Oswiu, King of Kings

by Edoardo Albert

  Acca looked hopefully at the king. “Will this be enough for peace?”

  “Of course not,” said Oswiu. “I know that, and Penda knows that I know that. But it will, I think, be enough to buy a winter’s peace – time for the queen to bring our child to birth and for me to make new plans.”

  “There was another message I was to give you, if you agreed to give the gold Penda asked for.”

  Oswiu looked questioningly at the scop. “Would you not have told us this if we had not agreed to send the gold?”

  “Yes, yes. I would have. I just had not the chance before.”

  Oswiu glanced at the queen and his warmaster. Neither gave, by their expressions, any sign of what they thought of this.

  “Very well. We shall put that aside for now. What other message were you asked to deliver?”

  “This.” The scop’s hands went behind his back. His eyes again took on the shine of memory. “‘The High King sends this further message to the king of Bernicia. If he would buy peace, then he must do so in person. For a peace bonded by two kings, face to face, shall surely endure where a peace brokered by others shall just as surely fail.’”

  Oswiu stared at Acca. “He expects me to come to speak with him? After what happened to Eanfrith?”

  “The High King told that you would answer in such manner and he bade me say this further: ‘The murder of Eanfrith under flag of truce was done by Cadwallon, king of Gwynedd, and he, the High King, had no part in it. The High King, as befits such a lord, is a man of his word and will respect any flag of truce that flies between you.’”

  “Oh, stop calling him High King.” Oswiu looked to his counsellors. “What say you?”

  But before they could reply, Acca spoke again. “The Hi– the king of the Mercians said further. He said, if you would not come in person, then there would be no peace between you, not though you poured all the gold of all the kingdoms of all the world before him.”

  Hearing this, Oswiu sighed. He looked again to his counsellors, to his wife and to his son. “I suppose we have answer then. I will go, and I will take the gold, and I will buy us peace for a season.”

  “I will come with you,” said Ahlfrith.

  But Oswiu shook his head. “If this be a trap, better we not both enter it. Besides, if he takes me, someone must remain to take the queen to safety.” Oswiu stood up from his stool. The rain, redoubling, drummed upon the tent and now it sounded like the throwing of thousands of stones. The rain was becoming hail. Winter would soon be coming to the mountains. The king turned to his son. “Give me pledge, Ahlfrith, in God’s holy hearing, that you will look after the queen should I fall, and take her to her kinsmen in Kent. She will be safe there – as safe as anywhere in this land.”

  Ahlfrith stood up in front of the king. Looking at them, Eanflæd saw that Ahlfrith now stood taller than his father.

  “I give pledge, I give it freely, before my father and my king, before God, that if you fall I shall see the queen safe to her own people.”

  “Thank you,” said Oswiu. He turned back to Acca. “Take this message to Penda, king of the Mercians. Tell him I will meet him at the Wall. Tell him that I will give him, there, all the gold his heart, and the hearts of the kings that march with him, could desire. Tell him I will meet him one week hence, but that his army must be far to the south, yet visible from the Wall, that I may know I approach without treachery. In likewise, he shall see that I approach with only my own men about me. I shall come from the west, he from the east, and we shall meet ten miles west of my estate at the Wall, where we received his son, the Red Hand, into the new life. The place where we shall meet is marked by a single tree, an ash, that has rooted into the south side of the Wall and grows up from there. The point is half a mile to the east of a small fort. The Wall stretches straight, east and west, for a mile there, so that each shall see the other approaching atop the Wall. Let him come walking east along the wall alone, and I shall meet him in like wise. Then both shall know there is no treachery.” Oswiu stopped. “Can you remember all that?”

  “Yes,” said Acca. “I remember the ancestors of all the kings of this land, I remember the tales of our people, I remember the dead in battle and the victories they won. I can remember a message.”

  “Very well. Tell Penda I shall see him, face to face, seven days hence.”

