The coins ran away, until one only remained. Œthelwald held it up to his gaze. There was a picture upon it – the picture of a man.
Œthelwald looked past the coin to where Penda stood watching him.
“Whose face is this upon the coin?” he asked.
“Earconbert, once king of Kent.”
Œthelwald turned the coin. Upon its reverse was the figure of an animal, cunningly worked into the gold so that it stood out from the surface.
“That is a lion,” said Penda. “I have heard tell that among all the beasts it is the king.”
Œthelwald let the coin drop back into the chest. “I have seen no lions in this land,” he said.
“Mayhap they have them in Kent or among the Britons.” Penda turned his gaze upon Rhieienmelth. “The lady here might tell us.”
Rhieienmelth regarded the king of the Mercians. “We have many such coins among us,” she said. “But there was only one king to match this king among the animals.”
“Yes,” said Penda. “I agree.” He looked back to Œthelwald. “It is no wonder that the king who came after him is not his match.” Penda’s black eye glittered in the shadow. “A lesser king than your father might use even a relation as defence against an enemy.” The black eye turned back to Rhieienmelth. “A lesser king might put aside a wife to take another for the advantage she might bring.” Penda reached up and drew his hood back from his head. “A greater king would keep the faithful wife of his youth, and meet those who hate him face to face. The greatness of a king is not a matter of blood, but of action.” Penda looked to the man and woman before him, one a king, the other once a queen, and said, “I would have peace with you, Œthelwald, son of my enemy. More, I would ask you to think on this: would a king who murdered to gain your throne not be likely to put you aside, as he put aside his queen, when he has a son of his own that he would put upon the throne of Deira? Think further: which king would you pledge your throne to? One who came to you, who offered his blood for your father’s, who can give you gold running over to win the oaths of many warriors; or one who summons you to wait upon him and gives not gold nor men nor mastery?” Penda, king of the Mercians, looked upon Œthelwald, king of Deira. “Think on this, Œthelwald, Oswald son.”
Œthelwald nodded. He glanced at Rhieienmelth, but she was staring at Penda and did not see his look.
“We will speak on this,” he said.
But before he could step back, Rhieienmelth said, “No.” She turned to look at Œthelwald. “I have looked upon the face of the man who killed Oswald. I have looked upon his face and seen that he speaks the truth. Your uncle uses you in the games he plays to keep his throne, but once he has used you, he will discard you. I should know.” Rhieienmelth turned back to Penda. “Once I thought that, should I ever meet you, I would fall upon you myself, woman that I am, and by the strength of my arm try to exact the blood price of my king. But now I am content to take the price you offer and, if my nephew will hear the advice of a woman, he will accept the price and pledge himself to you.”
Œthelwald looked to his memory hoard. He remembered the grace of Eanflæd the Wise; he remembered the scorn of his cousins, Ahlfrith and Ahlflæd; he remembered the kindness of the woman beside him, as much mother as the woman who had brought him to birth and died doing so; but most of all he remembered the king, Oswiu, placing him before the witan of Deira as their king.
He was king by the will of his uncle, and his uncle could as easily take the throne from him. But not if he had the support of the king of the Mercians. Then, too, with the threat of the High King standing behind his throne, the thegns of Deira would look on him, not as a king imposed upon them from Bernicia, but as a man who ruled in his own name, son of Oswald and grandson of Acha, offspring of the House of Yffi as well as the House of Ida.
Œthelwald, king of Deira, closed the door upon his memory hoard and looked with new eyes upon the king before him.
“Penda, king of the Mercians, lord of the Tomsæte, master of the Magonsæte, High King of Britain: I pledge myself to you.”
Chapter 4
“My father sends for me.”
Ahlflæd heard the words, but she did not answer them. She lay upon her side, turned away from her husband, pretending sleep. The Red Hand had finished with her for the night surely.
But Peada desired speech.
He lay also on his side, turned away from his wife. He was spent, but the sleep that usually came afterwards would not come.
