As they rode home that day, she contented herself with urging Wistan once more: “Whatever happens, promise me you will obey your father.” More she would not say.
Offa was still full of plans, but he too had met an obstacle – in his wife.
When he had been at Lundenwic ten days, Wistan and one of his brothers had taken a boat upstream to collect supplies from a farmstead a few miles away, and Offa had gone with them. He had been delighted with what he saw. Soon after leaving the bend by the ford, the left and right banks broke up into a system of marshy islands.
“That’s Chalk Island on the right,” Wistan had told him. Except that in Anglo-Saxon, in which “island” was rendered “eye”, the words “Chelch Eye” made a sound roughly like “Chelsea”. “Opposite is Badric’s Island.” This time “Badric’s Eye” came out roughly as “Battersea”. Everywhere along the marshy banks of the Thames, Offa discovered, there were more of these eyes and the even smaller islands, mud flats really, known as eyots.
There were already numerous tiny settlements, a farm here, a hamlet there. These, too, bore characteristic Saxon names with endings like -ham for a hamlet, -ton for a farm, and -hythe, meaning a harbour. Soon after passing Chalk Island, Wistan had again pointed to the north bank, where smoke was rising above the trees. “That’s Fulla’s-ham,” he explained. “And up there,” he pointed to a higher spot a couple of miles north, “there’s Kensing’s-ton.”
But what had impressed Offa most, as they progressed upstream, was the lush richness of the land. Behind marsh and mud flat he saw meadowland, pasture and, further off, gentle slopes. “Does the land continue far like this?” he cautiously asked Wistan.
“Yes,” came the reply. “Pretty much all the way to the river’s source, I believe.”
When they had returned that night, therefore, he had said to Ricola: “When you feel ready, I think we could run away. Upriver. The living is good there. If we go far enough I’m sure someone will take us in.”
But here, to his surprise, Ricola had flatly opposed him.
Though she was still very young, Offa had already noticed in his wife a cheery independence of spirit that he found attractive. She had established a light-hearted banter with the men. Once, to his horror, she had even made a disrespectful remark to the foreman, but with such good humour that he had just shaken his head and smiled. “She doesn’t put up with any nonsense, that one,” the men laughed.
He had assumed, therefore, that she would be as anxious as he was for freedom. But he was wrong.
“You must be mad,” she told him. “What do you want to go wandering through the forest for? So we can be eaten by the wolves?”
“It isn’t forest,” he countered. “Not like Essex.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t make sense,” she said.
“But we’re just slaves here,” he protested.
“So what? We eat well.”
“But don’t you want to be free?” he demanded.
And now she truly surprised him. “Not much,” she said. Then, seeing his astonishment: “What does it mean? We were free in the village and they would have drowned me with that snake.” She shuddered at the memory. “Run away from here and we aren’t free anyway. We’re outlaws. Frankly,” she smiled, “being a slave here isn’t so bad. Is it?”
Of course, he could not deny that her earthy practicality was right. In a way. But though the young fellow could not have expressed himself in abstract terms, the notion of independence acted powerfully upon him. It was something as primordial as the need for a fish to swim about in the sea.
“I don’t want to be a slave,” he said simply, but for the time being they discussed the matter no more.
In the meantime, he soon found something else to occupy his mind. A few days after the trip upriver, some of the men went across to the little promontory on the southern bank to do some fishing. As he had worked hard, Offa was allowed to go too.
It proved to be an excellent place for fishing. Jutting well out into the flow of the Thames, the spit had enough bushes and small trees to give the fishermen cover so that they could set nets in the water and throw out baited lines. Under the clear surface, Offa could see the silvery fish gliding about. However, the sight that really attracted his attention lay over the water. There before him, no longer masked by trees, lay the huge, ruined citadel that had been Londinium.
It was a remarkable sight. Although the riverside wall built by the city’s last inhabitants had badly crumbled, the original, landside wall was still standing, and within this great enclosure, across the twin hills, lay the ghostly ruins.
“A strange place,” one of the men remarked, following his gaze. “They say it was built by giants.”
Offa said nothing. He knew better.
That Offa should know more than these Saxons about the Roman city was not surprising. Only four generations had passed since his family had left the deserted city. And though neither he nor his father had had more than the vaguest conception of what such a city might look like, he had always known that it was huge and contained splendid buildings of stone. He also knew something else. True, it was only a family legend, and like most oral folklore it was a tantalizing mixture of the vague and the precise. But for three centuries, this simple and fascinating piece of information had been passed down from father to son.
“My grandfather always said,” Offa’s father had told him, “that there are two hills in the great city. And on the western hill, there’s buried gold. A huge treasure.”
“Where on the hill?” Offa had asked.
“Near the top,” he said. “But no one could ever find it.”
Now, directly before him, lay the city, with its two hills.
While the men were fishing, he took the boat and slipped across.
