They did not speak as they crept away in the dark of the night, making their way east without word, towards the sea. They spoke only when dawn fingered the horizon towards which they walked, and they searched for a hiding place.
“The gods lied.” Coifi spoke in a flat voice, devoid of feeling. Where his heart had been, there was only void.
“No, no,” said Acca, taking his arm. “The gods promised victory, but they did not tell you when, did they?”
Coifi made no answer, but he did not deny the scop’s suggestion.
“Victory will come to us, but not with Osric,” said Acca.
“If not him, then who?” asked the priest.
“Eanfrith.” Acca squeezed the priest’s arm tighter. “Æthelfrith Flesaur’s eldest son, from Bebba of the Picts. He will give the gods their victory.”
“Where is he?”
“Eanfrith has returned to his ancestral home, the fort named for his mother, Bamburgh, and holds it now. Bernicia is his. Cadwallon has scarce ranged against it. Let us go to Eanfrith and take a new lord, for he keeps to the way of our fathers too, and the gods will give him the victory they promised, for he is truly throne-worthy in a way that Osric was not – did you hear the tale of how he begged Cadwallon to keep his hall and his land?”
“The son of the Twister? He has returned?”
“So I hear, with many of his mother’s people.”
“No one can take Bamburgh if it be held.”
“With the rock as his base, Eanfrith can gather men to him and raise an army to face and defeat Cadwallon. Victory will come, Coifi. The gods have promised it – but they did not tell us how long it would take.”
Coifi laughed. “It is a fine morn when a scop tells a priest to heed the promise of the gods; before the morn is out, the priest might tell the scop to wet his throat with wine.” The priest pointed towards the crimson horizon. “It looks to be a day of fire, and we have neither drink nor food.”
“The shades drink not, nor do they eat, and a death skulking in hiding will not take us to the All-Father’s hall, so I would be glad for the wine should you have it. For now, I fear we will shadow the shades this day, but when night comes we may find ship or boat – whether the master knows or not – to take us up the coast to Bamburgh. What say you, priest?”
“I say that those willows look a good place to hide, and there may be water there too.”
“Wine is better than water for the throat.”
“And a lord is better than both.” The priest shook his head. “We have lost two lords, Acca. Let the third keep us.”
“I learned many new words from Paulinus, but there is only one I still use: amen.”
Chapter 7
“How long are you going to spend on your knees while our people are dying?”
Oswald did not look around. He had heard the approach to where he knelt in the nave of the church, but monks and novices and pilgrims came and went often during the Great Work of the monastery, the daily singing of the Divine Office. Some pilgrims came but across the Sound from Mull; others had crossed great expanses of sea. Oswald had travelled up and down the west side of Britain and around to the west of Ireland, where the sea surged in untrammelled ridges and, some men said, there was no end to water, while others told of lands of fire and ice that emerged, steaming, from the cold northern waters. But he had never gone further south than the Narrow Sea, and some of the pilgrims brought tales of the wonders to be found in lands where the sun was so fierce that it burned men’s skins. In truth, his mind had wandered from prayer into travellers’ tales when the words of reproach broke upon him.
Oswiu stopped behind Oswald. All around, pilgrims added their prayers to the Great Work of the monks, the chant reaching to heaven. Oswiu ground his teeth in frustration. The news had arrived with the latest round of pilgrims and messengers – Oswiu made it his practice to meet each curragh when it beached – and he had thought that this, at last, would rouse his brother into action. But all Oswald did was remain on his knees.
Oswiu bent down and hissed into his brother’s ear. “Did you not hear? Do you not care what happens to our people?”
If he had not been so angry himself, Oswiu would have noticed the tension that pulled his brother taught as a lyre string. He reached down to drag Oswald up only to find his wrist caught, crushed in a grip so strong it might have broken rock.
“I will hear the Office finish, then we will speak. For now, hold your peace.”
Oswald heard his brother grunt with the pain of bruised bones, then, when he let go, he heard Oswiu make his way through the pilgrims to the door. The Great Work soared forth, fending off God’s wrath and calling down his blessing, but try as Oswald might he could not hear it with heart undivided.
