Sigeberht stared into the eyes of his friend of old and did not know them. He unpeeled the fingers wrapped around his arm.
“No,” he said. “I made vow to put aside sword forever and take as my weapon only prayer and staff. I made no exceptions to the vow and I would be faithless were I to put it aside now.”
“You made vow to gods who laugh upon us in our plight, who take our sacrifices and spit upon them. Such vows are worthless.”
“I have one God and he is not faithless.”
“Then why does he not guard your kingdom now you have given it up for his sake?”
Sigeberht shook his head. “That is not his way; he cares not for worldly honour, but for the spirits of those who turn to him – and those who turn from him.”
“If he does not care for worldly honour, he will have none; men will not worship a god who brings no victory.”
“He brings truth; that is victory enough.”
“No.” Ecgric shook his head. “No, it isn’t enough. You look at Penda advancing across our land, ravaging as he goes, and then tell me truth is victory. Victory is truth, and you are going to help me gain victory whether you will or not. Old friend. Penda’s men are close at hand. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t send you back to the abbey.”
“I will bear no sword, but I will give counsel, if you would have it.”
“Tell me.”
“How many men does Penda bring with him?”
“More than I – than we – have. Sixty, maybe seventy or eighty.”
Sigeberht nodded. “I saw, what, thirty men in your camp?”
“Forty, and most of those carry injuries, like me.”
“Then I counsel that you seek not to meet Penda in battle again, but withdraw to one of the islands in the Great Fen, and take shelter there. He will not be able to bring his men to such a place. Then send word to our allies, to Cynegils of the West Saxons, to the kings of Kent and the East Saxons, but most of all to the High King, to Oswald, telling of our plight, that they may come to our aid, as they are pledged to.”
“It will be at least two weeks, maybe three, before any could come to our aid at this time of year; the spring storms will stop Oswald arriving by sea, and those riding will be delayed, even once they have gathered their men.”
“You may hold for two weeks, or even three, particularly if Penda knows not where you have gone.”
Ecgric grinned. “I’m not going alone, old friend.”
*
“Tell King Sigeberht and King Ecgric I will come.”
The messenger made the courtesy, the smile that came with renewed hope spreading across his face, and he stuttered thanks to Oswald.
“I will leave a guide to take you to where King Ecgric has taken refuge; King Sigeberht takes the title king no longer, but he is our lord too, and gives wise counsel to King Ecgric, though he will bear no sword, but only a staff.”
“Bid them have courage and endure; we will come as soon as wind and wave allow.”
“You come by sea?”
“That is the quickest way.”
“But less sure at this time of year.”
“Speed counts for more in this matter – for you as for us. I will have my men prepare food and drink for you, that you may take upon your boat, but you must return forthwith.”
As the messenger withdrew, Oswald turned to his counsellors: Bassus, his new warmaster, and Eowa of Mercia.
“Your brother could not sit content with his throne, but seeks to take another.”
“My only surprise is that it has taken him so long to break his pledge to you,” said Eowa.
“We can gather sixty men at once,” said Bassus, “and leave upon the tide tomorrow. If we wait two days, that will rise to eighty or ninety. In a week we could have one hundred and twenty.”
“I doubt Sigeberht and Ecgric have a week,” said Oswald. “Nor even two days. No, we will leave on the morrow with all the men we have here.” The king looked at Eowa. “We go against your brother. What say you of that?”
“I hope you kill him.”
Bassus laughed. “Not much love for brother there,” he said.
“My brother sent me as hostage that he might spare himself,” said Eowa. “And though I have rich treatment here among the Idings, yet I remember that against him. And in giving me as hostage, he removed a threat to his throne. For there were many among the witan who said that I was the more throne-worthy.” Eowa sighed. “But for my part, I held my hand from him and made no move against him, not knowing that my brother was plotting against me. It was ever thus: brother against brother.”
Oswald made no reply, but Bassus nodded his agreement.
