The Hallowed Isle Book Two Read online

  “That’s true,” answered Oesc. He reached for the horn.

  Ceretic moved closer, bending as if to continue his teasing. “At your wedding feast, the high king of Britannia himself sits down with his Saxon enemies. Are you not honored?” He was still smiling, but there was something unexpectedly sardonic in his tone.

  Oesc raised an eyebrow. “Shouldn’t I be?”

  Ceretic shrugged. “Artor sings a sweet song about peace between Briton and Saxon, but it is like trying to build an alliance between dogs and wolves.”

  “You yourself are half Briton—” Oesc began.

  Ceretic grunted. “But my heart is Saxon. The blood may mix, but the spirit must be singular. The Britons lick their wounds now, but they hate us still, especially Cataur, who has never forgiven us his brother’s death at Portus Adurni. They say he protested making peace with Icel and left the army immediately afterward with all his men, nor will he take them to Artor’s aid in Demetia. That man wants blood, and he’ll not care where he gets it. I would put a guard upon your borders if I were you.”

  “Artor will keep him leashed—”

  Ceretic shook his head. “Artor may desire peace, but one day his princes will force him to turn against us. When he summons you to war against your own people, which will you choose?”

  For a long moment Oesc frowned back at him, the mead growing cold in his belly. “I will choose my own land,” he said finally. “I will fight for Cantuware.”

  Ceretic opened his mouth as if he would say more, then closed it without speaking. The torches flared suddenly in a gust of wind, and Oesc turned. Hæthwæge had come into the circle of light. Silence spread as men saw her standing there, and one or two made a surreptitious gesture of warding where they thought no one could see. It occurred to Oesc that Hæthwæge must be in her sixth decade by now, but as always when she put on the regalia of a priestess, she seemed beyond age.

  The wisewoman looked around the circle, smiling slightly, then turned to Oesc. “This is a time of change, when the spindle twirls and new strands are woven into the web of Wyrd. Would you know, my king, what fates shall fall as a result of this marriage of yours?”

  The men who stood nearest backed away uneasily. Oesc found himself abruptly sober once more.

  “Are you afraid?” she asked then.

  He shook his head. This was Hæthwæge, who had guided and guarded him since he was a child.

  “I fear neither my fate nor you. Whether my Wyrd be good or bad, foreknowledge will enable me to face it well.”

  The guests drew back to leave a space around them. Hæthwæge spread a square of linen on the ground and drew the bundle of runestaves from her pouch.

  “Say, then, what it is you wish to know—”

  For a moment Oesc stood in thought, choosing his words. “Tell me if this marriage will prosper, and whether my queen will bear a son to follow me in this land.”

  Hæthwæge nodded. Her eyes closed, and she whispered a prayer he could not hear. Then she bent, and with a practiced flick of the wrist, scattered the runestaves across the cloth.

  The yew wood sticks rattled faintly as they fell, bounced against one another, and then lay still. Oesc leaned forward, trying to make out the symbols incised and painted where the sides of the sticks had been planed smooth. It was quite dark now. In the flicker of torchlight the rune signs seemed to twist and bend.

  Like any man of good blood he knew something of the runes, but their deeper meanings, especially in combination, were a mystery. The sticks the old woman had cast lay scattered across the cloth. Most of them had fallen near the edges; it was the ones that lay within the circle painted in the center that would provide the prophecy.

  “Ing, the rune of the king who comes over the sea, the god in the royal mound—” Hæthwæge pointed to a rune of crossed angles that lay in the middle of the cloth. “Your seed will take root in the ground.” There was a murmur of appreciation from the other men.

  “And there, near to it, are Ethel, for heritage and homeland, and Ger, the rune of good harvests. It means that you will bring luck to your land. But Hægl, the hailstone, lies close by them. Some violent upset threatens as well.”

  “What is the rune that lies across the other, just to the right of the middle of the cloth?” asked Oesc.

  For a moment Hæthwæge stared at them, swaying back and forth and muttering softly. Then she sighed.

