London (22 page)

It would be called St Paul’s.

The bishop stayed at Cerdic’s hall that evening. His party was small: apart from himself there were just three servants, two young priests and an elderly noble from King Ethelbert’s court. Though Cerdic was anxious to prepare a feast for him, the missionary begged him not to.

“I am a little tired,” he confessed, “and I am anxious to continue on to the King of Essex. Next month I shall return here to preach and to baptize. After that, you may prepare a feast.” He did, however, announce that the following morning, before continuing on his way, he would say a Mass at the place where the new church was to be built. Until then, Cerdic begged the bishop and his party to take over his own hall for the night, while he and his family retired to the barn.

Early in the bright, sunny morning, Bishop Mellitus led his little party to the empty city. One of the young priests took with him a flask containing wine, the other a bag containing barley bread. The nobleman from King Ethelbert’s court carried a simple wooden cross about seven feet high. At the site on the hill, they stuck the cross into the ground. There, Mellitus and his two priests prepared to say a simple Mass.

Cerdic looked around him with satisfaction. It was an intimate occasion. He and King Ethelbert’s noble would receive the bread of the communion while his family watched. He felt proud to be part of such an occasion. “I’m sure I’m the only man north of the Thames to have been baptized,” he remarked to the nobleman. In due course, when the cathedral was built and ready to be dedicated, he thought it likely that the kings of Kent and of Essex would attend with their courts. Then he, too, having helped the bishop as he built it, would have a place of honour amongst them.

Only one thing had irritated him. The night before, his two eldest sons had asked him if they could be excused from the event. “Why?” he had demanded. “We wanted to go hunting,” they casually replied. He had been furious. “You will all accompany me and behave yourselves,” he thundered. And when the boys had asked him to explain what the ceremony meant, he had been so angry that he had only shouted: “Never mind what it means. You’ll show respect to your father and the king and I’ll hear no more about it.” But glancing at them now, wearing their finest cloaks, their fair hair and young beards neatly combed, he decided that, all in all, they were a credit to him, and he approached the Mass in better humour.

The service was not unduly long. Mellitus preached a brief sermon in which he dwelt on the qualities of the Saxon King of Kent and the joy that they should all feel in this place of worship. He spoke Anglo-Saxon rather well, with feeling and eloquence. Cerdic nodded approval. Then came the communion itself. The bread and wine were consecrated. The miracle of the Eucharist took place. Proudly Cerdic stepped forward with the other noble who had been baptized.

It was then that Elfgiva, understanding little of these foreign rites but thinking to please her husband who, perhaps, still loved her, urged her four sons: “Go and do as your father does.” Which, after hesitating, they reluctantly did.

So Cerdic’s four sons, blushing a little, tramped forward to where the Roman priest was serving communion and, glancing at each other uncertainly, knelt before him to receive their due. Cerdic, who was already kneeling, did not see them approach, and, not expecting them to be there, was unaware of their presence until, just after he had risen and turned to go, he heard the bishop’s voice.

“Have you been baptized?”

The four sturdy fellows looked at him mistrustfully. Mellitus repeated the question. He guessed they had not.

“What does this beardless wonder want?” muttered the youngest.

“Just give us the magic bread,” the eldest said, “like you did our father,” and he indicated Cerdic.

Mellitus stared at him. “Magic bread?”

“Yes. That’s what we want.” And one of the four, meaning no harm, reached out to grab one of the pieces the priest held in a bowl.

Mellitus drew back. Now he was angry. “You treat the Host in this way? Have you no reverence for the body and blood of Our Lord?” he cried. Then, seeing the four strong Saxon youths look utterly mystified, he turned furiously towards Cerdic and demanded in a voice that seemed to echo off the city walls: “Is this how you instruct your sons, wretched fellow? Is this how you respect your sovereign Lord?” Cerdic, thinking the bishop was referring to the king, went scarlet with shame and humiliation.

A terrible silence fell. Cerdic looked at his sons. “What are you doing here?” he enquired, through gritted teeth, of the eldest. To which the boy shrugged and, indicating his mother, “She told us to come up for the bread,” he said.

