Edwin

by Edoardo Albert

  Edwin made to answer, then fell silent. “Eadfrith asked a question – one I think worthy of answer. Why did the child cry so when the priest gave her eternal life? Should she not have laughed and smiled and cried with joy?”

  At this question Æthelburh laughed.

  Edwin stared at his wife, his face hard. “Is my question so funny?”

  The queen shook her head. “My husband and my lord, you would not ask such a question had you been there when your daughter was born. She was born into this life screaming. Is it any surprise she should cry when she enters a new life? Besides, in baptism the sin she carries from our forefather of old, the bloodguilt of his oathbreaking passed down through all the generations, is torn from her, like a diseased scab torn from a wound, that the flesh underneath may heal. Of course she cried today, lord. I would have been more worried if she had not.” Æthelburh smiled in memory. “You should have heard her scream when she was born. She shouted so loudly I was sure you must hear her and come. It was only later that I learned you lay in a fever dream and could not come.”

  Æthelburh held out the baby again. “Here, my king, my lord and my husband, will you take your daughter, Eanflæd, and give her your blessing?”

  For a moment the king did not move, and the smile on the queen’s face began to strain. But then Edwin held out his hands and took his daughter in his arms.

  “She does not feel any different,” he said.

  “Do I?” asked Æthelburh archly.

  Edwin, seeing his son watching, almost blushed.

  “No. But I thought, after this baptism, she might.”

  “Give Eanflæd your blessing, lord.”

  Edwin looked down at the baby girl, asleep now in his arms, wrapped in a white shawl. He moved his head to shade her face from the May sun. Eanflæd stirred, then settled again, and a smile tugged gently at the king’s winter face.

  “Eanflæd, I give you my blessing, and that right gladly. May you find favour before God and know no treachery from men.” Then Edwin handed the baby back to her mother.

  “Thank you,” said Æthelburh.

  Paulinus was leading a procession of the newly baptized back into the royal encampment. Edwin nodded towards it. “Go, Æthelburh, and join the celebrations of your people.”

  The queen held out her hand for him to follow, but Edwin shook his head.

  “No, I have much to think on. I will stay here.”

  Æthelburh’s face stiffened, but she bowed before the king and went to join the chanting, singing procession.

  Eadfrith came over to join his father. They watched the newly baptized process through the gates, neither speaking to the other until the procession was out of sight, although the sound of its singing still reached them by the side of the river.

  “You blessed the child by their god, not ours,” said Eadfrith.

  The king looked up at his son. “You have sharp ears, Eadfrith.” Edwin turned his gaze back into the distance. “Osfrith should have been here.”

  “He honours our mother; it is all he can do to speak to the queen. He could not come here.”

  Edwin stared out over the river, watching as a wind-blown twig twisted upon its waters as the current tugged it downstream to the sea.

  “I honour your mother too. But a king marries for power and alliance and riches; Æthelburh brought all those, though Cadwallon stole most of the gifts.”

  “She is young too. And beautiful.”

  Edwin’s face twisted, the expression somewhere between a grimace and a smile. “An advantage and a disadvantage.”

  “She has brought her religion too.”

  Edwin watched the twig as it drifted out of sight.

  “Likewise,” he said.

  Eadfrith stood beside his father for a while, but when it became clear that the king had nothing more to say, he made to leave. But after he had taken a few steps, he returned to the king’s side.

  “There is something I should tell you. The queen’s priest saved you from the poison in Eumer’s blade, but afterwards you drifted into the shadows and it seemed you would not return.”

  Edwin continued to stare out over the river. “It was cold there. And dark.”

  “Coifi tried to call you back, but could not. In the end it was the queen who brought you back from the shadows. Æthelburh. Only, you thought it was Mother.”

  Edwin looked up at his son. Eadfrith nodded. “It was Æthelburh you heard amid the shadows, Father.”

  The king turned back to the river. “Thank you,” he said. Eadfrith waited upon him, but he spoke no more, and the prince withdrew.

