WHITEBLADE: Kings of Northumbria Book 1

by H A CULLEY

  ‘You are very kind to offer us such hospitality, but we wouldn’t want to put you to the trouble. I can see an upturned boat over there which you are repairing. That will provide sufficient shelter for our needs, but we would be grateful if we could purchase some fish and bread from you.’

  The headman looked put out, but he nodded.

  ‘I think it would be more suitable to offer King Murchadh’s son a better place to rest your head, but if that is your wish…. However, you will both join us for a feast in your honour tonight, I hope?’

  ‘We would be delighted to. Thank you,’ Ròidh said quickly, in case Aidan was about to decline.

  The next day they set out later than they had intended with sore heads and bloated stomachs. Aidan felt a little guilty about eating so much food as the inhabitants were evidently poor, but Ròidh said that their visit would be talked about for ages and they would be devastated if he thought that they couldn’t afford to lay on such a feast.

  ‘How far is it to King Necton’s hall?’ Ròidh had asked the settlement headman before they left.

  He looked at the other men helplessly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Prince Ròidh, but none of us have been there, nor have we ever met anyone who has. All we know is that it is inland and I presume it is some distance away; perhaps many days’ walk.’

  That contradicted what they had been told previously. Murchadh had been certain that it lay on the coast. Both Ròidh and Aidan thought that they would rather rely on the king’s knowledge than the vague thoughts of people who had never been further from their home than a few miles out to sea.

  ‘Thank you for your help yesterday,’ Aidan said as soon as the pair were out of sight of the settlement. ‘Although I have seen Brother Finnian charm his way into people’s hearts so many times, I fear I lack the skill myself.’

  Ròidh smiled at his companion. ‘You just need confidence in yourself. Next time I’ll hang back and let you do the talking.’

  ‘Oh!’ Aidan was about to object when he realised that Ròidh was right. He mustn’t depend on the boy’s father’s status if he was to have any chance of success as a missionary. The boy was meant to be his assistant, not the other way around.

  ‘You’re right, of course. I’ll do the talking next time.’

  Although Aidan was the older by eight years, he’d tended to defer to his young friend because of his royal status. Now he realised that that wasn’t appropriate. He would have to think of Ròidh as a potential novice monk, nothing more. It wouldn’t help Ròidh if and when they arrived back on Iona if he was anything more than Aidan’s assistant. There were other monks and novices with royal blood in their veins and they were treated no differently to anyone else. As monks, the king’s son was regarded for his piety and usefulness to the monastery, the same as the fisherman’s son.

  Aidan therefore began to teach Ròidh to speak and then read and write in Latin. The two were already helping each other to improve their skill in each other’s languages, but that exchange of knowledge put them on an equal footing. Teaching Latin and improving the boy’s knowledge of the scriptures, as well as being older, established Aidan as the senior of the two, despite Ròidh’s upbringing and natural tendency to take charge.

  ‘Good evening, I’m Brother Aidan from the Holy Island of Iona and this is my assistant, Ròidh. We would be grateful if you could offer us hospitality for the night. In return, I bring news of the outside world and will tell you of the miracles performed by our saviour Jesus Christ,’ he began, when confronted by the suspicious inhabitants at the next settlement.

  One of the boys picked up a stone and threw it at Aidan. With a great deal of luck, Ròidh managed to catch the stone, which must have stung his hand, but, if so, he gave no sign. He hefted it in his hand and made as if to throw the stone back at the boy, who ducked nervously. Ròidh dropped the stone and smiled and the inhabitants laughed. It broke the ice and they spent another comfortable night.

  This time there was no feast, but they joined the headman and his family, which included the humbled stone thrower, for a modest meal of fish and bread washed down with a particularly nice mead made from the product of bees kept to produce honey for the settlement. It was the first time Aidan has seen wild bees kept and used in this way and he decided to suggest it to the abbot when he returned to Iona.

