by K T Findlay
‘Excellent. Well, wisdom and honesty deserve their own reward, so here’s a third of it back, so you can get your life started again. I’m afraid we’ve given your old hut to someone else, so you’ll have to stay in the guest accommodation for now, but we’re building a number of new huts between the smithy and the quay, and you can have one of those when it’s ready.’
‘Thank you Your Highness!’ gushed Fulton, bowing as deeply as he could, without actually hitting his head on the ground.
‘You’re most welcome Fulton. Now, I know you’re a horse expert, so I suggest you go off to the stables, and familiarise yourself with our herd, and introduce yourself to their riders. They could do with another skilled hand.’
‘Yes Your Highness! Thank you Your Highness!’ said Fulton, and removed himself as fast as he decently could. The tension that had dwelt in his shoulders for so many days, finally began to ease, as hope for the future returned. It would be all right now, he thought.
‘Well, do I need to return to court do you think?’ Wulfstan asked Marwig.
‘Not if you don’t want to Your Highness.’ replied Marwig. ‘The King and Queen have things well under control for now, but you may wish to prepare your… arguments… for when you meet with the Archbishop. He’ll come out fighting, your word against Cuthbert’s, and talking about the honesty of priests to strengthen his case.’
Wulfstan frowned. ‘I’ve seen all I need to as regards the honesty and decency of the clergy. They’re not quite mutually exclusive, but you could be forgiven for wondering. Tell their majesties not to worry. I’ll be prepared.’
Marwig looked at him closely, wondering about Wulfstan’s choice of words. He wasn’t to know that the Prince’s vocabulary had increased in leaps and bounds through spending so much time with Thomas.
‘I believe you will my Prince. I believe you will… How are your other preparations going, those for your battle with Thegn Grimketil?’ he asked, changing the subject.
Wulfstan laughed. ‘Oh quite well I think. I have all my warriors now, their training is coming along nicely, and they’ll be properly equipped a few weeks from now. That gives us the winter to practice, and prepare for the fight to come. Father will be pleased. I’m not going to be spending much more of his money!’
Marwig's expression gave nothing away. ‘I imagine that will please him greatly. He has been, impressed, at the bills you have generated. Indeed, he has commented about them at some length.’
Wulfstan grinned. ‘I’ll bet he has! Well, he can’t blame me for doing what needs to be done, not when it’s all of his own making!’
‘I couldn’t possibly comment.’ said the ever diplomatic Marwig.
‘What? Not even after a good dinner and lots of beer?’ asked Wulfstan.
‘Not even then.’ said Marwig, wearing the gentlest of smiles on his face.
‘We shall see my friend, we shall see!’ laughed Wulfstan, but Marwig was as good as his word, maintaining his diplomatic poise throughout the entire evening.
The following morning, Wulfstan introduced Marwig to the coterie, but kept their new weaponry out of sight, and made no mention of it either. Instead he had the women demonstrate their archery skills, which impressed the earl greatly.
‘That’s ten bullseyes today Deana!’ cried Berthilda. ‘Well done that girl, well done!’
Her words gave Marwig the opportunity to introduce a subject of great interest to the King and Queen. ‘Prince Wulfstan, Fulton said that you counted the voting stones yourself. The King and Queen were somewhat surprised at that. They didn’t know you could count.’
In an instant Wulfstan found himself outside the body once more, and Thomas was back in control.
‘Oh well.’ he said to Thomas. ‘Short but sweet, and I enjoyed the food, but when it comes to talking about the school, I’m happy it’s all yours again! I’m off for a scout around.’
‘Have fun!’ called Thomas after him, before addressing himself to Marwig.
‘Ah yes,’ he murmured, ‘the King thought I was just playing childish games, yet all the time I was learning, just as I told him. Perhaps my parents just weren’t as observant as they thought they were.’
Marwig inclined his head diplomatically. ‘Learning to count is not usually done as a game Your Highness. Generally speaking, children learn it from an adult, and it looks anything but a game to me. It looks downright unpleasant!’
