Rhonwen giggled. “Did you know, there was a bet that you were going back to Eboracum for Aethelind? That’s why that shield changed hands and then changed back again when it got light and they saw it was me.”
Eadwine groaned sleepily. “I wish they’d find something else to wager on.”
“Well, your decisions affect them, so it’s not surprising they try to guess what you’re going to do.” She studied him. He was drowsy and relaxed, off his guard. A good time. “The other half of the bet was that you were going back to the hills for the doctor.”
His eyes snapped open and his whole body tensed. “It’s none of their damned business!”
That hit a sore spot, Rhonwen thought. “Are you? From what your friends told me, I hope you are. You’re the kind of man who needs a woman.”
He laughed. “Most men need women.”
“No,” she said crisply, “in my experience – which is a lot more extensive than yours, I may add – what most men need is a convenient hole. You’re at least as interested in the rest of the woman. You like to talk and laugh as much as to make love. You need a heart and mind to share as well as a body. And you found that with the doctor, didn’t you?”
“It’s very bad manners to discuss one woman while in bed with another,” he said lightly.
“Oh, nonsense!” Rhonwen captured his hand. “And stop trying to distract me! Who else can you talk to sensibly about matters of the heart? It’s not as if I want you for myself. If it embarrasses you we’ll get dressed, though that seems a terrible waste of your last night. Now, then. Are you going back for her?”
He turned his face away. “I can’t.”
That was a response Rhonwen had not expected. “Why ever not?”
A pause and then, wretchedly, “She’s married.”
Oh, Blessed Lady Mary, Rhonwen thought, exasperated, can’t you do better than this? Aloud, she said, “I thought her husband was missing, probably dead?”
“She insists he will come back.”
“Well, she would, until she found someone else,” Rhonwen said robustly. “As a wife she controls her husband’s goods, as a widow she’d be living on the charity of either his family or hers. Not many women would accept that unless it was forced on them.”
Eadwine recalled Severa’s words. My husband was not so complimentary – he had second thoughts, but I was well dowered – at Samhain a man who married for the dowry can seek out the woman he would rather have had. There was nothing there to suggest her marriage had been a love match. And she had not been drunk on the night of the escape from the fort, and there had been no doubt of her feelings for him then. Except –
He said, in a small voice, “I asked her to come. When we parted. But she would not.”
Rhonwen clicked her tongue impatiently. “Because you were rushing back to look for Aethelind, weren’t you? And I bet you’d told her that, hadn’t you? What were you planning to do with her when you found Aethelind? Keep her as a mistress? Drop one or other of them? Live in a delicious little threesome? No wonder she wouldn’t come!”
Eadwine winced. “All right, Rhona, I’m a fool. I know it. You needn’t rub it in.”
“Ah, my dear. But you’re free now. You have a second chance.”
“What, ask her to leave her home and run off with a homeless exile?” He laughed bitterly. “No woman would do that, wife or widow.”
“I did.”
Eadwine raised himself on one elbow. “You never told me that.”
“It wasn’t any of your business.” A dreamy note came into Rhonwen’s voice. “Elphin, his name was. He was a horse breeder and trader and, to be honest, I think he was a horse thief too. I was a year married, to a pleasant enough man, a minor landowner, who didn’t hit me or fart in bed, and I was content enough. Until we went to a horse fair and I saw Elphin. I couldn’t take my eyes off him all day. He was so handsome, with the looks of a god and a laugh like sunshine on a spring morning. And two days later he came looking for me. He had seen me, and wanted me too, and I went with him. I could have asked my husband for a divorce in the Brittonic way and reclaimed my dowry, but Elphin would have had to pay him compensation and it would have taken time, and Elphin did not want to wait and neither did I. So I declared the marriage over, and abandoned my dowry to my husband, and married Elphin the next day, and left my comfortable house and my comfortable life for a tent at fairs and a lean-to shack against the city wall and never knowing where the next meal was coming from. And we were happy. I never knew joy like that before, nor ever hope to again. He was mine and I was his, and nothing else mattered in this world or the next.”
