Edwin

by Edoardo Albert

  “My God – and there is only one god; these others you speak of are lesser spirits, demons most likely – my God is not capricious. He is gracious and kind, and repays honesty with abundance and the good man and true ruler with long life. You will see. We will send unceasing prayer to heaven this day, until the child and the queen are delivered.”

  Edwin nodded. “Thank you.” Hearing footsteps approaching, Edwin glanced round to see Forthred hurrying towards him. “I have to go – there is business I needs must attend to.”

  “We will pray, and the queen and the child will live,” Paulinus called after Edwin, as the king headed towards the great hall with his advisor whispering urgently into his ear. Then, assembling the procession, and with James leading them in chant, they returned to the small building that Paulinus had consecrated into a church, to pray and sing through all the remaining hours of the queen’s labour.

  “What is the urgency of this matter?” Edwin asked Forthred, as his thegn led him towards the hall.

  “A messenger, an ambassador, has arrived from Cwichelm of the West Saxons,” said Forthred. “From the gifts he brings, and the hints he gave me, it seems that he has come to pledge Cwichelm’s allegiance to you, and to give honour to Northumbria.”

  “Why this change? Thus far Wessex has refused to acknowledge me as lord and cleaves to its claim of sovereignty beyond the headwaters of the great southern river.”

  “The messenger, his name is Eumer, says only that he brings gifts and words from Cwichelm that are for the king’s ears alone. He willingly gave up his weapons upon arrival here, so I believe him to be in earnest.”

  Edwin pointed towards the boat moored at the jetty. “Is that how they came?”

  “Yes, lord.”

  “Have you asked after their route?”

  “No, lord. Should I have?”

  “It would take us, what – ten days, two weeks? – to march our men to the land of the West Saxons. One week if all were mounted. It would be interesting to know how long it took for them to sail here, and what was their route. I would guess they came down the Thames, then sailed along the coast, before rowing up the Derwent to here. But on the other hand, do you think that boat would be seaworthy in this season?”

  Both men inspected the forty foot, shallow-bottomed vessel.

  “If the messenger – you say his name is Eumer? – sailed up the coast in that through this season, then his message must be urgent indeed.” Edwin smiled grimly. “I find that the more urgent the message from a king, the better it is to make the messenger wait. Where are my sons, Forthred?”

  The thegn laughed. “Where do you think they are?”

  “The practice grounds?”

  “Where else?”

  “Let us go and call them. They should attend this meeting and hear what news Eumer brings of Cwichelm and the West Saxons, and the kingdoms of the south.”

  The two men headed past the great hall to the far side of the compound. The storehouses that wared the king’s share of the local crops and animals were still relatively full, as the royal party had only arrived at the vill on the River Derwent two weeks past. They would remain until the queen was delivered and purified and ready to travel again. Past the warehouses, they came to an area where the earth was packed hard and studded with the booths of the armourers, grinding wheels sparking, sharpening weapons, while the men of Edwin’s household practised their fighting skills under the watchful eyes of the older, more experienced thegns, and Edwin’s warmaster, Guthlaf.

  Upon the war ground, the men stood facing each other in two lines, each armed with shields and old, blunt practice swords. Osfrith stood in the centre of one group, Eadfrith commanded the other.

  “What are you teaching them, Guthlaf?” asked Edwin.

  The old warrior grunted, his concentration elsewhere. “The wedge and the forceps.”

  “Who is the wedge and who the forceps?” asked Edwin, since the lines were both still straight.

  Guthlaf turned and grinned at his king. “I told the boys to make their own minds up – that way neither knows what the other will do.”

  Edwin smiled. “As in battle. Good, Guthlaf. Give the signal.”

  The old warmaster raised his sword. Both lines waited, eager and expectant, and Edwin could see that his sons had seen his presence – they would strive the harder for victory before him.

  Guthlaf brought down his sword.

