Oswiu, King of Kings

by Edoardo Albert

  “To be sure, but it has been dry for so long, I would be glad of some rain.”

  Oswiu made to answer but then fell silent, for the warmaster was returning and he was not alone. A man came with Æthelwin, prodded at spear point, his hands bound behind him. A man Oswiu knew.

  The king slowly got to his feet.

  “You.”

  The man went to make the courtesy, but at his movement the men guarding him pitched him forward so that he fell, face first, into the dust at the king’s feet.

  Oswiu stared down at Hunwald.

  “For the man who captured this nithing, gold. But for the nithing, payment in kind.” He looked up at the curious men who’d followed the sentry as he prodded Hunwald forward through the camp. “Piss on him before he dies.”

  “Lord.” Æthelwin stepped forward. “He was not captured – he came to us.”

  Oswiu looked down once more at the man lying at his feet and now there was surprise in his face as well as anger.

  “Why did you come to me, when you knew I would kill you?”

  Hunwald struggled onto his knees. He made to stand up, but one of the guards pushed him down again. In the firelight, Oswiu could see the fresh bruises on Hunwald’s face. The king was not the only one who remembered what had happened outside the walls of York.

  “You wish to know why I come to you?” Hunwald looked up at Oswiu. “Then let me stand and speak as a man. Or slay me as I kneel, but then you will never know why I walked, and walked freely, into your camp.”

  Oswiu stared down at the man. He nodded, once.

  “Stand.”

  Hunwald got to his feet.

  The king looked him in the face. Hunwald met his gaze and did not flinch.

  “Speak,” said Oswiu.

  Hunwald cleared his throat. One glance at the waiting, watching, silent men betrayed his nerves, but then he looked back to the king.

  “I came to you, lord, because thrice now my lord has fled from you: when you raided into Deira, and he would not meet you; when we besieged you at Bamburgh; and now, again.” Hunwald looked round at the circle of men, then brought his gaze back to the king. “Oswine has fled. He ordered me to disband his army. He will not meet you in battle, lord.” The warmaster of Deira summoned spit from his dry throat and spat upon the dust. “My king is a coward. Better you kill me than I serve him longer.”

  Oswiu regarded the man. “You say Oswine has fled. What proof have you?” He glanced at his own warmaster. “Think you this a trick, Æthelwin?”

  Æthelwin nodded. “So I think, lord. He must mean to draw us into a trap.”

  “It is no trick, lord. The army is broken. I can show you the camp where we waited for you, under Wilfar’s Hill. It is empty now.”

  “Any army may move camp,” said Oswiu.

  “I – I can take you to the king.”

  “Oh yes, with all his army about him. Do you think I am fool enough to walk into such a trap?”

  “No! No, he is alone, save for one man. Oswine bade the army split up, that the men might have better chance of evading you. He himself went with just one warrior.”

  “Where did he go?”

  “To Gilling.” Hunwald straightened. He stared at the king. “To my hall.”

  “So,” said Oswiu. “You would betray your king under your own roof.”

  “He is king no more! He put aside the throne when he ran from the field. Oswine is no longer throne-worthy.”

  Oswiu laughed, though there was no humour in the sound. “That is what I have tried so long to tell the witan of Deira. It has not listened to me. Why should it listen to you?”

  “It would have to listen – if the king was king no longer.” Hunwald looked to king and warmaster and ætheling. “Oswine has but the one man with him. I swear it. Would I have come into this camp unless there were reason? This is my reason. Oswine is no friend of Deira. Let him die.”

  “You would deliver your king into my hands?” asked Oswiu.

  “I would. I will take you to where he is. There you may make a new king in Deira. One whom you trust. One that the witan will accept.”

  Oswiu looked to his warmaster and his son. “We will speak on this.” He gestured at Hunwald. “Take him away and keep him safe. But should he make any move to escape, kill him.”

  While the guards hustled Hunwald away, the king gestured his warmaster and Ahlfrith to him. Seeing Acca, the scop, the king called him over as well.

  “It may be a trap. But it is also a chance we may not overlook.”