Eadwine recognised that feeling. “What became of him?”
“He died,” Rhonwen said simply. “There was an argument over the ownership of a horse, a brawl, someone had a knife and I was a widow –” She bit her lip to stifle a sob, and went on, more steadily, “His family would not take me in once it was clear I was not carrying his child and had no claim on them. My father said I had disgraced his name and wasted my dowry and turned me from his door. My first husband and his friends and kin scorned me for a scarlet woman, though one of them liked me well enough to take me in on condition I earned my keep in his bed. When he was tired of me he passed me on to a friend he owed a favour to, and he to another, and so I came to the house in Eboracum where I met you. No, he was not my uncle. I lied to you because I did not want you to think badly of me.”
“Poor Rhona. I did not know.”
“Poor?” She laughed. “I had fifteen months in Paradise while Elphin lived, whatever misery came after. Many people never know a love like that in a lifetime. I count myself a lucky woman. My dear, do you understand what I am telling you? A chance of happiness is a rare and precious thing in this life. Do not squander it.”
“She said much the same thing once,” Eadwine murmured.
“Did she? Then I think you have your answer.”
Ashhere nudged Weasel and pointed up at the lowering cliffs above, silhouetted by the rising sun. “That’s Kyndyr. I’ve been up there, you know.”
“Oh, yes?” said Weasel, a city boy to his fingertips and profoundly unimpressed by scenery, however spectacular.
“That’s where the witch – I mean, Severa – led us. Across to that waterfall up there. In the dark it was, and there were two trolls, and nothing but rocks and peat for miles and miles.” He looked round to the south-east. “I suppose that means Navio valley is just two ridges that way – Oh.” He beamed. “Now I know where Eadwine was going last night!”
Drust grinned at Lilla in triumph. “Come on, laddie, give me the sword. I havena forgot our bet.”
“What are you three sniggering about?” Treowin grumbled, coming back from collecting water. “And where the hell has Eadwine got to? I don’t want to hang about in this dump any longer than we have to.”
“Hear, hear,” agreed Weasel, with feeling. “They’re savages up ‘ere.”
“You needn’t worry, Weasel, nobody’s going to eat you,” Ashhere laughed. “You’d give anything a stomach-ache.”
“Savages,” echoed Treowin, crossly. “They burn witches alive in these hills.”
The laughter died.
“What did you say?” Lilla demanded.
“They burn witches alive,” Treowin repeated. “You heard me the first time.”
“Who told you that?”
Treowin looked from one to the other, puzzled. “That fellow who was courting Lady Heledd. He was up somewhere in these hills in the early winter, hunting for Eadwine as it happens, and fell in with a mountain brigand who had some sort of grudge against a girl in the village he said was a witch. Well, some prisoners escaped from the brigand, and he blamed the witch and had her barred into a – what’s the word? – a chapel, and burned it down with her in it. Pretty little thing apparently, black hair and green eyes. His standard-bearer wanted to buy her as a slave but the brigand wouldn’t have it – What are you staring at me like that for?”
“By the Hammer!” muttered Ashhere, aghast, touching both his amulets in turn.
“Did you tell Eadwine this?” Lilla demanded.
Treowin shrugged. “Yes, it’s not a secret, is it?”
“May the Great Mother care for her,” Drust said gruffly. He handed the sword back to Lilla. “Go on, laddie, take it back. I dinna care to win a bet like this.”
“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” Treowin exploded. Hurrying footsteps splashing across the stream made him turn. “Ah, Eadwine, there you are! About time. This lot have gone completely mad –”
He broke off. Eadwine was chalk-white, his face etched with lines of pain, his eyes glassy as though he was focussed on some inward vision. And his hands and face and clothes were smeared with wood ash and charcoal.
“And what have you been doing all night?” Treowin demanded. “By all the gods, you look as if you’ve been raking through a funeral pyre –”
“Shut up!” Drust hissed. “Just shut up!”
No-one spoke all day. No-one was surprised when Eadwine volunteered for the first watch of the night, or that he slipped off alone as soon as it was over. Lilla followed and found him sitting hunched against a tree, staring at something that gleamed dully silver in his palm.
