The Church and the Devils 14 - Epilogue

It had been a long time since he had been here, and some of the huts had been rebuilt on different sites. He did not recognise any of the faces that had turned to him as he and his retinue clattered into the village. They were still his kin, if a man cared to split hairs, but the sons of Swefrith were strangers to him. His wife, failing in her illness, and his sons, and his lands, were his heart's concern now. His men looked around them dully. This was only another place to them, to be sacked or defended, and the villagers dared not raise their heads in their presence. He directed one of them to hold his horse and slid from the saddle with the care of age. The ground felt firm, but the fringes of the woods had fallen back, and no one ran out to embrace him as one of their own. Instead they watched him with angry fear, doubting him because of his warriors and his weapons, but ready to give their grain to any conqueror in these troubled times. Only when they heard that Egfrith or some other was safely crowned would they welcome strangers. Some of them made the sign of the cross as he passed.
When rumours brought by wandering tradesmen about the missing priest had made their way to Thane Berhtic’s ears Aethelsunne had almost had to return to Ediscum – this time at the head of a band of fighters. But luckily nothing had come of the talk. His lord had been persuaded by many voices, his own among them, that the rumours were lies; the priest was not missing; he had left to return to the Frankish lands. Ediscum did not need to be visited by a troop of warriors and Thane Berhtic could not spare them. All that was needed was a new priest, a man worthy to worship in a stone church. And so it had been ordered.
As he had ridden down through the ruins of Edricsham, with his men holding their noses at the rotten stink that rose from where the roofs had fallen in on themselves, he had thought that he would go and find see his sister’s grave, though he had known it would be hard to find in the graveyard. As the horses cantered by the bare bright stone of the city, he saw the marks on walls and in the mortar still fresh as though men had woeked there only yesterday. His men’s voices had quietened when they saw the stone ruins bearing down on them, but, pulling his fur-lined collar round him in a way that his younger self would not have recognised, Aethelsunne had only noted where they had taken out the arch as Stanmode had always said they would. The city still kept its powerful looks, but he knew that mortal men had tamed it.
Then he admitted to himself why he had really come. He had been away for enough years. The church had to be built by now. He picked his way between the huts with certainty. There it stood. The three trees in the full flush of summer swayed over it, their highest leaves brushing against the gold of the thatch.
The clustered ends of the straw began high above his head and the carefully fitted length of the wall was twenty paces from end to end. Stanmode had often spoken of how it would look. He stood and gazed up at the narrow high windows from which God looked out on the village. Aethelsunne could hear the villagers gathering at his back, hoping that he was not from pagan Mercia and its murderous king Penda, whose name Leofa used to quieten their youngest son. He smiled. These villagers could not know that he had been a loyal servant of Oswy, Northumbria’s dead king, and had been granted lands around the royal city of Yeavering. Little would they care too, as long as he left them in peace.
He hardly dared go closer to it, half thinking that age and too much dwelling on the past had made him dream. But the wood of the door was solid and rough enough on his fingers to make him forget his doubts. He glanced at the sundial on the wall, thinking perhaps that he might wait for evening prayers, but his arm was already pushing inside and soon the stillness enfolded him. The roof was higher over his head than he had expected, but the walls drew the eye away from its dark vault with their red and gold and blue and yellow, signs of the Cross, creatures and men entwined in threads of painted vine.
Shafts of light dropped down from the windows at his feet and he breathed in the coolness. He hardly dared move his feet on the hard echoing floor. Swefrith had done his work well. The painted walls sat well with the bright screen of pillars that stretched across the giant’s arch, which was now rebuilt in front of the altar. He bowed his head for a second in prayer for his sister, who had sent Straelsith to him one morning in the Milking-month, saying that her faith had returned to her and so she had no need of the money he had sent her, nor for the place in his household Leofa had offered. Straelsith had returned not long afterwards, this time to say that she was dead. Six winters ago now, in the last great sickness.
When he looked up, his eye was caught by a single square of unpainted stone by the side of one of the windows. He craned his neck to see, and understood at once why no brush had touched it. Those marks in it were still the same mysterious words that had frightened them. Father Owain could have told them what they said when they dragged it dripping from the river, but no one had wanted to know. Now it did not matter at all. The power of that writing had been removed, and the cursed stone was only a fragment of a holy house. Evil, after all, had been overcome. Aelfleda could have laughed at that.
But before he could go, one last prayer had to be said. A casket, a man’s height in length, lay in the middle of the nave. It was paler than the other stone in the churhc, perhaps brought in from the abbey by the coast. No extra decoration had been added to its clean straight lines, only a low step of stone for kneeling round its base and a round hole carved in either side at one end. He knelt and the floor was hard and cold on his old knees. He ran his finger round the rim of the hole. It was smooth, for many hands had brushed it, reaching in. It was said that doing so brought hope to lonely men. In his kinsmen’s church, Aethelsunne could not resist. Offering up prayers of supplication, he put his hand into the chill dry air. His fingers brushed smooth bone and he caressed it, thinking of the flesh it had worn.
When his men, concerned for him, pushed open the door, they found him still clutching the silent skull of Father Godric.