London (17 page)

THE ROOD

604

The woman stared at the sea. Her long hair fell loosely over her hunting dress, which flapped in the wind. The bright autumn sun was still in the east.

Her last moment of freedom. For three days she had delayed in this wild place that was her refuge, but now she must return. And decide. What answer would she give her husband?

It was
Haligmonath
– holy month – as they called the old Roman month of September in the pagan countries of the north.

The place where she was standing lay on the huge, curving coastline beyond the Thames Estuary where England bulges out some seventy miles eastwards into the waters of the cold North Sea. Before her, the great, grey sea. Behind her, huge, flat tracts of fen and heath, wood and field stretching to the horizon. And to her right, the long, desolate beaches that continued southwards for fifty miles before they curved into the wide entrance to the Thames.

Her name was Elfgiva – “The faeries’ gift” in the Anglo-Saxon tongue. Her richly embroidered dress proclaimed her a noblewoman. She was thirty-seven, with four grown sons. Her complexion was fair, her face handsome, her eyes bright blue. Although strands of silver had stolen into her golden hair, she knew she was still a fine-looking woman. I could still have another child, she thought. Even the daughter she had longed for. But what was the use of that if this terrible business remained unresolved?

Though the two servants waiting with the horses could not see the anguish on her face, they could guess her feelings. They felt sorry for her. The whole household knew how, after a quarter-century of happy marriage, the master and mistress had suddenly fallen out.

“She’s brave,” one groom whispered to the other. “But can she hold out?”

“Not against the master,” the other replied. “He always gets his way.”

“True,” the groom agreed. And then, with admiration: “But she’s proud.”

It was not easy for a woman to be too proud amongst the Anglo-Saxons of England.

Profound changes had taken place in the northern island of Britain during the last two centuries. The first was that, since the empire of Rome had effectively collapsed, Britain had ceased to be a Roman province. The second was that, like most of the empire, it had been invaded.

There had always been barbarians at the empire’s gates, but Rome had either repelled them or absorbed them as mercenaries and immigrant settlers. From about 260, however, as the sprawling empire fragmented into regions, the incursions grew harder to control. And around the year 400, the many tribes of eastern Europe, stirred up by the appearance of the terrible Huns from Asia, began a long series of huge migrations west. The process was a gradual one. But slowly the Goths, Lombards, Burgundians, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Slavs and many others, settling beside the existing populations, established their tribal territories and the old order and civilization of western Europe had been completely disrupted.

It was soon after 400
AD
that the hard-pressed Roman emperor withdrew the garrison from Britain, sending the island provincials only the bleak message: “Defend yourselves.”

At first, the islanders coped. True, there were raids from Germanic pirates, but the island’s ports and towns had defences. After a few decades, they started employing German mercenaries to protect them. Gradually, however, with the old trade from the Continent disrupted, things began to slide. Regional leaders sprang up. The mercenaries settled and sent messages to their kinsmen overseas that the island province was weak and fragmented.

They were north Germans – tribes from the coastal regions of today’s Germany and Denmark – Angles, Saxons and others, including, probably, a related tribe known as the Jutes. Most of these people were fair-haired and blue-eyed.

They came in a steady stream, extending their hold on England from east to west. Sometimes they were successfully resisted. Around the year 500, a Romano-British leader held the West Country against them, and his name, discovered by chroniclers long after, gave rise to the legend of King Arthur.

But despite these valiant attempts to preserve the old Romano-British world, within a century and a half of their first coming, the immigrants were masters of the English land. Wales in the far west and Scotland in the north they failed to colonize. Elsewhere, except in some place names and river names – Thames from Tamesis, for instance – even the old Celtic and Latin languages largely died out. The settlement evolved into several famous kingdoms: the Angles set up Northumbria and midland Mercia; in the south lay the Saxon kingdoms of Wessex in the west, Sussex in the centre, and Kent in the old peninsula of the Cantii. The huge, low-lying eastern tract of land across the estuary from Kent was divided in two: in the northern half were the Angles of East Anglia; in the south, the East Saxon King of Essex.

It was from East Anglia that Elfgiva was returning to her husband.

It was her childhood home. Every year she went there to visit her father’s grave. This time, in particular, she had hoped the visit would give her strength, and in a way it had. How happily she had wandered along the open coast where the broad flats and beaches were broken only by the long, low lines of sand dunes before they merged with the shallow waves. How she had enjoyed the salt breeze that came in, harsh and bracing, off the sea. They said the East Anglians lived longer than others because of it.

A little way inland lay the burial ground, a series of mounds, a few feet high, by a clump of furze and small trees whose tops had long since been brushed to flatness by the winds. She had spent several hours there during her visit. The largest of the mounds was her father’s grave.

How she had loved and admired him. He had travelled all over the northern seas and taken a Swedish bride. Such a bold seafarer had he been that when he died they had buried him in his boat in full regalia. She could hear his deep voice still. As he lay there now, with his long beard spread, was he dreaming of the heaving seas? Perhaps. And did the gods of the north watch over him? She had no doubt of it. Were they not in his very blood? Had not their people given their names to the days of the week? Tiw, the war god, had Tuesday, in place of Mars in the Roman calendar; Woden, or Wotan as the Germans called him, greatest of all gods, had the middle day, Wednesday; Thunor the Thunderer, Thursday; Frigg, goddess of love, Friday, in place of the Roman Venus.

“My great-grandfather was the youngest brother of a royal line,” he would remind her, “so we are descended from Woden himself.” Nearly all the royal families of England claimed descent from Woden. No wonder her father’s endless strength had seemed to come from the sea and sky itself.

