Oslac waited, his hand resting upon his sword hilt but not drawing it, his shield relaxed but ready by his side.
The horseman drew his animal to a halt some ten feet from Oslac. The two men kept silence, and from the watching parties the only sound was the chant of the psalms from among the wagons. Watching, Paulinus saw the horseman’s eyes flick towards the wagons and there seemed to be surprise and recognition in his expression. But then the rider focused again on Oslac.
“Who are you to cross the ancestral lands of my people without my leave?” asked the rider. And although Paulinus understood the words, they were uttered with a strange, singing accent that he had never heard before.
“Who are you to stop us, sent by Eadbald, king of Kent?” demanded Oslac.
“You are a long way from Kent, friend. I have a mind to see what it is that you carry in those wagons.”
“There will be fewer of you to see what we carry then.”
“Fewer, perhaps, but enough I think.” The rider gestured and his men walked their horses forward a few steps.
Oslac licked his lips. He was a thegn, a warrior, and he had lived with death through most of his life. He was not afraid of dying, but he feared breaking the oath he had sworn to deliver Æthelburh to her new husband. For none of the gods, be they the old gods of his forefathers or the new god of his king, looked kindly on oathbreakers. His best, his only, chance was to try to persuade this man not to attack.
“You may attack, you may even win, but to do so would earn the blood enmity not only of Kent, but of Edwin of Northumbria.”
“You are going to Edwin?” The rider swung off his horse and advanced on Oslac. “Do you know what he is?”
“He is king of Northumbria, the most powerful lord in the land,” said Oslac.
“He is an oathbreaker and a liar!” The man removed his helmet and Paulinus saw that his hair was black, as black as a raven’s wing, but his skin was as white as the neck of a swan. “Anything you take to him I will take from you!”
“Would you take his wife?” The voice of Queen Æthelburh rang out, sweet and pure, and despite the protests of her maids Æthelburh stood up in her wagon so that all might see her.
The man stopped and stared at her.
“You are his wife?”
“His betrothed. Promised and affianced. Would you have me break my word, and my brother, King Eadbald, break his?” The sun, low in the west, lit the face of the queen, and the strands of hair that escaped from beneath her shawl to fly about her face in the wind shone gold in the light. Behind her back, visible only to her women, Æthelburh’s hands twisted upon each other, but her face was serene.
“I would have you find a truer husband than Edwin.”
“Who are you to traduce the name of my betrothed?”
“I am Cadwallon, king of Gwynedd, native son of this land and scourge of those who have taken it from me and my people!”
At his words, the queen’s glance flicked again to the markings on the shields of the men of Gwynedd, and she looked over to Paulinus and James. There was a chance, a tiny chance, if she could appeal to a part of Cadwallon that he would not expect to be importuned by men from Kent.
“Ora!” she hissed.
Paulinus nodded to James, who was still upon his knees, and together they began to chant the psalms of the day.
Cadwallon stiffened as the sound carried across to him over the rough grass. He turned to stare at where the chant came from, and saw there the two men, one upon his knees and the other standing, hands upraised in prayer.
“What is this?” Cadwallon turned back to the queen and pointed at the priests.
“Surely you know,” said Æthelburh, and with her hand hidden behind her back she gestured for her women to join the prayer.
Cadwallon stared at the priests, wide mouthed, and then jerked visibly when the women’s voices joined the chant, rising above the Italians and inflecting it with the accents of a land at the edge of the world.
Oslac, seeing the man’s distraction, began to inch his sword from its sheath.
The queen herself joined the prayer, chanting the ancient words of comfort and protection.
“De profundis clamavi ad te Domine
Domine exaudi vocem meam fiant aures tuae intendentes in vocem deprecationis meae…”
And over the rough green pastureland and the silver meres, up and down the rutted tracks of the Great North Road, spreading into the great silence of an empty land, the chant flowed, as strange and new as a baby’s first cry and yet as familiar as the return of spring.
