Oswiu, King of Kings

by Edoardo Albert

  Peada looked down at the hand upon his shoulder.

  “You are the Red Hand now, Wihtrun,” he said.

  And it was true. The marram grass had cut the priest’s hand open so that it made the blood mark upon Peada.

  “Lord, you must hear: magic is raised against us. A great wizard stands upon the island and works a spell against us.”

  Peada turned his head towards the Farne Islands and, squinting for far vision, looked whither the priest had told him.

  “I see only wave and rock,” he said. “Tell me what you see, and where.”

  “Lord, I dare not. The wizard is beyond my strength. Should I turn my eyes upon him once more, I would not turn them back to you.”

  “What magic does he work?”

  “Lord, I know not, but I am sure it is to your ruin, and the ruin of your father.”

  The Red Hand looked down at his bloodstained shoulder. “So far as I can see, the only ruin he has made is of your hands – we are all but through the door. Once in the stronghold, let him work what magic he will. The day is ours.”

  And as he spoke, a great splintering crash came from the gate.

  “It’s down! It’s down!”

  The cry went up from the men gathered round it, a great roar, and Peada turned a flashing, wolf grin on the priest standing beside him.

  “Let the mage work his magic – my sword will cut through any glamour. Come, Wihtrun. See the work iron and steel make of magic.” Peada ran, with his warriors around him, to the broken gate.

  “The king’s daughter is mine – the rest are yours for the taking!”

  And still with his men around him, the Red Hand pushed through the ruined gate.

  Bamburgh, the ancient seat of the Idings that had withstood every siege, had broken. The enemy was through the gate and, amid screams and cries, he was ascending to the main body of the fortress. Soon the fight would dissolve into desperate knots of scattered men, standing and falling in defence of women and children, while the fires that had stopped any help coming to the gate gained hold and raged unchecked.

  Standing at the gate, Wihtrun still did not dare to look round at the island. But behind his back he made a fist against the mage who had so overmastered him, and yelled obscenities into the rising wind, that the westering winds that had carried the flames up and over the stronghold would carry them over the sea to the mage.

  The wind…

  The wind, which had blown steadily from the west for the past week, was now blowing upon his back. He could feel its cold touch upon his neck, sending fingers of dread down his spine. For without his noticing, it had changed direction. It was blowing from the east now, and it was strengthening.

  Wihtrun peered in through the gate. The way led upwards, on a narrow path, up to the height where the stronghold stood, and men struggled and fought upon it, the last line of defenders stopping the onrush of Peada and his men into the open killing spaces of the inner ward. The way lay all but open. The magic would fail.

  But still he could not turn and look out to sea, to the man standing on the island, raising the storm.

  Chapter 7

  Aidan watched the flames rising in a great halo over the rock at Bamburgh. Around him, the birds of sea and wave flocked in screeching alarm: fulmars, guillemots, shags and terns. Rising from the wave ridges, slick dark heads turned also to land: the seals were watching too.

  The abbot of the Holy Island had been on Inner Farne since shortly after Pentecost and he had been there alone.

  Solitude was not possible for abbot and bishop: always, there were the needs of his monks, the disputes of his people – seldom would two farmers, arguing over straying cattle or wandering sheep, settle for any judgement other than that of the abbot – and the calls of kings and thegns. Of them all, kings were the least able to wait, demanding his presence and his counsel and his prayers.

  Aidan had given his counsel and his presence and his prayers, and given them willingly and without stinting, for years; first to Oswald, then to Oswiu; to the Godfriend, king of Deira; to the other kings new come to the new life. It seemed that though he was abbot of the Holy Island, he spent his whole life upon road or water. Amid such constant movement, there was barely time to give thought to God, to seek him in the quiet of prayer. And slowly, over the years, Aidan had felt a gap form, and then widen, so that where he had once but to still his mind and fix his gaze upon some sign of God for him to be aware of his presence, as subtle and all encompassing as the air of a still, quiet day, now, when he sought God, he found only absence. The same absence a man might find when, returning to his home from a day’s labour in the fields, he enters upon the back of a greeting only to find no one there but the pot upon the fire and the tablets for weaving scattered on the floor by an upturned stool. Then fear would strike the man, clutching at throat and gut and bowel, and he would run out, looking and searching and calling, fearful lest raiders had come while he was in the fields and taken his family.

