Paths of Exile

by Carla Nayland

  “Mother of God! Why?”

  Because he has lost all hope, Eadwine thought, not looking at her. Because he is the leader, he chose wrongly, he has failed to defend his kingdom and all can see his shame, and a glorious death in battle means he can die a hero and he will not have to choose and fail again. Aloud, he said, “Because we have had twenty years of peace and the old men who fought at Caer Greu are mostly gone and the young men are eager for battle to show their prowess and have not thought that we could lose. Because defending a city under siege is tiresome and tedious work, and there are many who will grow bored and cry shame on him for shirking a battle, as there were those who cried shame on me at the Council. And because he is old and fat and sick, and he fears to die in his bed. A charge to glory, a bloodied blade, a swift pain soon over, and then the everlasting feast in Woden’s hall. When Cynewulf and Treowin and their kind shout for battle, who can blame him for being convinced?”

  “Perhaps all the other men – and women – who will die and suffer for his selfish whim,” Heledd said sourly.

  “Do you think I did not try to make him see that?” He drained his wine cup. “Is there much of this left?”

  Heledd blinked, surprised. He had changed more than she thought. “Of course. I suppose you have a right to get drunk.”

  “No, no. I was thinking of you. Tomorrow. If you barricade yourselves in here and put all the wine, mead and beer in the outer room, the looters will find that first, drink themselves senseless on it and leave you alone. They’ll find you eventually, but by then they’ll have sobered up and you’ll be able to argue with the commanders. Aethelferth won’t ill-treat a Princess of Elmet. He isn’t stupid. It should be possible for your servants to get Hereric out in the confusion, or you might get away with disguising him as a slave. Aethelferth will know he exists – he will have learned the entire family tree from Acha – but he’s never met any of us. He won’t recognise Hereric.”

  “Or you, either,” Rhonwen interrupted. “Don’t throw your life away just because the King’s a fool! Stay here with us! Please!”

  She was almost sobbing, remembering the shy boy of four years ago who had told her she was beautiful, who had responded to her tutoring with such awed gentleness, who had said Teach me what to do, Rhona. Some day I shall have a wife, and I cannot expect her to love me for my looks.

  “Ah, Rhona, the finest warrior on earth couldn’t defend you alone against an army. Your best bet is to hide in the ruins and hope to escape notice. They’re not likely to find our courtyard –”

  He broke off, and Rhonwen knew he was remembering the same summer, the ruined courtyard filled with roses.

  “I didn’t mean that,” she sobbed. “I meant you should get away – somewhere safe –”

  “My place is at my father’s side, whether he wants me there or not. Heledd – was this of the battle what you feared? I am sorry I can think of nothing better. I have been racking my brains all the way here.”

  “No,” Heledd said slowly, “though it may change things. Rhonwen, watch the door.” She leaned forward, speaking now in Latin. It was a rare language in Britannia now, two centuries after the departure of the Empire, but the Brittonic royal families still taught it to their children and Heledd in turn had taught it to Eadwine, as a joke that if she was going to have to learn Anglian he was going to have to learn something too. And it gave a guarantee against eavesdroppers.

  “I believe,” she said, “that Eadric was murdered.”

  There was a long pause, and Heledd wondered if he had not understood.

  “Murdered?” he whispered eventually, in the same language. “But – they told me he died in battle. Caught by a Bernician patrol, with only a few of his men. They died honourably, fighting to the end.”

  “He may have died in a battle, but it was not battle that killed him,” she said cryptically. “When they brought him home, I laid out his body. It is a wife’s duty. He had wounds, yes, but they were superficial. Almost as if done for show. The wound that killed him was made by a knife, long of blade but very narrow, no more than half an inch wide. It had pierced between the rings of his mail shirt and gone straight to the heart. Your brother was stabbed in the back.”

  Eadwine shivered, trying to absorb this new shock. “Who could do such a thing?”