Listening, tears ran down Cadwallon’s face, and as the psalm reached its end he raised his own strong voice in unison.
“Quia apud Dominum misericordia et copiosa apud eum redemptio.
Et ipse redimet Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus eius.”
The chant fell back into the great silence, a silence made more profound by the intake of breath, in wonder and awe, of all the men listening.
Cadwallon stepped closer to the queen, out of reach of Oslac. Conscious of Cadwallon’s watching men, Oslac took his hand away from his sword, but he began to manoeuvre himself closer to the king of Gwynedd.
“You are Christian?” Cadwallon asked in Latin, looking up at Æthelburh as she stood upon the wagon, her robes and headscarf brilliant blue in the sunlight.
“Yes,” said the queen in the same language, striving to keep her voice from quavering in fear and desperate hope. “I am Christian.”
“But the Angles and Saxons are pagans. Whence comes your faith?”
“From God,” said Æthelburh. “But I learned the tidings of happiness from my mother. She is of the Franks.”
“Then why go you, a Christian woman, into the hands of pagans and idolaters?”
“My brother, King Eadbald of Kent, had Edwin agree as part of the marriage settlement that I and my people should be able to practise our religion without hindrance. Besides,” and here Æthelburh bent slightly towards Cadwallon and lowered her voice as if sharing a confidence, “I take with me these Christian priests, who have come to us all the way from Rome, in the hope and prayer that my new husband may come to know the truth and abandon the worship of stones and wood and vain things.”
“No!” Cadwallon stepped towards her, so taking Æthelburh by surprise that she all but flinched. “No, you must not take these people the truth! The Lord says that we are not to cast pearls before swine. These people are pigs, and worse than pigs, the despoilers of this land, murderers, thieves, rapists, who came as guests and stole everything from their hosts. Give them the gift of truth? Never! Let them sup their fill of the damnation that is their due; let them die and go down to hell where the worm feeds and the fire burns, and they shall know something of the suffering my people, the people of this land, have endured at their hands. Let them die true death and not know hope. They are not worthy of the hope you bring.”
As he spoke, Cadwallon shifted back and forth in his agitation, not noticing the slow, stealthy approach of Oslac. Nor did the queen see Oslac come closer, so compelling was the king of Gwynedd in his rage.
For his part, Oslac had understood little of what passed between Cadwallon and Æthelburh, for much of it had been in Latin. He knew only that he was trusted to bring his queen safely to her new husband, and to that end he had given his oath to Eadbald, his lord.
With all attention still upon the king, Oslac moved within range. Cadwallon stared up at the queen, who shook her head before his fury, but then – too late – she saw what Oslac intended. In one single fluid motion the thegn drew his sword and thrust, aiming for the small of Cadwallon’s back, where a blade will kill most surely although not most quickly.
The king of Gwynedd would have died there, beside the North Road on the marches of the kingdom of Lindsey, if Oslac’s foot had not slipped upon the wet grass, pitching him forwards
and sending his thrust off centre, and if Cadwallon himself, reacting to the alarm he saw on Æthelburh’s face, had not begun to turn, presenting a narrower target than the full expanse of his back. As it was, the blade slid along his flank, scoring the chain mail into his flesh but not piercing it, and Oslac, stumbling, heard the iron hiss of a knife drawn as he fell forwards, trying to pull his sword back for another blow. But he was wide open now, unprotected on his flank, and Cadwallon’s knife slid into his neck, and he fell. And as Oslac lay upon the ground, his sight darkening, he saw Cadwallon put his sword to the queen’s breast and he knew, with his last thought, that he had failed in his oath and no god would accept him into his hall.
