Born of the Sun

by Joan Wolf

  Edgar, who had been listening in silence, now said excitedly, "You will catch him in the middle of the two of you, uncle!"

  Aethelbert's light brown eyes turned to his nephew. Edgar was a paler, less vigorous version of his brother Edwin, but he was still a handsome boy. Of greater importance to Aethelbert, he was completely dominated by Guthfrid. The boy's uncle anticipated little trouble ruling Edgar once the boy had been installed in Wessex. "That is my plan," he answered his nephew with a patronizing smile.

  Edric was pulling at his mustache. "It sounds all right."

  "It is a brilliant plan," Aethelbert snapped, his pride touched by the faint praise of his brother-in-law.

  Edric stared at him bleakly. "With Ceawlin, brilliant plans have a way of going awry."

  "Yes, well we all know that you had your troubles with Ceawlin, my brother," said Aethelbert as he rose to his feet. He was not a tall man, but he was very muscular. He gave Edric a stare of contempt before he strode away, shoulders characteristically hunched forward, eyes on the ground.

  "May I go with the war band, Mother?" Edgar asked.

  "No!" Guthfrid stared in horror at the fair, brown-eyed face of her only living son. "No, my love. You are too valuable to risk in battle. Your uncle will wage the war for you, never fear. By next Yule, Edgar, you will be sitting in the great hall of Winchester." And she gave him a brilliant smile.

  * * * *

  Niniane looked around her sunny bedroom with satisfaction. Five years since Ceawlin had ordered the carpenters to cut a window into the wall of the king's hall for her, and he had had glass brought from one of the few remaining windows in the praetorium in Venta to glaze it. It was the only window in all of Winchester, and Niniane loved it.

  The March day was chill, but the pool of sunshine on the bedroom floor was warm. Ceawlin's hound had long since discovered the pleasure of glass-filtered sun, and he lay now on one of the floor skins, basking in the warmth, sound asleep. Niniane had given up complaining about the hound in her bedroom and, to compromise, Ceawlin had taught him to stay off the bed. The bedcover was Niniane's other pride and joy, a blue wool rug with a border of white horses that had taken her half a year to weave on the great loom in the women's hall. She smoothed a proprietary hand along the cover, then went to the larger of the two clothes chests in the room and began to take out and inspect her gowns and tunics.

  "What are you doing?" It was Ceawlin. The hound, hearing a beloved voice, raised his head, then got up and went to greet his master. Niniane, sitting on the floor, continued to sort clothes into piles.

  "I am setting aside the things I want to take with me when I go to Wyckholm," she answered.

  "Oh." He came over to the bed and sat down, watching her in silence for a few minutes. The hound followed, resting its head against Ceawlin's knee.

  She finished folding a linen undergarment, then turned around to look at him. "Is something wrong, Ceawlin?"

  He shrugged. "One of the vils close to Kent has been raided again."

  "Oh." She searched his face. "Well, that is Oswald's area, is it not?"

  "Yes. Oswald gave chase and his son was killed in the pursuit."

  "Oh ..." The word this time was long and drawn out.

  "Yes." His eyes on her face were thoughtful. "I don't like it, Nan. There have been too many of these raids of late. And this last attack was more than just a cattle raid. There were near two hundred men, Oswald said. That is a war band. I have not forgot that Guthfrid's mother was from Kent. Nor have I forgot that Aethelbert spent the last five years of his father's life with his mother's kin."

  Her delicate brows rose into two fine question marks. "Do you think that these Kentish raids are coming at Guthfrid's instigation?"

  "Or East Anglian instigation. I certainly wouldn't dismiss the idea, Niniane. Nor do I think that this is the time for you to be going to Wyckholm."

  She put a saffron-colored tunic on one of the piles and sat back on her heels. "Coenburg is due to deliver her baby, Ceawlin. I promised her I would be with her. You know that."

  He reached down to rub the hound's ears, but his eyes were on his wife. "Cannot you send one of the other women?"

  "It would not be the same. Coenburg is Cutha's daughter, Penda's wife. She is due the honor of having the queen attend her childbirth. You know that too."

  Ceawlin continued to pet his dog and the hound sighed with pleasure. Niniane got to her feet and came to sit beside her husband on the bed. "What are you afraid of?" she asked softly.

