Conqueror

by Baxter, Stephen

  But they still had to get past the thegn and his guard.

  They reached the head of the line. The thegn was a bear-like man with a tangle of greying beard, and a barrel of a chest under a mail tunic. At his side was a much smaller man in a drab, much-repaired cloak. The skin of his face was a rich acorn brown. This foreigner held a scroll of paper before him that he marked with a bit of charcoal as each petitioner passed. He shivered, seeming to suffer the winter cold more than those around him.

  The thegn faced Cynewulf. ‘State your business.’

  ‘My name is Cynewulf. I am a priest. I grew up in Wessex, where my father Cynesige was a thegn of the then king. I lived in a monastery in Snotingaham, which is in Mercia—’

  ‘I know where it is.’ The thegn eyed the girl. ‘I didn’t know priests took concubines.’

  Cynewulf flared. ‘She is no concubine, and you should have more respect for my holy office. This is Aebbe, whom I have brought here from the heart of Mercia, at no small risk to myself, to meet the King.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She has a message for him.’

  ‘What sort of message?’

  ‘A prophecy,’ Cynewulf admitted reluctantly. ‘A prophecy that speaks of dark times for Alfred, but ultimate glory which—’

  The thegn grinned. ‘The King follows the Christ. I doubt very much if he will be interested in the hokum you peddle.’

  ‘The prophecy is not for sale,’ Cynewulf snapped. ‘I bring it here out of duty. And it is not hokum.’ He babbled, ‘The internal consistency - a correlation with past events of record - the visitations of a certain comet which—’

  The thegn held up a gloved hand. ‘Just hand it over and be on your way.’

  Cynewulf sighed. ‘It is not written down. It is in her memory—in her head - and nowhere else.’

  The girl glared at the thegn. ‘So what now, greybeard? Will you cut off my head and give it to the King?’

  To Cynewulf’s relief the thegn seemed more amused than angry. ‘You need to get this one under better control, priest.’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve tried.’

  ‘You see, my problem is this. If nothing is written down, what proof do you have of what you say?’

  ‘This.’ Cynewulf reached into his robe and produced a letter on vellum, crumpled and stained by his own sweat; he had carried it across the country and back. ‘This is a safe-conduct signed by the King himself. It has kept me alive, more than once - for even among the heathen Northmen Alfred’s name carries weight.’

  The thegn took the letter. Cynewulf noted that he held it upside down. He passed it to the foreigner. ‘Read it, Ibn Zuhr.’ The foreigner murmured something Cynewulf couldn’t hear, and passed the letter back to the thegn - who, to Cynewulf’s horror, crumpled it and trod it into the dirt. ‘An obvious forgery. On your way, priest, if you don’t want to leave your head behind.’

  ‘But - but—’ Cynewulf got to his knees, retrieved his precious note, and tried to smooth it out. ‘Can you not read, man? Can’t you see?’

  Aebbe placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘Priest. Calm down.’

  ‘But these dolts - I have been across the country, I have faced down the heathen, only for this …’

  But Aebbe was smiling. When Cynewulf looked up, wondering, he saw that the thegn was smiling too. And though his grin through the beard looked like a wound in a bear’s thigh, something in his eyes, the shape of his mouth, was familiar.

  ‘Arngrim? Is it you?’

  Arngrim grinned wider. ‘You always were easy to tease, cousin!’ And he leaned down to clap Cynewulf on the shoulder.

  Amgrim and Aebbe had to help Cynewulf up from his knees, and then they guided him into the hall of King Alfred.

  II

  Inside the hall Cynewulf was immersed in smoky warmth. A fire blazed in a huge central hearth, and rush torches on the walls cast bright light. There was a hubbub of rumbling conversation, for the hall was already crowded.

  He breathed deep of the fuggy air and rubbed his hands, gleeful. ‘At last, at last.’

  Aebbe was unimpressed. ‘You’re glad to be here? In this tavern?’

  Arngrim laughed. ‘You’ll have to forgive him. He grew up in places like this, so he feels at home. Come on, let’s find somewhere to sit.’

