Moyra Caldecott (18 page)

‘This is not me,’ she thought. ‘I am invisible. This…
this
will be married today. Not me. I am somewhere else where nothing can touch me, no one can reach me, somewhere where there is reality… not this charade of shadows!’

Saxberga burst in.

‘Come! Come!’ she cried. ‘It is time. Why do you delay?’

Heregyth took her by the shoulders and turned her towards Saxberga as though she were a statue.

‘Look at her! Is she not beautiful?’

Saxberga’s anxious face broke into an admiring smile.

‘Beautiful!’ she cried with delight.

‘You too, my sister,’ Etheldreda thought. ‘Even you cannot distinguish the real from the unreal.’

She thought of tearing the clothes off, of clothing herself in rags and blackening her face with dust and soot. ‘This,
this
is the body!’ she would cry. ‘Tomorrow it will be gross and ugly. Why do you waste your time with it! Look for me somewhere else. Find me where I really am!’ But she did not.

She was swept out of the room on a tide of excited women and washed towards the king’s chapel where Egfrid had been placed, equally splendidly dressed, to wait for her.

As she took her place at his side she looked into his eyes.

His were dark and smouldering, those of an animal who could not leave his cage.

When all the noise and clamour of the day had died down Egfrid and Etheldreda faced each other for the first time alone, in a grand chamber full of tapestries and flowers.

Exhausted, she sank down upon a carved wooden chair and looked at him. He was so young. So old. So twisted and knotted in private bitterness. Was it the exile from his parents that had done this to him? Had he too seen the thinness of the skin of gold that covered the violence, the greed and the fear? But, being young, had he stopped there, and not looked further to find even deeper within the human heart the capacity for experiencing great and holy wonders, rich and lovely knowledge?

He sat on the edge of the bed, one knee drawn up to his chin, biting the knuckles of one hand, looking at her with deep resentment.

‘My lord,’ she said at last. ‘Neither of us has asked for this marriage. Let us not be enemies.’

He did not reply, but continued to stare at her and bite his knuckles.

She waited for a while longer and then rose and started to loosen her outer garments and remove her jewels, ignoring him. Heregyth and the women who would normally have performed this office had been forbidden by her to enter the chamber.

He watched every move as she folded her clothes and put them neatly away. The lamps flickered on her long golden hair as she combed it out, on the fine white silk of her shift. When she was ready she brought out from among her possessions a small golden box, a reliquary containing a chip of stone from Golgotha, a wedding present from Bishop Honorious at her first wedding. On its lid was a fish, the cipher of Christ. She placed it on a low table and, still ignoring him, knelt down in front of it. She bent her head, and stayed absolutely still for a long time. The only sound in the room was the creak of the bed as he changed his weight from one leg to another.

When she was finished she arose and, still ignoring him, took some of the rugs from the bed and laid them on the floor. She then laid herself down upon them.

This time astonishment drew words from him.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I am going to sleep.’

‘On the floor?’

‘Yes.’

He stood up, staring down at her, frowning.

Within moments she was fast asleep as though on the most comfortable bed in town, on the most ordinary night of the year. He could hear her peaceful breathing.

He watched her for a while longer and then, realising that there was no one there to care what he thought or what he did, he pulled off his own clothes, dropped them in a crumpled heap on the floor beside her, and climbed into bed and fell asleep.

Chapter 16

Wilfrid

Where had she seen the tall monk before? His appearance teased her memory, but she could not place him. He was smiling into her eyes as though he knew her, an amused lift to the corner of his mouth as though he knew that he was causing her confusion. He was handsome, dark-haired and dark-eyed, his skin tanned from the sun in Rome, his hair cut to the Roman style, the crown shaved and a circle of hair left around his head to suggest the Lord’s crown of thorns. She did not like the Roman tonsure and hoped that it would not become customary in Northumbria, but she had to admit that it suited him.

