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.
Ricola, his wife, was naked now. She looked at him. Her cheerful, round face was very white. He knew she loved him, but her expression said only one thing: You did this to me. I’m going to die. You aren’t.
Some of the men were leering at her. They could not help it. After all, she had a delicious young body. Pink and white flesh, a trace of puppy fat, soft young breasts. Two men held open the sack. The man with the adder was grinning. Saxon justice was harsh.
“Woden,??
? the young man murmured, “save us.” And he looked around in desperation.
Surely their lives could not end like this.
Elfgiva and her party rode slowly. It was only a day’s journey, and she still felt confused. It was not just the question of denying her faith, though nothing was dearer to her. There was something else: she had an instinctive sense of foreboding. And the closer she was to home, the worse it became. What did it mean? Was it a message from the gods?
How dreary the clouds seemed. They had come from behind her and now they masked the sun. The travellers were passing through a stretch of wilderness: small trees, burnt grass, brown bracken. Elfgiva remained deep in thought. As she pondered, she remembered her father’s words, many years ago. “When a voyager begins a journey, he prepares his ship, decides upon his course and sets sail. What else can he do? But he cannot know the outcome – what storms may arise, what new lands he may find, or whether or not he will return. That is destiny, and you must accept it. Never think you can escape destiny.”
Wyrd they called it in Anglo-Saxon. Destiny. Wyrd was invisible, yet governed all. Even the gods were subject to it. They were the actors; Wyrd was the story. And when Thunor’s thunder rumbled across the sky and echoed in the mountains, behind that sky, containing that echo, lay Wyrd. It was neither good nor bad; it was unknowable. You felt it all the time, in the earth, the rolling sea, the cavernous grey sky. Every Anglo-Saxon and Norseman knew Wyrd, which decided life and death and gave to their songs and poetry a resonant fatalism.
Destiny alone would decree what was to happen when she met her husband.
“I shall decide what to say when I see him,” she murmured aloud. She would pray to Woden and Frigg that night.
They were passing through a wood when they came to the stream. It was deep. Irritated, she realized that if they tried to ford it she was going to get very wet. For several minutes, therefore, she cast about to see if she could find a better crossing. It was just then, seeing the small bridge, that she also caught sight of the strange little gathering and urged her horse into a canter.
Moments later, Offa was surprised to find himself staring at a handsome lady whom the gods had just caused to appear out of the forest upon a fine horse.
“What did she do?” The lady was gazing down at the naked girl with curiosity. The village elder quickly explained. Elfgiva gazed around the crowd. The sight of the snake and the sack made her tremble. She looked carefully at the young couple again. It was chance that she should have come across this hamlet hidden in the woods. Why should fate have brought her there just then? To save a life perhaps. As she looked at the couple, her own troubles did not seem so terrible. She even felt envious in a way. They were young. The young man loved the girl almost, it seemed, to insanity.
“What will you take for them?”
“Lady?”
“I’ll buy them. As slaves. I’ll take them away.”
The village elder hesitated. It was true that for certain crimes a man might be turned into a slave, but he was not sure in this case what the proper doom should be.
Elfgiva took a coin from the pouch that hung at her waist. The Saxons had no coins of their own, but used those of the traders from across the English Channel. The coin she took out was gold. The entire village stared at it. Few had ever seen such a thing before, but the elder and several of the men had a shrewd idea of its value.
“You need them both?” he asked. He had rather wanted to see the naked girl in the bag with the snake.
“Yes.”
The elder could see at once what the village wished him to do. He signalled to the women to release the girl, who hurriedly began to dress herself.
“Cut their hair,” Elfgiva ordered one of her servants. This was the mark of all her slaves, but Offa and his wife were so shaken by what had been about to happen that they submitted meekly. As soon as it was done, Elfgiva handed the elder the coin, then turned to the young couple. “You belong to me now. Walk behind,” she ordered. And she began to ride away, across the little bridge.
They travelled for some time in silence. Offa noted that they were heading almost due west.
“Lady,” he called out respectfully, at last. “Where are we going?” At which Elfgiva briefly turned her head.
“You’ve probably never heard of it,” she said. “It’s just a little trading post, far away.” She smiled. “It’s called Lundenwic.” Then she turned back again.
Whatever destiny might finally decide, there was little doubt that Elfgiva’s fate that morning lay in the firm hand of the powerful figure who, unknown to her, was at that moment riding exactly parallel to her course only twenty miles to the south.
All those who knew her husband would have agreed, “She may be brave, but no one gets the better of Cerdic.” Two events – one that had taken place the day before, the other which Cerdic planned for the following morning – would have convinced them: “She doesn’t stand a chance.”
