Moyra Caldecott (17 page)

The boat came in sight at last, Edwin’s widow, Ethelberga, standing at the prow, gazing out at the land and the people she had had to flee from in such distress so long ago. She had never met her grandson Egfrid, nor seen her daughter Eanfleda since she had forced her to accept marriage to Oswy.

Eanfleda herself took Etheldreda’s hand and held it tight as she saw her mother, tall and elegant as ever, her hair as white as a swan’s wing. Behind her stood Etheldreda’s sister Saxberga and with her her two sons, Egbert, a tall and confident eighteen, and young Hlothere still very much a child though he was only a year younger than the bridegroom.

As soon as she saw her sister, Etheldreda ran down to the water’s edge and flung her arms around her as she stepped off the small bridge onto dry land. She heard nothing of the calls and the cheers of the crowd, nor was aware of their good-natured pressure around her.

Queen Eanfleda stepped forward to greet her mother and the cheek she offered for her kiss was cold, her words of greeting formal. Many years had passed since they had last seen each other, and not all of them had been good for Eanfleda. Somewhere in the back of her heart she still carried resentment against her mother for insisting on her marriage with Oswy.

Ethelberga sensed Eanfleda’s coolness at once, and tears came to her eyes. She turned from her only child to the crowd of strangers who sang her name, whose eyes were full of love and welcome.

Over her head Eanfleda sought Eorconbert, the image of whom she had carried in her heart all these years as she bore another man’s children, wore another kingdom’s crown.

Suddenly, a deep voice spoke beside her and she turned her head, her heart missing a beat. He was there, close enough to touch. She drew in her breath sharply. He had changed. He had grown heavier through the years, the fine lines of his face had gone. He was now bearded, almost gross of feature. His belly bulged above his sword belt. He was smiling at her, but all the magic was gone. He could have been anybody. He took her hands and she did not even feel the need to draw them back. She heard her voice greeting him, but it was a stranger’s voice. By losing her long and secret dream she had lost a part of herself that had sustained her through the long and lonely years. Who would she think of now when Oswy made love to her?

She was kissed by Saxberga, by the young Kentish princes. She heard her mother’s voice as though it was very far away. Politely she did all that was required of her as hostess and queen, nothing that was expected of her as daughter or as friend.

Had she changed much? She had borne six children and endured many years of danger and fear at the hands of Penda’s raiders, and much sorrow from a husband who did not hesitate to kill her kinsmen if it suited him. She looked down at her own body. She had not grown fat, but the slimness of her youth had given way to a bony leanness. She knew her neck was wrinkled and her face was lined.

‘How sad,’ she thought. How quickly youth passed. Before one even knew one had it, it was gone. She looked at her mother with a sudden warmth, sorry that she had wasted precious time in resentment.

It was time to move. Horses were brought for the royal party, and in the bustle and confusion, difficult emotions were forgotten.

Eanfleda rode ahead with her mother, Etheldreda with her sister, and Eorconbert brought up the rear with his two sons.

That night after the feasting and the songs and the speeches, Saxberga came to Etheldreda’s room and they sat together as they had as children talking into the night. From time to time Heregyth looked in, bustled about and went out again, annoyed that someone else was taking her place as confidante.

The following day the attention was turned to the road from the south. Wulfhere, the king of Mercia, was expected with his new wife Eormengild, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Saxberga and Eorconbert of Kent.

The mood of the crowd was very different to the one that had gathered the day before at the quayside to greet Edwin’s queen and the Kentish royal family.

Mercia had always been their enemy and no matter how hard Oswy had tried to heal the breach after his victory over Penda by taking over the country himself and marrying his eldest son to one of Penda’s daughters, and two of his own daughters to sons of Penda, the ill feeling between the two countries was still there. There was scarcely a village that had not suffered at the hands of the Mercians, scarcely a family that had not lost someone in the wars. If it had not been for the presence of Etheldreda and Queen Saxberga the crowd might well have turned ugly as the young king and his entourage came in sight.

