Oswald: Return of the King

by Edoardo Albert

  “You are alive?” Aidan asked. Even as he spoke them the words seemed fatuous, yet until he heard Oswald speak, he would not know if what he saw was a man truly living or a wraith returned from the sea.

  “I – I do not know,” said Oswald, and his voice sounded as from one far away, although in truth he was but a few feet from the monk. “I had thought I must die, but now…” He stared at Aidan, as if only just remembering him. “But now, unless this be heaven, and it seems too wet for that, and you be Peter, a Peter who bears the appearance of my friend Aidan, then I must be living, and the Lord has given me his answer.”

  “I am not Peter,” said Aidan.

  “Then I am Oswald, Iding, son of Æthelfrith, nephew to Edwin, by my blood ætheling to Bernicia and to Deira, and I will return to Northumbria to claim my throne.”

  Chapter 10

  “I should make you clean out the pigs for the next five years!” Abbot Ségéne could scarce keep the smile from his face, try as he might.

  Brother Aidan hung his head, but that was as much to keep his own smile from showing too obviously as to hide his shame.

  For his part, Oswiu, who had been called from his station at the isle’s landing place with the news that his brother had been lost at sea, only to find him again, dripping but definitely alive, remained unusually silent. When word had reached him, he had felt the world lurch beneath him, as if the very earth beneath his feet was breaking. But piercing through the shock, there was also a thread of triumph, that now he would no longer be measured against his brother and found wanting. Both feelings clashed, then were washed away with relief when they found Oswald alive.

  “For the next ten years!” said the abbot.

  “Then I shall clean them out with him, for it was my doing that I took boat for the green pilgrimage, not his.” Oswald was making no effort to keep the smile from his own face.

  “I expect you to be giving out gold rings for the next ten years, not swilling pigs,” said the abbot.

  “And then?” asked Oswald. “Ten years is long to reign – few kings do.”

  Abbot Ségéne clapped him on the shoulder. “Let us concern ourselves with what will happen when you return to Northumbria rather than the events of ten years’ time: ‘nolite ergo solliciti esse in crastinum. Crastinus enim dies sollicitus erit sibi ipsi: sufficit diei malitia sua.’”

  The ætheling looked at him blankly.

  The abbot shook his head. “If we had had longer, I would have had you speaking Latin. ‘Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.’”

  Oswald nodded. At those words, he saw himself thrashing against the restraining arms of his father’s retainer as, across upon the far shore of the River Idle, King Rædwald of East Anglia, with Edwin at his side, slowly killed his father.

  “But now that you have decided – and, my son, I truly believe that the decision is wise and one blessed by God – we must decide what to do. You will need men, horses, weapons, supplies, ships, passage from the kings through whose lands you will travel…”

  Oswald held up his hand. “No, Father Abbot. What I need more than all these is speed. The campaigning season draws to its close, and we have not even begun our preparations; therefore no rumour can possibly have reached Cadwallon of what we plan to do. We must act now, before the turning of this year, before word can reach him and before he can prepare his men. I must come upon him as the storm came upon me at sea: unprepared and alone.” The young ætheling smiled. “When I went upon the green pilgrimage, I hoped that God would give answer to the question in my heart; not only did he do that, but he gave me my strategy too.”

  “But you will need some men,” said the abbot. “Cadwallon is scarce like to give up the throne to you on your own. And even if you should find him unprepared, you will not find him alone.”

  “I will send my brother to Dal Riada to bring from there those of our old retainers who now serve the king, and whatever other men would follow me on this venture. There will like be some. I had thought to ask the Uí Neíll, for they have many young men eager for battle and gold, but Oswiu’s, er, friendship with Fina of the Uí Neíll precludes that.” Oswald shrugged. “It will be enough. God wills it.”

  The abbot held up his hand. “In my experience, it is unwise to state too strongly that God wills what you want, for our hearts are dense and our desires dark; the evil one ever seeks to bend them to his ends.”