Thomas laughed.
‘I have some people I think you should meet.’ he said, and led Marwig to the new schoolroom. Somewhat to his surprise, there was no one there, but he quickly snapped his fingers in realisation. ‘I know where they are! They’ll be down by the quay.’
Sure enough, the children and their parents were on the wooden pier, clustered around Oswin and Sigeberht’s new crane, which had just been erected.
Its base was a squared off oak tree trunk, trimmed of bark, about two feet thick and two feet high, mounted on its side onto a solid platform, that had itself been secured tightly to the pier’s structural timbers. On top of the trunk was a wrought iron plate attached to the top of the bottom trunk, and a second plate attached to another worked oak trunk above that.
Mounted halfway through this second trunk was a cutout containing a long ash pole, with a stout iron rod through it that allowed it to rotate up and down. Most of the pole stuck out one side, with a hook at its far end, while the shorter side had a series of notches cut into its top at regular intervals.
‘Well, well!’ said Thomas, clapping his hands in appreciation. ‘You finally did it! Well, come on then, show me how it works!’
Sigeberht pointed to the hook at the far end. ‘We dip the pole down into the boat, and the boatman,’ he said, indicating a cheerful man in the boat by the quay, ‘hooks one of his sacks onto the end there like he’s just done.’
‘Then we hang these iron weights into the notches on this end, until the sack lifts out of the boat.’ added Oswin, preceding to demonstrate just that.
The sack lifted easily, and ignoring the slightly unpleasant noise of the two iron plates grinding against each other, despite the grease between them, Gundy was able to push the weighted end of the pole around with just one hand, until the sack was above a hand cart on the pier.
‘It works!’ cried Oscar. ‘It works!’
Gundy looked up proudly.
‘And, we know how much the sack weighs too!’ she said. ‘We just need to read off the iron weights and where they are on this side of the pole.’
She quickly did the maths in her head, and proudly declared that particular sack to be forty pounds, a figure confirmed by the boatman.
Marwig broke his silence.
‘That’s most ingenious. Who built it?’
Thomas laughed.
‘You’re looking at them! Oswin and Sigeberht designed the structure and did the basic calculations. Oscar and Gundy here, checked and refined those calculations to make sure it would work, before they started to build it, and Grimhild wrote it all up with chalk on these slates so they’d have accurate information to refer to during the build. Smith helped by making the iron plates and the rods that hold it all together. Sighard and Lynette, their parents, helped them with the build. And that’s the whole team.’
Marwig finally lost his diplomatic cool. ‘But they’re just children! That’s not possible! And they’re peasants to boot!’
Thomas just smiled. ‘I don’t care what class someone is. I care about who they are as people, their attitude to life, and their potential. Class doesn’t come into it. This family is amazing, and they were an easy choice for my school.’
‘Your school?’ asked Marwig hollowly. ‘Not the priest’s school?’
Gundy stuck out her bottom lip. ‘That mean old priest wouldn’t teach anybody anything! He just wanted to keep it all to himself! Prince Wulfstan taught us everything, not the priest!’
Marwig knelt down so his face was at the same level as hers. ‘And how old are you Gundy?’
‘I’m eight!’ she said proudly.
‘And the Prince taught you how to use numbers to be able to do all that?’
‘Yes.’ she smiled bashfully. ‘It’s not really difficult you know. It’s just fun!’
‘Fun?’ asked Marwig weakly.
‘Fun!’ chorused the rest of the family.
After that experience, Marwig needed a walk to settle his mind, but he was about to get another shock. Alfred walked in front of them, and into a small building the size of a modern garden shed.
‘What’s he doing?’ asked Marwig.
‘Evacuating his bowels.’
Marwig stopped dead in his tracks. ‘You have a building for that? In a village?’
‘Actually, we have eight now.’ said Thomas. ‘They have to be convenient if people are going to use them.’
‘But why do it at all?’ asked a bemused Marwig.
Thomas laughed. ‘Does this village smell the same as other villages, or does it smell sweeter?’ he asked.