  Aidan told the sceptical family about the life of Christ in the Brythonic tongue, with occasional help with unfamiliar words from Ròidh, and told them about a few of the parables and miracles from the beautifully illustrated Bible he had inherited from Finnian. This often necessitated a translation from Latin into Gaelic and then into the version of Brythonic spoken by the Picts, but the listeners didn’t seem to mind. There were no druids locally and the deities they prayed to were those that they believed controlled the sea, the weather and the abundance of fish in the sea.

  Aidan deliberated whether to spend longer at the settlement, but there were too few people there to make it worth his while to devote the time necessary to turn them into Christians. His task was to convert the king and establish a base upon which others could build. Nevertheless, he felt guilty about leaving behind the headman and his family with their interest unsatisfied. They hadn’t gone far, following the ill-defined path along the coast, when they heard the sounds of pursuit. Fearing for their safety, they hid in the undergrowth and were amazed to see Varar, the headman’s second son, hurtle passed them, looking for all the world as if he was intent on catching them up.

  The previous evening all of them had been interested in what Aidan had to say, but Varar was the most spellbound and the one who asked the most questions.

  ‘Varar, where are you going?’ Aidan called after him and he and Ròidh stepped out on the track.

  ‘Oh, there you are. I was frightened that I had taken the wrong track and I’d missed you.’

  ‘So you were chasing after us. Why?’

  ‘Because I want to hear more about this magical god called Christ. My father has agreed that I can travel with you to the king’s hall and then return to my settlement to tell them what I have learned.’

  Aidan thought quickly and could see no reason not to do as the boy asked. As they would be returning that way on their way back to Iona, he decided that he would be happier if Varar wasn’t left to fend for himself, as he would be if he sent him back now on his own.

  He was roughly the same age as Ròidh and the two quickly became friends, despite their very different social standing. They continued along the coast and usually found a fishing hamlet at which to spend the night. As Varar was the son of the headman of a settlement like those they stayed at, he helped allay the suspicions of the people along the way.

  Aidan continued to preach as he went, gaining in confidence all the while. Occasionally they would encounter local pagan priests at these settlements, but they weren’t either clever or well-educated and Aidan, or even the two boys, could in time defeat them in debate. Of course, this didn’t endear them to the priests and more than once they were threatened physically.

  On one occasion Aidan was knocked to the ground as he repeatedly demolished the so-called evidence the priest produced for the existence of his false gods. Ròidh immediately went to stand over Aidan to protect him from further blows and to threaten the priest, but Varar rounded on the headman and accused the priest of dragging the headman’s honour in the dust by violating the laws of hospitality. Picts took their honour very seriously and the headman had the priest forcibly ejected from the circle in which the settlement elders sat. He apologised but Aidan assured him that he had nothing to apologise for.

  Later that night, the priest, whose name was Cenioch, had crept into the hut which had been allocated to the three travellers, and went to stab the blanket-covered bodies as they slept. When he pulled back the covers from the first body he found a sack of wool underneath. The headman then entered the hut, followed by Aidan and the boys. Varar had kept watch on the priest’s hut and had gone to summon the
headman and the others when he saw him make for the guest hut.

  The man was confined until he could be tried and then Aidan spoke eloquently in his defence. He told them of Christ’s pronouncements about forgiveness and the man was allowed to leave the settlement after being sentenced to banishment for life. His wife and baby son were given to another man and he was escorted five miles inland to make sure he didn’t try to follow Aidan when he left the next day.

