“Lord?” asked Coifi.
“Do you agree with my priest: that men fall from the ways of our fathers? That the gods are angered by this desertion?”
“The gods bestow favour and wrath where they will: I know not how men may call the one rather than the other.”
Penda looked to Nothelm the Blind. “Not much use as a priest. At least mine says he can call down the gods’ favour when I need it. Of course, their favour usually costs me dear in beasts and blood and gold.” He pointed at the third and fourth members of the group. “And who else accompanies you?”
“My scop – that he might tell these wonders, should they come to pass – and my warmaster, chief among my retainers.”
“Lord,” said Brandnoth, his face flushed red with the news he was about to tell. “The scop has already been healed, for he had lost his voice and now can speak again.”
“Really? Nothelm the Blind must tell me of this further.” Penda looked ahead and saw the column of riders had formed and was waiting upon him. “When we get to Shrewsbury.” He felt at his belt, rolled the familiar cubes between his fingers.
“Tell me, Nothelm the Blind: do you play dice?”
Chapter 8
The royal hall at Shrewsbury was large. Approaching it, as the sun sank into the west, Acca murmured in awe at the splendour of its carved door posts and the colour of its roof poles, intricately shaped in the form of serpents and beasts. In the late light, it caught into his memory the form of Ad Gefrin, the great hall of Edwin beneath Yeavering Bell, which Cadwallon of Gwynedd had consigned to the flames. But though he gasped, Acca spoke no other word. They were surrounded by the riders of Penda, his wolf pack, the men who accompanied him in the ceaseless round of his kingdom.
They had ridden hard and fast, making good pace over the royal road. Hearing the sound of hooves galloping, every wagon and walker upon the road before them had moved aside. On one occasion, Acca had seen a hapless wagoner scratching his head as he contemplated the wheel, cracked upon stone, that was the price of getting out of the king’s way. But a wheel might be replaced. A king, in haste, might not wait upon a life, but ride it down.
Keeping Oswiu, swathed in his bandages, upon his horse and straight upon the road had taken all the concentration that the scop and his companions possessed. Of the two companions, Æthelwin had taken the greater part in the long ride, pushing his horse flank to flank with the king’s. Coifi, no horseman, had his part in keeping up with them.
Acca had taken the chance to look at the riders that accompanied Penda. For the most part they were his retainers, but the queen rode with the king as well, with three of her women and a daughter and, near the head of the column, proud as a puffing frog, a boy that must be Penda’s son.
In all, there were thirty riders upon the road. It would be a brave band of robbers that tried to stop such a heavily armed group of men; though woods marched in places alongside the road, heavy and silent and watchful, no one emerged from the green shadows to challenge the riders, and they arrived at the king’s hall with the sun still a finger’s breadth above the distant rising rim of hills.
The arrival was set amid the customary chaos and panic – on the part of the hall’s wardens and stewards – and the demands and desires of the arriving riders.
In the hall, the new arrivals rattled as a dry nut within its shell: there were so few when the hall could hold so many. Oswiu and his companions sat apart, speaking quietly, sharing the bread, warm but tough, that had been pulled in haste from the store and heated rather than baked fresh, while slaves hurried around with jugs, filling cups with beer. Any steward surprised by the unexpected arrival of his king knew well to fill bellies with beer, and fast, before tempers frayed and the food was cooked.
But news of a king’s arrival soon spreads.
Æthelwin nudged Oswiu. “Don’t look, but someone has arrived.”
In answer, Oswiu pointed at his bandages.
“Looks important,” said the warmaster, as the new arrival, accompanied by the door warden, made his way across the hall to the high table, where Penda sat with the queen, his children and closest companions.
The man made the courtesy before the king. Normally, in hall, talk and boasts and singing would have drowned out the conversation between king and new arrival to anyone sitting as far from the high table as Oswiu and his companions, but with so few men present, the hall was uncommonly quiet.