Marwig sniffed thoughtfully. ‘Sweeter.’ he said. ‘Much sweeter indeed.’
‘That’s because nobody does their business anywhere but in one of these four toilets, even you and your men. I had your chamber pots emptied for you this morning, in case you were wondering. But it’s not just to keep the smell down. It stops disease.’
Marwig looked at him.
‘Well, of course if you get rid of the smell, then it follows that the disease will go too.’
‘It’s not quite that simple Marwig, but certainly there’s a correlation of sorts. Anyway, we haven’t lost a single person to dysentery, cholera or any of the puke and poop diseases since these were built. Not even an infant.’
Marwig was staggered. Out of a village of close to two hundred souls, you’d expect to lose a significant number every year to disease, especially children.
‘Good heavens! So you’re already making good on your boasts to your father, that you could achieve a lower death rate than anywhere else in the kingdom?’
Thomas grinned broadly.
‘Uhuh. And, we have a new arrangement for the fields which we’re implementing right now. It will triple food and wool production within a year, something else I said to my father.’
‘But how did you come to learn all of this?’ asked Marwig. ‘Or perhaps I should ask, how did you manage to keep the knowledge a secret until now?’ his diplomatic skills coming back to him.
Thomas chose his words carefully. The last thing he needed was an accusation of witchcraft. ‘As I said to the King that fateful evening, as a child I played, as I played I observed, as I observed I learned, and as I learned I thought, and imagined how things might be, with a little change here and there. None of it’s a very big change you know. It’s not magic, just common sense once you see things as they really are.’
Marwig looked at him thoughtfully. ‘And the idea for the school? Why did you do that instead of relying on the Church?’
‘Oh come on!’ said Thomas, losing his cool for once. ‘You know about Cuthbert? Well what kind of idiot knowingly puts himself at the mercy of that sort of creature? And then extend that thought. If the Church can wilfully appoint such a man to the rank of priest, what makes you think it will be any less fallible when it’s appointing its Archbishops? If we end up with a corrupt Archbishop, where does that leave the kingdom if it’s wholly dependent on the Church for all its reading, writing and accounting?’
Marwig stared at him, open mouthed.
‘No.’ Thomas continued. ‘The kingdom needs its own supply of trained scribes and numbers people, independent of the Church, and for that we need a school! That’s why I started my own here.’
‘But the Church must have scribes to replicate the holy texts, and priests who can read them!’ argued Marwig.
‘Who’s stopping them?’ asked Thomas. ‘My running a school doesn’t stop the Church from running theirs. It just stops them from having as much power in the kingdom as they do now.’
He smiled thoughtfully. ‘And you know what? The King will agree with me when he thinks about it properly! After all, who writes the history of our people at the moment? The Church, that’s who! And if the King falls out with the Archbishop, which is always likely, what do you think they’re going to write about him after he’s dead? Will it be Offa the Great, or Offa the Awful? If the only people who can read or write are the clergy, then the King’s memory is entirely in their hands. Will he want that do you suppose?’
‘And it applies to you too!’ he went on. ‘Will it be Marwig the Magnificent, or Marwig the Malfeasant? How’s your own relationship with the Church going to be after this Cuthbert business shakes out?’
For a minute or two they walked on in silence, as Marwig digested this new view of the world. ‘I think,’ he said, slowly stroking his beard, ‘that you may well have a point.’
By the time Marwig slid into bed that evening, his head was buzzing. This young boy could be the greatest king Mercia had ever had. If he survived that is. And if he did survive, how would his older brother take to the idea of being supplanted? Marwig thought the future looked turbulent, but never expected it to break upon him quite as quickly as it did.
Wulfstan was enjoying his favourite night time pursuit of watching the owls hunting. He never tired of their silent flight, and unerring accuracy in locating their prey. Tonight, he was following a young female on the prowl for mice around the barn. The bird was sitting silently on the east gable, intent on a tiny rustle near the river, when it suddenly took fright and flew away.
