The Northumbrian nodded. “I know whereof you speak, Sigeberht.”
“Then know that I would have more of this new life. When I return to my land and my country, I will put away the crown and step away from the throne. There is another, Ecgric, who is ready and able to rule in my place. And I will enter a monastery, the holy house at Beodricesworth, and raise sword never again.” Sigeberht looked to Oswald. “What say you of this, Oswald, High King?”
“I say I would that I could join you, Sigeberht. I say I will raise no counsel against you, for there is no work greater than the work of prayer in the houses of the holy. I say, if God wills, someday I too will put the sword aside and join you in prayer.”
The king nodded. “I thank you, High King. I have yet to tell any others what I plan, but now I have your blessing I will return and tell my people. Ecgric will make a good king, although he still follows the old ways.” Sigeberht took Oswald’s hand in his own. “But my heart tells me the days will be long, and the time may never come, before you can lay aside the sword.”
“That may be so.” But here Oswald smiled. “Yet there was less death today than I feared, far far less. Now I must catch up with my brother, for I have redeemed my cousin from Penda, and one who was as dead will live.”
Sigeberht looked at Oswald. “You truly want him to live?”
“Yes,” said Oswald. He stopped. “You are the third to ask me this. Is it so strange?”
“Yes, it is strange. Few kings would welcome back alive another who might claim their throne, particularly when there is blood, much blood, between your families.”
“Nevertheless, I have redeemed him, and now we shall go to fetch him.”
Sigeberht nodded. “I hope Penda realized your wishes.”
“What do you mean?”
“It would be easy for him to think you wanted Eadfrith dead but sought to have another’s hand do the killing, lest the guilt, and blood debt, incur to you.”
Oswald stared at him. “But I told him I wanted him alive.”
“Did you say alive?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m sure I did. Yes.”
*
They found Eadfrith, son of Edwin, Yffing, lying by Ælberht’s oak. He lay upon his back, and his arms were spread, as if in his dying he sought to embrace the sky. Oswald saw Oswiu standing beside him as he slipped from his horse.
“Penda left a message.” Oswiu pulled a slave forward, a young lad who, seeing Oswald and the rage and grief upon his face, shivered back against Oswiu’s side. But Oswiu bent down to him. “Do not fear; his anger is not for you. Tell him your message.”
The boy stepped forward, his hands behind his back, as he had been taught when delivering messages from memory.
“Speak,” said Oswald.
“Penda of Mercia leaves this gift for you. He has done as you wished. The only ætheling who might yet claim your throne is your brother, and Penda leaves him to you to deal with, as he has given his own brother into your keeping.”
Oswald nodded, tight-lipped.
“Anything else?”
“Penda of Mercia says it is better to rule alone. He thanks you for your aid in securing his throne.”
Oswald began to turn away, but the boy coughed. “There was one more message, lord. Penda of Mercia said that Eadfrith never gave him what was in his heart; he took it with him when he died.”
Oswald nodded. “Thank you.” He went and knelt beside his cousin. He saw there something of the face he remembered, of the young man who would play with his eager cousin, before their families had been torn apart in blood and death. Oswald drew his hand down over Eadfrith’s face and closed his eyes.
The last of the sons of Edwin was dead.
PART 3
Rule
Chapter 1
“We could be sending Brother Diuma to his death.”
Oswald looked to Aidan. He nodded. “I know.”
The warrior monk, his spear laid aside for a staff that might possibly pass as an aid to walking rather than a weapon of war, sat in the curragh, bobbing high on the shore by Aidan’s monastery.
“But if it is the red martyrdom he faces, Diuma goes willingly.” Aidan raised his hand as the wind caught the small sail of the curragh and sent it skimming over the sea, down the coast towards Bamburgh and beyond: the great tidal flows of the Humber and then the long haul upstream, using every breath of wind along the way, as the River Trent took Diuma into the heart of Penda’s kingdom.
“You’re waving,” Oswald said.
“Yes,” said Aidan.
“You’re his bishop. He might prefer your blessing.”
“Oh, of course.” Aidan added the vertical to his wave, now signing the cross over the departing monk. Brother Diuma, seeing the blessing, waved back.
“I keep forgetting,” Aidan said.
Oswald looked to the slight figure standing beside him. Although outwardly he seemed the same as the hesitant monk he had known on the Holy Isle, inwardly the man had changed, and sometimes it was apparent to all around him. His monks on Lindisfarne harkened to his word, each eager to do whatever their abbot asked; Aidan appeared to not even realize that it might be different with a different abbot. So when he had asked for a monk to volunteer to go to Penda to tell him of the news of life, all had put themselves forward. The main difficulty Aidan had faced was preventing the competition from escalating to blows. In the end, Diuma had won, arguing that his background as warrior made him most suitable; and that the blood guilt that lay upon him from his years of killing meant that he had most sin to expiate, and therefore most need of the red martyrdom, should it be granted to him.
Before the argument descended into a sordid competition to see who had killed the most men in their former lives – Oswald suspected that the tally for some of the men come from Iona would be large indeed – and with others, less bloodstained but more world weary, urging the inclusion of sins sexual, spiritual and corporeal, as well as martial, Aidan had decreed Diuma to be the monk he had chosen for the mission. Now they were watching him depart.