  Osfrith immediately put himself at the apex of the wedge, the flank men pushing in behind to give the formation added strength and depth, and they began to advance, shields locked and swords drumming shield rims as the men yelled their battle cries. Facing the advance, Eadfrith dressed his line, gradually pulling the centre back little by little, so that the advancing wedge would be caught and enveloped upon all sides, rather than striking a single section of the line. Guthlaf, Edwin and Forthred watched with practised, critical eyes – timing was everything in such manoeuvres. Move too early and it gave the attackers sufficient time to change their line of attack, so they could hit the vulnerable place where the defending line curved in. Move too late and the line would be too straight and brittle, and the charging wedge would break it.

  Leading the attack, Osfrith began to pick up the pace, moving from a fast walk into a trot, all the time beating the rhythm on his shield rim. His men, shields still locked – although the experienced watching eyes saw the beginnings of a gap on the near flank, where some of the younger men were growing too eager and advancing too quickly – pushed him onwards, the men behind adding their weight to the charge, though they would be blind to the first impact.

  Edwin himself had led this charge in battle, and looking at his elder son rehearse it now, he remembered the sensation of simultaneously charging and being carried along, as if he were a swimmer riding a breaking wave towards a threatening, rock-strewn shore. The point man, alone of all the charging warriors, could see clearly the waiting line. It was up to him to shift the point of impact to left or right, to hit the shieldwall where it looked weakest. He remembered the battle cry rising up and out and through him, as if he spoke with the voice of all his men. He remembered the awful bright clarity that came on the back of the battle fear, as time slowed and he became the death dealer, splitting men’s souls from their bodies, opening their bodies to the ravens and the crows.

  It was a high-risk tactic. Should the enemy time its movement correctly, the wedge would be enveloped and the flank men exposed to a far greater threat than men standing firmly side to side in the shieldwall.

  “He’s leaving it too late.” Forthred pointed at Eadfrith’s line, which still stood perpendicular to Osfrith’s advancing wedge, which had just upped its pace from trot to slow run.

  “We will see,” said Guthlaf. “That boy is a sly one – methinks he has some trick to play yet.”

  Edwin said nothing. Osfrith was the elder, and a faithful, dutiful son, but Eadfrith with his laughter and his recklessness brought a lightness of heart to his father that Edwin strove to conceal.

  Osfrith and his men gave their battle cry, a guttural growl of mixed syllables, and, with the distance between the two forces now down to only twenty feet, they began to charge.

  Edwin held his breath. Forthred was right. Eadfrith had left it too late to pull the centre of his line back.

  But Eadfrith did the opposite. He stepped out of his line, as did another man some twenty yards to his left, and they both, as one, bent and lifted.

  The timing was perfect. Osfrith, leading and with the best view, managed to vault the rope, but the men following caught the rope on their knees and like forest trees toppling in a storm went down one after another.

  Guthlaf laughed. “What did I say? That boy is a wily one.” Forthred joined the warmaster in laughter, but Edwin kept his face expressionless. In the matter of his sons, it did not do to show favour to one over the other, but E
adfrith’s resourcefulness had nevertheless impressed him.

  However, despite the charge falling over itself onto the earth, the practice battle was not over yet. Osfrith, isolated and humiliated but enraged because of that, charged into the opposition line on his own and began laying around wildly with this blunt sword, his rage clearing a space around him. But sheer weight of arms would bring down his battle fury in a short enough time. Still, Edwin could not help but be impressed with the way Osfrith stood up to the press of men around him. Battle madness – the special gift of Woden – could sometimes lead a single man to change the course of a battle, although in Edwin’s experience it more generally led to a glorious pile of corpses around a single dead body and the rest of the battle going on unchanged, unless the battle-mad warrior managed to get to the enemy leader.

  But he had seen enough. This was the sort of exchange, where men were humiliated and struggling up from the ground, which could breed the type of rancour that produced fights, duels and knives slid across sleeping throats in the night.

  “End it,” Edwin told Guthlaf.