He rose to his feet and followed his brother from the church. Oswiu was waiting for him outside, his back turned as he stared across the Sound to Mull. But from his posture, Oswald saw that Oswiu was looking far beyond the next island, over the sea and across the spine of mountains that divided the country to the grey sea-washed land of their birth. It was strange how Oswiu pined for it, for he had been only four at the time of their exile, while Oswald had been twelve and all but a man, yet it was the one who had known the lands of their birth less who yearned for them more.
The elder brother sighed, but so quietly that Oswiu did not hear.
“You miss home.”
Oswiu turned around. “Yes, I miss home,” he said. “Don’t you?”
“I’ve made a home here,” said Oswald. “I would not return.”
“Well, I would. This is not our land, Oswald. It is not the land our fathers won – it is not the land our father won.”
Oswald shook his head. “No, it is not.” He stared back into memory. “You were a boy then, barely walking, but I remember Father winning that land. I remember his battles.”
“Then why don’t you want to win it back?”
Oswald stared at him. “Because I remember the winning of it. Because I remember Father.”
“Our father was a great warrior and a great king.”
“Yes. Yes, he was a great warrior and a great king…”
Oswald remembered their father: warrior, king, a man whom men feared and revered. That was how Oswiu called him to mind when they spoke of Æthelfrith, but Oswald recalled other aspects of their father too, such as the still, resigned calm that took their mother when their father, in his cups, thrust aside his concubines and turned his eyes to his wife; or the shouts and wails of the monks – monks like these among whom they lived – when Æthelfrith sent his warriors to slaughter the ranks of religious praying for his defeat before the Battle of Chester. The monks dead, or fled, Æthelfrith turned his attack against the armies of Powys and Gwynedd, defeating the Britons and making him, for a while, the most powerful king in the land. Before his voice had broken, Oswald had seen hundreds of men die. Before his voice had broken, he had killed men too; for after the Battle of Chester, where he had been an excited but protected eleven-year-old held behind the shieldwall, his father had brought him to the group of broken, beaten men who had survived the encounter but not managed to escape. Most were booty, as valuable as sword and buckle, to be sold at the slave markets that sprang up following a battle; traders arriving from far and wide with the news of war and captives. But Æthelfrith had a different use in mind for one of the captured men.
Taking his son by the hand, Æthelfrith led him through the aftermath of the battle, describing its course, explaining to him how the Northumbrian shieldwall had pushed the Britons back through its sheer man weight – “These Britons are, man for man, smaller than us, and lighter; use that against them” – and showing where a hollow in the ground had caused the men of Gwynedd to stumble and fall, opening a gap in their lines through which Æthelfrith, with his household warriors, had poured, peeling open the lines of the enemy like a skinner stripping a cow.
Æthelfrith brought the marvelling boy to the cowed group of prisoners. The b
attlefield scavengers, man and beast alike, were working at the corpses, but the king’s own warriors had stripped all the most valuable items from the bodies already and laid them in a great glittering pile at the feet of Æthelfrith.
“I will give many rings this evening in camp, and in hall when we return there, and one,” the king clapped his son on the shoulder, “I will give to you, Oswald.”
“To me? But – but I didn’t do anything. I just watched the battle.”
“I will give you your first ring because you killed your first man.”
“But I haven’t killed anyone, Father.”
Æthelfrith laughed, his face still flushed with the memory of battle. “No, but you will.” He pointed to the group of prisoners, lying slumped on the ground. “Pick one of them and kill him.”
Oswald looked at the men who stared, uncomprehending, as Æthelfrith spoke their fate in a tongue they did not understand.
Misunderstanding his expression, Æthelfrith ruffled his son’s hair. “Yes, you can kill any one you want, although if it were me, I would save the fit ones, as they’ll sell for more to the slavers, and pick one of the wounded. We all but have to pay the slavers to take away the wounded, so getting rid of one or two of them would help.”