  “If Hunwald speaks true, and Oswine has only one man with him, then it will not need many men to bring him back to you, Father,” said Ahlfrith. “Let me take a score of men and ride to Gilling, and bring you back a great prize.”

  Oswiu looked to the warmaster. “What say you, Æthelwin?”

  The warmaster shook his head. “I should say not. For Oswine it were a risk worth taking, to lose his warmaster but gain the son of the king as hostage. A brave and loyal warmaster might suggest such an idea himself. Ahlfrith should not go.”

  “Did you see falsehood in what the man said?” Oswiu asked his counsellors.

  “No,” said Ahlfrith.

  After a moment’s consideration, Æthelwin shook his head.

  “He spoke truly,” said Acca. He looked round the other men. “Though I would wish Coifi were with us, that he might see the truth of the man.”

  “I would have brought him too, if we went more slowly,” said Oswiu. “Without him, I think we must see if Hunwald speaks the truth.”

  “But if the whole army goes,” said Ahlfrith, “then it runs the risk of falling into a trap laid for it.”

  “That is true,” said Æthelwin. “But one warmaster sacrificed for another would be no great loss, and the chance of taking the king is too great to pass up.” Æthelwin looked to king and ætheling and scop. “Ahlfrith was right. A score of men, riding fast to Gilling, could take the king with ease if he has but a single guard. Ahlfrith’s only error was who should go: it should be me. Then if it be a trap and I be lost, Oswine gains no great advantage, for he too will lose his warmaster.”

  “I would not lose mine,” said Oswiu.

  “Nor do I intend to be lost. But I must be the one to go.”

  Ahlfrith made to speak, but the king held up his hand for silence. “No, son.”

  “But, Father…”

  Oswiu shook his head. “I know what you will say, but Æthelwin is right. He must go and bring me back a king.”

  The warmaster made the courtesy. “I have one question, lord,” Æthelwin said. “Oswine waged war against you and allied with your enemies. You say to bring him back to you. But if I find him alone, would it not be better to kill him?”

  But before Oswiu could answer, Acca spoke. “There is no glory in killing a man alone, even if he be a king. No scop will ever sing of such a deed. No, but they will make gossip and riddles of it, such that all the kingdoms shall hear of it and account it an inglorious deed. Would you have the king held up to such talk?”

  Æthelwin shrugged. “I care little for the prattle of scops or the chatter of women. It were better for us that Oswine die than that he live.”

  “Acca is right.” Ahlfrith turned to his father. “Such an act would live long after we are dead. It would stain our memory and haunt our children and be repaid in blood through the generations. To kill Oswine when he has lain down his sword would mean feud, blood feud, between his family and ours. You say you are the true king in Deira, Father, and such you are. But do not baptize your throne with blood, lest the blood debt be paid by our children and our children’s children.”

  “You counsel mercy to a man thrice traitor.” Oswiu turned away and looked to where Hunwald stood captive. “But I will think on this. Æthelwin, choose the men you will take. The night is bright with moonlight. I would set my hounds running before the day comes.”

  While the warmaster gathered his troop, Oswiu sat and thought.

  Ever and
again, his mind circled back to Aidan. He saw the abbot, his old friend, pleading peace with him, asking him to raise no hand against the Godfriend. But Aidan had not been in Bamburgh when its walls burned and the gate was broken. He had not stood on the battlements and seen the flag of Deira drawn up next to the wolf banner of the Iclingas. He had not wife nor children, but Oswiu had, and the memory of Eanflæd and Ecgfrith, held at knifepoint, pushed into his mind.

  He closed his eyes and slept.

  And dreamed.

  He saw a king pulled from a monastery. He saw a man, soaked in sweat, coughing blood in a great hall, then turn and look at him with haunted eyes. He saw his mother, as she took his face in her hands, as she had done on every leave-taking. But now she looked as if she saw him not. He saw his brother, as if from far off, and he tried to get to Oswald but, looking down, he saw that the feet he thought bore him towards his brother were walking away from him.

  “Lord.”

  Oswiu jerked awake, gasping.

