Oswald: Return of the King

by Edoardo Albert

  “Lord, King, Restorer, take, I beg, the title you have earned by your deeds. Send word to the kings of the Old North, to Rheged and Strathclyde, to Dal Riada and Gododdin; send word to the kingdoms of the south, to Powys and Dyfed and Ceredigion, to Dumnonia and across the Narrow Sea to Brittany, to all the lands where the blessed tongue of old is spoken; send word that they may know: Arthur has returned!”

  The men of Gwynedd rose to their feet. Cadwallon, face pale as death, turned to face them. They looked upon their king – a man they had known through defeat and victory, through campaign and in hall – and they saw, as if unveiled, Arthur, the king of their hope, and they acclaimed him.

  Cadwallon received their acclaim and their homage as Cian sang songs of praise and blessing. Penda sat in dark silence upon the high table, and his men withdrew to the rear of the hall.

  “So, you are Arthur now,” he said, when Cadwallon turned to him.

  “I am Arthur,” said Cadwallon. The king of Gwynedd looked upon him with suspicion. “You understand our tongue?”

  “There is no great need to do so when your men chant, ‘Arthur, Arthur, Arthur,’ and weep into their beer.”

  Cadwallon smiled, all trace of his former drunkenness gone. “This is a glad day, a day waited upon since our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ day.” The king paused, and looked upon his ally. “I asked you for your name for us. Now I ask if you know our name for the lands of the Angles and the Saxons.”

  Penda shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “Logres. The Lost Lands. But bearing before us the dragon banner of Arthur, we shall reclaim our lost lands, and the Baptized will drive the pagans into the sea.”

  Penda stared at Cadwallon. “What of me and my people? Will you drive us into the sea too?”

  “Even though you be not of the Baptized, yet you are allies. I will give you leave to remain in these lands, so long as you render me homage.”

  “What form would this homage take?”

  “To declare foes those whom I declare enemies, to march with me when I summon thee, to attend me when I call upon thee, and to render to me the gold that thy brother, Eowa, out these past four week in Deira, bears upon his horses and in his wagons. That is homage.”

  Penda stood, and gestured for his men to follow.

  “We will take our leave. The summer is near over, and men hear the call of home, and wives, and harvest. I was your ally when none other answered your call – remember that well, king of the Baptized.”

  “The kings of the Old North, all the kings of the Baptized, I will call upon them and they will come to me, for Arthur has returned in glory to lead them.” Cadwallon grasped Penda’s forearm in friendship. “Take the gold your brother has garnered, for you have served me well, though you be pagan and damned.”

  “What of Eadfrith? You have him still.”

  “Edwin’s son? I have kept him alive since we found him after the battle, insensible upon the ground, lest the men of Northumbria attempt to raise another king against me. But they flee before me as ducks before the hunter; take him, if you want him.”

  “We will ride then; I will send messengers to call my brother home. Should he return here, send him after us.” Penda took Cadwallon’s forearm too. The two kings looked into each other’s faces and were glad they parted now, before their friendship turned to blood.

  As Penda led his men from the hall, he could already hear the messengers being called up to Cadwallon to take word to the kingdoms of the Britons, telling them that their hopes stood realized: Arthur had returned, in the guise of Cadwallon of Gwynedd, and he claimed their fealty. The Mercian grimaced. Maybe they would follow Cadwallon, thinking him Arthur returned. Then the power Cadwallon wielded would be great indeed; sufficient maybe to push the new peoples back into the grey sea that had carried them to this land at the edge of the world. But kings were jealous of power, and shy of sharing glory. Some would come, some would listen, some would plot against the new power, closer at hand and more dangerous than any Angle. It was ever thus.

  Besides, he had needs find what delayed his brother. Gold could buy men at witan, and Penda knew his claim upon the throne was not yet secure.

  But first there was the matter of Eadfrith, Edwin’s son.