  “The heir to the kingdom is bound to have enemies.” She paused. “I am not so concerned with who, Eadwine, as who next? I fear that whoever sought the death of the father will also seek the death of the son. You do understand? Hereric is all I have left. I need your help. Eadwine, you must save him!”

  He still seemed dazed. “Treachery, on top of everything else,” he said, his voice slow and hopeless. “Perhaps my father is right, and the gods have turned against us.”

  Rhonwen had not understood the conversation, but she saw Eadwine put his head in his hands and saw the flicker of disappointment cross Heledd’s face. She understood that the Princess had asked something of him, something that he could not do.

  “My lady,” she said in Brittonic, “you expect too much. One man cannot turn back the tide.” She left the door and came to stand behind Eadwine’s chair, resting one hand lightly on his shoulder. Although he looked as limp as a worn-out rag, the muscles were tense and knotted like a heap of badly-spun wool. “You should get some sleep, my dear,” she said softly. “You look terrible.”

  He raised his head and ran a hand wearily through his hair. “I’m getting very tired of people telling me that.”

  “It’s true,” Heledd said, her voice full of sympathy. “You look like a walking corpse. When did you last sleep?”

  Eadwine shrugged. “Two nights, three, I don’t know. What does it matter? There’ll be all the time in the world for sleep after tomorrow. I only wish there was something I could do for you.”

  “I am sorry. I should not have asked. What could you do? Rhonwen is right, one man cannot turn back the tide.”

  “The tide!” He sprang to his feet, knocking the chair over. “The tide, the tide!” He smote his forehead. “Oh, what’s happened to my brain? High water is in about an hour, isn’t it?”

  “Ye-es,” Rhonwen said, eyeing him dubiously. “But –”

  “Heledd, Hereric must get out of the city tonight. You cannot trust anyone in Deira now. Eadric’s enemy, or enemies, will certainly betray Hereric to Aethelferth. What easier way than to let someone else do their killing for them? Hereric’s life depends on getting out of Deira before tomorrow. And you’re his passport to the court of Elmet. King Ceretic can hardly deny refuge to his aunt and her son. You must go too.”

  The two women exchanged doubtful glances. “The bridge and the gates are all watched,” Heledd said carefully, “and in any case I cannot walk or ride far or fast –”

  Eadwine was pacing back and forth, his eyes alight with purpose. “You can sit in a boat. I think I know where one might have survived. Collect all the gold and all the jewellery you can wear or carry. I’d rather you took it than the Twister. Be ready here with Hereric in an hour. I’ll send one of my men to guide you if I can’t come myself. Rhona, I’m sorry, you’ll have to take your own chances.”

  “I don’t see –” Heledd began.

  “Trust me. Have I ever let you down?” He grinned, suddenly alive again, as a candle flares brightest just before it burns out. “If this is going to be my last night on earth, I’ll damn well do something useful with it! Be ready.”

  Half an hour later, three figures plodded, dripping, through the ruins of the civilian half of the city on the opposite bank of the river. It was a cheerless place, especially in the middle of the night, with shabby clay and timber huts squatting in what had once been gracious gardens and the gravel streets potholed and choked with weeds.

  “I don’t know what you see in this place,” Ashhere grumbled, stubbing a toe on a broken roof tile. “And I don’t think much of midnight swimming.”

  “We could hardly fight Aethelferth’s guards on the bridge,” Eadwine
whispered back. “You should try swimming the river at half-tide when the current’s running fast. Then it’s really hard work.”

  “How do you find your way around?” Lilla asked. “This city goes on for ever in all directions!”

  “Don’t you know every tree and every stone around Deornoth’s village, where you grew up? Well, I grew up here. I used to come here a lot at one time. This place –” Eadwine stopped beside a paling fence and rapped hard on the gate, “– is full of interesting people.”

  A small loophole in the gate jerked open and a man’s head popped out, with all the hair shaved off forward of a line joining the ears over the crown. Lilla jumped back, startled.

  “God be with you, Brother,” Eadwine said to the apparition, in perfect Brittonic. “I am Eadwine son of Aelle. I am known here. I would speak with Father Ysgafnell, if you please.”

