The Church and the Devils 13

Andred would surely be laughing now, Aelfleda thought as Swefrith and Streamas piled earth on the body. First he was burned like a heathen man, then he was given a Christian grave. Now his Christian killer had been buried over his head like a heathen, but still protesting that he loved his Christian God. It was true, it seemed, that Owain still believed in holiness even as Upheahric drew the bright blade across his throat and the first of the blood had rained into the reopened grave. It was possible that he had still believed when they had thrown his living body into the pit and began to throw earth on him in the old way. Well, he would know now if his holiness was real. Andred, still peeping out from the cracks in the pot that held his bones, would perhaps laugh less when he learned why Owain had chosen to sink that pick blade into his back.
Upheahric demanded that Owain be brought out. Straelsith fetched him and helped him to lean against the hut. Filth covered his front, dirtied his face and forehead. His eyes were wide and flicked from face to face. Upheahric cleared his throat and stepped alongside the tense body. “I will repeat what this man said to me while he was still in this hut. That’s all that needs to be said about him. He won’t have any oath-helpers.” She couldn’t see his face clearly, so she moved closer and stopped just behind Godric and Aethelsunne. “I asked him if he had killed Andred. He said yes.” A growl went round the gathered men and she saw a glance pass between Godric and Aethelsunne. “I asked him if he had tried to kill Erderinca and he said yes. I asked him why and he said this.” Upheahric’s tone was strained and slow, but she could hear an echo in it of the priest’s frightened babble as he lay with his face in the dried muck. “When the church was first spoken of men spoke against it, believing that that evil would come of evil stones. This man argued that God’s church would defeat evil and he believed that it was he himself who would be the chief warrior in the battle.”
“But there was no evil.” Owain’s voice was harsh with pain and terror. Up heahric stopped and let him speak. It was a habit they had all learned “Except what Swefrith did, and that made no difference. I felt the Lord in me, so I thought –“ He fell back against the wood and a grunt broke his speech as he felt bruises from his beating again. Upheahric waited, then continued.
“He believed that the Lord said to him: ‘Kill the heathen man to make them frightened. They will cling to you and you will make them holy, and everyone will help with the church’. So it was done for that reason, so that we would build the church the better and he would be our saviour against the dark devils that he made us think had killed our kinsman. He would be a saint to us. And we, one day, would bring his bones into the heart of our church, believing him a saint, our pillar of protection, and the church of Ediscum would be the church of Saint Owain.” Upheahric’s voice rose to a shout and it rang over their heads. “His body would be elevated before the altar and men would come from miles around to caress his bones believing that their own demons would be driven out. But they would only gain more hellish companions from touching him, this traitor!”
“But I meant no harm to any but Andred! God would have looked kindly on you for your faith.” He whined now, crouching in the short grass. “All your souls would be saved through me! I was proud, but forgive me – for God, for God and you all!”
“Proud snake! We all know the story of Lucifer and his pride – because you have told us it, and we thanked you and thought you were most holy. Then you attacked a weak old woman – for her soul, you said.”
“She cried out and called me a murderer! And all I wanted – all I wanted was a place where I could watch all of you be with God. All I wanted was holiness – holiness!” He knelt, tears on his face.
“Erderinca never said anything,” said Streamas with a puzzled frown. “All I heard was him shouting and the sound of a fight.”
“She cried out as God left me. Swefrith, this is your doing! Why didn’t you believe like the others did? If you’d stayed in bed at night, everything would be holiness.” He sobbed.
Aelfleda laughed. She couldn’t help it. The laugh caught, against men’s will, and even Upheahric could not keep a smile off his face. His voice was much quieter when he spoke again. “Then we must give a feast for Swefrith. But as for you –“ He bent and even his aged strength was enough to pull Owain upright. The killer’s face was twisted and flushed, spittle hanging from slack lips. “You have judged yourself. We will now sentence you.”
Aelfleda saw Godric start forward, but Aethelsunne caught his arm. He shook his head slowly and sadly and then spoke quietly in the other man’s ear. She did not catch the words but Godric’s body relaxed. She looked and admired him then as he stood and watched, clasping his hands behind his back. She could see that he was praying. He prayed for the priest, for mercy. She saw his body shake. Then she joined him. She would not stop them, nor disapprove of them, but there could be no harm in praying for him. Let God do what he would with Owain’s soul. God was here now, seeing Ediscum, and for a moment her doubts fell away. Standing behind Godric’s round shoulders, seeing him believe, she remembered her first real flush of belief during her husband’s miserable life, and the thrill of Father Owain’s holy words. She prayed for Owain.
She prayed for him as Stanmode, in short, hard words, pronounced the fit punishment. She prayed for him while Upheahric asked the villagers for their assent. She prayed for him when they gave it, and Upheahric pronounced it and explained it to the weak man while he still held him by the hair. She prayed until Owain knew that he was to die a heathen death. Then she stopped, because he let out a cry that made her start back a step. “But what will become of the church?”
It had entered his mind slowly what the death that awaited him really meant. It was almost a renunciation of everything Christian. Aelfleda vaguely remembered being told about this punishment when she was a child. Both the village’s priests had held it up as a sign of the barbarity of lost heathen souls. They soke against the idea of the man’s blood warming and freeing the spirit of his victim… Only God could free souls, Father Owain had told her. Christ’s blood had been spilt for all bad men. To spill another’s like that cried out against God’s will. The priests were angry when they talked about it. She remembered the first one striking a man. She watched Owain’s face with interest, wondering if he still felt the same anger. “But what will become of the church?” He asked again.
