by Brian Bates
I paused, avoiding Wulfs probing stare and running an agitated hand over my close-cropped head.
‘Aethelwealh submitted to such a humiliation?’ he said, sounding more curious than shocked.
‘Aethelwealh dared not refuse the arrangement,’ I replied. Wulf raised his eyebrows in surprise and I did not mention that the Mercian King had sweetened the pagan ruler by granting him additional lands on the South coast. ‘When your King prepared to return to these lands, the Mercian monarch commanded that he bring with him a small party of monks to attend to the spiritual needs of Queen Eabe. But he also ordered that your King should co-operate with the monks in creating a Mission for Our Lord the Saviour among your people. I am a scribe and serve Brother Eappa, leader of the Mission.’
Wulf pursed his lips and whistled softly, apparently impressed. Relating the powerful royal authority for my presence seemed to have won respect from my guide and my embarrassment in being caught in a lie melted in a sudden flush of confidence. I allowed myself a smug smile.
Wulf tugged at his beard thoughtfully. ‘What do you wish to know of our gods?’ he asked, sounding as friendly as when I had encountered him on the hilltop.
‘Everything,’ I asserted boldly. ‘The very nature of your beliefs; the names of the gods, the dates and purposes of your festivals and the powers of your priests.’
I had been instructed to take particular interest in the priests of paganism, for it was these people whom the Mission would seek to replace with servants of the Lord.
Wulf covered his mouth with his hand. For an instant I thought that he was hiding a sly smile, but when he dropped his hand his expression was serious.
‘We are simple people, with simple beliefs. We worship the sun, the moon and the stars on account of their shining brightness. We believe in fire because of its sudden heat; also water and the earth because they nourish all things.’ He shrugged his shoulders dismissively. ‘That is the extent of it. Your task should be easily accomplished—there is really nothing more to know.’
Wulf squatted in front of the fire, poking the embers with an oak stick and sending showers of sparks shooting into the night air The conversation seemed to be over as far as he was concerned and I did not know what to say; indeed, I felt embarrassed for him. His beliefs were as manifestly in error as the monks had forewarned, for the South Saxons had yet to learn that He is the true God who created the sun, moon, stars and earth for the enjoyment and use of man. These things were not to be worshipped as gods.
Wulf leaned back against the oak trunk and looked at me sideways. ‘Your god must be very powerful,’ he said, his manner betraying a hint of awe.
‘He is. He is the Creator of everything. And now in the kingdom of Mercia, crimes and outrages against the property of the church are punished with a fine as heavy as that for treason against the King himself.’
Again I had the uneasy feeling that Wulf was chuckling to himself, but if there was a smile on his lips it disappeared instantly.
‘Our gods are not worth discussing. They are fools—like the spoiled children of a petty king,’ he said.
I looked at him in astonishment and thought his gods must indeed be weak and worthless, for similar blasphemies against the Lord Almighty would surely result in eternal damnation. If the South Saxons spoke so disparagingly of all their gods, then the Mission to preach the word of God would meet little difficulty.
‘Can you really denigrate your gods with impunity?’ I asked, my confidence fuelled now by a sense of superiority.
Just then a clap of thunder rumbled in the distance and I sat upright in alarm. Wulf began chuckling as if at some private joke.
‘See!’ he said, pointing towards the sky. ‘Old Thunor, the Thunderer, is taking offence. I suspected that he was eavesdropping, Now what kind of god worth his wergild fines would concern himself with remarks passed in conversation by mere mortals like us?’
I looked nervously at the night sky, grey and flat above the treetops, listening keenly for more thunder. The sound was terrifying reminiscent of the rumble preceding my nightmare encounter with the forest hunters.
‘Let me tell you a story about the Thunderer,’ Wulf continued loudly, frowning melodramatically and glaring in mock abuse towards the sky. ‘It will prove to you what a fool he is. One time he was travelling in the land of the giants, when he came upon the mead hall of the mightiest giant of all and knocked on the door to ask for hospitality.’
