The Ethelbert I knew was a pop-eyed monster with skin complaints and a partiality to other men’s wives. He’d put on even more weight than when I’d last seen him, a few months before my mother died. In the flickering light cast by the wall torches and the cooking fire, his face shone with sweat and mutton grease. There was that exultant tone to his voice that I remembered well from when he was minded to let everyone around him know who was the absolute boss.
‘You’ve been a bad boy’, he said, his voice dropping to what a stranger might have taken for good humour. ‘You’ve been making that two-backed beast with someone you shouldn’t never have looked at. You’ve dishonoured my best man’s daughter. You’ve dishonoured him. You’ve dishonoured me.’
He stopped a few feet from where I was held fast, and gloated as I tried without the slightest effect to wriggle free.
‘Come on, my lad’, he said with a smile that showed a good dozen of his riddled teeth, ‘speak up.’
‘I can explain,’ I croaked. How I could explain I had no idea. I didn’t know how much he knew. I guessed Edwina had been to one of the household women to ask about herbs. But effective lying needs some awareness of what the other party knows.
Besides, I was hardly able to keep the tears back. I knew what he could do, and was beginning to shake with terror as well as the cold.
‘I – I…’
And that was all the speaking Ethelbert wanted. He dropped the facade of good humour and reverted to his more usual tyrannical mode.
‘You fucking piece of shit!’ he screamed at me, his large face purple with rage, veins in his forehead swollen. ‘I gave you your life. I gave you food from my table. I gave you everything. And this is how you repay me.’
He jerked his head over to the company. Alfred sat there among the others. He was somewhat less demure in his bearing than I’d seen him among the missionaries. And if he didn’t seem inclined to embrace me as a son-in-law, he didn’t seem that put out either by his daughter’s dishonour. He raised his horn and grinned at me.
Ethelbert continued: ‘You snake. You fucker. You fucking piece of shit. Do you know what we’re going to do to you?’
He put his face close to mine. I could smell the sour breath – all rotting teeth and vomity beer and food. His jowls shook.
‘See that ladder over there?’ he snarled. ‘I’m having you splayed on that like a rabbit ripe for gutting. I’ll have you begging for death before I’m done with you, you fucking piece of fucking shit.’
He stopped. He opened his mouth wide. A belch came out, followed by a stream of mutton juice. It ran down his chin onto his front.
I spoke quickly. ‘Sir, I am of noble birth. I am of your own house. I claim my right as a freeman to face my accuser, sword in hand. I claim my right under ancient custom.’
I looked across at Alfred. He was really grinning now, his sword pulled halfway out. I couldn’t last long against him even in a fair contest. He must have been twice my weight and size. But anything was preferable to what Ethelbert had in mind for me.
It might have been better if I’d gone on to add an appeal to the whole company: If Ethelbert could do this to a noble’s son, after all, what might he one day do to their sons?
No time. Ethelbert recovered himself.
‘Don’t give me none of that poof talk,’ he screamed, all control gone. He landed a great punch in my stomach.
He took me by surprise. If I hadn’t been held fast on both sides, I’d have gone down like a fallen roof tile. I slumped into the grasp of his men, gagging and coughing. He aimed a kick at my balls, but missed, his nailed boot opening a gash in my thigh.
I tried to scream, but only a croak issued. I was numb with terror. This couldn’t be happening. It was surely a nightmare. In a minute, I’d wake in the mission library and go back to thinking how to lay my hands on enough cash to get myself and Edwina across the Channel.
But I was awake and this was really happening. I was in the absolute power of a filthy barbarian tyrant. I’d seen any number of times what he could do when the mood took him. Now he had me. I could have shat myself, but had nothing in my guts but wind.
‘Don’t you dare lecture me like some fucking priest about your fucking so-called rights,’ he continued. ‘You lost your free status when your father tried to fuck me over. That made you nothing. You’re only alive now because I didn’t kill you then.
‘By the time I’m done with you, my boy, you’ll wish the sweating sickness had taken you as well as your brothers.’
There was a blur of motion just out of sight on my left. Then:
‘He’ll be lower than me – lower than me!’
It was the churl who’d lured me into that side street. He reeled into sight, clutching uncontrollably at himself. A copper bracelet shone new from his withered wrist.
‘Let me cut his hair off, Lord King. Give me his golden hair.’
I can’t say if my hair back then was my best point. There’s no doubt, though, it completed me as a vision of loveliness. It was this that had first brought me to Edwin’s attention at those interminable banquets where I’d acted as interpreter between Bishop Lawrence and her father. I’d even turned the heads of quite a few of the priests. ‘ Non Anglus,’ they used to coo at me as they’d reach up to pat my curls, ‘ sed angelus ’ – ‘not English but an angel.’
But it had never struck me before that a churl could even notice these things, let alone envy them. His shrill, demented pleading almost took my mind off the greater horrors as I looked at him properly for the first time.
It was a brief interlude. Ethelbert kicked him out of the way. This was his show, and he wasn’t sharing it with anyone – least of all a churl.
He stepped right up to me. He embraced me and suddenly kissed me. He forced his slimy tongue deep into my mouth and flickered it against my throat. I could feel his swollen cock throbbing against me through his breeches. I tried to pull away, but was held fast in a grip tighter than iron.
Ethelbert stepped back, now under control. He gave me another of his exultant grins.
‘Hey, Alfred,’ he called over in a light voice. ‘Do you want this little shitbag afterwards to comb your daughter’s hair? He’ll be safe enough then with her. Or do you want him in your fields with the other churls? Do you want him with or without eyes?’
‘No, please,’ I whispered.
But I was lifted bodily and carried towards the ladder over by the far wall. I squirmed and jerked about like a landed fish. But it was to the same lack of effect. I was caught. There were a few laughs and appreciative murmurs as my legs were forced apart and I was tied in place with leather bands.
‘Come on, look lively,’ Ethelbert shouted, wheeling round to take in the whole display of his power. ‘Get that poncy tunic of his up. Let’s have a butcher’s at what he’s still got under there. Two sheep, Alfred, it’s no bigger than a baby’s finger.
‘Not that it makes any difference now,’ he went on to Alfred, ‘but do you really believe it was this snivelling little piece of shit who got your girl up the duff?’ He turned back to me and grasped at my clothing, leering maniacally up at me.
‘Give me a knife,’ he snapped at one of his retainers. As I heard the rasp of iron on leather, he had second thoughts. ‘No – first get me one of them torches. And get me some mutton fat.’
As he slowly raised my tunic, I swallowed and began to pray under my breath to the god of the missionaries.
‘Halt!’
In a deep-accented English, the word cut through the air like a knife. The room fell silent. Even the dogs ceased their yapping.
‘Halt in the name of God and the Church!’
Maximin stood by the door, his sodden robe sticking to his little round body. How did he get here? I thought. He must have flogged his donkey half to death to get over so fast from Canterbury.