  The rest of the journey to King Necton’s capital was comparatively uneventful. However, when they arrived at Elgin, situated at the confluence of the Spey and Findhorn Rivers five miles inland from the coast, the three got a shock. When they were shown into the king’s hall, there, standing next to Necton’s throne, were two priests, one of who was Cenioch, the man who had tried to kill them two weeks previously.

  ~~~

  Oswald made his way carefully down the coast from Loch Melfort, where he and his three companions had landed, towards Dùn Add, some ten miles to the south. He had chosen Rònan, Alaric and a man called Fáelán, who had been born in the settlement of Dùn Add and who had been in his crew since the beginning. Fáelán had quite a few kinfolk still living in the settlement so Oswald hoped that they would help him.

  They reached Dùn Add at twilight, when there was just enough light for him to see the outer circular earthworks and palisade that Connad had constructed, both to improve the fort’s defences and to accommodate a lot more warriors inside.

  However, it seemed that most chose to sleep with their wives and families in the settlement, as several hundred left the fort a few minutes later and made their way to the scattered huts to the south and west of the fortress. As the last group exchanged ribald comments with those left on watch, the gates slammed shut. It seemed that Connad had no inkling that the three rebellious sub-kings had anchored their fleet only ten miles away.

  Oswald was disappointed to see that, in an act of petty revenge, Connad had demolished the hut that he and Rònan had built. His mother’s hut was still there, but another family now lived in it. Thankfully, Fáelán’s family were delighted to see him again. He had been little more than a youth when he left and he had settled down on Arran and married a local girl. He had two daughters, one only newly-born and so they all had a lot of catching up to do.

  After they had eaten, Oswald, Rònan and Alaric left them to carry on talking and went to reconnoitre the new defences. Whoever had designed them didn’t know his trade. The ditch offered more opportunity to approach unseen than it hindered an assault. It ran close to some bushes which Connad had neglected to clear away and, once in the ditch, attackers moving quietly on a dark night should be able to travel along it undetected.

  The palisade had been built on the bank thrown up by the men who had dug the ditch, but they hadn’t compacted the soil enough and so the palisade wasn’t as firmly anchored into the ground as it should have been. Furthermore, it had been set a foot back from the top of the earthworks and, as it was only ten feet tall, two men standing on the narrow ledge below it could lift a third man up enough so that he could pull himself over the top.

  They froze as a sentry walked past along the parapet and then made their way back to Fáelán’s hut.

  ‘It should be an easy matter to scale or pull down the outer palisade and capture the outer defences,’ Oswald told everyone. ‘However, that still leaves the original palisade and the hall within.’

  ‘Connad has also improved that,’ Fáelán’s father told them. ‘There are four towers, one by the gate and three around the perimeter. They are manned by archers all day and they have a clear view from the top into the outer area and beyond.’

  ‘Then we must attack on a dark night,’ Oswald told them. ‘My main worry is the warriors in the settlement. We daren’t be caught between them and the defenders of the Dùn.’

  ‘Leave them to us,’ Fáelán told him. ‘I’ve already discussed it with my father and uncles. We’ll talk to all those we feel we can trust tomorrow and persuade them to keep anyone loyal to Connad from interfering. Mind you, I suspect that, given the right circumstances, few would side with him. He’s unpopular, but people are scared of upsetting him. If they feel that he is about to be toppled, they’ll be quick enough to join the winning side.’

  ‘I hope you’re right. We’ll leave here before first light tomorrow and schedule our attack for two nights hence. Will that give you enough time?’

  ‘Yes, that gives us to two days and one night to prepare everyone; it should be more than enough.’

  ~~~

  Aidan looked at Cenioch warily and clasped his stout stick so firmly that his knuckles were white. The pagan priest had chosen a sword as his weapon and stood leering at Aidan like a buzzard about to rip its beak into a juicy piece of carrion. Cenioch had obviously predisposed Necton towards his version of events and Aidan suspected that he would have been executed without a fair trial had it not been for the two boys. As one was the son of a king who was an ally and the other the son of a local headman, their word carried more weight than would normally have been the case for underage boys.

  The other priest had, of course, supported Cenioch, as did many of the warriors present. Necton was in a difficult position. He didn’t want to upset the boys’ fathers – and if he executed Aidan, he would probably have to dispose of them, as well, or they would cause trouble – but he needed to keep his own people happy. In the end he decided on a fight to the death, in the belief that the gods – or the one true God, as Aidan and his acolytes insisted on – would protect the one who was telling the truth.

