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A hot day, this, and the road ahead of Totta was white and dusty between strip-fields, pasture and prosperous well-tended hazel-copses. And all of it, far too empty and quiet. There should be cattle on these pastures, pigs grunting contentedly in the woods, women with looms weaving outside the cottages while children played around them.
He glanced behind at the columns of black smoke, too close behind, and walked a little faster.
That was why the women had fled, the cattle had been driven away and even the pigs were nowhere to be seen. The peasants of this countryside had fled from the menace of the Sea Wolves who had slain their lord Beorhtnoth and his housecarls around him.
It seemed strange, when the sun was high and the light shone upon the golden barley-fields of Essex, that behind him came came Darkness in the form of Man: raiders who would kill and burn and ruin for the sake of bringing horror to decent God-fearing men. Would kill, not for food or land or even God, but in the hope of treasure.
The old stories of the heroes of the North who had driven out the slave-welsh and taken the land for their own long ago had seemed a fine and golden thing when he had heard them sung at the ale-house or around a hearth-fire. They seemed now a little too real.
Totta had never seen a battle: he had only heard them sung about. His first sight of a battlefield had been of the bodies strewn deep in the dark of night, hunting through the corpses to find his lord’s body.
They had taken the body of Beorhtnoth Beorhthelm’s son to the monastery at Ely, to be buried by the monks. He wondered if Ely was still standing. Probably it was. It was a good distance to the north of Maldon and the battlefield. The Wolves probably had not come there yet. Not unless yet more ships had come ravening out of the East...
He had seen death before, of course. But there were so many of them. They lay so still...
His throat was dry. So was the ditch beside the roadway, and so was the stony bed of the small stream that usually ran across into the meadow that was now yellow and dry with the summer heat. He knew this road well. It had led home, once, but home had been robbed and burned now. He should have gone on with Tída from Ely, but Tída had thought the enemy had gone off to Ipswich and so Totta had gone to his family...
Tída had been wrong about that.
With luck some of the villagers had got away and would be ahead of him, if he could come up with the King’s forces around his town upon the river Thames...
There would be cool well-water at that farm off a little way to the east, but the east was where the Sea Wolves were most likely to come from. He could not spare the time to stop. Better keep walking.
The road made a wide loop ahead, around low-lying marshy ground that would be impassable thick mud in winter, but the land was dry now, and a narrow path led through the yellowing reeds and the willow trees. There might be a pool, further in among the willows. Totta left the road and followed the dry path into quiet willow-shade. It was cooler here, the sound of bees and flies droning among the cow-parsley as he hurried along the path.
Soon, the path divided. One way went downward, and it did indeed lead to water, but the vanished cattle had been here recently. The pool was fouled and muddied, and the edge of it all torn up by their hooves. You would have to be very thirsty to want to drink that water. Getting down to it would clearly involve getting both muddy and smelly, and Totta had only the clothes that he was wearing.
Totta sighed, and decided he was not that thirsty after all. He took the other path which led him upwards, winding through the remains of old ruined walls with ferns growing thick in the shade. He might have been uneasy at that, at another time. It was the kind of place where hell-walkers and troll-shapes might be seen at night. But now the sun was high and the risk of turning back to meet heathens with axes seemed greater than that of going on. At least this path was going in the right direction by the sun: south and west towards the great river and the King’s Town that lay beside it.
There was a strange scent on the air, something like the spring scent of bluebells. Strange, that. It was a dry mid-August and the bluebells of spring all had vanished long ago. A sound on the air like harpsong in the distance.
He could see something that was not a tree or rock, and as he came close to it, saw it was a tent, a tall fine one of a fine rich red cloth. It looked perhaps the sort of thing an ealdorman might have, though there were no guards around it, which was strange indeed. Strange, too, for an ealdorman to make his camp upon this forsaken rocky hillside, within the walls of this long-lost overgrown ruin.
The owner of a tent like that was probably not someone that Totta should be interrupting, but there must be guards and servants around here somewhere: someone who might spare a cup of water or small beer to one of Ealdorman Beorhtnoth’s loyal servants...
Someone came out of the tent, and abruptly Totta was terribly aware that he was alone in this ancient ruin, where giants of the past had no doubt dwelt, for the figure that faced him was taller than anyone he had ever seen, dressed in clothes of a strange cut with jewels on his neck and wrists, and his eyes... his eyes burned as if hellfire lay within them.
Totta whirled in horror to flee, tripped on a clump of fern and found himself sprawled headlong, all the wind knocked out of him.
“Good afternoon,” the strange figure said. “Are you hurt?” He had an odd-looking sword on his belt, but the most important thing was that it was not in his hand.
