Sarum

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Osric’s face gave him all the answer he needed.

  “Splendid. We have a new craftsman,” he announced to the abbess. He smiled. Whatever was wrong with the boy, this seemed to have settled it; and Aelfwald liked to settle things.

  While this conversation was taking place, a very different one was going on between the thane’s youngest son Aelfstan, his daughter Aelfgifu, and poor Edith. Aelfstan was indulging in his favourite occupation of teasing.

  “Yes,” Aelfstan assured the nun, with a sad shake of his head, “my father says that if Aelfgifu cannot find a husband in the next two months, she’s to come here as a nun.” He sighed. “So far, Edith, no bridegroom has appeared.”

  The effect of this invented news exceeded his greatest hopes.

  As she gazed up at the handsome, strapping and obviously disruptive eighteen-year-old girl, who was known throughout the area to be wilder than any young man, the nun’s face registered horror. She looked from one to the other. Both brother and sister were shaking their heads despondently.

  “A nun?” The idea was too awful to contemplate. “But surely . . .” she began. “Such haste . . . A year or two at least?”

  “No.” Aelfstan was adamant. “My father never changes his mind.”

  Edith’s jaw had now dropped open; she tried to swallow.

  “Well,” Aelfstan continued briskly. “I’m sure she’ll be happy here, won’t you, Aelfgifu?”

  “Oh yes,” the girl replied gaily. And then as an afterthought: “Will I still be allowed to ride and hunt?”

  “Hunt?” Edith’s eyes opened wide as she tried to take in this idea.

  “Occasionally?” Aelfgifu. suggested. She was a fine horsewoman, and had gone out hawking with the king himself.

  “No, no,” the nun murmured. This terrible news had, for a moment, driven even the thought of the golden cross from her mind. “Our chief occupation is our needlework,” she added seriously. For the nuns were rightly proud of the magnificent embroidery they produced, working together, silently, patiently, hour after hour.

  Aelfgifu let out a guffaw of laughter that rang round the chapel, and held up her large strong hands. “I can hardly hold a needle,” she cried.

  “Life is very different here,” Edith said anxiously, wondering what she could possibly do to avert this disaster.

  “I should miss not being able to wrestle with my brothers,” the girl remarked in her open, easy way. But Edith was now past speech. Her face had lost even the little colour it had.

  Aelfstan now brought the teasing to an end with a warning cough. The rest of the group was beginning to stare at them curiously, and he had no wish to explain the conversation to his father. Hurriedly, and a little guiltily, brother and sister excused themselves politely and moved away, leaving Edith with her anxious thoughts. It was not until that evening that the abbess was able to explain to the by-now-distracted nun that the young people had been mistaken about the thane’s intentions for his daughter; and it was only after poor Edith had left that the abbess allowed herself to lean back in her seat and shake with laughter.

  As the sun sank over the valley that evening, the feast began.

  The great hall of Aelfwald the thane stood at the centre of a busy community. Around the hall itself, with its massive oak beams and its raised floor were grouped the stout timber and thatched buildings of the farm. Fifty yards away, straddling the lane that wound along the valley floor, was the small village of Avonsford, consisting of a dozen cottages; and around the village lay the most striking feature of the Saxon countryside: the open fields.

  This was the great change that the Saxons had wrought. Whereas before, the higher slopes had been laid bare, and the farmsteads and villas had nestled in modest clearings on the valley slopes, gradually, century after century, the Saxons had carved great swathes out of the lowland forests, smashing down woods, and scrub, as they made the rich land submit to their will. At Avonsford there were now two huge open fields, extending for hundreds of yards over the sweep of the low ground, divided by ridges into long strips, so that it looked as if some huge comb had been passed over the bare landscape. The villagers had given the two fields names – the eastern field was called Paradise, the western, Purgatory. Heavy ploughs pulled by teams of six or eight oxen had clawed up the heavy soil, just as Caius Porteus had dreamed of doing eight hundred years before. The long ridges were carefully divided – some belonging to the lord, some to the individual churls or their own lesser tenants, the freedmen or former slaves. The village worked the fields; and the lord took his share. The land on each side of the river, which Aelfwald’s grandfather had drained with modest success, was now a huge meadow, where livestock was pastured.