  Forthred, hearing the order, grinned at the king and put his fingers in his ears.

  The warmaster stepped forward and, swelling like a displaying cockerel, bellowed, “Enough.”

  Despite the fingers, Forthred winced. One of the key attributes of a warmaster was to possess a voice loud enough to be heard over the screams and shouts of a battlefield. Guthlaf possessed such a voice.

  The battling factions – Eadfrith’s men having moved forward to deal with the floor-bound mass of their attackers – slowly came to a heaving, sweat- and in some cases blood-stained halt. Osfrith stood panting and all but spent among a circle of wary enemies, most of whom bore some mark of his battle fury. Eadfrith meanwhile, hardly even breathing hard, was smiling so broadly that his teeth glinted in the pale March light.

  “Osfrith, Eadfrith, to me,” Edwin called. Then, stepping forward, he passed quickly through the men, passing out short words of praise to those he had seen fight well.

  His inspection over and with his sons by his side, Edwin said to Guthlaf, in a voice that all could hear, “When you are finished with them, bring all into the hall. We have an ambassador arrived from the king of the West Saxons, and we must feast him.”

  The men cheered their approval, but Edwin had not finished yet. He held up his hand for silence.

  “And more reason to feast, my wife Æthelburh labours to bring forth my new child.”

  The start of a louder cheer went up, only for it to be choked off by an unearthly, drawn-out scream that spoke of a world of pain undreamed of by even these battle-hardened men.

  The sons of Edwin, standing behind him, heard the sound too. Osfrith’s face, already stiff with the humiliation of his battle loss, hardened further, but Eadfrith looked alarmed.

  “How much longer, father?”

  Edwin shook his head. “I do not know. I hope not long.” Shaking himself out of the shock the scream had produced, Edwin told Guthlaf to carry on, then led Forthred and his sons towards the hall.

  Osfrith ran up to his father’s side. “Guthlaf did not say they could use tricks like that – I thought we were practising the wedge formation.”

  Edwin glanced at his son, flushed with self-justification. He was a fierce warrior, and a brave one, whom men would follow, but they might find themselves following Osfrith to destruction if he did not better learn the ruses of war.

  “Tricks are part of war, Osfrith. Learn to watch for them.”

  From his place on Edwin’s other side, Eadfrith gave his brother a broad grin, then stuck out his tongue.

  Osfrith made to jump at him, but Forthred, following and watchful, grabbed the young man and soothed his anger with quiet words, while an exasperated Edwin turned on his younger son.

  “Eadfrith!” Edwin could see the young man was trying to look sorry, but a smile kept breaking past his attempts to control it. There were times when he still looked like the boy who had played pranks on his father, lifting Edwin from the gloom that had settled over him after Cwenburg’s death, and the king found it hard not to smile in return. But Edwin knew all too well how often battles had been lost and kingdoms destroyed through the rivalry of contending sons; he had no intention that this should happen with his own.

  “Enough.”

  Eadfrith struggled his face under control. Edwin half turned so he could see both his sons. “Do you not see this is why I pit you against each other in training? You each have much to learn from the other. Osfrith, you fight like Rædwald, all bravery and strength, but you must learn to watch and wait for your enemy’s devices to be revealed before attacking; Eadfrith, cunning and trickery will serve you well, but even the most well-thought-out plan can be overturned by the battle fury of a single man – learn to respect that, and devise some stratagem to cut down such a warrior before he can turn the fight against you. Do you understand?”

  The two young men – one eagerly, the other grudgingly – gave their assent.

  “Now, being young you no doubt think the greater part of kingship is war. But I, being old and king for many years, tell you this is false. The greater part of kingship is talk, and we go to do that now. Dress yourselves and join me and let this messenger from the West Saxons see the wealth and splendour of the Northumbrians with his own eyes.”

