The Fabulous Beast (20 page)
Read The Fabulous Beast Online
Authors: Garry Kilworth
The hunt found a great boar, a brute with a mane as black as charcoal and eyes like flints. They chased it through the brush with wild cries and excited yells, cornering it under the dark greenness of a live oak. Orodin, the broadaxe-wielder, suggested they leave this strong giant to father more wild pigs, but Penda would hear none of it. He ordered the beast to be slaughtered, driving the first lance home himself.
‘We hunt to kill,’ he said. ‘Only a lordless weakling returns to camp without bloodied hands.’
Penda then returned to camp, strangely exhausted.
The wind had abated and an eerie silence hovered about the remains of Oswald. Penda brooded, staring at his erstwhile enemy, then shrugged and went to his bed. He camped near to the hanging tree for several days, resting his body, spirit and mind.
At the end of the first day, Oswald’s sword arm disappeared.
On the second day the left arm vanished.
On the third day the head went missing.
The fourth day saw the loss of the right leg.
Finally, at the going down of the sun on the fifth day, the tree was empty of the last of Oswald’s body parts.
Penda, having rested, left his tent in a great fury, threatening to boil the thief in a vat of pig lard. He was certain, he said, that one of the Bernician hostages must have stolen back their king. But severe torture, normally quite effective, resulted only the death of the victim. No further information was forthcoming. There was a rumour in the camp that Oswald’s god had put him back together again. He was a corpse, it was true, but he was whole and a kind of other-life was in him. Someone had seen him, walking the ridge above the camp, pointing a rotting finger at Penda’s tent, and mouthing a curse. The witness had heard no words, but had the feeling that the warlord Penda was to be haunted for the rest of his days by the king he had slain upon the grassy hill.
‘They say,’ Aedan told his lord, ‘that this Christ-god is able to raise men from the dead.’
King Penda brooded on this suggestion.
He remained at the site for a second week, hoping either to find the body parts, or for them to reappear in some way. When each day came to an end, a disguised Penda would prowl the camp, the ash-wood spear of a common warrior in hand, walking from fire to fire, hoping to catch some piece of unguarded talk. He was still convinced that someone – a rival to his kingship, or one of the enemy hostages – was responsible for this theft from the hanging tree. But he heard nothing, only the mindless chatter of his shield-bearers and their camp followers.
When he was in the proximity of a campfire he smelt the ash and woodsmoke and bubbling sap, but back in his own tent there was a peculiar stench of rotting meat overriding all the other smells of a camped army: odours from the latrines and the stink of man and horse sweat.
Penda was convinced he could smell decaying flesh.
Twice during the third night he rushed out of his tent, frightening his faithful body-servant, as the flesh-stink overpowered him during his fitful dozing. His half-asleep guards were startled into leaping to attention, as he blundered through the tent flaps, then peered into the darkness, wondering whether there was a corpse out there wandering between the tents. Still there was no clue as to the source of the smell of putrefaction. His sword-bearers all proclaimed their innocence, though every seventh man was soundly whipped with willow wands. The hostages were broken one by one, and either died or ended a cripple for life. Still no idea of the whereabouts of Oswald’s remains came to Penda.
What was more, when he visited his
gesiths
in their tents they swore they could scent nothing – swore an oath on their swords, and later on the heads of their sons – that they could not smell what their treasure-giver did. How infuriating this was to King Penda, as it is to anyone who catches something faint in the air which others cannot or will not verify. He inhaled through his nose continually, prowling the camp like a dog, sniffing here, there and everyplace, trying to track down the spot from which the stink emanated. Sometimes the stench was strong and overpowering, at other times it was simply a hint, a suggestion of an odour, carried by the breeze.
Dark of mouth and mind, Penda broke camp and he and his retinue, his army, went back to his capital. There he stalked the halls of his residence, the stink still caught in his nostrils, heavy in damp corners, or hovering lightly by the throne in the Great Hall. Sometimes he would whirl quickly, as if to catch a walking corpse off guard. Othertimes he leapt from his bed, snatching a burning brand from an iron holder, and rushed down the passageways seeking, seeking, seeking.