  But Oswald shook his head. “Father Abbot, I went out upon the green pilgrimage and the storm took me and I was as one dead. But God brought me from the storm; he brought me back from the dead. He wills that I should return and save my people.” There was no doubt in the ætheling’s voice, and those hearing him believed.

  “It may be as you say,” said Abbot Ségéne, “yet nevertheless, God requires us to act too when he wills something: you will seek as many men to accompany you as possible?”

  “Of course,” said Oswald. “But we will not require many, for by accomplishing this with few, we will bring greater glory to God’s name, and spread his fame through all the land, that my people, and the people of the other kingdoms of the Angles and the Saxons, will know him. But that I will leave to my brother; Oswiu will gather those men who will follow us. For my part, I must seek the blessing of our mother.”

  “Can’t I come too to see Mother?” asked Oswiu.

  Oswald looked at him. “If this was an ordinary warband, where we fail or triumph according to the strength of our arms and the chance of the day, then of course you would need to go to Mother to seek her blessing and to bid her farewell, lest the warband fail. But this is no ordinary war party. We will not fail, but my heart tells me that speed is our greatest weapon. You must prepare the men, while I prepare our mother.” He smiled at his younger brother and took hold of his shoulders, so that all Oswiu’s doubts melted in the radiance of his regard. “Will you do that for me, brother?”

  Oswiu shrugged. “Don’t I always?”

  “I would ask you to return here from visiting your mother on Coll, Oswald,” said the abbot. “Before you go on to Dal Riada I will have gifts of my own for your – for our – venture.”

  “I would wish Oswiu to bring the men he gathers here first anyway,” said Oswald. “We should depart upon this venture from this Holy Island.”

  “I will go as soon as I find a boat to take me,” said Oswiu.

  Oswald pointed to where the coracle lay, bottom up, upon the beach. “I already have a boat to take me,” he said.

  “No, no, no!” The abbot held up his hand. “You have near broken my heart once today. You will not do so again. I will send a curragh for you, a vessel fit for the sea, not this eggshell you set out upon the green pilgrimage in.”

  “I jest,” Oswald shuddered. “I would no more set out again upon the ocean in that coracle than I would go against your will, Father Abbot.”

  Abbot Ségéne rolled his eyes. “If that is supposed to give me surety, it doesn’t. It seems to me you have done little else than go against my will in all the years you have lived on the saint’s island.”

  “Now you jest, surely. I have always sought to follow your counsel; it is only that there were times when God’s will was not yours, Father Abbot.”

  Aidan stifled a gasp. For him and the brothers, Abbot Ségéne knew God’s heart as intimately as a mother knows her son. Oswiu, for his part, covered a smile, for he had spent much of his time upon the Holy Isle evading Ségéne’s will, and he could scarce help but enjoy his brother’s discomfiting of the abbot.

  A dark shadow passed over the men and they looked up to see the raven circling. Seeing them, the bird croaked its greeting. Oswald held out his arm and the raven settled upon the machair, bouncing to a stop upon the springy turf before high-stepping towards the ætheling, who bent down so that Bran might claw his way up his arm and sit upon his shoulder. With talons dug firmly into Oswald’s cloak, Bran dipped
his head and croaked again, black eyes fixing each man in the watching ring.

  “At least,” said Abbot Ségéne, “I will be rid of that benighted bird!”

  Bran turned his head to the abbot, his black eyes cold.

  “I sometimes think he understands what I say,” said the abbot.

  “He does,” said Oswald.

  “Very well: then listen to this, unfaithful cargo of Noah. Keep watch upon Oswald. Fly high and bring him warning of enemies, speak to the wind and the sun, talk to the mountains and the marshes; be his eyes and search far. Do this and I will call you blessed among God’s creatures and a worthy cargo of the ark. What say you, raven?”

  The bird regarded the abbot with its black eyes, then dipped its head and croaked out its reply, to the amazed laughter of the men.

  “It truly does understand what I say,” said Abbot Ségéne.

  “Yes,” said Oswald, “he does.”

  *

  “Mother.”

