Not that the memory of Roman and Celtic times had died. The river Avon had kept its Celtic name; so had the river Wylye to the west. The memory of a Roman spring – fontana – was alive a few miles up the Wylye at the estate of Fonthill. And besides, though the old Roman Empire had departed from the west of Europe, everyone in its many kingdoms knew that Rome was civilisation. Was not the Bible, were not all the works of philosophy, literature and learning to be found in the churches and monasteries of Europe, written in Latin? Had not Charlemagne, the greatest emperor Europe had seen in centuries, taken care to be crowned in Rome? Had not King Alfred himself made three journeys there when still a boy? The imperial troops had long gone, but their legacy would never die.
If the Porteus family name had become obscure, this was only a matter of convention: the Saxons rarely used surnames in the Roman or the modern manner: neither Earldorman Wulfhere nor thane Aelfwald had more than a single personal name. And the stubborn Porteus family, who reminded each new generation that they had been famous Romans once, had themselves forgotten how to pronounce their own name. Over the centuries they had called themselves by names such as Port, Porta or Porter, which were recognisable to Saxon ears as terms meaning doorman or gatekeeper.
“Never forget,” Port told his two young sons, as he pointed to the dune at Sarum, “when this place was taken, we were the lords of it and we fought bravely.”
This was true. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle recorded for the year 552: “Cynric fought the Britons at a place called Searobyrg and put them to flight.” This was the dune, whose new Saxon name meant the place of battle. There the descendants of Petrus Porteus had fought bravely and lost; and the only survivor of the family, whose valour the Saxons admired, was honoured by them after the final surrender. It was because of this incident three centuries before that Port kept the last remnants of his nobility in the wergild which marked him out as, if not a thane, at least something more than an ordinary churl.
The old Porteus wealth was gone. The villa and most of its lands, were taken from them and given to the family of Aelfwald the thane. But not all. While the Saxons took the rich land on the lower slopes, the Porteus family was allowed to keep the bare land on the high ground; and here, in a small farmstead, sowing a little corn and pasturing the white sheep their ancestor had brought to the place, the descendants of Sarum’s ancient lords had lived for three hundred years.
But today, all this could change; and this was Port’s terrible dilemma. For today’s events had given him a chance to raise his family to a position it had not known in centuries.
“With the money from the wergild added to what I am holding,” he thought, “by sunset tomorrow I can be a thane.” And not for the first time that morning he shook his head in discouragement. Yes, it could certainly be done, but to do it, he must break his word: and the promise he had made to his sister Edith was a solemn one. Worse, now that the trial was over, he was about to have to confront her. If only there were some way out.
“Well, are you coming?”
The tall figure of Aelfwald was beside him. He was smiling broadly. The two men, so strangely contrasted, liked each other, and though Port’s secret ambition was to become a thane himself, he had no complaint to make about his lord.
Accompanying Aelfwald was a small retinue consisting of two of his sons, his daughter, a boy dressed in the habit of a novice monk, and a young man with a pinched, ageless face, whom Port recognised as the slave called Tostig.
Port nodded to them. It was clear from the grins on the faces of Aelfwald’s children that they regarded him as something of a joke, but he did not mind. The sons: Aelfric and Aelfstan – the repetition of the first syllable in a family’s name was a typically Saxon custom – were close in age. Aelfric, the eldest, was twenty-six; and the girl, Aelfgifu, was only eighteen. He bowed to her gravely. He did not dislike the cheerful, rather childish high spirits of the young men, but Aelfgifu’s wild, tomboy antics shocked his sense of propriety. It was of course this which gave the thane’s children such delight in teasing him.
Aelfwald looked at this little retinue contentedly. He was typical of the Saxon folk who had made the island their own: an easy-going, even-tempered man, with a mind that moved slowly, but steadily. He was not much given to argument or speculation, but once he had seized an idea that he believed in, he could be massively obstinate in defending it. The fiery Celtic peoples, who had held out in Wales, despised what they saw as the slow-witted Saxon settlers who had taken their lands; but their contempt was not necessarily returned, and the two communities had long since lived on the island with only sporadic outbreaks of violence over the border.
Aelfwald had good reason to take a comfortable view of life. The thane possessed estates in several parts of Wessex, including a fine area of woodland down at the coast. His eldest son was married and he had already been able to give him handsome farms. He hoped soon to find a husband for Aelfgifu.
“Though who’ll want to marry such a tomboy, the Lord knows,” he complained laughingly to his wife.
Now the trial was over, he was going personally to conduct his man back to his farm where Port’s wife and two sons were waiting; and that night he had invited Port and all his other dependants to a feast in his spacious hall in the valley.
But first they must pay the visit that was causing Port so much secret anguish.
Together the party moved along the main street of Wilton.