Peada rolled over onto his back and looked up at the roof beams. The dim red light of the banked fire in the hall shone upon them, but the roof beyond them lay in darkness. He could hear rain running down the thatch.
“The messenger came today. You were not in the hall, so you did not hear him. He said my father wants me to come to him, with all my men.” Peada glanced sideways. Ahlflæd lay unmoving, giving no indication that she heard, but he was sure she did not sleep. She usually didn’t, not after he had finished with her. Peada clenched the satisfaction of that to himself and wrapped it tight around the pain.
“I have heard that my father, these days, oft times sends Wulfhere as his messenger when treating with a king.” Ahlflæd still did not move. Peada let his head roll back, so that he looked again into the red darkness over them. “He did not send Wulfhere to me. Am I less a king than these others? I hear he even sent Wulfhere to speak with the king of Deira, whose father he had killed. Yet, to me, brother and son and king, he sends some young pup whose chin has never known a hair. I would have wished to see my brother. It has been a long time.”
Still Ahlflæd gave no answer. But she listened, he knew she listened, and so he continued to speak. For how rarely did she listen to his words, but rather turned her head and, eyes blank, withdrew from him into the sanctuary of her mind?
Sometimes he looked at her, stealing glances when she was turned inward and unaware of him. Sometimes he saw a smile, quick as a swallow, flash across her face. Then he remembered the girl, racing her brother across one of his father’s compounds, and winning, always winning, before turning on her panting, angry rival and skipping out of his way as he attempted to catch her and push her down. Then, without realizing it, his own hand would reach to her. But a touch from him was always enough to jolt Ahlflæd from memory and bring her to the present. And, each time, when the disappointment of finding where she was flashed again across her face, the Red Hand felt the red hand deep within him clutching his guts, squeezing there. Sometimes he saw her face relax, and a peace, like the dawn quiet, flow across it. Then, always, he spoke, or touched her; if he might not know peace, then neither would she.
But, this night, he did not need to wake her, although she pretended to sleep.
“Mayhap my father fears that if he sent Wulfhere I would not send him back. But I am not such a man that kills his brother – I leave that to my father. Or did Wulfhere himself refuse to come, fearing me? In that, he is right – but so should any king who crosses me be afraid. I would not kill him. I am not a monster who kills his brother.”
The Red Hand looked again at his wife and queen. Never once had he seen her look at him without his calling her gaze to him – never, not since the day they had married. Instead, she spent her time with the women she had brought with her from her own kingdom, and the priest who had come with her to the land of the Middle Angles where Peada now ruled. Ruled by sufferance of his father. The messenger had seen fit to remind Peada of that.
“My father is gathering all the kings of this land to him. That is what the messenger told me. There is a new king among the East Saxons now. Sigeberht, who was their king, is dead. He died in his own blood, a knife sticking in his side.” Peada looked at Ahlflæd. Even the regular breathing that had moved her flank up and down had ceased. She listened now as a mouse within its hole listens for the cat waiting without. “I have seen men die like that. They drown in their blood.” He reached out and touched her shoulder. He saw the skin move beneath his finger. “The new king
is sworn to my father. Wihtrun will be happy, for the new king has put aside your new god and returned to the ways of our fathers. They sacrifice to Woden again in the fields and woods of the East Saxons.”
“He’s your god too.”
The voice, the answer, was as unexpected as his father’s messenger. Ahlflæd did not roll over so that she might look upon her husband, but she spoke. “He is your god and he will not be mocked.”
“I have not mocked him. I gave my pledge that I would put aside the gods of my fathers and cleave to this new god, and I have not broken my pledge.”
Peada waited for Ahlflæd to speak again, but she held silence, not moving.
“He has put down the king of the East Angles too, placing his own man upon the throne, and driven the king of the West Saxons from his land. You must see that which my father does.”
Peada waited for an answer that did not come, so in the silence he spoke the answer himself.
