Moyra Caldecott (15 page)

Their hesitation was their undoing. Oswy’s men took heart and swept forward. The Mercians were forced back to the river that they had with such difficulty just crossed, Oswy’s men close upon them.

‘Back!’ shouted Oswy suddenly, noticing the fearful energy of the river… but only some managed to get back in time. The onslaught of rain the sky now unleashed and the flood waters pouring down the valley from the hills, washed many away.

It was said that when the storm passed, the dying and the dead were strewn for miles downstream of the battlefield, and there were more casualties on both sides from the storm’s fury than from man’s.

Chapter 14

Death of Tondbert AD 655

The winter that followed the battle of Winwaed was severe.

Blizzards drove across the high moors and ice split rock from rock on the dark ridges. People huddled in their thatched houses, chopping and burning the very trees whose branches gave them shelter from the icy winds and whose roots held the earth firm beneath them. Rivers froze. Sheep were lost in snowdrifts. The old and very young died daily, coughing and shivering.

Oswy took steps to consolidate his dramatic victory over Penda. His eldest son Alfrid, who had fought with him at Winwaed, was installed as sub-king of Deira. Penda’s daughter, Cyneberga, was given to him as wife and hostage. Peada, Penda’s eldest son, was allowed to rule as sub-king of the Middle Angles, but Oswy wove such a web of spies around him and kept such tight control he was no more than a figurehead. He was forced to marry Oswy’s daughter Alfleda and accept baptism.

The missionaries came to Mercia and Penda’s old enemy, the Christian God, toppled the statue of Thunor in the temple and drove Frejya’s cat women into hiding.

Wulfhere, bitterly resenting the change in his country’s fortunes, took to the hills.

Egfrid returned home.

In the marshlands of the South Gyrwe the winter was no less severe. An icy fog hung day and night upon them, not even the walls of the prince’s hall strong enough to keep it out. Guttering torches and the sputtering fat of roasting animals added an acrid smell of smoke, and at times it was difficult to see across the great table.

Tondbert took ill and lay behind his curtain at the end of the hall coughing and wheezing. Etheldreda barely left his side, feeding him herb broth, mopping the sweat from his brow and holding him close against her as he alternately shivered and burned. She would have liked to have taken him from the crowded hall to the privacy of their own house, but his people would not let him go. Solicitously they hovered about him, offering him mysterious delicacies that were supposed to heal.

She could feel him slipping from her and held him closer, but the priest touched her arm and indicated that she should draw back allowing him to pray for the peaceful passage of her husband’s soul.

She lifted her blotched and tear-stained face to him.

‘Why?’ she whispered. ‘Oh why am I so weak in faith when I most need it? I should rejoice that he goes to the Lord, not weep that I am losing him!’

It seemed to her that she had not, in the three years they had been married, realised that she loved him until this moment.

When Prince Tondbert’s successor was chosen, Etheldreda withdrew to Ely. At last she could give all her attention to what had always been closest to her heart, the founding of her community. She and five of her closest women friends, Ovin and her priest Huna, built huts with their own hands from the trees of the Ely woods and thatched them with reeds from the marshlands nearby. They met for worship in the little church Ovin had built on the site Etheldreda had consecrated.

Heregyth was bitterly critical. If the princess was going to take to the religious life, she asked petulantly, why could she not have done so in one of the big monasteries as she originally intended instead of like a Celt in a hovel. Only the Irish monks lived in gloomy isolated cells and had no comforts. The Roman priests Heregyth had met lived very well indeed. But Etheldreda herself was not aware of the discomfort.

It seemed to her a great luxury to have time to herself at last, with all the distractions of the world removed. She saw sustained meditation and prayer as essential if she wanted to adjust her inner hearing and her inner seeing to the eternal.

She did not ask Heregyth to join the community, for she could see that the life would bring nothing but misery to her. She gave her blessing to her marriage with Egdils and sent them both back to Rendilsham where Anna’s younger brother, Ethelwald, was now king.