  “Gyfu is crossed by Nyd—the rune of gifts and exchange cut by Necessity. You see how similar they are—one equal-armed, the other showing the firedrill crossed by its bow. Gyfu is a rune that wins great gains, but it is also a sign of self-sacrifice. Some say that Nyd represents the slash of a sword, or the spindle of the Norns. Whichever is true, these two crossed runes intersect.” The wisewoman looked up at Oesc, and his heart chilled at the sorrow he saw in her eyes.

  The wisewoman sighed, then spoke again. “This is the Wyrd that these runes show to me. Your reign will be fruitful, my king, and your son will rule long in this land. But there is a price to pay. Always. Only if you are willing to give all will all you have wished for come to pass.”

  “All?” he echoed softly, remembering how his grandfather’s body had swung from the tree. Since childhood he had understood what might be required of a king. “I made that offering before I ever ascended Hengest’s high seat, when I sat out upon his mound.”

  “You have answered well.” Leaning on her staff, the wicce straightened. “Your bride awaits you. Go now, and fulfill your destiny.”

  The light around them brightened. Oesc turned and saw that four of the women who had escorted Rigana to the hall had returned, bearing fresh torches whose flames were whipped out into ribbons of fire by the rising wind.

  “To your destiny!” echoed Ceretic, grinning, “and a fair one it is!” He gave Oesc a push, and fell in with the other men behind him, cheering, as the women lit his way towards the bridal bower.

  To satisfy his bride’s Roman preference for privacy, Oesc had built a partition to wall off the end of the hall that held the king’s boxbed from the rest. Four pillars still supported the framework, stuffed with straw and featherbeds. But instead of closing the space between them with wooden slats, it now was hung with lengths of heavy woolen woven in bands of crimson and gold. A wooden floor had been laid and a wolfskin rug cast over it. Terracotta lamps hung from brackets on the wall, and the women had garlanded the bed with greenery and early summer flowers.

  More important still, the bower had a door. As he shut it firmly behind him, Oesc was suddenly extremely glad he had taken the trouble to build it. This moment would have been even more difficult if there had been no more than a single bedcurtain between him and the raucous encouragement he was being given by the men outside. He cleared his throat.

  “Rigana?”

  From the other side of the curtain came a noise that sounded suspiciously like laughter.

  She answered, “The sooner you come to bed, the sooner those louts outside will shut up and go away.”

  Oesc fumbled with the clasp of his belt, dragged his tunic over his head and dropped it, and pulled off his breeches. As he pulled aside the curtain and climbed into the bed he could feel his heart beating as it did when he was going to war.

  Light filtered through the rough weave of the curtains, glowing on the pale flesh of the woman who sat cross-legged on the coverlet. Oesc’s breath caught as he looked at her small, uptilted breasts and rounded thighs, confirming with his eyes what his hands had learned about her body when they struggled on the grass. Since that day, she had scarcely let him touch her. But she did not seem to be afraid.

  “Are you drunk?” she asked suddenly.

  He blinked, then shook his head. “Did you think I would have to be drunk to lie with you?”

  “I only wondered what was keeping you so long.” She settled back among the pillows, looking at him with the same frank interest with which he had eyed her.

  Hoping that the dim light would not show his b
lush, Oesc climbed the rest of the way into the bed.

  “Hæthwæge read the runes. She says we will have a fine son to be king of this land.”

  “Does she? Then we had better get started on making him—”

  Oesc could not decide whether her smile held eagerness or defiance.

  He had meant to be tender, to take her slowly. He had dreamed of this moment in exquisite detail—how he would stroke first her cheek, and then work his way carefully down until her breast lay like a tender fruit in his hand. He had not anticipated the way that lust would flame in his blood in response to the challenge in her smile. Frige be with me! he thought desperately as he pulled Rigana into his arms.

