Bernard Cornwell - The Lords of the North

‘He’s your companion?’ Eadred demanded of Guthred.

‘He rescued me,’ Guthred said, ‘and he is my friend.’

Eadred made the sign of the cross. He had disliked me from the moment he mistook me for the dream-born king, but now he was fairly spitting malevolence at me. He hated me because our family was supposedly the guardians of Lindisfarena’s monastery, but the monastery lay in ruins and Eadred, its abbot, had been driven into exile. ‘Did Ælfric send you?’ he demanded.

‘Ælfric,’ I spat the name, ‘is a usurper, a thief, a cuckoo, and one day I shall spill his rotting belly and send him to the tree where Corpse-Ripper will feed on him.’

Eadred placed me then. ‘You’re Lord Uhtred’s son,’ he said, and he looked at my arm rings and my mail and at the workmanship of my swords and at the hammer about my neck. ‘You’re the boy raised by the Danes.’

‘I am the boy,’ I said sarcastically, ‘who killed Ubba Lothbrokson beside a southern sea.’

‘He is my friend,’ Guthred insisted.

Abbot Eadred shuddered, then half bowed his head as if to show that he accepted me as Guthred’s companion. ‘You will take an oath,’ he growled at me, ‘to serve King Guthred faithfully.’

I took a half-step backwards. Oath-taking is a serious matter. If I swore to serve this king who had been a slave then I would no longer be a free man. I would be Guthred’s man, sworn to die for him, to obey him and serve him until death, and the thought galled me. Guthred saw my hesitation and smiled. ‘I shall free you,’ he whispered to me in Danish, and I understood that he, like me, saw this ceremony as a game.

‘You swear it?’ I asked him.

‘On my life,’ he said lightly.

‘The oaths will be taken!’ Eadred announced, wanting to restore some dignity to the church that now murmured with talk. He glowered at the congregation until they went quiet, then he opened one of the two smaller chests. Inside was a book, its cover crusted with precious stones. ‘This is the great gospel book of Lindisfarena,’ Eadred said in awe. He lifted the book out of the chest and held it aloft so that the dim light glinted from its jewels. The monks all crossed themselves, then Eadred handed the heavy book to an attendant priest whose hands shook as he accepted the volume. Eadred stooped to the second of the small chests. He made the sign of the cross then opened the lid and there, facing me with closed eyes, was a severed head. Guthred could not suppress a grunt of distaste and, fearing sorcery, took my right arm. ‘That is the most holy Saint Oswald,’ Eadred said, ‘once king of Northumbria and now a saint most beloved of almighty God.’ His voice quivered with emotion.

Guthred took a half-pace backwards, repelled by the head, but I shook off his grip and stepped forward to gaze down at Oswald. He had been the lord of Bebbanburg in his time, and he had been king of Northumbria too, but that had been two hundred years ago. He had died in battle against the Mercians who had hacked him to pieces, and I wondered how his head had been rescued from the charnel-house of defeat. The head, its cheeks shrunken and its skin dark, looked quite unscarred. His hair was long and tangled, while his neck had been hidden by a scrap of yellowed linen. A gilt-bronze circlet served as his crown. ‘Beloved Saint Oswald,’ Eadred said, making the sign of the cross, ‘protect us and guide us and pray for us.’ The king’s lips had shrivelled so that three of his teeth showed. They were like yellow pegs. The monks kneeling closest to Oswald bobbed up and down in silent and fervent prayer. ‘Saint Oswald,’ Eadred announced, ‘is a warrior of God and with him on our side none can stand against us.’

He stepped past the dead king’s head to the last and biggest of the chests. The church was silent. The Christians, of course, were aware that by revealing the relics, Eadred was summoning the powers of heaven to witness the oaths, while the pagan Danes, even if they did not understand exactly what was happening, were awed by the magic they sensed in the big building. And they sensed that more and greater magic was about to happen, for the monks now prostrated themselves flat on the earthen floor as Eadred silently prayed beside the last box. He prayed for a long time, his hands clasped, his lips moving and with his eyes raised to the rafters where sparrows fluttered and then at last he unlatched the chest’s two heavy bronze locks and lifted the big lid.

A corpse lay inside the big chest. The corpse was wrapped in a linen cloth, but I could see the body’s shape clearly enough. Guthered had again taken my arm as if I could protect him against Eadred’s sorcery. Eadred, meanwhile, gently unwrapped the linen and so revealed a dead bishop robed in white and with his face covered by a small white square of cloth that was hemmed with golden thread. The corpse had an embroidered scapular about its neck and a battered mitre had fallen from its head. A cross of gold, decorated with garnets, lay half-hidden by his hands that were prayerfully clasped on his breast. A ruby ring shone on one shrunken finger. Some of the monks were gasping, as though they could not endure the holy power flowing from the corpse and even Eadred was subdued. He touched his forehead against the edge of the coffin, then straightened to look at me. ‘You know who this is?’ he asked.

‘No.’

‘In the name of the Father,’ he said, ‘and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,’ and he took the square of golden-hemmed linen away to reveal a yellowed face blotched with darker patches. ‘It is Saint Cuthbert,’ Eadred said with a tearful catch in his voice. ‘It is the most blessed, the most holy, the most beloved Cuthbert. Oh dear sweet God,’ he rocked backward and forward on his knees, ‘this is Saint Cuthbert himself.’

Until the age of ten I had been raised on stories of Cuthbert. I learned how he had trained a choir of seals to sing psalms, and how the eagles had brought food to the small island off Bebbanburg where he lived in solitude for a time. He could calm storms by prayer and had rescued countless sailors from drowning. Angels came to talk with him. He had once rescued a family by commanding the flames that consumed their house to return to hell, and the fire had miraculously vanished. He would walk into the winter sea until the cold water reached his neck and he would stay there all night, praying, and when he came back to the beach in the dawn his monk’s robes would be dry. He drew water from parched ground during a drought and when birds stole newly-sewn barley seed he commanded them to return it, which they did. Or so I was told. He was certainly the greatest saint of Northumbria, the holy man who watched over us and to whom we were supposed to direct our prayers so that he could whisper them into the ear of God, and here he was in a carved and gilded elm box, flat on his back, nostrils gaping, mouth slightly open, cheeks fallen in, and with five yellow-black teeth from which the gums had receded so they looked like fangs. One fang was broken. His eyes were shut. My stepmother had possessed Saint Cuthbert’s comb and she had liked to tell me that she had found some of the saint’s hair on the comb’s teeth and that the hair had been the colour of finest gold, but this corpse had hair black as pitch. It was long, lank and brushed away from a high forehead and from his monkish tonsure. Eadred gently restored the mitre, then leaned forward and kissed the ruby ring. ‘You will note,’ he said in a voice made hoarse by emotion, ‘that the holy flesh is uncorrupted,’ he paused to stroke one of the saint’s bony hands, ‘and that miracle is a sure and certain sign of his sanctity.’ He leaned forward and this time kissed the saint full on the open, shrivelled lips. ‘Oh most holy Cuthbert,’ he prayed aloud, ‘guide us and lead us and bring us to your glory in the name of Him who died for us and upon whose right hand you now sit in splendour everlasting, amen.’