The Church and the Devils 11

“Called me a woman! What did he mean, what did he mean, Leofa?” Swefrith’s eyes were full of tears. She watched as he toyed with a fine-toothed horn comb. She hadn’t seen before how the work on the church’s heavy stones had made his skin bleed. But could she to do for him? She couldn’t act. She just stared blankly at him. “But I was right wasn’t I? No kinsman could have done that to Andred! I’d always thought it was Godric.”
Leofa stood as he went on. There was nothing she could say. She walked towards the doorway and he stopped speaking. When she looked back he was gazing at her with tearful eyes. For a second she waited, thinking that she should go back to him and help him rest, but then she turned away.
She wanted to go to Aethelsunne, but he was with his sister. Could she interrupt them? No, no, but she still wanted to be near him, because he was far away from her brother. She ran in the dark across the smoky village smell. Villagers were still in the hall – she could hear raised voices– but it felt as though she was entirely alone in the gloom. She tried not to think of the devils Godric had spoken of. Thoughts like that sent a chill of wet grass up from her feet and into her belly. She wrapped her heavy cloak around herself to drive it away.
Now she was at Aefleda’s hut. Firelight glimmered around the cloak hung over the door. No, she could not go in. But she touched the old, tightly bound straw of the thatch. It was rough on her finger-ends and made a faint rustling. Afraid, she froze, except for her heart. They couldn’t hear such a tiny sound could they? She realised they couldn’t, because they were talking loudly and angrily. Anguished affection stiffened her body. It pained her to hear them angry with each other. But she listened more carefully.
“I’m a widow, Aethelsunne! I am my own woman! Not even you can command me!”
“But you went and met him in the dark!”
“What of it? I sinned no more than you have done!”
Leofa screwed up her face and her fingers wound in her clothes. Had she and Aethelsunne sinned without her knowing? But Aethelsunne seemed not to care about that at all. She relaxed slightly when he spoke again. “Well, let’s not bother with that. But these questions you asked him in th hall – what did they mean?”
“A little thought would answer that.”
“But I don’t think like you, Aelfleda. Why did you make him tell us how he killed Andred? We all know how it was done.”
“Yes, we do. But that’s why I made him tell you.” Aelfleda’s voice was happier now, relaxed. “When Godric answered my questions he told you that he didn’t kill Andred. I knew you wouldn’t kill him if I asked lots of questions.”
“Why did he say he did then?”
“I don’t know.” Aelfleda’s voice was quieter now. “Perhaps I made him believe that I believed he did.”
Leofa’s legs trembled. She had to see him. She pulled aside the cloak and stepped into the warmth of their fire and their smell. Aethelsunne was seated on the floor, his hair in a knot over his neck and his mouth open. He stared at her. Aelfleda stared too, but she smiled as Leofa caught herself, stumbled and leant against the wall. “How do you know he didn’t kill Andred?”
“Sit down, Leofa. You look too pale.”
She sat by his sister and felt her arm, thick from work, brush gently against her as she sewed the sleeve of a tunic. The broad irregular stitches were gradually sealing up a long tear from the cuff to the elbow. Aethelsunne gazed at their visitor with a puzzled look in his eyes. “Good evening, Leofa,” he said at last. “Where’s Swefrith?”
“Oh he’s – he’s… I don’t know…”
“I should speak to him I was very cruel to him in the hall.”
“Yes… yes, he’s angry,” She smiled uncertainly. “But – but is Godric not the man then?”
Aethelsunne glanced at Aelfleda. “I don’t think so.”
“No, he isn’t.” More glances between them. Leofa wondered what they meant. Perhaps, How long was she listening for? But it was not for her to change what others thought. Aethelsunne was here, and he believed Aelfleda. So Godric was not the man.
“But won’t you tell me –“
“No, brother. Not until tomorrow. You should go to Swefrith. Calm him down. I’ll keep Leofa here with me a while.”
Aethelsunne stood. “I’ll be back soon.” He looked at Leofa as he spoke. “Then you can sleep.”