“All those kings that your father thought to tie to himself by alliance, making a net about my father, he has destroyed: they are either dead, or driven into exile. All that your father sought to build up, my father has brought down.” Peada looked at the back that lay unmoving beside him. “Have you no care for that? I know you to have no care for me or my people, but do you not have care for your own father?”
“I – I have care for him.” Ahlflæd’s back moved, her ribs expanding and contracting as she breathed convulsively. “I have care for him, or I would not be here.”
Again, like a blow upon a bruise, Peada felt the words inside him.
“Then if you have care for your father, think on these words from the messenger. My father is drawing all the kings of this land, with all their armies, to him. There is but one kingdom they will march against, and but one king they will bring down. Would you have me answer my father’s call?”
“You will do as you wish. For my part, I will send every prayer and sacrifice to my god, that he defend my father, and that he cast down all his enemies.”
“I am not his enemy.”
“My father stood as father to you when you entered the new life. Would you turn upon him now, when all hands are raised against him?”
“When all hands are raised against him, it is harder to stand back from the march.”
Ahlflæd rolled over and looked upon her husband. She had hoped that the revulsion she felt for him would lessen with time, but it had not. Rather, it had solidified, becoming a solid block of despite, ice about her heart. Safe within its coldness, she could allow him to use her when he desired and it had no more effect upon her than the rain or snow. Sometimes she saw the pain in his eyes, a dumb pain, like that of an animal ill used, and a fierce joy sprang up in her at the sight, for she knew that he could never hurt her so deeply as she hurt him. And with her marriage, she held the Red Hand from her father – held his men back from marching into Bernicia. But now, from what he had told her, Penda was preparing the final campaign against her father. The siege of Bamburgh had failed, but with so many men marching behind the banner of the black wolf, even such a stronghold would surely fall. Any men that she could keep from the campaign would be of help to her father.
“If you would hold your hand back from my father, I would be grateful,” Ahlflæd said. And she reached out and touched her hand to Peada’s shoulder. She saw the flare of his hope, and she felt her contempt for it in her heart, but she forced a smile to her lips. “I would be grateful indeed.”
“When all kings march behind my father’s flag, I cannot simply refuse his call. What would you have me do?”
“A call may be answered but too late. There are reasons, and enough, for men not to arrive where they are meant to arrive: roads, rivers, sickness, weather. Each of these may stop you doing that which you told your father you would do. With all these other kings marshalled to his side, he will have no chance to seek after you, but will be grateful enough that you make no attack upon his rear.”
But Peada was barely listening to what she said. He reached for her and she did not flinch from his touch.
“I would send word to my father of what you have told me.”
“Send it,” murmured the Red Hand, “send it.”
When he had finished, and slept beside her, Ahlflæd lay upon her back and looked up into the dark, and to her eyes the dark had no ending.
Chapter 5
Ecgfrith ran towards his mother, waving a sword.
“See, see!” he called. “It’s a proper sword; not wood like the last one.”
Eanflæd sat down. The hall was spinning. When she had seen Ecgfrith standing at the door, looking around and calling for her, she had stood up to call him over, but that had been a mistake. She shook her head, trying to clear it.
Ecgfrith held the sword out to her. “See this edge,” he said. “I bet it could cut through anything.” He turned to one of his mother’s women and reached for the cloth she was weaving. “Give me that,” he said. Eanflæd tried to tell him to stop, but the words brought up bile and she gagged. While she sought to swallow back the bile, Ecgfrith took the cloth and, raising it, let it fall upon the edge of the sword… where it sat, unmoving and uncut.
Eanflæd took the cloth from the sword and handed it back to her woman. “Gytha spent many days weaving this. She would not wish it used to demonstrate the sharpness of a sword.”
But Ecgfrith was looking with disgust at the sword that, a moment before, he had been waving around in high excitement. “It wouldn’t even cut a cloth,” he said. “Wældhelm told me this was a special sword; that it would cut through anything.”
“I don’t think he had cloth in mind.”