  Chapter 11

  The rain had not stopped. Oswiu had led his household south, riding along the spines and ridges of the hills, and in that bitter march, the wind had not ceased and the rain had only paused when it turned to sleet and hail. The land ran with water, silver sheets flowing down the sides of the hills like hair. The riders who went before them, as scouts, reported through rain-washed eyes that Penda’s army likewise struggled south. Although the way was easier on the farm lands east of the hills, and there were good paths and roads running south towards the Great Wall of the emperors, yet such were the number of feet and hooves and wheels rolling down them that the paths and roads became little more than mud rivers, holding the wheels of Penda’s great army in their brown grasp. Such was the difficulty of moving the wagons that much of what the army had looted through the summer had been abandoned during the autumn, left to rot beside the road.

  The scouts brought back the news of the difficulties the great army was having, but that hardly served to raise the spirits of Oswiu’s household as they squelched south.

  “Even the sheep look miserable.”

  Ecgfrith had noticed this as he trudged along, using some of the men as a wind break, and that became the refrain of the march, for he had added after his observation, “But I am not.” So the men and women and the few children took to singing, to the tune of one of Acca’s old songs, “Though the sheep are miserable, and the cows complain, while the wolves howl and the ravens moan, even if the hares hide and the foxes stay home, we sing and we chant because we are not.”

  When the men had first taken up this song, Ahlfrith had come to his father in some anger, saying that such noise would surely tell Penda’s scouts where they were. But Oswiu bade him let them be.

  “Any scout will have ears roaring with wind and his eyes stopped with the rain. Besides, even if Penda were to learn where to find us, he could hardly get much of his army up here – not with the paths and ways more rivers and streams than tracks. No, son, let them sing, for if they do not sing their hearts will falter.”

  So they sang as they marched, but the king did not sing. Riding at their head, his cloak drawn round his shoulders, his hood over his head, he stared into the rain mist, and there sought some way of defeating Penda. But as he stared into blankness, the thought came to his mind that Penda had defeated his brother; he had defeated Edwin, his uncle. Was he a better man, a better king, than they?

  He knew the answer to that.

  Then came the day when the curtain of rain drew aside enough for him to see the stone line the emperors had drawn across the land, from sea to sea. It snaked over hill and ridge, the towers upon it standing proud as the few remaining teeth of an old man poke from his gums, and the face it turned to the north was still, in many places, white. For Oswiu had heard tell that in the days of the emperors, the Great Wall was painted dazzling white, there as a sign to all that in passing beyond it they were entering the emperor’s dominion – or leaving it.

  Oswiu led his people over the trackways that ran down to the Wall from the hills to the north. Looking down upon the Wall from the last ridge, the land seemed to Oswiu’s eye to be as much water as land, for the rain lay upon the sodden earth in great shallow pools, the tops of grasses poking spiked fingers from the rain-rippled surface to tell the depth was not great, but also that the land was so wet that it might accept no more rain for the moment.

  The scouts having returned with report that there was no one to be seen to the south of the wall, or for many miles along its length to the west and, more particularly, to the east, Oswiu led his people down to the Wall. At this point there was, on the southern side,
the ruins of a fort, still intact in its walls and, in some places, its ceilings. It would afford them some shelter from rain and wind.

  Once he had settled his household there and seen, as much as was possible, to their wellbeing, Oswiu called all his counsellors together.

  “Ahlfrith will have charge while I am gone.” Oswiu stood amid his counsellors and the thegns who had followed him into the hills. He looked at the men about him. “If matters should go amiss and I not return, I charge you to follow him in all things, as you have me – and my brother before me. If I do not return, then the way east will be barred to you. Follow the paths west to Rheged. There may still be some welcome for you there, but do not linger: find a ship, and let it take you south, to the men of Kent. King Earconbert will surely accept into his service, for my sake and for the sake of his niece, Queen Eanflæd, so fine a group of men. If I have not returned by three days hence, you must go. Send no more men after me, but go.” The king looked to Ahlfrith. “You understand this?”

  “I understand,” said Ahlfrith.

  “Very well. Then give me your blessing, my son, my queen, my people, and pray for me to the lord of high heaven, and I will give you mine.”