The road through the hills was narrow and Etheldreda, Saxberga and others were nearly pushed off it as Egfrid suddenly galloped past, looking neither to the left nor the right. Etheldreda caught a glimpse of his face as he thundered by before the dust the hooves of his horse threw up temporarily blinded her. She was surprised to see how relaxed and happy he looked. On the few occasions they had met since she had come to York he had been so consistently morose and sullen she had feared that there would be no way to make him relax or smile.

She had heard good things of the young King Wulfhere and, although he was a Mercian, Saxberga had not been too averse to his marriage with her daughter. Unlike his father Penda, he had accepted that the tide had turned in favour of the new religion and had allowed bishops to set up their sees in Mercia.

‘Your future husband needs to learn a few manners,’ said Saxberga, coughing and trying to hold her own horse steady after Egfrid’s passing.

Etheldreda laughed ruefully.

‘I don’t think he is going to take too kindly to my trying to teach him!’ she said.

They could see him, already far ahead, reining up beside Wulfhere. Words could not be heard, but the two men were evidently very pleased to see each other, and there was a great deal of back-slapping as the two horses circled one another.

Saxberga saw her daughter behind Wulfhere and, forgetting what she had just said about Egfrid, she broke into a canter on the narrow path, inconveniencing the other riders.

Etheldreda thought to give them a few moments alone together and held back. King Alfrid drew up beside her. She felt the pressure of his knee on hers, and when she met his eyes there was a look in them that made her uneasy. Since the incident of the water fight she had avoided him as much as possible. When their paths had crossed he had not mentioned it, but his eyes always looked at her as though he were seeing her naked. She drew away from him now and cantered forward towards the Mercian party.

She knew that Oswy wanted her to greet the son of the man who had killed her father in a way that conveyed the desire for a peaceful future between them, while letting him know, very subtly, that the past was not yet forgotten.

She smiled bitterly. Had this not been the way she had greeted Oswy himself? She remembered how much it had cost her to bend her knee to him knowing that it was he who had murdered the man she loved.

‘I am a stranger on the earth, O Lord,’ she whispered from her favourite psalm. ‘Hide not thy commandments from me.’
[12]

‘My lord Wulfhere,’ she said quietly when she reached the Mercian king, and bowed her head to him. There was no memory of the long years of hate and violence between their two families, their two countries, in her eyes.

That night her sleep was disturbed by Alfrid. His hand was on her breast before she realised what was happening.

She jerked awake as he lifted her into his arms.

Bewildered, she gasped and fought. Grimly he held on. His own desire was strong, but he told himself that it was for Egfrid’s sake he wanted to break the iron barrier of her virginity. He could not get his hand between her legs because she struggled so violently, but he did get his mouth upon her mouth. But a kiss as brutally hard as that had no savour to it. He gradually withdrew his lips and with the lessening of the pressure she managed to bite his tongue.

He leapt back startled and enraged, releasing his grip on her and raising his fist to strike her. The candle he had lit when he came in to her chamber the better to see her, shone in her face, and he caught the look in her eyes. The enormity of what he was doing, or trying to do, suddenly struck him. His hand dropped and, after staring at her aghast for a few moments, he turned and left. She could hear his footsteps in the yard, the dogs barking at him as though he were a common thief.

Trembling, she drew her rugs about her. She had felt something in that moment of waking with his hands upon her breast that she did not wish to feel. She tried to forget it, and remember only the revulsion and dislike she had felt towards him when she was fully awake.

Shivering she fell on her knees and asked for help. Her breast tingled as though his touch was still upon it. And below, in the secret place of her body she scarcely knew existed, another feeling stirred that made her sob with chagrin and with shame.

The next few days passed full and fast.

Etheldreda smiled and talked and did all that was expected of her, deliberately not seeking solitude. She had a strange feeling of unreality, as though she herself and all with whom she spoke were painted figures in a manuscript, and the real people were somewhere else. She forced herself to look at Alfrid, knowing that if she did not the memory of that night would grow out of all proportion.