Wulf leapt to his feet and stood with legs spread wide apart, banging his fist on an imaginary door. Then he jumped on to the oak trunk and bellowed the giant’s response. ‘“I admit to my hall only those who are masters of some trial. What can a puny individual like you hope to achieve against my giant warriors?”’
Dropping to the ground, Wulf voiced the Thunderer’s challenge: ‘There is no one here can eat faster than I.’ Then he sat on the log and continued his narrative excitedly. ‘An enormous trencher was brought in. Thunor sat down at one end and a giant warrior at the other, and they both ate as fast as they could. They met in the middle of the trencher and Thunor thought he had at least matched the giant for speed of eating. But then he saw that while he had left only the bones of his meat, the giant had eaten all his meat, bones and the trencher as well. Thunor had lost the contest.’
Wulf collapsed in a fit of mirth and was so overcome that he had to rest a hand on my shoulder for support until he had regained his composure. I was so transfixed by his total, animated involvement in his story and his sudden change of mood that I was taken completely by surprise when another crash of thunder rocked the night sky, sending me leaping to my feet with a shout.
‘But wait!’ Wulf said, pulling me back to the ground. ‘There is more. Thunor was too stupid to be dismayed by this defeat. He challenged all the giants in the mighty mead hall to a drinking contest. The giants produced an enormous ale-horn, and challenged the Thunderer to empty it.’
Wulf’s eyes popped as he enacted Thunor’s attempt to empty the imaginary horn; I sat frozen with fear, watching the midnight charade and listening for the threatening, deep-throated boom of thunder. Sitting on the log, Wulf plunged back into the narrative.
‘Thunor took three immense draughts, but was unable to empty the horn. At this the giants roared with laughter, and the mightiest giant said, “This mockery has lasted long enough; after all, Thunor is a mere weakling compared with such mighty beings as we have here”.’
Wulf leapt to his feet again, standing astride in his Thunderer characterization, his eyes blazing, I glanced nervously at the sky; purple thunderclouds rolled across the face of the moon and in the firelight Wolf’s animated body projected huge shadows against the silent trees.
‘Thunderer was now furious. He shouted, “Now I am really angry and I will show you how strong I am. I challenge any of you giants to a wrestling match.” The giants laughed and beckoned into the hall a bent old crone, shuffling forward to take up his challenge. And although Thunor tried with all his strength, he could struggle only evenly with the old woman and eventually she threw him to the ground.’
Wolf’s shoulders heaved with laughter. This seemed to be the end of his tale.
‘Is that the point of the story?’ I asked. ‘Your god was totally humiliated by the giants?’
‘He was,’ Wulf nodded, his words swallowed by chuckles. ‘He turned to leave the hall, his head hung in shame. But then the mighty giant called him back, and said, “Had I known you were so powerful I would never have admitted you to my hall, for I would have been afraid of you”.’
Wulf paused dramatically, his eyes twinkling, stroking his moustache as if wiping away the smiles.
‘But how so, Wulf? Surely he had lost every contest?’
‘Yes, but the giant then revealed that Thunderer’s opponents had not been as they had appeared. Thunor had in fact competed for speed of eating with Wildfire itself, which can consume entire forests at one sitting, And the enormous drinking horn had been connected to th
e oceans, and in each of his three draughts Thunor had succeeded in lowering the level of the sea by one inch.’
I laughed with him. ‘But what about the old woman who wrestled him to the ground?’
‘The crone was Thunderer’s most formidable opponent, for she who finally threw him to the ground was Old Age itself.’
Wulf cackled happily and crouched in front of the fire, lightly smothering the flames with wood ash and piling more wood carefully on top to ensure a slow burn that would last the night. I sat looking in wonder at my strange guide and thinking about his story. Begun as a jest at the expense of his Thunder god, it had ended by portraying him as powerful indeed, a being who could challenge the very forces of nature. But if Wulf had related the story to impress me with the might of his gods he had failed, for the Thunderer was not in command of those forces he had challenged. I felt secure in the knowledge that our Lord and Saviour was all-powerful, the true Creator and ruler of all forces.