  “Come.” Penda called his warmaster, Hroth, while the men prepared horses, wagons and boats for the journey south. It was a day’s sailing down the Ouse, and then hard rowing up the Trent, into the heart of Mercia. The same journey on foot might take three or four days. However, some of the men would return the slow way, taking the roads of the emperors of old with the wagons and those horses that could not be accommodated on ship.

  *

  The city of York lay in ruins, a haunted place that breathed of the giants that had built it. Penda made his camp outside its tumbled walls, in tents and shelters his men could build in a few hours at the end of a day’s march. Cadwallon, though, remained within, laying claim to Edwin’s hall and feigning conversance with the city’s ghosts, and keeping his captive in an old building near the hall.

  Penda, with Hroth by his side, made his way through the weed- choked streets.

  “Cadwallon calls himself a Roman,” Penda said to Hroth, after they had both started at the sudden explosion of an unknown bird from a dark door. “That is why he prefers to camp in the city of the Romans.”

  Hroth, a man who spoke little, grunted, but his sword remained in his hand. “The giants are gone,” he said.

  “Yes, they are gone,” said Penda, “but they have left their works.” He drew his own sword. These places of the old ones were wraith- haunted; men did not enter them unnecessarily. As such, it was a good place to keep a man prisoner, for few would go to find him among such ghosts, and Penda himself had been but once before, when Eadfrith had been consigned to the dark.

  Now, the evening was drawing in and shadows lengthened, flowing out of the empty doors and windows that looked in silence upon their progress.

  They came at last to the house, its walls broken down on two sides, and, putting their shoulders together to the stone, pushed the boulder aside. A stench, rank and raw, rose from the pit, and although no strangers to foul smells, they drew back as the evening light flowed down into the dark.

  Hroth took the ladder that lay propped against a wall and dropped it into the pit.

  But from the dark came a voice, little more than a croak: “If you want me, you will have to fetch me.”

  Penda looked at his warmaster. The big man shrugged, handed over his sword, tied his tunic up to his waist, breathed deep and climbed down into the dark. He emerged moments later, carrying a bundle that, on laying it down in front of Penda, proved to be a man.

  Penda covered his mouth and nose. “You stink.”

  Eadfrith, son of Edwin, of the house of Yffi, heir to the throne of Deira and Northumbria, staggered to his feet, holding his hands over his eyes to protect them from the light. His skin clung to his bones, but the hair had mostly fallen from his head: he was as a skeleton, walking, but his eyes burned in his skull.

  “I stink in the flesh,” he said. “But you stink in the soul.”

  Penda stared at him for a moment, then turned away. “He is no danger. You do not need me, Hroth. Wash him, then bring him.”

  “Where are you taking me?” asked Eadfrith.

  Penda looked back to him. “How long have you been in that pit?”

  Eadfrith wiped a trembling hand across eyes that wept at the evening light.

  “I do not know.”

  “I am taking you to your grandfather’s house.”

  “You killed him?”

  “He is dead.”

  “His blood to my father’s and brother’s.”

  “You live; they are dead. Men call you ‘faithless son’.”

  “I care no longer for the words of men; I care only to see you dead.”

  “You will have your chance then, Eadfrith. I will bring you before the witan of Mercia, that they may judge between us:
last remaining scion of Cearl, or I, Penda. Wash him well, Hroth, lest the witan choke on his smell.” Penda turned to go.

  “Wait!” Eadfrith stumbled forward. “You will let me speak my case to the witan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What trick is this?”

  “There is no trick. You will speak; I will speak; they will choose. Too long have they demurred, though I bring them gold and victory beyond anything they have known before. Still some mutter for the Iclingas. Very well. Let them see you before them: the last of the Iclingas.” Penda smiled. “Wash him, Hroth, but not too well.”

  Chapter 5

  “Gone, gone, gone. All gone.”