“She might have escaped,” he said. “You said yourself it’s possible to escape a hall-burning.”
“There was charred human bone among the ashes.”
Lilla swallowed. “It might not have been her.”
“Who else could it have been? And besides – there was this.”
He held out the object in his palm and Lilla saw that it was a shapeless lump of silvery metal with a blue-veined stone pooled in it. It looked like Severa’s betrothal pendant, discoloured and melted by some great heat.
“It isn’t fair!” Lilla burst out. “She didn’t deserve to die!”
“That could be said of many,” Eadwine answered bitterly. “Since when do the Three Ladies care what you deserve? All they care for is what amuses them.” He closed his hand over the melted pendant. “She had the choice of being a mistress, as she thought, or a slave, and she chose neither. A cruel choice, a false choice. If I had only known –!”
Lilla’s throat closed up. “It – it – isn’t your fault,” he stammered, “it w-was us she rescued –”
“It was Navio’s fault. May he be cursed by every god in the nine worlds!” Eadwine’s knuckles showed white on his clenched hand. “And one day I will make him pay for it.”
“When you do, remember I owe him vengeance for what he did to Luned. Even if it was a long while ago.”
Eadwine did not answer.
“It wouldn’t have worked,” Lilla hurried on, too quickly. “Me and Luned, I mean. It’s better like this.” He found a smile. “The world is full of girls. I’ll find another. So will you.”
“Go away, Lilla,” Eadwine said, sounding very tired. “And never mention her again, understand?”
Lilla turned back once, to see him sitting still and silent, turning the pendant over and over in his hand.
“Isn’t it about time we turned south?” Treowin complained, as they were trussing packs and preparing to set off in the early morning, some days later. “We cleared the hills yesterday, but you’re still heading west. This can’t be the way to Lundencaster.”
“I told you, we aren’t going to Lundencaster,” Eadwine answered.
“Where, then?”
The others looked up, wondering if they were going to get an answer at last.
“Guenedot.”
Ashhere looked at Lilla, who looked at Weasel, who shrugged. None of them had ever heard of it.
Treowin had, and reacted as if he had been told they were going to the Underworld. “A Brittonic kingdom? You’re mad! Eadwine –”
“And don’t use that name again.” Eadwine included them all in a harsh look. “Not even between ourselves, understand? If it comes to Aethelferth’s ears I’m dead, and most likely so are the rest of you.”
“What should we call you?” Lilla asked. “Steeleye?”
A shadow crossed Eadwine’s face. Severa had called him by that name. “No. I’ll think of something else.”
“But why Guenedot?” Treowin protested.
“Because Iago Guenedot is the strongest Brittonic king south of the Wall. Aethelferth will think at least twice before interfering in his lands. Besides, it’s not an obvious place to look for an Anglian exile, is it?”
“No, it bloody isn’t,” said Treowin, with feeling. “Why can’t you stay with your own kind?”
Eadwine regarded him with a level stare. “It was you that said I should go somewhere where other gods rule.”
“Well, yes, but does it have to be Brittonic? They can’t be trusted, you know.”
The stare became cold. “My mother was Brittonic, in case you’d forgotten.”
Treowin brightened. “Oh, I keep forgetting you’re half-foreign. These kings of Guenedot, are they family?”
“They’re the hereditary enemies of my mother’s house,” Eadwine answered, with a straight face. “But that isn’t going to matter, because Iago isn’t going to know who I am.”
“Then why should he give us refuge?”
“He isn’t going to give us anything,” Eadwine said coolly. “He’s going to beg us to do him the favour of joining his warband.” He got to his feet. “He doesn’t know it yet, but he is.”
Ashhere watched the tall, straight figure stride away up the track. Eadwine had lost everything except his life. His lands, his wealth, his position, his woman, his kingdom, his home, even his name, all were gone. And yet he was starting out on the long, hard, dangerous road to win them all back. Ashhere could not begin to imagine how it was to be done, but he knew it would never be dull.
He squared his shoulders, took a firmer grip on his spear, and followed his lord into exile.
