After a couple of days’ rest, William’s men conclude that, although the Northumbrian’s daughters are worthy of a modest detour, his ale and mead are far less endearing, his beds are in desperate need of fresh straw and his midden not fit for pigs.
And so, they move further north. The chill wind of winter begins to bite and snow falls from the gull-grey clouds above them. They lose touch with humanity. All signs of life – or death – disappear. Roger looks out across the bleak scene.
‘What kind of man would choose to live up here?’
‘One who has many memories to dwell upon, and perhaps a few regrets. When people who have lived a turbulent life come to face the end of it, it’s often the case that they seek solitude in which to reflect.’
William and Roger spend many hours speculating on the long and fascinating life of Edgar the Atheling, all of which only increases William’s impatience to meet him. But their idle musings are brought to an end by the increasing remoteness of their route.
Their men-at-arms look tense; they are not easily unnerved but are not accustomed to such hostile terrain. The boundless swathes of primordial forest, untouched by the hand of man, are dense and dark, and above them the high fells rise like menacing shadows. Only on the very crests of the fells is the ground clear, where relentless wind and bitter cold make it difficult for anything to grow except moss and heather.
On the third day north of Sedbergh, their sergeant rides back from his lead position to speak to William.
‘My Lord Abbot, is it wise to go on? This place is wild.’
‘Sergeant, the man we seek will have chosen this place deliberately. He is a prince of the realm – if he can venture here, so can we.’
‘I fear we are being watched … perhaps for the last couple of hours. I’m not certain, but I think I can see movement in the trees.’
‘Be vigilant, Sergeant. Send your best man to higher ground to see if we’re being followed. And tell the men to stay alert.’
The sergeant sends out his senior man, Eadmer, with instructions to work his way around to the back of the small party and check if anyone is following them.
They eventually find the key to their passage: the Maiden Way, an ancient Roman route, cut over the fells a millennium earlier to link the lead and silver mines of the northern hills to the routes heading south and to the fort at Carvoran on the Great North Wall of the Emperor Hadrian.
William has often reflected on Rome and its achievements. When writing his chronicles of the English kings, there were many monarchs he admired, such as the great and noble Alfred. He has marvelled at their courage, wisdom and triumphs. But if only he had been a scholar in Ancient Rome, then he could have been the chronicler of men who had conquered the known world; those who built a civilization so sophisticated and powerful that it endured for hundreds of years.
Now he is approaching the last outpost of their empire. He shivers, partly in awe at contemplating their triumphs and partly in dread at what he is getting himself into in this fearful place. He wonders what the intrepid Romans must have thought as they trudged northwards. Rugged and resolute, no doubt, they were men from the Mediterranean, southern Gaul; perhaps as far as Anatolia, North Africa, or Phoenicia. They must have been as anxious as he is now. What men they must have been!
The Maiden Way is little used and difficult to negotiate, but at least it cuts through the forests, fords the rivers and points true north.
‘Abbot, do you know the route?’
‘I do; the Norseman’s instructions were very clear.’
‘May a young monk, who is perhaps often too sure of himself for his own good, confess to an overwhelming feeling of terror at his current circumstances?’
William smiles and turns to his young companion.
‘There is much to fear in this world: nature and its wild and unpredictable habits; man and his bestial depravities. But it is God we should respect the most, for He controls everything. Pray to Him and ask for His protection.’
Roger kicks on, not at all reassured, scanning the trees intently and twitching at the slightest sound. After a while, he blurts out another question with an anxious tremor.
‘I know Edgar is the last English claimant to the kingdom, and I know what you said … But are you really sure he is worth such a perilous journey? He’s probably nothing but an incoherent old fool by now.’
‘Far from it, my young friend. The Norseman said he was not only lucid but a fount of stories. Remember, Edgar was announced as King of England after Harold’s slaughter on Senlac Ridge. He had powerful friends, including the Kings of Scotland and France. After being reconciled with the Conqueror and befriending Robert Curthose, he went to the Great Crusade with him – and both men came back in one piece, an outcome not afforded to many.’
‘I have been doing my arithmetic. He was too young to succeed the saintly Edward in 1066 – fifteen or sixteen, I think – so, he must be in his mid-seventies. I hope he keeps warm in this miserable place.’
‘I think we will find a man of some resolve. He fought in the wars between the Conqueror’s sons and must have gained their respect, otherwise King Henry would have had him killed or thrown into an oubliette.’
‘And you think this abode any better!’
‘My son, you have obviously never been in one of the King’s dungeons.’
2. Kingdom of Rheged
They are now approaching the high moorland and the trees are thinning. Roger stops suddenly and crosses himself.
‘God bless and save us! It is Eadmer.’
He points to the last tree before the open moor. Hanging from it, severed from his body and tied by his hair, is Eadmer’s head, blood still oozing on to the ground. Bizarrely, despite the gruesome scene and the horror of his death – perhaps only moments ago – his eyes are closed and at peace, and he looks strangely serene. Nearby, his body has been propped upright in his saddle and his horse carefully tethered.
‘It is a warning to turn back.’
