by Trevor Bloom
‘You’re lying,’ Ascha whispered.
Radhalla smiled and ran his hand over his chin. ‘Na, lad, I ain’t lying. You and me are closer than you think,’ he laughed and slapped his thigh. ‘I wasn’t sure at first but then it came to me when I saw the hatred in your eyes after we executed Hroc, and when you killed Wulfhere and Sigisberht, and again when you led the Roman horse soldiers against me,’ he chuckled softly. ‘You’re not Aelfric’s son, you’re mine. You were always mine.’
Ascha saw Tchenguiz slip into the chamber behind Radhalla, a shadow in the smoke. A burning beam fell to the floor with a loud crash and the wall hangings went up in flames with a whoompf. He felt a weariness overcome him as if his spirit was draining away. His side was wet with blood and he could no longer feel his legs. Could Radhalla really believe he was his natural son?
But then he remembered Wulfhere’s jibes. Does tha know who tha father is? And the strange glances Aelfric would sometimes give him, as if he was not sure who Ascha really was.
Tchenguiz stood in the doorway with a bow. Through smoke-stung eyes, Ascha saw Tchenguiz draw a red hackled arrow and fit it to the bowstring.
‘We want the same things, you and me,’ Radhalla said, ‘and we don’t give in until we get them. You do as I would do. You keep going. You don’t give in. You’re my blood and bone. Tiw’s breath! We even look alike.’ And Radhalla dipped his head to show the profile of his own thick nose.
Tchenguiz drew the arrow to his ear. The Hun tensed, and Ascha knew he was waiting for a clear shot. With a giant heave, he raised himself up on one elbow. He saw Tchenguiz hesitate and then lower the bow. Ascha shook his head, trying to remember how he felt such a terrible pain. His chest was tight and his breathing laboured. ‘You’re wrong. I’m not like you.’
Radhalla laughed without humour. ‘You were born for this. Can’t you see? It’s in your blood. You could never have accepted life as a simple woodcarver.’ He leaned forward and the sword point wavered over Ascha’s throat. ‘Come on. Join me! It’s what I’ve always wanted, to go through life with my own flesh and blood by my side. Let’s finish off this scum and be done with it.’
‘I’m a half-slave,’ Ascha croaked.
‘I don’t fucken care what you are,’ Radhalla snarled. ‘You’re my son, and that’s all there is to it.’
‘And Sigisberht?’
‘He tried but he wasn’t up to it. But you and I, boy, we could set the world alight.
Ascha looked up at Radhalla. The Cherusker was growing dim again, his voice coming at him like out of some dark funnel. Set the world alight? But he had never wanted to set the world alight, he had only wanted to be whole.
‘Tell me one thing?’ he whispered.
‘Name it.’
‘Did you kill Aelfric?’
Behind the Cherusker’s eyes was a deep and unfathomable darkness. Radhalla shrugged, looked away, and then looked back.
He nodded.
‘The slinger was your man?’
‘He was meant to injure Aelfric, not kill him. I wanted him out of the way. I didn’t want him dead. But Aelfric never was no horseman.’
Ascha looked deep into Radhalla’s pale blue eyes for what seemed a long time.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Aelfric was no horseman.’ His eyes felt gritty and tired. The pain in his side was welling up and threatening to overwhelm him. Slowly, he shifted the weight on his arm, hesitated for a moment, and then allowed himself to drop back.
‘But he was my father,’ he murmured.
The blow took Radhalla by surprise.
The warlord of the Cheruskkii lurched forward and crashed to his knees, a bloody arrowhead standing out a full hand’s breadth from his chest. He stayed there, sitting back on his heels, without moving and looked down at the arrowhead protruding from his body with a look of dull surprise. His face went through many changes, and then he lifted his eyes to Ascha and his mouth worked silently.
Tchenguiz came up behind him.
‘Wah! Radhalla! Are you not yet dead?’
The Hun reached back and swung the hatchet, shattering Radhalla’s skull.
Tchenguiz muttered something in his own language and then reached into the Cherusker’s broken head and washed his hands in Radhalla’s brain.
