The Chruch and the Devils 8

Leofa could barely see them. The tears burned her eyes and she swallowed again and again to drive the choking from her throat. It felt as though the air around her was thick with faces that frowned. She sat and felt stalks of grass bend and break beneath the folds of her cloak. In front of her the roof of the hall stretched up towards spring clouds, its brown flank seeming to breathe beneath its old thatch coat. She dragged a wrist across her eyes to stop the shifting of shapes the weeping caused. Aethelsunne would not look into her eyes now, as he had done the night before, not now they were red and swollen. A pang shot through her and she crossed her arms over her legs and let her hair fall. If she thought about her body, only her body, which was not dried and twisted like the village widows’, the struggle might ease a little. She felt the weight of herself resting against the woollen cloth, and within it, her heart. Behind her, where she no longer looked, the village men had gathered. Their faces were glum and no-one spoke. She heard running feet and youthful panting pass her, a latecomer, Straelsith, and then she heard people talking. The balance she had made in her body was upset and she felt the cloth twist painfully against her breasts. But she could not help listening.
“… these are the things of which I say Swefrith is guilty. I swear that this is the crime and I am a true accuser. Let him answer.”
“First, Aethelsunne, and my children, let us be merciful.”
“You are right, Father. But let him answer.” Upheahric’s voice rang out over the village and through the thick air that surrounded the sister of the suspected man.
The sound of Aethelsunne’s charges struck her hard. He spoke them slowly and clearly so that everyone could hear him. Then he asked for Swefrith to be brought out from his hut to stand before them. Stanmode pushed her brother so that he stumbled. With his hands bound, he was unable to stop himself falling. He stared round him with flushed cheeks as they watched him struggle slowly to his feet. Then Aethelsunne repeated himself, looking hard into his kinsman’s face. The repetition was worse for Leofa. She found herself listening because perhaps Aethelsunne would relent and say something different, but he didn’t. Word for word he said the same and only added at the end, speaking lines learned in his lord’s courts, that he was pure at heart and did not hate Swefrith. But his crimes had to be tried.
Aethelsunne had said that this was how trials had always been done, and Upheahric had nodded his head, and murmured that even his heathen ancestors had known the law as it was spoken. Leofa wouldn’t speak against this, though it hurt her heart to hear it.
But she had chosen. She had chosen a different kind of kin from that of brothers. It was the burial of Andred’s burned bones that had set her on this road. At the side of the grave, while Streamas’ hairy arms had the earth down, she remembered Swefrith’s concern that she might have told Aethelsunne that he had “walked” at night. Aethelsunne was looking at her with a lost face and she thought of sitting next to him on the bench while they gazed at the things Swefrith had made. There was the good smell of him after a day at the church-building. Swefrith had sunken eyes and he spent all day gathering the stink of sour smoke into his clothes.
Her brother was on trial before the village and she had brought him there. Aelfleda had told her to follow her heart. She went to Aethelsunne hesitantly, almost unwilling. But she had known what kind look would be in his eyes and the welcoming tones that would be in his voice.
“I answer. I deny all you have said, Aethelsunne. The Lord is a witness to my truth.” Swefrith’s voice was bitter and strong, stronger than Aethelsunne’s had been. Leofa choked again. She didn’t know whether to believe her own brother, her closest kin! There was a pause. She turned to look at the crowd. Aethelsunne should have spoken again, but there were murmurings among the villagers.
Aethelsunne’s face would be frowning, afraid of someone shouting out that he was lying. She knew this because when she had spoken to him he had refused to believe it. He had reached out to the round brooch on her shoulder that Swefrith had made.
“I don’t know that he’s done anything wrong,” she said, as her voice had failed.
“But he did lie when I questioned him. I will talk to him and Father Owain. Father Owain will help us to understand what we are supposed to do.”
“If you think that’s the right thing to do,” she said quietly.
He smiled a strange painful smile and waited a moment, moving slightly backwards and forwards.
“Murder is a bootless crime, and so is fire-setting. If you can’t show you are guiltless the only punishment is death.” Upheahric said. “Is there any man who would swear for you?” Leofa gnawed at her fingers. Aethelsunne would have sworn for him! But he was the accuser… she had led her brother had been led to this death. Tears built up inside the walls of her head and she couldn’t see anything but blurred shapes. “Bring out your oath-helpers, Swefrith!”