Cerdic rode steadily. Though it was only twenty miles as the crow flies, he might have been a world away, for he was on the other side of the Thames Estuary, riding along the great chalk ridges of the kingdom of Kent.
The contrast between the two sides of the estuary could not have been greater. Whereas the huge tracts of East Anglia were low and flat, the narrower peninsula of Kent was divided by the huge ridges that ran eastwards until they ended abruptly in the tall white cliffs that stared over the sea. Between those ridges lay great valleys and sweeps of country – rolling, open fields in the eastern parts, and in the western, bosky woods, smaller fields and orchards.
If Elfgiva was from the wild, free coast, Cerdic was from ordered Kent. And there was the difference.
His family had been there since the first Saxon and Jutish settlement. Their estate, in the west, was still their true home, but as a young man Cerdic had also set up a second residence at the little trading post of Lundenwic on the River Thames. From there he received and shipped goods and set out with a string of packhorses to visit all parts of the island. It was a trade that had made him rich indeed.
He was a large, bluff man, a Saxon to the core, fair-haired, blue-eyed, with a hint of temper about him. Whilst his beard was full, the hair on his head was thinning, and his complexion suggested that, when angry, he could become flushed even to apoplexy. At the same time, his broad, Germanic face had high cheekbones that suggested a measured, even cold strength and authority. “Strong as a bull, but hard as an oak tree,” his men used to say of him. It was also generally agreed that, like his father before him, he would live to be old: “They’re too shrewd to die in a hurry, that family.”
Two other character traits, always strong in his ancestors, were especially noticeable in Cerdic. One was that, once given, he had never been known to break his word. As a trader, this had become a great asset to him. The other, though it was sometimes the subject of wry amusement to his friends, was more often viewed with awe and even fear.
To Cerdic there were only two sides to any issue. Whatever he had to decide – a course of action, a man’s character, a question of guilt or innocence – as far as Cerdic was concerned, there was a right answer and a wrong answer, and nothing in between. Once his mind, which was an intelligent one, was made up, it snapped shut like an iron trap. “Things are only black and white to Cerdic, never grey,” his associates would say.
None of this boded well for his wife. At this moment, Cerdic was on his way back from the court of his traditional lord, good King Ethelbert of Kent, in the city of Canterbury.
Where they were Christians.
In the days when young Offa’s ancestor Julius had forged his coins in Roman Londinium, Christianity had been an unofficial cult, subject to occasional persecution. Then, in the following century, thanks to the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, Christianity had become the empire’s official religion, and Rome the Catholic capital. In the province of Britain, as elsewhere, churches were built, often on the site of pagan temples. The Briti
sh Church was of some consequence. Even decades after the Romans had left the island, British bishops were still attending faraway Church councils. “Though we had to pay their travelling expenses,” the Italian bishops recorded, “because they’re miserably poor.”
But then the Anglo-Saxons came, staunch pagans all. The British Christians struggled, became cut off, and then silent. A century passed, and more.
Not that all was lost. Missionaries arrived. From Ireland, recently converted by St Patrick, came Celtic monks, intense in spirit, rich in Celtic art. Monasteries were established in the north of the island, near the border with the Scots. Nevertheless, most of England still belonged to the Nordic gods. Until now.
For in the year of Our Lord 597, the monk Augustine had been sent by the Pope to convert the Anglo-Saxons to the true faith. His mission had taken him straight to Canterbury, in the south-eastern peninsula of Kent.
It was certainly a convenient place. Situated at the centre of the peninsula’s tip on a small hill, Canterbury had since Roman times acted as a hub to which the Kentish ports like Dover – which lay only twenty miles across the Channel from the European Continent – were all connected. Coming from Europe, Canterbury was the first place of significance a traveller reached. Far more important than its geography, however, was that good King Ethelbert of Kent, whose principal residence this was, had married a Frankish princess, and her people had already been converted. It was the presence of this Christian queen that really drew the Church to Canterbury and gave it its opportunity. In those times the rule of conversion was simple: “Convert the king. The rest will follow.”
“And you, my good Cerdic, I know I can trust absolutely.” Only yesterday, the grey-bearded King Ethelbert had put his hand on his shoulder whilst Queen Bertha had smiled approvingly. Of course they could trust him. Hadn’t his ancestors been loyal companions of the first Kentish kings? Hadn’t King Ethelbert given rings – the most intimate token between a lord and his men – to his own father? “We are always so glad to see you,” the queen had said, “at our court at Canterbury.”