  The wiry, whipcord strength was as he remembered, but the feel of her smooth skin against his own as they wrestled together made his mind reel. His fingers tightened in her hair as he kissed her, his body straining against hers until she lay still. She cried out as he thrust through her maidenhead, and began to fight him again, but imperceptibly their struggles became harmony, their breath coming together in harsh gasps as they rode the storm. He felt her convulse in his arms, and her final frenzy swept his own awareness away.

  An eternity later, they became aware of each other as separate beings again. Wind was whispering in the thatching, and from the feasting ground they could hear men’s voices lifted in song. Oesc raised himself up on one elbow, looking down at his bride.

  “Don’t think it will be this easy every time . . .” she said shakily.

  “Easy?” Oesc winced as bites and scratches began to sting. “I feel like a ship that has barely survived the storm. If this coupling has made a son, he will be a warrior!”

  “A typical Saxon!”

  “As fierce as his mother!” Oesc replied. He shook his head in exasperation. “If you hate us so, why did you marry me?”

  “You carried me off—” she retorted, “what choice did I have?”

  “You know very well I would not have forced you. And at the end there, your body seemed very eager for mine! Rigana—the same wind buffeted us both, and brought us in the end to safe harbor. Even now will you not give truth to me?”

  “The truth is . . . that my body may have surrendered, but my mind still tells me that you are my enemy.”

  “And your heart?” he asked softly.

  Rigana sighed. “My heart is a slow learner—you must give it time to understand.”

  In the weeks that followed, Oesc remembered those words. Marriage with Rigana was like sailing the sea at the mercy of conflicting winds. At times they blew as balmy as some fabled southern isle, and Oesc, half-drunk on his new wife’s kisses, would swear that he had won her at last. But then some clash of culture or concept, or even the sight of the ruins over which her grandfather had ruled, would set the wind wheeling round to the north again, with a chill that could freeze his soul. But the body had its own imperatives. Their lovemaking, when Rigana would submit to it, was a force that shook them both to the core. And soon it became apparent that Oesc’s seed had taken root in fertile ground.

  Pregnancy, of course, gave the queen a whole new source of invective, especially during the early months, when she was often ill. Nonetheless, as the result of their lovemaking became increasingly apparent, Rigana began to turn to her husband more and more. It was a golden year, with a bountiful harvest and a mild winter, and Oesc tasted his new happiness with astonished joy.

  Just after the spring equinox, when the rain storms followed each other in stately succession across the land, Rigana’s pangs came upon her. The bed in the bower was spread with clean cloths and fresh straw for her lying in, and Oesc was banished from the room to wait beside the fire in the hall with the other men.

  “Women!” exclaimed Wulfhere, “they act as if all men were monsters when one of them is in the straw!”

  “Not all men—” said Oesc, wincing as he heard Rigana swearing from the other side of the wall. “Just me. . . .” He rubbed his left arm, where Rigana’s slingstone had cracked the old break in the bone. He had still not gotten back full use of that hand.

  “She has a good vocabulary,” observed Wulfhere, running a hand through his thinning ash-brown hair.

  Oesc managed to smile back at him. Wulfhere was a good friend, he thought, straightforward and steady, as good a man as one might find in the Saxon lands. But he had been born in Cantium, son to a man who had come over in Hengest’s first warband. He understood Oesc’s love for this land. More to the point, he was also the father of four children, and understood what his lord was going through.

  Oesc looked up suddenly, realizing that he could hear nothing from the bower. He started to get to his feet, but Wulfhere shook his head.

  “Someone will come out if there’s news.” He pushed the beer jug across the table.

  “No. I don’t want to be drunk when—if—she’s been at it since morning and it is past midnight! I’d rather fight a battle than wait here. At least I could do something there!”

  “This is a woman’s battlefield. But life, not death, is the victory.”

  “I hope so—” Oesc sat down once more.

  From the bower came a grunt, and then something very like a battle cry. The two men stared, scarcely daring to breathe, until they heard, like an echo, a thin, protesting wail.

  Women’s voices murmured busily as the door opened and Hæthwæge beckoned. Two steps brought Oesc to her side.