His hearth-companions believed he was turning mad.
On his birthday Penda rose up with tears of frustration in his eyes, crying, ‘Oswald, Oswald – for pity’s sake leave me alone.’ Later in the day he begged forgiveness of Woden, the SkyFather, Lord of the Wild Hunt, for his weakness. ‘There is no walking dead,’ he told his great Lord in the temple, ‘it is all my imagination. I have developed a frail mind. I will make it strong again by my own strength of will!’
Yet, even in the dead of that same night, his hunched figure was seen roaming various rooms, looking in corners, peering up chimneys, opening doors and staring, lifting the lids of chests, his anxious body-servant three paces behind. His powerful shoulders now drooped and his back was bent. Sallow cheeks were hollowed beneath the dark furrowed brow. Penda’s eyes were bright though – fever bright – darting here and there, quickly, urgently. A trembling had entered the hands which continually fidgeted with his sword hilt. He had a tendency to cry out, unintelligibly, without being conscious of it.
His
gesiths
were convinced that what their king needed was another war, to wipe his mind clean of this obsession. There is nothing like a slaughter-field, said Aedan, to distract a man from dark wild imaginings. So his warriors called for him to attack Bernicia once again, the kingdom which had been responsible for their king’s dread madness. A new king was in place there: Oswui, brother of Oswald. Oswui had consolidated his dead brother’s kingdom once more, and had defeated and killed their cousin, Oswine, who had attempted to take Deira back to paganism. This was a crime in the eyes of the Mercians and they urged their king, the great warlord Penda, favoured of Woden, to punish this Oswui in the same way they had dealt with his brother Oswald.
‘Oswui is but a priestling, better suited for the work of a scribe rather than a warrior,’ said Aedan. ‘A thin, wan figure his fist made to hold a goose-quill, not a sword.’
And Aedan had momentous news for his lord.
‘Sire, there are also reports of a great grey wolf roaming the forests to the north – they say it is huge and its cowl is the colour of Cumbrian stone.’
Thus it was then that the great ring-giver, the pagan King Penda, mighty in battle, undefeated by any puny Christian king, set forth to destroy Oswui of the North Umbrians. It was not the season for campaigning, for the snow was thick upon the ground and hung white and heavy in the branches of bare black trees. It was the season of ice, when the wolf walks with an empty belly and the raven seeks the blood-red berries of the holly tree. Penda’s army trudged through the bleak countryside of Mercia to the borders of North Umbria, where a forewarned Oswui waited to meet his traditional foe.
~
With a great round leather shield on his arm and in his hand his sword, a wonderful weapon crafted by smiths said to have been apprentices of the god Wayland, Penda is almost his old self again. His speech-bearers follow him with praise on their lips. Around his shoulders is the scarlet cloak once worn by his grandfather and Penda feels a man again. The odour of death and decay has gone and he is no longer haunted by it. The smell vanished when King Penda’s body-servant, ever-present to attend to his master’s needs, recently died. The cause of death was a limb with creeping rot, the result of an accident kept secret from his master. Penda convinces himself that his servant’s wound was responsible for the stink of death, though there is still the mystery of the disappearing Oswald to solve.
The march through winter countryside is gruelling. Men fall by the wayside and are left to freeze to death. Lone farms and hovels are locked up tight against the invading army, the snow piled high against their doors, protecting the inhabitants from incursion. But Penda’s
gesiths
are full of optimism, happy to see their ring-giver in battle mood once more. Priests and sorcerers report that there have been sightings of the cloaked and hooded one-eyed god, Lord Woden. In the day he has been witnessed striding the rolling downland in his masked form of Grim, pausing at crossroads to smile at murderers dangling from his gallows: at night hurtling across the sky as leader of lost and boisterous souls in the wild hunt. These are encouraging signs and Penda is lifted in spirit, ready to crush the enemy who waits for him on a distant hill.