  Such fear an abbot might not own. Yet Aidan felt it. No matter how he struggled and persuaded and cajoled, he could not bring peace and an end to the fighting between Bernicia and Deira. As bishop, their care lay on his soul. As God’s presence slowly left him, he knew his failure the more bitterly.

  But what man could not accomplish, God might.

  Bishop Aidan, after Pentecost, had called together the monks of Lindisfarne. They met in the church, the only building on the island large enough to take all the members of the community, and there he had told them that he must seek solitude for a time, the better to know and understand God’s will. Great had been the upset this had caused, and greater yet when Aidan proposed that he should go forth unknown and unmarked, to wander a while by God’s grace and under his favour where he might lead. That they might be without their abbot and their bishop for a while, the monks were prepared to countenance. That he should go they knew not where, so that they would be unable to seek him out should need demand, this they were not able to accept.

  So, Aidan made a promise. They were to sail him to one of the Farne Islands and leave him there. Without a boat, he might not leave. Without a boat, none could come to him. But should the necessity arise, the monks of the Holy Island would know where he was and be able to seek either guidance or send a boat to fetch him.

  Leaving the community under the care of one of the brethren, a most able monk named Finan, the monks set sail with Aidan to the islands, bobbing across the sea in a leather-skinned curragh that brought to mind the boats of his youth that sailed between the islands of the west.

  Aidan had given no thought as to which of the many islands of the Farnes should be his hermitage, so he let the monks taking him to his retreat make the way.

  They landed him upon Inner Farne. Despite their pleas, he would let none of them land with him, for he would be alone there from the beginning, trusting to God for food and shelter and water. But he should have known his monks better. As they pulled away from the small cove where they had left him, Aidan climbed the short path up the cliff onto the main body of the island, only to see that his monks had already been there. They had made for him a small hut, roofed with turves, set in the shelter of one of the little dips on the rocky surface of the island. By the hut they had made a small paddock and in that paddock, bleating eagerly to be let out, were two goats: milk. Lain out by the hut were fish traps and fishing lines with bone hooks. They had built him an oven too, and stacked firewood beside it – wood that must have been brought from Lindisfarne, for there were no trees upon this island for the making of firewood.

  Seeing the care they had for him, Aidan ran back to the cliff top, that he might call after his brethren – although whether he meant to offer them thanks or send imprecations after them for striving to make his short exile the more comfortable he did not know. But getting to the cliff, he could do neither, for the cough took him, wracking his body and leaving him, when finally it was spent, bent over and panting. To clear his throat and mouth, Aida
n spat, and the froth that fell over the sea campion at his feet was pink.

  That wracking cough had been troubling him more frequently in the months before he had come to this small island. But as Aidan settled into solitude, the attacks lessened. He might still find himself doubled over and spitting pink froth, but it happened now once or twice a week rather than every day.

  The days themselves had taken their rhythm from his duties as a monk. He woke when it was yet dark – and the sun rose early at this time of year – and sang the office of the night, his lone voice weaving between the many voices of the sea. Then, as the sun rose, he walked the bounds of the island, pacing prayer into stone and grass. As the sun rose, he sang the office of the dawn, wherever he happened to be on the island, the Latin psalms rising with the new light. Then he took what breakfast he might, depending on whether the day was one of fast, a day in ordinary time, or a day of feast. The rest of the time he spent in prayer and work; prayer, that his soul might live; work, that his body might endure.

