right, he thought.
“Then we are honoured to be met by the High King’s athelings,” said Anwen. “Is he your father?”
Godsway shook his head. “Nay, he’s our half-brother. We lost so many at Penda’s fight, but he’ll pay for it in the next life, the heathen bastard.” He glanced at Essa and Wulf. “Are your blades peace-bound or not? Now’s the time to make them safe – tha’ll be safe in our hands if tha’s not armed.”
He rode closer, and Essa and Wulf showed the peace-bands on their swords, and Essa felt glad of the bone-handled dagger hidden safe in his boot.
“Well enough,” said Godsway. “Are you honest Christians, or keeping the old ways still?”
“Oh, we’re honest Christians, praise the Lord,” said Wulf. Essa fought a strong urge to laugh.
“Good, for there’s powerful hatred against the old ways in our hall, and the old ways may blame Penda for that,” said Godsway. “I must ask your names and what you want here now you’re on our land. If you would come closer, it’ll be with us or not at all. Nor far, the least. The way is guarded now with hidden archers.”
They gave their real names, but said Essa and Wulf were cousins from East Anglia, Anwen Wulf’s wife, and that they’d news for the king.
“What’s tha news, then?” said the Fox. He glanced down at Fenrir. “It’s a long way to travel with tha hound, all the way from Wolf Folk marches.” His eyes narrowed slightly. “And the king’s enough to think on as it is.”
He knows we’re not telling them the whole story…
Essa put the idea out of his mind. They would have to deal with that later, if at all. Now they just had to get in that hall. It was making his toes curl with frustration, knowing the High King was only paces away after so many days of riding. He glanced across at Wulf, and they exchanged a look; they had not thought of this. What if they were not actually allowed to see Godsrule? There must be hordes of people seeking an audience with him: there was every chance they would be turned away.
Anwen smiled serenely. “It is news for King Godsrule’s ears only.”
“News?” said Godsway. “What’s the price?”
“We give it free,” said Essa.
Godsway and the Fox stared at him. “There’s something about your face,” said the Fox. “Where’d tha say you come from?”
Essa felt a bubble of fear rise up his throat, and he heard that long-ago voice once more: It’s in tha face—
“You’re mistaken,” he said. “I’ve not been this far north before.”
“Aye, well,” said Godsway. “Ride on with us, then.”
But the Fox stared at Essa a moment longer: long enough to turn the blood to ice in his veins. He can’t know you, he told himself angrily. And besides, it’s Wulf they’ll kill if they find out who we really are. Nobody cares any which way about you in here.
Ad Gefrin lay settled in a green valley amid high, soaring fells. The land surrounding it was bright with new grass, and the great earthen palace walls rose high above a deep, dark ditch, dotted with snowdrops. It was spring: the fells were all over flowers and new life was everywhere. He heard the crying of lambs born on the hillside, and smiled at their keening, the song of spring. There would be no fighting now, no bloody death. He was going to put a stop to it all.
“We dug deep and built the walls high after that heathen bastard came,” said Godsway, as they neared the gate. “You should have seen Ad Gefrin before these days. They say the earth ran with molten gold as the hall burned, and Edwin’s golden dragons melted right off the walls.”
“Were you not at the fight, then?” said Essa lightly. Wulf was grinning and sitting back in his saddle, swinging his legs so that the iron buckles on his stirrups sprayed raindrops. Essa wondered how he did it; it was as if he had never laid eyes on Ad Gefrin before, far less helped his father burn it to the ground.
The Fox shook his head. “Na, more’s the pity. We were fostered down in Kent, and never knew of it till a month had passed.”
Essa felt a thin trickle of fear slide down the back of his neck. It was unlikely anyone would recognize Wulf, so why did he suddenly feel as if he were walking into a trap? Godsway and the Fox rode on either side of Anwen as she told them about the “little East Anglian hall” she had grown up in. “It’s so wonderful to live by the sea,” she said. “Apart from the Frisian pirates.” He could tell they weren’t listening to a word she was saying; they were spelled into silence by her face, watching her red lips move. For a moment, Essa wanted to laugh and had to stare at Godsway’s solid, square back to distract himself. There was a sooty black stain on his cloak – he must have brushed against a cooking pot.