Puzzled, Wulfstan looked around to see what might have disturbed her, and if he’d had a heart, it might have missed a beat. Two men were moving stealthily between the hall and the barn, heading for the stables. Then he looked again. There were more of them, flitting through the village paths, and they were armed.
Wulfstan shot back into his body.
‘We’re under attack!’ he shouted at a startled Thomas. ‘Get up there and tell me what they’re doing!’
Then he bounced out of bed rousing the other sleepers in the hall. ‘Everybody up! Seize your weapons! This is not a drill, we’re under attack!’ he yelled.
Rowena and Berthilda moved to grab regular swords but Wulfstan stopped them.
‘No! Grab your new ones, and the bucklers. We can’t keep them hidden now. Deena, Deana and Melody, you grab the other three new swords. Everybody else, you’re stronger at present, so you grab the regular blades!’
Thomas swooped in to give a warning.
‘There are two men outside the hall door, one each side, with axes.’
Wulfstan ran out through the door, dropping into a barrel roll as he went. The axeman on the left of the door was so startled that he did nothing, and the one on the right swung his axe into thin air.
Melody was the first girl out, plunging her sword into the startled axeman’s chest, stopping his heart instantly.
The other one raised his axe to cut her down, but Freawaru was there, thrusting a shield into his face to block. He cursed loudly and stepped back, trying to give himself space, which he did, but Storm filled it, thrusting her blade up into his throat. With a horrible gurgle, he fell backwards out of the way, and the rest of the coterie burst out into the moonlight.
Thomas watch them go, and for the first time, he saw Melody’s golden glow.
‘I wonder…’ he said to himself.
A group of four men with swords ran past the guest huts, yelling for all they were worth, intent on hacking the women to pieces. They didn’t see Marwig and one of his men come out behind them.
Marwig swung his sword down hard from right to left, onto the right shoulder of one of them. It exited just above the man’s left hip, cleaving him in two.
This alerted the other three, who spun to face this new line of attack. One engaged Marwig, while the other two went for his man at arms. Marwig’s man managed to kill one, but as he was trying to withdraw his sword from his victim’s groin, the second att
acker took his head off with a finely judged blow.
Marwig had found himself facing a master swordsman, who could counter his every move, and now had to deal with the beheader as well. He flicked his sword point back and forth between the two, keeping them at bay.
‘What ho Marwig!’ came a childish voice from behind the master swordsman. ‘Need a hand?’
Marwig’s expert opponent spun around, and laughed when he saw Wulfstan, Deena and Deana.
‘Oh good!’ he cried. ‘I could do with a snack or two. It’s a pity the rest got cold feet though.’ he said, watching the other girls running off into the night. Then he leapt towards Deana, leaving his colleague to deal with Marwig.
He swung his sword hard and fast from above his right shoulder, down at Deana’s chest. There was a clash of iron on steel as Deana caught it on her buckler and deflected it into the ground.
Sparks flashed out as the tip of his blade bounced off a stone. He cursed, recovered his balance and struck again, a thrust this time, straight at her face.
Again, she caught it on her buckler, this time flicking his sword out past her left shoulder. That left him open, and she managed to strike him on the forehead with her own blade, its razor sharp edge slicing away the skin to reveal the white bone beneath.
Startled, the man drew back. These mice had claws after all!
Deena moved out to the side, trying to get around behind him, but he was wise to her intentions. He feinted, as if to attack Deana once more, but instead swung his sword horizontally at waist height towards Deena. She caught it between her sword and buckler, trapping the blade, but was lifted off her feet by the sheer force of the blow.
The man growled in frustration, forcing his blade up and around, tumbling her to the ground, face down. With a snarl of satisfaction, he prepared to bring his blade down across her back, but never got the chance. Wulfstan’s sword pierced his belly and ran all the way up inside his ribcage into the heart.
The man twisted away to address his new attacker, opening his stomach on Wulfstan’s withdrawing blade. Appalled, he watched his own intestines spilling onto the ground, then his knees gave way and he fell face first into his own gore.