  ‘Let me fight for you,’ Ròidh insisted. ‘At least I’ve had some training in how to use weapons; you haven’t. Neither has Varar, nor Cenioch, come to that.’

  ‘No, I’m the one who is accused. God and his Son, Jesus Christ, will protect me.’

  After a cloudless night the day dawned cold, but it soon grew unseasonably warm for October. Just before the sun reached its zenith, the accused and his accuser took their places inside the ring of warriors. The men all carried spears or swords with which to prod an unwilling combatant back into the fight, if one backed off too far. When King Necton gave the signal, the men started to cheer and the two boys watched helplessly as Aidan just stood there, clutching the wooden cross suspended from a leather thong around his neck in one hand and his staff in the other, and gazing skywards as if for heavenly inspiration.

  Cenioch moved towards him cautiously. If he had rushed at him, Aidan would have been dead, but the pagan suspected a trap. Then suddenly, he and all the men watching the fight became aware that the sky was getting darker and a shadow started to pass over the ground. They looked up expecting to see a solitary cloud, but instead it looked as if something was swallowing up the sun. Everyone wailed in terror, thinking that the end of the world had come; even Ròidh and Varar were terrified, but Aidan called to them that it was just a solar eclipse and nothing to worry about.

  He strode towards the cowering Cenioch and knocked the sword out of his hand with his staff as the world faded into blackness. As he brought the solid length of wood down on the priest’s head, knocking him senseless, the moon started to move away from the sun and the world gradually grew lighter again. Even when the sun was fully revealed once more, everyone was still in a state of shock. They clearly believed that the Christian God had been responsible for coming to Aidan’s rescue. Both Ròidh and Varar looked at him in awe.

  ‘Did you make that happen, Brother Aidan?’ Ròidh asked in a voice that was barely a whisper.

  Aidan chuckled. ‘No, of course not. It’s a natural occurrence that happens every so often. It’s called an eclipse. I read about them on Iona and Finnian once told me that he had been trying to convert a settlement in Ireland when it happened some time ago, though he said that was a partial eclipse and so not as impressive. I saw the moon approaching the sun and prayed that it would be an eclipse, so I was expecting it.’

  Gradually everyone recovered their self-confid
ence. The king was one of the first and seemed annoyed that he had been seen to be afraid of the sudden darkness.

  ‘You must kill Cenioch,’ Necton told him, kicking the unconscious body in the ribs. ‘It’s our law that a fight to the death means exactly that.’

  ‘And it is God’s law that thou shalt not kill,’ Aidan told him. ‘God’s law overrides whatever law man makes.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous; men are killed by other men all the time. What sort of a god would forbid killing? Our enemies would wipe us out!’

  ‘God’s law means that you must not kill unless it is absolutely essential to save life. But executing Cenioch is not an act of self-defence. It would be an act of wanton murder.’

  ‘Very well. I respect the fact that your religion doesn’t allow you to do so, but mine expects it,’ and he gestured to one of his bodyguards, who immediately thrust a spear into the comatose priest.

  ‘He has shamed me. I believed him and not you, but you have proven him to be a liar. No-one does that to me and lives.’

  He looked Aidan up and down and seemed to reach a decision.

  ‘You say that Murchadh and his people have converted to this new faith? I suspect that it’s all because of that wife of his. He always was a fool for a pretty face. It seems to me that your god of love and peace has been created for women and not men, but your demonstration of power over the sun has persuaded a lot of my men to fear you and to be ready to listen to you. I’ve decided that you may stay with us for one month. During that time you can explain this Christ and his teachings to those willing to listen and I will debate your faith with you. If, at the end of that time, I believe in this Christ, I’ll be baptised and so will my people. You can stay with us and be our priest.’

  Aidan shifted from one foot to the other uncomfortably.

  ‘I’m grateful to you for the month and I’m confident that I can convince you in that time, but I cannot stay after that. I’ll send for a more experienced priest, a man we call a bishop and he will serve you and your community. My calling is different. I must go on to spread the word to other nations.’