As they near a border river a giant wolf is seen prowling the stark and leafless forests nearby. Penda recalls the words of the sorcerer, who has since left his kingdom for the green misty isle to the west of Wales. It is really for this creature that he is out campaigning in the worst weather of the year. War alone would not have roused him from his lodge in such inclement conditions. Ahead of him Penda can see the army of Oswui: thousands of dark figures lining the crest of a snow white ridge, their torches like small suns. But the Mercian king is thinking only of a night hunt. With his immortality ensured he need have no fear of the living or the dead. He would not have to continually look behind him for the corpse of his old enemy coming upon him.
‘Bring me this great wolf,’ is all he says.
And so the night before the battle the hunt goes out with flaming brands, out on a wild hunt in the snow-covered forests, the hooves of their ponies flinging ice-clods high into the branches of the trees. And they find the starving beast and slay him easily, and bring his huge carcass to Penda on a bier.
Penda rushes to the beast and lifts one of its eyelids, staring in the light of a burning torch. But any runes or symbols that might have been written there have faded with the brute’s death. The secret of everlasting life has been lost for all eternity.
’Why?’ cries the distraught Penda, his spirit crushed. ‘Why did you kill this magical creature, my
gesiths
?’
‘But my noble lord,’ replies a puzzled Aedan, ‘you have taught us to kill everything.’
Penda’s rage at being thwarted of this priceless treasure is unleashed upon his hearth-companions. Aedan is summarily slain. Aedan’s brothers and cousins are sent home under sentence of banishment. Even the hunt’s other riders, and there are many
gesiths
among them, are stripped of their status and made to march with the kitchen boys at the rear of the army. None dare speak to the king during that long hour as they approach the borders of Bernicia where King Oswui waits in reflective mood.
Still hot with fury, his head a storm of black thoughts that dwell on secretive body servants and stupid theigns, for the first time Penda attacks without a battle plan. His great anger allows no pause for details of strategy or tactics: blazing passion will surely be enough to carry the day against a weakling like Oswui. There stands the young brother of the slain King Oswald, on the snow-covered banks of the River Winwaed, a pale young figure with a sword as slim as a stylus in his hand.
And indeed wrath and ire might easily have been enough to win, had he all his faithful
gesiths
at his side. But these protectors of the armring-giver, their gracious lord, have been swept away. Aedan is dead, his kin exiled, his friends milling helplessly behind wide-eyed, greasy boys wielding carving knives and meat cleavers. Penda’s hearth-companions are now so few they cannot cluster about their king and Oswui’s own faithful
gesiths
slaughter them to a man. Penda finally stands alone, a figure of frenzy, screaming and cursing his enemies as weaklings and sword-haters, unworthy to wield a blade. At a crucial moment, just as he is about to kill his enemy, Penda is distracted. A shape crosses a ridge in his eye's sight. A wolf. A she-wolf.
In that fatal moment, Oswui lunges.
The sword enters Penda’s chest, piercing that huge heart with a neat, single, pen-sharp thrust. The great king falls to the frozen ground in a shower of hoar-frost. In the following minutes he knows he is dying and looks up at his killer with mist-dimmed eyes, anger evaporated, reason returning too late to the battle-hardened brain. ‘Not to you the victory,’ he murmurs, ‘but to my own
gesiths
who denied me the secret of a rune-eyed beast.’
‘Perhaps that’s the truth,’ replies Oswui, ‘but I will take victory anyway, for the sake of an uncle and a dismembered brother, who both now lie whole in their graves, their spirits in a far kingdom.’
‘So,’ says the fallen king, his voice a mere rustle of reeds on a breeze-swept bog, ‘what will you do with my body now? I am after all a king of kings. My conquests are many. My deeds are great. I am entitled to a funeral of high import. You dare not do otherwise for someone as beloved of the gods as I.’
‘Gods? Whose gods?’ Oswui’s calm voice falls soft upon the ears of the mortally-wounded Penda. ‘You ask the nature of your fate and I will tell it to you. There is a she-wolf with her cubs, recently robbed of her faithful mate and the pack’s provider – your flesh will feed her young.’
The Farrier’s Wife
My grief overwhelms me.
First, let me tell you who I am.
My name is Aiken, which comes from the great tree that spreads its mighty branches over our land. My work is shoeing horses. I am farrier to Raedwald, our lord and king, who chose me from a number of farriers.