Wasn’t this the heritage she had passed on to her own four sons when they were in the cradle? Hadn’t she taught them that they were children of the sea and the wind and of the gods themselves? What, then, would her father have said to her husband’s new and shameful demand? As she stood by his grave she had known very well. Which was why, if the visit had given her strength, it had brought her no comfort.

Her husband had demanded that she become a Christian.

The man and his pretty young wife were standing together in the middle of a circle of villagers by the river. Both were terrified.

Like the rest of them, the couple were dressed in simple smocks and leggings bound with thongs of twine. Except that two women were pulling the leggings off the girl. In a moment they would pull off the smock as well.

The crime and the trial – such as it was – had taken place the previous day; the sentence would have been carried out then, too, if the village elder had not decided to wait until they had a snake. They had one now.

The woodsman carefully held the adder just beneath its head. In a moment he would hold it close to a small charcoal fire, just to tease it.

On the ground in front of the girl was a large sack already weighted with stones. As soon as her clothes were off, the fair-haired girl would be forced to get into it. They would then toss the adder in, tie up the top, and watch the sack’s convulsions as the adder struck her. When the elder said so, they would throw the sack in the stream and let it sink.

This was how they punished a woman for witchcraft.

There was no question about their guilt: they had been caught in the act. No man would speak on their behalf. Admittedly, the young fellow had protested that his wife was not involved, but there was no need to take any notice of that. He had come from their cottage before he did it, and she had been in there. In the eyes of the village, that made her guilty.

“She must have told him to do it,” some said. “She didn’t try to stop him,” others qualified. Either way it made no difference. The ancient laws – the
dooms
– of the Anglo-Saxons were harsh and unyielding. “Put her in the sack,” they cried.

For the young man, Offa, there was more sympathy, even though his own sentence was assured. No one could deny he had shown spirit. The facts were simple. The village elder, a tall and cunning man, had taken a fancy to young Offa’s wife. He had tried to seduce her and come close to rape before her screams had stopped him. That was all. No harm had been done. But Offa was in love with his wife, and she with him. He could not bear the thought of the assault. Some in the village considered that he had slightly lost his reason.

If he had just attacked the elder it would not have been so bad. Disputes between parties were usually settled by payments. If you cut off a person’s hands, it would cost so much; their arm, so much more. Though it could mean a blood feud, even a death was often settled with a man’s family for cash. But that was not what the young fellow had done. Egged on, no doubt, by his wife, he had come out of his cottage the previous day and stuck a pin into the elder. This was another matter altogether. It was witchcraft.

Though the sticking of pins into the effigies of victims was a common form of witchcraft, another method was to stick the pin directly into the victim himself, as is still told in the tale of Sleeping Beauty, and then pray not that the victim would sleep but that the wound should fester until death was brought on. This was the terrible crime of which Offa was accused. Being of little account, he had not stood a chance.

He was an eager fellow, twenty years old, wiry, smaller than most of the sturdy Saxon villagers, brown-haired where they were fair, although, like them, his eyes were blue. A certain quickness in his thoughts and temper were further signs that his blood was Celtic rather than Saxon. He had two distinguishing marks: just above his forehead was a patch of white hair, and between the fingers of both hands was a curious webbing. Though his name was Offa, the other villagers usually referred to him as Duck.

It was a century and a half since his family had departed the once Roman city of Londinium. Small-time merchants, they had served in the militia when the legions left and watched with concern the city’s decline. They had still been there in 457 when thousands of people from Kent had streamed in to escape a huge force of Saxon marauders. Although, on that occasion, the formidable walls, strengthened with extra bastions and a great stout wall along the waterfront, had protected them, it had proved to be the city’s last hour of glory, the beginning of an end that came quite swiftly. The Saxon farmers who took over the land had no use for cities. The old metropolis, its purpose lost, sank into decay and emptied. A generation later, Offa’s family were impoverished; another and they drifted away. Offa’s grandfather had eked out a living as a charcoal-burner in the forests of Essex; his father, a jolly fellow and a wonderful singer, had been adopted by this small Saxon village and allowed to marry a Saxon girl. These villagers, then, were Offa’s people: he had no others.

It was a small place, just a forest clearing really, but set beside one of the many streams that followed modest, meandering courses through woods and marsh down to the lower reaches of the Thames. There were a few brown thatched huts, a long wooden barn, two fields, one ready to harvest, the other fallow, a meadow, and an area of open grass where four cows and a shaggy horse were idly grazing. There was a black painted boat by the riverbank. Oak, ash and beech trees stood sombrely around. Pigs snouted for nuts and acorns on the soft forest floor.

Once a Roman road from Londinium to the east coast had passed only a mile away, but its line was grown over now. The village was not entirely cut off, however, for a winding track through the forest brought occasional travellers, and over the stream there was a small wooden bridge.

Young Offa was one of the poorest of the villagers. He did not possess the peasant’s full quota of land, the yardland. “I’ve only a farthing,” he had warned his bride when he courted her – a quarter of a yardland. To support himself, he worked for others. Still, he was free. A Saxon peasant in a village. Yet now, as soon as they had drowned his wife, they were going to inflict a punishment perhaps worse than death upon him.

“Let him bear the wolf’s head,” the elder had pronounced. Let him live like the wolves in the forest – friendless, alone. An outlaw. That was the terrible punishment they reserved for a freeman. An outlaw had no rights. If the village elder came after him to kill him, he was free to do so. No one in the area would take him in. He must wander where he could, to survive or die alone as he pleased. That was the
doom
of the Anglo-Saxons.