No one answered. Streamas tied his hands in front of him and Straelsith was sent to the church site to fetch two spades. Upheahric himself fetched a knife. “What will become of the church? Don’t destroy it, all your souls will be lost. Don’t destroy it. Please answer me. What will become of it?”
His life seemed bound up in it. Dying, he still wanted them to follow what he believed. Aelfleda could not pray, though her heart still beat with the rhythm of mercy-begging. She might have answered if she’d had an answer, but she did not, and Godric did not, and her brother stared blankly at the ground. “What will become of it?” he pleaded again. Swefrith stepped in front of him, as though to speak, but spat instead. With his hands bound, Owain could not wipe the spit off and it slipped down his face, smearing away a little of the grime.
He pleaded with the men who led him down to the cemetery and with any he passed on the gently sloping path. Still no one answered. “Don’t forget Our Lord, don’t forget holiness”, he began to mutter as they led him round the grave-mounds of those who had died before him. The sun was full in his face and it gleamed from Swefrith’s spit as they began to dig. Still he muttered, addressing no one now. Aelfleda watched, finding herself permitted to stand with the men at the ceremony. As the pit grew deeper, closer to the pot containing Andred’s bones, Owain’s gabbling grew louder and louder. Aelfleda wished he would be quiet so that she could pray for him again. She was sure that Godric was standing further off so he could have calm to pray. She couldn’t follow. Andred had been her kinsman and she had to watch his killer die. She could not turn away. She could not close her eyes. And so, as they pushed him, still chattering, forward and made him kneel, her voice could not intercede for him. Swefrith held his legs, Stanmode and Streamas each of his arms. He hung over the grave, a pinioned creature, now only gabbling “holiness, holiness, holiness,” until Upheahric pressed the sharp blade of his knife against his throat. “Holiness, holiness, holiness.”
“For our kinsman,” said Upheahric, and pulled the knife across, cutting deep into the throat so that blood, bright in the spring sun, fell onto the earth with the sound of raindrops. The muttering stopped, became choking gurgling laden with breath scraping sore from the wound. They swung their arms and the body, still in its priestly robes, fell forward and down, and writhed against the stony earth. Swefrith and Streamas took up their spades. The first load of earth fell on Owain’s back, and weighed down the body. The next ones covered the head. Little falls of earth rolled down into the red pool and took its colour. Soon afterwards the body stopped moving. The earth was piled over it.
On the way back to Ediscum Aelfleda walked apart, behind the men. Her neck ached from being bowed, but she couldn’t raise it because she would have lost her thoughts. Andred was avenged, but the city’s shadow would still linger in the village so long as any of them, like Stanmode, remembered the old ways. Perhaps Tiw and Rheda had stirred and beaten back the new God from the villager’s hearts. But he had a foothold in Ediscum that could not be dislodged. So long as Godric remained here, there would be holiness. She would be his wife, and keep his faith strong. She wouldn’t let it weaken, not like her first husband’s. She felt a laugh rising in her throat. Perhaps too the church would be built, since evil was purged at last. If that was so, then Father Owain had been right after all and he was the saviour of Ediscum. How his soul would answer to God if that was true, she didn’t know.
When she reached the high cross, she paused to gaze up to where it stood against the blue of the sky. She was comforted by it, but it gave no answers. When she looked down again she saw Aethelsunne standing near her. His blue eyes were full of feeling. “We should eat together sister. I must go back to my lord and serve him again.”
“Why?”
“There’s nothing for me to do here,” he said sadly. “We have the answers to the mystery. We’ve almost forgotten now, but I only came here to see you, that first day. Then there was the church, then Andred. Only the building of the church is left and that’s not for me any more, if it’s done at all.”
“Will you take Leofa with you?” she choked on the last word. She had forgotten that her brother must leave some day.
“I will. She’s saying farewell to Swefrith now.” Aelfleda pictured the new-found strength in Swefrith’s face fading as Leofa left him. Her young face would be tear-stained too, but there would be more hope in it.
“When will you go?”
“When we’ve eaten together, sister. I sent Cnapa to prepare food. We must remember our father and mother together before we part, since we haven’t done that in all this time.”
“As you wish. I’ll go to our hut in a short while. First I have to go and see Godric.”
Aethelsunne let a grim smile cross his lips. “As you wish,” he said. “He didn’t come down to the graveside with us did he? I didn’t see him there.”
“I thought he was waiting a little way off. No, I didn’t see him either.”
“Then go to him. Then come to me and we’ll part like noble kin.” He rested a hand on her cheek and bowed his head to hers. Then he turned away and walked quickly off between the huts. For a moment Aelfleda watched him, feeling a sharp pain in the back of her throat. Then she remembered what they had said to each other about Godric’s absence and a new worry raised its head in her mind. She caught the skirt of her dress in both hands to raise it, and hurried through the sunlit village so fast that her mouth dried and her tongue was swollen and unable to move. She went to the smithy-hut. All was still. Inside, the smell of smoke was stale and there was no light, no warmth from the fire when she put her hands near it. She dared to touch the ash. It was wet. He had poured water on the embers to kill them. Now more afraid, she felt around for smithing tools, for the pair of tongs she knew he kept lying close to where he worked. Her hands met only wood, cold and unyielding. It splintered up into her fingers as she scrabbled around, wanting to believe that she was mistaken. Nothing, nothing anywhere, as though no smith had ever beaten metal here. Now she ran the short distance to the hut where he slept. She did not search there. One glance at the dark mouth of the door was enough. The cloak had been taken down, and there were bare boards around the hearth. Godric had left his kin again. She slumped down on the softness of the ground while the village whirled round her aching head.