“My lord, King Oswiu, Iding, ruler of Bernicia, master of the lands north of the Humber, sends greetings to the kings here gathered upon the borders of his land, and bids them a peaceful welcome. For it has ever been my lord’s desire to live at peace with the other kings of this land, for he desires not war, if it may be avoided, but only that which is his by right and by blood.” Acca looked around the assembled kings, engaging each by eye. “For his part, my lord has no quarrel with any of you. Should you have quarrel with him, he has given me leave to treat with you, to seek understanding of whatever offence he may have committed against your majesty, that he might make recompense. For he has ever sought to treat with honour those who sit upon the thrones of this land and in particular those who share in the new life with him.” Acca sought out, by sight, the kings of the East Saxons and the East Angles, the king of Gwynedd and the king of Strathclyde. The Britons, ancient foes of the Idings, met his gaze levelly and without shame, for in standing with Penda they followed in the long alliances of their peoples. But the kings of the East Saxons and the East Angles shifted under Acca’s glance. “Such is my king’s grace that he will treat with those who have taken thrones once held by men whom he accounted friends, until they were most cruelly slain. But then even the highest king might come to his throne by a treacherous slaying.”
At this, the assembly as a whole seemed to gasp, for all there had heard the rumour that Penda had murdered Cearl, the previous king of Mercia, when he was Cearl’s warmaster. Eyes flicked to where Penda sat, silent and hooded, upon the judgement seat, his black eye glittering as it looked upon the scop.
Penda held his hand up.
Under that upraised hand, even Acca, though he would have spoken further, fell silent.
“If this new life your king proclaims is so secure, why then does he send, beside you, the priest of the gods of our fathers?”
Acca made to answer, but still Penda held his hand up for silence, and beneath it the scop found he could not speak.
Standing behind the judgement seat, looking with satisfaction at them, Acca saw Penda’s own priest, Wihtrun. Despite the summer heat, he still wore his wolf cloak over his shoulders, the head of the animal peering over his own, its teeth bared upon Wihtrun’s forehead.
“Besides, I have not the patience to listen to the witterings of scops.” Penda glanced around at the assembled kings. “If any here doubt where to lay their banner, thinking perhaps of the loyalty they once owed to Oswald, then there is one new come among us whom I would introduce to the rest of you.”
Penda did not look round, but merely beckoned. “Come forth.”
The flap of his tent was lifted aside and a man emerged, blinking at the light and the scrutiny.
“Œthelwald, Oswald son, king of Deira, marches with us against his faithless uncle,” said Penda. As he spoke, Penda watched the two messengers standing in front of him. Though Acca tried, he could not stop some part of the shock he felt appearing on his face. But Coifi, hearing the sudden scraping of a grasshopper’s legs and the whirr of its music, smiled.
Penda waited while the whispers of surprise at Œthelwald’s presence died away.
“If you have an offer for me from your lord, then tell it. Else leave our presence, for we have many tasks to accomplish.”
At last, Penda lowered his hand and Acca, released of its weight, could speak again.
“My lord, generous even to those who wrong him, offers great treasures of gold and silver to you, lord, and to all here present; for he has no wish for war.”
“Great treasure? What does this great treasure consist of?”
“Gold, cunningly worked and inlaid with garnet, and silver, of coin and plate and bowl.”
“How much?” asked Penda.
Hearing the question, Acca remembered the rumour that attended the king of the Mercians – that he was of peasant stock, of a family more used to dragging iron through the ground than wielding it in battle, and of giving render to the king rather than fighting beside him. Before, Acca had always thought the rumours of Penda’s mean birth simply the chatter of enemies, but now, hearing the way in which Penda asked how much Oswiu was willing to pay for peace, Acca knew the rumours for truth: Penda must once have scrabbled among the tares and the scrapings to make good the weight of food to render to the king. Only such an upbringing could produce that tone – that particular tone which combined the certainty that the weights were fixed with the sudden, greedy hope that maybe they were faulty in your favour.
“One pound of gold and four pounds of silver,” said Acca.