“Gather the men we have and tell them to make ready. We leave tomorrow with the tide.”
Eowa groaned. “Not more boats.”
Oswald laughed. “If you would have us strike against your brother, we must needs get there quickly, and there is no faster way than by boat.”
“But I want to be able to raise sword when I get there. After two days in a boat, I will not be good for anything.”
“That is as well. There is great blood guilt in slaying a brother – however much he deserves it,” said Oswald.
*
“Where is he?” The seax, point deep into the side of the monk’s neck, drew a welling bead of blood from the skin. “Where is your abbot?”
“I – I will not say,” said the monk, his eyes swivelling from the man who held the seax against his throat to the one questioning him. Although the one with the knife was the one who might kill him, yet it was the other, the one asking the questions, who truly scared him.
“King Penda, I ask you, please, if I have done aught to please you, spare my brother monk.” Diuma appeared, his robes hitched up to near his waist, that they might not catch his running legs. When he had heard that the acting abbot of Beodricesworth monastery had been dragged to the king, he had gone rushing to him.
“I am glad you have come,” said Penda. “Tell this monk that I am a man of my word. If he tells me what I ask, then I will spare him and all his fellows.”
“It may be that he can give no answer for the question you ask him, lord,” said Brother Diuma. “There was a story when I was young…”
“I do not have two days,” said Penda, “so you will spare me this story. Tell this monk to say where his abbot is, and I will spare him and all the others in this monastery. After all, I am not like the father of Oswald. Æthelfrith killed monks for his good pleasure; I allow one to speak of his god to me in my own household. Tell him this.”
Brother Diuma looked to the men holding the monk, and in particular the one holding the seax to his throat.
“Release him,” said Penda.
Released, the monk gasped, his hand going to his throat, but the skin there was merely bruised, not sliced.
Diuma looked at the man and saw the pale skin and dark hair of one of his own people. Speaking in the language of his fathers, he asked, “Whence came you here, brother?”
The monk started.
“You are of the Baptized? I had not thought to hear the tongue of my forefathers from those who break down our doors and spill the blood of the brothers.”
“I am of the sons of Ulster, sent from the Holy Isle to Northumbria and King Oswald, thence among the pagans and King Penda, that I might tell them the news of life and bring them to it.”
The monk looked sidelong at the warriors standing ready and the grim king standing before him.
“I take it you have not succeeded?”
“Not yet. But King Penda makes no hindrance to my speaking; I may talk with whomever will listen. The king himself oft speaks with me of the faith, learning of it.”
“No doubt that is why he wishes to speak to my abbot too,” said the monk dryly, attempting to massage some feeling back into his neck.
“No, it is not,” said Penda in the same language.
The monk froze. His eyes leapt from Brother Diuma to Penda and ba
ck again. “I – I did not know you spoke our tongue.”
“I tire of this. Tell me where your abbot who was once king is, or I will do as the Twister did, and start killing monks in front of your eyes.”
Brother Diuma placed himself in front of the monk. “You will have to strike me first, lord.”
Penda shook his head. “Do you really think I would not?”
“No, lord, no I do not. But I would not live if I let such blood flow.”
“There is no need.” The monk pushed Brother Diuma aside. “There is no great secret to where the abbot has gone. I can show you.” He looked questioningly to Penda, who nodded, and then led them through the broken gate and to the rise that looked over the black water and grey distance of the Great Fen. “He is there,” he said, and he pointed to the fen fastness. From the heart of its immensity rose the wheeling black shapes of buzzards and hawks and kites, while the wind moved waves through the banks of reeds and sedge that crawled between the black waters.
“Where?” asked Penda.
“Who can say where anything is in the Great Fen?” said the monk.
From out of the immensity rose, in many places, the irregular columns of smoke that marked the dwelling of a fen family eking a living trapping eels and wild fowling in a world more water than earth. Any of those smoke columns might indicate the refuge of the kings. Within the untracked pathways of the fen, they were as unreachable as the emperor of the East.