  Æthelwin stood over him. “I am ready.”

  The king stood up, shaking the dreams from his mind. They made no sense.

  The warmaster leaned towards the king, speaking softly so that none of the men nearby might hear. “Do you wish me to bring Oswine back to you?”

  “Yes,” said Oswiu. “Yes, I do.”

  “Very well.” Æthelwin stepped back, his face expressionless.

  Oswiu knew well that blank face. It meant the warmaster disagreed with his decision. Oswiu stepped forward to embrace Æthelwin. But as the man stood stiffly within his embrace, Oswiu whispered, “I didn’t say to bring him all.”

  The warmaster gave the slightest of nods to show that he had heard. “And Hunwald?”

  “There is a warmaster I trust to take the throne of Deira, but he is not Hunwald.”

  “Lord.”

  “A king may call another king brother. Go, brother. Make Deira yours.”

  Æthelwin stepped back from the king’s embrace, made the courtesy and turned to where his men waited with Hunwald, bound, in their midst. Mounting his horse, the warmaster saluted Oswiu, and then turned and rode away into the night.

  Chapter 12

  “It is… it is too hot in here.” Aidan, lying sweat-soaked upon his bed in the great hall at Ad Gefrin, turned his head to a figure passing by.

  “Please,” he asked. “Help me to go outside.”

  The man paused. Though the hall was stifling in this summer without end, yet he pulled his raven-feather cloak tighter around his thin shoulders. He did not look at the figure upon the bed, but searched, through the dark corners of the hall and in the play of dust through the pillars of light cutting through the gloom, for some sign as to what he should do. It was chance that brought him by Aidan’s bed when, for some short time, he lay there unattended. Normally, one of his monks sat always by him, cooling his face with a wet cloth and fanning air over him with his robe. But he had seen the monk scuttle from the hall, gripping his belly with the look of a man whose bowels are about to explode. The noises that came shortly afterwards from outside the hall told they had. Then, dancing through the blades of light that pierced the darkness of the hall, he had seen a sprite and followed where it led, clambering over benches (as well that there were so few men in the hall, or he would have kicked over many a cup in his pursuit of the sprite) and tripping over sleeping dogs, until he came to the corner where Aidan lay.

  The abbot, seeing the figure stop but not turn, looked to where Coifi was staring, head bobbing as he tried to follow the motion of the sprite. Holding out his hand, palm open, Aidan whispered in his own tongue, and the sprite darted and swooped to him, and sat there, wings opening and closing.

  Coifi stared at it. What was before a sprite was now a butterfly.

  Aidan, with great effort, pushed himself up so he rested on one elbow and brought the butterfly towards his face. He breathed on it. “Go before me, little one.” The butterfly spread its wings to his breath, then took flight again.

  Coifi, neck snapping, turned to watch, and as it flew in and out of the rays of light towards the door, it seemed to him to be sometimes butterfly and sometimes sprite. It flew out of the great doors to the hall. The old priest’s gaze snapped back to the abbot. Aidan lay upon his bed, but his face was turned towards Coifi.

  “You saw it?” asked Coifi. “You saw it?”

  Aidan smiled. “I had not thought to see you here, for I thought you to have gone with the king, and I am glad. For the reign of three kings you have been their shadow, the tale of their past – men say you were less easily separated from them than the pearl from its shell.” The abbot began a smile, but he could not finish it, for the coughing fits came upon him again, wracking his body. But this time they did not last too long, and he regained himself, though new sweat beaded his forehead.

  “Why did you stay?” Aidan asked, when he could speak again.

  Coifi squatted down on his haunches beside the bed. “Acca went with Oswiu, but I grow too old to chase after kings,” he said. “The sprite they do not see; I do not see that which they pursue.”

  “That is because no man may see it, for it exists only in their minds and on the lips of the scops: glory.”

  “Mind, they chase gold too, and that I can see. But gold has never come towards me, though I served the gods well when I was their priest and even now, when I am a priest no more, I still serve.”

  “That is because God does not pay in gold, which a man may also give, but in that which no man may give, be he High King or the least slave.”