One or two gasps went up from the assembled kings. Such was treasure indeed.
But Penda held up his hand for silence.
“Words have no more weight than the wind. If you would have me hear your offer, then lay this pound of gold and four pounds of silver before me.”
Acca spread his arms wide.
“Would I speak of that which I do not have? Would I cast myself into the wolf’s lair on the back of a lie?” He looked around the kings, catching as many by the eye as he could. “Do I look like a man who wants to die?”
Cheers and calls went up at Acca’s words, but Penda did not take his gaze from the men in front of him.
“You look like a man who tells stories to kings,” Penda said. “But I would have the truth of this. One of you will go, and return with the gold and treasure whereof you speak, against the life of the other.” The king of the Mercians pointed at Acca. “You will go. I would have some peace while you are away.” Penda signalled to his guards. “Take the other and hold him. Put him in my tent.”
Coifi, who had become lost in the spark of light upon the garnets on the buckle that held Penda’s cloak, blinked back into awareness when the guards laid hold of him.
“What’s happening?” he asked, as they dragged him, unresisting, away.
“It’s all right,” Acca called after him. “I’ll be back to get you.”
“If you are not back by nightfall, then he will not be alive when you do return,” said Penda.
“But…” began Acca.
Penda shook his head.
“But…” Acca tried again.
Penda held his finger to his lips.
“But…” Acca tried a third time.
“Hasten,” said Penda. And he glanced towards the west, where the sun was but two hands’ breadth from setting.
Acca turned and ran from the assembly, accompanied by the laughter of kings, and the guards rushing after him.
But Penda raised his hand for quiet.
“He is not – quite – as stupid as he seems. It is clear from this that Oswiu seeks to gain time, for that is what I should do were I in his place.” Penda looked around the watching kings. “I have often given thought to what my enemy might do.” Sitting, hooded, upon the judgement seat, the king of the Mercians seemed to the eyes of the men watching less like a man than he had ever seemed before. His single, black eye glittered beneath his hood.
“Yes,” said Penda. “I have given thought to what my enemy will do and, in sending these men, he does it. He will seek time.” Penda looked around the assembled kings. “For you were late in assembling, and the season for war draws near its end. Least that is what Oswiu believes. He will seek to delay us, to sow confusion and doubt… and greed. But in doing this, he does what I wish him to. Let him offer gold and silver. We will take it. By what he offers we will know what he still has to give. By the time we march into his lands, the harvest will be in, and we shall burn it. Let all those who placed their trust in this Iding come to know that their trust was vain and their hope false.”
Penda slowly stood from the judgement seat.
“I shall set the ways of ours fathers and our fathers’ fathers against Oswiu’s new life. Then all shall see, and see truly, which way men should take.”
*
“Do you truly think the scop will return for you?”
Coifi looked up. In Penda’s tent, the air was thick
and stifling. Under his raven-feather cloak, trails of sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. When he had first been put into its gloom, his hands tied together and the rope looped around one of the supports, he had thought of trying to pull the support down. But then the tent would simply have sagged down on top of him, and the guards forced to repitch it would have treated him even less kindly than they had when first tying him to it. Besides, there was no escaping from such a place. Even as he had stood beside Acca, Coifi had seen the unease that Penda had come to evoke in those that followed him. His tent stood alone, set in space where, in the rest of the camp, almost no space existed. None, not even other kings, would willingly set their tents alongside the king of the Mercians.
He wondered if it was ever thus.
No. For he had travelled with Penda through part of his kingdom when they went in disguise. Then, people sought him out, sought his company and his protection. Now, for sure, men sought his protection, but it was as much for fear of Penda as for assurance against others. Even the men of his own household now held back from their king.
They all feared Penda now.
Coifi was thinking on this when the tent flap opened, letting light into the gloom. Wihtrun slipped inside and came over to where Coifi squatted upon his heels.
“One pound of gold and four of silver. That is a lot to put before a man.”
Coifi glanced up at the priest. “He will come back,” he said. Wihtrun rubbed a hand across his forehead. “It is hot in here,” he said. He squatted down next to Coifi. “I can take you out of here, get you a drink.”