  And one by one they came before him and laid their hands upon the king, and he laid his hands upon them. When, last of all, the queen came before him, Oswiu put his hands on head, and shoulders, and breathed upon her brow. Then he laid his hands upon her belly, where the child sat, and blessed it too.

  “I… ” the queen gasped. “I think you may have another child by the time you return.”

  “Then I must be swift,” said Oswiu. And he kissed her too.

  “Who will you take with you?” Ahlfrith asked. “For with such a treasure you surely may not ride alone.”

  “I have ridden this Wall many times. Few live near it, for many believe it wraith haunted. I will take but a few men, two or three, for speed is more important in this than strength of arms.”

  “Can I come, can I come?” Ecgfrith, hearing his half-brother speak with his father, had come to hear what kingly matters they spoke of.

  Oswiu shook his head. “No, I am sorry,” he said. “It would not be safe for you to come with me.”

  But as Ecgfrith’s face fell, Ahlfrith took his father’s arm and drew him aside. “Birth brings great peril to a woman, Father. Might it not be better, lest some mischance happen, that Ecgfrith be away from his mother as she labours?”

  “What if this be but a trap? I would not have it catch my son as well as me.”

  “I do not say take him all the way. But if you take him part way, then set him with one or two trusted men to guard your line of retreat, he will have much to keep his mind upon while his mother labours in her own battle.”

  Oswiu nodded. “Ecgfrith,” he called, “you are coming with me.”

  As the boy shouted his joy, Oswiu tried to calm him. “Not the whole way, mind.” But Ecgfrith shouted all the louder. He was going with the king to face the enemy.

  *

  Riding east, Oswiu set riders to the north and south of the Wall. Those on the southern side had the easier ride, for the road of the emperors ran there. The riders on the north had to pick their way through rougher terrain, sometimes pulling away from the Wall to find a path. Oswiu kept Ecgfrith with him on the south side of the Wall. The boy was a fine horseman and even the continuing rain did not dampen his delight at the trust that had been placed in him.

  A day’s riding brought them to within sight of the fort that lay ten miles west of the king’s estate at the Wall. The rain had settled into the fine mist that soaks and chills everything it touches.

  Oswiu called his riders to a halt.

  “Ecgfrith,” he said. “You have the clear eyes of a… of youth. Can you see sign of aught amiss ahead? Any mark of man or rider?”

  Ecgfrith straightened in the saddle, shielding his eyes against the rain. “I can see nothing at the fort, Father. And the way is clear beyond, all the way to where the tree grows from the Wall.” The boy squinted into the rain. “It still has many leaves, but they are sure to fall soon, for most of them are brown, not green.”

  “Can you see aught beyond the tree? Any sign of a man upon the Wall, or riders beyond?”

  Ecgfrith searched again. “No, Father. Not yet.”

  “Very well. You have done well, Ecgfrith – all that I asked you. So I give to you another task. You will have charge of the men I leave at the fort. Watch them, and watch over me, as I go to meet Penda. For I feel in my heart that he will surely come.”

  This last section of the Wall was all but intact. For the view it gave, Oswiu climbed up to its walkway, which was broken in only a few places, and walked the last stage towards the fort, with Ecgfrith beside him, and the men riding below. Walking on the Wall, there was no need for scouts upon the north side, for they could see better from atop the Wall than any man on horse might from its base.

  “What shall we do if Penda is not here?” Ecgfrith asked his father as they approached the fort.

  “This day is the day appointed to meet. If there is no sight of him, then we shall wait until the afternoon gives way towards evening. But if there is still no sign of Penda then, we shall withdraw, making as much speed as we can, for it would be too easy for him to fall upon us in the night at the fort. There is a cave, some miles back, that only a few men know of. We shall rest there the night if he does not come.” Oswiu looked ahead, past the fort, along the straight line of the Wall towards the upraised hand of the tree. “But I think he will come.”

  *

  “You have proven you have the best sight, Ecgfrith. You stand watch with Dunstan. Tell him if you see anything – anything at all. I will make sure all is well for the rest of us.”