Oswald stared at faces that avoided his gaze, staring blankly at the sky, muttering under their breath oaths against a god that had failed them or comrades that had fled. He had been given the power of life and death over them – at his hand, one more would be dead. He looked up at his father, who smiled encouragingly at him.
“It’s not easy killing a man,” said Æthelfrith. “They’re like wild boars: they squeal and they struggle – though not as much as boars – and this lot,” he gestured at the captured men, “don’t look as if they have any fight in them. I wager I won’t even have to hold yours down. Now, who’s it going to be, lad? That one over there, with the red hair and squint? Or him, old one eye? Or maybe you fancy one of their priests? We killed most of them, but there are one or two left over – you can always tell a priest by looking at their hands: soft they are, like a baby’s.”
“I – I can’t.”
Æthelfrith looked down at his son, then ruffled his hair again. “It’s the choosing that’s hard, Oswald, but believe you me, in the shieldwall you don’t get to choose who you kill; they just come up against you, and most of the time you don’t even remember how many there were afterwards. Oh, I know you’ll hear men boasting in the hall about the number of men they killed, but believe you me, in the shieldwall there’s no time for counting kills or remembering faces; it’s just block, stab, push, block, stab, until your arm feels like it will drop off and the sweat’s like as not about to turn your mail to a heap of rust if the battle don’t end quick. Look, I’ll pick one for you, a little one, ’bout your age – they’re easier to kill then: less fat and muscle in the way.”
The king pointed into the group of prisoners and one of them, a boy little more than Oswald’s age, was hauled out. Æthelfrith looked him up and down.
“He’s so scrawny, the slavers will want me to pay them to take him away. Go on, son, he’s yours; kill him, and I’ll give you your first ring. What’s more, I’ll give you my own sword to do it with.” And Æthelfrith drew his sword, the blade he’d named Splitter on account of the ease with which it sliced men’s bellies apart, and handed it, hilt first, to Oswald. Æthelfrith turned around to his men.
“Here, come watch: Oswald’s about to make his first kill.”
The men, those who weren’t too exhausted or too drunk, put up a cheer, and the more mobile among them formed a rough half- circle around Oswald. The ætheling remembered feeling the sword’s weight in his hand, marvelling at how it lay balanced upon his palm, but not looking, never looking, at the boy he was about to kill.
The men waited, and their wait grew past expectancy to encouragement to clapping, and Æthelfrith, seeing them grow impatient and not wanting his son disgraced, pushed Oswald forward. The boy stumbled and, in stumbling, looked into the face of the boy he was about to kill.
“Oswald, Oswald, Oswald,” the men chanted, for they were fond of him, calling him their luck and their fortune, and carrying him upon their shoulders before and after battle. Hunlaf, Æthelfrith’s warmaster, saw the glance from his king and, slipping behind the boy who was about to die, pinioned his arms to his sides, taking care to stand with his arms extended. Hunlaf had seen too many killed by a sword piercing through one man to stab another to stand anywhere within range, even if it was a boy who was about to thrust the sword.
“Oswald, Oswald, Oswald.” The chant grew louder. Æthelfrith leaned in towards his son.
“Go on, lad,” he said. “Aim for the belly – no bones there to turn the blade.”
Oswald stared at the boy. The boy was staring at him. His eyes were grey. The boys lips were moving, but he could not hear what he was saying over the chant, and he would not have understood him if he could hear.
“Oswald, Oswald, Oswald!”
The boy closed his eyes.
Oswald pushed the blade and, as it met resistance, the boy’s eyes flew open and, almost embracing, he fell forward against him as he pushed harder. Hunlaf, not needing to be asked, pushed too, running the boy forward onto the blade until its red tip emerged from his skinny back.
Face to face, almost cheek to cheek, Oswald heard the boy’s last sound. He did not know its meaning, but it had remained with him until, coming to the island of saints, he had heard the sound again, at the end of the monks’ Great Work, and known it for a word: amen.
