Time of the Beast (16 page)

‘My name is Cynewulf, son of Beornwulf, born to a noble clan in the kingdom of Mercia in the time of King Ceorl.

‘The day of my birth was long afterwards remembered as one of ill omen. It happened in deepest winter, on a night dark and very cold, in the hall on my family estate at a place called Imma’s ham – the home of the heirs of Imma. In those days, when Mercia was still a pagan land, the time of childbirth was given to the sacred rites and mysteries of women. When the pangs of labour began, the females in a village would gather at their place of worship to offer prayers to the goddesses Frigga and Freya. Then they would intone their ancient rituals to summon those great spirits who are the weavers of fate – Urd, Verdandi and Skuld – the Sisters of Wyrd. These three sisters would come to inspire a shamaness who would attend the birth, to act as a midwife, and then speak a prophecy of the child’s future. In our kingdom at that time, the most famous and revered of these was a woman called Urta. It was Urta herself who came at my birth to perform this function, a tribute to the high standing of my family.

‘Once the child was safely delivered, it was normal that the women would go chanting paeans from the place of confinement to give thanks and proclaim the powerful immanence of the Wyrd Sisters. Then they would burst into riotous celebrations, loudly daring any man to try and restrain them. They would dance and cavort, sing lewd songs, and go on to consume all the strong drink they could find. Like men in battle they would abandon restraint and later women would be found lying drunk and insensible all around the village. It was their time of freedom, and no man would seek to prevent it, for no man dared to forbid a woman who went under the spell of the Sisters.

‘But I learned that when I was born these customary celebrations did not occur, for as my life began there blew up a sudden violent storm, and raging winds were followed by a blizzard that covered the land in ice and snow. That night many across the kingdom died, and among them was my mother. It was declared an accursed night. But still Urta fell into her trance, communing with the three Sisters to give her secret prophecy of my destiny to my grieving father. It was said that my father was never the same man after that night, and he never married again, nor even took a woman to his bed.

‘As I grew older I was told of Urta’s prophecy, and I once asked my father what she had foretold. But he only grew angry and would tell me nothing, forbidding me ever to speak of the matter again. I was never close to my father and was allowed little contact with him. He left me to be raised by servants, and they secretly supposed he resented me, blaming me for my mother’s death. I once heard him shout at his steward, Herewald, that I was a changeling child of the dark elves. But I never really understood his aversion towards me and became bitter at his great unjustness.

‘I grew, like my father, to be much taller and stronger than most men, and in my youth I was sent away to do military service with one of the king’s ealdormen, Ceolwulf. It was made to seem like an honour, but even then I knew the harsh truth of it: I was to serve as a hostage to ensure my father’s loyalty. How little they knew my father, if they believed that any threat against me would concern him. But in those days such rules were strictly enforced, for our king now was Penda, who had quickly come to assert his authority over our many feuding tribes and clans, and was turning Mercia for the first time into a strong and unified kingdom.

‘I took well to the martial life, for my size and strength, along with my skill, made me a formidable warrior. I spent my young days riding through the kingdom, fighting to put down rebellion and lawlessness, and enforcing the king’s authority. I rode in Penda’s army to fight in his great war against the confederate lands of Northumbria, and I was twenty when he declared his first war against the kingdom of East Anglia. We marched behind him into Middle Anglia, the territory he sought to win from East Anglia’s control, and our army gathered into three formations as we moved to face the enemy forces, while behind us there rose up the war cries and curses of our wizards. From the opposing ranks there came the chanting of monks, for it was known that Sigbert, East Anglia’s king, a pious Christian, had gone soft in the head and retired into a monastery, leaving the rule of his land in the hands of his young kinsman. But his nobles dragged Sigbert, against his will, onto the battlefield in an effort to inspire his wavering troops. We saw him there, his standard surrounded not by warriors but by singing monks, and we all thought it looked very funny indeed.

