Moyra Caldecott (11 page)

‘Heregyth tells me that you are worried about me?’ she said gently, taking the reins in her small fine hands.

‘Aye, my lady.’

‘There is no need. All is well. As you can see – the sun is shining and everything is fine and new.’

He bowed his head, and stepped back away from her, her cheerfulness stinging like a cold wind. She rode off without a backward glance, the relief she felt at Tondbert honouring his promise making her light-headed. Her gaiety was instantly attributed to her husband’s prowess as a lover.

It was the custom for a groom to give his bride a present to celebrate the consummation. Tondbert gave Etheldreda the island of Ely which she had loved so much as a child, the best land in his princedom, wooded and standing free from the marshes, supporting six hundred souls. She received it humbly and gratefully, knowing that she had not earned it. At her request they rested there before they continued the last lap of their journey by boat. She wanted to talk to the people who were now her people and see how best to serve them. Near the end of her walk around the island they came across the charred remains of a wooden building that had once been a church. ‘Consecrated by Bishop Augustine himself in my grandfather’s time,’ Tondbert told her.

‘The Lord’s house and it is lying in such ruins!’ she cried.

‘It was Penda’s work,’ he said gruffly, ashamed that he had not thought to rebuild it before he gave his gift to her.

A shadow crossed her face. ‘Penda!’ She picked up a piece of burnt wood and stood a long time turning it over and over in her hands, thinking, remembering Penda’s invasion of her country.

Tondbert’s men had gone to organise the shallow boats for the last stage of the journey and Ovin and Heregyth were bartering for food from the villagers. The prince and she were alone, and he, seeing that she was absorbed in contemplation withdrew, and stood awkwardly a little way from her, wishing that instead of the small island with its few huts and desecrated church, he could give her the world and all its riches.

He saw her stoop down and pick up a handful of grass and earth, and stand again, sifting it thoughtfully through her fingers. This was the first earth she had ever owned and she felt awed by the thought of it. This earth was her responsibility. She knew that she must rebuild the church… but not here. Penda’s hate and violence had marked the place forever. She would find another place and she would know it at once when she saw it.

Once they took to the punts, Tondbert’s companions seemed less ungainly, less uncouth. They had been ill at ease on dry land and in the alien court, but in the marshes they were at home. The small, light punts glided swiftly, poled skilfully between the many hazards. Occasionally a man would draw a bow and arrow and shoot a bird from the sky. Etheldreda winced to see the lovely creatures fall, but when night came and tender marsh fowl was served for dinner she forgot her scruples and ate hungrily.

On the last day a sudden hubbub drew the attention of the Prince and Princess and they drew near to find a man floundering in the black, slimy water among the eels, the others gathered around shouting with laughter, Heregyth screaming and trying to reach him with the long punt pole, her boat rocking dangerously.

‘What is it Ovin?’ called Etheldreda.

‘Nothing, my lady,’ replied the big Celt with a grin. He, with Tondbert’s men, was not sorry to see Edgils, a young thegn from Anna’s court, get a wetting. He and Heregyth had been free with their insults since they had left Rendilsham and so one of the fen men, egged on by the others, had challenged him to a race and contrived to make him lose his footing.

‘Help him out,’ commanded Etheldreda, seeing that the young man was really struggling against the clinging waterweeds. So with great humour and not a few crude remarks they hauled him out and returned him, soaking and smelling, to Heregyth who instantly took him in her arms and covered his muddy head with kisses. Etheldreda and Tondbert joined in the general laughter and then turned back to the journey. ‘So,’ thought Etheldreda. ‘Heregyth and Edgils, eh?’

Tondbert’s court had very few of the comforts to which Etheldreda had been accustomed throughout her life. The great hall was smaller than any she had known, dark, stuffy and overcrowded, and she was expected to sleep with him at one end of it, only a thin curtain between her and the noisy companions who occupied the rest of it.

At home, after the drinking and the feasting, the talking and the singing, the royal family and most of the married couples of the court left the hall and found privacy in separate wooden chambers spread about the court enclosure. Only the unmarried thegns and bachelor visitors pulled out cushions and pallets and spent the night in the hall. Of course slave girls, peasants and servants thought nothing of copulating in public, but it was unthinkable that a princess should be subjected to the same indignity.