  The birds of the island soon came to know him. When the great rafts of puffins came in June Aidan had to take care, lest he, all unaware, step into one of their burrows and break either ankle or egg. But the birds themselves welcomed his presence, and often he would return to his hut to find an offering of the little fish they ate laid at his door. When the skuas came, great savage-beaked birds circling in great gyres above the island while they waited for a fluffy-feathered chick to wander from the nest, Aidan patrolled the island, waving the birds off with arm and curse. Then, when the puffins were gone, he had sat by the sea and watched the grey heads of the seals pop from the water and look, with their big dark eyes, at the strange creature who now lived where they would, later in the year, drag themselves up to give birth to pups.

  Through all this time, and despite the prayers and psalms he offered every day and most of the night, Aidan felt no sense of God’s presence: there was only void.

  At first, he sought to fill that void with prayer. But the void received every prayer and yet changed not: it was as if he sought to fill the space between the stars with his thoughts. Then, thinking there must needs be some hidden knot in his soul, some sin and stain of which he was unaware, Aidan set to disciplining his flesh. He stood to his shoulders in the sea, until all feeling was gone from his body and only the movement of his eyes told him he was still alive. He fasted, going without food for many days and drink until his tongue was so thick he could only croak the office of prayer.

  But still there was no presence in the void that lay at the centre of his heart.

  The monks from his community respected his solitude. Every week, Finan would send a boat from the Holy Island and it would stop, bobbing upon the waves, some fifty yards from the shore, while the monks aboard hailed their abbot and asked after his health. Reassured, they would return and report to their brethren that the abbot was well – and determined to abide a while longer on his island. Aidan asked them for no news of the world beyond the island and they gave him none, although there were times when he sensed they would have spoken had he but asked.

  Then came the day when a second sun rose behind the rock of the Idings.

  From Inner Farne, the rock of the Idings rose where sea met land, with but a thin spit of beach before it when the tide fell. The rock was crowned with a wall, a stone rampart that ran around the top of the rock surmounted with wood. Only in one place did the wall break, where it ran steeply down the side of the rock to the gate halfway up. From the island, Aidan could trace the line of the wall around the rock, but it was too far for him to see any man, either upon the ramparts or upon the narrow beach. A little further north, the beach was wider, and merchants would sometimes pull their boats up onto the sand to sell their wares to eager buyers from the fortress. Watching from his island, Aidan could see the boats on the beach and the people milling about them, although from so far the people were tiny to his eyes.

  But when the merchants should have come, no boat came.

  And Aidan thought he saw companies of men circling the rock, as the pack circles the boar at bay.

  Though he would not know the doings of the world, Aidan determined that when next Finan sent the boat to ask after his health, he would ask what had happened at Bamburgh.

  But before the boat came, the second sun rose. It rose in yellow and orange, making a crown of fire over the rock. Standing, staring at the stronghold, Aidan thought in horror how great the fire must be to send flames so high.

  This must be the hand of a king, raised against the Idings.

  From where he watched, Aidan saw new flames rising from wooden wall and roof. The season had been dry: wood would burn with a single spark.

  The wind carried the smoke to him across the sea. As yet it was just smoke; there was none of the sweet tang that told of burning human flesh.

  Aidan raised his arms, and without taking his eyes from the rock, he began to pray. The words came to his mind without thought. He spoke them. He sang them. He shouted them into the wind.

  And as he prayed, he became aware that there was another, standing beneath the rock of the Idings, who was aware he prayed and who strove against the answering of those prayers. But Aidan paid no mind to him, praying all the more, until beads of sweat sprang from his forehead and his raised arms trembled with the effort of holding them aloft.

  Then the coughing came. From the depths of his lungs, from his guts and his heart, the coughs wracked through Aidan’s body, doubling him over though he strove to hold his arms aloft, then pitching him to his knees as the daylight swam before his eyes and dissolved into grey.