  From the queen’s quarters came the sound of singing and much joy. On the training grounds Guthlaf put the men through their exercises. Everywhere there was bustle and movement, as servants and slaves hurried to and fro, carrying pots and cloth and weapons and food, and petitioners arrived to put their cases to the king.

  But the king himself sat in solitude upon a stool by the river, his eyes looking out and his mind turned within. He sought the memory of Cwenburg, striving for the look of her face, the smell of her hair, the touch of her fingers. But it was gone. Only shadows remained, the memory of a memory. Instead, unbidden, there came to his mind the image of Æthelburh, sitting beside him at the high table, handing the cup to men who came for audience and fellowship, smiling, bringing cheer. The pall of gloom that had hung over his companionship these many years since the death of Cwenburg, a dourness that had become so ingrained that he had not even noticed it, had lifted and his hall had become again a place of laughter and song, of warmth and light. But the change had come so gradually he had not even realized it.

  Unconsciously, Edwin twisted the garnet-encrusted gold band that encircled his forearm. The interlaced animals – serpents and eagles and creatures of the sea – ran around his arm in continuous whorls that twisted as he slowly rotated the band. The bracelet had been Forthred’s. Edwin had given it to him many years before, the richest gift from the spoils won when taking the kingdom of Lindsey under their control. The king still sometimes marvelled at the wealth they had found in the hall of the marsh king – wealth that had made the miserable campaign, waged through swamp and water and mud, suddenly and gloriously worthwhile. In memory he saw the laughter in Forthred’s face as he had held up handfuls of treasure, his arms dripping with gold and silver and jewels.

  “Who would have believed the king of so mean a place could be so rich?” Forthred had said.

  Edwin remembered his own delighted laughter, and giving the armband, the richest he had ever seen, to Forthred as a gift. And he remembered taking the band from Forthred’s arm as he lay upon the pyre, clad in the finest cloth, his weapons about him. The gold had been as cold as Forthred’s flesh. He had replaced the band with one taken from his own arm, then he slid Forthred’s bracelet up over his hand and wrist onto his forearm. His old friend had stared up with sightless eyes at the grey clouds scudding low overhead. The wind, a cold north-easterly, was sending them in from the sea, and Edwin could smell the rain that would fall later that day, extinguishing the ashes of Forthred’s pyre. The body lay upon crossed logs outside the encampment and on the banks of the Derwent. Coifi had carried the urn that would take the gathered ashes when the fire had eaten its fill. The king had drawn his hand down over Forthred’s face, gently closing his eyes.

  “Rest well, old friend,” he had said, but the words sounded hollow in his mouth. For warriors who did not die in battle, there was only Hel, the shadow world, where ghosts slowly gibbered their way into nothingness through the long, grey ages. Forthred had sacrificed his life for him, but there would be no gift giving for the great service he had rendered his king. Gifts stopped with death. Maybe the gods would look kindly upon him, for Forthred had been a brave warrior, and a wise and cunning counsellor, but wyrd had taken him, and against the fate weavers the gods themselves fought in
vain.

  Taking the brand, Edwin had thrust it into the pyre. The logs, dry and packed around with tinder soaked in wax, had turned quickly to flame, the yellow tongues licking up over the body. The king had stood close to the pyre – so close that he felt the hair on his arms crisping – but he did not step back until the flames had closed over Forthred, enfolding him like a flower closing for the night. The body had shifted as it burned, the collapsing logs beneath it at one point making it seem as if the charred black remains were trying to sit up. But the body had fallen back into the flames, sending a gout of red sparks flaring through the air.

  As the fire died away into a sullen, cloudy evening, and the first rags of rain whipped in from the east, Edwin had allowed the rest of the royal household to return to the warmth of the fires in the great hall. But he had remained by the pyre until the scudding showers had doused the flames.

  “Collect his ashes,” Edwin had said to Coifi. As the priest scuttled forward with the urn, Edwin added, “Make sure his treasure is with him.”