We ought to be safe here. This should work. They’ll listen to us.
But when the Fox excused himself from Anwen and rode on a few paces to bang on the huge, oak-hewn gate, Essa had to fight a strong urge to turn Grani south, whistle to Fenrir, and ride away. Maybe it was the ghosts of the fallen making him feel uneasy, he told himself. Maybe Penda’s victims had never left Ad Gefrin, tied here by the sorrow of their passing, and the passing of their great, golden-banded hall.
The gates swung open. Godsway exchanged a few words with the guard, and they rode in. Ad Gefrin lay before them: a great hall still, new wood, built over what had been burnt. It was a huge place with soaring thatched roofs, smaller halls surrounding the largest as if it had spawned cubs. Some of the trees nearby were blackened, others just young saplings.
Despite the spitting rain, the courtyard thronged with people: gangs of men and women with long, curved billhooks, back from laying hedges out in the fields; a pair of sulky-looking boys heaving baskets full of manure from the stables to the dungheap; a group of older girls sweeping across the yard with hooded hawks on their wrists. A group of shouting children ran in circles around the great flag mast, playing a game beneath the fluttering dragon-standard of the High King. Two little girls jumped in puddles, shrieking and laughing, skinny bare legs streaked with muddy water. They stopped and stared when Godsway gave the signal to dismount, gazing at him devotedly. When everyone was out of the saddle, Godsway jerked his head at the girls. “Here, Thryft and Unna, isn’t it? Take these horses to the stables, take the hound to the dog-shed, and honour our guests.”
The girls dropped to their knees and scrambled up again. One of them was dark-eyed, and Essa saw there must be a lot of British blood in Northumbria. He remembered the northern outlaw in the forest, the way his speech was veined with the old language, old words. One of the little girls reached out a hand to Fenrir, but she backed off, growling softly.
Don’t fret, my dear one, go on. Go with her. Fenrir stared at him, as if to say, Are you sure? And Essa felt another pang of unease. He glanced quickly around the courtyard. In the corner, a small boy was leaning over the fence into the pigpen, scratching a black hog with a stick. It’s fine, he told himself. And, anyhow, you have no choice but to go in if you want talk with the High King.
The girls darted curious looks at the three strangers over their shoulders as they splashed off, leading the horses, Fenrir following close behind.
Essa felt powerless without Fenrir and Grani, and let his hand rest on the sword-handle at his belt. He felt a fresh shock of grief as his fingers rested in the hollows and shapes left in the bound leather by his father’s hand. But there was no time for that now. Anwen and Wulf were already following Godsway and the Fox towards a dark doorway. They went in. A pair of women sitting
spinning in the shelter of the dripping eaves stared at them without much interest. Wool thrummed as their clay spindle whorls fell, twisting the wool into thread. Again, Essa had to fight the need to run like a sprung deer, as far away from here as he could get. Taking a long breath, he went inside.
The hall was huge and dark, most of the wide doors closed against the rain. Weak, grey daylight followed Essa in; he could see dust floating in the air and smell burning pitch from the torches guttering in iron sconces on the walls. A group of men sat on the floor on a pile of skins, leaning against the wall as they played knucklestones. He heard a sharp intake of breath as he passed them, and murmuring voices whispering about him. The men let their knucklestones fall as he went by. All the better to stare, thought Essa. Did they not see strangers here, in the hall of the High King? This was not some marsh-village. What was wrong with these folk? He quickened his step to catch up with the others, but he could still feel the men watching him.
A fire burned in the centre of the hall, surrounded by flat grey riverbed stones. A couple of heavy iron pots rested on the stones; savoury-smelling steam drifted from beneath their lids. A great silver bowl hung above the fire, suspended from one of the high ceiling beams on a thin chain, just like the one from Constantinople that Wulf had given Anwen at their wedding, only bigger, richer. A woman passed him, carrying a copper pan of cream. A thick plait of grey hair was coiled about her head; her face looked kind. Let’s see if they’re all gapeseeds, he thought, and looked up, smiling broadly at her.