Ascha must have passed out again because when he came to he saw only blackness. For a moment he imagined he had been buried alive under the market square and the panic rose and gripped him by the throat, and then he saw the shadows move and realized they were black smoke. Tchenguiz had an arm under his shoulders and was lifting him up. Ascha clambered to his feet. He swayed unsteadily and then staggered over to where Clovis lay. The Overlord seemed lifeless. Ascha pulled the rope from his throat and put two fingertips to the side of his neck just below the jaw.
He could not be certain but he thought he felt the faintest flicker of life.
‘Leave him,’ grunted Tchenguiz. ‘We must go.’
‘No, I’m not leaving him,’ Ascha shouted.
A belch of flame crashed out at him, and he realized that the fire had reached the scrolls and books. With a huge effort, he picked Clovis up and threw him over one shoulder. A burning beam crashed to the floor scattering sparks and firedrops. Wall hangings flared and curled. Everywhere he looked, there was fire. He staggered from the chamber, flames licking his skin and ran heavy-footed towards the door. A shower of red hot ashes fell on his neck and shoulders, stinging the raw flesh. He felt his hair burn.
Halfway down the hall, he stumbled over a burning corpse and would have sprawled if Gydda hadn’t appeared and caught him. Gydda and Tchenguiz dragged Ascha to his feet. The way out was a wall of flame. Ascha looked back to see the chamber blazing. A great paw of heat buffeted his face and pushed down his throat. He couldn’t breathe.
‘The door is that way!’ Tchenguiz shouted. ‘Now, run!’
Ascha summoned all his strength. Still carrying the body of the Overlord, he put his head down and ran through the fire and out into the sun-splitted street.
A moment later, with a deafening roar, the roof collapsed.
The Great Hall of Tornacum, formerly the Basilica of imperial Rome, was no more.
34
Three months after the Saxon host was destroyed, Ascha travelled home to see his mother. He looked well, she thought, a handsome young man with his dark beard, topknot and fine clothes. He wore a fine wolf-skin cape and carried his father’s sword on his hip and was accompanied by Tchenguiz and an ugly Jute with mangled ears.
He sat by the fire and spoke of all that had happened since he went away. He told how he had been rescued from slavery by Octha the Frisian, how he had spoken before the Great Council at Tornacum and how he had led the Franks and hostages during the great battle against the Cheruskkii.
His mother and Budrum listened as if spellbound. They gasped in horror when they heard how Hanno died on the bridge at Tornacum and smiled with delight when Ascha told them how the Overlord of the Franks had shat his breeches while dangling from a rope. And when Ascha told them how Radhalla had died, like a wolf without a groan, they looked at each other and nodded with solemn satisfaction.
One week after the battle, in the burnt-out shell of the Basilica, the Overlord of the Franks gave Ascha Aelfricson his freedom. All the Frankish and Roman lords were there, as well as the Overlord’s Antrustions, the Royal Hostages, Rufus and his Pritanni and Besso and the Theodi. The Overlord took Ascha’s hands in his and uttered the words ‘Maltho thi afrio lito,’ which is in the Frankish language, ‘I say to you now, I free you, half-free.’
‘Now I am whole!’ Ascha said to the two women with a quiet smile.
He told them that Clovis had rewarded him with gold and silver, and had given him a gold neck torc as thick as his thumb, saying it would remind him of how he had saved the Overlord of the Franks from a slow and lingering death. Clovis had wanted to make Ascha a captain in the Antrustions, but Ascha declined. He’d had his fill of Frankish service. Clovis did not seem
displeased. After what had happened in the Basilica, they both needed to put some distance between them.
Ascha’s mother had no wish to meet Herrad. The girl sounded headstrong and stubborn and she was sure they would have clashed before too long.
After the Cheruskkii were destroyed, Herrad went back to Thraelsted with Octha. It was plain that the girl was with child, but whether the child was Ascha’s or Sigisbherht’s or Octha’s was anyone’s guess. Ascha used to visit them. He would go for long walks with Herrad along the beach and, in the evening, he and Octha would get drunk together. By then, Octha knew he did not have long to live. He told Ascha and Herrad that he wanted them to have his wealth when he died.
