Accommodation was cramped at Loidis with most of the court and a foreign ambassador in residence, and a travelling bard of no reputation was a long way down the pecking order. Eadwine was consigned to an outbuilding, which suited him very well as being out of the way, and gave him an opportunity to get himself knocked down in a dispute over bed space. One black eye, a swollen jaw and a few more bruises later, even Hereric might have had some difficulty recognising him.
Ceretic’s hall was crowded. Ceretic himself was lounging comfortably in his high-seat, with most of his advisors ranged on carefully placed flanking benches. The envoy from Aethelferth had been given a chair on the dais, a mark of respect, but not too much respect, for it had been carefully chosen to seat him just a little lower than Ceretic. His bodyguards were consigned to the ordinary mead-benches at the foot of the dais, where they sat looking frankly bored. Some of Ceretic’s warband had just come back from hunting and were monopolising the fire, and anyone else who could find an excuse to be there had come along to watch. The formal reception of a foreign envoy often turned into a verbal battle that was as much a display of the king’s prowess as a duel or a wrestling match. No-one paid any attention to a young bard, plainly down on his luck, mending a broken harp-string in a dark corner.
At first Eadwine thought he had walked twenty miles and picked a fight for nothing. The envoy was arguing with Ceretic about the tariffs charged to the Frisian and Frankish slave traders. Aethelferth had apparently demanded higher tariffs from the traders at Eboracum, whereupon they had negotiated better terms from Ceretic for access to the Aire for the coming season. Aethelferth was not pleased. Ceretic was. The subsequent wrangle was a tour de force of courteous obstructionism on Ceretic’s part that left the envoy red-faced and furious and Eadwine stifling admiring laughter. He had last met Ceretic about eight years previously and remembered him as a pimply youth with a permanently sulky expression. Clearly there was more to Ceretic than met the eye. He wished the Bernician bodyguards would be quiet so he could hear properly. They had been served with wine – a great honour, for wine was brought great distances from Gaul – and they didn’t appreciate it.
“Poncy stuff,” complained a stentorian whisper in the Bernician dialect.
“Yeah.”
“Tastes like sheep’s piss.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Dunno what these poncy toss-pots see in it.”
“Too right.”
Eadwine leaned closer to the leader.
“Excuse me,” he whispered, speaking Anglian but with a strong Brittonic accent, “like you not?” He pointed to their cups, which despite their complaints were all empty. “Want you mead?”
He beckoned to a passing servant, and a few words in Brittonic procured a mead flagon and beaming grins from the bodyguards.
“Cheers, mate!”
It worked. They shut up.
Aethelferth’s envoy, comprehensively outmanoeuvred on his first subject, turned to another. Aethelferth wanted tribute from Elmet, and hostages as a token of good faith. Ceretic objected, not surprisingly, for paying tribute and yielding hostages was an admission of weakness that no king would contemplate except by force or the threat of force.
“Of course,” he was saying smoothly, “naturally your lord can count on my full support as his ally, especially as he is having so much trouble in Deira –”
“There’s no trouble in Deira!” protested the envoy, rather too fast.
“Really? Then Black Dudda is burning villages on the North March because the occupants are in full agreement with their new king?”
Muffled laughter from the audience. Aethelferth’s envoy went brick-red. “He’s burning villages because the scum won’t pay their tribute! That’s what happens to people who withhold tribute from Aethelferth!”
This time the reaction from the hall was a hiss, compounded of roughly equal measures of anger and alarm at the implied threat. Aethelferth had never been beaten in the field, and not many people thought Ceretic of Elmet was likely to succeed where mightier kings had failed.
“However –” Ceretic glanced around the hall, and his next words dropped into hushed silence like pebbles into a pond – “it may be that I have something to offer your king that he would value more highly than cattle and silver. My men are on the trail of Eadwine of Deira.”
He’s bluffing, Eadwine thought, over the pounding of his heart, he has to be. If he really knew anything, he could have picked me up any time in the last two months, handed me over on a plate. It took all his iron self-control to stay still and silent, not ten feet from two men who wanted him dead and fifty more who could enforce their will, like a hounded stag lying in cover and waiting for the hunters to pass by.
No-one moved. No-one even looked in his direction. By the time the rushing in his ears had subsided enough to let him hear again, Ceretic had cut off the envoy’s eager response and was speaking as smoothly as ever,
“– but you must give me time. He is far away. Well guarded. Not impossible to capture, but difficult – and of course if I have to divert men to collecting tribute –”
Why me? Eadwine wondered, listening as Ceretic expertly tied the excited envoy up in diplomatic knots, at the end of which Aethelferth’s envoy had conceded all claims to tribute for at least a year and Ceretic had conceded a few vague promises. What makes me worth so much to the Twister? He can tolerate Hereric living here and Osric living in Kent, and Aethelric under his thumb in Eboracum, but he wants me dead at any price. True, Hereric is a child and nobody would follow Osric or Aethelric anywhere except out of curiosity, but am I really so much more of a threat? What makes me different?