Londinium had been empty for more than a century, but its crumbling walls, with their red, horizontal stripes, were still huge and impressive. The two western gateways remained intact. Between them, at various points along the wall, mighty bastions jutted out. Behind, looming over the summit of the nearer hill, the great stone circle of the amphitheatre, which now had a jagged breach in its side, stood against the sky like a surly sentinel, as though to say: Rome has departed only for a day. She will return. The stream on the western side now bore a Saxon name – the Fleet – though further up they called it the Holebourne. Walking up the slope, he passed through the gateway.
Into a ghost city. Before him stretched the broad Roman thoroughfare, now covered with grass and moss, so that his footfalls fell silently. The Saxons, having no understanding of Londinium, had left the place alone. But they passed across it from time to time, and even drove cattle through, and as a result, upon the ancient pattern of the two great east–west thoroughfares and the grid of streets and alleys between, a new and more rustic pattern had been imposed. As far as possible, this series of cattle tracks and pathways led directly across the ruined city from one gateway to another, but because they frequently encountered obstacles, such as the huge circle of the amphitheatre, they had come to form a winding pattern, full of bends and curious turns that would seem strange and illogical once their Roman causes had vanished.
He had the whole place to himself. He briefly visited the high ground by the city’s south-eastern corner, but, encountering the ravens, quickly withdrew. For no special reason, he followed the rivulet that ran between the twin hills to where it passed under the city’s northern wall, and, climbing the parapet, observed that due to the Roman ducts under the wall having silted up, a great marsh had formed on the wasteland along the city’s northern side.
Climbing down to the quay again, one thing puzzled him. The silent waters of the river came over the edge of the ruined quays which seemed meant to have been set higher. Could the city, over time, have sunk or the river grown higher?
His observation in fact was perfectly correct. Two dynamics had been at work to produce this phenomenon. The first was that even now the Arctic ice-cap, extend
ed by the last Ice Age, was continuing to melt, causing the sea, and hence all water levels, to rise gently. The second was that in the huge march of the Earth’s geological plates, the south-eastern side of the island of Britain was being tilted very gradually downward into the sea. The combined effect of these factors meant that the level of the Thames near its estuary was rising approximately nine inches each century. Since his ancestor Julius had forged his coins in the year 250, the river had risen some two and a half feet.
“But where’s that gold?” he demanded aloud, as though the empty city might tell him.
He had investigated the puzzling remains of the Temple of Mithras, returned to the forum, and then taken the upper of the two great thoroughfares across the city towards the western hill. He had walked along ruined colonnades, gazed at tumble-down houses with trees growing through where windows had once been, poked his head into alleys filled with bushes as though the disposition of these relics might give him a clue as to where the treasure lay. Several times he had closed his eyes, muttered a prayer to Woden, and turned in a circle, hoping the god might point him in the right direction.
Men use divining rods to find water, he said to himself now. Perhaps you can divine gold underground the same way. But what kind of rods would do it? For an hour and more he tramped around before the light began to fade. “But I’ll come back another day,” he muttered. And another. After all, it was something to do. Besides, he never gave up. He decided, however, to say nothing about his quest, even to Ricola.
And so, at Lundenwic, they came towards the end of Haligmonath, the holy month.
Another reason why Ricola was unwilling to leave was that she was becoming attached to her mistress.
Perhaps it was because the girl was a new face, or because she had suffered misfortune, or because Elfgiva had always wanted a daughter, but whatever the reason, the older woman took a liking to Ricola. She would often summon her on some pretext, sometimes only to sit with her, but often to braid her hair or brush it, for which the girl had a talent. And Ricola was glad to do so.
Since Elfgiva was the first woman of the noble class the girl had met, she observed her closely. Not only was her dress different – a long girdled gown instead of the ordinary woman’s modest tunic – but her whole manner subtly marked her out. What was it? “She gets cross just like I do. She laughs. She may be a bit quieter than me, but so are lots of women I know,” the girl explained to Offa. “Yet she is different. She’s a lady.” Gradually Ricola began to reach a conclusion. “You know what it is. It’s as if she is being watched all the time.”
“I suppose she is. By all the people who work for the master.”
“I know. And I dare say she knows it. But,” Ricola’s brow furrowed, “there’s something else. Even when I’m alone with her. She doesn’t care a rap what I think of her. I’m just a slave. She’s too proud for that. But even then she thinks she’s being watched. I can feel it.”
“By the gods, I dare say.”
“Maybe. Actually, I think it’s her own family. Her dead father, his father, the whole lot of them, generations back. She has to behave because she thinks they’re watching her. That’s what I reckon it is.” She nodded with satisfaction. “And all the time, just walking around like you and me, that’s not just the Lady Elfgiva you’re looking at. You’re looking at the whole bunch of them, all the way back to the god Woden himself, I dare say. They’re all there in her mind, you see, whatever she’s doing. That’s what it’s like being a lady.”
Offa looked at his wife wonderingly. He could see what she meant. “So would you like to be her?” he asked.
Ricola gave an earthy laugh. “What, and have that lot to carry around on my back all the time? I’d sooner get in that sack with the snake! It’s too much trouble.”
But while Offa chuckled at her common sense, she remarked more seriously: “It’s terrible for her really, you know. You see, I’ve watched her. I told you the master’s done something bad to her. I still don’t know what it is, but she’s really suffering. Only being a lady, she’s too proud to let it out.”