  They walked into the body of the hall. Two rows of century-old oaks divided the open floor into three aisles, like the Roman basilicas of older times. It was a massive wooden structure, an ark surely strong enough to withstand the mightiest storm. And if there was security here, there was wealth too. Though boar spears and deer skins hung on the walls, gold glinted everywhere, woven into the fabric of the tapestries on the walls, even inlaid into the mead benches.

  The hall was packed. Cynewulf knew he would find many of the great men of Wessex here: bishops, thegns, and ealdormen, the great landowners. They had been summoned on Saint Stephen’s Day for the King’s witan, and were still here this January evening, the end of the feast of the Twelve Days of Christmas. The town of Cippanhamm was full of their families and retainers, and even here in the hall a few children picked at the food on the tables.

  Some of the men were sleeping, worn out by the long days of festivities. They lay on blankets on the floor behind the mead benches, with their polished wooden shields at their heads and their armour and weapons heaped up on the benches. These days even bishops were never out of reach of their swords.

  And at the head of the hall, opposite the great door, seated on his giving-throne, was the King himself. Alfred was a young man with a young family; his wife stood at his shoulder and children sat as his feet while lines of supplicants approached him. Among the warriors who drank on the mead benches must be the King’s hearth-companions, his bodyguard and closest allies.

  Cynewulf felt hugely reassured to be in the presence of this mass of great men, bound to each other and their King by oaths, the foundation of the law. A king’s hall was the very pivot of English society. He turned to Aebbe, beaming helplessly. ‘I told you I would bring you home.’

  Aebbe still wasn’t impressed. ‘And that,’ she said, pointing, ‘is the King. Him?’

  Cynewulf looked again, and saw the King through her eyes. Alfred was a tall, pale man, his hair worn long and loose. Clean-shaven, he had a remarkably long chin that gave his face a perpetually mournful expression. His habit was almost as plain as Cynewulf’s, but it glistened with gold’s lustre. As the petitioners spoke to him, clerks at his elbows frantically scribbled down a record of all that was said, but the King was racked by fits of coughing, during which the clerks paused, their quill pens poised. After a few moments Alfred waved away his petitioners and bowed his head as a priest at his side began to intone prayers.

  Aebbe said, ‘The last English king. The only man who stands before the Danes. And you tell me I am safe here, Cynewulf.’

  Cynewulf tried to suppress his own doubts. Alfred looked more a scholar than a warrior, it couldn’t be denied. ‘It is midwinter. The Danes never move in midwinter. And there is a truce between Alfred and Guthrum—’

  ‘Well, at least the King is pious, just as you said. Maybe his prayers will keep away the Northmen.’

  ‘For a girl born on a holy island you’re terribly cynical.’

  ‘But think what she’s been through.’ Arngrim was five years older than Cynewulf, and probably twice his weight. ‘The monks abandoned their house on Lindisfarena long before she was born, bearing the bones of Saint Cuthbert with them. Christianity didn’t help them much, did it? And since then you’ve had to run yourself, girl, haven’t you?’

  Aebbe’s was a common story. More than eighty years after the first raid on Lindisfarena, and twelve years since the Danish army called the Force had landed in East Anglia and begun its purposeful rampage, the country’s markets were ruined, trade withered, monasteries shattered, folk driven from their farms to starve. Even kings had died. Of the four great English kingdoms, only Wessex still stood. England was a land full of fear - and
there were many, many refugees.

  ‘I can look after myself,’ Aebbe said defiantly. ‘And as for Christ, there are many who say He has deserted England, for why would He let us suffer so?’

  ‘You can see she’s mixed up,’ Cynewulf said hastily.

  ‘You mustn’t mind Cynewulf, Aebbe,’ Arngrim said. ‘Christianity is only a generation deep in our family. That’s why Cynewulf works so hard at it. Even Alfred, pious as he might be, is directly descended from Cerdic, the first Saxon to land in Wessex four hundred years ago, who in turn was descended from Woden.’

  The foreigner, Arngrim’s companion, spoke for the first time. ‘For a follower of your Christ-prophet the King seems remarkably fond of wealth. I am so blinded by his jewellery I can barely see him.’ His voice was a deep brown tone, and he made Aebbe laugh.

  Cynewulf turned on him. ‘And who are you?’

  The foreigner seemed to remember himself, and hastily dropped his eyes. ‘I have no name but my master’s. I apologise.’