“Stop!” Cadwallon raised his voice in a mighty shout, bringing the sudden pouring of men forwards to a sudden halt. His sword did not waver from where he held it, the point steady before the heart of the queen. From behind Æthelburh there came the frightened whispers of her maids, but everyone else on the field, a field that teetered on the brink of becoming a battlefield, was silent, watchful, still. The men of Kent, charged with bringing their queen to her new husband, stood ready to attack. The warriors of Gwynedd, ready to protect their king, were poised to charge. And poised between them, suspended upon a thread, was the life of the queen.
“I did not want Oslac to attack…” began Æthelburh, but Cadwallon pushed the point of his sword against her flesh, so that she felt it prick through the cloth and touch her skin, and she fell silent.
“I should have known better than to hear one of your people – ever you lie, when you seem most fair. You are no Christian! No Christian would enter into parlay with an enemy and then try to stab him in the back…”
“I am a Christian, baptized,” said Æthelburh, clinging to the one commonality between her and the man poised to kill her.
“Then why did you have your man try to kill me?”
“It was not at my command that he did so.”
“If not yours, whose?”
“I – I do not know. P-perhaps a devil put the intention into his heart.”
“It was the devil’s work, but done at your bidding, queen, as Adam sinned through Eve.”
“No, no, I had no part of it. He acted on his own.”
“A warrior act without orders from his lord? I think not.”
“Oslac was a free man, a thegn charged with bringing me safely to my new husband. He took an oath to protect me.”
Cadwallon glanced at the dead man lying on the ground, his glassy eyes staring up at them as if he was following their exchange from the shadows.
“He failed.” Looking back to Æthelburh, Cadwallon smiled. “And he has left in my hands the betrothed of my enemy. The Lord God avenges himself upon oathbreakers, and this day he is avenged.”
Æthelburh fell silent. Although the queen’s face was calm, there was no concealing her tension from a man schooled by combat to read physical language.
“It would be a sweet revenge, a most meet revenge, if I should deny Edwin his beautiful bride. Or maybe I should send him his bride in such a condition that he will not have her?”
A tremble began to spread through Æthelburh’s body, starting out from her centre until her hands and fingers shook and she had to take hold of her right arm with her left hand to prevent herself losing control and being disgraced in front of her enemy. For a moment, she closed her eyes and began to pray, the words moving her lips although no sound emerged from her mouth.
“Wait. What are you saying? Witch, do not try to place a spell upon me!”
Startled, Æthelburh opened her eyes. “I was praying,” she said.
At her words, Cadwallon stepped back, and some of the fury drained from his eyes. “You were praying,” he said. “You are in truth a Christian.” He shook his head as if to clear the blood rage, and when he looked at the queen again his eyes were clearer. He pointed to where Oslac lay.
“Since he is dead, you must have charge of your people. Very well, I give to you this choice: we can fight, in which case your husband will never know his wife, and your men and your servants will die here. Or I will take the treasure and the gifts you are taking to that dog of a husband, but I will let you live to know your husband, and I will take your people as slaves. What say you?”
“Why would you let me live, to serve my husband and to give him further reason to hate you?” Æthelburh asked.
“Because I want him to hate me! Because I want Edwin to know that I had his betrothed at my mercy, and spared her. Because I want you to ask him why he betrayed the people of Gwynedd, people who had sheltered him in his exile. Because I would not kill you and have your blood stain my soul when I come before the great and terrible judge.” Cadwallon shook his head. “It is stained enough already, my lady, and though I have many monks on the Holy Island of my country praying for me day and night, I fear for my soul. So I will spare you and take only what is mine, if you will tell your men to stand aside.”
Æthelburh looked at the surrounding warriors. Cadwallon’s men outnumbered her own men by two to one. They were poised, drawn up in battle line, ready to advance, and while her own men were ready too, they were hampered by the wagons and carts that they had not had time to adequately draw together. There was little chance of victory. But if Cadwallon chose to fight, he would lose many men as well, and that gave her hope. For sure his warband was on its way elsewhere and it could not continue if half its members lay dead or injured upon this field.