  Leaving his son talking excitedly with Dunstan, Oswiu deployed his men around the ruined fort, ensuring that the best were put to watch over the approaches that might most easily conceal approaching warriors. That done, Oswiu looked to the south, searching for some sign, through the rain, of where the sun sat in the sky. As best he could judge, it was just past mid day. At this point in the season, at the mid mark of the autumn, the days were still nearly as long as the nights, so there were still a few hours before he would have to call a retreat to some more secret shelter. Until then, he set himself to watching too.

  But it was Ecgfrith who saw first.

  “Daddy, Daddy!” he called, forgetting in his excitement that he now called Oswiu Father rather than Daddy. “Over there. On the Wall. Past the tree. It’s him.”

  And it did indeed seem to be him.

  Shielding his eyes against the rain, Oswiu saw the figure of a man standing upon the Wall. He was hooded and he carried a staff in one hand, although the lie of his cloak told of a sword carried beneath it.

  Oswiu called to his sentries, asking if any saw sign of other men. But there was no one else in view. Only the single, hooded figure.

  “He’s coming closer,” said Ecgfrith, jumping up and down in his excitement. “It’s him; it must be him.”

  “Yes,” said Oswiu. “It’s him. Penda.”

  He turned to Ecgfrith, but addressed the words as much to Dunstan. “I will go to him. If, as I approach, you see any sign of a trap, sound the horn, and I will return as fast as I may – be ready, then, and horsed, for we will not wait. But if you see no alarm, then wait on me. When I am ready I will signal for you to bring the gold forward. For that, one man will suffice. He will lead the horse along the road to me, with the gold and silver lashed over the animal’s back. When he reaches the ash tree, he must tie the animal to the tree and return here, not waiting. Do you understand?”

  “I understand, Daddy. I understand!”

  “And you, Dunstan?”

  Dunstan made the courtesy. “I understand, lord.”

  “Very well.” Oswiu turned to the door that led out upon the Wall. The grey stone marched away eastward. In one or two places it had crumbled, but for the most part it stood level before him.


  “Farewell.”

  Gathering his cloak about him, he stepped out upon the Wall.

  The rain was cold upon his face, but he did not begrudge the cold, for it cleared the mind. He had felt a fog upon him these past weeks, as if he groped for landmarks in a place where he could see only as far as his hands could reach. But now, the rain had lifted the fog and he saw clearly.

  Beyond the ash tree, the hooded figure raised his staff, as if in salute. In answer, Oswiu raised his arm. Then both men began to advance.

  As he walked along the walkway, Oswiu watched for any sign of men hiding. But the emperors of old had built their Wall well. They had left no place near to it where a man might approach unseen: no gully or ditch, no copse or run of gorse. The land to either side was bare, with only the ash tree making a mark against the rock and grass.

  Coming closer to the tree, Oswiu checked under his cloak that the hilt of his sword was not caught in some fold of material; nor his seax. The hooded figure approached steadily, changing neither his pace nor his attitude.

  Twenty yards to the tree now.

  Oswiu unclasped his cloak and pushed it back over his shoulders so that it would not get in his way should he need to draw sword. But the hooded figure simply walked on, neither unclasping cloak nor drawing back hood.

  Oswiu stopped just shy of the tree. That way, he could be sure it would not block his men’s sight of him.

  The hooded figure continued to advance, until he stood under the tree. There, he stopped.

  They were ten yards apart.

  “Penda,” said Oswiu. He strove to keep the question from his voice.

  The hooded figure did not speak. In the shadow beneath the hood, Oswiu saw an eye glitter.

  “I would have peace,” said Oswiu.

  Still the eye glittered, but no voice came from the depth of the shadow.

  “I have the gold.”

  “If you would have peace, I would have the boy as well.” The hooded figure pointed past Oswiu, and, feeling himself suddenly plunged into nightmare though he was yet waking, Oswiu turned, until he saw Ecgfrith, coming to him along the Wall. Beyond him, he saw Dunstan rushing after the boy, but Oswiu knew well how fast Ecgfrith could be and how elusive.