‘The Princess Etheldreda,’ King Alfrid was saying, ‘a jewel added to the family treasure since you left, Wilfrid.’ Alfrid’s voice had an edge of irony to it that Wilfrid picked up at once. He looked at Etheldreda closer. What had she done to deserve that hidden barb? She was even more attractive than he remembered her, the pretty girl mellowed into the beautiful woman. He had seen her at her first wedding when he was on his way to Rome and he remembered ruefully the way his blood had raced at the sight of her. But he was older now and more controlled. He would be careful not to let his emotions cause him such difficulties again.

‘Wilfrid grew up with me, Etheldreda,’ Alfrid was saying. ‘He might have been my father’s shield bearer had my mother not exiled him to Lindisfarne.’

‘Exiled?’

‘As good as.’

Wilfrid laughed.

‘I know I was not too pleased at the time, my lord, but as it has worked out I have travelled further and seen more sights than I ever would have had I stayed at court.’

‘That I envy you, my friend. Tell me of Rome!’ Alfrid’s eyes glowed at the thought of the great city, all the coming and going, the intrigues, the adventures, the power.

Etheldreda sat beside them quietly as they talked. The court at York had seemed busy enough to her during the year since her marriage. She found it difficult to find time to herself. But by Wilfrid’s account of Rome, York was a quiet backwater, embarrassingly small and unimportant. The Church at Rome was more splendid than any royal court, ambassadors from all the kings of Christendom sought audience of its bishop. To have been there, to have won through the hundreds of miles of dangerous terrain and walked its ancient streets, lent a glamour to Wilfrid that was hard to resist. Etheldreda found herself looking at him more often and listening to him more closely than she had to anyone for a long time.

‘The time is past when it is good enough for a priest to walk the countryside as the whim takes him, and preach the Word in fields and on hilltops to one or two hapless peasants,’ Wilfrid said. ‘We must have organisation now. We must use our resources to consolidate what we have won. Villages are growing into towns. We must have a settled, disciplined body of monks and priests. We must have order.’

Wilfrid argued that the discipline of the Benedictine rule would provide a framework, a backbone, for the ordinary monk and make him something more than he might otherwise have been. The ordinary monk, maybe, thought Etheldreda, but she wondered if it might not clip the wings of the great one. She thought of the Irish pilgrim Fursey who had so impressed her as a child. He would have chafed to be so cooped up behind walls, following a set routine.

‘I think you forget the need for freedom of inspiration,’ she said suddenly. ‘If you have so many rules that all the time is neatly parcelled out, this for prayer and that for manual work, are you not putting limits on the times when God will be “allowed” to speak? To me, one Cuthbert standing on a hill moved by the Holy Spirit, channelling the mighty energy of God so that it can sweep through him and out into the world, is worth far more than a thousand monks doing what they are told to do by an abbot.’

Wilfrid looked at her.

‘Very few men can handle freedom,’ he said. ‘I’m sure Cuthbert would be the first to agree that reasonable, orderly discipline never hurt anyone, while too much freedom has.’

‘I don’t think he would.’ Her eyes flashed. She almost disliked this arrogant monk who behaved and dressed like a nobleman and talked as though he had the sole right to the ordering of God’s Kingdom.

‘When have you known men not to abuse freedom?’ he challenged.

‘When have you known men not to abuse rules and laws?’ she replied.

Alfrid was forgotten, the two faced each other with flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes.

‘You seem to think that my way denies the possibility of inspiration,’ he said.

‘You seem to think that my way denies the possibility of discipline,’ she said. ‘I only say that it should be flexible enough to allow for the sudden inrush of inspiration.’

‘If discipline is flexible it is not discipline,’ he countered.

‘What if someone is speaking with God and the bell goes for Vigils or for Lauds. Must he break off the conversation?’ she asked sharply.

Wilfrid laughed.

‘You are a woman of spirit I see, my lady. With a little more discipline you would be worth a great deal to the Church.’

Etheldreda went scarlet with annoyance. She bit her lip, too angry to speak.

Alfrid displaced Cuthbert and Eata from the monastery at Ripon where they had been installed only recently by Oswy, and gave Wilfrid all the help he needed to extend the buildings and introduce the rules of the new Order.

