Oswiu swallowed. “Ah, Oswald, there may be a small problem with your plan.”
Oswald let go and stepped back, staring at his brother with a sudden, terrible suspicion.
“What have you done?”
Oswiu swallowed again. “I – I don’t think we will be getting much help from the Uí Neíll.”
“Oswiu…”
“Um, you remember when we sailed with King Colman’s warband last year? I was injured in the first raid and stayed at the king’s hall to recover while you went off. His – his daughter was very kind to me.”
“Oswiu…”
“And – and the baby must be due soon.”
“Baby?”
Oswiu closed his eyes. “Yes.”
“You – you mean to tell me you tupped a princess?”
“Yes.”
“But not just any princess: Fina, daughter of Colman, High King of the Uí Neíll.”
“Yes.” With each assent, Oswiu’s voice squeaked higher.
“The Uí Neíll who promised us many men to reclaim our kingdom.”
“Yes.” Oswiu’s voice had reached falsetto.
“Argh.”
Oswiu waited, eyes tight shut, but Oswald said nothing more. He opened one eye. His brother, seeing him, balled his fists.
“I should…”
“Yes, you should.”
Oswald quivered, strung between rage and restraint, then abruptly he turned away and marched up the machair towards the white house.
Oswiu, seeing him go, ran after him, but before he could get too close, Oswald held up his hand in warning. No nearer.
So, one brother trailing the other, Oswald and Oswiu, the sons of Æthelfrith, arrived at the house of their mother, Acha.
As the æthelings approached, a woman emerged, a rich shawl wrapped over her shoulders and hair but otherwise plainly clad, and then a moment later a young woman followed her, to stand waiting outside the house, a broad smile upon her face. Seeing her, Oswiu hurried on, catching his brother as they neared the house.
“I did not know Æbbe would be here as well,” he said.
“I – I hoped she might,” said Oswald, then breaking into a run he surged up the machair, past the outbuildings and workshops and the men, women and children greeting and gaping at the æthelings, to the two waiting women.
“Mother.” He made the courtesy to the older woman. “Sister.”
Before they could answer in kind, Oswiu wrapped his arms around Æbbe. “Sister! I thought you were in Ulster with our kin there. When did you come back here?”
Æbbe laughed and extricated herself from her brother’s embrace. “I was going to send word to you today, only you have come to me!”
“This is a fine chance.” Acha put out arms to enclose both sons in her embrace before pushing them away so she could see them, and once again commit their faces to memory, lest this be the last occasion on which she see them in this life. She looked searchingly from her older son to her younger, and then back again. “But I see it is no chance that brings you both here today.”
The brothers looked to each other, communicating silently, then turned to their mother.
Oswald, the elder, spoke, as Acha knew he would.
“News came to the abbey today.” The ætheling was pale and his mother knew he was struggling to find words. He always hated to tell her ill tidings, so she brought his discomfort to an end by holding her finger up.
“I know. Word reached us today as well. The king, my brother, the man who killed your father, is dead.” Acha held her hand to her heart. “I have not seen Edwin for many, many years, not since he fled from Æthelfrith, but he was kind to me when we were children, and he did not pursue us after your father died.” Unexpected tears welled from her eyes, and the queen, who had endured betrayal and death and exile dry-eyed, turned away and stood, her body shaking, in tears.
Her children stood about her, uncertain, until Oswiu gestured to his sister: do something. Æbbe stepped forward and put her arm about the exiled queen, and slowly Acha’s shoulders stopped shaking. Taking a breath, Acha turned to her children and forced a smile. But seeing them all together, the smile grew true.
“Come, my beloveds, let us eat and be glad, and then take counsel together, for we have much to ponder.”
Chapter 2
It was a simple meal, but joyful. The household slaves set up a table and benches outside on the machair, for in this season the night scarce came before the dawn arrived to banish it once more, and the air was mild and the wind kind. The storm that had threatened earlier grumbled upon the horizon but, as if mindful of the meeting that had taken place, it bided away upon the sea, waiting its time. Oswald and Oswiu laughed with the slaves as they set up the supper, for most of them they had known since childhood, the slaves going with them into exile when their father died.
Remembering that he’d left his friend to the hospitality of the islanders – always generous, usually noisome – Oswald sent a messenger to fetch Brother Aidan from the village, ignoring his brother’s suggestion that Gunna be summoned as well, and the monk arrived just as the food was being brought out to the table.
Brother Aidan called down blessings upon the meal and their fellowship as the slaves bustled to and from the house, setting up their own table on the machair in among the preparations for the family meal. Oswald was old enough to remember the two false summers and hard winters of his childhood that had brought famine in their train, and the children lying hollow-eyed and swollen-bellied by the side of the road, too weak to hold out hands to beg. Many of his mother’s slaves came from those terrible years, when families had come staggering, carrying the young and the old, to the royal compounds that lay a day’s journey apart throughout Northumbria, and begged to be taken as slaves, that they might have food and live. Oswald remembered his mother gathering the household slaves together when his father died, in the fever of fear that gripped Bamburgh as it waited upon the arrival of Æthelfrith’s slayers, and telling them that those who wished might have their freedom; for the rest, exile and an uncertain future waited. All but a handful – and in the cases of those who stayed it was because of pregnancy or illness – had followed them, choosing exile and to serve the Idings over Edwin, the descendant of Yffi, who would rule over Northumbria for sixteen years.