The king looked down at the dead boy lying at his son’s feet. “He died well,” Æthelfrith said. He turned to Hunlaf. “Make sure he is buried well – get one of their priests to do it, then throw him in after the boy.” The king grinned. “A gift for our gods!”
Oswald was shaking. He could feel his hands and arms trembling, but they seemed a long way away from him, and there seemed nothing he could do to stop them. But then his father clapped him on the back, a blow fierce enough to all but fell him, and the shaking stopped. Æthelfrith squatted down by his son and stared him full in the face.
“I shook for two days after I killed my first man,” he said quietly to Oswald. “And that was after I’d thrown up everything that was in my stomach and voided my bowels too. You did well – you did better than me: my father had to push the sword for me; I hadn’t the strength.” The king leaned in closer to his son. “It gets easier. I don’t know if it should, but it does. And killing is part of being a king. It’s best done in battle, but sometimes you’ll need to kill cold, like you’ve just done, and that doesn’t get much easier.” The king drew a ring from his forearm, a thick, heavy gold ring, and pushed it onto his son’s arm, up to near the shoulder, so slender was Oswald’s build as yet in comparison to his father’s. “You’ve done the hardest thing a king has to do, Oswald.”
Standing up, Æthelfrith raised Oswald’s arm.
“My son,” he cried. And the men cheered, and Oswald, the tears still wet on his cheek, smiled at their acclaim, while at his feet the dead boy stared glassy eyed at the grey sky.
Oswald shook the recollections of his father from his mind. Oswiu revered the memory of Æthelfrith and neither he nor Acha, his mother, saw fit to tell him otherwise. But the memories of Northumbria cast dark shadows over him; in truth, Oswald did not want to return there.
“What news?” he asked, for though he did not want to return, he must needs know what had happened.
Like an eager dog, Oswiu brightened at the interest shown by his brother. “The witan of Deira declared Osric, Uncle Edwin’s cousin, king, but when he went to besiege Cadwallon in York, Cadwallon and his men crept out from the city in the night and killed Osric and most all his army. Now Cadwallon’s anger falls upon Deira, and he is burning and killing all the thegns that remain, for he said that he had their oath before, and they broke it, so now he will lay waste their land and their homes.”
“Did the
y?”
“Did they what?”
“Did they pledge themselves to Cadwallon?”
Oswiu shrugged. “I do not know. Some will have done, to save their halls and their land. The rest…” He shrugged again.
“God’s disfavour lies upon those who break oath: maybe that is why he allowed Cadwallon to kill Osric, if Osric had pledged himself to Cadwallon.”
“I don’t think Osric cared what God thought; after Edwin died, he brought back the old priest, Coifi, and had him sacrifice to the old gods for victory.”
“But Osric was baptized, wasn’t he? Surely all Edwin’s thegns accepted baptism from Paulinus.”
“So they say. They all followed him into the pool that Edwin had built in his church in York, one after the other, in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti.” Oswiu shrugged again. “Maybe it didn’t work?”
Oswald stared over the Sound towards the mountains of Mull. “When the Israelites broke their covenant with God, he sent the Babylonians to punish them, and they were carried away into slavery; now you tell me Northumbria has broken pledge and abjured God – is it any wonder God’s punishment follows?”
“What did Edwin do wrong then? God punished him.”
“I – I do not know,” Oswald said, a note of helplessness in his voice. “I have thought much on this and I do not understand it.” He shook his head. “If Uncle Edwin had lived, then Northumbria would be safe and there would be no question of what I should do.” Oswald turned to look at his brother. “If our uncle had lived, it would have been convenient for everyone for me to become a monk, thereby removing a threat to the throne, and it would have been God’s will.”
“But he didn’t live,” Oswiu pointed out.
“I don’t know why.” Oswald squeezed a fist with frustration. “I don’t understand it.”
Oswiu looked at his brother. “You mean, you usually do understand things?”
Oswald looked startled. “Don’t you?”
Oswiu laughed. “No, hardly ever. I just do what you tell me – then I know things will work all right.”
Oswald: Return of the King Page 8