When Tondbert pulled the greasy furs from his pallet and indicated that this was where she was expected to sleep, tired as she was, her anger rose high and fierce.

‘What of your promise now, sir?’ she flushed at him with unusual haughtiness. ‘Are we to be a nightly spectacle for your thegns?’

‘There is a curtain, lady,’ he said feebly, shocked at her sudden rage.

‘A curtain!’ she cried scornfully, and gave it a jerk with her white hand. It ripped at once and hung limply from its broken moorings. ‘It would not obscure a midge!’

Tondbert looked embarrassed, aware that the noise of the hall had suddenly ceased and all eyes were upon them.

She turned from him and seized a torch, holding it high above her head.

‘What kind of people are you?’ she demanded, ‘that you expect your prince’s bride to sleep here among your snoring and your filth. I will not shut my eyes until you’ve built a separate house for me!’

An angry murmur started amongst some of the men, but she turned her fiery eyes upon them so fiercely that they were quiet at once. She was amazingly beautiful in the flickering light of the torch, and this, combined with the fact that they were a people who admired courage and outspokenness above all else, impressed them. Someone suggested that they rig up the travelling tent for her but she refused. She had said that she would not shut her eyes until she had a house, and she would not. Tondbert tried to remonstrate with her, but she was adamant.

‘In the morning my men will build you a house, lady, but tonight be content with the tent.’

‘If I sleep in a tent tonight, a tent will be offered to me tomorrow night and the house will never be built. No, I have said I will not sleep until I sleep in my own house and I will not go back on that.’

‘You might as well give up, my lord,’ Heregyth said. ‘My lady is very…’ She hesitated, and then finished the sentence carefully, ‘determined.’

Tondbert sighed. His men were looking at him and he knew what they were thinking. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Stay awake if that is what you want. But the house will not be started until the morning.’ And he strode back to his bed with dignity and, with a great show of being unconcerned, prepared to settle down for the night.

She remained upright in a chair all night staring into the shadows behind the torch flames, as, one by one, the men and women all around her fell asleep. Only Ovin stayed awake with her, standing behind her chair as though on guard. Heregyth tried to do the same, but in a very short time was slumped at her feet, fast asleep.

At first light Ovin started to organise the building of her home. The marshlands had very little stone or wood, but reeds were plentiful. They wove her a house of reeds, cut sedge for the thatching, interlaced bulrushes for the matting to cover the ground, set rush candles at every corner to keep darkness at bay, the women preparing a huge mattress of soft marsh grasses and duck feathers, covering it with otter pelts.

At nightfall when the house was ready she and Tondbert were led to it proudly. Somewhere a lad was playing a reed pipe, its notes fine and clear; birds winged homeward over the water-lands and the sun sank, red and heavy, beyond the featureless horizon of a flat land. Etheldreda raised her arms to the green and gold of the sky.

‘I want to give thanks to the Lord,’ she said, ‘for the people of this land, who were strangers, and are now my own people.’

Chapter 10

Ethelhere at Penda’s court

‘What’s happening?’ shouted Egfrid, son of Oswy of Bernicia, as Wulfhere and some other Mercian youths galloped past him on the practice ground. Wulfhere called back over his shoulder, but the words were lost in the sound of hooves drumming on the turf. Egfrid stared after him, wishing that he could ride with him instead of spending endless hours sparring with old Enwulf and the boys of his own age.

Egfrid had served six long years as hostage at the Mercian court. Cynewise, the Mercian queen, had been kind to him, but Penda he feared, though he saw very little of him. Wulfhere, Penda’s second son, now seventeen, was Egfrid’s hero. He tried to remember that he was an enemy like the others and that one day he would have to kill him, but it was not easy when Wulfhere took him hunting and treated him like a friend and an equal.

Seeing that the younger boys would not settle back to their work after the disturbance, Enwulf called them together.

‘You want to know what’s going on? Well, I’ll tell you what’s going on, but it’ll do you no good to know it because I’m not going to let you stop work until you’ve finished what I’ve set you for the day.’