  Oswald took Acha’s hands in his own. She had seen the curragh coming, racing across the sea road, blown by a steady, following wind, and Æbbe, her eyes keen, had seen the dark circling shadow above the boat and known that Bran flew above the curragh, so her brother sailed upon it. They had laid hands alongside the family slaves, pulling the long table out upon the machair in front of the white house to take advantage of the warm, late season weather, and each had set to with baking and cooking, so that Oswald arrived to delicious smells.

  “Oswald.” Mother embraced son, then held him away from her, so that she could see his face more clearly and again fix it in memory. Each time she saw him, he had changed: and now her searching eyes saw that the lines of uncertainty that had marked his face before were gone.

  “It is my turn,” said Æbbe, stepping beside Acha. Oswald reached out to her, and sister and brother held each other, while Acha took in the sight of them, her two eldest children, hale and whole and grown. She had buried three others in the years between these two and Oswiu, two girls and a boy, and she held their memory tightest of all, for she knew that she alone in this middle-earth remembered them. She had buried them in the days when she still followed the old gods, wrapping their little bodies in the finest cloth, giving to the grave richly jewelled spoons and brooches, but taking from it, as the earth closed over them, no hope. For only warriors, heroes slain in battle, were taken to Woden’s hall to feast and fight alongside him through the ages until, with the gods, they would face the monsters of the encircling darkness, and fall to them in the final death. For the newborn and the child, for the woman taken in birthing and the crone withered with age, there were only shadows, drawing down towards the dark until they fell away into silence.

  Such was the belief of her fathers and her mothers, and Acha accepted it with dumb grief as she had buried, one after the other, her babies who had died young. But fleeing the death of her husband and the vengeance of her brother, Acha had taken her children for refuge among the islands, and there learned a hope she had not known: life, life for all, babe and greybeard, warrior and woman, king and slave. And in hearing, Acha knew it for the answer to a hope she had not known she had cleaved to, even as she buried her three lost children. In her heart, in her soul, she commended them to hope. Acha held them among the saved, for from each she had kept a part, hair or nail, and this she blessed and, apart from priests and monks and any man, these she baptized.

  “You have not brought your brother?” Acha asked.

  Oswald shook his head. “I ask your pardon, Mother, but we have need of speed, and I sent him to gather men to our cause.” The ætheling let go of his sister, and abruptly knelt before Acha. “I ask your blessing. I ask your blessing as queen of Bernicia, as queen of Deira, of the house of Yffing, married to the Idings, bridge between two kingdoms, widow, mother.”

  Acha looked down at her son. Although he knelt, his face was upturned to her, and the sun caught it, as so often it seemed to catch Oswald’s face. In truth, the lines of uncertainty had gone from his skin and his eyes were clear of the doubt she had seen before, when they had come together to debate what to do after Edwin’s death. “What have you seen to make you so sure?” she asked.

  “I – I went on the green pilgrimage, and God, in storm and wind and land beyond hope, showed me what I must do. Though I wished for the peace of the Holy Isle, God has called me to take the sword in defence of our people and to claim the throne in his name.” The young man smiled, but tears glittered in his eyes. “I would have been more happy than I can say to be Brother Oswald, a monk of the Holy Isle, but I will be Oswald Lamnguin once again, the Whiteblade, and go to seek my throne.”

  Acha took his face in her hands. “Are you certain of this?” She looked into his eyes, and looked away. Her breath caught in her throat and her heart lurched, for fear tugged at her bowels: the mother fear, too often realized, of laying her child into the earth’s long embrace.

  “I am certain,” said Oswald. She knew he spoke truly, but still she could not bring her gaze back to his face. Letting go, she turned her back upon her son and gazed out over the sea. Tiree lay close to the south-west, a short pull across the Sound. North-west, barely visible, were the first of the Outer Hebrides: Sandray, Vatersay, Barra. And then sea. Rolling, grey, green, blue. But even the sea, first and masterless, had quietened at the command of her heart Lord. If he had chosen Oswald, she could not hold him back for mother fear.