He was still puzzling this question when the feast got under way. Unsurprisingly, though to his considerable relief, he was not required to perform. Ceretic maintained his own establishment of court bards, who praised their glorious/valiant/generous – hint, hint – king to the rafters in relays for hours on end. Eadwine was just wondering whether he trusted his disguise enough to make his way up to the dais and try to engage the Bernician envoy in conversation, when a loud voice interrupted his thoughts.
“Hey, you! Singer-boy!”
It was four of the Bernician bodyguards, weaving their way across the hall in the cheerful early stages of inebriation. A swift glance round confirmed to Eadwine that there was no obvious route of escape. He managed a feeble smile as they came close.
“You talk Saxon?” demanded the leader, brandishing a mead flagon.
Eadwine remembered just in time to apply a Brittonic accent. “Yes, want you I do something for you?”
The mead flagon encompassed the current bard and the rest of the hall in a dismissive gesture. “We’re bored wi’ this poncy heathen rubbish. You know any real poetry?”
“Er –”
“Proper battles,” expanded one of the others. “This is all King La-di-da Arthur. Boring –!”
“Poncy!”
“’Is wife sounds a bit of all right, though –” put in a short man with a cauliflower ear.
“Yeah, but you never ‘ear nuffink about ‘er,” interrupted the first speaker, saving Eadwine from having to explain that he didn’t do that kind of poetry. “It’s all poncing about on ‘orses. We want t’ear about real fighting, see?”
“Have a drink,” offered the biggest of the four, flopping down onto the bench and rocking the table alarmingly. The others followed suit, gathering into an expectant huddle.
“Um – what about Beowulf’s fight with Grendel?”
“Yeah!”
They were an appreciative if unsophisticated audience. He quickly learned that they got restive in speeches that lasted more than two lines, so Hrothgar and Beowulf became models of unaccustomed brevity and the fight itself expanded to epic dimensions. They cheered every time Beowulf landed a punch, hissed whenever Grendel got the upper hand, and roared “Yes!” in unison when Beowulf finally nailed the monster’s bloodstained hand up above the door.
“
’Ere, that was good, that was,” belched the leader, in a cloud of alcoholic fumes. “That bit where ’e rips the arm out, right, with the spout of blood hitting the roof, that weren’t in it last time I ’eard it. I’d of remembered that bit. You making this up?”
“Some of it, yes,” Eadwine admitted cautiously, and got another thump on the back.
“Good on yer, mate! ’Ere, can you make up anythin’? Can you make up summat about us?”
“We’ll tell you what ’appened, an’ you turn it into poetry, right. Summat short –”
“–but wi’ plenty of blood an’ guts –”
“– what we can learn an’ tell our mates back ’ome –”
“We’ll pay yer!”
“We’ll find the bloke what done that to yer face an’ kick the shit out of ’im.”
The big one captured a passing serving girl and banged a flagon of mead down on the table. “Have a drink!” Then, struck by a generous thought, “Have the girl an’ all!”
“After you,” Eadwine said politely.
“Ta, mate, yer a gent –!”
“Come on, you make summat up for us! It were like this, see –”
To his horror, Eadwine found himself listening to a confused account of the battle at Eboracum from the winning side, though fortunately they interrupted each other so much that it made no sense at all and it was certainly impossible to relate any of the numerous fatalities they claimed to real people. Come to that, since between them they claimed more casualties than the total size of the Deiran shield-wall, most of them probably weren’t real people, merely the generic ‘enemy’ whose sole claim to fame was the inventive method of their despatch by the hero. The major difficulty was describing all their claimed exploits without repeating himself. Luckily, every bard and skald in history had had the same problem, and the corpus of heroic poetry in both languages was replete with metaphors, similes and kennings. His customers ran out of material before he did.
“Beorn Bear-Grip,” mumbled the biggest one, “I like that. Yeah. Have a drink.”
“Good battle, that was,” said Cauliflower Ear, now at the stage of mellow reminiscence.
“Beorn Bear-Grip. Good name. Have another drink.”
“Yeah,” agreed the captain, rescuing the mead flagon as Beorn subsided gently off the bench like a mountain landslide, “a lot better than what was s’posed to ’appen –”
Eadwine pricked up his ears. This might not be such a waste of time as he thought. “Oh? What was supposed to happen? A siege?”