“Well, there’s nothing we can do,” Offa said.
“No,” his wife agreed. “But I wish there was.”
A further bond developed between Ricola and her mistress when Elfgiva permitted her to join in an activity the girl had never seen before.
Even at this early date, the Anglo-Saxon ladies of England were famous for their needlework, but embroidery was practised only by women of the upper class, for the simple reason that the materials used were rare and expensive. With fascination, therefore, when the afternoon drew in Ricola would sit at Elfgiva’s feet as, holding her work close to a lamp, the noblewoman went about her task.
“First you must take a length of fine linen,” she explained. “Some people in the king’s court even use silk. On this you trace the whole design.” To Ricola’s surprise, Elfgiva did not take the marker herself, but instead sent for Wistan. “He draws a better line than I,” she said.
And what designs, indeed, the young man drew. First, down the centre of the cloth, he made a single, long, curving line. “This is the stalk,” he announced. Then, branching off from this stalk, he made smaller stalks, always with the simplest curves, and upon these he made the outline, still with the purest simplicity, of several kinds of leaves and flowers, so that when he had finished, in the centre of the bare linen was a design that was so organic you could almost feel the nature of the plants, and yet so entirely abstract it might have been Oriental.
Next he indicated some stars and crosshatching as modest decoration within these forms. Finally, leaving a bare, echoing space around this plant form, he began to design a border. This, too, was masterly. Tightly controlled, geometric flowers, birds, animals, all manner of pagan and magic symbols appeared, as precise and neat as if they were links in a bracelet. From the inside of the border, like crocuses pushing rudely through the unbroken ground in spring, strange plants with elegantly curling, scroll-like leaves, and blunt little trees, insistent and sexual, broke into the edge of the central space as though to say: Art is order, but nature is always greater. Which was, perhaps still is, the essence of the Anglo-Saxon spirit.
Only then did Elfgiva put the linen on to a frame to begin the slow work of embroidery. She began with the centre.
Working with bronze needles, she would cross-stitch the details of the leaves. For these she used a variety of coloured silk threads. “When the Frisians come for slaves,” she explained, “they always bring me silk from the south.” Not content with this, however, she also used threads of gold and, to make the embroidery even richer, in one or two places she added seed pearls as well. At last, when this process was completed, she took a heavy cord of green silk and laid it down along the curving line of the stalk. Then she couched it in place, passing a silk thread over it from the back of the linen. To finish, she stitched extra lines of coloured silk along all the main outlines.
“Next we start to tackle the border.” She smiled. “That will take many months.”
Finding the girl’s fingers were nimble, Elfgiva would often let her put in a stitch or two, amused to see the slave girl’s delight in the process. She even let the girl bring Offa in, to show him what they were doing.
And all the while Ricola studied the older woman, admired her stately ways, and, each day, asked some questions about her dress, or the life of the court, or the estate at Bocton, adding a little to her stock of knowledge. At the same time, she studied ways to make herself useful. “You want us to be free,” she reminded her husband, “and if she likes us enough, one day she could give us our freedom, you know.” She smiled. “We just have to be patient. It’s a waiting game.”
As for Elfgiva, she, too, was playing a waiting game of a kind. She had quickly realized that even though Cerdic had so deeply hurt her, she must deny her pain. “If your husband strays,” the older women had told her long ago, “there is only one thing to do.” It was a fact of married life,
for better or worse, that the only way to keep a straying husband was to entice him to bed as quickly and as often as possible. All other approaches that reason or morality might suggest were, unfortunately, futile. She had acted accordingly. She had not sulked, or argued, or been cold towards him, but each night after the evening meal set out to seduce and satisfy him. More than once they had awoken at sunrise in each other’s arms and she had lain quietly listening to the birds at dawn, thinking that perhaps, after all, he was contented, that the simple operation of inertia, that greatest of all friends to the married state, might keep him at her side. Even now, at this late hour, she still found herself secretly praying to the gods of her ancestors: “Let me have another child.” Or if not that: “Give me time. Do not let this bishop come just yet.” And so the next month passed.
Blodmonath, the month of blood, the Saxons called November. Blodmonath, when the oxen were slain before the winter snows and the last of the leaves, crisp with hoarfrost, fell to the ground hardening after the autumn rains.
Early in Blodmonath, a ship had come to the trading post. It had crossed the sea from the Frankish lands beside the River Rhine, and Offa had been told to help unload it.
It was the first time he had seen a proper seagoing vessel, and the boat fascinated him. Although the Saxons had well-constructed rafts and even broad rowing boats upon the Thames, this ship was in another class entirely.
The most immediately striking feature was the keel. Starting as a great wooden ridge high above the stern, it descended in a graceful, curving line to the water, made its long way down the centre of the vessel and then rose once more in a magnificent prow that arched proudly above the water. Wistan, as it happened, was standing just by Offa as he gazed with admiration at this lovely sight. “It’s just like the line you drew for the Lady Elfgiva’s embroidery,” the young slave cried out in a flash of inspiration, and Wistan agreed.
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