Neither monk nor king moved from the strand until the curragh was lost from sight among the dipping grey waves. The clouds hung low above their heads, but the rain that they promised did not fall, instead holding itself from the earth. Ducks, black and white, bobbed upon the swell. Aidan pointed to them.
“Eider,” he said. “They have come in close to shore. There is a storm coming.”
“When isn’t there?” said Oswald.
“True.” The monk smiled. “In one day I have been hailed upon, windswept, sun burned and snowed on, with the sea mist arriving to seal the day into grey.”
“Oh, was this not the best place for your monastery?”
“It is perfect. All God’s blessings, the sweet and the bitter, laid out for us near enough each day. Besides, it reminds me of home.”
“Good. I had wanted to give you the right place, and one near to me.”
“But you spend but a month or so in Bamburgh each year.”
“A king must see the people, and the people see him. Besides, oft times when I have returned here, you have been gone yourself.”
“A bishop must teach; I go into the hills and along the coast, speaking to every man I meet – now, at last, I speak your tongue well enough for people to understand me without someone else saying my words.” Aidan smiled. “Although, it is true, I had no difficulty in getting a hearing when I had the king telling my words for me!”
“But they still hear you?”
“For the most part they do. The thegns and reeves, they listen with eagerness, for if they would know your mind better, they know they must understand the hope that moves you. The ceorls listen with half an ear and somewhat less mind, for as always their sight is tilted to their fields and their crops. But already, through prayer and by some knowledge that Brother Fintan has brought with him, their crops wax greater and their lives less harsh; so their interest grows. And the slaves, they are most open of all.
”
“You speak to slaves as well?”
“Yes.” Aidan looked at Oswald. “Of course. Would you have me not?”
“No, no. But what of their masters – do they allow it?”
“I do not ask of their masters. I speak where and when I find men, in the fields or upon the road; there is no need to ask permission of masters there.”
“Some masters might not agree.”
“I do not ask them.” Aidan looked at the king. “But mayhap it would be better if you did not speak of it.”
“I will not.” Oswald nodded. “Abbot Ségéne did indeed choose the right man to be bishop in my kingdom.”
Aidan grimaced. “A man who still forgets he is a bishop and waves instead of blessing. But come, now you are here let me show you what has been done in your absence.”
Taking Oswald by the arm, Aidan led him from the beach, studded with the upturned shells of curraghs and coracles and speckled with drying nets and fish traps, towards the monastery.
The church, its walls washed white, was the largest building. The roof was thatch, and three small windows in each long wall brought light, but not much light, into the nave.
Clustered around the church, and looking, Oswald thought, like chicks clustered around a hen, were the huts in which the monks slept and some slightly larger buildings: the refectory and, judging from the smoke rising from it, the kitchen. But these were not the buildings that Aidan wanted to show Oswald. Instead, he led him to another structure, built on the south-facing side of the monastery, its southern wall opened by two doors and more and bigger windows than he had seen before, although shutters, pegged back for the moment, meant that the windows could be closed should the rain and wind blow from the south. Outside the building, perched upon stools, were three monks with slabs of slate laid upon their knees and rows of long feathers, stuck into wax, by their sides, hunched over whatever lay upon their slates.
Aidan pointed. “A book is as vital to a monk as a sword is to a king. Books contain our Great Work, which is to call God’s grace and blessing down upon this middle-earth, and your realm, as rain from clouds, and to offer to God our thanks and our praise…”
“You are God’s scops,” said Oswald. “The singers of his praises and the tellers of his deeds.”
Aidan thought. “Maybe that is the case. But I would say we are monks: that is our work. And as books are necessary to our work, we have started to make them. The scribes sit out here, when the weather holds and the light is good. Abbot Ségéne, in his generosity, sent five books from Iona: a psalter, a gospel book, and three works of the fathers. These we must copy, the psalter and gospel book first of all, that others might have what is most necessary for all men to know.” Aidan turned to Oswald. “For if you will grant it, lord, I would establish further monasteries, that those who are far from here may yet receive the news of life, and have it.”
“Where? You have but to ask, Aidan, and I will give you the hides necessary to support as many monasteries as you have monks to fill them.”
“It should not be difficult to fill them, for the abbot sends me more monks from the Holy Isle – so many that we can bare fit them all in here. So I would establish daughter houses, at Melrose first and then one or two other places.” Aidan smiled. “In fact, that may be another reason Brother Diuma was so keen to go to Penda: at least there will be no lack of room for him there; here he had to sleep with his feet out of the door of his cell, so crowded had it become.”
“Very well. Ask and it will be given you.”
“You remembered. Very good.”
Oswald smiled in turn. “It was not hard. It was given to me. Now, will you return with me to Bamburgh? Oswiu wants to see you, and I would wish you to speak with Eowa, Penda’s brother. Now that Penda has given him into our hands as hostage, we must care for him; there is also the chance to tell him the news of life, that he might live and, in time, mayhap bring his people to such knowledge too.”
Aidan shook his head. “There is much I must do here.”