It was a small, sheltered town, pleasantly situated in the angle where the rivers Wylye and Nadder ran together. The stout wooden wall around its west side, despite the fact that a Danish force had briefly overrun the place seven years before, was still only half finished, and the palisades and banks that completed the circuit had been left in some disrepair for the winter. The little river Nadder wandered along the southern edge of the town; trees flanked the river, and magnificent oaks and beeches stood on the slopes that led quietly up towards the great chalk plateau on the northern side. The two central features of the place were the small market square, surrounded by modest wooden buildings, and a large building in stone that lay just east of it. This was the Kingsbury, the royal palace, for although King Alfred was now lavishing more attention on the larger town of Winchester, Wilton was still the second most important royal town in his kingdom.
Today the palace was empty: the king was hunting in the west; but the party’s destination was a third entity, that lay just beside it: a small group of buildings within their own walled enclosure, through the gate of which they now entered quietly. For this was the abbey: and it was here, in the small but distinguished group of twelve nuns, that Port’s sister led her life.
There were several buildings – the nuns’ house, a wooden church, a refectory; but it was to a small, stone chapel with two side aisles and a steep wooden roof that they were now led by one of the nuns. It was a single structure with small windows and triangular pointed arches, but it was not without a certain quiet elegance. The nuns’ greatest pride were the beautifully carved pillars on each side of the west door, whose sides were covered with a wonderful pattern of interlocking knots and whose square capitals depicted a similarly intricate design of interwoven dragons – Saxon workmanship at its best. There was a delicate smell of incense in the church, and everywhere there was evidence of its rich endowments in the gold and silver ornaments, the splendid hangings, and the finely woven altar cloth.
Aelfwald the thane often visited the abbey; he liked to pay his respects to the abbess, who was a distant kinswoman of the king himself, and to admire the stone church, which was by far the finest building in the area. And Port had come to see his sister. The abbess entered almost immediately, accompanied by Edith. The two nuns exchanged polite greetings with their guests; then Port and Edith drew to one side.
She was not an attractive woman. Thin like her brother, though ten years younger, she had a face over which the pale skin was drawn tightly, so that her appearance was skeletal, an impression made worse b
y yellowish eyes and pale lips which often turned blue in the winter months. She was lucky to have been accepted in the abbey, for most of the nuns were high born, and their families had given endowments far beyond the means of Port. Indeed, it was only thanks to the support of Aelfwald that she had been accepted. But she had come to the abbey with high ambitions. Several of the nuns there, including the abbess, had been trained in the great double minster of Wimborne, twenty miles to the south west, where two large, though carefully segregated communities, one of monks, the other of nuns, were ruled over by a single abbess. In previous centuries, great missionaries like Boniface, who had set out from the newly converted Anglo-Saxon island to convert the heathen tribes of north east Europe, had drawn many of their best assistants from the great Wimborne community, and Edith had hoped that from Wilton, she too might be selected for such work. But the wise abbess had soon seen that Edith was not the stuff that missionaries were made of; no invitation to go to Wimborne had come, and it was clear that she would live out the rest of her life in the little community with the other nuns.
Now she had only one ambition – and since she had time to brood, it was never out of her mind. For she alone of all the nuns had made no contribution to the abbey, and though she was never reminded of it, she felt the disgrace keenly. It was because of this, three years before, that she had given her small inheritance to her brother to keep for her, and won from him, in a weak moment, a promise that he would add to it when he could, so that the family could buy a fine gold cross to be given to the abbey. Night and day she dreamed of it: to be sure, it would not rival some of the fine jewelled ornaments given by the king; but it would stand there, simple but dignified on the altar in the abbey church, and the nuns would know that the family of Edith had given it.
Then had come the news of Port’s accident and the trial that must follow. She had said nothing to anyone, but alone in her room, she had calculated, with rising excitement, the sum that she knew he must receive in wergild; and added to what she had given him, she knew that it would be enough. As the days passed, she had gone about her duties in a state of suppressed excitement; there was a new fervour in her prayers; her singing of the psalms was almost tuneful. For no reason that any of the other nuns knew, it was clear that she had some new and secret joy.
This was Port’s dilemma.
It was a clearly understood rule, under the Anglo-Saxon legal system, that when a churl possessed five hides of land – a hide, depending on the quality of the land, being usually between forty and over a hundred and twenty acres – he automatically had the right to the status of thane. A man like Aelfwald had many scores of hides; Port had four.
The money from the wergild, added to what he had saved, together with some of the money that his sister had entrusted to him, would be enough to buy the last hide.
For two weeks, he too had been making secret calculations; and he too had been living in a state of suppressed excitement: for there was nothing in the world that he wanted more passionately than this all-important status for himself and his family.
But he had given Edith his word: the money ought to go to her golden cross. Surely, he told himself, the money for the cross could be found later; but if that were true, then so could the money for the land – and in his heart of hearts, he did not believe that it ever would be. If he broke his promise to Edith, would anyone ever know? No. It was, and would certainly remain, their secret. Would she not rather he became a thane? He shook his head despondently. He knew what she wanted. And as he entered the abbey, thought of her pale, expectant face and of his hide of land, he did not know what to do.