  “Is Rigana—is the baby—” He could not find words. Beyond the wicce he saw his wife lying in the bed in which the child had been begotten. A pile of bloodstained cloths lay on the floor. She looked pale, but her eyes were very bright. Walking carefully, as if his footfalls might break something, he came to her side and took her hand.

  “My dear, I’m so sorry—” he stammered, “I didn’t know!”

  “Sorry! When I’ve given you a fine son? Look at him!” She flipped back a piece of linen and he realized that what he had taken for tumbled bedclothes beside her were the cloths that swaddled a tiny being who mewed at the disturbance and rooted against his mother’s breast.

  “You’re all right?” he asked.

  “Of course. I’ve helped too many ewes bring their lambs into the world to make a fuss—though I must say the sheep seem to have an easier time! Pick him up—is he not beautiful?”

  Oesc realized that the women were all watching him expectantly, and someone had summoned his sword-thanes, who were crowding into the room.

  “Beautiful—” he muttered, although the crumpled red features looked more like those of a tiny troll than of a man. Carefully he got his hands under the small bundle and lifted it, and caught his breath as the slitted eyes opened and for a moment he saw his grandfather Eadguth’s face overlaid on that of the child.

  “Beautiful—” he said again, knowing what they were waiting for. “And I claim him as my son! Is there water?” He looked at Hæthwæge.

  “Here—I brought it from the sacred spring . . .” She held out a bowl of dark brown earthenware incised with a zigzag design around the rim.

  Oesc dipped his fingers into the water and sprinkled the cool droplets on the baby’s brow. “Eormenric son of Oesc I name you, grandson of Octha and Gorangonus of Cantium, great grandson of Hengest of the royal Anglians, and Eadguth the Myrging king. I dedicate you to Woden, who has given you breath, and to the Lady of this land, who has given you flesh. Live long, my son, for Cantuware is your heritage!”

  “I think I never knew what it was to simply feel happy before . . .” said Oesc. Wulfhere, who was riding beside him, laughed.

  “Well, lord, you have reason.”

  Oesc found that he was grinning. The movement of the horse beneath him, the way the summer sunlight glowed through the whispering leaves above the track that led north through the Weald towards Aegelesford, even the sweetness of the air he drew in—today, everything gave him joy. But he had ridden through fine summer days before and never noticed their beauty. It was the happiness he had found in the great things
of his life that allowed him to value the little ones as well.

  “To the fortunate man, all things are golden—” he repeated the old saying. “It is true, I have been greatly blessed.”

  Still smiling, he silently enumerated the gifts that the gods had given him: Rigana had recovered well from the birthing, and Eormenric had outgrown the first fragility of babyhood and was now as fine and lusty a child as any man might wish for. The first, disturbing resemblance to his grandfathers had faded as he put on flesh. At three months, he was all plump cheeks and bright eyes, reaching out to grasp the world with chubby pink hands.

  In his delight with the baby, Oesc did not forget the wife who had produced him. Rigana would never be an easy woman to live with, but after a year of marriage, she had lost the abrasive edge that had at first turned every conversation into a battle. Now they only fought once or twice a week, and since their battles more often than not ended in bed, Oesc could hardly regret them.

  And Hengest’s old hall had never been so bright. Rigana had the manner of a princess, but her life on the farm in the hills had given her a realistic understanding of the labor needed to maintain a hall. She asked nothing of her maids that she could not do better, and though at times they felt the lash of her tongue, they respected her.

  His marriage had won him new respect among the men of Cantuware as well, especially the eorls and elders. They no longer have to fear I will lead their sons off on wild adventures, he thought. I am becoming a land-king now.

  Certainly Hæsta seemed to think so. At this last law-giving, the southern eorl had praised his judgments. Even Hengest, he said, had not understood the land and its needs so well.

  And Oesc was still young, and save for that lingering weakness in his left arm, in robust health. There was no reason he should not live as long as his grandfather and see his own grandchildren root themselves in this land. He had taken Rigana and the baby to Aegele’s ford so that they could get the blessing of the goddess of the sacred spring.