Coifi made no answer, but stared at the man beside him. Then, despite himself, his gaze darted away after the shifting of a shadow.
“Here, pull the rope tight.”
Wihtrun drew his seax from his belt and, setting blade to rope, cut Coifi free. The old priest, no longer held up, fell backwards.
Wihtrun took his wrist. “Up,” he said, and hauled the older man to his feet. “It’s cooler outside, and I will get you something to drink.” Leading Coifi by the hand, Wihtrun took him from the tent. Emerging, blinking, into the light, Coifi saw that the sun was hanging low in the west. Half a hand’s breadth held it from the horizon. Despite himself, Coifi could not help looking to see if Acca was coming. But what he could see of the old road of the emperors was empty, this late in the day. Any travellers would have sought shelter and safety for the night by now.
Coifi looked at Wihtrun. “Do you have wine? If this be my last drink, I would that it was something other than small beer.”
“Yes, I have wine. Come.” Still holding his arm, Wihtrun took Coifi through the camp to where large cooking fires burned and most of the wagons were circled. Never letting go of the old priest, Wihtrun elbowed his way through a hubbub of men to one of the wagons – manned by particularly heavily armed men – and, after a short but loud argument, one of the guards disappeared onto the wagon, to return a minute later with a flask, which he handed to Wihtrun amid further warnings as to the risks he was running in doing so. Listening, Coifi realized that the food and drink upon this wagon were for the king’s use. It was only by claiming that the king himself wished the wine given to him, and by threatening to return, with Penda, to prove the claim, that Wihtrun had managed to extract a flask from its keeper.
“Come, it is good wine,” said Wihtrun. “If your friend does not return, it will be with the taste of good wine in your mouth that you die – that, and his betrayal.”
“He will not betray me,” said Coifi. “But I am thirsty, and would drink.”
Wihtrun leaned closer to him. “I would drink too,” he whispered. “But if I am seen – and there are some in this camp who wander it, looking to spin lies against others – then I would have to explain my drinking of the king’s wine with others. But you are our guest – and our prisoner. So, let us go where there are fewer eyes to see and no ears to hear, and there let us drink.”
Wihtrun led Coifi through and out of the camp.
“Where are we going?” Coifi asked.
Wihtrun pointed ahead. “Where the ways cross,” he said. “We will rest and drink there. The hollow way is shaded, and cool.”
Reaching the place where the ways crossed, Coifi saw a post driven into the summer-hardened ground. From it, the skull of an animal glared blankly at the two men. Coifi saw a fly crawl from the eye socket and scrape its legs over its shining eyes.
It was strange, Coifi thought, how, though a mist had descended over his sight when looking at things far away, yet he could see that which was near more clearly than ever. Once, he would not have been able to make out the fly’s eyes, but now he could see them. The fly, for its part, paid Coifi no heed, but continued with its business.
“The wine.”
Coifi looked round to see Wihtrun holding the flask out to him. From the stain on the priest’s lips, Coifi could tell that he had already made a start on slaking summer thirst. Taking the flask, Coifi drank.
It was good wine.
The old priest drank again, wiping the back of his wrist over his mouth when he was finished. As he handed the flask back to Wihtrun, he said, “Now I understand why Acca says he must drink wine to keep his voice sweet.”
“I hope he will return,” said Wihtrun.
Coifi saw that, while he held the flask, he did not drink from it, but rather passed it distractedly from one hand to the other.
“If you have drunk enough, then I will have more,” said Coifi. “The tent was stuffier than a compost heap in a shed.”
“Here, drink.” Wihtrun handed the flask back to Coifi. “I have drunk my fill.” The priest looked at the older man as he raised the flask and drank, his throat bobbing as the wine went down. “It would be a great shame should your scop not return, for there are fewer of us now than there were, and though you serve my king’s enemy, yet the greater service is to those whom we both serve.”
Coifi stopped drinking, but still holding the flask to his lips, he looked with one eye past it to Wihtrun.