When he had gone, Aelfleda turned in her seat to look up at her kinswoman. Her hands kept on sewing without guidance from her eyes. Leofa, unsure now that Aethelsunne had gone, watched the older woman’s face. The wounds from her journey to the city following Andred were almost gone now, but where they had been her skin gleamed unnaturally. Her expression was tired and Leofa could see where lines cut into Aelfleda’s skin, around the mouth, around the eyes, beneath the narrow line of fading hair she could see below her head-shawl. When Aelfleda spoke, she could see how her teeth were worn down on one side as though they expected that the wrinkling neck always to be at a tilt. They were the teeth of an old woman and a widow, she thought with a thrill of horror. So many years chewing on flax and stone-filled bread.
“It’s terrible that Erderinca can’t speak. If she could, perhaps there would be an end to it all.” The stitches had almost reached the end of the tear. Aelfleda’s hands began to move more slowly.
“Do you think so?”
“Who can uncover the truth of all this? Somewhere in Ediscum there is a man with blood gouts spilling over his hands, yet we can’t see them.”
“Who might it be?” Leofa whispered. “I couldn’t believe that it really was my brother. Godric didn’t do it.”
“I think I believed that Godric had done it,” Aelfleda said with a dry laugh. “But only for a little while.” There was a silence. Leofa watched Aelfleda’s face look into the fire. Then she looked around at the crumpled bedding that lay on either side of the hut. Pots, some of which Aelfleda had made herself, though they had soon cracked, were stacked neatly in a corner. Here and there the firelight caught a comb, a brooch, gifts from Swefrith. The more she looked at it all, the less she understood. Alefleda had so much and so little – all those years of wearing down her teeth, and all she’d earned was was this hut and its things.
Sometimes Leofa desired the peace Aelfleda seemed sometimes to have reached. But all that accompanied it was age – Aelfleda’s age, Erderinca’s age, and then death. Aelfleda could have explained it all, but she dared not ask her. Perhaps Father Owain –
“We may see the blood on the killer tomorrow.” Aelfleda said slowly, thinking. The tunic, repaired, had been put to one side and her hands now lay idle in her lap. “I’ll tell them all I know and they’ll listen even though I’m a woman. By showing that Godric is guiltless, I might bring the guilty out.”
Leofa’s thoughts had drifted to Aethelsunne, but she heard and understood. Tomorrow Aethelsunne would be listening and Leofa would be watching him. She would look at Aethelsunne looking over them all. She might know what she wanted then.
Aelfleda sighed. “Poor Erderinca,” she heard her say. “Even if we found out who did it, would she know that we know? I think when she lost Andred her mind was lost.”
There was silence again. The two women let their thoughts entwine as they sat side by side on the creaking stool. The wood of the seat had split years ago when the river had flooded in the Winter-fall month. Leofa knew this because Aelfleda had told her it was so, and what Aelfleda believed could be trusted. She like the sense of her kinswoman’s arm pressed against her.
When Aethelsunne returned, she was surprised. He had been so much in her thoughts that she had forgotten his absence. There was sweat on his face. “I’ve spoken to Swefrith,” was all he said.
“Will he come out to the church tomorrow?” Aelfleda asked. Leofa frowned suddenly. What was that tone in her voice?
Aethelsunne laughed roughly like a dog on the scent. “I don’t think that there will be work on the church. Not until you free Godric. I hope you can, sister. If Godric is held guilty it will never be built.”
“Well, I shall. Leofa, I think it is time for you to sleep.”
Leofa went to the door, cold growing where Aelfleda’s warmth had been. There was so little she understood. But she looked at Aethelsunne as she bid them a good night, and tried to see what she might find in him tomorrow when all the village would be listening to Aelfleda.
Her journey back across the village was colder now that the night-chill, winter’s relic, had set in. An owl sent its boom out from the swine-woods. At first the sound made her flare her nostrils in fear, but then she remembered that owls were said to live peace with gods. There would be quiet spirits watching over the village.
Swefrith was sleeping as she laid herself down, but she lay awake for a while, thinking of what she wanted to find in Aethelsunne.