  The urn still resided in the great hall, but when the royal household finally left to make its way to York, the urn would be buried, where Forthred had burned.

  Wrapping his cloak about his shoulders, for with the sunset a cool wind blew inland from the sea, Edwin stood up and walked over to his old friend’s final resting place. The earth lay fire bare, save for some scattered ashes, and for many feet around and beyond the grass was yellow and dead.

  Edwin squatted on his haunches and laid his hand upon the scorched earth. Forthred had sacrificed his life that he might live, and there was no repayment he could make or treasure he could give to equal such a gift. Though he was a king and Forthred his follower, yet his man had been more generous than he.

  “Will you not come and join us?”

  Edwin turned to look and saw the queen, her cloak drawn around her and her face veiled. He stood up, and the dust of Forthred’s pyre fell from his fingers.

  “This celebration is yours, my queen. I cannot join it.”

  Æthelburh nodded, her face in shadow behind her veil, and turned away.

  “Wait.”

  The queen stopped, but she did not look back to the king.

  “Eadfrith told me that it was you who called me back from the shadows, not Cwenburg. Why did you not tell me?”

  “I – I feared if you knew it was me who spoke to you, not Cwenburg, you would not come.”

  “In the shadow world, I wandered in memories. But know this, Æthelburh of Kent. Here, now, in the world of the light and the living, you are my wife and my queen and I would have no other.”

  Æthelburh turned her face back to Edwin.

  The king saw that she trembled. “Are you cold?”

  Æthelburh laughed, but her eyes were filled with diamond tears. “No, I am not cold!” She laughed again, and there were no tears this time. She held out her hand. “Now will you join us?”

  And Edwin took her hand.

  Chapter 13

  “You want vengeance.”

  Edwin did not look around. He had heard Wældhelm’s approach. The smith’s lameness made him drag his foot along the ground.

  The king’s recovery dragged on, and oftentimes, when the sun was warm, he would bring a stool to the hard-packed earth where Forthred had burned from the world and sit upon it, drawing his cloak about his body and his plans about his mind.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Wældhelm stood beside the king, looking down at the burned earth.

  “Destroy your enemies, kill their children, salt their earth and let the last sound they hear be the screams of their women. It is as the gods would do.”

  Edwin slowly stood up and turned to the giant smith.

  “The god of the queen tells us to eschew vengeance. He tells us to love our enemies.”

  The giant smith began to smile, but when he saw no answering laughter from the king, the smile died away.

  “Are you joking, lord?”

  “No. No, I am not joking. That is what the queen told me this new god teaches. I could not believe she spoke truly, so I asked her priest. It is true. That is what her god commands.”

  The smile spread again across the smith’s face and creased into laughter, the deep laughter that creaked in his forge as things that were once as solid as rock were made to run like water. Wældhelm wiped the tears from his eyes.

  “That is a religion for women,” he said at last. “And Britons. No wonder we took this land from them.”

  “It is the religion of the Franks, and the emperors, and more peoples than I have heard of too.”

  “But our gods are the gods of our fathers.” Wældhelm shook his head, still marvelling at this new doctrine. “This is how our gods take vengeance, lord. The fame of Wayland the smith grew so great that King Nidud determined that he must have him as his royal smith, to make wondrous weapons for him. So he tricked Wayland into coming to his court, and he feasted him, but the mead that trickled down Wayland’s beard was laced with a sleeping draught. When Wayland woke, he found himself imprisoned on a lonely island, along with his brother, and to ensure that Wayland could not escape, King Nidud had hamstrung him.

  “Wayland’s brother, Egil, collected feathers from the seabirds that nested on the island, and Wayland, in between forging swords and torcs and spears for the king, made wings. With the feathers stuck into them, the brothers were able to fly, and escape the island. But Wayland did not escape. Instead, he tricked the king’s sons into coming to visit him, and when they were inspecting his latest wonders, Wayland slaughtered them and, stripping the flesh from their bones, he made their skulls into jewel-encrusted goblets, and their teeth into a beautiful necklace. Then he brought these latest, most exquisite works of his craft before the king. Nidud was so delighted with the goblets he immediately began to drink from them, and the necklace he hung upon his beautiful daughter, Beahilda.