He looked round at the eager faces of the boys, all sons of thegns and noblemen, but in the sweat and dirt of the practice field indistinguishable from the rough slaves who served them. Egfrid’s face stood out. It always did. He had a kind of sullen pride in his eyes, a lift to his head and a swagger to the way he walked, even at the age of nine, that told much about his future strengths and weaknesses. Ethelred, King Penda’s youngest son, was in his group of pupils too, but it was Egfrid, the Bernician hostage, who was always at the centre of anything that was going on.

‘Our lord the king entertains a special guest. There will be a display.’

A display!

The boys chattered excitedly amongst themselves. A display was the greatest excitement the court could offer apart from war, and was only put on for very special guests on very special occasions. It would mean that everyone would be in their finest clothes, the priests would be out in their feathers and their paint, the warriors would stage mock battles, the horsemen would compete with daring stunts. Everything would be done to impress the visitor. Enwulf had been wise not to tell the boys earlier in the day. He could see they would take some stern handling now that the news was out.

‘Who is the guest, sir?’ Egfrid asked, his voice cutting sharply across the general hubbub.

Enwulf looked at him. What dark fires smouldered in that heart, what thoughts festered in that head? Did he resent his father for abandoning him to the enemy, and wait year after year in growing bitterness for his reprieve? Did he think now the honoured guest might be the Bernician king come to take him home?

‘I think it is Prince Ethelhere of East Anglia,’ Enwulf said mildly.

‘Prince Ethelhere? Not even a king!’ Ethelred said, surprised.

Egfrid said nothing, but Enwulf, seeing the disappointment on his face, knew that he had not guessed wrong about the boy’s expectations.

‘Princes may become kings,’ Enwulf said. ‘But not if they don’t learn what kings must know,’ he added pointedly. He clapped his hands.

‘No more of this. You’ll see the display, but first you must finish the morning’s work.’

Unwillingly the boys returned to their practice – but soon Enwulf’s problem became restraint. They were so excited that they were forgetting the disciplined moves he had been trying to teach them and they were fighting each other as they had seen men fight, to kill.

‘Egfrid,’ the teacher shouted sharply, and interposed his own sword as the young foreigner’s blade drove towards Ethelred’s ribs. Ethelred took advantage of the help to jump back, shaken and pale from his narrow brush with death.

Egfrid’s face flushed darkly.

‘Prince Egfrid!’ he ground out between clenched teeth, his eyes blazing at Enwulf.

‘
Prince
Egfrid,’ Enwulf said as calmly and as firmly as he could for he too was shaken at the boy’s sudden ferocity, ‘you are losing control, the most important thing I am trying to teach you.’

Egfrid threw his sword down on the ground and turned on his heel.

All activity on the field stopped as the boys watched him stride off. Enwulf bit his lip.

‘Come back here!’ he roared. He had been challenged in front of all his pupils and he could not let Egfrid get away with it. But Egfrid did not turn round.

Enwulf seized a practice spear from the pile and flung it with such skill that it landed just ahead of Egfrid, slightly to the right.

Egfrid stopped, but still did not turn round.

The boys watched breathlessly and crept nearer to get a better view of what was happening. Enwulf strode up to the boy.

‘Do you question my authority, boy?’ he snapped.

He confronted the lad, and only then did he realise why Egfrid would not turn round. There were tears making dusty runnels on his cheeks. For a second Enwulf hesitated and then he knew for both their sakes he had to finish what he had started.

He pulled the spear from the ground with one fierce movement, and shouted: ‘Leave the field, whelp of a Christian dog! I’ll deal with you later!’

Egfrid left, but to his friends, he still managed to leave with dignity, walking slowly and with his usual arrogant swagger.

The display put on by the Mercian king for King Anna’s brother Ethelhere was one of the most impressive they had seen for years. But for Egfrid the highlight was the display of horsemanship, his own special skill encouraged by his hero Wulfhere.

As the riders gathered for the start, the boy’s heart beat fast, knowing that Wulfhere would win, yet fearing that he might not. He clambered onto a small rocky knoll where he could view the scene better, pushing a couple of smaller boys off in order to do so. He could see Penda and his queen, the visiting prince, and all the most important eorldermen and thegns sitting and standing on the raised wooden platform beside the field where the race was about to take place. Someone blew a horn and the horses thundered past him, dust almost blinding and choking him.