Penda looked out over the fen. “It is not so easy for a king to hide,” he said. “Less so for two of them.”
*
“How long are we going to wait here?” Ecgric paced up and down by the mean fire that produced more smoke than heat and was the only source of warmth on the damp, low island in the Great Fen where they had taken refuge. To call it an island was to dignify it with a solidity it did not possess. Rather, it was a series of tussocks and humps of ground rising just above the squelching mud and black water, but more through the accumulated growth of many years of reed and sedge than through any depth of earth. It was a shifting, sodden world, and a single misstep would send the walker knee deep in stinking, clinging mud.
The men who had accompanied King Ecgric and Abbot Sigeberht into the fen lay about on what patches of drier ground they could find. Even the time-honoured pastimes of waiting warriors – talking, boasting, remembering and dicing – had grown tedious in the time they had spent waiting upon their allies to come. Of all the men, only Sigeberht seemed relatively content, and that was because he spent most of his day engaged in the Great Work of monks, praying the Office, most of which the abbot had committed to memory. But though the Latin phrases had first soothed Ecgric, they had come to annoy him almost beyond endurance, particularly when reports reached him, brought by one of the fensmen, of Penda’s depredations.
“How long are we going to wait?” Ecgric repeated, this time stopping his pacing in front of the kneeling abbot.
Sigeberht continued the Latin phrase through to its end, then looked up at Ecgric.
“Until Oswald arrives,” he said.
“If he was coming, he should have got here by now,” said Ecgric.
“This is the storm season; it would be easy for him to be delayed, stormbound.”
“He could have walked here by now. On his hands.”
“But if he set off by boat to reach us the more quickly, and became stormbound, he would have to wait for it to clear. Still, it has been quite a long time.”
Ecgric raised a hand. “Wait. How would he find us? We are hidden away in the middle of the Great Fen. Unless he has a guide, he will not reach us.”
“I would expect him to send a messenger; it would simply be a matter of passing the news to one of the fensmen, and he would bring us the news. Then we would go out to meet him.”
Ecgric shivered and drew his cloak tighter around his body. “I hope he is swift. This damp is in my bones and no fire seems able to drive it out.”
As he spoke, the tell-tale sound of rushes compacting under foot – a squelching, fibrous noise – told the arrival of one of the fensmen, bringing tidings and meagre supplies. The man – a creature, to Ecgric’s eye, who seemed all but made of the marsh he dwelled in – cringed in front of the king, tugging a finger through his matted hair.
“What news?” asked Ecgric.
The creature sidled closer, bringing a whiff of the marsh with him.
“He is here, master,” he said. “He sent me to tell you, to fetch you.”
“Who is here?” asked Ecgric, suddenly attentive. Beside him, Sigeberht got to his feet.
“The king,” said the fensman. “The High King, the one you sent for. He is here. He waits outside and bids you come to him.”
“Whereaways?”
“Yonder.” The fensman pointed. Like all his people, he had only the vaguest appreciation of the geography outside the fen but the most minute knowledge of the shifting pathways within the marsh.
“Wait,” said Sigeberht. “What sign or token did he give for surety?”
“Here it be,” said the fensman, and he held up a single black feather. A raven feather.
The two kings looked to each other.
“It is Oswald,” said Sigeberht.
“What are we waiting for?” said Ecgric. “Let’s get out of this place.” He turned to the fensman. “Lead us to him.”
It was the work of but a few minutes to strike the mean camp they had made, and then the fensman took them, by narrow paths and uncertain steps, sometimes perforce wading through water still winter cold, towards the edge of the fen. As they went, the fensman pointed ahead.
