PART I Saint Baldewulf’s Day

Had an accurate map of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of Atheldom and Derthwald been drawn and had it survived the ravages of time, a modern historian might well have compared their configuration to a large amoeba ingesting a smaller one. Taking the analogy a step further (and assuming he or she didn’t have compunctions about mixing metaphors), that academic might have gone on to quote:

Big fleas have little fleas,

Upon their backs to bite ’em,

And little fleas have lesser fleas,

and so on, ad infinitum.

After digressing to remark that the rhyme was from “Siphonaptera,” composed by the Victorian mathematician and logician Augustus De Morgan and based on a similar verse by Jonathan Swift in the satirical poem “On Poetry: a Rhapsody,” and correcting its common misattribution to Ogden Nash, he or she might well have used this as a segue to return to his or her main point—that the early Middle Ages were a time when small kingdoms were being subsumed by larger ones and that Atheldom itself would be reduced to a vassal state before losing its identity altogether.

While it was true that neither Atheldom nor its king, Athelrod, was destined to make a lasting mark on history, both were in their prime at the close of the eighth century, due in no small part to Athelrod’s acumen in tactically shifting his public allegiance between the continually warring Northumbria and Mercia while supplying both with contingents of battle-ready troops when called on to do so.

Athelrod was not and never would be a ruler on the order of Aethelfrith, Oswald, or Offa, but within the borders of Atheldom, he was The King, and none of his subjects, from the highest noble to the lowest slave, had any reason to question his absolute authority. His allies and his enemies were their allies and enemies; his religion was their religion; and his patron saint was their patron saint—this last accounting for the fact that, in Atheldom, the feast day commemorating the martyrdom of Saint Baldewulf and held in the king’s great hall, was an annual event second only to the martyrdom of Jesus Himself.

Living up to its name, the Great Hall was huge. It had to be for occasions like the Feast of Saint Baldewulf, when the king’s entire family and retinue, his nobles, earls, and generals, and their wives and grown children, gathered around a central hearth large enough for roasting an ox, along with a half dozen boar. While the Feast of Saint Baldewulf (or the King’s Feast, to call it by its shortened name) wasn’t the only large banquet held in the Great Hall, it was the official celebration of the past year’s victories—and it was the one feast of the year when some of the lesser members of the king’s army who’d distinguished themselves during the previous battle season sufficiently to share in its spoils had tables set for them at the far end of the hall.

The Feast of Saint Baldewulf held in AD 788 was much the same as those in previous years. Minstrels sang formulaic songs recounting the heroics of the king’s favorites. Servants poured mead and served out allotted portions of meat in keeping with the diner’s rank. Warriors stood up, drinking horns in hand, to swear their loyalty to the king. As the afternoon drew on, there was a growing sense of anticipation until, finally, when the carcasses of the ox and the boar were reduced to skeletons and the final oaths were sworn, the king rose from his throne, called triumphant generals forward to receive their share of the spoils, and then sat back down while his scribe read the list of that year’s royal decrees, ending in time for those who’d been assigned to posts outside of the capital city to leave for their appointed tasks while there was still light.