She dropped the pan. Time seemed to melt, slow down. A low note sang out as the copper pan struck the floorboards, a wave of white cream splashed her feet but the woman just stood there, staring at him.
“I’m sorry.” Essa reached down to pick up the bowl. When he handed it back to her, he saw the old woman’s veined hands were shaking. She opened her mouth to speak, but at that moment Godsway said, “Brother, this is the lad with news. Says it’s no price, too. Essa – that’s your name, isn’t it? – speak up, then! The king’s got enough to think on without waiting for your news, whatever it may be.”
Essa walked towards him. The air in the hall felt heavy, pressing down on his head. Anwen and Wulf were on their knees, bowing their heads before a man sprawling in a chair near the fire. He stood up, unfolding himself slowly. He was tall, as tall as Essa, with grey-streaked red hair hanging loose around his shoulders, and a grey beard. His eyes were grey too: hard and sharp like flints. A gold-wrought crucifix swung against his chest on a fine chain.
So this was Godsrule, High King of all Britain. Essa knew he should be kneeling, but could not move. Godsrule stepped close to him, taking Essa’s chin in his hand. Essa could smell the stale wine in his breath, the sweat of his body. The king’s grey eyes were flecked with amber, as if the red in his hair ran through his body like a vein of bright metal, and they travelled across Essa’s face so slowly that he wanted to tear himself away. Somehow, Essa knew that to speak would be the end of him, that this man would kill him at once if he said a word. It was too late to run now.
“Show me tha blade.” Godsrule’s voice was dry and hard, the rustling of winter leaves. The words of the northern outlaw echoed in Essa’s head, Tha hast the Lady’s sword, maw.
Essa unbuckled his sword-belt and, kneeling at last, he laid the sword in her silver-dragon-patterned scabbard before the High King’s feet, waiting to see what would come.
The king stared down at it, and the lines around his mouth seemed to grow deeper. “I trust tha isn’t such a fool as to come into my hall bringing a sword not made safe with peace bands, boy. Unwrap them now, and show me the blade. I’ve a fancy to see it.”
Essa felt strangely calm as he dug his fingers into the knotted leather that bound the Silver Serpent in her scabbard. Within moments, the bands were undone.
Well, my lord, he thought. You asked to see it. Heart hammering, Essa closed his fingers around the sword hilt, and pulled her from the scabbard. The blade shone as she sung through the air, and Essa laid her at the High King’s feet, naked in her beauty.
The king stared down at her, a small, tight smile on his lips. “Get up, that I might look at thee again,” he said. “What is tha father’s name, boy, and where do you come from?”
Essa stood up. “I’m Essa. Aesc, son of Cai. He’s a scop and a trader.”
The king’s cold grey eyes narrowed. “That’s not all he is.”
A sudden, thick silence settled on the hall like a fall of heavy snow. Someone dropped a wooden spoon. It struck the floorboards with a noise like a drumbeat.
Essa felt his skin crawl, as if someone were tracing a line down the back of his neck with a feather. What’s happening, he thought. Why is he looking at me like that? “With respect, my lord, but he is dead now. Killed by King Penda – we have come here to—”
Suddenly, the king turned away and laughed. “Well done,” he said to Godsway and the Fox. “Tha hast brought me the bitch’s whelp. After all these years, he walks into my hall. This is the working of God, I swear it.”
“My lord,” Essa said. “I do not know what you mean. We have come with news of Penda – he waits to march on the Wolf Folk, his host of fighting men is gathered at the border and Seobert will not come out of his monastery—”
Godsrule laughed again, an airless hiss, and gestured with one long-fingered hand so that Essa turned. Behind him, a silent crowd had gathered, staring at him as if he were a spirit. “Oh, how they adored her,” said the king. “How they loved their Lady. And I did too, for she was my sister. I am your mother’s brother, kaveth: your uncle.”