Now Edith was beside him.
She took his bandaged arm in her thin hands and looked up at him tenderly.
“I am sorry you were injured,” she said gently.
“It was nothing.” His voice was cold. He had not meant it to be.
For a moment neither spoke. Then, like a drop of water that one has been watching form, the inevitable question softly fell.
“Did you win your case?”
He nodded miserably.
“Sigewulf paid the wergild?”
Again he nodded. She gazed up at him; then, unable to contain herself, she broke into a smile. Her smile disclosed a row of surprisingly good teeth and, for a moment, she almost looked beautiful.
“You have the wergild?” He nodded once more. “Have we enough?” she asked eagerly.
Still he could not bring himself to admit it.
“Perhaps. I do not know,” he lied.
Her face fell. “Surely . . .” she checked herself. She knew she must not question her brother. “I had hoped . . .” she began. He could see the happy excitement draining out of her.
“There may be. I will see,” he said quickly, unable to bear the spectacle any longer. He could not look into her eyes.
She nodded slowly. He felt wretched, almost as though he had committed violence against her frail body.
“You will tell me when it is possible,” she murmured sadly. Her submissiveness gently quenched the little flame of hope she had allowed to exalt her.
He nodded. “Of course.”
A few moments later, they rejoined the others.
The abbess was showing Aelfwald the latest treasure that had come to the abbey. It was a book of the Gospels – a huge, leather-bound volume, its cover studded with magnificent jewels in the shape of a cross and its pages splendidly illuminated.
Over the centuries, the art of book illumination had been brought to its wonderful flowering in the Saxon north of England and the monasteries of Celtic Ireland, culminating in such masterpieces as the great Book of Kells, completed only a few generations before, and the Gospels from Lindisfarne, the holy monastic island off the coast of Northumbria; the brilliant scholarship and craftsmanship of Mercia was well known; and in southern Britain, too, there was a fine school of illumination at Canterbury, now being emulated at Alfred’s Winchester. But the invasions of the heathen Danes had destroyed most of the schools in the northern half of the country, and this magnificent volume had only recently been rescued from a monastery in Mercia: it made a splendid addition to the treasures of Wilton.
The abbess was pointing to the finely written text. Most of the uncial scripts used in England derived either from the Celtic Irish or the continental Frankish school known as Carolingian.
“See,” she remarked, “the Mercian monk has adapted the Carolingian script – good, square lettering.”
Aelfwald said nothing. All scripts were as one to him, for like most Saxon nobles, he could neither read nor write – a shortcoming for which King Alfred, who was painfully learning these arts himself, had several times taken him to task.
But Aelfwald’s eye had been caught by something else. And it was causing him to smile.
Osric was twelve years old. A short, serious little boy, his two most noticeable features were his large grey eyes and his small hands with stubby thumbs, both of which he had inherited from his father, who was a carpenter working on Aelfwald’s estate. Some years previously when, rather to Aelfwald’s surprise, his second son Aelfwine had decided that he wished to become a monk, the thane had set up a small monastic cell for six monks on his estate near Twyneham, down on the coast, and installed Aelfwine there, hoping that in time he would change his mind. So far, the young man had not. And when the carpenter confided to his lord that his young son Osric had a similar ambition, the thane in his cheerful way had sent the boy down there too. “At least Aelfwine can keep an eye on him and let us know as soon as he’s had enough,” he remarked to the carpenter. That had been almost a year ago.
But when, three days ago, Osric had come to visit his parents, the thane had noticed that the boy did not seem to he happy. The reports of him from Aelfwine had been good, and neither the carpenter nor the thane had been able to discover what was the matter. Perhaps, Aelfwald guessed, the boy regretted his decision, but was too proud, or too frightened, to say so.
He had k
ept young Osric with him for several days, and though he had repeatedly asked him: “Are you certain you wish to be a monk?” the boy had always assured him that he did. It still seemed to Aelfwald that the boy was unhappy, but whatever his secret, it was obvious that no one was going to find out.
But now, suddenly, Osric’s face was shining. As he studied the illuminated book, followed the careful penwork, the exquisite choice of reds and blues, the gold leaf applied around the elaborate capitals, it was clear that the boy was lost to the world. It was not surprising that Osric, descendant of countless generations of craftsmen, should have been moved by such workmanship; but as soon as he saw it, Aelfwald smiled. The boy’s obvious fascination had given the thane a new idea – a solution that might make young Osric happy, add lustre to his own reputation, and even please the king as well.
Resting his hand on Osric’s shoulder he asked:
“Do you think you could do that?”
The boy considered slowly.
“I think so, my lord.”
“And would you like to?” Aelfwald went on.
The boy’s eyes sparkled. “Oh yes.”
“Good. Then that’s what you will do. I will speak with the king. This summer you’ll be sent either to Winchester or Canterbury to learn your craft. You’d like that?”