Brother Aidan raised the cup and it seemed that the sun, low in the evening sky, filled it with light as he sang blessings upon it. They would all, for many reasons, remember this evening together through the remaining years of their lives, but it was not the glow of reminiscence that coloured the memories golden, for the sun itself poured gold upon the evening, gilding the machair and turning the sea into a moving cloth of jewelled blue. Acha sat with her sons across the table from her, that she might see them the better, while her daughter took the cup that the monk had blessed and brought it to Oswald and Oswiu in turn, bidding them, “Drink, give thanks and be glad.” Each, in turn, took and drank deep, returning the cup with solemn joy.
“There is great joy for me this eve,” said Acha, as Æbbe returned the cup to her. “And great tidings too.” She looked to her sons and there was a deep smile filled with soft shadows upon her face. Acha turned and beckoned Æbbe to her side, and the young woman came and stood beside her.
“Give your sister your blessings, my sons, for she is to forsake the pleasures and pains of this world to join herself in eternal union with our Lord, and become abbess of a monastery – King Domnall Brecc has given into our hands land and house for such a one.”
Oswald and Oswiu stood and embraced their sister, while Brother Aidan bounced from foot to foot in excitement before welcoming Æbbe as a sister in Christ. Æbbe herself, after an initial flush, settled into their contentment, but as they took seat again, she turned to Oswald.
“I was worried that you would want to make me a marriage that would bring the family warriors and influence – Mother said you would not forbid me, but I had not the courage to tell you before.”
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Oswald laughed. “We tried that already, when you were fourteen, and word reached us that Rædwald was dead and Edwin no longer had his support. Do you remember, we went, all of us, to the king of Ulster? That was a miserable journey, and I feared more than once that our curragh would founder, and our welcome was hardly less miserable than our voyage, and then Ulster introduced his son.
” Oswald turned to Acha. “You went pale as death.”
“As did you.”
“True.”
“What was wrong with him?” asked Æbbe. “Remember, I never saw the young Ulster.”
“For which I remain grateful; men wake sweating from dreams of battles remembered. You have been spared similar dreams of marriage through never seeing him.”
“Was he that bad?”
Mother and son exchanged memories by look, then turned back to Æbbe.
“Worse,” they answered.
“But if you had betrothed me, Ulster would like have given you the men to claim Northumbria; would you not have wished that, brother?”
“And then I would have faced my uncle in battle, and he or I would have lived, but either way part of our mother would have died. This way, our hands are clean of Edwin’s blood, there is no guilt upon us, and we may call down God’s blessing with full heart.”
“But now I will never bring any warriors to our family’s cause.”
“You will hold us in your heart and fill God’s hall with your prayers and those of your community, that he may remember us and bless us. What greater aid could we wish for?”
Æbbe smiled at her elder brother, and golden light played upon her face and her hair.
They ate well that eve, taking the fruits of sea and land: cream and rich cheese from the small cattle that browsed the machair, fish and the fatty meat of porpoise, harpooned from a curragh and dragged flopping ashore for butchery. Bran, having made his courtesy to the birds of the island, swooped down upon the machair and, gathering his wings around him like a cloak, high-stepped to Oswald’s side and, croaking, announced his presence and his hunger. Æbbe clapped her hands and laughed at Bran’s arrival.
“We are all together again,” she said.
Brother Aidan, sitting to the end of the table, contented himself with his meat, striving to make himself as invisible as possible while the family talked and remembered and ate, then talked some more.
The meal taken and thanks given, the Idings, the sons and daughters of Ida, first king of Bernicia, sat upon the machair, the sun hanging in the sky at their backs as if refusing to dip his red head into the cooling sea.
“God has brought us all together this eve,” said Oswald, “when news has reached us all of the High King’s death. We have full bellies…”
“Speak for yourself,” said Oswiu, reaching for a hand of cheese. “…we have bellies that may soon burst,” continued Oswald, “a clear eve and gentle wind.” He sat up straight upon the machair. “Let us take counsel together. Mother, what say you?”
Acha smoothed her skirts over her knees. She sat, legs bent and knees embraced, upon the machair, the late breeze rippling her shawl, and her children each saw in her then the beauty she had had in her youth, before the hard tidings of her husband’s betrayal of her brother, the years spent married to a lord of uncertain temper and the further years of exile had broken her looks and tempered her soul upon the anvil of regret and pain.
“I say that I would not have this eve end. I have my children about me. I can wish for no more, lest it be grandchildren.”
At that, Oswiu turned his face from Acha lest she see him blush.
“But the night will come, and it will grow dark, though only for a short time in this season. So we must speak of what will be. My sons, you brought me the news of my brother’s death at the hands of Cadwallon of Gwynedd and Penda of Mercia. Know you when he died?”