“See, the masts of his ships.” And rising up beyond the next line of dwarf alder were the tall poles and yards of Oswald’s boats. No sail hung from them, of course, as this far upriver they would have been rowed or poled, but they were almost there, and the men, cheered by the prospect of finally leaving the bone-gnawing damp of the fen, splashed towards them, breasting through the final line of trees.
“There they be,” said the fensman, pointing to the boats drawn up on the bank of the River Great Ouse. Tents were set up on the bank, and flying from a pole was the gold and purple banner of Northumbria.
As the Northumbrians saw the men emerge from the fen, the camp stirred into activity, men forming into an honour guard to welcome the kings of the East Angles as they marched towards the camp.
But as they approached, Sigeberht saw that the place of honour, where Oswald should have waited for them, stood empty. Looking more closely at the men of the honour guard, he began to see tension under the respect of the silence in which they waited.
“Wait,” he said, taking hold of Ecgric’s shoulder. “Stop.” He looked around. Both ends of the honour guard were beginning to drift inwards. He peered more closely at the faces, and saw no man there that he recognized. Though he had not met all of Oswald’s thegns and retainers, yet he would expect to see one or two faces he knew among the High King’s men.
“What is it?” asked Ecgric.
As he asked the question, a man, armoured but with his helmet held under his arm, stepped into the gap at the centre of the honour guard.
“The High King,” said the fensman, pointing.
“You know,” said Penda, “he genuinely believed me to be the High King. That’s why he made such a convincing messenger.”
*
The river was grown too shallow for rowing now, so the men stood and pushed their oars down into the soft mud below the boat, poling the vessel along. Three boats, each holding some twenty-five men, moved slowly through the trailing grey willow fronds. In the lead boat, a fensman, his speech all but incomprehensible to Oswald but his gestures plain enough, pointed the way through the winding streams of black water. Each pole pulled up released an upwelling of foul gases, so they travelled within a noxious cloud, causing some of the men, seasoned sailors though they were, to gag and void their bellies over the sides of the boats.
The fensman brought
them through the network of streams and channels to the broader waters of the River Great Ouse. He pointed ahead, but even without his indication, the circling cloud of buzzards and kites, crows and rooks, told the tale of what lay beneath.
“He said he be the High King. He said he be you.” The fensman turned his face to Oswald, and tears tracked through the grain of fine silt layered upon his cheeks. “I not know. I think he tell truth.”
“Did anyone get away?” asked Oswald.
The fensman pointed to himself. “The king, Ecgric, he wanted to kill me, but the other king, the holy man, he stopped him. He said I did not know what I did – and that is true. He put himself in front of me when Ecgric raise his sword against me, raising his staff to protect me. Then he told me, ‘Run.’ I run. I have children, wife, and no sword. I run into the fen and there I watch.”
The boats, with enough water now to pull oar, made swift progress through the flat, turbid waters of the Great Ouse. The sound of the scavenger birds grew louder: the cough and caw of crows, the whir of rooks, the feather rush of buzzard and kite.
“The fight, it is not long, I think; but for me, I think it goes on forever. King Ecgric fight bravely, but he soon falls. Only the other king, the holy king, holds the battle together long, and he does not fight, but stands with his staff in his hand, praying and calling out until the last of the men around him fall. Then King Penda goes to him, and I hear, I hear…”
*
“You fought well without even raising a sword.” Penda stopped in front of Sigeberht. “You should have stayed king.”
“Seeing what kings become, I am glad I did not.” Sigeberht held his staff in his right hand. It was notched in many places, where it had deflected blows intended for the men beside him, but now the last of them had fallen and he stood face to face with death. Sigeberht smiled. “I have taken the better part.”
“You can live, you know,” said Penda. “You don’t have to die with the other one.”
Sigeberht nodded. “That lies more with you than with me.”
“No. No, it doesn’t. All you have to do is acknowledge me as over-king, and I will leave you be, as long as you take back the throne of the East Angles. I will not have it occupied by another ally of Oswald.”
Oswald: Return of the King Page 38