“The gods,” said Wihtrun, seeing the question without it being spoken. “We are both priests to the gods.”
Coifi resumed his drinking, but he shook his head as he did so. Wiping his mouth, he looked at Wihtrun. “I am a priest no more,” he said.
But now Wihtrun shook his head. “Do not tell me that. Once you have walked the spirit ways and seen the play of wyrd in blood and light and water, then you will ever be a priest. Say to me that is not true, and I will speak no further.”
But Coifi held silence. For once, his eyes did not wander, but were locked upon those of the man standing in front of him upon the crossing of the ways.
Wihtrun nodded. “What we have seen is not so easily forgotten, nor the pledges we made so easily abjured.”
Coifi felt the wine, potent and warm, spreading from his belly, sending life and heat down into his legs and arms, and rising up to his head. He swayed slightly.
“While we can drink this wine here undisturbed, there was another reason I brought you to this crossroad.” Wihtrun put his hand to the pole. The skull – Coifi thought it now the bone of a cat – looked at the two men standing before it. “I planted this here,” said Wihtrun. “In the days of our fathers, every crossing of the ways was made holy by sacrifice, but now, men forget the customs of before. Men forget the gods.” Wihtrun looked at Coifi, and anger sparked in his eyes. “You were the first to forsake them. I have heard how you desecrated the grove sacred to the gods at Goodmanham.” The priest’s hand strayed to his belt, where his seax lay sheathed. “I ought to kill you for what you did.” Wihtrun drew the knife. The metal hissed as it slid from the sheath. The sun, low in the sky, painted the seax red.
Coifi made no move. He did not look at the knife approaching in Wihtrun’s hand, but only the man. Tears had sprung in Wihtrun’s eyes. They flowed down his cheeks. And he came closer, holding the knife.
“The tree of the world groans at the axe blows. I feel it, I hear it. The
gods are forgotten and forsaken, and turn their eyes from us, their forgetters. Men follow after this new god, and none hearken after the cries of our forefathers.” Wihtrun stopped in front of Coifi. He traced the tip of the seax down the side of Coifi’s face, from eye to cheek, to the corner of his mouth. “I should kill you.” The knife followed the line of Coifi’s jaw down onto his throat. “A sacrifice to the gods you forsook.” The tip slid down, over his chest, to rest above Coifi’s heart.
Coifi stared into the eyes of the man who was going to kill him. Wihtrun wept.
Coifi raised his hand. He saw, laid out upon the man’s cheek, the web of fate playing out in the tracks of tears. He wiped his finger over Wihtrun’s cheek and wiped away the tears.
“Tell me,” said Coifi, “what may I do to bring the gods back among men?”
And as the tears were wiped away, a great light of hope filled Wihtrun’s face.
“You will help me?” he said. “For I see you perceive the workings of wyrd in a way that few others have, and none today.”
“I would have men worship truly,” said Coifi.
Wihtrun sheathed his knife and took hold of Coifi’s thin shoulders. “Then it may be. For Woden walks among men again. He has not forsaken his people.”
“Where have you seen the Hooded One?” asked Coifi. “For I have oft looked for him, but when I most thought to have seen him, it ever seemed to me afterwards that I was deceived.”
“The Lord of Battles has come among men to feast upon the slain. For the High King has taken the mantle of the Father of Men. He has cast down those kings who had forsaken the ways of their fathers and accepted this new god; he has put in their place kings who cleave to the old ways and make sacrifice to the gods of our fathers – and who honour those who can see the workings of wyrd.” Wihtrun tightened his grasp on Coifi’s shoulders. “It can be again as it was in the days of our fathers. Tell only where the High King may find the king of the Bernicians, and then it will be over. For with the great army that we bring, even such a stronghold as Bamburgh will fall. Then, when all men see that the Lord of Battles has triumphed, they will turn their faces from this new god and return to the ways of our fathers. A man may pledge to a lord, but the pledges made to the gods are greater, for they hold this middle-earth firm beneath the high heavens.”
Oswiu, King of Kings Page 46