“It was in October of the year past,” said Oswald.
“And what of the kingdom in the time since? Have you any further tale?”
“The messenger brought rumour of great suffering, though whether that be true I cannot say. But it seems that Cadwallon and Penda remain in the kingdom, for the last tale had them still in Deira, ravaging and plundering as they go and laying the land to waste and ruin.”
“They wintered in Northumbria?”
“That is what we hear told. And as they go, they burn, setting flames to the great halls that our fathers built and driving those that remain to flight and exile. Those thegns that still hold their land and halls wait upon the arrival of Cadwallon and Penda like men wait upon winter, knowing it will come, helpless to prolong the summer. We have heard that Osric, Edwin’s cousin, has put himself to what remains of the witan as king of Deira, but can he rule when Cadwallon and Penda and their warbands roam the land like wolves? I doubt it.”
“Wolves require feeding,” said Acha. “When there is no more to eat, the pack will return to its den.”
“They have not gone yet, and the season draws on. The month for planting is past, the month for reaping draws near. If Cadwallon and Penda remain in the kingdom until harvest, then they are not returning to their kingdoms, but seeking a new one.”
“Two kings and one kingdom do not match.” Acha smiled grimly. “That is what your father told me after our wedding night and before the feast from which my brother fled for his life.”
The family fell into the silence of memory until Oswiu spoke.
“The Britons called him Flesaur, the Twister, did they not?”
“He loved that name and so did his warriors,” said Oswald. “He would have his scop chant it before battle, even though it did not fit into our tongue.”
“The men chanted it too,” said Acha. “Standing in front of him, brandishing their swords and shields, shouting ‘Flesaur, Flesaur’ over and again as he handed out the shining gold rings.”
“He never gave me a ring,” said Oswald. “I was too young. The first time he took me with him in his warband, he died, and I was left, struggling and crying to get back to him, in the arms of Dæglaf.”
“He was more generous to his men than his sons,” said Acha.
“He only gave Eanfrith one ring, and he was your elder by five years.”
“I remember that ring. Eanfrith would dangle it in front of me, and when I tried to touch it, he would pull it away, laughing.”
“He was cruel to you,” said Acha, “but I could not blame him. Eanfrith’s mother, Bebba, died when he was four and your father took me as his new wife; each of you was a threat to him.”
“I did not feel a threat when he was beating me,” said Oswald.
“You fought like a wildcat,” said Acha “and the next day Eanfrith was as cut and bruised as you.”
“But not the day after,” said Oswald. “I could not lie down for a week. But he let me be after that.”
“He has let us all be these years since your father’s death,” said Acha. “He went to his mother’s people, the Picts, after Æthelfrith was killed, and made no move against us, but now I have heard tell that he is gathering a warband from among the Picts and those men who went with him into exile. I have sent messengers to learn more, but I think it sure that they will return with tidings that your half-brother will attempt to claim the throne of Bernicia and, if he succeeds, then Deira and all of Northumbria.”
Oswald made no reaction, but Oswiu grimaced. “He will ignore us no longer if he wins the throne, brother. We will have to watch for knife and arrow and poison then. We should act now, before he has the power to make our friends over into our enemies.”
Oswald shook his head. “Eanfrith has done us no ill – well, not since I was a boy.” He turned back to Acha. “Have you any word of where stands the witan of Bernicia? Will they bow to him, or turn their back on him?”
“He is your father’s eldest son, and his thegns remember the glory and gold your father brought them. He is eldest, and throne-worthy. They will bow to him if he comes to them first.”
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nbsp; “Let us get there before him,” said Oswiu, turning urgently to his brother. “We are Father’s sons too, and throne-worthy; if it be but a matter of priority, let us gather a few men and horses and sail for the Solway Firth. It is but a two-day ride from Carlisle to Bamburgh, and we may gather aid from Rheged.”
“A few men will not defeat Cadwallon and Penda,” said Oswald.
“They would not have to. Get back, raise the witan, swear the thegns of Bernicia to you; then we have an army to beat them.”
Oswald shook his head. “Let us say it happens as you wish, brother. We would then have to face Eanfrith and his warband.”
“So? If we’ve already defeated Cadwallon and Penda, we would be able to defeat Eanfrith too.”
“Eanfrith is our brother.”
“Half-brother.” Oswiu glanced at Acha. “The wrong half.”
“Brother.” Oswald closed his eyes.
The eve was silent. Fires and lamps flickered in the twilight, but no true night would fall.
Oswald opened his eyes and turned to his brother. “I will not fight him,” he said and, standing, he brushed the machair from his tunic.
“Mother, I would speak with you. Alone,” he added, as Oswiu and Æbbe began to get to their feet as well.
Leaving his brother and sister with Brother Aidan by the white house, Oswald walked with Acha towards the lines of waves breaking upon the beach. They went in silence, reaching the strand without word, and there Oswald stopped.
Oswald: Return of the King Page 3