“Edgar.” Penda nodded to the man standing in front of him, but made no other move to welcome him.
“My lord, we had not thought to see you so soon.”
Penda indicated the sparse meal laid out on the table. “So I see.”
Edgar coloured. “If you would come to my hall, I would feast you as befits a king, lord.”
“On another night. We spend but one night here, and then ride on.”
“Then it is my fortune to have seen you.”
“And mine to have seen you, Edgar.” Penda made to return to his meal, but Edgar did not withdraw. Penda stopped, bread halfway to his mouth, then sighed and put the bread down again. “What do you want, Edgar?”
“I would speak with you, lord. The witan has tasked me with a message for the king.”
“Then give the message and leave me to my supper.”
Edgar looked questioningly at the king, then pointedly along the table to where the queen was sitting with the children.
“It’s not that again, is it?” said Penda. “Cynewisse?”
“The witan believes the king’s honour would be better served…” Edgar began, but Penda interrupted him.
“I will worry about my honour.” Penda stared with thoughtful, calculating eyes at the man standing in front of him. “The witan. It was Herefrith and Odda who told you to speak to me on this.”
“Lord, the witan speaks as one…”
“Spare me that, Edgar. I know with whose voices the witan speaks. Tell them, from me, that my answer has not changed and will not change: I will not put Cynewisse aside for another, more highly born. Tell them also, when they cavil, that this serves them. I would not grant any of them the advantage that would come from tying their family to me. Thus, they stand equal before their king: service to me shall bring reward; division and treachery shall bring downfall.”
“But lord, it is the custom of our people. No son may be called ætheling who has not been born to a queen, yet you call your son Peada ætheling, though he were born when you were not yet king – and the queen certainly wasn’t yet a queen.”
“By my will Peada is ætheling, as Cynewisse is queen. Take this message to the witan, Edgar. It is my will that Cynewisse is queen, and my will that Peada is ætheling. Should the witan send to me again on such matters, then I will require of it reason that it goes against the will of the king. Do you understand?” Penda picked up his bread again. “Well, Edgar?”
The thegn, although he did not move, seemed to step backwards as all his weight shifted into retreat.
“Now, you may stay and share this meagre feast with us, or take my message and go and deliver it to those that need to hear it.” The king stared at Edgar. “What will you do?”
“I-I will go, lord.”
“Good.”
The thegn made the courtesy and hurried from the hall.
Blind, Oswiu turned to his companions for their words.
“The queen sits as if she heard not a word of that,” whispered Acca, “and by that, let’s all know the favour in which the king holds her and her children.”
“Would that all kings had wives and children worthy of such favour,” said Æthelwin.
Before Oswiu could answer, he felt a hand upon his arm.
“The king calls for you,” said Acca.
Taking Acca’s arm, and letting him act as guide, Oswiu made his way across the hall to the high table.
“Lord.” He made the courtesy.
There was a spread of laughter and, from his right, the king’s voice, saying, “Hail then, Kin
g Cild.”
“Your pardon, lord.” Oswiu turned towards the king’s voice, and made the courtesy again.
“When Brandnoth brought you to me for my protection, I asked whether you played dice, Nothelm the Blind. I would dice with you, but now I must ask how you say to play when you cannot see.”
“If others will count, I may throw, lord,” said Oswiu.
“Very well, Nothelm the Blind. We will play then.”
“I will throw, and most willingly, lord. But to what stakes? I have little a king might want.”
“We play for luck, for fortune’s favour. Here. Take the dice. Throw.”
Oswiu felt a hand – he did not know if it was the king’s – push two dice into his grasp.
“What favour will fortune grant if I should win this contest?” asked Oswiu as he rolled the dice between his fingers. The cubes felt smooth and warm to his touch, more like things living than stone.
“My protection to Woden’s tree and the field where I killed Oswald.”
“And what favour will fortune take should I lose?”