In Mercia, after only a few years of rule, Peada was assassinated, some said with the treacherous help of his Bernician wife. Certainly her father Oswy benefited and moved in at once to take the leaderless country under his wing. But a year later a powerful group of Mercian noblemen brought the young Prince Wulfhere out of hiding and forced Oswy to accept him as the rightful king of their country.

Needing important allies, Wulfhere sent to Kent for Saxberga’s eldest daughter, Eormengild.

Oswy, realizing that his position was weakening, sent his messengers to East Anglia and requested an alliance with Etheldreda’s uncle, Ethelwald. The alliance was to be sealed by the marriage of Oswy’s second son, Egfrid, to the widowed East Anglian princess, Etheldreda.

King Ethelwald received the request with mixed feelings. To have Northumbria his ally was more than he could wish for, but, he knew his niece!

The last of the March snows were still lying when he set off for Ely, knowing that if he sent a messenger he would receive a polite but firm refusal to his proposition. His only hope was to appeal, as her father had done before, to her sense of duty towards her people.

Etheldreda was chopping logs of wood for the fire when she received a message that the king was coming in person to speak to her. She paused a moment, straightening her aching back, and looked thoughtfully at the village lad who had excitedly brought her the news.

‘How soon will he be here?’ she asked at last.

‘He is already on the island, my lady,’ the boy cried. ‘He had already landed before we realised who it was!’

She smiled.

‘Well, then, you had better run back and guide him to us. You would not want a king to lose his way now, would you?’

Filled with a sense of importance the boy ran back down the hill.

Etheldreda put down her axe and without hurry tidied up her pile of wood. She would be pleased to see her Uncle Ethelwald, of whom she was fond, but she was a little anxious as to the reason for his unannounced visit.

By the time he arrived she had laid and lit a fire and found what simple furniture there was available in their community for him to sit upon. They had not seen each other for some time and Ethelwald was surprised to see how much she had changed. She was still thin, but she looked brown and healthy as though the vigorous Spartan life she led suited her.

If he had hoped that she would have found it too much for her, he was disappointed; her eyes were bright, her cheeks glowing with health.

His heart sank.

She sensed that something was wrong as soon as she kissed him.

‘Why, uncle – there is a shadow on your greeting! What is the matter?’

He had not intended to tell her at once, but had planned to introduce the subject tactfully much later. He tried to smile reassuringly.

‘There is no shadow, niece, I bring good news.’

‘What news, uncle?’

‘Will you not let me rest a while and eat? I am hungry and cold.’

She bowed at once, and brought him warm bread and thin soup. She asked politely about court matters, trying to bring herself to be interested in them. She was sorry to hear that Heregyth had had another miscarriage and seemed not to be able to bring children full term to birth.

Taking advantage of her unguarded expressions of sympathy on this subject, King Ethelwald asked if she herself did not miss the joys of motherhood.

‘So here we have it,’ she thought. ‘I knew there was something.’

She assured him that she did not and looked at him with such a penetrating gaze that he brought out Oswy’s request sooner than he had intended and with no fine words to accompany it.

She laughed.

‘Uncle, you’ve travelled through the snow for nothing! You must have known that I would not accept. Marriage is impossible for me.’

‘Don’t be so hasty,’ he said. ‘Think about it.’

‘There is nothing to think about. I married once to save my father and it did not save him. There is nothing you can say now that will make me give up the way of life I have chosen.’

Ethelwald sighed deeply.

He was not a weak king and knew that if he commanded a thousand men they would do his bidding without question, but there was something in this woman that he could not bend.

‘Come, uncle, I’ll take you down to the village and make you as comfortable as it is possible to be on this simple island. Stay as long as you like with us and share our life. You’ll see why it gives me so much joy that I dread to leave.’

He thought of all the persuasive things he had intended to say and wondered if he stayed longer whether he would be able to say them. He allowed himself to be led down to the village where all the islanders had gathered to do him honour.

That night Ethelwald decided his mission was hopeless. He did not know how he was going to refuse Oswy, but he knew that there was no way to persuade Etheldreda. To force her at sword point was not only unthinkable, but would not work. He suspected that she would choose death rather than give in.