The sergeant is already turning his horse as he speaks.
‘Where are you going, man? You are a soldier; your father was a housecarl in King Harold’s army. Get a grip of yourself! We will cut him down and give him a Christian burial.’
With that, the renowned scribe of Malmesbury takes the sergeant’s sword and removes Eadmer’s head from the tree, placing it on the ground. They then pull his body from the horse, lay his corpse in a shallow grave and hold a short service.
A piercing wind shrieks at them as William reads from his Bible. The skies darken and the snow begins to fall more heavily, swirling around them in wild flurries. William seems oblivious to everything that has happened; the others are in a state of terror.
It is Roger who voices their fears.
‘Abbot, the men want to turn back. So do I.’
‘Roger, calm yourself. We haven’t come all this way to turn back now. We’ll find a place to camp over there in the trees and see what the morning brings.’
‘This is madness. We are in the middle of the wilderness and someone has just beheaded one of our men!’
In silence, and with grim determination, William leads his group to a small copse of trees barely a hundred yards away. As they enter the grove, looming above them, far off in the distance, they can see the mighty crest of Cross Fell.
Then the Druid appears.
He is standing alone on a small rocky knoll, no more than ten yards away. He wears a simple grey robe of washed wool tied at the waist with a pleated cord. His untied hair and beard are long and hoary and he has a heavy silver chain and amulet around his neck decorated with pagan images. His right hand holds a long oak staff topped by a ram’s skull replete with enormous horns, and around the wrist of his left hand is a small garland of mistletoe. His dark, piercing eyes are fixed on them in an unblinking stare. William assumes he is a druid, for he has exactly the mien and bearing that legend describes.
The sergeant-at-arms makes for his sword, but before he can draw
it more than six inches from its scabbard an arrow cuts through the air and lodges in his throat, the tip of its head exiting close to his spine. A second hits him square in the chest near his heart, and a third lands inches away from the second. Both are deeply embedded. He is silent and motionless for a moment before reaching desperately for his throat, uttering a muted cry that turns into a sickening splutter as a stream of blood cascades from his mouth. His futile grasp of his gullet soon relaxes and he tumbles off his horse, hitting the ground with a heavy thud.
In that instance, at least thirty heavily armed men appear, as if out of nowhere. They make no sound, not even the faintest rustle underfoot.
William begs his remaining companions in a hiss, ‘Do not move. Stay silent.’
They are clearly Celts, but resemble a breed William has only read about, never seen.
The Druid speaks in excellent English, but with a strong accent that confirms it is not his first language.
‘You are a monk and, I think, an important one. What brings you to our land?’
‘You have committed murder here.’
‘Your bodyguards are not welcome here, and neither are you. This is our land.’
‘Is this not the land of the Earl of Bamburgh?’
‘It is not. Our tribe has owned this land since before the legions of Rome came here. I asked you a question.’
William is thinking quickly.
Could it be possible for a tribe of Celts to have remained here, undisturbed since antiquity? To have avoided or repelled the attentions of Rome’s legions and of Saxon, Dane and Norman?
They certainly look like the ancient Celts of the chronicles. Their bearded faces and bodies are adorned with swirls of pagan imagery, but not in the blue woad of legend – theirs are an ochre colour, not painted on to their skin, but cut in and permanent. Their dress is like the Celts’ of Wales and Cornwall: woollen leggings dyed red; heavy cloaks over their shoulders – the only covering for their bare chests. Their weapons are similar to the seax, spear and shield of a Saxon housecarl, but they do not carry the housecarl’s main weapon, the axe, preferring a short but powerful Celtic bow and quiver of arrows.
‘I will see to it that your crime is dealt with by the Earl.’
‘The Earl? I know no such man. I rule here. Your guard strayed from the Roman path; that means he had to die. This one drew his weapon, which cost him his life. We let people pass, but if they stray into our domain or raise their weapons, they pay with their lives. It has always been so. I ask you for the final time, what brings you to our land?’
William decides that it is wise to acquiesce.
‘I am on a journey with my cleric, Roger of Malmesbury –’ he chooses not to mention Roger’s Norman origins ‘– to meet a man I am told lives near here. I am William, Abbot of Malmesbury, a chronicler. These are my men-at-arms.’
The Druid does not respond. He looks at his men, then closes his eyes and prays out loud in a language that is unrecognizable. He finishes his invocations by raising his staff with its ram’s head and pointing it at Cross Fell. He then looks at William, but more benignly than before.
‘We respect you. You chose to bury your man and pray over him; few men would have done that, preferring to scurry off the fells as quickly as their horses would carry them.’ He stares at William intently. ‘So, you are a storyteller. Storytellers are welcome here, but your warriors are not. They must go back to Appleby and wait for you there.’
‘But they are here for our protection.’
‘You have no need of them now. You are safe with us.’
William knows immediately that the Druid is right. Whoever these people are, it is certainly their realm. He nods to his two remaining warriors to depart. The older one, visibly terrified, questions the wisdom of William’s decision.
‘Are you sure, Abbot?’