A curious business to his mother’s way of thinking, but it seemed to suit them.
When he was done telling, he sat back in his father’s chair, crossed his ankles and closed his eyes. The two women thought he seemed calmer and more at peace, as if the demons that had chased him for so many years had finally been put to rest. He had earned the love of his friends and the respect of his clan, and that was all he had ever wanted.
Ascha never spoke of what had passed between him and Radhalla. But one afternoon, he took Budrum to one side and asked her. Budrum said the journey to the homeland all those years ago had been a trial his mother had tried to forget. The Theodi had used his mother and the other women cruelly, and it was a long time before Aelfric claimed her as his own, forbidding any man to touch her on pain of death. By then a boatload of seed was running down her thighs and she was near despair.
Had Radhalla been one of them?
Budrum pulled a face.
He might have been.
Ascha recovered Hroc’s body from the swamp. By some miracle of the marshes in those parts, the body had not rotted and Hroc’s face was smooth and unmarked, as if he had died only a few days before. With the help of Gydda and Tchenguiz, Ascha took Hroc to the burial ground and buried him next to Aelfric, overlooking the wetlands they both had loved.
The next day, Ascha picked up his chisels and began carving a monument to Aelfric. He carved him in stone as a Saxon warlord, mounted on a big horse, armed with shield, spear and sword. It was a fine piece of work, perhaps the finest he had ever done. They erected the monument above the estuary where it can be seen by the ships of all nations.
As far as anyone knows it is still there.
After the battle against the Cheruskkii, the Theodi broke up. Some, the old and the faint-hearted, stayed. Others, fearing the storm-floods, went to live among the Frisians, but most emigrated across the Narrow Seas to Pritannia. Besso went with them as their hetman. The young women who remained married Cheruskkii boys and moved away, Saefaru among them.
Ascha had wanted to take his mother home to her island, but she refused.
‘Pritannia is no longer what it was,’ she said. ‘My home is where my man is buried, and it is here I will live out my days.’
She told him that others had moved in to occupy the long houses the Theodi had abandoned.
‘They are primitive people without history,’ she said scornfully. ‘Already they call themselves Saxons, as if living in a Saxon hall makes you a warrior. But they know my son is a great lord and they treat me with respect. I heal their sick, I give them advice and, when the nights are cold and damp, I sit the little ones around the fire and tell them stories about the great warrior, Ascha Aelfricson, and how many, many years ago, he destroyed Radhalla, the dark war lord of the Cheruskkii.
And then I tell them I am Ascha’s mother.
And for me, it is enough.’
Epilogue
Thraelsted, two years later
Rhine mouth, late summer and a man and a woman are walking along the beach, holding the hand of a small child who walks between them. It is late in the day, and the rain that had fallen that morning has stopped, but there is a fresh wind blowing off the estuary and the air is full of the salt-tang of the sea. Far off the surf booms and hisses.
The child suddenly breaks free and runs off with choppy stubborn steps. The man picks up a handful of pebbles, reaches back and hurls them into the water in long swooping arcs. The woman watches him, one hand drawn up to her eyes. She turns to the child and, at that moment, the little girl falls and sits down on the sand with a surprised expression, as if unsure whether to laugh or cry. The man smiles at her, she looks at him, gurgles with laughter and gets to her feet, bottom first. She shakes herself, rubs her hands together and runs to him with arms outstretched.
The man scoops her up, swings her over his head and drops her gently onto his shoulders. She grips his chin in her tiny hands and beats his head like a drum. He groans in mock despair, and she giggles with delight. The woman stands with her arms crossed, holding her shoulders. She looks at them both and smiles. The wind blows her hair across her face in long floating tendrils like seaweed. She pushes her hair back behind her ear, and then twists it into a roll on the nape of her neck, takes a long pin from the folds of her dress and pins it up. The man watches her until she looks at him, and then he smiles and looks away. The three of them watch the plovers racing over the flat and listen to the shrieks of the gulls wheeling overhead. The woman takes the man’s arm in both of hers, bends her head to his shoulder and they turn and walk on towards the west beneath a clear and blue sky.