  Acha turned back to her son, still kneeling upon the machair. Oswald, seeing her framed with the sun, saw her as the queen, the queen twice over, that she was: tall and fierce and dark. She seized his face between her hands and turned it up to her.

  “You will live; you will take the throne and cast down your enemies and the enemies of our people; you will fill their mouths with dust and the throne that is yours will be yours, my son, my son. My son.” Then, placing her hands upon his head, Acha breathed her blessing upon him.

  Oswald rose. “Will you come to me? Mother, after I have taken the throne and an Iding rules once more in Bernicia and an Yffing in Deira, will you come to me, and Æbbe too, and make your home again in the east lands, between the mountains and the sea? I would give land to you, Æbbe, good land to hold, that you might make a holy house and hold the kingdom in your prayers, that we might live. And you, Mother, you could remain with Æbbe if that is your wish, or you could stay with me, queen once more.”

  Acha brushed a strand of hair back beneath her scarf. “Ah, after all these years, you still take me by surprise, Oswald. I had not thought to be asked that and now I do not know what to say.” She shook her head in thought. “A king must needs wed: for children, for young æthelings to tumble their rivalry in the sun and for maidens to marry the æthelings of other kings. It would not do to have such as me, your mother, about you when you wed. Nor would I ask our slaves, who followed us into exile when I offered them their freedom, to move once more when they have made new families here, and children. Besides, I have lived many years here, within sight of the Holy Isle, and I have grown used to seeing the sun lay the red road of its setting upon the sea. This is where I had thought to die and be lain to rest, and I am content that that should be so.”

  “Give them again the choice they made when we fled: freedom to stay, or go. For love of you, they followed you into exile; let them choose once more. But Mother, come when I call and I will make for you a new Holy Island. Abbot Ségéne has promised to send me a bishop and monks when I win the throne, and I will give over to them the island that is not; the place which takes pilgrims dry-shod then sets them back to shore.” Oswald smiled as he saw his mother grasp his riddle.

  “Lindisfarne,” Acha said.

  “Yes, Lindisfarne,” said Oswald. “A new Holy Island, daughter to the Blessed Colm Cille’s house in Iona, an island and mainland, a place apart and yet part of the whole: what better home for the monks that the abbot has promised me! With them, Mother, my sister, we can tell the people, our people, the news of hope and bring them li
fe.” Oswald looked to his mother and saw she still hesitated. “Besides, you said you have grown used to watching the sun set? Come with me and watch the sun rise!”

  Acha smoothed her hands down over the front of her dress. She looked to her daughter, who nodded her assent with bright face and ready eyes.

  “Very well,” Acha said. “Win the throne and we will come. But only win the throne first, my son, and in winning it, see to your brother, for he is rash and prone to anger, and if there was one thing I learned from your father of war, it is that killing is better done with cool head than hot heart. Now,” said Acha, turning to where the table sat upon the machair in front of the house, “you will stay and eat with us…”

  “Mother, I should …”

  “You will stay and eat with us,” she continued, undeflected, moving to direct the slaves about their task. Oswald glanced at Æbbe, who smiled at him with the shared understanding of siblings.

  “I think you’re staying to eat with us,” she said. “Besides, you have to give us a little time: we have to finish weaving your banner.”

  Oswald looked at her in surprise.

  “Oh, yes,” said Æbbe. “We have been weaving your banner this past two month. While the days were yet long we set to, weaving long into the white night, and even now, when the days grow shorter, we spend our time weaving.”

  Oswald glanced at Acha, busying herself with preparations around and about the table now. “Why, if she knew this would happen, did she hesitate to lay her blessing upon me?” he asked.

  “Don’t you know? We weaved against the weavers, brother. We sewed against the fate singers, and breathed our prayers into the thread. When the time comes for you to fly your banner upon the field, Oswald, know that our prayers lie within it and upon it.”

  *

  Oswald, belly still full from the feasting of the day before, stepped back onto the strand of the Holy Isle. Although the wind, blowing keenly from the north-west, had served to clear his head on the voyage back from Coll, his legs felt heavy as he walked upon land again.