Essa turned away from them, a nameless feeling creeping through his body: part thwartedness, part burning excitement. He could not take his eyes off the king’s face now: the long, slightly hooked nose, high cheekbones, arched red eyebrows, skin spattered with freckles. He had seen it before, down by the mere with Cole, threading blue jays’ feathers on to a hook, looking at his own image in the still water.
“Yes,” said the king. “You see it now, don’t you?”
Essa stood silent, breathless, thinking of the dragon-standard fluttering at Godsrule’s flag mast outside. In his mind, he flew high above the village again, watching the Mercian forest stretch out to the west, the flatlands reaching east across the marches of the Wolf Folk for the coast.
Essa’s spirit-journey had lifted him to the skies because he was a Silver Serpent – born of the house of Ad Gefrin.
This was what he was.
Somewhere, a voice in Essa’s head said, Remember what you came here for.
He could feel the crowd watching him; their eyes were like needles in his back. What did they want? He heard lambs calling outside on the fellside. A side door creaked open and he caught the hot, yeasty smell of a bread oven. High above his head, a starling flew from one beam to another.
“My mother,” he said. “She is dead.”
“Dead to me, to my family,” King Godsrule said. “Edwin should have had her strangled, and you drowned in the water butt – he was always too soft-hearted. But Elfgift’s still alive, last I heard. The bitch ran off to a nunnery after she’d been got with you – she sits there now at Bedricsworth with that useless fool, Seobert.”
The Silver Serpent
ESSA gasped when he heard his mother’s name spoken. “My lord,” he stammered, “you are mistaken. My mother is dead.”
By now Wulf and Anwen were standing, Wulf’s face was slack with shock. Anwen had folded her arms across her chest, shaking her head.
“With respect, it is plain to see you are kin, to look at you all,” she said, gazing from Godsrule to Essa, to Godsway and his brother.
Wulf opened and closed his mouth a few times, then said, “But does this mean that Essa—”
“He is one of us,” said Godsrule sharply. “Traveller’s leavings or no. Lucky for you, boy, that Penda killed so many of my house, else I’d cut tha throat.” By now, the watching crowd were staring and pointing openly at Es
sa, muttering to each other, some holding up their children for a better view.
“It’s the Lady’s child,” a woman said.
“It’s a miracle, the working of the Lord!”
Godsrule wheeled around to face them all, “Get thee gone!” he hissed, and even though he had not even raised his voice, everyone backed off, slipping away to listen from dark corners of the hall where they would not be seen. He turned to Essa. “Now you’re here, boy, you’ll stay. I need all the men I can get, though your friends may do as they please. For he’s no more your cousin than I’m a goat, and I’ll only have people by me that are useful.”
Essa only half heard him. She was alive. His mother was alive. Everything Cai had told him was a lie. He wanted to laugh – Cai had lied to everyone, so why not to his own child? Elfgift was alive, at Bedricsworth monastery. And Bedricsworth was in Wolf Folk land, near the coast. It was no more than a few days’ ride from the village. All these years she had been so close to him. Anger burst in his chest and he fought to swallow it back.
“I don’t believe it!” He stooped to pick up the sword, the Silver Serpent who had been sleeping all these years, just hanging on the wall of the smithy. Metal hissed against leather as he resheathed her. “Anyone could have a sword like this. And many people look alike who are not kin. With respect, my lord, it proves nothing.”
“But you said yourself Cai’s tha father!” said Godsway. Essa stared at him. If Godsway and the Fox were the High King’s half-brothers, they were his kin too, his uncles. “And that’s what the man who dishonoured my sister was called.”
The Fox nodded. “Everyone knows the tale.” He did not look pleased, and Essa realized with a jolt that it was because he now stood just as close to the throne of Ad Gefrin as the brothers. His uncles. The Fox could not be old enough to remember Elfgift, but Godsway must have been able to.
Essa ignored the Fox, turning to the king. “I have come here to ask your help, and if you can not give it, I must return to my lord, Egric the Atheling. Penda will not wait for ever, and I will have to fight.”