  This was the community, the basic village of England, which had now formed on the remains of the estate that had been the Porteus villa. Half a mile away, the woods began again; and these were used for pasturing swine. On the chalk slopes above, the ancient farmlands of earlier times were still used by Port and others like him to drive their flocks of sheep.

  There was one other notable feature of the place: in a small field, reserved for pasture, that lay between Aelfwald’s hall and the village, stood a single wooden cross. This served as the open air church for the people, winter and summer. Here the elders of the village met when there were matters of importance in the village to discuss; and here the priest from Wilton would hold a service on Sundays and on the great feast days of the church.

  As the setting sun caught the edge of the furrows in the open fields, creating a striking pattern of red and black, light and shadow across the land, the entire community were making their way towards Thane Aelfwald’s hall.

  For tonight there was to be a great feast; and tonight, it was rumoured, the thane was to make an important announcement.

  The hall accommodated a hundred people with ease. Trestle tables were arranged in two lines down the sides of the hall with a single table across the head, where the thane sat with his wife Hild, a tall, handsome woman in her fifties whose only sign of age seemed to be a light streaking of grey in her long, fair hair and a few lines in her forehead. The thane’s sons and Aelfgifu were dispersed around the tables amongst his retainers.

  The feast was splendid. Beef and venison were complemented by huge plates of fish that Tostig the slave had provided from the river. A few of the men drank wine, but most drank the thickly scented ale of the region, and beside each man and woman was a cup into which the servants poured the most important drink of all, the sweet and heady mead that still, as in the most ancient times, was made from honey gathered in the woods.

  At the head table, the splendid enamel dishes gleamed in the light from the tapers and from the roaring fire at the end of the hall.

  “The hall of Aelfwald could be that of a king,” it was often said, and the thane lived up to his reputation.

  In the place of honour, directly in front of him, rested the magnificent drinking horn that was one of his proudest possessions. It was the horn of that rarest and most stupendous of all beasts, the almost forgotten auroch, and it had been given by King Egbert of Wessex himself to the thane’s grandfather – a long, curving and fearsome object, polished so that its whiteness gleamed, bound with six bands of gold, and so big that hollowed out it could hold eight quarts of ale.

  To his great pleasure, Port found that he had been placed in an honoured position at the corner of the high table, and there with his wife – a small, mousy woman who gave him her unquestioning devotion – he sat contentedly.

  The whole company seemed to be in high good humour, and if some of the hoots of laughter from the far table came from the fact that Aelfstan was giving a perfect imitation of Edith the nun’s consternation that morning, both the thane and Port were fortunately unaware of it.

  More than once at that gathering however, the eyes of the men had turned away from the high table where the thane sat, towards his daughter, as she and her mother, performing their proper duties as the wife and dau
ghter of a hospitable lord, moved about the hall, offering delicacies and mead to their guests and speaking a few kind words to each. For the tomboy Aelfgifu this evening had been transformed. She was dressed in a long, red, embroidered gown with billowing cuffs of silk. On her feet were slim, elegant shoes of soft red leather. Around her neck on a golden chain hung a pendant of gold and garnets, and from her girdle hung the long silver hooks in the shape of keys that were the Saxon symbols of womanhood. Her magnificent golden hair was worn loose and spread in waves down her back, and her athletic figure stood out proudly. Suddenly the flashing eyes and laughing good humour that had made her a tomboy companion for her brothers now made her seem an even more splendid young woman.

  “She’s worth a thane’s morgengifu,” the men murmured. This was the gift the bridegroom had to pay to his new bride on the morning after the marriage was consummated.

  “For a night with her,” one churl replied, “I’d pay any price.”