“Then I’ll try something else.” Ecgfrith looked around wildly, then his gaze alighted on one of the dogs, asleep under a table, and with a determined light in his eyes he began to advance towards it.
“No!” said Eanflæd getting to her feet.
But that proved a greater mistake. The vomit that she had swallowed down surged back up her throat and it was only by the swiftness of one of her women, passing her a bucket, that she did not throw up on the floor of the hall.
“Mummy, are you sick?” asked Ecgfrith, in his concern forgetting his mission to prove the sharpness of his sword.
Eanflæd heaved again, then waited, breathing deeply, to see if that was all. It was. She wiped a cloth over her mouth. Now, her stomach voided, the room felt still. But she knew that it would start spinning again.
“Are you sick, Mummy?” Ecgfrith asked again.
Eanflæd managed a weak smile. “No, I am not sick. But, God willing, you will have a brother or sister before Christmas.”
“I hope it’s a brother,” said Ecgfrith. “Girls are no fun.” He ran off to demonstrate his new weapon to a fresh audience.
“You should rest.”
Eanflæd turned to see the king looking at her. She shook her head. “Lying down just makes me feel worse.” The queen smiled. “Besides, for now I feel better.”
Oswiu nodded. “Then, if you are able, I would have you join us and give your counsel. There is much to speak on.”
“The messenger from Ahlflæd? Was the news not good?”
“No,” said Oswiu. “It was not good.”
*
“Penda is raising all the kings of this land against me – against us.”
Oswiu, king of Bernicia, stood outside the hall of his estate at Maelmin. The hall was newly built and the smoke from the fire had yet to steep the thatch and wood slate and find its way to the air without, so the air within was thick and hard to breathe.
Oswiu looked to his wife. “Shall we walk?”
She cast him a grateful glance. “That would help,” she said. Walking in the cool air might serve to fight back the nausea that was rising again in her stomach.
“Come,” he said, looking to the others present: Ahlfrith, son and warmaster, Coifi and Acca, and Romanus, priest to the queen. “Let us walk.”
With the queen between th
em, they stepped down from the hall. The wind blew from the west, round Coldside Hill, but in the valley bottom they were spared the worst of it. Outside the fence that marked the king’s compound from the usual straggle of fields petered out into the gorse and heather that trailed down from the hilltops. The king pulled his cloak around his shoulders. The wind was brisk.
“Are you warm enough?” he asked Eanflæd.
“This wind is good for me,” she said, her cheeks reddening under its lash. “It clears my head and steadies my stomach.”
“Good, good.” Oswiu indicated the line of willows and alder to the east of the hall that stretched from north to south. “Let us walk down to the river. There we may talk without fear of others hearing what we have to say.” He glanced back at the hall. “Unlike there.”
“A secret told in hall is no secret at all,” said Acca. Everyone looked at him. “It’s an old saying,” the scop added.
“To which has been added a new saying: a secret told to Acca shall be sung in every hall in the land,” said Coifi.
Acca spluttered his indignation, but his protests were covered by the laughter of the others.
“Take no offence,” said Oswiu. “If I did not know you to be true, I would not have called for your counsel. Come.”
With the king leading, they made their way along the paths that fringed the fields, down to the River Till. There Oswiu stopped, standing on the riverside between banks of sedge. Bending down, he scooped up a handful of pebbles and began to throw them, one by one, into the river.
“Penda has killed Anna, the king of the East Angles, our friend and ally, and placed his own man, Æthelhere, upon the throne. Our friend Sigeberht, king of the East Saxons, was murdered, cut down by two thegns, men tied to him in blood. But the ties of blood mean nothing to the king of the Mercians. He suborned those wretched men, promising them the throne, and they struck that bargain, not knowing that its true cost shall be their souls. But, while they live, they will trouble us, for they are tied to Penda by this deed of treachery and, doubly treacherous, they have expelled God’s priests from their kingdom and are sacrificing to the gods of old.”
Oswiu, King of Kings Page 44