She couldn’t bear to hear his answer. She knew he had none. She stretched herself full length on the grass and thought of Aethelsunne, willed him to do something.
“Without men to support your word, my kinsman, your denial doesn’t mean anything.” Upheahric’s voice was unhappy but resigned.
“The minds of my kinsmen are all poisoned. There is more danger here than you all know. I didn’t kill Andred, but evil has made you think I did.”
“Evil!” Father Owain shouted over his last words. Leofa wondered why he was so certain that her brother hated God. He was a man of God, though, and he knew more than the others. She pressed her body to the grass so that its coolness spread along her belly.
“He is a free man, Father Owain,” Aethelsunne! But he sounded doubtful – “he has more rights to defend himself. Is that right, Upheahric?”
A muffled sound. It sounded like agreement from the others. Leofa raised her head from the grass smell. She knew that the blades had marked her face. The light was bright in her newly reopened eyes. The villagers had gathered closer together. Necks and heads craned round one another and leather shoes slipped and crushed each other. The low shapes of huts were close either side of the gathering as though they wanted to play their own parts. It looked as though all the world were crowded into that small space.
“Why should a God-hater get any more defence? We’ve seen that he has no oath-helpers! He can’t swear he didn’t do it!” Stanmode’s voice boomed over them all. “Why should we give him more chances?”
“Because he’s your kinsman, Stanmode.”
Her heart swelled for Aethelsunne, but his words also reminded her of what she had done. She could see his head over the clustered backs of men.
“There are other forms of trial, Swefrith. I have seen them all in the courts under Thane Berhtic. I could take an oath against you, or you can prove yourself by ordeal in front of Father Owain.”
Ordeal! She groaned.
“But that will not be today. You will have time to consider how you want to be tried while we watch over you.”
“What will we do with him now, Aethelsunne?” Godric’s growled question stopped the young man short.
“What do you mean?”
“Surely now it’s time to take him to a proper trial before full free men. Won’t your lord want to know what’s happening?”
Aethelsunne laughed, but his face flushed. “My lord’s power is given to me here. We were to build the church alone, and we will make our law alone.” His voice was strident. “We don’t need further help. Not yet, anyway. We haven’t yet truly found out Swefrith’s guilt. Leave it all to me, Godric. I’ll do what’s right.”
Swefrith’s eyes bulged as he gazed at the smith. Godric knew that other men were watching him too, and his words were not welcome. What could a Mercian anhaga know? He retreated a little into the crowd.
The crowd parted and faces turned towards Leofa. Aethelsunne came out from the circle with his head high. His hand gripped Swefrith’s arm. Her brother’s head swung to and fro as though he had been slaughtered. His dragging feet caught in the yellowing grass that marked the path, but Aethelsunne held him upright. Before they saw her, Leofa got to her feet and ran, painfully, out of sight.

Godric had forgotten that here in Berenicia the accused man was asked no questions in public during the trial other than whether or not he was guilty. The asking of questions when a man was being guarded, he supposed, happened more often. But he had not attended many trials after he left Mercia. He had certainly never seen one so small, so badly prepared for. It was an assembly of free men at least, and Aethelsunne had spoken some of the forms of the law. That had been right, but nothing else had been. Swefrith had had no chance to gather oath-helpers, and barely believable things had been said about him. Other things normally required were missing because of Aethelsunne’s hurry. A thane, at least, had to sit at such an event. Perhaps if they had taken Swefrith out of the village and to the new abbey he would have found more oath-helpers among his kin. Perhaps Aethelsunne didn’t want that. Aethelsunne might even have been Swefrith’s oath-helper if the trial had happened in the new abbey. That wouldn’t have been quite the same for him. But what Godric had feared most had not happened. Swefrith had not turned the accusations away from himself towards him. The could still happen, even so. It was better that Swefrith was still suspected. The church might now have more support in the village.
But he was only thinking about the trial because his mind was unwilling to struggle to make sense of what had happened the night before. Answers presented themselves when he thought about the trial. They did not when he thought of Aelfleda.