“But we are here for only a short time; after this we go to Ad Gefrin, to receive the render of the hill men. When I sought you as bishop from Abbot Ségéne, I thought in part to have my friend beside me in a land that, though that of my birth, had become strange to me through my years of exile. But now it seems I see you less than if you had remained upon the Holy Isle.”
“Nevertheless, I have much work to do.” Aidan paused, then turned to his old friend. “There is another reason. Abbot Ségéne warned me, when he left me here as bishop, to beware kings, even those who were friends – perhaps especially those who were friends. ‘For their ways are not our ways, and their tasks are not our tasks; yet, being kings, they will of necessity seek to bend you to their will and their throne, that they might better accomplish what they set themselves to do. This you must resist, lest our work, which is the greater, become subsumed in their work, which is the less.’ That is what Abbot Ségéne said to me before he left to return to the Holy Isle. Do you think it untrue or unjust?”
“I can think it neither; but I can also think it incomplete. Surely a king has need of counsellors, men of wisdom who will help guide him and, through him, his people. Should you not be my counsellor who is also my oldest friend?”
“I would that I might be so, yet the abbot also said that the risk of the great work being subsumed into the lesser work of kings is with a king who is a friend: ‘For you will see him changed by the throne and you will wish to hold him unmarked, yet such cannot be, and to think so is foolishness.’”
Oswald held his hands to his chest. “Have I been changed by the throne?”
The monk looked at him. “Yes,” he said.
“How so? Or would it be best that I not know?”
Aidan turned and looked down the coast to the rock upon which the stronghold of Bamburgh stood.
“I will come with you,” he said.
“But what of my question? How have I changed?”
The monk turned to look at the king. “Once, you would not have had to ask me.”
*
“This is as it used to be!” Oswiu’s smile embraced Aidan and his brother. “When it was just the three of us on the Holy Isle.”
“But let me remind you, it is not just the three of you any longer,” said Rhieienmelth, flashing a smile to her husband and Aidan and, last of all, to Oswald.
“Well, that is true,” said Oswiu. “But to have the three of us together again – it is like our days on the Holy Isle. And what is more, we have a new Holy Island too!”
“But no women were allowed on the Holy Isle of Colm Cille, whereas I have already been on your Holy Island, Bishop Aidan. Would you ban women from your Holy Island? Would you give him leave to do so?” Rhieienmelth turned her smile once again upon Oswald. He received it with no answering smile, but turned to Aidan, jerking his gaze from his sister-in-law.
“Do you wish to remove women from the Holy Island, Bishop Aidan?”
Rhieienmelth glanced at her husband and raised an eyebrow. “So formal,” she whispered, loudly enough for all to hear.
“No, I would not remove women from Holy Island. Although, for some of the younger monks, it might mean less distraction, it would mean expelling the families of the fishermen and farmers who were upon the island before we came to it; and most all of these families have been baptized. That would not be just.”
“So true,” Rhieienmelth whispered again.
Oswiu stifled a laugh, then pushed it further down when his brother turned a disapproving glance towards him.
“Aidan is a bishop,” said Oswald. “He should be respected.”
“Aidan is our friend,” said Oswiu. “He should be embraced.” And, getting up from his place, he went to the monk and swept him into a hug. As he did so, slaves and servants began sweeping into the hall, carrying hastily prepared food and drink.
Oswald looked around. “Who ordered a feast?” he asked.
Eowa bowed before hi
m. “I sent word to the kitchen, lord, that you would want food and drink for your friend. Did I do wrong?”
“No. No, of course not. Thank you, Eowa.”
The Mercian made the courtesy and took his place at the end of the table, eating and drinking, but with restraint, through the course of the feast, until, as feasting gave way to conversation, a messenger came into the hall. Then Eowa rose again and approached Oswald.
“Have I leave to remain and hear what tidings the messenger brings? Now I am part of your household, it is only with your permission that I may learn what transpires in my home country.”
Oswald pointed to the messenger; although his face was clear, swirling designs crept from his sleeves, sliding down his forearms. “I fear he brings no news of Mercia, but you are welcome to remain and hear what tidings he brings.”
Eowa nodded. “I thank you, lord. I fear that if the fate weavers had spun their thread differently, you would not have received such courtesy from us.”
“I am not you.” Oswald waved the messenger forward. “Come, tell your name and tell your tidings.”
“I am named Leith. I come with news and word from King Rhoedd of Rheged.”
Princess Rhieienmelth sat forward. “My father? Is he well?”
“Yes, he is well.”
“Oh.” The princess sat back.
“But he sends word to his ally, Oswald, High King of Britain, and to his son-in-law Oswiu, that he is sore pressed by the warbands of the Gododdin, who harry his country and steal his animals and take his people, weeping and wailing, as slaves. He asks Oswald, as High King, to send aid, to send an army or, better still, to come himself, the Lamnguin, and drive these vermin from his lands and to take their ancestral stronghold, the great rock at Edinburgh.” The messenger stopped and looked from Oswald to the other powerful men at the high table, then to the woman who sat between Oswald and Oswiu.
Oswald: Return of the King Page 32