“What have you to lose?” asked Penda. “Your sight has gone and you seek it back. Your lands are far from here and of no value to me. Your friends?”
“I would not lose them for the throw of dice.”
“Your life then?”
“Nor so that, when I have come so far to seek these places.”
“Your hand then. Your left hand. You’ll still be able to eat.”
“But after eating…”
“Indeed. That will be difficult.” Penda looked searchingly at the bandaged man standing in front of him. There was something about him…
Oswiu’s hand flicked, and the dice tumbled across the table, rattling over the wood, bouncing and tumbling while eager eyes – but not his – followed their progress.
The dice came to a rest.
“Six. And six.”
A gasp, and hollow cheer, went up from the watching men. Further along the table, Acca saw the queen, Cynewisse, sitting with her women and the children. The queen, he saw, paid no mind to what the king was about to throw.
Then the scop knew.
“Double six.”
A second roar, unfeigned and wholehearted, followed the king’s score.
Acca sidled to Oswiu’s side and, covered by the noise, whispered to him. “The dice are fixed.”
“I know,” said Oswiu.
But before Acca could ask anything more, Penda held up his hands for quiet. “Thought you had won, then, Nothelm the Blind?”
“I had hoped so.”
“Luck’s like that: sometimes she’s a whore, spreading it everywhere; sometimes she’s a virgin, and no one gets it. Throw again?”
In answer, Oswiu held out his hand.
“Better make it your left hand,” said Penda. “That’s the one that’s going if you lose.”
So Oswiu took the dice in his left hand. He rolled the cubes between his fingers, feeling them warm and smooth, while the cheering grew louder and less feigned. Though he was the stranger, yet every man present among the king’s retainers had played, and lost, at dice with the king. They knew what it was like to play a man whom luck favoured.
Oswiu flicked his wrist. The dice tumbled over the table.
“Six and six!”
All work in the hall had ceased. Even the slaves were sidling closer, hoping that no one, amid the excitement, would see that they had stopped working to better see the game. Only the queen sat apart, and even she was looking with interest to the game.
“Such luck!” said Penda. “Will it rub off?”
He gathered the dice and tossed them.
“Yes!” The cheers were even louder.
Penda picked up the dice and held them up for all to see, turning them as a king might turn a sword or severed head on the battlefield.
Acca, watching, saw Penda clasp one hand with the other before passing the dice back to Oswiu.
“He’s switched dice,” he said to Æthelwin, not even needing to whisper amid the tumult. But the warmaster could do nothing other than watch.
Oswiu took the dice. For three days he had been without sight. Already, he sought through hearing, smell, and touch, to perceive a world he could no longer see.
The dice felt different. To any ordinary touch – to his own fingers a few days before – there would have been no difference. But now he could tell.
“Last throw,” said Penda.
Oswiu put the dice to his lips and kissed them. His lips moved, but no one there could hear which god he invoked.
A flick.
The dice tumbled, bouncing, spinning, coming to rest…
“Six!” A quick, cut-off cheer.
“And five!” The cheer was long: the stranger’s luck was good. But the king’s luck was better.
Penda rubbed the dice between his fingers. His luck. His fortune.
“If you win, I take you to Woden’s tree and Maserfield. If I win, I take your hand.”
“Yes.” Oswiu felt the air, tight at the back of his throat. Men still fought with one hand. But few would follow a maimed king.
Penda clicked the dice together, rattling them, as the watching men gathered tight in.
Blind, Oswiu waited for the rattle and bump of stone on wood, but still Penda clicked the dice together, clacking them as teeth on a cold, shivering night.
“Throw, will you!”
Penda threw. The dice hopped and dropped and skipped over the wood, the men turning to cheer as they tumbled, tumbled, fell and settled.
“Five and three…”
The cheers died to puzzled quiet. Men looked, one to the other, shaking their heads in disbelief. Never had they seen this before. The king had lost at dice. His luck, the luck that had taken him to the throne, had left him.