Totta gasped breath back into his lungs. “I’m well enough, by the mercy of Saint Osgyth, ” he said, which made a good excuse to cross himself. Rather to his surprise, the figure did not blanch or flee at the sound of the holy name. “I hadn’t thought to see anyone upon this path.”
“And you would not have done, save that I chose that you should,” the stranger replied, holding out a slender-fingered hand. “Come, stand up. I wish to know what is passing in this land. You shall tell me what you know, and take food and drink with us in friendship in return.”
Totta stared at him. Some stories said that you should never accept meat or drink from the Elves, that they brought sickness, that they were the next thing to demons. But other stories said that their counsel could bring great good luck, and that their gifts and favour should not be lightly turned aside.
Surely this must be one of the Elves. His face behind the shining eyes was more fair than any that Totta had seen, and neither old nor young. His dark shining hair fell to his waist, and on his strong wrists were jewelled arm-rings with strange patterns to them like nothing that Totta had ever seen.
“I mean you no harm,” the Elf said when he did not answer. “I swear it by your Saint Osgyth.”
Definitely not a demon, then, and he had offered a fair trade, food and drink for news. The thought of a drink was very tempting. Totta reached out, took the hand and allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.
******
A round face, smudged with dust and tears, marked with red spots that showed him little more than a boy. No sword, only a short knife upon his belt. The language had changed from last time Fëanor had heard it, but it was not unrecognisable. Easy enough to pick the new version from the lad’s mind, and interesting to see how it had changed since last he had spoken with Men here in the isles of the western shore too.
Clumsy feet, a rumpled jerkin, curly mouse-coloured hair and a general air of alarm. And yet there was something about this one Man in particular, an air of song and story about him.
“The Sea Wolves are coming,” the boy said as if he had just remembered it, and looked over his shoulder.
“Not here,” Fëanor said with certainty. “Here among the fern they will pass us by, even if they come within a handbreadth of the path. But I would like to hear of these Sea Wolves. My name is Fëanáro. How should I call you?” Men were sometimes reluctant to give their names. The word was that there was some enchantment that could be worked with them, though Fëanor had never managed to determine what it was or how it worked.
“Torhthelm,” the boy said, and then looked aghast, as if he had forgotten that the names of Men could be used against them. “They call me Totta,” he said hastily.
“Totta. I am glad to meet you. Nerdanel!” he called. “We have a guest.”
Nerdanel appeared around the edge of the tent, sketchbook in hand. “So I see,” she said. “Good. It’s about lunchtime. You find some food, Fëanáro, and I’ll get the drinks.”
Totta refused wine, but he sat gratefully down among the ferns, drank a cup of cold water thirstily and accepted another. Nerdanel gave him the water-jug and poured wine for herself and Fëanor, while Fëanor fetched flat-breads, smoked venison, sweet spiced onions and dried fruit.
In theory, Nerdanel was a Queen of the Noldor who had every right to bake lembas for her journeys. In practice, Nerdanel had baked it three times to show that she could, then had declared that baking was not an art that pleased her, and anyway she was married to Fëanor and not his crown.
Fëanor had made lembas a few times himself after that, but he found that baking made him feel guilty. Lembas was traditionally a matter for the women of the royal house, and though there was no real reason why it could not be made by anyone with the skill to set the correct virtues upon the cakes as they were baking, he could not shake a faint worry that his mother might not approve.
In the end, Nerdanel had told him firmly that they could do perfectly well without lembas. They did not need to eat as much now as they had done when they were young, anyway, for their bodies were slipping very slowly away into memory.
Still, the memory of a body could still feel joy; could still be in love and filled with curiosity, and so still after so many years they returned at times to Middle-earth, to walk within the Round World for a while in lands that had changed beyond all reckoning since he had known them, to speak with Men and hear the languages of the Secondborn who now had inherited Middle-earth.
Sometimes he still wondered what Eru was playing at, giving Men the world as their inheritance. They seemed to be making a terrible mess of it.
He set the food on a platter and carried it out to hear the news from their guest, sitting on the old mossy stone wall not far from the tent. Totta sprang to his feet politely when Fëanor approached, and bowed.
Nerdanel had convinced Totta that they knew nothing of the state of the land, and he was not reluctant to tell his tale.
“The Sea Wolves come from across the sea, from Daneland,” he told them, waving a hand vaguely in a direction that was more North than East. The other hand was firmly grasping a flat-bread stuffed with venison and onions. It seemed their guest had not eaten that day. “They come to plunder the land and steal the riches of Britain, in their long ships.”
“But why?” Nerdanel enquired. “What do they hope to gain?”