  “If you weren’t already dead with exhaustion,” his companions told him laughingly.

  When the company had eaten, it was time for the entertainments, and for these, a stout young man with a clean shaven face stepped into the space between the tables, accompanied by a youth who carried a small harp.

  For a few minutes, they sang some bawdy songs that set the listeners laughing; and these were quickly followed by riddles, most of which were familiar to the guests, but to which the stout young man had added two or three of his own. He sang them tunefully but slowly, with a formal measure, enticing the audience’s concentration.

  Silent my dress when I step on the shore

  Stay in my lodge, or stir the stream.

  Or my trailing gown and the wild wind

  Lift me high, over the living:

  There with the clouds, I can sweep and soar

  Over the land-bound. Then my white wings

  Echo so loudly, ring and moan,

  Sing to your ear; when I’m not sleeping

  On the soil, or sailing on the still water:

  Like a ship, like a wandering spirit.

  I am. What am I?

  “A swan,” the audience cried, and the young man bowed. For all were familiar with the stately swans that moved above on the five rivers of Sarum.

  The riddles were followed by songs about the old Germanic gods: Thunor the thunderer, Tiw, the god of death, great Woden, the battle god, and the mythical ancestor of the royal house of Wessex. At the end of each song, the men hammered on the table with their goblets and applauded.

  Although for many generations the Ango-Saxons of England had been Christian, the memory of the pagan past was alive, an accepted part of everyday life which no church could attempt to stifle. Were not the gods still celebrated in the days of the week, like Wodensday? Did not the code of honour that made a man loyal to his lord, the law of blood feud and wergild, and the songs and poetry they loved all come from pagan times? Aelfwald the thane did not try to cudgel his brains over the fact that the Saxon culture he loved and the Christian religion he believed in were logically incompatible. He was an Anglo-Saxon Christian: and he was content.

  Now, at a nod from his companion, the youth strummed three times on the harp and the reciter announced:

  “Beowulf.”

  And now the hall became silent. For no poem was better known or more highly prized than Beowulf; and though it had been written down, the reciter still carried it all in his head. He would not sing it, but declaim it in a low, stately chant, letting the words, with their heavy, stressed alliteration weave their own spell round the hall. Nor would he recite it all that night, for Beowulf was very long; but he would give his eager audience the parts they knew and loved best. He would tell them how the hero journeyed across the sea to help the Danish King Hrothgar; how at night Beowulf with his bare hands, in just such a hall as this one, fought the gruesome monster Grendel and tore his whole arm from its socket; how he slew the monster’s mother at the bottom of the lake; and how in his last fight, Beowulf died slaying a dragon that lived in an ancient barrow tomb.

  He began slowly, describing Beowulf’s voyage: his slow, rhythmic chant fell on the audience like waves on the sea; and around the hall, unconscious of what they were doing, men and women alike rocked to and fro on the benches, strangely moved. Port, too, was enthralled. It seemed to him that he could see the ship, sense the motion on the waters under the empty sky, feel its keel scrape when it finally beached upon the Danish sands. Like the rest of the audience, his eyes grew misty. He, with them, was transported to the echoing, half mournful, half heroic, timeless world that is the world of the sagas of all the northern peoples.

  Then came Beowulf’s great oaths of loyalty to King Hrothgar, and the fights in which he redeemed them. This was the Anglo-Saxon warrior as he ought to be – loyal to his chosen lord, trusting in fate, believing in the Christian God to aid him, but pagan in every other respect.

  As the reciter came to the battle scenes, his pace quickened. The words poured out, thick, guttural, hissing, making a sound like that of the fight itself.

  From Grendel’s shoulder, the gash ripped wide open,

  Out sprang the sinews, the bone-casings burst;

  Beowulf was given glory in battle:

  Broken and bleeding Grendel was beaten:

  Fled to the fens, to his dark lair.

  Like the Saxons, Port’s eyes were shining; his fists were clenched and he felt the pumping of the blood. How the hero fought!