  Coifi, once priest to Edwin, abjurer of the old gods, turned about amid the stumps and poles of what had been the site sacred to Woden at Goodmanham, a day’s ride from York. Upon his thin shoulders he had drawn the raven-feather cloak of his priesthood, in his hand he held the bone rattle, but the feathers rustled upon his back as leaves in winter’s deep and the rattle mumbled in an idiot’s voice.

  Dropping to his knees, Coifi sketched the gesture the priest of the new god had made, touching head and heart and shoulders. He held his hands up to heaven, to where all the gods dwelled, whether they be old gods or new.

  “Where are you?” he cried.

  The heavens, heavy with cloud, grey and dark, gave no answer.

  “I have no lord either.”

  Coifi looked around, struggling to get to his feet, hand going to his sword. As priest of the old gods, he might bear no weapon, but priest no more, it was not safe to venture abroad without sword and spear; not since the death of the king.

  A man slid out of the shadows and stood before Coifi. “And it is bitter indeed for a scop to have no lord – as bitter as a priest without a god.”

  “Acca!” The priest put down his sword. “What brings you here?”

  “Like you, blown before the storm, and seeking harbour. I was told you might be here.”

  “Who told you?”

  “Oh, the local people. They still talk about the day you rode here and put fire to the gods! You seemed a god to them yourself that day, Coifi – I have spoken with them, through some tedious nights when I needed shelter and they insisted on telling me their tales. Come, I have found you; you are summoned. Let us go.”

  “Who summons me?”

  “Have you not heard? There is a new king in Deira.”

  “Cadwallon?”

  “No, a king of the Yffings, a true king of Deira: Osric, cousin to Edwin, has arisen and called the witan to acclaim him lord, and they have done so, casting off the promises they made to that interloper as easily as a man casts off the dreams of the night when the morning comes. He calls you to him.”

  “Why does he want me?”

  “To call the favour of the gods down upon him, that he might strike down Cadwallon and win the throne.”

  “But Osric was baptized with all the thegns; he follows the new god of Paulinus.”

  “Paulinus has fled, with the queen and her children. Mayhap they will return some day, but Wuscfrea is still a child: he cannot claim the throne. No, only Osric is ætheling, a throne-worthy man, and he calls you to come to him. He has returned to the ways of our fathers, casting off the promises he made to the new god, for that god has failed us, and given victory to our enemies. So now he summons you to sacrifice to the old gods, to Woden and Thunor and Tiw, to call their blessings back upon us that we might tear the hearts from our enemies and hear the weeping of their women.”

  Acca stopped and passed a trembling hand over his forehead in a gesture the priest remembered well: it signified a particularly poignant moment in his tale. But Coifi, looking more closely, saw that this time there was no art in the movement, no sidelong eyeglance to see whether the audience were following where his words led, be it into the hall of Hrothgar or the fen fastnesses where monsters stalked; Acca was not acting, and little that Coifi had seen over the past year disturbed him so much.

  “It has been terrible, Coifi, terrible. When the news came that the king was dead – and then the rumours that Eadfrith yet lived and was coming with men, or no, that Cadwallon and Penda rode upon us, ready to burn and plunder – then I fell into such a state that I have not known: it was as if I walked yet slept, moving with eyes open and wits dead. I saw the queen and her children take ship with the priest of the new god, and if my wits were with me I would have run to them and begged to sail too, but I stood and watched as stupidly as an ox chewing the cud while it waits the slaughterer. I saw the other priest, James, gather his robes and his people about him, the ones he had taught to sing in the language of the new god, and, loading people and whatever they might carry in wagons, set off north. I hear he lives yet, in Catterick, with his people about him, singing his new song and skulking in the woods whenever Cadwallon’s raiders come seeking provision and treasure.

  “Maybe I should have done as he did – hidden and waited. But I could no more live without a lord than you can live without a god, Coifi, so I set out in search of a hall and a lord. I have ridden and walked the kingdom, and everywhere I have gone I have seen the devastation wrought by Cadwallon and his men: they strip the food from the living and what they cannot take they spoil, falling upon hard-won halls as rats and leaving a waste where all that can be heard is the wail of women as they wait for death.” Acca placed his hands upon a lean belly.