The captain slapped his thigh. “Siege! ’Ere, you ’ear that lads? A siege! Ha! ha! ha! After we’d burned all the fields an’ all? That’s a good ’un, that is!”
“So what was supposed to happen?” Eadwine prodded, when the roar of raucous laughter had died down. “You were going to storm the city?”
“Storm that! Beard of Woden, when I first saw that city I nearly pissed meself. Never seen nuffink like it. Even old Ox-brains could of defended that ’til ‘e died of old age. Nah, the King weren’t never goin’ to storm that. ’E ain’t stupid.”
“Beorn Bear-Grip, tha’s me, y’know,” slurred a happy voice from under the table.
“’E ain’t called the Twister for nuffink, you know,” the captain went on, ignoring the interruption. He leaned forward, making Eadwine wonder if you could suffocate from halitosis, and announced, in what was supposed to be a confidential whisper, ‘’E’d got somebody what was goin’ t’open the gate.” He leaned back and tapped the side of his nose triumphantly. “Not many people know that.”
Eadwine had no difficulty looking suitably stunned at this revelation. The Bernician camp on the morning of the battle! The warriors lined up for attack even though they had no scaling ladders! Here was the explanation. A traitor in the city. Who?
The captain mistook shock for awe and beamed, highly gratified. “That were my job, see? Just before first light, me an’ a few other lads crawled up the ditch to the posh gate on the river. Creepy it was, I swear I ’eard a rat rustlin’ about –”
No, Eadwine thought, trying to keep his face set in an expression of mild interest, that was me, and I knew you weren’t rats.
“– An’ I were to give a password, and the gate were goin’ to be opened, an’ as soon as it did I were goin’ to blow a horn to signal the rest o’ the lads to charge, see? They was all lined up just round the corner, an’ we’d of gone through that city like rhubarb through a sick dog.”
“Who –?” Eadwine began, but his mouth was too dry to speak. He swallowed. “Who was going to open the gate?”
“Dunno. ’E never showed up. I give the password, all correct, an’ all I got were the sentry shoutin’ from the top of the wall. There was some row goin’ on up the river, all the ducks squawkin’ an’ quackin’ like there was a fox in the roost, an’ I reckon the city was all woke up an’ ’e got cold feet.”
“I reckon the King planned it like that,” observed Cauliflower Ear, nodding sagely.
“Not the way ’e was swearing, ’e didn’t.”
“Ah!” said Cauliflower Ear, in the manner of one imparting great wisdom. “We won, dint we? ’Ere, that bit where I chop the fella’s ’ead off an’ gut ‘im on the backswing, do that again. I like that bit.”
“– Bear-Grip – hic! – ’s me, y’know – hic!”
Eadwine got away some time later, leaving them snoring contentedly in a pool of spilled mead, and escaped into the blissful silence of an icy-cold winter night. How could he have been so stupid? Of course Aethelferth the Twister was never going to besiege Eboracum. Burning the surrounding fields had proved that, if only he had had the wit to see it. And of course Aethelferth was never going to storm the city either. He remembered his own words to Hereric, Could you climb the walls? No. Could you break down the gates? No. And he had thought that made the city impregnable. He had never thought to say, Could you bribe some traitorous scum to open the gate?
He clenched his fists. What kind of man could stoop to that? What kind of man would deliberately condemn his comrades, and his lord, and his king, and everyone else in the city, to Aethelferth’s tender mercy?
One who could stab his own lord in the back.
It had been Eadric’s hearth-troop on duty at the river-gate that night. It had been Beortred who, in Eadric’s absence, was captain of the guard. Beortred who would have had the perfect opportunity to be at the gate at the appointed time for treachery.
Beortred who now had a great deal to answer for.
Chapter 16
Eadwine left Loidis the next day. If Beortred had been in Aethelferth’s pay to betray Eboracum, no doubt Aethelferth had paid him to murder Eadric as well. That would explain why Beortred had apparently gone back east over the moors, and also why there was no sign of him in Elmet; he had probably been feasting in his master’s hall all winter. Though some things were still not explained. If Beortred was Aethelferth’s agent, why had he helped to rescue Eadwine from the battlefield? Why insist on staying with him as long as possible? Why had he apparently been willing to give his life to save the others? If he had been planning to deliver Aethelferth another atheling of Deira, why had no warband descended on Severa’s hafod? There had been ample time, yet when the searchers did come they had been from Ceretic, not Aethelferth. And from the readiness of Aethelferth’s envoy to make concessions, Aethelferth clearly had no idea of Eadwine’s whereabouts
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