  “But Beahilda, like all her family, was greedy, and she stole away to Wayland’s island later that night to garner further treasures. Wayland raped her and got her with child, and only then did he strap on his wings and make his escape. But before he returned to his home forge, he flew on his iron wings to King Nidud’s palace, and shouted to the king the news of what he had done.”

  Wældhelm the smith, the lame servant of a lame god, who had told the tale while staring out over the river vale, turned to the king and his smile was fierce.

  “Thus does a god take vengeance, lord. And if you would take vengeance for Forthred, I have forged a sword for you that is the greatest I have yet made – there is no blade finer. It will cut through a shield of green limewood and yet sit as light in the hand as a child’s seax. Would you see it, lord?”

  “Yes, I would see it.”

  “Then I shall take you to my forge, lord, and you shall see it.”

  Edwin looked in surprise at the smith. “But you allow no man to come to your smithy.”

  Wældhelm grinned. “The labour is done, lord, and the sword made. You may see my fires, but you will not see my secrets.”

  “Lead on,” said Edwin. The king followed the limping smith as he painfully made his way upstream along the river path to the stand of trees in the midst of which stood the smith’s forge. Every smith lived apart from other men, bringing his wares to the village or the court, and receiving visitors in turn, but always remaining apart, as befitted a man whose art was to turn brute rock into flesh-biting metal.

  The trees, a copse of alders that sank their roots into the damp riverside earth, were old and twisted, the leaf fall of years caught in flares of mistletoe. Each breath of wind made the dead leaves rattle, like Coifi’s bone rattle. Edwin found himself startling at the sound, and more so once they had entered the copse proper, and he found that the scrub of hawthorn and blackthorn, mixed with yew and holly, growing beneath the alders cut off any vie
w of the outside world. It was as if he had entered a forest, yet approaching he had seen it to be no more than a stand of a few dozen trees.

  Wældhelm limped along a path that cut between the bushes. Edwin followed, wondering at how long they had already been walking in this tiny wood. He smelled burning, the pervasive wood smoke of charcoal burners, and then finally they came out into a clearing. In the centre of the clearing, as far from the trees as possible, was a hut that steamed, leaking smoke through its walls and roof. By the trees’ edge was a house.

  “Daddy!” A boy of maybe eight winters came running from the thatched house that backed against the trees at the clearing’s edge, and threw his arms around Wældhelm. Edwin noted that such was the girth of the smith that the boy’s arms did not meet.

  Wældhelm ruffled the boy’s hair and turned to the king. “My eldest son. When he is older, I will cut him.”

  “Cut him?”

  Wældhelm looked at the king through fire-narrowed eyes. “To know Wayland’s secrets, he must know Wayland’s pain.” The smith pushed the boy on. “Come, lad, show the king the sword I have made for him.”

  Beaming with pride, the boy ran to the forge. He emerged a moment later with the sword in his hands and, still smiling shyly, he came up to the king and held it out for him.

  Even at first glance Edwin could see that this was a weapon of extraordinary craft. The blade was etched with flowing lines, but its twin edges shone, clean and clear and hard.

  Edwin looked questioningly at Wældhelm.

  “Take it,” said the smith. “Feel its weight in your hand, its cut through the air. Try the edge and think of it upon your enemies.”

  Edwin grasped the hilt of the sword. He held it outstretched and felt the weight of the blade pulling his arm downwards; this was a sword that wanted to slash through the air and come down upon the weak place where helmet met mail shirt. Giving the sword its desire, Edwin carved it through the air, taking it through the patterns that he had learned in a lifetime of combat. Wældhelm watched Edwin as he made the blade hiss, grinning broadly through his beard.