Stanmode paced backwards and forwards across the warped wooden boards of the hut floor. His feet made them creak and bend, grinding against each other. But that would not wake Godric. He slept too well to be guilty.
In Upheahric’s hut, where Straelsith slept, there was a torch. It was marked with lines and when it burnt down to each one, the person watching over Godric would be changed. Stanmode let his feet rock to and fro on a board that let out pained sounds when he put his weight on it. How long ago it was that Streamas woke him. The flame must be close to the line now. He grunted. He had felt like that for a long while.
Not that Godric would run anyway. His legs were folded up, and his knees were close to his chin. His hair covered most of his face. Sleep. Stanmode yawned and went to look outside the door. All he saw was the brightness of the torch inside the hut still burning across his eyes. Some animal sounds came from the swine-woods, but that was all he could hear. There was no sign of Straelsith. He brought his head back into the stale air. Grain had been kept in here and the last of it had rotted. The stink of it got in his throat. Godric slept on.
“You haven’t betrayed me then,” Stanmode said and his voice growled in his throat. “I pray God you won’t yet. But perhaps you should’ve met your end tonight. Been better for the rest of us, maybe. But... Aelfleda saved you. You owe your life to a woman.” He laughed again and rocked back and forth. Then he went forward and knelt in front of Godric’s sleeping body. “Did you see a devil? When was it in you? And when it wasn’t there, where was it?”
A step on the wood. He turned, feeling his skin grow hotter. Straelsith was standing in the doorway with dull bleariness in his face. “The torch burned down – I woke up.”
“Well then. There’s no trouble here, lad. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yes.” The boy looked at him with a frown. Their voices were low and Stanmode wondered how loud his words to Godric had been. Still, couldn’t be helped. Tomorrow the boy would have forgotten. He had long enough to forget before his watch ended, God knew.
“A good night,” he said as he passed Straelsith. They boy looked at the curled shape of Godric with tired eyes and did not seem to hear at first. But then he replied. Stanmode left him and stretched out his arms in the damp dark. He wouldn’t be able to find his way back until the flames of the torch had faded from his eyes, but soon, soon enough, he would be sleeping as well as Godric.

“I swear in the name of the Lord God,” and also Woden, Rheda and Tiw “That all I say here today is the truth.” Aelfleda’s back was pressed hard against the high cross. The villagers were in front of her, their faces ranked into men, with faces that showed that they hadn’t slept well, and then women with their heads covered, wives and mothers. Behind them stood Leofa and the children, who didn’t really understand and whose chatter broke up the silence. Most of the village was there – except the unfree men and Straelsith, who was still sleeping after his watch over Godric. Godric was here though, between her brother and Upheahric. His round head was bowed and the grip of his guards on his arms was loose.
“Stand before us, Godric,” said Father Owain.
The smith shuffled forwards until he stood at the foot of the cross. His back was still turned towards the villagers but his face was lifted up to Aelfleda. She smiled down on him, thinking of the way his face had creased with confusion outside the city. She could barely believe that she had thought he was guilty, even for so short a time.
“Like you all, I once thought that Godric was Andred’s killer.” Though not since they had gone to the city together. “Though I am a woman, and unfit to delcare a man guilty or not, my soul will not let me stand by while a godly man dies wrongly. When Godric told you how he killed Andred, he spoke of a false murder I made him enact in front of the city. And he forgot, again, that the man who stabbed that pick into Andred’s flesh fell over after the first blow. There are marks on the ground where Andred died that show where a man fell. And he could only have fallen after the first blow because before then he had hidden in a bush waiting to strike.” Some of them knew this already from what Aethelsunne had said, she could see. “While he stood there, some strands of his cloak were caught on broken twigs. Like these.” They craned their necks, heads moving together like wheat in the wind. She let them see the colour of the thread in her fingers. “The cloak Straelsith found in the river was this colour, though faded. If it had been Godric’s he would not have told me this.”
They murmured and Streamas muttered “Stanmode threw it back in the water.”