“Gold and jewels and any riches they can find, my lady,” Totta said, looking somewhat baffled by this question. “They are thieves and heathens: they’ll steal even holy relics just for the gold of the casket, from anywhere that isn’t defended stoutly.”
“And so your people resolved to put up a stout defence?” Fëanor asked.
“My lord Beorhtnoth did. He was Ealdorman of all Essex,” Totta said proudly. “By all accounts the raiders offered a truce in return for tribute. But my lord Beorhtnoth was having none of that. He marched out to meet them with all the strength of Essex behind him. But alas, he fell in battle, and all the housecarls of his bodyguard around him, four days ago.”
“I am sorry to hear it,” Fëanor said. “ Is the land then all undefended from these Sea Wolves?”
“There’s the King,” Totta said. Fëanor gave him an enquiring look. “King Æthelred, that is, king of all Wessex. They say that he is at the Kings Town on the river, and stands ready to defend his people. But Beorhtnoth was our own man of the lands of the East.
‘His head was higher than helm of kings with heathen crowns,
his heart keener and his soul clearer
than swords of heroes polished and proven:
than plated gold his worth was greater.
From the world has passed a prince
peerless in peace and war, just in judgment,
generous-handed as the golden lords of long ago.
He has gone to God glory seeking, Beorhtnoth beloved. ’”
Nerdanel asked politely. “And you wrote that yourself, did you?”
“I made it up.” Totta sounded proud. Then he remembered, and flushed with embarrassment. “I thought... it seemed like it was all over, when he died, and that there was a need of songs. But the Sea Wolves are still here. They are ravaging all the land and stealing everything they can find. They are raiding the churches, and they burned the village where my family lived. That’s why I was walking this way alone: I found them there and... there was nothing I could do. There were so many of them, the Wolves. And I don’t have a sword.”
“It would be pointless to fall in battle against a much stronger foe. Save your strength for a battle you can hope to win,” Fëanor told him, and Nerdanel put an arm around his shoulder for a moment.
“That’s advice from the heart,” she told the boy. “It’s what your lord Beorhtnoth would wish you to do, isn’t it?”
Totta looked troubled and made a puzzled gesture with one hand. “I don’t know,” he said. “They were saying in Ely that he was ofermod ...”
Fëanor raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a word I am familiar with,” he said. He could not quite puzzle out the meaning of the images that ran across Totta’s mind when he said it.
“It means... it means proud as Satan. One who would sacrifice all to pride and care nothing for the consequences,” Totta explained. “Pride-doomed, one might say it.”
Fëanor caught Nerdanel’s eye speculatively. “I’m saying nothing,” she assured him. “And anyway, I’m not so sure, nowadays, that you were . Or not entirely, anyway.” Fëanor raised a surprised eyebrow, but Totta went on, forehead wrinkled with thought.
“It was because he let them come across the causeway,” he told them. “The Sea Wolves had come sailing up the river Blackwater, but they could not land because of the saltmarsh along the shore. They landed on an island in the river instead, and that was connected to the land by a causeway. Narrow, slippery and muddy it was, the causeway, I saw it in the moonlight when we went to find his body, afterwards... So the men of Essex were upon the shore, and the Sea Wolves upon the island, and my lord agreed that the Sea Wolves should be allowed to cross the causeway so they could fight the battle fairly. And so they say in Ely that he was ofermod , and he and his men died because of it.”
“Well, I can see their point,” Nerdanel admitted. “It doesn’t sound the wisest thing to do.”
“I think that would depend on the circumstances,” Fëanor objected. “You say that the Sea Wolves had come by ship and landed upon the island? What was to prevent them from leaving again by ship?”
“The river’s all salt-marsh both sides,” Totta said. “They couldn’t sail across to where the Essex men had taken their stand: they would be stuck fast in the mud, an easy prey for arrows.”
“You mistake me,” Fëanor said, and Totta leant back, eyes wide in alarm. Fëanor deliberately calmed his voice. “My thought is this; why should they choose to come near Beorhtnoth and his men at all? This land is all bounded by the Sea, is it not, with many rivers, harbours and inlets? What was to stop them from going back to sea, to strike later at some unprotected village far away? ”
Totta looked startled. “Nothing.”
“Well then. Give your lord credit for some sense. He could hold these enemies at bay for a little while upon their island, but he could not hold them from slipping away to strike elsewhere, some place where his people were more vulnerable. To force the causeway himself would put his own people at a greater disadvantage. And so, it seems to me not unwise or over-proud to allow the enemy to cross the causeway to a place where battle could be fairly joined.”
“But he lost,” Nerdanel pointed out.