When their eyes met for the first time the expression in his was wary, but when he realised she had accepted what had happened and put it firmly behind her, he bowed his head, and she understood he would not attempt to touch her again.

One of the most honoured guests of the wedding was the princess Hilda, now the much-respected abbess of the double monastery at Whitby.

Etheldreda was impatient to be with her alone, believing that she was the only person who could help her resolve the conflict of her thoughts. As soon as she could she drew her aside and led her to her chamber, where she knew they could be undisturbed.

‘What am I doing here?’ she cried, throwing up her hands, her voice filled with bewilderment and distress. ‘Jewelled clasps! Golden crowns! Fine silks! Hilda – this is not how I should be dressed! This is not how I should be living!’

The older woman in her plain woollen habit embraced her, kissed her eyelids behind which tears were gathering.

‘Sssh… There must be a reason. You have been chosen for this as surely as I have been chosen as Abbess of Whitby. There are times I would give anything to be a simple nun alone in a cell with no worldly responsibilities, able to devote all my time to the visible kingdom of God.’

Etheldreda looked at her, surprised.

‘Yes, I too feel I am wasting time with lists of provisions, with building projects, with letters and interviews and meetings. Sometimes at night I am so tired I fall asleep on my knees. The one moment of the day when I finally have time for private prayer – I fall asleep!’

Etheldreda laughed.

‘You see, it is never what we envisage. You are a king’s daughter and I am an abbess. We must make of our lives what we can. The realm of spirit is everywhere – in the great hall, in the abbey, in the village. Everywhere. You will not lose it by accepting the life you have been given if you remember always, in every decision, to consult the Holy Spirit within you.’

‘Hilda…’ Etheldreda paused. What she wanted to say she had not dared to think through, even to herself.

Hilda waited.

‘Sometimes I wonder if I am doing the right thing by accepting marriage to a man and yet not giving him what a man has a right to expect from his wife.’

Hilda was silent for a long while.

‘Egfrid knows what to expect from you? He has been told?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘You are offering him something far more valuable than physical love, which is demanding, temporary, limited. You are offering him spiritual love which will endure through eternity.’

Etheldreda sighed. Hilda was playing the stern abbess, the ruler of a great monastery. They were not walking in the forests of Rendilsham now with all the possibilities of youth open to them. They had chosen and were committed. There could be no compromise. No doubts.

The older woman saw more than she admitted. She reached out her arms to her troubled friend and held her close.

In the great hall that night before the feast, King Oswy called upon Cuthbert, a monk from Melrose, to say the grace. The crowded guests shifted and muttered amongst themselves, surprised that with Bishop Finan from Lindisfarne there the king should ask this unlettered peasant to speak. He did not know himself why he did it. It was an impulse.

Cuthbert waited until there was silence and then lifted his head and spoke as simply and as sincerely as though he were speaking to someone visible in the hall.

‘Thank you, O Lord,’ he said, ‘for the gift of life. Help us to use it wisely.’

And he sat down.

In the surprised silence that followed this brief plea, Etheldreda shivered, knowing that he had touched the realm of spirit and its secret sound was vibrating through the hearts of all who had heard it. Some would choose to ignore it. She would not. Everything that was good seemed suddenly easy and possible.

But later that night when she passed Egfrid’s quarters on the way to her own, his door opened and a woman, still straightening her clothes, came out, laughing at something he had said. Etheldreda drew back into the shadows and let her pass, watching the light that shone from beneath the now closed door. After a few moments it went out.

The next morning she woke to find Heregyth fussing over her and her chamber full of slaves. Sleepily she allowed herself to be dressed, wondering why there were so many people in her room. It was not until Cyneberga entered that she began to remember it was her wedding-day.

Heregyth brought in the robes that she was to wear. They had come from Rome, of Byzantine silk.

Silently Etheldreda submitted to the attentions of the slaves, silently stared at her own image in a copper mirror as one by one the layers of fine cloth were put upon her, the jewels hung from shoulder to shoulder, the coronet of pearls placed upon her head.