“Not on Garbonian’s terms. We will ride out and see these Anglians of his on neutral ground.” He met Coel’s woebegone expression with a smile. “We’ll have our best archers man the walls, sire, just in case.”
But Garb’s Anglian didn’t look like a threat. Nor did they look especially noble. Riding across the windy plain at Arthur’s side—aware of Guy, Bors and Drustan behind them along with Coel and his personal guard, all of them armed to the teeth—Lance wondered what the outcome would be of this strange meeting. He was startled that Arthur had agreed, and more surprised still that the Merlin had kept silence, not stirring from his seat in the shadows behind the throne.
The man called Oesa stood with his eyes downcast as they approached, his bearing meek, although he towered over Garbonian’s soldiers around him. He was massive and fair, thick hair in a plait down his spine. He wore a finely worked torc around his throat, and a good leather sword belt from which the scabbard hung conspicuously empty. Otherwise he was dressed like a well-to-do farmer, in brightly coloured tunic and calfskin breeches, a red woollen cloak swept back across his shoulders. Looking past him, Lance saw a woman huddled by the flank of her pony. She and the two children clinging to her skirts were as fair as Oesa, but their posture indicated less respect than terror. Arthur drew his party to a halt a few yards away. “Garbonian,” he said. “Who are these people?”
Garb was pale with nerves. He twitched as Oesa cut with a low-pitched growl across his attempt to reply. “He, er—he wishes to speak for himself, Your Majesty.”
Lance felt a brief, reluctant sympathy for Oesa. One thing to decide on a diplomatic mission—quite another, to be brought to it under guard by a diminutive British prince he could have probably snapped over his knee. Lance exchanged a glance with Art, offering a small nod in answer to the question in his eyes. “Then let him,” Art said. “Who are you, sir, and what do you want at Din Guardi?”
The Anglian nobleman looked up. When he did so, Lance understood why he had been told to keep his eyes on the ground: they were fearless, a blazing frosty blue. “I am Oesa of Alauna,” he said in rough Latin. “I lead the people of my settlement—they call me their thegn. We came here five years ago from the kingdom the Romans call Anglia.”
“Why did you come?”
Oesa shrugged. “We heard the land was undefended.”
Garb went paler still. Watching, Lance thought that he might have liked to poke Oesa in the ribs to remind him of his manners. Art sounded half-amused, too. “And did you find it so?”
“Almost. We did not have to kill many to make our claim. But now we have farms of our own. Fields, homes, children. We don’t want others of our kind to come and take them from us. Neither do you want more of us in your land. We have common cause.”
“Doesn’t dress it up, does he?” This from Guy, who had leaned forward on his horse’s neck to listen. A ripple of laughter went through the assembled soldiers. Oesa stared brazenly back at them. “Better an honest enemy then a snake-tongued friend,” he said, and gave Garb a nudge that made him stumble and the guards laugh more loudly still. “You need not fear me, King Artorius. My wife Aedilthryd will answer for it, if I behave ill.”
“No, Thegn Oesa,” Arthur told him politely. “Youwill answer for it. I don’t take women and children hostage. But, with King Coel’s agreement, I will welcome you and your family at Din Guardi as guests.” He turned to the elder king. “What do you say, sire?”
The poor old man looked ready to slide off his horse and die of despair on the ground. “My father was a tribal chief,” he announced unexpectedly. “He was in charge of a hillfort, twenty people and some goats. The Romans came, and they made me a king. I took their money and the title they gave me. Then they vanished, and they left me their gift as a curse in my hands, an unbearable burden. Now you, Artorius—the hope of Britannia, as the people claim, and as I truly believe you to be, with your wisdom and kindness—you, of all men, ask me to open my own castle doors to the invaders.”
“Not if you don’t wish it. Say the word.” Art lowered his voice so that only Coel and the men closest to him would hear. “I know what it is that I’m asking you, my friend. I do understand.”
“I feel ancient, Arthur. And lost.”
“You’re neither, I swear. I will stand by you, no matter what you decide.”
“Will your general, too—good Sir Lancelot?” Coel’s brow creased. “Odd name, isn’t it?”
“Very,” Lance agreed, as solemnly as he could. He supposedLance o’Loughhad been round the fortress a few times and come back to him like this. “But my king’s allegiance is mine.”
Coel turned back to Arthur. “Are you truly certain this is wise?”