Etheldreda settled to sleep regretting that she had had to cross her uncle, but with no doubt in her mind that she was doing the right thing. She began to dream that she was one of thousands of pilgrims walking towards a Christian shrine on the top of a hill. She knew that this shrine contained something unbelievably precious. There was a good, cheerful sense of purpose in her heart and seemingly in the people around her, but as she approached the shrine she sensed that something was wrong. The shrine seemed to have disappeared and people were walking over the place where it had been, looking anxiously for it. She noticed that some of them were crying. Others were walking away embittered, saying that there never had been anything there in the first place.

At first she stood helplessly by and watched, filled with sorrow, but not knowing what to do, when suddenly the gleam of something in the grass caught her eye and she stooped down to take a closer look. It was a simple gold ring. She picked it up, calling out to the others joyfully that she had found what they were looking for. But even as she did so she woke up with a start. The dream had been so vivid she found herself looking down at her hand expecting to find the gold ring upon it. But there was no ring.

She pondered the dream a long time.

Most dreams she ignored for they seemed inconsequential and were soon forgotten, but from time to time she had special dreams, dreams that seemed to be trying to tell her something. These she remembered in every vivid detail all her life. This, she knew, would be one of them, but what was it trying to tell her?

That Christ should not be taken for granted? That He should not be looked for only in the expected place, nor recognised only in the expected form? Was the dream trying to tell her that she might be wrong in thinking she could only serve Christ on the hill of Ely in the way she had decided? Was the ring she found telling her to take the marriage with Egfrid and seek there for new ways to serve her Lord?

Suddenly her life at Ely seemed not to have been a life at all, but a preparation.

When Ethelwald came to say goodbye to his niece in the morning, he found her face pale and serious.

‘Uncle,’ she said, ‘I see it is God’s will that I should take my place in the world again. I will accept Prince Egfrid, but only on the same terms that I accepted Prince Tondbert.’

Astonished, King Ethelwald stared at her. It must be God’s will indeed, for he had said nothing to persuade her!

Chapter 15

Marriage to Egfrid AD 659

When Oswy heard the terms Ethelwald had laid down for the marriage contract he started to pace the hall, his face flushed red, his eyes sparking with anger. Eanfleda, not yet knowing what the gist of the reply from Ethelwald was, but knowing that sometimes the ungovernable rages of her husband could be very shaming and destructive, cleared the place at once of all other people.

When they were alone she watched him for some time, waiting her opportunity to find out what had happened. She knew that he had set his heart on the marriage alliance and from his reaction she assumed it had been refused. She was secretly glad. Egfrid was barely fifteen and Etheldreda was a widow of twenty-nine. Anna’s youngest daughter, Withberga, was eleven. If there had to be a marriage between the two countries she had argued that it should be between Withberga and Egfrid, but Oswy would not hear of this. Etheldreda was an experienced and intelligent woman, her reputation for diplomacy at her father’s court and for the way she had civilised the rough people of the Gyrwe was impressive. Though it had never been proved, the rumour was strong that she had outwitted the treacherous Ethelhere in the matter of her father’s burial at Blythburgh. Such a woman Oswy wanted for Egfrid. Withberga was a pale and sickly child. She would be of no use to Egfrid. The boy had returned from the Mercians difficult and sullen. He seemed to fit in nowhere. He paid lip service to his father and mother, but there was no filial love in his eyes, and Oswy had caught a brooding look once or twice that had made him instinctively put his hand to his sword hilt.

Oswy had heard of Etheldreda’s fervent religious bent and had decided that this could be an advantage. Egfrid had a smouldering strength that could lead to greatness if channelled the right way, but if left to itself could lead to a wanton destructiveness. Etheldreda was a strong and beautiful woman. She would be able to handle him, to mould him in a way his own mother no longer could. With her he might grow out of resentment and regret into a strong and practical man. This would still be dangerous for his father if it were not tempered with the Christian taboos and virtues. Etheldreda was definitely the one! But now that she said that she would marry him, but not bed with him, how would this affect the boy?