  Coifi rolled his head. There, he’d seen something. But he hauled his gaze back to the man lying upon the bed.

  “What does your god pay with, that no man may give?”

  “Life,” said Aidan.

  “Life…” Coifi began to rock backwards and forwards on his haunches, while making strange squaffling noises, and only after Aidan saw him wipe tears from his eyes did he realize that the old priest was laughing.

  “Life,” said Coifi. “And you, lying here, with one leg in this world and the other already among the shadows. When the other priest came, the one from far, and I did as the king wanted, and abjured the gods and put fire and spear into the sacred grove, I too went under the water and took the salt and oil, for he said it would give me new life. But it seems to me I have had little but my old life, ever chasing the tail of understanding, yet feeling it always dissolve in my hands before I grasp it.” Coifi turned eyes rheumed with thought and age upon the monk. “I do not understand.”

  Aidan held out his hand and the old priest took it.

  “Oft, I do not understand either. I do not understand why I was made bishop, who was barely able to prepare the skins for tanning on the Holy Island. I do not understand why the worthy perish and the evil thrive. I do not understand why men hearken so easily to the evil promptings of their heart and turn away from good counsel – and hope. Come, if you will help me. We have been inside, in the dark, too long. Let us go out into the light.”

  Aidan struggled to sit, and held out his arm. Coifi took it and helped him from the bed. Together, with Coifi half holding, half supporting Aidan, they went out from the hall into the light and warmth of the day.

  “I – I will sit here,” said Aidan. He put his back to one of the great pillars of the hall and, with Coifi helping him, slid down to the floor. He looked out, from under the eaves of the hall, to the hills rising smoothly from the valley floor. “It is good to feel the breeze again.” Aidan looked up at Coifi. “Will you sit with me? I would hear tales of the old days, when Edwin was king, and the queen’s mother reigned beside him.”

  So Coifi squatted down next to the abbot and, rocking upon his heels, told him tales of Edwin and his sons, and when the monk who was meant to be caring for Aidan returned from his ablutions – for such had been the explosion from his bowels that he had had to go to wash in the river – the abbot told him to rest, for he was well looked after for the moment.

  But wh
en Coifi paused, mouth dry from the telling, Aidan put a hand on his arm. “Would you go and call the queen, and her guard. There are riders coming.” He pointed with a glance down the valley, and Coifi saw them too. A score of men, their spear tips held aloft and glittering in the sun, their armour bright and flashing in the light.

  While Coifi went in search of Queen Eanflæd, Aidan’s monk, hearing the news, came to him and would have moved him within the hall. But the abbot refused.

  “I would see who comes to call,” he said.

  *

  The queen waited, standing in the open doorway of the great hall. Her guard stood, for the most part, discreetly aside; but there were men ready and armed should the riders raise arms against her. But by their approach, Eanflæd expected no trouble. There were a score of them: enough to serve as escort for a thegn or ætheling, but not so many as could attack a hall and expect to succeed. And the riders came riding behind a banner. No band of reivers, bent on plunder, would ride in such a manner. But such was the stillness of the day and the lankness of the air that she could not see the banner, for despite the steady trot at which the riders approached, the banner did not unfurl, but hung limply from its pole.

  There was, however, something familiar about that banner, about the colours she could glimpse as it shifted and sought to unfurl, only for the lack of wind to collapse it once more.

  As the riders approached the fence to the compound, and the gate, they sped up a little, enough to tug the banner loose. And Eanflæd saw that they rode under the colours of purple and gold – the colours of Bernicia.

  Eanflæd looked to her priest, Romanus the Frank, who stood beside her. “Who is it?” she asked.

  But Romanus shrugged. “I do not know. Perhaps…” He looked round and saw, for the first time, Aidan sitting with his back propped up by the pillar. “Perhaps he will know.”

  The queen, seeing Aidan there, gasped. “Aidan, you should not be here. You are ill; you must rest.”

  But the monk slowly shook his head. “There will be time, and enough, to rest soon, my lady. For now, I will wait to see who calls on us this hot summer day when all hide from the sun rather than ride through it.”