Conscience of the King

by Alfred Duggan

  When the religious nonsense was finished we made a satisfactory treaty. Port and his measly little war-band were allowed to dwell in Portus and the country round about, and he remained in authority over them, an authority he might transmit to his heirs; of course, subject to my supreme command in time of war. This brought in the danger of separatist tendencies in my new state, a thing that I had always tried to avoid up to now; I think my comrades were surprised that I conceded it so easily. There was a reason. I had taken Port’s measure. I knew he was a fool, and I was confident that I could eliminate him before he became a nuisance.

  We had one more day of feasting and drinking, and then I marched back to the open sheep-runs of the north. I had decided to wait for at least a year, to lull any suspicions that the Porting as might harbour, and then I should not be at all surprised if a sad accident befell that intrusive religious nincompoop. There was no hurry at all, for my men would never desert me to follow him; the danger would come in the next generation, if he left a capable son.

  We remained at peace, living comfortably on our flocks and the corn from the southern valleys. We even began to plough the sheltered ravines of the open country, wherever there was water; the Roman peasants had clung to the infertile hill-tops, which were bare by nature, but our heavy ox-drawn ploughs did better on deep soil, and we had good axes to cut down the trees. Huts were built near the new fields, and they were warmer and more comfortable than the hill-forts, which were presently left to the shepherds. I have noticed the same thing in other lands permanently occupied by Saxons; after a few years the whole pattern of settlement is changed, until you would have to dig to find traces of the Roman inhabitants.

  Port and his little self-governing settlement in my territory still rankled. I did not want to pick a quarrel and wipe out the whole war-band; if Port and his two sons died suddenly his followers would be useful reinforcements for my own army. What made the whole enterprise difficult was that I dared not take an accomplice into my confidence. Cynric must continue to believe that I was an honourable chief, otherwise he might start plotting to succeed me. Also the plan must arrange for the deaths of Baeda and Maegla at the same time as their father; the two young men had no religious scruples and were governed by nothing but self-interest; to allow one of them to inherit his father’s power would merely be exchanging King Log for King Stork. I racked my brains in vain; the stock arrangement on these occasions is a hunting accident, but the objection to that was that I wanted to kill three people, and it would be altogether too much of a coincidence if I shot all three of them in mistake for a deer.

  I suppose my mind had grown flabby during the years of peace we had enjoyed, for it took me a long time to remember that I possessed one great advantage; I was the only German in Britain who could read and write, and no one among my following suspected that I had acquired so much effeminate and useless learning. I could safely arrange by letter the deaths that were necessary for the peaceful succession of my son.

  Once I had thought of this solution it was easy to work out the details. Only Romans could read the letters I must write, so I would have to get into touch with a band of Roman outlaws, capable of killing three well-armed Saxon nobles; and I would have to arrange matters so that they got some advantage from the murder, or thought they were going to, which would do just as well. I listened carefully to the reports of our scouts on the Roman outlaws who hung around the outskirts of our settlements. They were mostly dispossessed peasants, who knew that the Dumnonians had no farms to offer them, and who enjoyed the idle life of the woods. The trouble was that probably none of them could read either; but years of outlawry had made them into hardened campaigners, and I thought it likely that exiled Roman noblemen would presently start to form them into a comitatus.

  I pretended that the occasional raids of these outlaws were more of a nuisance than they were in actual fact, and appealed to our farmers for information about their depredations. I heard rumours of a Roman leader who sounded like the very man I wanted. In the western woods quite a large band had been formed; it was led by a relative of the King of Demetia, who had left home in a hurry. He was known to my men as Natan-leod, a quite impossible name; but Germans often make the most horrible mess of foreign words, since the strange noises of their ugly language have no parallel in Latin.

  I gave out that I was seriously alarmed at the danger represented by this band of half-armed peasants, and offered a reward to anyone who could bring in one of their men alive. Some of our best warriors went out to hunt them, and caught a prisoner. He was an intelligent man, and I talked to him in private; I told him frankly that I wished to get in touch with his chief, and that I would arrange his escape so that he could deliver a letter. He said that the real name of Natan-leod was Venatianus Leoninus, and that he had been a noted warrior of the Demetians until he had been mixed up in an unsuccessful rebellion; a man of that standing would certainly be able to read, so that was one difficulty solved. But there still remained another: what reward could I offer to Leoninus to make him my ally? I could do nothing openly, of course, for my men would not have obeyed me if I told them that a Roman chief must be left in peace, as my friend. I did not dare to lose a battle so that he might win, for men would leave me if I got the reputation of an unsuccessful leader. Besides, though one often hears gossip that the result of a battle was arranged in advance, and that one commander lost on purpose, actually such an affair is very difficult to work out.

  Eventually I wrote a long letter. I explained frankly my reasons for wanting to get rid of the Portingas as a separate community, and offered to leave a small flock of sheep in a certain spot, as evidence of my good faith. When Leoninus had taken the sheep he was to leave a letter where I could find it, and then we would make a plan to ensure the deaths I wished for. I knew that sheep would be an acceptable gift to the outlaws, for they were always short of clothing, especially wool.