  "My spies in East Anglia tell an interesting tale," he answered. "They say that Aethelbert has purged his hall of all his father's old thanes. They say he has gathered around him a large number of new thanes, young thanes, land-hungry thanes." He had been bending over a little to stroke the dog, and now he straightened and looked directly down into her upturned face. "I think he means to come against me," Ceawlin said.

  "Dear God."

  He smiled a little wryly into her small, horrified face. "I cannot say such a decision would be unwelcome to me. I am not afraid of going to war with East Anglia. However, I am not particularly pleased with the idea of going to war with both East Anglia and Kent at the same time."

  "I don't want you to go to war at all!" she said fiercely.

  At that he grinned and his eyes danced as he said, "Of course you don't."

  Even after all these years, that look turned her heart right over. But she wouldn't let him see that. "I realize," she said with delicate sarcasm, "that I am only a woman and so am incapable of understanding the pleasures of killing and murdering and maiming other people."

  He raised an eyebrow and looked at her. "Guthfrid is a woman, and she understands it perfectly."

  "Guthfrid is a monster."

  "Mmm." His eyes were glinting as he watched her.

  "What do you think is going to happen?" she asked.

  "I think Aethelbert hopes to draw me to Kent with these border raids. Then, when I am safely occupied in the east, he will invade Wessex himself, coming from East Anglia by way of the Icknield Way into the Thames valley. Where Wyckholm lies. Under the circumstances, I would prefer that you were elsewhere."

  "But what of Coenburg? I promised her I would be with her. It is her first child, Ceawlin. And now that her mother is dead, I am the woman she is closest to." He did not say anything, but got off the bed and began to pace up and down the floor. She watched him for a moment before she said flatly, "You have made some plan, Ceawlin. You are not simply going to leave Penda there alone to face an East Anglian invasion."

  He continued to pace. "I am sending Penda a hundred men and five wagon loads of arrows and spears. Wyckholm has a strong stockade' fence around it; all Penda need do is pull his ceorls and the British farmers who wish to come inside the stockade. He will be able to hold off Aethelbert easily with that number of men and that much ammunition. If Penda can slow Aethelbert down for me, give me time to deal with the situation on the Kentish border, that will be enough."

  "Do you have word that Aethelbert is actually gathering a war band?"

  "No."

  "So none of this may come to pass after all?"

  "That is true," he said. Regretfully.

  "Then I am going to Wyckholm. If I do not go and Aethelbert does not come, it is not just Coenburg who will be upset. Penda will be offended, Ceawlin. You know how touchy he is about his position and his prerogatives. And if Aethelbert does come, I shall be perfectly safe inside the stockade with everyone else."

  He came to a halt in front of her and looked down. His shoulders were so broad they blocked the light from the window. He was so big, she thought. So big and strong and fearless. He was really hoping for a war. She knew him too well. She was furious with him. She stuck her chin in the air and said, "I am going to Wyckholm." And was utterly dumbfounded when he agreed.

  * * * *

  "Are you mad?" Sigurd asked Ceawlin incredulously. "You think there will be an invasion from East Anglia and you are sending Nini
ane to Wyckholm?"

  "She will be perfectly safe," Ceawlin replied. "I would not send her if I thought otherwise. Nor would I permit Penda to keep your sister there."

  "Coenburg is already there and it would be difficult to move a woman in her condition. But you are sending Niniane. That is different."

  "Niniane insists upon going."

  Ceawlin's face was as bland as his voice, and Sigurd stared at him with hard eyes. The two men were standing in the great hall while around them the trestle tables were being set up for the thanes' dinner. "You have not given in to her on this," Sigurd said after a minute, and Ceawlin laughed.

  "Not this time," he agreed. "She has to go, Sigurd. I cannot ask Penda to risk for his wife what I am not willing to risk for my own." Then, as Sigurd's face set into grim lines, "There is no risk, Sigurd. I am positive of that, else I would not let her go. However, if you wish to leave Edith here in Winchester, I will understand." Sigurd was also going to Wyckholm for the birth of his sister's child.