‘Upon the order we charged, shouting out our battle cries, and both shield walls met with a mighty crash, and almost at once the enemy formation started to break. In the chaos which ensued, I found myself face to face with a huge enemy warrior, who saw my own size and came forward to challenge me in single combat. I advanced and began to swing my sword in fast circular motions, a showy manoeuvre designed to demonstrate my skill and unnerve him. It did not work. He lunged at me, and as our blades met I felt at once his enormous strength. Then he was striking at me relentlessly as the air about us filled with the screams of men and the stink of blood. He was attacking so hard that I fell back before him as I smelt the reek of his stale sweat and looked into his wide, roaring mouth to see his rotting teeth as he bared them at me. Such was his sheer weight and power that we both sensed it was I who would weaken first. Desperately I saw that my best hope lay in my greater agility and speed, since I was a youth and he was a lumbering brute. But suddenly he stayed his attack, lowering his blade as if to rest his sword-arm. Exhausted, I sought a moment of respite to relax my own tortured muscles. Yet his move was a bluff, and he suddenly swung his sword at my face in a fast sideways strike. I raised my shield barely in time to block the blow, but in the same moment he struck out with his own shield, smiting me full in the face. The iron boss of his shield slammed into the nose-guard on my helmet, and I felt a sharp crunch of pain as the metal buckled and my nose began to bleed. I was stumbling backwards, my head ringing as my flesh crawled with fear, but I found my footing just as he came at me. Now I saw my chance, and I feigned another stumble as I waved my blade weakly in front of me, as if disoriented and still fighting to regain my balance. My opponent hurtled forward to claim his victory – my lure had worked. As he swung down his blade to beat mine aside, I pulled my sword back and leapt away, so his blow met no resistance as he lurched forward under his own momentum. I turned beside him, and with all my strength drove the point of my blade through his war-coat and into his ribs as he gave a bellow and the blood burst out through his chain-mail in a torrent. Then his life was mine for the taking.

‘Already the enemy shield wall had collapsed, and they were in full flight as the battle turned into a rout. I joined the pursuit, but soon had to stop to pull off my helmet, for my nose had swollen painfully against the metal, and the stream of my own blood was suffocating me. I did not hear anything above all the confusion and clamour until it was too late, when suddenly there were footsteps running behind me. As I went to turn I was struck a heavy blow on the side of my head, and my sight began to fade as I fell dazed to the ground. I lay and felt the warm trickle of blood on my face and neck as I helplessly awaited the killing blow. But clearly my attacker had no time to inflict it, and I only began to sink deeper into unconsciousness.

‘When I opened my eyes again I felt profound shock as I realised I could not move my body, but lay where I had fallen, entirely paralysed. I looked out over the mist-covered battlefield, strewn with the bodies of the slain, their faces fixed into lifeless contortions of agony and horror. The battle was long over, and the bodies lay stripped of their armour. A great terror filled my heart as it came to me that I had been abandoned, crippled and useless, and left for dead. I tried to call out to anyone who might be nearby, but my powers of speech were lost. So I lay, no more than a living brain housed within a corpse. Then I saw that the crows were beginning to come in great numbers to batten upon the fallen. And I felt sheer panic and terror as I knew that soon the carrion birds would come for me, to devour me while I was still alive.

‘Now hordes of the creatures were flocking on the edge of my sight, each one a little black horror as they flapped and hopped together in a vile scuffling mass until it seemed to me that these filthy things, which scuttled forward with beady, hungry eyes that seemed to exult in all my helplessness, began somehow to blur and merge within my sight into one obscene giant form that scrambled upon me in a single frightful movement, engulfing my whole body inside a great shroud of clawing, shuddering blackness.

‘Wild fear overcame me even as I looked up to find that the darkness upon me was transformed and had become only a man who stood leaning over me to block out the sunlight.

‘ “Steady,” he said to me. “It was a nasty blow. Can you stand up?”

‘My head was splitting with pain, but the wound meant nothing. I felt only an incredible sense of relief to be restored to my waking self, so terrifying and real had the vision seemed. But now the living world itself appeared barely real to me as my senses grew vague, and I could find no power to speak or respond sensibly to my comrades, who supposed the blow had left me concussed and confused. I am sure it did, but over the following days it felt to me as if I were still helplessly trapped inside myself, lost and unable to communicate with the world outside, as the nightmare of paralysis I had suffered in my vision came to seem like a clear and fearful foreseeing of my present state. A cold fever plagued my body, while in the isolation of my mind creeping terrors began to grow: the memory of the flocking crows as they gathered into a single dark and predatory shape. I wondered what terrible events this image might portend. For I could not doubt that what I had experienced was something weird and ominous, yet hideously
real
– a grim and prophetic spirit which had entered into me, and which even now was not gone from me, but held me exiled and alone in a dark netherworld of inward foreboding and dread.