  Slowly, slowly it stopped, and Aidan came to himself, staring down at a patch of grass a hand from his face. He was on his knees, and the strength was gone from him, drained utterly, so that he thought he might never be able to rise.

  His prayer had failed.

  The absence he had felt had become a denial. God had left him – because of some great sin or fault on his part he did not doubt – and in leaving him, he had turned his ear from his prayer.

  The stronghold would burn.

  The king was going to die.

  A final cough convulsed Aidan and, in its ending, he fetched up a thick and bloody paste. It spattered over the grass under his face. The wind, catching the leaves heavy with his lungs’ heavings, bent them over, towards the distant rock.

  Towards the rock?

  Aidan sat back on his haunches. He did not have the strength to stand. Around him, flowing over the sea campion like the tide streaming in over sand, the wind blew; it blew from the east. Already, in the few moments he had taken to sit back, he could feel the wind strengthen, and now he felt it grow stronger, so that the hair that grew long down the back of his head whipped over his face. He saw the first riders of the wind race across the wave tops towards the shore, skimming the white froth from them and pushing the waves up the beach. He saw the wind spread the marram grass that grew up around the rock, making great channels through it. He saw the wind reach up and round, over the rock, and he saw it push against the yellow fingers of flame that were threatening to clasp the stronghold in their grip. He saw the wind push open the flame hand and uncurl its fingers; he saw the wind turn back the fire.

  And Aidan, on his knees, with his lungs red raw and not strength enough to rise to his feet, sent up a prayer of praise and thanksgiving – for his prayer had been heard.

  But as he sent up his prayer, he heard distant shouts from across the sea, of men fighting, hand to hand. The enemy was in the stronghold.

  *

  “Get Ecgfrith safe!”

  Oswiu pulled his wife aside, under the shelter of the east wall. All along the west wall, fires rose: some the great tongues of flame that came from the pyre Penda had raised at the base of the rock, others from new fires that were starting to take hold along the length of the wall. Men ran from one to another, smothering sparks beneath cloaks and tunics, sometimes stamping on them or even falling upon them. But so m
any were the sparks and embers falling down in the castle that for every one that was extinguished another five fell. Already, the roof of the hall was smouldering in three different places – with Oswiu unable to spare anyone from the walls it would surely burn. Many of the storehouses and huts scattered through the inner ward atop the rock were already smouldering and one or two were in flames. Only the church remained untouched, the sparks falling from it as if they were rain falling off the back of a duck.

  “Find somewhere safe – stay there with him.”

  But Eanflæd, holding the boy’s hand tight in her own, looked around and saw nowhere safe.

  “We will stay with you.”

  Oswiu made to tell her to go, but before he could, Ahlfrith ran to him across the courtyard. His sword was in his hand and the dark stain on it told that it had tasted blood.

  “The gate is down!” he cried.

  Oswiu grabbed his son’s arm. “Who holds the path?”

  “Æthelwin, but there are many. He cannot hold long.”

  “Then we shall hold it for him.” Oswiu drew his sword from its sheath. The swirling pattern on its blade caught the firelight, and the garnets on its pommel glowed red. Such a sword knew well when it was going to drink, and drink its fill.

  “To me! Idings, to me!”

  With his son beside him, Oswiu ran across the courtyard to the corner that led down to the gate. Eanflæd, hearing well what Ahlfrith had said, held back. Fear griped her bowels, but she put it aside. Now, she must think, and clearly, that the child might live.

  It was said that none had ever taken Bamburgh rock, and she prayed, swift and hard, that that might be so. But for now, she pulled Ecgfrith after her. She must know what was happening before she could decide what to do.

  The boy pulled against her, struggling to free his hand and follow his father.

  “Mummy, I want to fight,” Ecgfrith cried, tears of frustration coursing down his cheeks. But she pulled him on, towards the steps up to the east wall.

  “Come, we can see what’s happening from up there.”