  “I starved, Coifi, starved. Stumbling from hall to hall, driven out when men learned that I was Edwin’s scop. I felt my stomach swell and my flesh fall away, until I could scarce raise my harp or pluck a song from memory. Mayhap I would have died if Osric had not found me, lying abandoned by a spring where in better days our good lord Edwin had placed brass cups that travellers might refresh themselves and none dared take them all the days of his reign. But the cups were gone, long gone, and I had not the strength to raise water to my lips, but only to take my mouth to the water. And that was when Osric found me, lamenting Edwin’s passing, and he heard my voice and remembered me. I had not known any strength remained to me, but when he said he remembered my singing I raised myself to my feet and raised my voice – weakened though it was by hunger, I was pleased to hear it sound all the purer – and told our hope: that Osric, ætheling, of the House of Yffi, would deliver us from our tormentor and save us from his depredations. Osric, hearing me sing, said he would take me as his scop as long as I would bring to him another of Edwin’s household: you.”

  Acca stared at the priest, clad in his old raven-feather cloak and bearing the bone rattle that told the working of wyrd.

  “Cadwallon has promised to drive us into the sea, and many say it would be a better fate to die there than to starve in our own homes when the winter comes. He has left us nothing, Coifi, nothing. When Penda sailed south, taking poor Eadfrith with him, we hoped that things might improve, but Cadwallon’s fury grows worse – any who cross him he kills. The witan passes messages in secret, and called upon Osric to deliver us – and he promised me that he would be my lord if I brought you to him. Will you come?”

  Coifi squatted, drawing his cloak around his thin shoulders. Acca was not alone in hunger – since Edwin’s death he had scarce known a full belly. He had wandered, alone, sleeping in the hollows under hawthorn and blackthorn, snuffling roots and small creatures, sometimes taking shelter and sup with isolated houses where news of the king’s death bought a meal, or a shake of his bone rattle produced a dry bed for the night. He had not known it, but his wandering had an end in view, and he knew it when he topped the ridge over Goodmanham and saw the dark crowns of the trees of Woden’s sacred grove. There had been a time when those trees hung with sacrifice, things bright and golden, things of blood and bone. Now they hung empty, save for their fringe of leaves, but the memory of sacrifice hung dark upon them, and he felt its weight upon his back as he squatted upon the earth. “Coifi?”

  The priest dug his finger into the earth. If he dug deeply enough, surely he would find the b
lood he had spilled into this dark earth, the offerings for victory, for a son, for deliverance from illness or enemy or hunger. He had made all these offerings and more, and in his latter days he had sacrificed on his own behalf here, asking the gods to give back what they had taken from him: his sight. Once, the workings of wyrd had been clear to him, the weavings of the fate singers revealed in rattle bone and leaf fall, in smoke rise and blood spill, but his vision had dimmed, leaving him a haunted, hunted creature, searching always for the track that eluded him, as a hunter lost in the woods, slowly coming to the knowledge that that which he had once hunted was now hunting him.

  The gods no longer spoke and when the priest of the new god had come with Edwin’s bride, Æthelburh, and he had seen the way the king listened to him, Coifi had tried to learn Paulinus’s ways and the ways of his new god. Guthlaf, Edwin’s warmaster, had come to him, promising gold and gifts if he spoke for the new god in front of the witan, and Coifi had taken the promise, for the gods had abandoned him. He still remembered the wild, fierce delight when he tore down the poles sacred to them and set flame to their sanctuaries under the trees – Acca had said the villagers thought him a god that night, and it was true: a god he had felt himself, raw with power. Then, the promises of Paulinus and his new god seemed to bear fruit, and as Edwin’s power waxed, his own wealth grew, though he yet shied from the water that Paulinus wished to bathe him in.