I glanced up above the trees and gasped in amazement; the thunderclouds were dispersing like smoke in the wind and within a few moments they had pulled away to leave vast areas of clear sky. I was still trying to absorb the astonishing phenomenon when Wulf turned back towards me.
‘Now, the giants are very different,’ Wulf enthused, settling back against the log and brushing fire ash from his tunic. ‘The giants tower far above human size. They stand like mighty oaks, rooted to the ground but with their heads in the clouds. Usually they are as good-natured as lambs, but if they are provoked they can be very dangerous. When their wrath is kindled they rage and thunder, uproot trees and hurl rocks, squeeze water out of stones. And in temper they stamp on the ground with such force that their legs are buried up to the knees.’
He roared with laughter again, thumping his right foot on the ground in imitation of the giants. I chuckled at the prodigious deeds of strength he claimed for them, but listened warily for the point of the story. I thought he might try to turn a tale against the Lord Almighty, since he had already laughed at his own god.
‘I will tell you how big they are,’ he chuckled, leaning forward dramatically with his eyes brimming with mirth. ‘One day a giant had got something in his eye that pricked him; it was making his eye water. He tried to get it out with his finger, but that was too bulky. So he took a sheaf of corn and with that he managed to remove the speck in his eye. Then he picked it up and examined it on the end of his finger. “Why, it’s a fir-cone!” he said. “Who would have thought a little thing like that could have hurt me so?”’
We both laughed uproariously. The giants had taken on a sense of the ridiculous. Wulf continued his narrative in a singsong voice as if he were talking to a child.
‘Once there was a giant maiden. As she was walking in enormous bounds across the hills, she looked down and saw something moving. Bending to her knees, she picked up a ploughman with his horse and plough. Putting them on her lap, she watched with curiosity as they crawled and slipped about in panic. Finally she carried them to her mother and asked, “What kind of beetle can this be, mother, that I have found rooting up the ground in tiny furrows?”
I laughed out loud, but Wulf was not amused. He waited for me to quieten down, then continued: ‘So the mother looked at the creatures crawling on her daughter’s palm. “Put them away, child,” she said. “We have to leave this land soon, and they are to live here instead.”’
Wulf reported the mother’s reply in a tone of great sadness, his mood changing with startling suddenness. He sat in silence, his face mournful.
‘Wulf, would you prefer that the giants still ruled over these lands?’ I asked at last, unable to stand the uneasy silence.
‘They will again,’ he said, spreading his arms, hands open towards the sky. ‘That is the way of wyrd. Events flow in cycles like the tides of the ocean. The same thing will happen to us one day.’
I stared at him in disbelief.
‘Eventually people will have to make way for the tiny creatures that crawl about in our mattresses,’ he went on. ‘Then we shall be the lumbering outcasts, slipping ever further towards exile.’
I bit back a retort. It was surely not the prerogative of man to pronounce on the future. And all creatures were put into the world by God to serve man, even if we did not understand how they were meant to serve us.
‘The giants are the gods of old,’ he said in a low voice. ‘The world was made from giants, in the first winter. A mighty giant was created from hoarfrost. And when fire came, he melted. From the enormous bulk of his body came the worlds. From his blood flowed the sea, from his bones the mountains, from his hair the forests, from his skull the sky. And from his lashes, covering the eyes that beheld all, was fashioned Middle-Earth, land of people, sorcerers and spirits. In the centre of Middle-Earth, on hills rising high as mountains, live the gods and below seethes the Underworld, land of the dead and all their secrets.’
Wulf looked up towards the night sky, his eyes hooded, concealing his emotion from me. ‘The giants are now outcasts, living as exiles on the fringe of the earth, kept at bay by a mighty ocean surrounding Middle-Earth.’