‘At last my condition improved, and slowly I emerged to recover my normal senses. But since that time crows have been things of aversion and ill omen to me, and I will tell you that I still cannot look at one without shuddering.

‘After our great victory there was peace in Mercia for some time, before King Penda began his warmongering again. Soon I returned home, since I had received a message informing me I was to be married. My betrothal had been arranged a few years before, to the daughter of an undistinguished thegn whose land bordered a part of our own. It was not a particularly advantageous match, and I wondered why my father had agreed to it. But I had seen the girl once – her name was Elswith – and she seemed pretty enough, so I supposed she would do. She was now sixteen, and her family were pressing for the marriage to take place.

‘When I arrived back home, my father no longer seemed to me the intimidating figure of my childhood, for he had become visibly older in the years I had been away, and now I had grown even taller than he. I had not grown badly, I told myself, for a changeling of the elves. As a wedding gift he now presented me with something truly magnificent, designed to increase our family’s prestige at the ealdorman’s hall. It was a newly forged sword, beautifully wrought from the finest steel, the pommel studded with gleaming garnets. I named the sword Blood Drinker, and I have carried it with me to this day.

‘The wedding ceremony took place on a cold, bright spring day in front of our hall. My bride and I stood to exchange our vows, surrounded by our families and retainers, who shook branches of the birch tree at us as the traditional symbols of fertility. I studied her face, beneath a lustrous crown of golden hair garlanded with spring flowers, and was not at all displeased by what I saw. But when she looked back at me she seemed to show no reaction at all, her eyes remaining blank and wholly dispassionate as she studied me. This offended me, for I was washed and scrubbed, finely dressed, and my hair was combed. I was tall and well made, even considered handsome, and she might easily have been married to some ugly troll three times her age. So in my youthful vanity I suppose I had expected her to be pleased with me.

‘At the wedding feast we hardly spoke, and she answered all my questions with only a plain yes or no. She merely picked at the joints of meat served up on our trenchers, and I gained a sense of sulkiness and even anger from her. But I reminded myself that she was young and absent from her home for the first time, and no doubt unaccustomed to the company of strangers. So I decided I must be patient with her and treat her with kindness.

‘But that night, when we were escorted to our bedchamber and left alone, the situation did not improve. Determined to do my duty – for that was how I thought of it – I threw off my clothes and lay on the bed beside her. But she only lay silently on her back, staring up at the ceiling with those perpetually angry eyes. I then tried to undress her, but while she did not resist she did nothing to help me, and indeed did not move at all. Her body was pleasing enough, with firm breasts and unblemished skin, but I was deterred by the pure coldness of her manner, and all the while she made no response to any of my fumbling efforts. What happened that night was awkward and embarrassing. It was like attempting to couple with a sack of dough.

‘In the nights that followed nothing changed, and all my clumsy attempts were only met by this same icy lack of responsiveness. I had not known quite what to expect from her – I had spent my life among men and had little experience – but I definitely knew it should not be like this.

‘Unable to endure her company for long, I began in the daytime to pass the hours in sparring with the men in my father’s service, practising my swordsmanship and starting to accustom myself to the feel and balance of my new weapon. It was after a fierce bout, when my blood was roused, that I decided finally to go to Elswith and demand some explanation for her behaviour. I looked for her in our private room but did not find her there, and neither was she in the main hall, nor could I see her anywhere outside. I was informed she had last been seen walking out among the barns and outhouses, so I went to search for her there. It was while I wandered in that vicinity that I heard the faint sound of a muffled squealing. I traced it to a small storage hut, and quietly pushed open the door. My wife was inside, her back turned to me, and kneeling before her with her hands bound to a post and her mouth gagged was one of Elswith’s maidservants. The girl was stripped, her gown flung onto the floor beside her; and my wife was inflicting a severe beating on her with a leather scourge. The servant’s back was already bloody as she writhed and squirmed, but Elswith’s fury was relentless, and each time she inflicted a blow she let out a short harsh cry, as if it were she who suffered the pain of it.