“I will not have my people taken as slaves,” said Æthelburh.
Cadwallon shook his head. “Do not force my hand, lady. I have said I will spare you – that is enough.”
“I cannot let you take them.”
“Then you will all die.”
Æthelburh nodded. She took a deep breath. “Very well. Begin with me.” And she stepped forward so that the point of Cadwallon’s sword touched her breast.
“No!”
Paulinus, who had been struggling to understand what was being said in the uncouth tongue of these islands, looked around, startled, to see James off his knees and running towards the queen. He hurried after him, shaking off a restraining hand and warning voices telling him to stand still.
Cadwallon saw James running towards him and turned his sword to meet him. From his waiting men there came a warning growl, but Cadwallon waved his hand for them to hold their position, and he raised his sword so that it pointed at James’s heart. The deacon came to a stop.
“Me…be slave,” James said in faltering English. “No kill queen.”
Cadwallon replied in fluent Latin. “Were you the one chanting the psalm?”
“Yes,” said James.
“We both were,” added Paulinus, joining him.
“You are priests?”
Paulinus looked down ruefully at his travel-stained clothing. Outside the sacrifice of Mass, it was difficult to tell that he was not as other men.
“Yes,” he said.
“I’m a deacon,” added James.
“You go among thieves and oathbreakers.” Cadwallon lowered his sword. “But for your sake, and for the sake of the faith we share, I will let you go and I will take no slaves though you offer yourself in ransom for these others. They are pagans, brother, and not worthy of you.” He turned back to Æthelburh. “Your bravery and beauty is beyond all that the dog Edwin deserves. I would urge you to return to your father’s land and leave the dog to lick up his vomit, but I know you to be too honourable to abjure your vows. Very well, go to him, but tell Edwin he will die at my hands.”
Æthelburh looked steadily into the eyes of Cadwallon. “Why do you hate my husband so?”
“Why do I hate Edwin? Ha, why do I despise the deceiver, the treacherous, the snake nurtured at our breast who turns to bite us? Do you not know that he sought shelter with my father during his exile, when all hands were turned against him, and
my father willingly took him into our family and adopted him as a foster son alongside me. Edwin was the elder, and I admired him, lady; I loved him as a brother in blood as well as by oath, and he remained with us for long years. Never did he receive anything but kindness from my people, though he came from an enemy race and his people did mine great hurt in that time. Yet he shared our table, fought alongside us, sang with us, and all along he nurtured behind his fair-seeming face the intentions of the devil.”
“But what did he do to you?”
“He broke his oath, lady, and worse.” Cadwallon stared at the queen for a long time as if weighing up what more he should say. Then moving closer he said, “This is for your ears alone. When he was a guest in my father’s house, Edwin raped my sister and got her with child.”
Æthelburh blanched. “I – I do not know what to say.”
“Ask your husband,” said Cadwallon.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Ask your husband,” said Cadwallon. “Before you join him in the marriage bed, ask him what he did to Briant, daughter of Cadfan and sister to Cadwallon. Ask him!”
“Yes,” said Æthelburh, “Yes, I will ask him.”
“Good. Then at least you may know what manner of man you marry and mayhap there will still be time for you to return to your brother. Now I must take your treasure.” Cadwallon waved towards the waiting, watching men. “Tell them to stand back, to keep their hands from their swords and their mouths closed, and we might end this day with no more blood shed than this fool’s.” Cadwallon indicated Oslac’s corpse.
“May we bury him?” asked Æthelburh.
“Do whatever you want with him. Just stand your men down.”
Æthelburh called some of her retainers to her, and they dragged Oslac’s body to the east side of the road, while the rest of the men, and her women, gathered in a worried, watching body as the raiding men of Gwynedd scoured the wagons and carts, turning out jars, opening pots, unrolling cloth; stripping the bridal party of anything of value as efficiently as a swarm of rats, but rather less tidily.
Edwin Page 7