  The prisoner escaped the night before we were to sacrifice him, and after the flock had been taken I found the letter. The rest of the plot was quite easy to fix up, although in the end I had to hand over the reward that I had promised. I possessed very little treasure, but the outlaws were easily satisfied; they were short of weapons and everything made of iron, for they could not trade with the Roman Kingdoms, who made war on them just as we did. Accordingly, I offered a consignment of sword-blades and scrap-iron if Leoninus would carry out the little commission in which I needed his help.

  My plans were worked out by harvest-time. Leoninus made a small but very impudent raid on the flocks that grazed outside the hill-fort where I was staying. I summoned Port and his two sons to a conference to decide on measures against these raids, but I told him that we would not take the field until the end of autumn, and that he could leave his followers to get in their crops. I asked him to let me know by what route he was coming, so that I could send an escort; I then passed on this information to Leoninus, and arranged for the escort to go the wrong way. Port, Baeda, and Maegla were killed after a brave defence. Venatianus took away his promised payment in excellent steel, and the Portingas, leaderless, agreed to merge their identity in the common mass of my followers.

  Meanwhile we all lived in peace and prosperity, the grazing of the north admirably supplemented by the corn of the south. Each summer several boatloads of new immigrants arrived direct from Germany, until the southern valleys were lined from end to end with fertile farms. Dear Cynric several times suggested that it would be fitting for me to take the title of King, now that I ruled so many men and such rich land; but I was against it. I pointed out that though the number of able-bodied men who came to my annual law-moots was large, they were nearly all stiff and clumsy spearmen. My war-band, who did no work and were supported by the rents of the farmers, was actually smaller than it had been when I first landed. I also said that I thought it silly to announce myself as a King, for no particular reason except that we were growing rich; let us wait until the next war broke out, and I could be properl
y hoisted on a shield amid the slain.

  I was perfectly content to go on with things as they were. I was now too old, in my middle fifties, to enjoy warfare for its own sake; I was at last completely independent, and my nearest equal was far away in the land of the South Saxons. For the rest of my life I had no ambition except to safeguard what I had won.

  Cynric was in his twenties, the age when all Woden-born young men delight in war; it was really very good of him to put up so quietly with the peaceful ways of his father, but I have already said that he was a remarkable son. Of course he now led my little war-band when they had to go out after raiders, and he did most of the work that is involved in the defence of a land surrounded by enemies; but he remained faithful to me. I don’t know what I have done to deserve such an obedient son, but I long ago made up my mind that there is no justice in the way the world is run, and I sincerely hope there will be none in the next world.

  Considering the disturbed state of Britain as a whole, our little corner was remarkably peaceful. The South Saxons had relapsed into a quiet and vegetable existence in their narrow strip of land between the Forest and the sea; their King, Aella, had once been the most prominent German war chief in Britain, but now he was very old. They had wiped out the Roman population, and in fact even their purely German culture was in decline, as happens so easily when new settlers live a rough life in a conquered land; they get used to camping out and living hand to mouth, they do not bother to bring good German craftsmen, and very soon their farms and their weapons are more barbarous than anything they would have put up with at home. Even the elementary civilization of Old Saxony was only kept in being by constant effort; in the new land they were letting it go downhill. It was a warning that I took to heart, for I was determined that my own followers should finally end up as civilized men.

  The Cantwara, on the other hand, were doing well; though they also were at peace. But then their conquest had been a gradual process, occasionally interrupted by truce with the Romans, and in consequence large numbers of the original population had been enslaved instead of killed; these included many of the best metal-workers, so that now Kent was a famous centre for jewellery and drinking bowls. I believe King Oisc was still alive, and he seemed to have laid the foundations of an enduring civilized state. His men were proud of their prosperity, and now called themselves Jutes, after their ruling family; I suppose they were ashamed of their mongrel origin.

  Those were the only German neighbours that I had to reckon with in politics, though I heard rumours of a new Kingdom of the East Saxons that had been set up north of the estuary of the Thames. What was happening beyond them was something that I never knew accurately, although I believe there was a continuous belt of German settlements on the east coast as far as the Great Wall; unfortunately the occasional wandering poets who sang of battles in the north used German place-names that meant nothing to me.

  One thing was clear: the Saxon invasion of Britain had come to a standstill. The Roman Kings had given up hope of expelling us, and were far too jealous of one another to combine for the task. Luckily, there seemed to be no surviving representatives of the dispossessed rulers, except for the descendants of Vortigern in the far west. I suppose it is natural for Kings to be slain in battle when their land is conquered, as my father had been, and in any case these dynasties were less than a hundred years old; so there were no pretenders lurking in the woods for a chance to turn us out. My only important Roman neighbour was the King of Dumnonia, and I had never done him any harm; of course, my followers would never allow me to conclude a formal truce with him, for they looked on all Romans as deadly enemies; but in practice we respected our mutual boundary.