  Chapter 9

  Edwin and Forthred found the ambassador from the king of the West Saxons waiting for them in the great hall. Seeing them approach, flanked by the door warden and Edwin’s bodyguard, the ambassador sprang to his feet, and as Edwin came closer he slammed his forearm against his chest in honour of the king, then bowed his head.

  “Eumer, thegn to Cwichelm, king of the West Saxons, honours Edwin, lord of Deira and Bernicia, master of Northumbria!”

  Edwin surveyed this messenger. Eumer was a short, powerfully built man, with a broad brow and pale blue eyes. His clothes were travel stained, but he wore a golden torc of the finest workmanship around his neck, and his cloak was pinned with a gold brooch inlaid with garnets that sparkled blood fire in the light of the hall’s torches. By his appearance, Eumer was no ordinary thegn, but a man gifted with the richest of a king’s gifts, and thus bound into the closest service to his lord.

  “Well met, Eumer of the West Saxons. Edwin, king, greets you and gives greetings to his brother king, Cwichelm.” Edwin gestured to Forthred. “Make ready a feast for our guest, for I see that you have travelled far to find me. After you have taken your fill of food and drink, we will speak.”

  Eumer stepped forward without invitation, and immediately Edwin’s bodyguards closed in front of him, hands upon the hilts of their swords, although they did not draw their weapons. The West Saxon raised his hands slowly and carefully, to show that they were empty, before speaking.

  “Lord and king, my message is urgent.”

  Edwin surveyed the shorter man. “Do you intend to start upon your return to Cwichelm this day?”

  “Um, no, lord and king.”

  “Then your message will keep until food has been eaten, toasts made and gifts given.”

  Eumer made to begin an answer, thought better of it and bowed before smoothly returning to his place.

  Edwin looked around for Forthred, but his friend and counsellor had gone to order the servants to start preparing the welcome feast. There was something about this messenger from the West Saxons that he did not like, but he could see that he was weaponless – the door warden had even taken his seax from him. Edwin frowned. They would have to give Eumer a seax to eat. Forthred was no fool, however; the knife would be blunt and short, adequate for spearing meat from the steaming broth, but hardly able to do any more damage than that.

  As the servants and slaves scurried around placing cups on the long tables and feeding the fire, the men, somewhat bruised from the earlier encounter, slowly drifted into the ha
ll. Guthlaf, looking pleased with how the session had gone, came over to Edwin.

  “What does he want?” he asked, staring over the king’s shoulder to the waiting messenger.

  “I have not asked him yet. First, we eat and drink, then we talk.”

  Guthlaf grinned. “A wetted wit talks the more freely.”

  “Indeed.” Edwin glanced around, then lowered his voice, bending closer towards his warmaster. “Do you think Osfrith will ever learn to see when a trap is being sprung upon him?”

  Guthlaf looked doubtful. “With your son, if I may speak plain…” He looked at the king, who signalled his assent. “With Osfrith, what he shows is what he is: he is prickly, proud and brave. The men respect him, for they know he will never let them down, and I can think of no one better suited to marshalling the shieldwall. But he has no cunning or craft. He is like a wild boar: to be feared when enraged, to be avoided when he charges, and ripe to be gutted when his target skips aside.”

  Edwin nodded. “It is much as I thought. He is alike to Rædwald, my sanctuary and succourer of old, and that is no bad likeness of itself, as Rædwald, through his battle fury feared by all, became the most powerful king in these islands.” Then Edwin shook his head. “But things are not now as they were then. Men’s tongues have grown cunning and their word worthless – lies kill as many as the sword. In such a world I fear for Osfrith.”

  “As long as he retains the counsel and love of his brother, he will be well. The men respect Osfrith, but they love Eadfrith: he is still their little mascot, but grown now and with the wit of Loki about him. He is never going to miss an enemy’s tricks – more likely the enemy will not see his tricks!”

  “I know, but more to the point my sons know it too. How can I ensure that they remain brothers and allies after I am dead, when there is so much about them to turn them into rivals and enemies?”