  Sigurd did not answer immediately, and from halfway across the room there came the sound of a boy's voice. "Father!" Sigurd looked around and saw Ceawlin's two eldest sons threading their way through the slaves who were setting up the tables. "Father," said Cerdic once again as soon as he had come up before the men, "may we go to Wyckholm with Mother?"

  Sigurd looked down into the two eager young faces as they waited for Ceawlin to answer. Cerdic, at ten, was a tall, well-grown youngster with butter-yellow hair and large slate-blue eyes. Crida, a year younger, was small-boned like his mother and fair-haired like his father. He looked at least three years younger than Cerdic as he stood there beside his taller brother, but Sigurd knew how much toughness and determination was in the small, seemingly delicate frame of Niniane's second son.

  "Why?" Ceawlin asked.

  Cerdic's eyes were glowing. "Because there is going to be a war! Please, Father, may we go?"

  "There is no certainty that there will be a war," said Ceawlin. "And, no, you may not go."

  The two faces fell ludicrously. "But you are letting Mother go!" said Crida.

  "Mother is going because of Coenburg's baby; she does not need the additional burden of you two to worry about. You will stay right here in Winchester."

  "If we stay here, we will never get to do any fighting," Cerdic muttered.

  Crida gave his brother a warning look. "Of course, we would much rather go in your war band than in Penda's, Father," he said with his rare smile.

  "You are too young to go in anyone's war band," Ceawlin answered pleasantly but firmly.

  "But why can't we at least go with Mother?" Cerdic persisted. "We won't get in her way, Father. We won't bother her at all."

  The corner of Ceawlin's mouth twitched. "I'm quite sure you would keep yourselves out of her sight, but that is not what I had in mind." Then, as Crida opened his mouth, "That is the end of the discussion. You will both stay right here in Winchester. Do I make myself clear?"

  "Yes, sir." The two young faces were almost comically glum.

  "You may go."

  "Yes, sir."

  Ceawlin and Sigurd watched the boys trail disconsolately off to the door, and then Ceawlin turned to his friend. "Do you remember how it felt?" he asked.

  Sigurd grinned. "Yes."

  "Actually, there is little trouble they could get into at Wyckholm, but Niniane would have my head if I let them go." There was someone else coming in the door of the great hall, and with a small shock of surprise Sigurd recognized his brother.

  "Did you send for Cuthwulf?" he asked Ceawlin as his brother began to thread his way through the slaves and the tables.

  "Yes." All the humor had left Ceawlin's face; his eyes were coldly reflective as they watched Cuthwulf approach. "I am going to send him to deal with the raiders from Kent," he said.

  "Well, that should make him happy." Sigurd tried to keep his tone light. "We all know how Cuthwulf is longing for a fight. He's almost as bad as Cerdic and Crida."

  "Cerdic and Crida are children," said Ceawlin. "Cuthwulf is not." He put his hand on Sigurd's shoulder in what might have been a gesture of affection or dismissal. "Let me talk with him," he said, and Sigurd nodded and left the hall, giving a greeting to his brother as he passed.

  * * * *

  Aethelbert's war band left Sutton Hoo at dawn on a misty March morning and began its trek down the Icknield Way, the ancient track first used by the Old Ones that ran from East Anglia along the edge of the Chilton hills to the valley of the Thames. It was not paved or graveled, as were the roads left by the Romans; it was a dirt track but it cut across country where there was neither fen nor forest to hinder easy transit, and it was the most direct route into Wessex.

  Six hundred men marched under Aethelbert's standard and the King of East Anglia's martial heart was filled with pride as he rode along in front of his thanes. At last, after all the years of frustration, the long years spent waiting for an old man to die, at last Aethelbert of East Anglia was on the war road.

  He knew that Ceawlin had placed one of his eorls on the northernmost border of the land Wessex claimed; he knew that Penda had built a fortified manor there. But Aethelbert had six hundred men. He anticipated little difficulty in storming Penda's manor and from thence driving onward into the heart of Wessex itself. It was consequently a severe shock to find that he had scarce passed Verulamium when he was confronted with an ambush of bow-carrying horsemen, who struck with deadly accuracy and then fled.

  "He knows we are coming." It was Edric, grim-faced and positive. "I told you, my lord, not to count on anything with Ceawlin."