Appendix: Historical and Geographical Notes
When I finish reading a historical novel, I always want to know what parts of the story are documented history, what the author made up to fill in gaps, and what (if anything) the author changed from documented facts. If anyone else shares this interest, this note is for you. More detailed articles on many aspects of the historical background can be found on my website at www.carlanayland.org.
The novel is first and foremost a work of the imagination. My rule throughout has been that where I could find a solid fact, I would not change it. But solid facts are rare indeed in seventh-century Britain, and most of the story in Paths of Exile is my invention.
The primary source for seventh-century English history is the Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written in 731 AD by Bede, a monk at the monastery of Jarrow in modern Northumberland. I work from the modern English translation published by Penguin Classics. Other sources for the period include the Historia Brittonum believed to have been written (possibly by a monk called Nennius) in the ninth century, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, genealogies of medieval Welsh kings, Welsh poetry, the Annales Cambriae, the Welsh Triads, various medieval chroniclers, and a few stories in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. All of these were written down much later than Bede’s history, though they may well preserve kernels of older tradition. Where the sources conflict, I generally give Bede primacy because of the early date of his account.
Eadwine existed. Bede tells us he was the son of Aelle, and that he was driven out of Deira by Aethelferth. The later part of Eadwine’s career is described by Bede (Ecclesiastical History Book 2, chapters 9–20), so anyone who wants to know how the story worked out in the end is welcome to look it up. Bede tells us very little of Eadwine’s early life, saying only ‘When Aethelferth was persecuting him, Eadwine wandered as an unknown fugitive for many years through many lands and kingdoms’. From Bede’s information on the date of Eadwine’s death and his age at death, it can be deduced that he was born some time around 585 AD. From information on Aethelferth’s reign length in
Deira and Bernicia given in Bede and Historia Brittonum, it can be deduced that Aethelferth annexed Deira around 605 AD, and therefore Eadwine was about twenty when he was driven into exile. Something of Eadwine’s character can be gleaned from Bede’s account, though Bede was a Northumbrian and may have given Eadwine an excessively good press out of patriotism. It is also fair to say that he was writing a century after the events and may have had an unduly rosy view of the ‘good old days’. Medieval Welsh poems such as the Moliant Cadwallon, and the medieval Welsh Triads give a less favourable picture of Eadwine’s character. It is my intention in this and subsequent novels to show both sides. There is some evidence from the Welsh Triads that Eadwine spent some time in North Wales, and slight evidence from Bede that he knew of and admired Britain’s Roman heritage. If the timber amphitheatre discovered in archaeological excavations at Yeavering is attributable to Eadwine’s reign it would also be consistent with knowledge of and respect for Roman ways. Everything else in the story concerning Eadwine is my invention.
King Aelle of Deira existed, and ruled some time in the late sixth century. Bede says that Aelle was a ruling king when St Augustine arrived in Kent in 597 AD. It is not known when Aelle became King of Deira or when and how he died.
King Aethelferth of Bernicia existed, and ruled Bernicia from 593 AD. Bede tells us that he was a very powerful and ambitious king who conquered large areas of British-controlled territory and who beat the King of Dal Riada (modern Argyll in West Scotland) in a decisive battle in 603 AD. Bede also tells us that he never gave up pursuing Eadwine, though the reason why is not known. He was indeed married to Eadwine’s sister Acha, and from the dates given in Bede it is possible to work out that their son Oswald was born in 604 AD and therefore that Aethelferth and Acha must have been married at latest by early that year. Historia Brittonum says that Aethelferth ruled in Bernicia for twelve years and for twelve other years in Deira, implying that he was king of Bernicia for twelve years before also becoming king of Deira. This places the date of the annexation around 605 AD. The method of Aethelferth’s annexation of Deira is not known, but given Aethelferth’s undoubted prowess as a warlord and the fact of his hostile relations with Eadwine, it seems likely that it was by military force. Aethelferth’s nickname ‘Flesaurs’, usually translated into modern English as ‘The Artful’ or ‘The Twister’, is recorded in Historia Brittonum.
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