  I devoted my attention to the never-ending task of keeping up our level of civilization. I was determined not to end as the headman of a group of complete savages, and I took the interest in their culture that is more natural for a stranger than for one born to it. I encouraged wandering poets; I even named some old pre-Roman grave-mounds after the best known of the great men of old, so that their stories might still be sung; Woden and Thor were not forgotten, and of course the farmers kept up the ritual of Baldur and Freya, for fear that otherwise their seed corn might not know how to grow. But I was most careful to discourage costly sacrifices of precious objects that we could not replace, although if men were going to slaughter an ox for food I saw no harm in their dedicating it to a god. I also made it clear that each farmer and landowner was responsible for worship on his own land, and that he must conduct the services himself. No secular ruler would wish to introduce a professional priesthood into a land where luckily it is unknown.

  I did not bother so much about material comfort. That comes easily enough when the time is ripe for it, if only men’s minds remain civilized. On the exposed northern frontier where I usually lived we had to move from place to place, as our sheep ate up the grass, and it was easy to build some sort of shack in the nearest of the numerous hill-forts. I like plenty of food, and a warm fire, but I am indifferent to the appearance of my house, and I had long ago given up hope of having a decent bath; in fact I very much doubt if there was a real bath anywhere even in the Roman parts of Britain. To accustom my men to the idea that cities were quite good places to dwell in, I held an annual meeting to decide important lawsuits in the ruins of deserted Venta. Nobody lived there, for most Germans think that deserted cities are haunted by the ghosts of warlike Roman soldiers. I was planning for a future I would never live to see.

  I was quite independent, and the fact that I had no title greater than war-chief did not worry me in the slightest; Cynric, or his son, would sooner or later become a King, unless the Romans made a bigger effort to dislodge us than they had up to now. The dear boy was married, to a healthy and tractable daughter of Woden who had been imported from Germany for the purpose, and she bore him a child every year. I gave her a separate establishment in the south, on the excuse that it was the safest part of the country for young children, and I saw very little of her; the real reason was that Cynric was too fond of his family, and I hated to take second place in his affections. Of course, he spent most of his time with the war-band.

  There was only one cloud on the horizon. That tiresome Venatianus Leoninus had done me a considerable service, and had been well rewarded for his pains. Unfortunately, he had persuaded himself that it was entirely his own courage and skill that had caused the death of the chiefs of the Portingas; fools with short memories often reason like that. His band had increased now, he had good weapons at his disposal, and I had been careful not to interfere with his activities in the south, where he raided impartially both my Germans and the Dumnonians. I thought he might come in useful one day, since it is always handy to have an unscrupulous ally whom one can disavow at need. But he did not understand that he only existed because of my unwillingness to crush him, and he went on gathering recruits until he could only feed his men by incessant raids on my best land. I tried sending him a letter by the usual secret route, but he did not deign to answer it, and his pillaging continued.

  In the year 508 he finally stirred me to action by his own foolishness and pride. He was doing very well as a chief of outlaws, and I am sure he had never been more prosperous in his life. But he had the audacity to proclaim himself King of the Durotriges, an archaic title that he took from the tribe that lived thereabouts before the Romans came to Britain. By doing this he annoyed the King of the Dumnonians and the other rulers of the Romans, and deprived himself of any hope of winning their alliance in what he called his holy struggle against the invading Germans; as soon as I heard of it, by the roundabout gossip of the countryside, I knew that I must crush him.

  When the harvest had been gathered I called up the whole levy from the farmlands, to join the small band of professional warriors about my person. I was fifty-seven, and it was more than twelve years since I had led an army in person, but I would have lost all authority if I had appointed anyone else as commander-in-chief. Apart from the rheumatism
that afflicts anyone who has lived fifty years in the climate of Britain I was quite fit enough to order a line of battle, and I did not intend to charge at the head of my men.

  The peasants came willingly to the muster, for they were very tired of feeding Natan-leod and all his followers as well as paying tribute to me. I was amazed at our numbers when I reviewed the troops on an open plain; there must have been more than three thousand men, which is a remarkable increase for an army that came to Britain in five ships only thirteen years ago; of course, since then new settlers had been arriving every summer. By contrast, my true war-band of professional warriors was barely a hundred strong. That made the army weaker than its total numbers would seem to imply, but it was natural enough after the long peace of the last decade.

  Our first task was to locate the enemy, who lived in the dense woodland to the west of our river valleys. In the winter it was their habit to take refuge on an island in some impassable swamp, but in the summer, when the swamps dried up, they roamed the forest. I thought that since Leoninus had proclaimed himself King he would find it beneath his dignity to live like a Scythian nomad, and that he would set up a permanent palace. That should make it easier to bring him to battle; I had no fear of the outcome of a fight, but I knew that his bandits could probably march through familiar country faster than my men, and I dreaded chasing him for months on end, through the damp and haunted forest. If he had been foolish enough to found a permanent capital, there would be a place he would have to defend.