He fell silent again. I wanted to ask him more, for he was telling me exactly what I had been sent to hear. But he seemed deeply affected by his story and sat staring at the grey wisps of smoke climbing from the fire into the night sky. I felt embarrassed for him. His obvious sincerity diluted slightly the revulsion I felt for his erroneous story of the Creation, but almost certainly he had not intended to open his heart so readily to a stranger.
‘We are taught a truth very different from the story you have told me,’ I said at last, hoping to draw him out of his sadness and back into conversation. ‘I cannot imagine ever encountering your gods.’
Wulf turned to look directly at me, his eyes twinkling brightly through the gloom.
‘You already have,’ he replied, in a voice strangely flat and toneless.
I frowned in puzzlement.
‘This very night,’ he prompted, raising an eyebrow knowingly.
The terror of the horse-head dream and the huntsmen flooded back into my body and my whole world fell in. Wulf’s knowledge of my ordeal in the forest spun me into confusion and I suddenly felt totally unprotected and vulnerable, as if he could read my thoughts and know my deepest secrets.
Wulf leaned forward, his eyes never leaving mine, his face crinkling into a smile. He spoke in a whisper.
‘I know, because my reality is the sorcerer’s reality. I can enter the world of spirits and they showed me what happened to you as clearly as if I were watching images moving in a still pool.’
Dumbfounded and frightened, I desperately wanted to fill the silence with a statement, reply, question: anything. But I could say nothing.
‘The spirits of death acknowledged you,’ he said with conviction. ‘If Woden had not swept his huntsmen over your forest camp, then I would not—indeed could not—have served as your guide. I waited on the hilltop until Woden marked you out.’
He jumped up and paced energetically around the fire. All melancholy thoughts of the giants seemed to have left him.
‘Woden is greybeard among our gods,’ he continued animatedly. ‘He is god of the magic song, incantations, words of power. For nine nights Woden hung on the Tree of Knowledge, swept by the wind of destiny. He was pierced by the spears of Knowledge but he did not bleed. He hung there without food or drink; he hung there in a fast until he was transported to the mountain of the gods. There he was shown the secrets of the runes and the incantations that unravel the secrets of Middle-Earth.
‘This is why Woden had to mark you out. Only he chooses who may be guided to the secrets.’
Wulf stopped pacing and stood facing me, feet astride, thumbs hooked into his woven leather belt, casting his face in dramatic, moving shadows.
‘Brand, when Woden marked you out I knew that I could guide you. You have been granted access to the spirits.’
I stared at his face in the moving fire shadows,
looking desperately for clues, signs, reassurance—I knew not what.
‘The spirits?’ My voice sounded tiny and cracked and I coughed to camouflage it. Wulf looked at me from under half-closed lids—a devastating look, full of craft and cunning.
‘The spirits are the custodians of our knowledge. If you wish me to guide you to our gods, then I can show you secrets your masters never dreamed of. But I warn you: the secrets of the spirits cannot be encompassed by words passed between us. You must encounter the spirits directly.’
I was still stunned by Wulf’s knowledge of my ordeal with the spectral huntsmen, but talk of spirits served only to compound my terror. I had survived the spectres in the forest, with the help of God Almighty, but to purposely seek them out smacked of evil. Spirits were devils, agents of evil, to be dismissed from the minds of pagans and supplanted by the Seed of Truth, the Word of God. Indeed, Eappa had warned me that pagan sorcerers steal the souls of the peasants through pacts with the devils. What Eappa had not told me—what he could not know—was that my guide was a sorcerer.
Wulf scrutinized me steadily as my thoughts whirled and spun.
‘Wulf, couldn’t you just tell me about the spirits? All I wish to know are the names of your gods and the nature of your beliefs, and perhaps to observe your people at their worship.’
Wulf strolled back towards the fallen oak.
‘If you do not wish to be guided by me, then I shall take you to a trading harbour tomorrow and you can leave. Let me know your decision in the morning.’
He wrapped himself in his cloak, lay down and closed his eyes, seeming to fall asleep instantly. I watched him closely for a moment, but he did not stir. The conversation was over.