Etheldreda asked Egfrid to take her to Hexham, which had been his wedding gift to her. She felt restless and needed to get away from York. She was aware of Alfrid’s desire for her and his resentment of her chastity vow, and tired of being always on her guard.

Egfrid had come to accept her role in his life with the kind of sullen resignation with which he accepted almost everything. In public he was as silent and morose as usual, but accompanied her without objection when his duties as second son of Oswy called upon him to do so. In private they hardly ever met. She chose to ask him to accompany her to Hexham because she hoped to make one more attempt to break through his resentment and reach some kind of friendly understanding. It was high summer and the sun was warm, the hills green, the forests ringing with bird-song. He too was restless, and quickly accepted the suggestion to leave the overcrowded town.

As soon as he was on horseback the awkwardness and clumsiness which characterised his movements about the court disappeared. He had learned something of the brilliant Mercian horsemanship during his childhood and was never so happy as he was in the saddle.

They started the journey with a race, Etheldreda’s young mare giving his stallion a challenge that he found difficult to meet. But Egfrid won, and by the shine in his eyes as he did so Etheldreda knew that for that moment, at least, he was happy.

They broke their journey north at Ripon, Wilfrid entertaining them lavishly with pheasant and French wine.

Wilfrid was using stone in the church buildings, even importing French glaziers to work on the windows. Enthusiastically he walked Etheldreda round, taking her arm to lead her under scaffolding and over precarious planks of wood. She found it difficult to keep up the resentment she had felt at Cuthbert’s displacement and began to see something of Wilfrid’s vision of the future.

While Egfrid snored the day’s exertions away, she rose in the small hours to the bell that called the monks to the chapel and for a few hours she followed the discipline of the monastery, finding that kneeling in a sacred place, praying in unison with others, charged the atmosphere with a certain powerful energy.

During the mass she trembled as the wheat touched her tongue, feeling that something of great power had entered her. The wine flowed in her veins transforming her.

Egfrid brusquely refused Wilfrid’s invitation to stay. There was something in the way the priest and his wife looked at each other when they spoke that gave him the feeling of being excluded. He didn’t understand it, but he knew he didn’t like it. For the first time since his marriage he saw Etheldreda as something other than a chain about his neck and was glad to be alone with her as they rode the high, bleak moors, the clean, fierce wind whipping her hair, and floating her cloak out behind her like wings.

On the last night before they reached Hexham, Etheldreda and he stood side by side looking at the stars. Neither felt the need to speak. Above them the immense dome of the sky seemed to wheel silently, the brilliant points of light imperceptibly changing position.

‘Are we moving, or are they?’ Etheldreda breathed.

He shivered, feeling the moments poised, precious, infinitely fragile. He wished he could say something that would please her, that would make her think of him as something other than a clumsy boy, but he could think of nothing.

‘You are mad!’ he said roughly, turning angrily away from her. ‘How could the earth possibly move?’

Chapter 17

Synod of Whitby AD 663

Etheldreda stood upon the very edge of the headland at Whitby and stared out at the sea, its silver folds, its deep mysterious depths, its vast impersonal reaches bringing a calm to her mind that had been sadly lacking lately.

Under King Oswy’s patronage and with King Alfrid’s help, Wilfrid had gone from strength to strength. He was at the Synod that was now in progress in the abbey great hall, an impassioned defender of the Roman computation of the Easter date, spokesman for Bishop Agilbert of the West Saxons, a Frenchman who feared his arguments would be impaired if they had to be filtered through a translator.

Etheldreda sighed. So many words. Such heated, angry faces. She could see Bishop Colman’s Scottish monks from Lindisfarne now as they reacted to Wilfrid’s withering scorn.

‘Our Easter customs are those that we have seen universally observed in Rome, where the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul lived, taught, suffered, and are buried,’ Wilfrid said. ‘We have also seen the same customs generally observed throughout Italy and Gaul and through many different countries, in Asia, Africa, Egypt, Greece. In fact, throughout the world wherever the Church of Christ has spread. The only people who are stupid enough to disagree with the whole world are these Scots and their obstinate adherents the Picts and Britons, who inhabit only a portion of these two islands in the remote ocean.’
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