‘Aiken,’ said our lord Raedwald, ‘you have a gift with horses – they become calm in your presence. They submit to your gentle hands without fret. Henceforth you are my farrier and the farrier of my theigns and gesiths.’
And so it was, my status grew high in the fiefdom of the Wuffings where my fellow Angles work, live and die. The land that is rich in rivers and deep-brown soil. This country where the deer and the boar run, where the wolf keeps to his own paths in the forest for fear of hunters, where the geese come back to in the winter, flying from the old land across the sea. Here we are safe where our ring-giving lord is great among warriors, gesiths and hearth-men who are fierce in battle and whose swords flash with fire when they fight.
I had every reason to be joyful.
And I
was
happy.
Happy, that is, until my beloved wife Daegal fell sick of the shaking disease and died in the night. My mother-in-law blamed me for the death, saying I must have upset either man or god, someone who visited revenge upon me by taking away our dearest possession. I searched my mind but could find no enemies there. Who would hate a farrier? Only perhaps a man whose warhorse lost a shoe at a vital time and was unsuccessful in battle or hunt. I have never had a complaint of that kind.
So, let us think about gods.
Woden, the Lord of the Wild Hunt, he would not bother lowering himself to concern himself with a farrier.
Ingui? My fertility has not yet been put to the question, my young wife dying after only three months of wedlock.
Thunar is too busy cracking the heads of giants with his hammer to worry about a farrier who took up his craft because he was too short to become a great warrior.
Frige, Welund, Eostre, Nerthus, Tiw – none of these have I to my knowledge offended.
It is true that when it comes to Seaxneat, I may have said that the metal I shoe my horses with is as strong as that of a sword, but surely this claim could not have been enough to enrage the sword-god of our people?
My mother-in-law’s tongue is as sharp as a knife and cuts me deeply, but others have taken little notice of her ravings.
I have a friend, Scowyrhta, the maker of sandals for our people. He is a short man, with a narrow face and sharp eyes, and the warriors despise him for his weak body, but he listens as well as any tree, as well as any lake, to the sorrowful rambling of his friend.
Others have told me to take myself in hand, to take myself in an iron grip and to shed this womanly grief. Scowyrhta does not chastise me or sneer when I weep. He places an arm around my shoulders and whispers sympathy in my ear before tenderly kissing my cheek in an attempt to alleviate my distress. Scowyrhta professes an understanding of my deepest, blackest feelings. He will sit with me all night, if I ask him to, and never complains my use of his time. Others are wary of my shoemaking friend, saying he is unwholesome to women and detested by men, but I can find no fault with his concern for my spiritual welfare.
‘It isn’t your fault you have lost your Daegal,’ said Scowyrhta on parting with me one day. ‘A living man cannot go against his wyrd. Wyrd rules our lives. Wyrd ruled that Daegal would go walking in the apple orchard one morning and there be elfshot. No mortal can avoid the arrows of the aelfe if they happen to be around. Aelfe arrows poison the blood and unfortunately sometimes take the life of the victim. Daegal was not a strong woman, being pale and insipid . . .’
‘I do not think she was insipid,’ I argued. ‘She was sweet and innocent perhaps, but I liked that about her.’
‘You saw her with a lover’s eyes. Others would say she was like a wilting lily before the onset of winter . . . but I have no wish to anger you, for I see you disagree with this view. I shall leave you now, before our friendship is impaired by thoughtless words.’
Recently I shoed the horse of a warrior named Wulfgar.
‘Be careful you don’t show her your red-hot iron,’ said Wulfgar referring to his chestnut mare, ‘or she goes berserk. Shield it with your body as you work. She hates bright colours, especially red, ever since she was burned by an inept blacksmith. You never see me wear anything but blue and grey.’