“Do you blame him for that? There is no shame in losing a battle against a stronger foe,” Fëanor told her and gave her a deliberate smile that showed his teeth. She narrowed her eyes in amusement and smiled back. “Hit him hard enough, and at least the enemy is weakened, and can do less harm for a while. You cannot hurt an enemy if you only stand at a safe distance and refuse to bring him to battle, or if you are not there to meet him when he comes.”
“You can’t hurt him if you and your men are all dead, either,” Nerdanel said practically.
“A gamble, it’s true. But I would say it was worth rolling the dice. Surely it was better for these Sea Wolves to face a seasoned commander and his companions, armed for battle, than to come all ready for war to some peaceful settlement and take it unawares?”
“Doom he dared, and died for it,” Totta said sadly. “And still the Sea-Wolves come, as long ago his long-fathers came, the Saxon lords who sailed the seas from Angel in the East to smite the Welsh, to win realms and royal kingdoms.”
Nerdanel wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I remember. I remember when the raiders from the East were Saxons, and before that too.” Totta blinked at her in sudden astonishment. “We’re very old,” she said gently. “Older than you can imagine. We come here from time to time, and we have seen all this before.”
Fëanor said to her; “And yet, for all that there is mingled light and dark in all of them, still there is honour for a time, and a name that will be remembered in song.”
Nerdanel met his eyes. “Until the end of Arda?”
“Perhaps,” he said and smiled back at her. “They may remember him as ofermod , Totta, but I would say it is better to strike against the darkness than to worry overmuch about what those who were not there will say afterwards.”
Totta nodded. “I think my lord would think it better to be a song than to be forgotten.”
“What will you do now?” Nerdanel asked the young man. “You said you were going to your king, I think?”
“It’s the only place to go,” Totta said. “The Sea Wolves are all over Essex and Beorhtnoth is no more. Once I get there... I don’t know. Try to find a new lord to serve, I suppose. The new lord will be less than the old, but there are few heroes left like Beorhtnoth of Essex. The songs wither, and the world worsens.”
“Finrod would love him,” she said to Fëanor, in Quenya. “He has a heart full of songs.”
“He is a mortal man, no matter what is in his heart. His place is among men,” Fëanor said, though he had had the same thought, and Nerdanel knew it.
“And your place was in the Halls of Mandos until world’s end,” Nerdanel said and smiled. “But I’m glad you aren’t. He is used to following a lord that some would call unwise.”
Totta was looking between them, baffled.
“My wife counsels me to offer you an invitation to join us,” Fëanor said, in the language of the land. “Is that something you desire? We will leave here soon to return to our own land, and will not return for many lives of Men. You may come with us, if you wish, and make your verses for the Elves; we delight in such things, and we can teach you much. I am the king of the Deep-Elves, and I offer you a place. But if you come, you may not see your own people again.”
Totta looked at him, and then at Nerdanel, wide-eyed and nervous. “To go to the land of the Elves... But that would mean giving up my immortal soul.”
“No,” Fëanor said. “No-one can take away the Gift of Men, and we would not take it from you unwilling, even if we could. You can come with us if you wish, but your spirit and your death remain your own.”
Totta thought about it. He looked behind him for a moment, into the east where the raiders came with fire and fury; then towards Ely, where the monks had tutted at the foolishness of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm’s son. Then he looked back at the Elves; the light in their eyes, the gold upon their wrists, and thought that this was an adventure that came only once in a lifetime. “Yes,” he said. “I will gladly go with you, Fëanáro the King.”
****
A warm August day in Elveden village, the scent of pine-trees and lavender mingling in the still air: red geraniums in pots outside the red-brick houses. A steady drone of cars passing on the A11 not far away, and overhead, a lark singing.
“He came in about three o’clock,” the landlady of the Elveden Inn told the young policeman. “You could see he wasn’t well. Walking all hunched over with a stick, and so old. He must have been at least ninety. No, I’d never seen him in here before. Someone must have dropped him off. We’ve checked the car-park... He sat by the window here, and I asked him what he wanted. Didn’t want him wobbling over to the bar and falling, you know? He only wanted a glass of water, but then, we’re not busy on a Tuesday. Then... oh maybe a couple of hours later, I noticed he was still here, and so... well, he’d passed away. Just quiet like, sitting in the sun from the window. Very polite, he was, thanking me for his drink. Bit of an accent. German, I thought, maybe, or Dutch. And his clothes. So unusual. All those embroidered stars. Beautifully made, mind.”
“Not a bad way to go,” the young copper said, and the landlady nodded. “He must have family around here somewhere. We’ll ask around.”