But the king, for his part, laughed. His laugh was loud and long, and there was no act to it.
“You win,” Penda said, taking Oswiu’s left hand. “You keep this, and I will take you where you wish to go.” The king turned to his watching men. “And you – do you think this means the king’s luck has gone? Take this chance to learn: the king’s luck lies on the battlefield – where I leave my enemies bleeding – and in his bed – where I get my sons. Think on this king’s luck: Oswald dead, and there, Peada alive, and the queen with child, and the others, my little pups, that I’ve given other women. What luck would you have your king have, men? This…” and he gestured to take in the hall and his family, “or this?” And he held up the dice.
The men acclaimed their king, while some took little Peada and carried him on their shoulders around the hall, the little boy pulling the hair of his human horse so hard that, by the end of the circuit, he had tufts of hair in both hands and the man was trying to pull him off.
“More, more,” shouted Peada, refusing to dismount, and pulling out more hair as the man tried in vain to get him down.
In the end, and to the jeers of his peers, it took the queen, offering sweetmeat, to lure Peada from his mount. Penda held out his arms and Cynewisse carried the wriggling boy to his father.
“Why did you lose?” Cynewisse asked softly, as she passed the boy to Penda.
“They had come to trust more in the dice than me,” said Penda, taking his son. He held the boy up for his men’s acclaim. “But I am their luck.”
Cynewisse bent closer and whispered into her husband’s ear: “And mine.”
Chapter 9
“Hold.”
The door warden stepped in front of the group of men approaching the hall’s great door. The only light came from the taper that burned in the sconce behind the warden, and the red embers of the hearth fire. Dim shadows lay sprawled on bench and floor, breathing night’s rhythm, and the dogs lay beside them, twitching in dream.
“Where go you at this hour?”
“My master would take the air.” Acca, holding Oswiu’s arm and half supporting him, stepped into the taper’s flickering light.
The
warden looked at Oswiu, his face wrapped in bandages, and shook his head. “The king’s word is that none should go forth without his leave in the night.”
“We’re not going forth. I’m taking my master for some air. He has the belly gripes.” Acca gestured at Oswiu’s pale face. “Would the king thank you for leaving him to void gut and bowel in his hall?”
The warden gestured at the shadows behind Acca. “What of these men?”
“These are my lord’s retainers. Would you have us go out alone? We are strangers here.”
The door warden paused, caught between command and courtesy.
“We do not ask for our swords to be returned,” added Acca. “Does that not show we mean no harm?”
But as the door warden began to shake his head, Oswiu coughed and began to retch, liquid splashing onto the warden’s legs. He skipped aside, then lifted the beam that barred the door, the great spar moving easily upon its pivot.
“Get him out,” said the door warden, as Acca half helped, half carried the still wretching Oswiu from the hall, followed closely by Coifi and Æthelwin.
Acca, with Æthelwin taking the king’s other arm, helped Oswiu down the steps from the hall. Behind them, the door closed, shutting out the hall light.
The night glittered. Mist pooled at feet and face.
“That way,” said Æthelwin, pointing towards the further gate that closed the great enclosure surrounding Penda’s hall. Beyond, fields pointed lines of shadow towards the low line of ruins that showed where once the road of the emperors had led: Wroxeter. In the dark, its ruins were darker still, shadow ports where wraiths dwelled and, in the night, prowled. Men did not live in such places any more, but built their halls and houses, made of living wood not cold stone, far from the old, crumbled walls.
But before they reached the gate, the men stopped. Æthelwin looked into a low, thatched hut, open mouthed to the night, and sunk into the earth.
“Clear,” he said.
The little group disappeared into the dark.
“Æthelwin, take watch.”
“Lord.”
In the dark of the hut, Oswiu pulled the bandages from his face.
“It’s good to get these off,” he said. He looked around. “But I still can’t see anything.”
Oswiu, King of Kings Page 10