End
HISTORICAL NOTE
Clovis, Basinia, Ragnachar and Syagrius are actual historical figures. In 481 AD the sixteen year old Clovis succeeded his father Childeric as leader of the Salian Franks and soon after became Overlord of all the Frankish tribes. A few years later, he had Syagrius, Governor of the last Roman enclave in Gaul, murdered. Clovis occupied Roman territory and shifted his capital from Tornacum (Tournai in Belgium) to Lutetia Parisi (Paris, France) and Roman rule in Gaul finally came to an end.
Clovis then turned his attention to his neighbours. One by one, Clovis took on the Germanic tribes who controlled Gaul – the Burgundii, the Thuringii, the Alemanni and Visigoths. He defeated them and overran their territories. While he was about it, he eliminated any Franks he felt might threaten him, including his kinsman Ragnachar, who was arrested, shorn of his long hair and executed. By the time of his death in 511, Clovis (the name became Louis in France, Ludwig in Germany and Lewis in Britain) ruled over most of Roman Gaul and had built an empire that would lay the foundations for modern France. On the continent he is as well known as King Arthur or King Alfred and has become a powerful post-war symbol of Franco-German unity.
The Franks’ success in taking over Gaul is likely to have been a major factor in persuading the Saxons and other tribes to avoid Gaul and settle in Britain. In time, the Franks adopted Latin as their language, although there are numerous Frankish loan-words in modern French. In Britain, Roman culture was less entrenched and after Germanic tribes took over the eastern part of the island, Roman culture was abandoned. Latin and the native British languages were replaced by English. It is possible that if Clovis had not succeeded in keeping the Germanic raiders out of Gaul, the British and Americans and other English-speaking nations would today speak a Celtic or Latin-derived language, like French or Spanish.
Few historians now believe that Britain was invaded by mass waves of Anglo-Saxons. Most likely the island was breached by small warbands who gradually assumed political and cultural domination over the native population. Some Britons fled and settled in what we now call Brittany, and this forms the background to Herrad’s story.
Although the remains of a basilica have been found in Tournai, the description of the Overlord’s Great Hall in The Half-Slave is based on the Roman Basilica of Constantine in Trier, which still survives.
The Theodi village is based on the iron-age village of Feddersen Wierde, near Bremerhaven in Germany. Feddersen Wierde was built on mounds raised above the flood plain and was occupied for around 600 years. Despite its remote location, there is evidence of contact with imperial Rome through trading, raids or service in the Roman army. In its later sta
ges, the village was home to about fifty families. One timber-built hall was larger than the others and probably belonged to a hereditary chieftain and his family.
Towards the end of the 5th century, at about the time of the events depicted in this story, the village declined and was abandoned. Some archaeologists believe the inhabitants travelled to Britain as part of the Anglo-Saxon migration and settled in the Thames estuary.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would never have written this story without the help of a number of people. Thanks are due to Neil Ferguson and the late Julia Casterton of the City Lit for getting me started; to Peggy Samson, Helen Rowe, John Keane, Alison St Helene, Kyo Louis, Julian Ives and Celia Toler of Covent Garden Writers for their good-humoured encouragement; and to Christian Enders and James Joseph for being such enthusiastic manuscript readers.
Thank you also to Harriet Gilbert, Jonathan Myerson, Jane Batkin, Syd Moore, Barbara Zuckriegl and Olivia Isaac Henry of the MA Creative Writing course at City University, London for their robust but always helpful advice; and to David Stevens for his specialist expertise.
I owe a particular debt to my wife Emma Bloom for her wise guidance and unflagging support. Any historical errors or solecisms that remain are entirely my responsibility.
Finally, special thanks are due to my editor, Yvonne Barlow at Hookline, for her passionate belief in reader power and for guiding me down the long and winding road to publication.