Amber Treasure, The (27 page)

“But, you will allow that the
kingdom needs such money, at a time like this: to repair the damage of the war
and to rearm and equip the Fyrd,” my father suggested and Aelle nodded.

“There is no denying that.”

“Then, for treachery to a
kingdom, I offer as weregild a kingdom’s treasure.”

With a flourish, he pulled out my
mother’s jewellery.

Aelle looked at it and pursed his
lips, staring at the amber treasure for a long time before speaking.

“I once gave that to your brother
as reward for saving the kingdom,” he said at last.

“Then let me give it back in
payment for his nephew’s wrong doing,” my father answered.

Aelle was silent again, but this
time his eyes were not focused upon the jewellery, but somewhere else and just
as on the day of the great council in his own hall, weeks before, he seemed to be
thinking back over the years to another war: another battle. Finally, he
nodded.

“So be it, but I will not permit
a traitor to remain in my kingdom. Hussa, I commute your sentence to exile from
Deira during my lifetime. My heirs will decide if that sentence prevails after
my death. You will leave Deira within two days. If after that time you are
found within its bounds, you will be declared an outlaw and any man can kill
you, lawfully.”

Hussa was shaking now and seemed
to be in a mix of conflicting emotions. He was staring at Father as if he did
not know what to make of him.

“You may escort your son to the
border,” Aelle said softly, “this council session is ended.”

I went to join my father, but he
shook his head and then held up his hand, bringing me to a halt.

“Wait here for me,” he said and
then turned away, glanced at Hussa and pointed at the door.

Hussa shuffled that way, escorted
by two warriors and followed by my father. At the door my brother turned and
looked at me for a moment and then nodded briefly, just the once. What did that
look mean? Was it an apology, or was it a threat that the next time we met, I
would not be so fortunate.

Then, he was gone and I was left
staring at the door, not sure if what had happened was right or wrong. Right
for Father, perhaps, but maybe wrong for everyone else. Aelle passed me and
glanced at my face.

“Don’t blame yourself, Lord Cerdic
− for Hussa, I mean. A man makes his own choices and he made his,” he
said. “You and your father have served me well and I am sure you have many
future battles to prove your worth,” he foretold.

So there it was, a prediction
about my future: Cerdic as a warrior lord. There was a time when Lilla’s poems
had set my soul aflame, when all I dreamed of were the glories of battle and of
winning a name and land, of slaying the kingdom’s enemy and becoming a hero of
the sagas. As I thought back upon them, I realised they were not visions I wanted
anymore. No, the events of the last few weeks had changed all that.

If I was honest, I had been
terrified when we got into battle. A lot of young men from both sides had died
on Catraeth field. Only a few days before, they had been alive and probably
full of the same dreams I had. Like them, my dreams had died and I had simpler
ones now. Now it seemed that a hero’s heart did not beat within my chest and I
realised that all I really wanted was to return home and settle down to
domestic life. Whatever Aelle said, I believed my fighting days were over. It
was time to go home to the Villa, to my family and, I thought tentatively, to
Aidith.

Father and Hussa had departed
Eoforwic within minutes of leaving the council. They had ridden north, out of
the city and up Dere Street. Father was gone for a couple of days and when he
did return, all he would say is that he had seen my brother to the border at Catraeth,
where Hussa crossed the bridge. Of what they spoke on the way, or how they had
parted, he never said a word.

When he did return, he clapped me
on the shoulder and I could see the tension finally draining from him.

“Now it is, at last, over!” he
said with smile, “let’s go home.”

Yes, it was over and the next day
we left Eoforwic. Firstly we went as far as Wicstun, with the rest of the company.
Now the cost of the war came home and showed itself in the anguished sobs of
mothers who had lost sons, wives who had lost husbands. In all, of the
eighty-five who had belonged to the Wicstun Company, sixty still lived, though
many were badly wounded. Twenty-five, including Wallace, were dead and those
losses hurt the small town and all the villages around it. Numbed by the deaths
and exhausted by the weeks of raids and war, there was relief rather than joy
over the victory. So it was, with polite acceptance rather than celebration,
that the townsfolk welcomed Father as the new Lord of Wicstun. I think we were
all glad that there was no suggestion of feasts or days of ceremony. We stayed
just the one night in Wictsun, then father summoned the villagers, Mildrith and
me for the final journey home.