Godric went into his smith’s hut. There was still time to stoke up the fire before it grew dark. In the shadows under the damp-smelling roof, he reached for his old faithful tongs and pushed them into the heaped white ash. He turned over a few embers and blew on them so that white flecks spiralled up around his eyes and their red underbellies glowed. Then he began to prepare the fire. The water that stood in the bucket nearby was old, but it would do its job if it was needed. Smoke began to rise in wisps. The smell of it was sharper than he remembered, but then many of his actions were slow. It had been a long time since he had worked properly in here. It would be longer still before he took up his smithing tools in earnest again. Tonight he was only straightening tools that had been used and damaged in building the church. He knew from experience that metal would break if he straightened it too many times, but he could not use that pick from the goats’ pen, and there was no time to make new ones. That pick, the bloody one, would go in the river as soon as it was dark. Aelfleda had made sure that that would be its fate.
Her fingers had been pressed into his arm in that enveloping darkness – pressed into his arm! I have sinned, Father. They were walking in silence. Godric was thinking about how well the wounds on her face had healed and that she was not afraid. She told him about the prowling night-stalker that had pursued her while she pursued Andred and Erderinca, but last night it had been sleeping. The cracking of twigs had been only the voice of a kindly but exhausted spirit. Her fingers were pressed into his arm and her body was close to his. She stopped their slow walk and he half-turned his head, but she put her lips to his ear so that they brushed his skin.
He paused in pressing the handle of the bellows. The very idea of it sent a thrill from the side of his head into his belly.
“Stand here a moment.” Then the soft sound of her breathing. He had waited, his whole body trembling. He had forgotten everything that had happened before this moment. “I want you to do something.”
He nodded, unable to speak. She must have felt the movement of his head. She made a small sound in her throat, then stepped away from him. His body chilled where her warmth had been.
“Andred is in front of you,” she whispered. “You hold the pick in two hands. Show me how he died.”
He wanted to protest, to hand back the imagined weapon she had put, unseen and unfelt, unto his hands. Andred was dead, buried. He opened his mouth to speak.
“Remember that I kissed you,” she said, her voice no louder than the birdsong that still lingered here and there in the depths of the woods.
“H-how did he die then?”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know. Strike the first blow, then the others. Now, while there is moon enough for me to see.”
He stood for a moment longer, then raised his blue-sheened hands as though he gripped the pick haft. He ran forward a few steps, and struck at air-made flesh. He stepped back to let the body fall.
“Wait until he’s dead,” she said. “Now, he has bled. Do the rest.”
Godric walked slowly round the patch of earth on which Andred lay. Then he raised his hands into the air and brought them down, raised them, brought them down again and again. Sweat ran down under his arms. As his breath began to come more quickly he stopped. The moon had gone behind a cloud and he could not see her. Then she laughed.
“It was all true. Except that you forgot to fall over.” Her voice was sharp.
“Why did you make me do that?”
He went towards her shadowy shape, but she had moved on towards the river. As he ran after her, half-afraid that tomorrow the evidence of what he had done would be found, he felt all the eyes of the forest on him. Not men’s eyes – not in all that distance of forest and fields was there a man’s eye, but other eyes, which would whisper what had happened until men heard it.

Before she had made him act out Andred’s death, she had already made him half-mad, but not as badly as that. This was the visit she had made him promise her. On the way there, while he watched the flapping of the soaked hem of her dress, he tried to make her tell him why she wanted to go there. She only said that she wanted to understand.
Beneath the high arch at the beginning of the city, she had paused and touched the cool stone. It was getting dark. He couldn’t smell the forest here, or the grass, though they still stood on it.
“The place will be harder to find when it gets darker.”
“Yes.” She stepped over the threshold onto the dead stone. He followed and the softness of her shoulders filled his vision. Against the deepening greyness of the stones she seemed to wield some spell over him and he stumbled on a fallen piece that rolled rattling over the hard ground. She waited for him. When they moved on together, he became aware that she was close to him. His knuckles ran along a rough surface that rose up beside him. Their steps grew louder and faded away as they passed between thick walls that still kept fragments of their roof. No giant would have had to duck his head under them. He glanced at the shadow of Aelfleda’s face.
After some time they reached the place, but Godric had thoughts in his head that he never expected to have in its presence. He had forgotten how close it was to where Stanmode had found Andred’s fire.
“Is this it?” she asked in a hushed voice. He said it was. A high pillar drove up towards heaven here and the ragged look of the hard stones seemed smoothed out. But Godric could not look long at the walls around him. He could barely call the image of the Cross to mind, and he thought of a prayer he might pray, but he didn’t. He couldn’t look away from her shape against the gloom.