She could hear Stanmode beginning to protest and she spoke quickly. “What Stanmode did is not important now. I asked Godric if he had burned Andred’s hut, and he said yes, but I found this in Erderinca’s hands.” No need to tell the whole of it, that Erderinca took to the cesspen and dug it up with her fingers every time she was. Aelfleda herself had only known because she had followed the widow there. “We know this kind of wood from the old times.” It was ash wood. She had known this at once when she dug it up after taking Erderinca back to her hut. Ash was Rheda’s wood, the only one allowed for lighting the fires in her honour– or she would have been angry. Even now, without really knowing why, young men rarely cut ash trees. She let them touch the hand’s-width length of wood and let them feel the blackened end where it had been burned. “Erderinca burned Andred, to let the spirits have his soul.”
“Oh Lord what folly!” She had not glanced at Father Owain since she had begun speaking. When he summoned Godric his hands were clasped gently together and his face was sad but calm. But now his fingers wrung each other. She waited, wondering what he would say next. He just stared and the children started chattering again. Aelfleda looked from him to Godric with relief.
“And last I asked him, if Erderinca could speak, would she say the same as he did?” Godric looked up and his eyes were empty of feeling. She smiled at him in any case and spoke on. “But Erderinca has welcomed Godric – as far as she can – whenever he has been near her.”
There was no more. It seemed to her that she went on speaking in the same loud voice even while Upheahric pronounced Godric innocent. “But there is blood here that has not been uncovered.” he continued. “May the Lord have mercy on us and on him who did the crime.”
Older voices now mixed with the children’s. Aelfleda stepped away from the cross’ hard wood and felt cold where her back had sweated against it. As the ranks of villagers began to break up, she went close to Godric. She felt his body tremble against her. Her husband’s had never done that! Now, flushed with exultation, she leaned her head closer to his ear and murmured: “I’ve known these things for a long time, Godric, but I didn’t expect to have to use them. Still, now I might grant your wish and let you have me.”
She watched his ear redden, then stepped away to find Aethelsunne, who was watching her with a strange smile on his face.

Lord, Lord, Lord! Father Owain was a poor man now, without the Word of God in him. He had never felt so empty – all his travels to the Frankish lands and through the holy houses of Deira and Berenicia had not prepared him for the greatest weakness of men’s flesh, this losing touch with God’s hand. He had believed himself blessed with his faith. But now women tore it from him. He would rather have torn out his eyes with his own fingers than watch Aelfleda beneath that cross. As she had given Godric back his honour she had stripped his away. And the fire set by Erderinca – how deep idolatry ran in these bloodthirsty people! But he had committed sins himself, stretching out his legs as though in pain at night, thinking of how Aelfleda and Leofa had gazed up at him with wide eyes. Those eyes had made him think of his bones laid out in a light wood coffin and brought into the centre of the high-built church, and venerated as though he were Saint Ninian or the converter of Mercia, Saint-King Oswald, oh Lord a saint! The women would gather round his body and, just as he had been translated into holiness, they too would be transported to a blessed state.
But it would all be worthless now. These people’s pride and idolatry, together with his own sins, had crushed God in him. It had been many days now since he had touched the rolled vellum with which the bishop had granted permission for the church. He was afraid to go near it now in case it crumbled. Sin had brought him down and his soul was withered. He paced round his hut and listened to the beating of his heart. There had to be something that could make it pure again.
He had forgotten. When Andred’s death had still been fresh, he had gone to Erderinca. Her soul was further lost than his – see how she had sent Andred to burn with his heathen brethren. He had tried to save her before and failed, but, yes, Andred’s blood was still fresh then. It would have faded with time and God’s light surely would shine through it. Surely it would.