As Father led us down the road
from Wicstun, we came over the last rise and could see the Villa and the
village. He stopped a moment and then laughed out loud and I realised that it
was the first time I had heard him laugh since my brother Cuthwine had died. We
all halted and looked at the sight that greeted us and I felt my heart suddenly
fill with joy. For there, ahead of us, was the little world I was born into.
Those fields, woods and cluster of buildings were so familiar to me that they
were like parts of my body. Now, after all the blood and horror there it was,
at last: home − we were home.

Father had sent ahead word of our
coming, so Mother had learnt of our return a day before and the villagers had
hurled themselves into frantic preparation. The last of the spring blossoms
were all used up in great garlands decorating the barn. A bonfire roared on the
ground outside it and strips of bright cloth streamed from all the huts.

We rushed down the path towards
the barn but, when we arrived, we were surprised to see no one. In fact, the
entire settlement seemed deserted. Then, I heard a giggle from one of the
village children hiding in the barn and a moment later the doors were flung
open and all the village women and children burst out, laughing and smiling.

Sunniva almost knocked me over as
she hugged me, then she rushed on to embrace Mildrith. Mother was just behind
her, laughing and crying at the same time. Mildrith came back and moving past
me, she surprised Cuthbert with a kiss on his cheek. My friend went red with
embarrassment. He glanced to see if this had been noticed and saw Eduard and me
watching him intently, grinning like idiots, as well as Aedann whose face was
wrinkled into a puzzled frown. Then, I felt someone kiss my own cheek and I
turned to see Aidith standing there, her hair braided with ribbons and wearing
a dazzling yellow gown and looking simply stunning.

“Welcome home, Cerdic,” she
whispered. I could find nothing to say and just stood there nodding stupidly.

Suddenly, in the barn, music
could be heard: a jaunty little tune played on a lyre. We all went in and found
that it was Lilla playing. The smile on my father’s face at that moment was
priceless.

“I thought you said you had to
play at a feast in your favourite hall,” Father said to him.

“Yes well, I do get so very bored
at councils. Besides which, Hrodwyn sent a message to me, asking that I be here
when you arrived ... and I decided to come early and practice ... this is,
after all, my favourite hall,” Lilla said, gesturing with his hand at the barn.

My father beamed and reached
across and pulled my mother to his side. Then, laughing, he waved us all into
the barn for the feast.

To all men, just like nations,
there are golden times. Moments that for all their lives they will think back
to as an ideal. To some it will be their earliest memory, to others it is times
of their glories and triumphs and others still, their first love. For me,
looking back through the haze of the long years through times of sorrow and
hardship, it was nights such as these, filled with joy and music and surrounded
by friends and family whom I loved, that are my golden times.

Of course, I may be a little
biased, for on the night of the great feast, Aidith found me after we had all
drunk far too much mead and ale. She had listened with a mixture of horror and
pride at Lilla’s tales of my battles and even though I denied most of what he
said, it was clear to her that I could so easily have died and that I might
have been one of those poor souls who now lay beneath the soil of Catraeth
field. That night, she took me to a dark corner of the hayloft behind the great
barn, from where laughter and music could be still heard coming through the
night air. Then, having both learnt just how fragile life was, feeling a
desperate need to simply enjoy the moment and with any inhibitions relieved by
the mead, she pulled me down on to her - and it has to be said that I offered
no resistance.

A few weeks before, the last
spring of our childhood had ended with a night of horror and blood that made
the children we were into man and woman. This summer night ended in warmth and
pleasure and we celebrated the fact that we were still alive and young by
giving ourselves to each other.

All my life, I had wanted to
become a warrior, inspired as I had been by the poems of Lilla and the stories
about my uncle. Yet, my dreams of glory had turned into the blood and ashes of
a battlefield. I realised that I did not find joy in the fighting or the
victory: rather, it had all seemed horrific beyond words. I still honoured my
uncle, but I had been glad to get home and I now assumed that I was destined to
be a farmer. I believed that I could live out my life in obscurity, farming the
land and filling my free hours with Aidith’s company.

This though is where this story
started. I said then and I feel it now, that looking back from old age, when
the faith of Christ has replaced the old religions of my fathers, I can recall
many times when my friends and I appeared to be at the whim of powers beyond
our understanding. Today, we talk of the will of God. In those far off days it
was the machinations of the gods or a man’s ‘wyrd’ or fate that affected his
destiny. A man prayed to the gods, put his trust in fate and life would go
well: unless of course he was fey − unless he had been chosen or doomed
to follow some other path.

