The Hallowed Isle Book Two

by Diana L. Paxson

  The feast was formal, the menu heavy on the Roman side, with spiced beets and wild spring greens dressed with oils, boiled grains with sauces, and chickens delicately seasoned as well as a suckling pig stewed in wine. For certain Oesc was not going to get a meal like this in his Saxon hut, thought Betiver, trying to decide whether he had room for just one more morsel of elderberry pie. But though his mouth still watered, his belly had another opinion, and he had let his belt out one notch already. With a sigh he pushed his plate away.

  “Are you not wanting that?” Gualchmai reached across the table and scraped the remains from Betiver’s plate to his own. Gualchmai had grown at least a foot since coming south with Artor, and was always hungry. He was going to be a big man.

  Servants cleared the plates away and began to serve more wine. Oesc proposed a toast to the king; the king responded in kind, his cropped brown hair rumpled and his eyes very bright. Cai toasted the armies of Brittania; Artor drank to their commanders. It should have been Cataur, but the Dumnnonian, who had barely tolerated Oesc’s presence with the army, had refused to attend. No one missed him. Indeed, by this time everyone was beginning to feel quite mellow, though Oesc looked depressed, except when he was forcing a smile.

  The gifts that Artor was sending with his former hostage were brought in. Oesc went red and pale again as he accepted them. There was a lorica hamata of mail with punched and riveted rings and an officer’s helmet with decorations in gold. But except for their quality, they would not make him stand out at home—half the Saxon fighting force was outfitted in looted Roman gear. Betiver did wonder, though, where Artor expected the Saxon to wear them. Perhaps he intended to raise auxiliaries from Cantium when the Picts made trouble again.

  There were tunics of Byzantine silk, an officer’s belt with gold fittings, a pair of arm rings, and a fine woolen cloak of deep blue that was the mate of Artor’s crimson, with a great round brooch of gold. There was a table service of figured red ceramic ware and a silver ewer with goblets. Taken together with Oesc’s share of the loot from the Pictish campaign, it was an impressive dowry to be taking home to Cantium.

  Then the gifts were carried away again and the king called for more wine. Artor stood up and began to make a speech about how brave they had all been during the Pictish war. Betiver felt his eyes closing and surrendered to a dream in which he was dancing around the festival fire with a girl whose body he could still picture in arousing detail, though he had never learned her name.

  He came abruptly awake again to find Gualchmai poking him.

  “There’s a man come from home to bring me messages, and he’s asking for you as well. He has a young woman with him who says she’s brought your child. . . .”

  He had not spoken softly, and Betiver’s progress towards the door was followed by a chorus of advice and comment that made him redden, though he pretended not to hear.

  He went, determined to see the girl off in short order. There was a widow in the city whom he visited sometimes, but he knew that she was not with child. He was not like Gualchmai, who had progressed from kitchen maids to married ladies and was reputed to have one bastard already, though he was barely sixteen.

  He was starting to question the messenger, a ginger-haired fellow wrapped in the yellowish checkered stuff Leudonus’ people wore, when he heard a cry. A red-headed woman came forward into the light with a yearling child in her arms, and it was the girl he had just seen in his dream.

  For a long moment Betiver stared at her. “What is your name?”

  “Roud—” She took a deep breath. “Do you know me, then? I was fearing you might not remember after all.”

  “I remember.”

  “Well, that’s a start—” Her words tumbled out as if she were afraid that she might not have the courage to say them all. “I know you are great among the princes of the south, and I don’t ask you to marry me. But the boy deserves better than I can give him, out in the hills. There was no other man for a moon before or after the festival, my lord, so I am certain he’s yours. If you will swear to do right by him, I’ll trouble you no more.”

  Betiver lifted the blanket and saw a frowning, pug-nosed face topped by a tangle of dark hair that looked so much like his own father’s that he blinked in surprise. A boy child . . . I have a son. . . .

  “A child needs his mother,” he said softly. “It would be better if you stayed.”

  Roud stared at him, then her eyes filled with tears. “We’ll be no trouble to you, I promise—”

  “Nay—you had the trouble of bearing him. If I had known of this, I would have provided for you before. Tonight you may sleep in my rooms here, and tomorrow we’ll see about finding a house for you in the town.”