There was not much hope in his heart as he pushed away the cloak over his door and went outside. But how else could he come back to God if not by saving another soul that would otherwise be sacrificed to damnation? If he didn’t, his soul would follow. He walked with slow steps. Villagers bowed their heads as he passed and he raised a hand over them in general blessing. He was a holy man, he had to bless them. It was his duty before God. But the blessing did not take away the dirt from their brows or the furrows from round their sunken eyes. The blessing did not shield him from the feeling he felt from their eyes, that they knew how he had fallen from grace. And it was a grey day on God’s earth even though the sun peeped out now and then between the swift clouds. He saw the wisps of smoke rising up, pointed at by the gables of the huts, and he shuddered at the thought of the fires below. Children carrying clothes to the river to be washed, imitated their parents movements towards him. He blessed them too, but thought he heard harshness in their voices.
Now Streamas’ hut was in front of him. It mocked him, brushing the straw-filled skirts of its roof on the long grass by its walls in the same way as he moved his clothes over the ground. Either side of the longer grass, paths led away to the river and to the church site, which was empty now. No figures bent straining over its stones. That was a rare sight, and it killed the temptation to walk on to it rather than face what he was going to do.
At the door he waited, listening. But only the sounds of the village at its worldly duties reached him. Perhaps the hut was empty. He thought he should knock his hand against the shaped hard wood over the doorway, but then thought again. With a deep breath, he ducked below the lintel.
It was deep dark inside. The light from the smoke-gap in the roof fell only onto the white and black remains of the fire in the middle of the room. A few wisps rose from the embers. He stood blinking air for a moment, until the shapes of things began to form in the corners of his watering eyes. The other end of the hut was still in gloom. He edged towards it cautiously, praying for mercy, praying that the hut would be empty.
It was not. As the feeble light from above fell on him a little more he heard a sound, a foot on the floor. If he squinted, he could make out the reflections of two eyes looking back at him. She whimpered weakly like a fox in a trap.
He stopped and stretched out a hand towards her, his breath coming heavily and slowly. At the furthest reach of his arm he turned the palm upwards so that heaven’s light fell on the pale clean skin. She whimpered again. “Erderinca, don’t fear me. I bring no danger, only safety. Come out into the light a little.”
He waited, thinking that perhaps he had spoken too gently and that her benighted ears had failed to catch the mercy he brought. He spoke again. She made a new sound.
“I know that you fear me, my child. But if you heard God’s Word you wouldn’t be afraid.” Now at last he felt faith stirring in him. His holy passion had not died, only waited for him to begin bringing souls into the light again. He went on talking about Christ’s sacrifice, of his redemption of all sinners, yes even such deep dark sinners as the two of them in this mean hut. “This mortal life is but a bright eye and the least moment; it will quickly depart; what goes before and what comes after we cannot tell.” All the time, he urged to her to forget what was past – it was worldly, nothing, and would be forgotten in an instant if she would come to him into the light and into the Light. After a while, he stopped and waited, his toes and his fingers twitching with the passion he had found again. Holiness thrilled though him. She would come to him and they would both be saved. “Erderinca, will you come to me?” In the shadows, he saw limbs moving.
Then she was into him. Her frail arms had the strength of surprise and he stepped back at the push of the two old hands in his chest, and found his feet sinking into the hot ash of the fire. The pain made him cry out and he kicked off the stinking burning leather of his shoe. But she was in the light. He could see her weak eyes and pursed lips. Her chest heaved up and down. She stared at him with pure hatred.
The pain in his foot was not dying away, but he resolved to turn the other cheek. “Erderinca, I offer you joy beyond all your understanding. There is holiness here –“ he struck his chest. “And it is kept wholly for you.” He smiled at her and reached towards her again. “Come to holiness.”
She watched him without changing the expression on her face or her hunched stance. Then, as though from the bottom of a well, he saw her open her mouth. He was falling, his body was becoming water, and her cracked voice spoke clearly the word he had dreaded all these weeks. The cooking cauldron over the fire has fallen, he thought, and he was slipping. It had crashed against the ground and spilt wetness across the floor under his feet. All the devils of hell were crying out to him. He blundered forward with his arms still blindly out before him. Her body blocked his path, then fell, his knee was on her belly. Streamas’ possessions seemed to be rising in the air and beating against him. Still she screamed that word and still he tried to make her stop.