had a way to escape.
The rest of Cynlæf’s men started to follow their leader into the tunnel, but suddenly stopped, and I knew that Finan had made his shield wall across the arena’s entrance the moment he heard the commotion. It would be two shields high, bristling with spears, and no horse would charge it. Some of Cynlæf’s men were retreating back into the arena’s open space, where a few knelt in surrender while a handful of stubborn men threw their last spears at Æthelstan and his men. ‘Down!’ Æthelstan shouted to his warriors, and he and his men jumped into the arena.
‘Fetch the Welshman,’ I told Oswi and Folcbald, and they also leaped down. Folcbald landed awkwardly and limped as he followed Oswi. It was a good long way down, and I was content to stay high and watch the fight that promised to be as brief as it would be brutal. The floor of the arena had once been fine sand, now it was a slushy mix of sand, horse dung, mud, and snow, and I wondered how much blood had soaked it over the years. There was more blood now. Æthelstan’s sixty men had made a shield wall, two ranks deep, that advanced on the panicking rebels. Æthelstan himself, still without a helmet, was in the front rank that kicked the kneeling men out of their way, sparing their lives for the moment, then hammered into the panicked mass crowding at the entrance. Those rebels had no time to make a shield wall of their own and there are few slaughters as one-sided as a combat between a shield wall and a rabble. I saw the spears lunge forward, heard men screaming, saw men fall. There were women among the mob, and two of them were crouching by the wall, covering their heads with their arms. Another woman clutched a child to her breast. Riderless horses panicked and galloped into the arena’s empty space where Oswi was darting forward. He had thrown his shield aside and carried a drawn sword in his right hand. He used his left to snatch Cadwallon’s arm to tug him backwards. A man tried to stop him, lunging a sword at Oswi’s belly, but there were few men as quick as Oswi. He let go of the Welshman, leaned to one side so that the sword slid a finger’s breadth from his waist, then struck up with his own sword. He hit the man’s wrist and sawed the blade back. The enemy’s sword dropped, Oswi stooped, picked up the fallen blade and held it to Cadwallon, then lunged his own sword to tear open his opponent’s cheek. That man reeled away, hand half severed and face pulsing blood as Oswi again tugged Cadwallon backwards. Folcbald was with them now, his huge size and the threat of his heavy war axe sufficient to deter any other foe.
That enemy was beaten. They were being driven back out of the entrance tunnel, which meant Finan and his men were advancing. More and more of Cynlæf’s men were kneeling, or else being kicked aside and told to wait, weaponless, in the arena’s centre. There were enough corpses heaped on the arena floor to check Æthelstan’s advance, and his shield wall had stopped by the tangled bodies, and one of the horsemen, coming from the entrance, turned his stallion and spurred it at Æthelstan himself. The horse stumbled on a body, slewed sideways, and the rider struck down with a long-handled axe that crashed onto a shield, then two spears were savaged into the stallion’s chest and the beast screamed, reared, and the rider fell backwards to be slaughtered by swords and spears. The horse fell and went on screaming, hooves thrashing until a man stepped forward and silenced it with a quick axe blow to the head.
‘You must be happy, father,’ I said to the priest, Bledod, who had stayed with me.
‘That Cadwallon is safe, lord? Yes.’
‘No, that Saxons are killing Saxons.’
He looked at me in surprise, then gave a sly grin. ‘I’m grateful for that too, lord,’ he said.
‘The first man I killed in battle was a Welshman,’ I told him, taking the grin off his face. ‘And the second. And the third. And the fourth.’
‘Yet you’ve killed more Saxons than Welshmen, lord,’ he said, ‘or so I hear?’
‘You hear right.’ I sat on the stone seats. Cadwallon, safe with Oswi and Folcbald, was beneath us, sheltering beside the arena’s inner wall, while Cynlæf’s men were surrendering meekly, letting Æthelstan’s warriors take their weapons. Cynlæf himself was still mounted and still carrying a sword and shield. His horse stood in the entrance, trapped between Finan’s shield wall and Æthelstan’s men. The sun broke through the leaden clouds, casting a long shadow on the bloodied ground. ‘I’m told Christians died here,’ I said to Bledod.
‘Killed by the Romans, lord?’
‘That’s what I was told.’
‘But in the end the Romans became Christians, lord, God be thanked.’
I grunted at that. I was trying to imagine the arena as it had been before Ceaster’s masons broke down the high stone seating for useful building blocks. The upper rim of the arena was jagged, like a mountain range. ‘We destroy, don’t we?’ I said.
‘Destroy, lord?’ Bledod asked nervously.
‘I burned half this city once,’ I said. I remembered the flames leaping from roof to roof, the smoke thick. To this day the masonry walls of the streets were streaked with black. ‘Imagine what this city was like when the Romans were here.’
Father Bledod said nothing. He was watching Cynlæf, who had been driven to the arena’s centre, where he was now surrounded by a ring of spearmen, some of them Finan’s men and some Æthelstan’s. He turned his horse as if seeking a way out. The horse’s rump showed a brand, a C and an H. Cynlæf Haraldson.
‘White-walled buildings,’ I said, ‘with red roofs. Statues and marble. I wish I could have seen it.’
‘Rome must have been a wonder too,’ Bledod said.
‘I hear it’s in ruins now.’
‘Everything passes, lord.’
Cynlæf spurred his horse towards one side of the ring, but the long spears came up, the shields clashed as they were braced together, and Cynlæf swerved away. He carried a drawn sword. The scabbard at his left hip was bound in red leather and studded with small gold plaques. The scabbard and sword had been a gift from Æthelflaed, last ruler of independent Mercia, and soon, I thought, they would belong to Æthelstan, who would doubtless give them to the church.
‘Everything passes,’ I agreed. ‘Look at the city now. Nothing but thatch and wattle, dirt and dung. I doubt it stank like a cesspit when the Romans were here.’
A word of command from Æthelstan caused the ring of men to take a pace forward. The ring shrank. Cynlæf still turned his horse, still looking for an escape that did not exist.
‘The Romans, lord …’ Bledod began, then faltered.
‘The Romans what?’ I asked.
Another word of command and the ring shrank again. Spears were levelled at the man and his branded horse. A score of Æthelstan’s warriors were now guarding the prisoners, herding them to one side of the arena while the dead made a tideline of bloody corpses by the entrance.
‘The Romans should have stayed in Britain, lord,’ Father Bledod said.
‘Because?’ I asked.
He hesitated, then gave me his sly grin again. ‘Because when they left, lord, the sais came.’
‘We did,’ I said, ‘we did.’ We were the sais, we Saxons. Britain had never been our home any more than it was home to the Romans. They took it, they left, and we came and we took it. ‘And you hate us,’ I said.
‘We