  "It is not Ceawlin," Aethelbert said. "It is Penda. Someone sent word ahead that we were on the march. But he cannot have enough men to mount an effective defense."

  The farms in the area were rich and Aethelbert regarded them with an acquisitive eye. This part of England would soon be his. There was, however, no sign of anyone working on the farms; no one in the fields, no one in any of the houses that they passed. And then, in the distance, barring the way south to the river Thames, they saw the great stockade fence of Wyckholm.

  It was considerably larger than Aethelbert had expected.

  "This is the manor of an eorl?" he said to Edric. "Ceawlin must place great thrust in this man, to give him such a stronghold."

  Edric too was surprised. Wyckholm would give any man who held it command of the whole valley of the upper Thames. He saw immediately the necessity of taking it for East Anglia and said as much to his brother-in-law. Aethelbert agreed. By now the day was far advanced and the East Anglian army settled down at little distance from the walls of Wyckholm and prepared to storm the stockade on the morrow.

  Inside the great stockade fence, in the crowded women's hall of Wyckholm, Coenburg at last gave birth to a son. It was a long labor and Penda had broken away from his war preparations numerous times to come and inquire how things were progressing. As he told Sigurd, he had lost one wife in childbirth and did not wish to repeat the experience.

  "Thank the gods," Sigurd said when at last Niniane told him that the baby had been born. Then, because the waiting had been so hard, because he had been reminded of that dreadful night when Cerdic was born, of the night when Edith had almost died giving birth to his own children, he said, "I wonder anew each time a babe is born that a woman who has been through that would ever again let a man near her bed."

  He thought that Niniane was looking tired. Coenburg had been in labor for almost twenty hours and Niniane had been with her the whole while. She had tied her hair on top of her head to keep it out of her way, but several strands had slipped out of the knot and were wisping around her face and her neck. There were smudges of sleeplessness under her eyes and her gown was crumpled and flecked with stains of something he could not identify. But at his words she smiled and the dimple in the corner of her mouth flickered. "Oh," she said, and placed her fingers lightly on his sleeve, "you are worth it."

  He did not return her smile, but
regarded her somberly. "Are we?" he asked.

  The dimple deepened. "Ceawlin is." Then, as Penda came in the door, her own face sobered. "My lord," she said with ceremonial formality, "you have a son."

  Penda grinned and thrust a hand through his already disordered hair.

  "Thank you, my lady," he said to Niniane. Then, as he noticed Sigurd, "Your sister is a good wife, Sigurd. A son!"

  Niniane slipped her hand through Penda's arm. "Coenburg is waiting for you, my lord." Sigurd did not stay to see the two of them move off, but turned to go outside and see once again to his defenses.

  The East Anglians charged Wyckholm at dawn and were met by a rain of arrows that felled dozens of them.

  "In the name of Woden, how many men does he have on those walls?" Aethelbert yelled to Edric.

  "Too many!" Edric yelled in return. "Pull back before you lose half your men!"

  The East Anglians retreated out of arrow range and met to discuss this new development.

  "He has at least two hundred men in there," Edric said. "Look." For now that the surprise was gone, Penda had allowed his men to show themselves on the walls.

  "So that is where all the farmers have gone," said Aethelbert bitterly.

  "Not just the farmers. Look." Edric pointed to a man on the wall. "Do you know who that is?"

  "No."

  "That is Sigurd. Cutha's son and Ceawlin's greatest friend. There can be only one reason for Sigurd being here; Ceawlin knew we were coming and sent him."

  Aethelbert cursed. Then, "Who could have told him?"

  "A pottery maker, a jeweler, a man who sells medicine; anyone who has been around Sutton Hoo long enough to realize that you were making preparations for war. It would not take much deduction to figure out whom you were planning to go against, or what route you would take."

  Aethelbert jutted his head forward. "If that is so, then why did not Ceawlin come north himself?"

  "I don't know."

  "He may have decided to go east, to deal with the invasion from Kent."

  "That may be so."

  Aethelbert got to his feet and stared at the stockade of Wyckholm. "We will try again once it is dark," he said. "If we can get inside, we will have them. We outnumber them by nearly three to one."