There are those who stand over me while I work, giving what they believe to be helpful advice. All men believe themselves to be experts at at the trade of others. Fortunately Wulfgar was not one of those fools and left me to my work. It was when I was shaping the red iron, fresh from a bed of charcoal blown to white heat with the leather bellows, that a thought came to me. The sparks flew from the shoe as my hammer clanged on the anvil and I fashioned a calkin. The beauty of sparks is transient. They are shooting stars spewed from the forge. Or souls flying on their way to the spirit world. It was this second thought that had me wondering. My wife was still here, not far from my side, separated from me only by a step from Middangeard, the realm of men, into Neorxnawang the realm of aelfe and spirits. That place of lost wights exists alongside our own world. There are men who have managed to enter it. There are spirit-beings who come out of it. The two are there together, separated only by an invisible barrier.
That night I lay in my bed wondering, what if I were to go into the spirit world and bring back my dear wife? I had heard of warriors who had visited the place of the dead, where demons and other insubstantial creatures hold sway. True, their stories often ended in tragedy. Was I willing to take the risk, to regain her who I love above all things, including life? Very soon I made up my mind that I
would
attempt the journey into the unknown. The rest of the night I spent planning how I would do it.
When Wulfgar came to collect his mount, I asked him, ‘Have you ever visited the Otherworld?’
Now Wulfgar is one of those big, powerful men, whose chest is more suited to a boar than a man. He wears two wolf-skins for his cloak, pinned by a huge gold brooch given him by our Lord Raedwald for services on the battlefield. His sword was made especially for his own massive hand, being heavier and longer than a normal blade. His legs appear to be tree-trunks borrowed from the forest and his head might well be a hillside boulder, if it were not for the long, greasy locks.
‘Are you mad?’ he said, fixing me with a hard stare. ‘Has the heat of your forge boiled your brains?’
I rapidly gathered my thoughts, knowing all men are susceptible to flattery.
‘It’s just that you are so famous for your deeds, being the one gesith on whom our lord can rely – so fierce a warrior and ever in the thick of the battle . . .’
Wulfgar laughed in my face.
‘Farrier, I had honey for breakfast, I don’t want it for my lunch too. What is it that you’re asking?’
‘Is there a way to get into Neorxnawang?’ I asked, my breath coming out quickly.
His eyes narrowed, but he was smiling.
‘What are you an ironsmith or a poet? Only poets want to go into the Otherworld, so that they can write their verses and astound and entertain us with their mystical journey. Are you bored with hammering iron? Do you want to risk death for the sake of a few magical lines?’
‘Yes,’ I said, emphatically. ‘I have stared at flying sparks too long. I have looked into dancing flames since boyhood. And this work is too physical for an older man. I want to find another trade before my muscles slacken and my bones begin to crack.’
Wulfgar snorted, taking the reins of his mare.
‘The only way I know of getting into that place,’ he said, ‘is on the back of Sleipnir – are you Woden, farrier?’
‘No,’ I replied, hanging my head, for the mere mention of the name of the Lord of Death and the Gallows had frightened me. ‘No, of course not.’
As he went away, Wulfgar said over his shoulder, ‘By the way, farrier, I’m sorry for your loss.’
Later that same day I spoke with my best friend, Scowyrhta. I told him I wanted to go to the spirit world to gain inspiration for a poem. Scowyrhta looked at me askance, with a hurt expression on his face.
‘Aiken,’ he said, ‘I am the poet, not you.’
Indeed, I had forgotten that my friend wrote verses, though they were not well regarded by our lord, or by anyone really. They were not stories of prowess in battle, or great journey’s across the wide ocean, or about the mighty gods who rule our lives. They were short pieces about the beauty of flowers, and love, and the blessings of the seasons. No one really wanted to read about such things and all regarded Scowyrhta’s efforts as puny attempts at recreating a child’s view of the world.
‘Yes,’ I said, not wishing to offend him, ‘and a superb poet too, but I’m not talking of emulating your wonderful writings. I simply want to explore the place in which my wife now walks daily. I need something of her still and to be able to picture her surroundings would help to crush my grief.’
This did not seem to mollify him, for Scowyrhta went away with a dark face. I sat under a plum tree all that day, ignoring any customers at my forge, and planned what I would do. In the evening I went in search of my lord Raedwald’s shaman. In my pocket were three gold coins, the total sum of my life’s savings. I found the woman in her hut, bending over some foul concoction and stirring it slowly. I gained her attention and told her what I wanted.
