Time of the Beast
Page 21
The same tactic was employed with King Redwald of East Anglia, while he gave refuge to Edwin, to whom Athelfrith sent envoys, at first offering rich rewards to kill or surrender Edwin, but finally threatening war. Redwald vacillated, but was persuaded by his queen to support Edwin. The armies of East Anglia and Northumbria clashed at the Battle of the River Idle in 616, where Redwald was victorious and Athelfrith was slain, clearing the way for Edwin to be installed as the new king of the whole of Northumbria. The powerful alliance between Redwald and Edwin now secured for Redwald the title of bretwalda or ‘Britain-ruler’, a position of pre-eminence over the other Anglo-Saxon kings in Britain.
Edwin next invaded and annexed Elmet, expelling King Ceredig in revenge for the murder of Hereric, or perhaps using this as a pretext for his actions – if any were needed, since it marked the beginning of an aggressive policy of westward expansion into British territory, with Edwin extending his overlordship far into those lands, so that he was able to claim the status of bretwalda for himself upon Redwald’s death. But these successes fostered animosity. In around 632 the Christian King Cadwallon of Gwynedd, war-leader of the Britons, formed an unlikely alliance with the pagan Angle, Penda of Mercia, who combined their forces to defeat and kill Edwin at the Battle of Hatfield Chase. Cadwallon went on to ravage and briefly conquer Northumbria – until he too died in battle – and Elmet presumably regained independence under British rule (at least this is what I have inferred for the purposes of the novel) until finally it was seized by Penda, then probably became as a bone between two dogs – alternately a province of Mercia and Northumbria during their continuing struggles for supremacy. Writing in the eighth-century, Bede refers simply to the Forest of Elmet.
Such was the turbulence and instability of the age. Into this toxic mix of shifting alliances between Britons and Anglo-Saxons, Celtic Christians and pagans, came the Roman Church – successor to the Roman Empire, and as an enduring symbol of Rome’s past glory still the main power-broker of Western Europe – determined to extend its sphere of political influence and control, and sweep away all opposition; to conquer new territories (or re-conquer old ones) by now claiming authority over the souls rather than the bodies of its subject peoples. Paganism and Celtic Christianity were by comparison uncoordinated and localised, lacking the cohesion to stand for long against the organised assault of the Roman Church – although it might be argued that with saints to take the place of heathen gods, and the symbol of the Cross to replace the idols the Christians affected to despise, paganism was never truly abandoned but merely repackaged, retaining enough of its original content to make it palatable to heathen converts. Kings, who as pagans were little more than tribal chieftains and warlords, were no doubt often keen to convert, since to become Christian was to improve their status by adopting a faith which spoke of divinely ordained royal power (although of course, according to the word of Pope Gelasius I in the fifth century in the doctrine of the Two Swords, a king’s authority was secondary to that of the Church, being merely temporal instead of spiritual) and enter a greater world of wide international connections – to start to become ‘civilised’ after the Roman fashion. Those who did resist were doubtless soon made to feel backward-looking and unenlightened – always a standard ploy by those determined to gain power over the minds of others.
In conclusion I must acknowledge a debt to the late Bertram Colgrave, who in his edited translation of The Life of St. Guthlac (Cambridge University Press 1956) first suggested the idea that Guthlac’s demonic visions as a hermit in the Fens might have been as a result of hallucinations induced by lysergic acid (LSD) in the ergots which grew on his damp stale bread.
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First published by Dedalus in 2014
Time of the Beast copyright © Geoff Smith 2014
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