  By the time Betiver had settled Roud and the boy in his own bed and returned to the feasting hall, everyone had gone but Cai and young Gualchmai, who was pouring more wine for the king.

  “You never knew you were planting a field, but it seems you got a fine crop all the same!” commented Gualchmai with rude good humor.

  “I remember the girl,” said Betiver, “and I’m satisfied that the boy is mine.”

  “You have a son?” asked Artor, his eyes dark with the wine.

  “It would seem so. He wrinkles his forehead just the way my father does when he’s annoyed. My memory of the festival in Dun Eidyn is somewhat confused, but I would guess mine was not the only seed to sprout from that sowing.”

  “Ah, indeed,” said Gualchmai, “it was generous of you to replace the men we lost on that campaign.”

  “You are an unregenerate heathen!” exclaimed Cai.

  “Maybe so, but in the north, festival babes are held to be a blessing from the gods.”

  “A man needs to know that his son is his own,” Cai replied.

  “Then get married and breed them!” exclaimed Gualchmai. “When will you be taking a wife, uncle? I’m heir to my father’s lands already—I’ve no need for yours!”

  His mother would be irritated to hear him say it, thought Betiver. By all accounts Morgause was ambitious for her sons. She had a fifth boy now to follow the others, he had heard.

  Artor shook his head. “Kings don’t make marriages, they make alliances. So long as I’m unmarried, any man of good blood can hope to make his daughter queen.”

  “I suppose that Oesc will settle down now and raise a troop of flaxen-haired brats,” said Betiver.

  “I suppose he will—” Artor sighed. Clearly the wine was wearing off. The sadness had returned to his eyes.

  “Are you so sorry to lose him?” asked Cai gruffly. “Oesc is a good fellow, for all his moody ways, and I suppose we’ll miss him. But we’re still here!”

  “That’s true—” Artor reached out to grip their hands. “But I value each one of you in a different way. I’m afraid that when I see Oesc again he’ll be a stranger, and then he might as well be dead to me—”

  Betiver felt the king’s hand strong and warm in his own, but in spirit Artor was far away. He tightened his grip, trying to draw him back again. My dear lord, are we not enough for you?

  Oesc rode across the bridge into Durovernum on a fine spring evening just before Ostara, wearing a British tunic and riding a fine British horse that Artor had given him, and still thinking, despite a week of journeying with his Saxon escort, in the British tongue. The remains of the theatre still stood like a monument in the center of the walled town, but the walls themselves seemed lower, and several of the other Roman buildings he remembered had been scavenged for building stone. The long Saxon houses huddled under their weight of thatching like sheep in fleece, and everything he looked on seemed small, and poor, and old.

  As they reined in before the hall, a figure appeared in the doorway, shading his eyes with his hand against the westering light. He shouted something, and in another moment Hæthwæge appeared, Hengest’s silver-mounted meadhorn in her hands. There was more silver in her hair than he remembered, but otherwise she hadn’t changed.

  “Oesc son of Oct
ha, waes hal—be welcome to your hall!” She came down the steps, and he took the horn. The mead was yeasty and dry, with an aftertaste of sweetness and fire. The taste of it brought a sudden flood of memories. He drank again, dizzied by the conflict of old knowledge and new, uncertain for a moment who he was or where.

  “Thank you . . .” he mumbled, clinging to the formalities. A thrall came up to take the horse’s head and he swung a leg across the high front of the saddle and slid to the ground. His escort were dismounting behind him. More thralls led their horses away. A horn blew and he heard people shouting.

  For so long, he thought, he had dreamed of this moment, longed for it. And now, it seemed the capacity to respond was dead in him. What am I doing here? How can I be a king to these people? Would Artor take me back again?

  Hæthwæge was saying something. He forced himself to attend.

  “You are tired. Come into the hall.”

  He nodded gratefully and followed her.