  Father Ysgafnell was an elderly Brittonic priest, bald as an egg and with one eye and one hand missing. He greeted Eadwine like a long-lost son, apparently not at all surprised at his arrival in the middle of the night, half-dressed and dripping wet.

  “My boy! Have you realised the error of your heathen ways at last and come to pray?”

  Ashhere and Lilla watched suspiciously from their seats by the fire, hands clutched around amulets for protection against any heathen magic. Lilla had not come across the Christian religion before, but Ashhere had heard blood-curdling rumours of vile cannibalistic rites, involving the ritual murder of a prophet and feasting on his flesh and blood. He wondered if the old priest’s missing hand and eye were something to do with their foul rituals, and shivered. The less he had to do with people who followed such a cruel and violent god, the better as far as he was concerned.

  Eadwine seemed unconcerned, returning the greeting with every appearance of delight and carrying on a vigorous conversation in Brittonic. Lilla clearly understood not a word, and although Ashhere knew some Brittonic, chiefly to make it easier to give orders to the peasants on his father’s recently-acquired estate, they were talking far too fast for him to catch more than a few words here and there. The best he could say was that it didn’t look threatening, and that nobody had been turned into a toad – yet.

  “Yes, I’ve still got the boat,” Father Ysgafnell was saying to Eadwine, “but whatever do you want it for, lad? A siege is no time to take up fishing. You can’t be short of food yet, they’ve only just arrived. A battle? Against Aethelferth the Twister? In open field? Holy Mary Mother of God!” He crossed himself.

  Ashhere, seeing the gesture, took a tighter hold of his hammer amulet and muttered a prayer to Thunor to protect them.

  “Truly, Saxons carry their brains between their legs!” Ysgafnell continued. “And you want to make yourself scarce before tomorrow, eh? Sensible lad.”

  “Not me,” Eadwine managed to get in, “it’s for Princess Heledd and her son –”

  “Ah, down the Ouse on the ebb tide and up the Aire on the flood to Loidis, eh? Well, in my opinion any sensible man would go with them, but I won’t argue. What are your friends so frightened of, by the way? Huddled together like a pair of wet hens. What, me? Do they think I want their eyes to replace the one I lost to a Saxon spear at Caer Greu? Worry not, little chickens, yours are blue and I want a matched pair –”

  “Don’t tease, Father,” Eadwine said, laughing. “Will you show us to the boat? There’s not much of the night left.”

  “If you need somewhere to hide tomorrow, lad,” Ysgafnell said in a low voice, as they made their way across the enclosure scattered with little beehive-shaped cells, “you come to us. I know they say it’s a disgrace to survive if your king is killed, but between you and me, whoever said that knew nothing about pig-headed kings and had probably never been in a battle. I have, and I’m telling you, lad, don’t throw your life away.”

  “I don’t intend to run away,” Eadwine said stubbornly. “And I don’t want to live in exile, thank you.”

  “Believe me, lad, a heroic death isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”

  “You never tried it.”

  “That was uncalled for, boy, and in my days as a spearman I’d have had your balls for it, but I am above such things now and will let it pass in the spirit of Christian forgiveness, amen.” He paused for breath and went on, in a changed voice, “I heard about your brother. I’m sorry. But I still say you shouldn’t rush to join him. Splendid life with the gods and all that, but I recommend keeping the one you’ve got for as long as possible.”

  “They say Aethelferth doesn’t like Christians,” Eadwine began cautiously. “You may want to take yourself out of the way tomorrow –”

  “My dear boy, nothing would brighten my last hours more than watching one Saxon king trying to kill another.”

  “I suppose I asked for that,” Eadwine said, after a pause.

  Ysgafnell put a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “Sorry. You’re so much your mother’s son I forget that you’re your father’s as well.”

  He pushed beneath a weeping willow, and pointed to a small skin boat drawn up to the bank under its branches, invisible to the world. Ashhere and Lilla looked at it doubtfully. They were used to proper boats, clinker-built from good solid timber, not these fragile cockleshells.