  Amgrim said, ‘His name is Ibn Zuhr. I bought him at the slave market at Brycgstow.’

  ‘A Moor,’ Cynewulf said, startled.

  ‘He has his uses. He can count, for example.’

  ‘Even you can count,’ Cynewulf said dryly.

  ‘Not like him. He can compute sums beyond nine hundred!’

  ‘Impossible,’ breathed Cynewulf.

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘Why bring him here?’

  Amgrim sighed. ‘Alfred insists his thegns be Christian, and literate. Well, I can fake the Christianity but not the literacy, and I don’t have time to learn, not with the Northmen rampaging around the country. If I have him I am literate too, at least by proxy. But he hasn’t got me any closer to Alfred.’

  Cynewulf was intrigued. ‘Does he have a tongue of his own? Say something in your own language.’

  Ibn Zuhr spoke rapidly, a string of harsh syllables.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I complimented you on your appearance.’ But there was a hint of mockery in this slave’s eyes.

  ‘Why are you literate?’

  ‘In my country, although I was taken away by the Northmen when I was a young man, I was a scholar. A pharmacist, in fact.’

  There was a commotion at the head of the hall, where the King had interrupted his prayers. He was bent over, his hands on his chest, evidently struggling to breathe.

  Aebbe murmured, ‘He looks ill.’

  ‘They say he has struggled for breath all his life,’ Arngrim said.

  ‘Perhaps he is asthmatic,’ suggested Ibn Zuhr. It was a Greek term the others weren’t familiar with.

  Aebbe was interested. ‘You said you were a pharmacist. Perhaps you have something to treat the King.’

  The Moor smiled, and opened his cloak. The interior was stitched with tiny pockets, each barely wide enough to admit a probing forefinger. ‘I had my stock with me when I was taken from al-Andalus. It is much depleted, but a little remains. Hold out your hand,’ he said to Arngrim. He sprinkled a pinch of a ground leaf, deep green, into the thegn’s palm.

  Arngrim sniffed this suspiciously. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Its name is—never mind. It is a plant from Africa, a country my people now own. Tell your King to crush this in a little wine, and then to rub the paste under his nose. It will not cure him but will relieve his symptoms.’

  Arngrim closed his fist. ‘Maybe this will be my way to the King’s hearth.’

  ‘You trust this slave?’ Cynewulf asked. ‘What if it’s poisonous?’

  Arngrim glanced at the Moor. ‘I’ve seen him work his magic before. And he’s a very long way from home. If he did betray me, where could he go, with skin that colour? Eh, Moor?’

  Ibn Zuhr merely smiled.

  Arngrim had to wait until the King’s latest prayers were finished. Then he pushed his way through the line of supplicants and presented his pinch of herbs to the King. With some scepticism Alfred’s physicians took it away to be prepared, and at length returned with a bowl of paste. When the King applied this to his face, leaving a smear like a green moustache under his prominent nose, his breathing seemed to ease.

  Alfred smiled on Arngrim.

  The Moorish slave, eyes downcast, said nothing.

  III

  They found a place to sit, at one end of a long mead bench.

  Ibn Zuhr fetched food and drink for them all. Even at this dying end of the Twelve Days feast there was meat - pork, mutton and game bird - and winter vegetables blended into a broth, and ale and wine to drink. Cynewulf wondered if this greasy meat, thick broth and lumpy ale was much like the food the Moor had been used to at home. But Ibn Zuhr had evidently learned the lesson of all slaves that you filled your belly whenever you got the chance, and, sitting at Arngrim’s feet, he wolfed down his portion.

  Aebbe was curious about Arngrim and Cynewulf. ‘You don’t look like cousins.’

  Arngrim grunted. ‘That’s what your choices in life will do for you. I always hunted and wrestled, and drank myself into a stupor in honour of Woden, while poor Cynewulf laboured over obscure books and argued with even more obscure theologians. And look at us now!’ He slammed his heavy arm down on the table.

  ‘My father encouraged me,’ Cynewulf protested. ‘He could sense the way the wind was blowing - Alfred’s father King Aethelwulf was just as learned and pious as he is himself. Anyhow I don’t regret it, not for a second, for my course in life has brought me closer to God.’