She sneered. ‘You wish me to make a new wife for you – out of river clay?’
‘Not a
new
wife,’ I told her, irritably. ‘I want you to make the wife I have just lost. I want your creation to look like her.’
The old woman laughed. ‘You’re going to fornicate with an earthen likeness of your dead wife?’
I felt myself going red with embarrassment.
‘You don’t understand. I shall first go to the Otherworld. There I shall seek my wife’s soul and bring it back here. You will put her into her new body. Once her spirit is inside, she will become flesh again, isn’t that so? Our bodies came from clay and return to clay. It is only the soul which gives life to the earthy substance from which we are made.’
‘Ah, you have listened well to my teachings in the Great Hall. I wish others did the same. Those oafish warriors continually fall asleep before the heat of the hearth-fire. Only the women, children and poets really heed my words. Are you a poet, farrier?’
‘I’m beginning to think I must be. Can you do it?’
She grinned, revealing a row of broken teeth.
‘Of course I can
do
it. But for what reward?’
I opened my hand and showed her the three gold coins. They were swept from my palm before I could close my fist again.
‘She will be ready for you, when you return.
If
you return. I have my doubts, farrier. I think you have pig-iron for brains, but then perhaps that will help you in your quest? Those who think too much have difficulty in making decisions and are often too slow to react to danger, being ever in debate with themselves over the best course of action. Follow the example of the hare, farrier, when danger comes freeze or run. The second option is nearly always the best, unless you have a faster animal than man on your tail. Even then I have heard of those who outran a pack of wolves. Fear is a wonderful spur . . .’
She was till yammering on when I left her hut.
I lay on my bed of straw that night trembling with both excitement and terror. I was going to enter the Otherworld. To do that, I had to borrow the warhorse of a god. Nay, the warhorse of
the
god – Woden. Master of the Runes and God of Magic, could snuff my life with a snap of his fingers, and no doubt would do if he knew I planned to steal Sleipnir for a few hours. One way or another my wife and I would be together again, either in Middangeard or Neorxnawang. I hoped it would be the former and not the latter. I sent my prayers to the great smithy, Weyland, hoping he would not betray me.
The next day there was a tremendous storm. Woden I knew would be riding across the sky on his eight-legged stallion, Sleipnir, hunting the celestial wild boar. I could hardly steal his mount while he was on its back, so I had to wait for a better time. Lightning zig-zagged from black clouds and thunder crashed over my head. It reminded me of my audacity in thinking I could play tricks on the gods. Perhaps Weyland had whispered in Thunar’s ear and the god of thunder and lightning was warning me not to carry out my scheme? I went to my forge and began striking my anvil with my heaviest hammer, a ringing strike for every clap of thunder, an attempt to placate Thunar by imitation. There are few who can resist the flattery of being copied.
When the storm was over I climbed the highest pine tree in the forest and waited. Sleipnir would be tired after the hunt. Even the horses of gods have their limit. He would be grazing amongst the clouds, left to rest by his master. When he came close to my treetop, I intended to leap onto his back. You may wonder at my audacity and daring, but I am a farrier. My working life has been spent in constant company of horses. I know them as well as I know myself. They in their turn know me and smell the trustworthiness on my skin. Even the wildest mounts are calm under my hands. I could never have been a shoe-er of horses had I not the gift of instant friendship with each and every one of them. They know me. I know them.
Hours I waited. A whole day.
Then as the gloaming rolled up the hill from the river and twilight dimmed the world, Sleipnir came in on a wisp of cloud.
My heart began to beat faster and faster. Fear flowed through my veins as I beheld this magnificent beast, his wonderful dark hide glossy with cloud-moisture; the huge muscles in his legs and thighs, along his flanks, and in that fine arched neck, glowed with strength. This was a giant of a steed. His galloping through the sky attested to the power in his form. Could I ever summon the courage to mount such a creature? I was but a puny mortal, whom Woden would crush like a cockroach if he knew of my plans. And who knew that Sleipnir would not whinny loud enough to raise the great hunter-god from his rest and down on this lowly farrier? Already I was beginning to wilt under pressure of my own making. Regrets began searing through my white-hot brain.