  “It’ll float,” Eadwine reassured them, switching back to Anglian. “Sit in the middle and take an oar each. You’ll have to get across the river quickly. Wait for me under the willow by the south tower, where we came just now.”

  “Aren’t you coming with us?”

  “I think it would help if the guards on the bridge were all looking the other way for a bit. Wait until you hear a commotion from upstream, then hurry across as fast as you can. It should be just about slack water by now, it’ll be easy.”

  He ducked back under the willows, and they saw him vault the fence, climb up onto a ruined wall and vanish along the bank. A few minutes later, the silent night erupted in a furious quacking and splashing and clapping of wings as a couple of hundred panicked waterfowl fled from their roost and flapped into the night.

  “Off you go, lads, and good luck to you,” said the old priest, in execrable Anglian. “I shall pray for you tomorrow, heathen Saxon imbeciles that you are. I think you’re going to need all the help you can get.”

  “I don’t know, Lady,” Treowin said for the fifth time, sounding distinctly aggrieved. He was very conscious of his position as the heir to Deira’s noblest family and rather resented running errands, even to oblige his best friend. “Eadwine asked me to bring you and the atheling here. He didn’t favour me with an explanation.”

  “Where does that hole go?” Hereric wanted to know, staring in appalled fascination at the black maw of the shaft disappearing down into the middle of the street. They were gathered in the shadow of a partly-collapsed archway in a part of the ruined city he had never visited before, where a rotting timber cover had been pushed aside to reveal the shaft. It was a manhole leading down into the main drain of the old city, but none of them knew that.

  “I don’t know,” Treowin answered crossly.

  “Why are all those ducks on the river quacking like that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s happening?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where’s Uncle Eadwine?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why –?”

  “Oh, by the Hammer, boy, will you be quiet? He told these two –” pointing at the hulking shadows that were Wulfgar and Wulfraed “– to collect food and then wait here, and he took two others with him and said they were going swimming.”

  “Why swimming?”

  “How the hell do I know?” Treowin snapped, and went back to biting his nails.

  “Relax,” advised Wulfgar, or possibly it was Wulfraed. Although the brothers came from one of his father’s estates, Treowin could never remember which was which. “His schemes sound crack-brained, but they work.”

  A light flickered at the base of the hole. Hereric
held tighter to his mother’s hand and took a step back. Everyone said the old city was full of ghosts, evil creatures that came out at night and drank blood.

  Now they could hear something breathing in the shaft, and the scrape and creak of something creeping upwards. A dark shadow formed at the mouth of the hole, and drew itself up over the lip. Hereric squeaked in fear. Treowin stepped forward, ostentatiously pushing Heledd and Hereric behind him, and in one swift movement seized the shadow and held his drawn sword to its throat.

  “I might have known I should have sent Ashhere up first,” Eadwine’s voice said in a whisper. “Put me down, Treowin. Is the lady here?”

  “Yes!” said Hereric eagerly. “We’re here! Are you taking us on an adventure – Ugh, you’re all wet! Where have you been?”

  “In the river, twice.”

  “Why?”

  “To get to the other side.”

  “Do we have to swim too? Mam can’t, you know –”

  “She doesn’t have to, you’re going by boat. To Loidis, where your cousin is the King –”

  Hereric jerked his hand out of his mother’s grasp. “I’m not running away! Running away is for girlies and cowards! I want to stay and fight in the battle!”

  “Hereric,” Eadwine said, in a stern voice his nephew had never heard before, “you cannot always do what you want. You can’t fight tomorrow, you are too young. It will be a full three years before you take the spear. You can help us best by living safe at your cousin’s court, where you will grow to manhood and learn the arts of war, and one day come back to avenge us. And make your great father proud.”

  Heledd found that a wooden ladder led down the shaft into a dank, malodorous stone-lined tunnel, its floor puddled with filthy water. Eadwine was waiting at the bottom, a lamp balanced in a recess in the wall. He held out his arms to her.