  Arngrim snorted. ‘But it has denied you a family, among other pleasures. I have three strong boys, Aebbe, tucked away with their mother this cold Christmas, safe within the walls of a town. But for all our differences, we were always friends - eh, Cynewulf?’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say,’ the priest said resentfully. ‘You were five years older than me, twice my size, and you bullied me relentlessly.’

  Amgrim laughed and quaffed his gritty ale. ‘I was only trying to toughen him up. Maybe it worked too. But what about you, Aebbe? What’s all this about a prophecy?’

  And Aebbe, haltingly, with assistance from Cynewulf, told him the story of Aelfric.

  The Northmen’s first raid on Lindisfarena, still shocking nearly ninety years later, was well known to Arngrim. ‘And this Aelfric was there, your grandmother—’

  ‘My great-grandmother,’ Aebbe said. ‘She escaped with her life - and with the Menologium of Isolde, the prophecy, locked up in her head.’

  ‘The only copy,’ said Cynewulf mournfully, ‘for the Northmen burned or stole the rest. Copies of copies, lovingly preserved across centuries—’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Arngrim testily. ‘Then how did you know about it, priest?’

  ‘Through my ability to read,’ said Cynewulf, allowing himself a stab of triumph. ‘Another survivor wrote down an account of that terrible assault - and that is where I came across a mention of the prophecy. Whether it is the work of God or the devil, it seems to contain a seed of truth, a rough map of the future. And I knew I must try to track it down.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because - so I believe, based on what I have read - the sixth stanza concerns Alfred, and the great trial he faces against the Danes.’

  From the floor the Moor listened, evidently intrigued.

  Aelfric, returning to her family at Bebbanburh, had in time taken a husband, the son of a thegn, and had children of her own. It was said that she filled her house with books, a habit her husband and children never shared nor understood. But she was never able to wipe away the scars on her soul left by the events at Lindisfarena.

  And she never forgot about the Menologium. She had lost the scroll to a Viking raider, but she had spent long months labouring over its words in the scriptorium. With time she trawled it all from her memory, word by word, stanza by stanza. But she never wrote it down.

  When her own daughter grew old enough she taught the whole long poem to her, by rote, word by word. And when that daughter had children of her own,
in turn, she entrusted the memory of the Menologium to her own youngest daughter’s memory.

  Aebbe said, ‘Aelfric preserved the Menologium in the minds of daughters and granddaughters. She said men were good for nothing but slaughter and rapine.’

  ‘Probably true,’ grunted Arngrim.

  Cynewulf had managed to trace Aelfric’s descendants down to his own time, and to Mercia where they had fled as the Danish force carved up Northumbria.

  Arngrim said, ‘And so you went looking for this child - Aebbe, greatgranddaughter of a woman who impersonated a monk.’ He laughed at the thought. ‘And this is the story you want to take to the King.’

  ‘I must take her, Aebbe, for even now she won’t write down the Menologium. But I believe that I must bring this prophecy to Alfred. More than our lives are at stake - the whole future of England, and the future of our children’s children, may depend on it too.’

  ‘I’m curious,’ said Ibn Zuhr suddenly, and inappropriately. ‘Master—’

  Arngrim drank his ale and shrugged. ‘Ask what you want.’

  ‘You refer to this island of yours, the part you own, as England.’ Engla-lond. ‘And to yourself as English.’ Englisc.

  Cynewulf shrugged. ‘So what?’

  ‘You are not English - or not all of you. The “English”, the Angles, are just one of the German nations who came across the ocean centuries ago.’

  Arngrim growled, ‘The word “English” has spread to mean us all. I don’t know why; I’m no scholar. I blame Bede, that toiling monk, scribbling his life away. He was an Angle, wasn’t he?’

  Cynewulf was irritated by this slave’s air of superiority. ‘What do names matter, Moor? What do you call yourself?’

  The slave smiled at the priest. ‘The children of God.’

  Arngrim said, ‘Ibn Zuhr tells me that his people believe their civilisation to be the most advanced in Europe. All that ancient learning they preserved, you see.’

  The priest sneered. ‘Such claims are easy to make.’

  ‘But my medicine has soothed your king,’ Ibn Zuhr pointed out.