Perhaps he should not have brought her. If she had been here that first day, he would not have been able to look away from her to see the five gems, the pouring blood and the great light of what had been revealed. He might even have used the Holy Light to see her more clearly.
She stood still for a long time. Then, with a shudder that ran up through her, she spoke. “Yes,” she said clearly. “Yes,” Then, “Godric?”
Her hand was stretched out towards him. Like a man staggering from the battlefield he lurched towards it and then her body was against his. He felt the blood rush to the front of him and her breasts loose under the thickness of her dress and her shawl. He gasped a little. Her belly was pressed to his, then her lips to his, the warmth of her nose beside his. He reeled and she let him go.
Then she led the way out of the city, and out onto the open grass. A few steps from the city, she turned, and put the unseen pick into his hands.

He caught up with her at last on the bank of the river. He caught her with his hand and felt the muscles and the bones moving inside the cloth. “Why did you make me do that?” he asked again.
“It was your pick,” she answered. “You know how best to use it.”
As the icy water ran up his shoes and into them, she turned to him. She held their bodies apart, but she kissed him again.

Godric realised that he was staring into his smithy fire. The metal he was going to straighten had cooled again. With a sigh he rubbed his hand over his still expectant lips. He had to work. Sparks rose up golden around the iron as he plunged it into the burning.

“So Leofa is asleep?”
“Yes. She is now. She let me look around, though she didn’t look very happy about it. I brought these things.” Straelsith handed Aethelsunne the cloak he held by all four corners and a stout staff.
“Thank you Straelsith. You can go now.” The boy’s eyes were tired – it was late. Aethelsunne smiled affectionately at him. Straelsith’s face was glum and he didn’t acknowledge the smile. He turned his back and was gone into the night beyond the light from the door of the storage hut. Aethelsunne crouched and opened out the cloak. Inside there was a pair of shoes, trousers and leg-bindings. All were deeply stained with earth. The staff, too, had earth ground into the end of it. There was chipping higher up in the smooth round surface. Aethelsunne weighed it in his hands. It was very sturdy and had clearly been cut for use as a tool. One of Godric’s pick hafts? After he had turned it and the clothes round a few more times, he gathered up the cloak and went inside the hut.
Black smoke guttered from the torch. Swefrith’s face gleamed in the heat. Aethelsunne dropped the clothes and the staff on the wood of the floor not far from him. He jerked his body as though he had just been woken from sleep. Aethelsunne watched the movements of his eyes.
“Here, let me get you some water.” Aethelsunne picked up the skin from the other side of the hut and carried it in his arms so that it was taut against him. He sat down beside his kinsman and gave him the skin. Swefrith drank in gulps and his eyes ran. Aethelsunne took the skin back and drank as well.
There was a new bond between them other than their positions as captor and captive and their knowledge of what Leofa had done. Aethelsunne felt that he had to take Swefrith’s soul in his hands and carry it somewhere. Aethelsunne, now possessed everything that made Swefrith what he had been.
Aethelsunne leaned his head back so that he could feel the shape of the wattle wall digging through his hair. He wanted Swefrith to ask what the things were that he had brought in.
Aethelsunne spent a long time thinking after the trial. He wanted to tell Leofa that her brother had not killed Andred, but he hadn’t seen her. Aelfleda had spoken to him too. She had not mentioned the trip over the river he knew she had taken, after which she had returned with her clothes running with water. Instead, she had asked him about the trial.
“It went as I’d expected, sister. No better, no worse.” She smiled and he saw a look in her eyes that he could not fathom. “I hope my lord would have approved.”
“So Swefrith has no oath-helpers?”
“No.”
“Don’t forget who made that pick.”
“I won’t, Aelfleda.”
Now he wanted to make it true that Swefrith had not killed Andred. If he could show it was true the village would not disagree with him. He had sent Straelsith to disturb Leofa, afraid to go himself, to find anything hidden. Straelsith had done his duty. Perhaps Leofa had helped him because Aethelsunne had sent him… he liked that thought. Perhaps it was true.
Swefrith had still not said anything. Aethelsunne pushed himself away from the wall with his elbows and pulled the cloak towards him. With an uncertain voice, he asked Swefrith to look at the things. His kinsman cast a half-look over the heap of filthy clothes.
“I don’t need to. I know what they are.”
“What are they, kinsman?”