  Inside it was cool and dim. As his vision adjusted, light from the opened smoke vents beneath the eaves at either end of the hall showed him the carved and painted pillars that upheld the peaked roof and the curtained compartments to either side. But he had become accustomed to separate sleeping chambers and columns of stone. Then the scent, composite of woodsmoke and ale, dog and old leather and the sweat of men, caught at his throat, and for a moment he was thirteen years old once more. Someone opened a side door, and a rush of fresh air brought him back to the present.

  “There are only half a dozen men now in the houseguard, and most of those are old,” Hæthwæge was saying. “He gave the younger men land to farm. And there is only one cook and three kitchen thralls, but I have asked some of the women to come and help us.”

  Oesc nodded, thinking he would have to use much of the treasure Artor had given him just to set things in order here. Compared to the crowded, noisy place he remembered, this was like a hall of ghosts.

  His footsteps echoed on the planking as he passed the boards and trestles for the tables that leaned in stacks against the walls, and he thought of colored mosaic floors. The raised stone hearth nearer the doorway was cold, but a little blue smoke rose from smoldering coals in the one before the high seat at the end of the hall. He remembered the clear light that fell through windows of nubbled glass, and Artor’s marble throne.

  The wisewoman paused as if she expected him to sit there. Oesc looked up at the serpentine carving on the posts, worn where Hengest had leaned against them, and at the cushion that still bore the impress of his body, and shook his head.

  “Not yet. It has been a long time, and my soul is still stretched like a drying hide between here and Londinium. Build up the fire and let me sit on a bench beside it. I’ll take the high seat when we drink Hengest’s funeral ale.”

  She frowned at him thoughtfully and handed him the meadhorn once more. From outside came the sound of many voices. The light from the door flickered as if someone were hovering there.

  “The people are gathering, wanting to see you. Two lambs are already roasting, and tonight you will feast. When you are ready, come to me and I will tell you how your grandfather died.”

  It was late before the shouting and the singing died away in the hall. But when the last of the revelers set off for his home or rolled up in his cloak beside the hearth, as Hæthwæge had known he would, Oesc came to her.

  He had still been a boy when he left them, with the soft flesh of youth covering his bones. Now the strong structure of his face made the resemblance to his grandfather clear, all the more so because he looked so tired.

  “Was it too bad?” He would have had more than enough ale in the hall. She dipped some of the mint tea that had been steeping on the hearth into a beaker and offered it.

  Oesc sighed. “The skin of the boy who lived here nine years ago no longer fits, and the man he became is some sort of Saxon-British hybrid who doesn’t fit anywhere. I told them I was tired from the journey, and they made allowances, but I am afraid my grandfather’s thanes will think they have got a bad bargain in me.”

  “You have half a moon until the feast of Ostara when the æthelings and freemen will gather to drink Hengest’s funeral ale. It will be better by then.”

  “I hope so! Otherwise I might as well lay myself in his mound . . .” He took a long drink of the tea and settled back on his stool. “This place is as I remember, and so are you. Talk to me, bind me back into this world again. . . .”

  At least he knew what he needed, she thought, watching him. She would have to shape the man as she had shaped the boy, but it would be harder now because he was not so much scarred as armored by his time in the British lands.

  “When one has a slow illness, or is very old, there comes a time when the spirit turns inward. Mostly our folk go quickly, in battle or sudden sickness, but I have seen this often enough so that when Hengest began to drift away from us I understood what it was. His health was no worse, nor was he in pain. He ate less and slept more, and delegated most of the household decisions to Guthlaf or to me. When he sat in his high seat he spoke of the battles of his youth sometimes, or of you, but as time went on, he mostly stayed in his bed.”

  Oesc frowned unhappily. “I should have been here for him. I knew how old he was—I should have begged Artor to let me visit him.”

  “It would have made no difference. It was that boy whose skin is too small for you that he remembered, not the man you are now.”

  “Whoever he is . . .” muttered Oesc, and refilled his cup. Then he straightened, obviously trying to lift himself out of the mood. “It is hard to picture Hengest, the conqueror of Britannia, dying in his bed like a woman or a thrall.”