  But at last, Beowulf fought his last battle; and after he was burned on his funeral pyre, he was buried in a barrow, in sight of the sea; with his brooches and his golden rings, as every warrior should be:

  Kindest of Kings, of men the mildest

  Just to his people, thirsty for fame.

  The voice of the reciter died to a murmur. It was over; and for a long, richly savoured moment all those in the hall were silent.

  Then the reciter bowed and the audience, after thunderous applause, toasted him for his excellent performance.

  It was after this, when all the thanks were done, that Aelfwald the thane rose ceremoniously from his chair and called for silence.

  “It is time for a ring-giving,” he announced.

  No ceremony was more important than the ancient custom of ring-giving. When the king gave his earldorman or his loyal thane a ring, it was a symbolic bond between them which could never, with honour, be broken. Often such rings would be engraved with a message or charm in the ancient runic script which the northern peoples still preserved from the pagan past and which gave the ring its particular magic value.

  Aelfwald the thane, rich with many lands, liked to give rings to his men, for it enhanced his own dignity.

  Now, as the voices in the hall died away to a murmur, he pointed to Port.

  “Today,” he announced, “Port received the wergild for the loss of his right hand.” There was a friendly banging on the tables and some laughter. “And so today, my loyal friends, I give him a ring to wear on the hand he still has.” There was a roar of cheerful approval. Port inclined his head gravely. “Keep this ring for me, Port,” the thane cried, “and,” he winked at the audience, “try not to lose it!”

  The hall rocked with applause and laughter. Port’s face went crimson with pleasure.

  While Aelfwald held the ring high for all to see, his wife moved along the table and ceremoniously offered Port the drinking cup. As soon as he had drunk, Aelfwald himself followed his wife and handed Port the ring. It was a thick band of gold with a runic inscription.

  Port fitted the ring on the little finger of his left hand. Then he, too, rapped on the table for silence. As he did so, the merriment ceased; for although the stiff and solemn sheep farmer was regarded as something of a joke, the pledge he must now make in reply to the ring-gift was a serious matter which must be heard with respect.

  “Thane Aelfwald is my lord,” he replied solemnly. “I have drunk his mead; I have received his ring. If any man attacks him, I
will defend him with my life.”

  There were nods of approval. The Saxon code of honour demanded that such oaths should be sworn, and Port, Celtic though his ancestors were, would be as good as his word.

  Then Aelfwald raised the huge auroch’s horn to his lips and cried: “Port, we drink to you.” And the company drank the toast.

  Several toasts followed. More rings were given and elaborate oaths sworn. Port sat flushed and happy, his wife smiling proudly beside him.

  But as he looked around the great hall, the disquieting thought of that morning returned more strongly than ever.

  Truly, he thought, it is a fine thing to be called a thane. And he remembered his four hides of land. For the hundredth time he made his calculations. Perhaps I could buy the hide and give Edith a silver cross, he reckoned. That would do. But he knew it would not. The image of his sister rose before his eyes, first angrily, then piteously. He tried to put her out of his mind, but without success, and he frowned with vexation.

  His thoughts were interrupted by Aelfwald, who had risen once more to his feet. This time he gave the table three loud bangs, to signal absolute silence, and the hall waited expectantly. This must be the expected announcement and they wondered what it would be.

  The thane’s face was now serious, and he looked slowly about him to convey this change of mood to his people. Even young Aelfstan managed to look grave for once. When he judged that the company was ready, he spoke.

  “Friends,” he began, “we have eaten and we have drunk mead together. We have taken rings and given oaths. But there is something more important that we have not done yet.” He paused. “I am speaking of our duty to God.”

  There was a respectful silence. It was right that a great thane should speak of such things. Did not King Alfred always spur his men on before a fight by reminding them of God’s ever watching eye; had not the king’s own brother won universal admiration for refusing to begin battle, when under attack, until he had finished the mass in his tent?