I still am not entirely sure I
agree with all that. It implies that nothing we do has any effect, that in the
end we are all merely pieces on the game board of the gods; just pawns pushed
around by Loki. I will accept that most folk just live and die with little
impact on and little affected by the world about them; but some of us, at
least, are more than that. We become part of the world, help to shape it and
mould it. You can tell we lived, because the world changed whilst we were
alive.

Whatever the truth: the will of
man, the plans of the gods or the chances of fate, I was a fool to believe that
the world had finished with me just yet. No, Loki had not cleared away my piece
from his board.

Not me, nor my friends Cuthbert,
Aedann and Eduard. Not the bard Lilla or the teacher Grettir. All were still in
play, as was Aethelfrith and Aelle.

Then, Loki laughed ... and put
one more piece back on the board.

His name was
Hussa ... and he was still in the game.

The
End

Historical
Note

The period of
history following the departure of Roman troops from Britain in about the year
416 and lasting until the reign of Alfred the Great almost five hundred years
later, represent the most poorly documented in the history of Britain. Enormous
changes overtook the Island. Large parts of the country passed from the
domination of one race to a completely different one. Place names, history,
culture and language were swept away. Invasions, battles and wanton destruction
raged across the land as never before, or since.

In this time, there would have
been heroes and villains. Legends would have arisen. Folk would have spoken
with familiarity of battles and warlords, as we today talk of celebrities and
sports teams. Amongst all this, normal people lived normal lives. People were
born and died. They lived and loved, as we do today.

And yet, we know almost nothing
of this time. Most records that do exist date from a period decades or even
centuries after the events they record. The greatest record of the age, The
Anglo Saxon Chronicle, was probably started by Alfred the Great. Some of the
events mentioned in it occurred five centuries earlier. That is like a modern
man writing an account of the Battle of Bosworth or the Spanish Armada.
Clearly, the monks who wrote the Chronicle referred back to earlier manuscripts
that do not now exist, but we have no idea how authentic they were.

In short, researching this book
has led me to conclude that no one can write a fiction on this period without a
great deal of guesswork and improvisation. Deira, Bernicia, Pennine, Rheged,
Elmet and the other realms mentioned did exist and did interact, by and large,
as I have written. Aelle was king of Deira. Aethelfrith was certainly a
powerful and ambitious king of Bernicia, as was Owain of Rheged. If I have made
any of them harsh and merciless, this is probably fitting for the times.

I have simplified the succession
of Bernicia. Dependant on which source you read, three of Aethelfrith's older
brothers or uncles were kings before he suceeded or possibly he succeeded
directly from Aethelric. Maybe Aethelric was "Firebrand" who fought
on Lindisfarne, or maybe it was his son or brother.  I took the view that if I
was confused, so would a reader be.  In any event, I wanted to use one of the
names for a major character: Hussa.

Looking at Catraeth there seems
no doubt that a battle of some sort did occur around the year 597 or maybe a
little earlier. Surviving records imply that it was a counter attack by the
British against land newly conquered by the Saxons. It seems certain, that
Aethelfrith and his Bernician army was involved, although Deira’s part in the
battle is less well recorded. As for the battle itself, the only event that is
documented is the charge of the Goddodin Cavalry. This does appear in the poems
of Aneirin but I have to confess that I have paraphrased the bard's words a
little. The rest of the battle is purely guesswork. Stanwick Camp does still
exist and it is possible to walk along the earthworks and to get a feel for the
size of the structure.

The existence of the England we
know today is strongly and rightly linked to the victories of Alfred the Great
and his Kingdom of Wessex over the Vikings in the ninth century. Yet, three
hundred years before Alfred’s time, it was the creation of the powerful kingdom
of Northumbria and its emergence as the dominant power in Britain for about a
century, where we can see the roots of that England.

This was the Kingdom of Bede, the
great chronicler of the late 7th. and early 8th. centuries and author of
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum: ‘The Ecclesiastical History of the English
People’. It is also the land of the great kings, Edwin and Oswald, as well as
the location of the Council of Whitby that established the form that the
Christian Church in England would take: a form that lasted − more or less
unchanged − until Henry VIII broke away from Rome some 900 years later.

One day, the Vikings would sweep
it all away, but by then the mark left on the history of England by the golden
age of Northumbria, could not be erased. The journey to that golden age started
at Catraeth, but there are many dangers, many battles and times of terrible
peril before that era arrives.

It will take heroes like Cerdic
and his friends to make sure it all happens.