“I’m not certain at all,” Art said honestly. “Our grandchildren will judge us for it, one way or the other—as visionaries or fools. But I think we have to try.”
***
So Anglians came within Din Guardi’s walls, and the world went on. Oesa’s wife sat among the women of Coel’s household and sewed, and did not have much of a time of it until she learned a few words of Latin and the women learned how to pronounce her name. Her children, not subject to such constraints, rolled and played with the others in the dunes.
As for Oesa himself, he took a place of honour in the debating hall. For almost a week, he, Coel and Arthur thrashed out an agreement in principle by which the Anglian populations around Din Guardi would provide a militia in case of attack. Oesa knew what had happened in Vortigern’s kingdom, and serenely accepted the restraints Arthur suggested to prevent a repeat of the disaster. The settlers’ soldiers would act only in conjunction with equal numbers from among Coel’s men. They would hold no meetings on their own, and no-one in their villages would send messages, food or other support to arriving immigrants. Coel himself would provide for the newcomers, if he saw fit and they came to him in peace.
God knew there was plenty of land. Bryneich was empty and vast—a realm for settlers, not invaders. Oesa assured Coel that he understood the difference. Good service in defence of Bryneich’s shores would be richly rewarded: aware of Anglian practicality, Coel didn’t leave this promise in the air but called for his scribes to mark down on parchment how much and what for. The Hen Ogledd kings, disgusted that their quarrel had been shelved but not quite daring to leave, hung about in the debating hall, and after a few days began to be a little ashamed of themselves, that this foreigner could talk peace while they remained at daggers drawn.
In the evenings, Oesa made himself comfortable in the dining hall. Lance, concerned that Aedilthryd was left disregarded in the women’s quarters, suggested to Art that she join them, but soon learned that a thegn’s wife did not partake of his rank or even shine with his reflected light, and Art, shrugging at Lance to indicate he’d done his best, settled to talk with their exotic visitor.
There was much to learn. The settlers were a mystery no-one had cared to unravel. They were unenlightened heathens, and the Christian priests hadn’t dared enter their settlements to remedy that. They lived by blade and barter. Beyond attempts to stem the tide of their invasion, the Britons had taken no interest in them.
But for all their ferocity, once they had taken the lands they wanted, the villages they built there were extraordinarily peaceful. They didn’t seem to fight amongst themselves. Oesa, leaning his elbows on Coel’s table as if he owned it, told Arthur of the laws and customs the settlers had brought over with them from Anglia—a strange, simple, visceral set of societal restraints that bore no resemblance to the Roman legal system. They lived by the blood-feud. If one man killed another, the victim’s family were honour-bound to avenge his death by slaying the killer in his turn.
At home in Anglia, these cycles of murder and vengeance could roll majestically around the large communities, gathering tales and songs about them. Out in the new world of Britannia, however, the small groups of immigrants had soon realised the impracticality of their old ways. The blood-feud tradition remained in place, but nobody was keen to start one. Extinction would soon swallow up a tiny town at war with itself, and so they behaved. Some forward-thinking souls, Oesa said, had even tried to find a substitute for blood-vengeance, one that wouldn’t depopulate a settlement faster than children could be born into it. In a few places, thewergildhad taken the place of the like-for-like killing. It literally meantthe price of a man: you could pay with money, not with your life, for your crime.
Arthur was fascinated. There was no equivalent concept in the Celtic world, or even in the more prosaic Roman one which had swallowed it. He and Lance spent long hours discussing with Oesa the extraordinary idea of quantifying the value of a human life. Oesa was proud of thewergild, and didn’t seem to realise that his companions were incredulous as well as intrigued, and more than anything repelled. He talked on, explaining how the man-price could be changed to deal with lesser offences, how each body part—an arm, a toe, a tooth—could be assigned its own value. If you blinded a man, why, you could pay for the price of an eye.
It made sense to him. In practical terms, Lance and Art agreed that they too could see the use of it. Better to pay up than be blinded yourself in your turn. But who decided the price? How was the sacred gift of vision, or of life in your lungs, reductible to a fixed amount of gold pieces, or of sheep or goats or cows, which could also be bartered? Misinterpreting the thrust of their questions, Oesa explained that these ideas were only in their infancy. But for now, the state of suspended blood-feud worked well as a deterrent.