‘I am sure. We are not far from our destination and these people will give us safe passage.’
The man-at-arms leans forward in his saddle to whisper, ‘They are heathens, murderous savages.’
‘They are heathens, and there is no doubting their savagery. But I have travelled a long way for the man I seek and I am not turning back now. Wait at Appleby for ten days. If we do not return, go to the garrison at Lancaster and tell them what you have seen here. In the meantime, say nothing of this to anyone – especially not to Wotus and his family.’
As his men turn and leave, William impatiently begins to ask the first of many questions to which he wants answers.
‘Do I address you as a priest, or are you lord of these people?’
‘I am Lord of the Gul. We do not have priests, or a god, as you would understand them; we worship the earth, moon and stars and follow what nature teaches us. You may call me Owain, for that is my name.’
‘And you are Celts?’
‘We are. Before I take you to the man you seek, I will tell you a little about us. We are the Gul, the last tribe of the great Kingdom of Rheged, a land that once stretched from the Picts of the mountains of Scotland all the way to the end of the fells of Hen Ogledd – what you call the “Old North” of England. Our southern boundary was the marshland where the waters of the Derventi, the Trenti, the Soori and the Irre Wiscce meet. Beyond lived the Coritani people, in what you now call Mercia. We speak Cumbric, which is like the Welsh you know in the south. I am a direct descendant of Urien Rheged, the most famous of our leaders; he ruled here many generations ago.’
‘How do you preserve your traditions? Do you trade with the other people in the area?’
‘That is all you may know about us. You are a storyteller, are you not? Read the poems of Taliesin; you will find them in the chronicles of the Welsh bards.’
‘You must tell me more. You are part of the great history of our land.’
‘I must? Indeed, I will not. We are not part of the history of “your” land. This is our land!’
Owain spits his answer at the Abbot, who realizes he has been given all the information the Druid is prepared to impart.
‘We must leave. The day is moving on and the snow will fall into the night. No man would want to be on these fells at night, blizzard or otherwise. We will help you bury your man. The Prince lives a few miles from here, next to the Water that Roars, near the Norse settlements of Alston and Garrigyll.’
‘How do you know we seek Prince Edgar?’
‘You surely haven’t come here to mine for lead. Why else would an English storyteller be high in the mountains of Rheged, stepping over the corpses of ill-begotten Saxons and Norse?’
William presides over another interment, for the sergeant-at-arms. Then, after several hours of struggle over difficult ground with driven snow increasingly obscuring the track, Owain Rheged and his band of warriors leave William and Roger at the top of a steep gorge. He beckons them towards a raging waterfall that spews its innards angrily into the valley below.
‘The Prince’s hall lies beyond the falls to the south, next to the Grue Water. There is a safe place to ford further upstream. You must show respect here; this place is sacred to us.’
William nods his assent.
Before he departs, Owain moves closer to William. He speaks gently, the ferocity of his demeanour suddenly assuaged.
‘Have you told all the stories you want to tell?’
‘Most of them, Owain Rheged.’
‘That is good. When you pray to your god, save a prayer for yourself.’
‘I always do. Are you concerned for me?’
‘You will soon be like the blacksmith without his strong arms …’ He pauses. ‘You will be blind by Midsummer’s Day.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘I have seen it before. You have what the Ancients called nazul-i-ah, “the descent of the water”. In Latin it is called cataracta. It means “waterfall”.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘I have seen it in the infirmaries of Constantinople. Prince Edgar believes I have never left these fells and
that when he came here, he taught me English and the ways of Christendom. He doesn’t know that before my face was decorated my father sent me into the world to learn its ways. I was away for a dozen years and travelled across Europe and into the great empire of Byzantium.’
William hesitates, shocked by the Druid’s pronouncement about his eyes.
‘Is there anything that can be done about my sight?’
‘No … but keep that boy close to you. You will need him.’
‘You are a fascinating man, Owain Rheged. I would like to hear more of your story one day.’
The Druid doesn’t answer.
In an instant, he is gone – he and his warriors melting into the forest as unobtrusively as they had appeared.
3. All Hallows
William and his men travel for some distance to find the crossing point of the Pennine beck, shallow enough for their horses, before doubling back on themselves to reach the settlement where the Druid had said they would find their quarry.
William’s next Northumbrian revelation is the humble nature of the Prince’s settlement.
The main hall is not much bigger than a freeman’s two-room cottage, and the two smaller buildings are about the size of a peasant’s simple one-room dwelling. The cluster of buildings, which appears to be deserted, cannot be home to more than ten or twelve people.
They search for a few minutes, but no one can be found. The fire in the hall is just a cool ember and has not been tended for several hours. Roger seizes his chance to bid for a rapid retreat to Malmesbury.
‘So, Abbot, the bird has flown; there is no point in wasting our time here. I will feed the horses and we can begin our journey home.’
‘Not at this time, I fear. It will be dark soon.’
‘I suppose I must bow to your judgement – if we can’t start tonight, I’ll find us a place to sleep.’
William gazes into the dense wall of trees surrounding the settlement.
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