Etheldreda

Chapter 1-3

‘You mean he gave up being king to become a priest?’ he said disbelievingly.

The boy nodded. He wished he could remember a prayer he had once learned, to keep him from the harm of demons. Penda was surely demon-driven with those dark and restless eyes, those beetling brows, those knotted muscular hands closing and unclosing on the hilt of the dagger in his belt.

‘Your priests, are they richer and more powerful than the King?’ Penda demanded, still trying to understand a man who would give up being king to be a priest. If he must be priest, could he not have been both?

The boy looked helpless. He had no idea how to answer this. The soldier jabbed him fiercely in the side.

‘No, my lord,’ he said. ‘They’re poor. They have nothing of their own. They even beg for food.’

Penda strode about. He could not get the eyes of the man Sigbert out of his mind. He had killed many men, but none who had disturbed him so much.

‘These priests, do they know magic?’

The boy shook his head, darkness seemed to be closing in on him. He knew that he had heard a wandering monk once condemn magic as being of the devil though this had not prevented many in his village turning to it when they needed it. For his own part he could never understand why an amulet that had the power to heal was evil, when a relic of a holy man doing the same work was not. His brother, who seemed to understand these things more than the rest of them, said it was because the amulet was ‘blind’ power and no one knew what dark forces might work through it without your noticing, but the relic was ‘seeing’ power and was linked to a spirit that was known and proven to be good.

‘If he was not there to fight, and he was not there to make magic, why was he there?’ Penda demanded.

‘King Egric and Prince Ethelhere had brought him to us to lead us into battle. He used to be a warrior. But he spoke to us of friendship with the Mercians, and said it was wrong to kill, even our enemies. He said he had taken a vow to God not to kill and he would not do it even to save his own life.’

‘He vowed to his god that he would not kill?’ Penda asked in amazement.

The boy nodded.

Penda grunted and rubbed his bearded chin.

‘What did he hope to gain by coming up to me like that?’

The boy shrugged helplessly.

‘I respect a man who keeps a vow and who honours his god. Even a god who is as foolish as this one seems to be.’ The Mercian king spoke as though to himself. And then, louder, to his men, he said: ‘Find this priest-king’s body and let it be buried with dignity.’

But before they could leave his presence to do his bidding there was a disturbance at the entrance and a man rushed in with urgent news. The boy could not catch what was said, as there was a great deal of shouting, but he heard enough to know that the Mercians were alarmed at a sudden change in the situation. When they rushed out leaving him alone, he began to crawl towards the entrance, but fainted before he reached it.

* * * *

The news Penda had heard to change his mood so swiftly had been that the East Anglians, whom he had thought he had defeated, were rallying under the standard of a new leader.

Prince Anna, brother to both Egric and Ethelhere, had missed the battle, being at the time on a visit to the Kentish court. But he had had a dream of such horror about his country that he had set off for home even before messengers arrived with the news of Penda’s invasion. And so it was that he was now already on East Anglian territory, having sailed up the Deben river while Penda’s army was mostly scattered, looting in isolated villages, celebrating with the local strong ale, over confident in the extent of their victory. He and his companion rode in from the south-east, fresh from their sojourn in Kent, angry and determined to retake their land.

Penda had overreached himself and knew it. His spies had told him East Anglia would be easy taking once he had breached the dykes, and at first it had seemed that they were right. But the Seer had warned him he would have a victory that was not a victory.

He had been foolish to relax so soon and he was angry with himself. That damn sorcerer had taken his mind off things he ought to have been thinking about.

Within a few days Anna had turned the Mercians around. No matter how cruelly Penda’s troops tried to stamp on the people, enough of them always seemed to get away to join their new leader.

By the coming of the Lord’s day, Prince Anna could give thanks to his god for deliverance from the enemy, while Penda, angry and disappointed, had had to retreat.

* * * *

All through these terrible events Etheldreda and Saxberga lay hidden in the cave under the care of the taciturn youth. During the day he went out to forage for food and drink. At night they sat in the dark and talked long hours together, learning that the young man’s name was Ovin and that he was a runaway slave of the Celtic race.

The punishment if he was caught would be certain death, and probably not by the most merciful method.

All their lives the princesses had taken slaves for granted, assuming that they would always be there at their father’s house at Exning or at Rendilsham, taking care of everything. They were not treated badly, for Anna and his wife were kind people and their slaves respected them and worked willingly. But Ovin told them that all masters were not so fair and gentle.

He started to describe the suffering and humiliations that he had endured, but had to stop because Etheldreda wept so piteously. She had been growing steadily paler as the days went by and now would scarcely eat or sleep, her eyes almost like dark holes in her head. She felt as though she had been living all her life believing that she was in a sturdy boat on a calm lake, and had suddenly found that she was on the open sea in a frail craft buffeted by winds and lashed by tremendous waves. One night as she dozed uneasily she thought she saw dry land and a beautiful country... but she could not see a way to reach it. She stretched out her arms, sobbing.

‘Ssh,’ hushed Saxberga, rocking her gently in her arms. ‘Ssh!’

Ovin woke and crept over to them.

‘She is having a bad dream,’ whispered Saxberga. ‘Do you think I should wake her?’

Runaway slave or not, Ovin had become for them both a strong and a comforting force, the only thing that kept them from absolute despair. He had treated Saxberga’s leg with herbal concoctions to keep it from going gangrenous and he had set the bone well, probably better than the king’s own physician would have done, binding it with strips of hide to a stick of wood. They had grown accustomed to his making every decision and waited patiently for the time when he thought it would be safe for them to leave the cave.

He put his hand on Etheldreda’s shoulder.

‘Wake up,’ he said softly. ‘You are safe.’

She jerked awake at once and sat bolt upright.

And for one amazing instant it seemed to her that she was not in the dark, but was seeing everything around her as clearly as though it were full daylight. But everything she saw, and everything she had ever seen, was as nothing to the fair and distant land she had glimpsed in her dream.

* * * *

The next day Ovin returned from foraging with good news.

‘The Mercians have gone,’ he told them. ‘King Anna has driven them away.’

‘King Anna?’ gasped the girls.

He looked at them and smiled. ‘Yes, King Anna,’ he said.