For a moment Cerdic did not move at all. He was too shocked. The truth of the matter was that not only had he failed to instruct his sons and to control his family, but that he was in fact a little uncertain about the niceties of the communion anyway. He had followed his king. He had supposed it was enough. Yet now he had been shamed before the king’s man, humiliated by this bishop, shown up as a weakling and a fool. He had never thought of himself as either. The pain was terrible. His throat felt very dry, his face red. Almost choking, he motioned to his sons to rise, which they did awkwardly. Then he walked back to where Elfgiva was standing. And as he did so, and glanced at her, it suddenly seemed to him that this was all her fault. None of this would have happened but for her obstinacy and disloyalty. Now she had sent his sons to disgrace him. If, at the back of his mind, he realized she had not done it deliberately, it no longer seemed to make any difference. It was her fault; that was the point.

Coldly, deliberately, he struck her across the face with the flat of his hand.

“I see you no longer wish to be my wife,” he said quietly. Then he strode over to his horse and rode down the hill.

A few hours later, a group of five riders came along the track from Lundenwic and, emerging from the trees, rode towards the little river now called the Fleet that lay below the Roman city’s western walls. Instead of crossing the wooden bridge, however, they went a short way upstream, dismounted, and walked down to the Fleet’s grassy riverbank, where Mellitus and his priests awaited them. There, watched by Cerdic, the four young men undressed and, at the priests’ command, jumped one by one into the freezing water.

Bishop Mellitus was merciful. He did not force any of them to stay in for more than a moment, but made the sign of the cross over each and let them hastily clamber out, shivering, to dry themselves. They had been baptized.

Cerdic watched calmly. After the disaster of the Mass it had taken all his powers to persuade the furious bishop not to leave at once. Finally, however, deeming it best for his cause, Mellitus had agreed to delay his onward journey a few hours and to perform this important ceremony for these pagan youths.

“I dare say,” he remarked with a smile to his priests, “that we shall be called upon to baptize worse fellows than these before long.”

As Cerdic saw them emerge dripping from the water, he had another reason for quiet satisfaction. The rage he had thrown at his sons when they returned to the trading post had proved effective. He had reasserted his authority. Without another word about hunting, they had gone meekly to their baptism.

Only one person was absent from the scene.

Elfgiva had remained alone in the hall, silently weeping.

By the next day, everybody knew. A groom had been sent down into Kent with a message: the master wished to claim his new bride. The Lady Elfgiva was to be cast aside. Despite the long weeks of tension between master and mistress, the entire household reeled from the shock. Yet nobody dared say a word. Cerdic went about looking silent but grim. Elfgiva, tall and very pale, moved through the days with a stately dignity that no one liked to invade. Some wondered if she would stay there in defiance of Cerdic. Others thought she would return to East Anglia.

Yet for Elfgiva the most painful aspect of the business was not the rejection, or even the humiliation of her position. It was not what had happened, but what did not happen.

For as she waited for her sons to protect her, or at least to protest, there was only silence.

True, the three eldest came to her, each in turn. They commiserated: they suggested that perhaps, if she converted, there might be a reconciliation. But even this they said without conviction. “The fact is,” she murmured to herself, as she stood staring at the river one day, “they fear their father more than they love me. And I do believe they probably love hunting slightly more than they love their own mother.”

Except for Wistan. When he had come to talk to her, the sixteen-year-old had broken down with grief. He had been so upset with his father that she had had to urge him for her sake not to enrage Cerdic further by attacking him.

“But you can’t just accept this,” he protested.

“You don’t understand.”

“Well, I can’t,” he vowed, and would say no more.

Three days after this conversation, Cerdic, walking along the lane from Thorney, was not entirely surprised to see young Wistan standing in his path awaiting him.

Assuming a grim expression, the merchant walked towards him with scarcely a nod, expecting to freeze the boy into silence. But Wistan stood his ground and spoke firmly.

“Father, I must talk to you.”

“Well I don’t need to talk to you, so get out of the way.” It was said with the cold authority that made most men tremble, but bravely the boy moved to bar his path.

“It’s Mother,” he said. “You can’t treat her like this.”