  Hæthwæge shook her head. “He did not. There came a day when the hills echoed with the cries of new lambs, and the sky with the calls of returning waterfowl. There was a wind, and we opened all the doors to air out the hall.” She shut her eyes for a moment, remembering the brilliance of the sky, and how life had tingled in that air. “The kitchen thrall who used to bring Hengest his porridge called me. The king was sitting up, asking for a basin to wash in and the Frankish lapped tunic with the gold borders to wear. The folk here rejoiced, thinking that he was getting well at last.”

  “Where did he want to go?”

  “He asked me to take him to the god-grove, and to bring the Spear.”

  Oesc’s eyes widened, and his gaze went to the shrouded shape by the door. Hæthwæge knew he was remembering how his other grandfather had died. In the same, measured tone, she went on.

  They had brought a lamb, and the old king cut its throat and splashed its blood on the god-posts and the stones. She remembered how the air around them grew heavy, as if something had awakened and was watching as Hengest set his back against the ash tree and pulled open his tunic to bare his breast. The green shadows had given his old skin a sickly pallor, as if he were dead already.

  And then, as he had commanded, she scratched Woden’s knot into his belly just below the ribs, and tied the rags with which she stanched the bleeding onto the branches of the ash tree. And at that a great wind had shivered the new leaves.

  “The god was there,” she said softly. “The offering was accepted. But Hengest said that as the god had made him live so long already he would let him choose his own moment to claim him. And so he closed up his tunic and we went back to the hall.

  “He sat down in his high seat and told them to build up the fire, but he would take neither food nor drink. Some of the men wanted me to force him to lie down, but the warriors of the houseguard backed me. They understood very well.”

  “How long did it take him to die?” asked Oesc in a still voice.

  Hæthwæge drew a deep breath, remembering the old king sitting like a carven image in his bloodstained tunic, listening to Andulf sing of Sigfrid and Hagano, of Offa of Angeln and Scyld Sceafing, one of the few heroes who lived to be old. He had sung of Eormanaric. He sang until even his trained voice grew hoarse and Hengest told hi
m to be still. That was the sixth night. Three days longer the king stayed, without eating or sleeping. By then he had stopped speaking as well, and only the occasional movement of his breast told them that he lived still.

  “Nine days and nights altogether Hengest sat there, and when the tenth morning dawned, although he had not moved, we saw that his breath no longer stirred his beard. The god had come for him at last.”

  “And that is the high seat you want me to sit in?” Oesc said unsteadily.

  “You will sit there, and Hengest’s spirit will guide you,” said Hæthwæge with the certainty of prophecy.

  “I drink to Hengest, wisest of warriors, first to be king in the British lands—” Aelle lifted his drinking horn, and the others followed his example with a roar of approval.

  Oesc, sitting on a bench before the high seat, gazed around him at the men crammed into the hall. They had begun to arrive just after the Ostara offerings, when by custom kings feasted with their chieftains, to celebrate Hengest’s funeral ale.

  He had expected Aelle to bring his son Cymen, and Ceretic to come over from Venta, and he knew that Hengest’s thanes, Hrofe Guthereson and Hæsta and the others, would be there. But he was surprised by how many others made the journey—old men who had fought in Hengest’s battles, and young men to whom they were legends. There was even a small party from Gallia, bearing the condolences of Chlodovechus, the Frankish king.

  Each day more tents went up in the field beyond the hall as new groups settled in. It was just as well that Artor had gifted him with so much treasure, he thought ruefully, for this feast would exhaust their stores. He did not delude himself that all these folk had come for his sake. Hengest had been the father of the Saxon migration. With his death an era was ended.

  Many times that night the meadhorn had gone round. Men laughed and said it was time the hall had a queen to honor the warriors. Hengest had been an old wolf, who had rather embrace his sword than a woman, but Oesc still had juice in his loins. He should take a wife—the talk grew ribald with speculation. Aelle had granddaughters, girls of good Saxon stock who would give him strong sons. Ceretic had a little daughter, but it would be a dozen winters before she was husband-high. The lords from the Anglian lands suggested that one of the Icelinga girls could bring him a useful alliance. Even Chlodovechus’s representative joined the discussion, pointing out that his master also had marriageable daughters, and Cantuware possessed fine harbors that could benefit from Frankish trade.