Cerdic was a burly man. Not only that, he had force of character and all the tricks of authority. When he chose, he could be very frightening indeed. Now, he glowered at his son and fairly bellowed.

“That is a matter for us, not for you. Be quiet!”

“No, Father, I can’t.”

“You can and you will. Out of the way!” And using his far greater weight he knocked the boy aside and strode furiously down the lane, his eyes blazing with fury.

But that boy’s the best of the lot, he thought to himself secretly as he marched along.

It did not change his view about Elfgiva, however.

Four days after he had left, the groom Cerdic had sent to Kent returned with the reply from the girl’s father. Cerdic’s new bride would be delivered to him at Bocton, two weeks after the midwinter feast of Yule.

It had always been the habit of Cerdic and Elfgiva to return to the Bocton estate well before the great Saxon Yuletide celebrations, but on receiving this news, the merchant announced briefly: “I shall celebrate Yule here at Lundenwic. Then I shall go to Bocton for the rest of the winter.” The signal was clear. The old regime was to end. A new one was to begin.

As the household adjusted to this information, a change of mood began to take place at the trading post. At first it was almost imperceptible, but as the days went by there was no mistaking it.

Elfgiva was still there. Technically, since Cerdic had not yet sent her away, she was still his wife. However, in some indefinable way, people started to behave as though she had already left. If she gave an order, for instance, it would be politely obeyed, but something in the other person’s eyes would tell her that the servant was already thinking about how to please the new mistress. “It’s as though I’ve become a guest in my own home,” she murmured to herself. And then, with bitter irony: “One who’s starting to stay too long.”

Yet if everybody else was wondering when she would leave, she herself had still to make up her mind about what to do. She had a brother in East Anglia. But I haven’t seen him for years, she reminded herself. There were some distant kinsfolk living in a village a few miles from her childhood home. Could she go there? “Surely Cerdic can’t just send me out into the forest?” she cried. For the moment, though she hardly realized it, a strange lassitude crept over her. I’ll decide before Yuletide, she told herself. And did nothing.

Cerdic, too, said nothing. She did not know what he wanted nor how he meant to provide for her. He merely left her, still his wife in name, in a kind of limbo.

Ricola found that she was often with her mistress now. Although Elfgiva was usually reticent and dignified, occasionally, in her loneliness, she stooped to sharing a confidence with the slave girl. Ricola was certain the rift between Cerdic and his wife was complete. “The master’s not sleeping with her any more,” she told Offa. “I’m sure of that.” She braided and brushed Elfgiva’s hair with a secret tenderness. And once, after Elfgiva confided that she hadn’t decided where to go yet, she cautiously asked: “If the master means you to leave, Lady Elfgiva, then why hasn’t he made arrangements about it?”

“It’s quite simple,” the older woman explained with a sad smile. “I know my husband. He’s a cautious merchant. He’ll divorce me as soon as he has the new girl in his hands. Not before. He’ll wait until then.”

“I’d just leave,” Ricola blurted out. To which the older woman said nothing.

But this uncertainty left one problem which Offa brought up with Ricola one night. “If she’s sent away,” he demanded, “what do you think will happen to us? You and me?” He looked perplexed. “She bought us. Does that mean we go with her?”

“I should hope so,” the girl cried indignantly, surprising herself by the strength of her feeling. “She saved my life,” she added, to explain her vehemence. And then, staring at Offa she asked: “Don’t you want to stay with her?”

At first Offa could only reply by looking puzzled. Where would Elfgiva take them? He thought of the dark Essex forest; he had no wish to go back there. He thought of what little he knew about the huge cold openness of East Anglia. And he thought of the rich, lush valley of the Thames, and of the empty city with its hoard of gold.

“I don’t know,” he said at last. “I don’t know at all.”

As the days passed, there were two events in Ricola’s life that she did not discuss with anyone. The first concerned the merchant.

It was just a week after the baptism of his sons that he first looked at Ricola. It was nothing much. She had been emerging from the main house, stooping under the heavy thatch of the little doorway just as he strode up from the jetty. She had passed close to him, and he had looked at her.