Paths of Exile to be re-published by Trifolium Books

I am delighted to announce that Paths of Exile is to be republished by Trifolium Books in July 2011.

It will have a new cover, revised and expanded maps and a new character list, together with a new print layout. The publisher, Connie Jensen, explains her approach to layout and design here.

Trifolium Books is an independent publisher based in Cumbria, UK. Their first title was Kathleen Herbert's last novel Moon In Leo, which I reviewed here (before Trifolium decided to publish Paths of Exile), and they are investigating the possibility of republishing her excellent Cumbrian Trilogy in due course. I've long admired Kathleen Herbert's Cumbrian novels, and am very pleased to have my novel(s) under the same roof.

Paths of Exile should be available some time in July, with e-book editions for Kindle, iPad and other formats to follow shortly. More details here and on the publisher's website as they become available.

The Dig, by John Preston. Book review

Penguin, 2008, ISBN 978-0-141-01638-2. 230 pages

The Dig is set in the summer of 1939 during the discovery and excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship burial. All the main characters are historical figures. Note that the author’s note says that “Certain changes have been made for dramatic effect”, but no further detail is given about what has been changed. Readers looking for an account of the actual excavation should consider themselves warned that they should not treat the novel as fact.

In April 1939, as clouds of imminent war gather over Europe, Mrs Edith Pretty of Sutton Hoo House, Suffolk, asks local archaeologist Basil Brown to excavate the ancient mounds on her land. When Basil unearths the ship-rivets of a magnificent early medieval ship, apparently undisturbed, academics from London and Cambridge promptly descend on the site, all eager to be involved in what promises to be a major discovery. When young Peggy Piggott, newly married to her former professor, discovers the first items of exquisite gold jewellery in the remains of the burial chamber, it becomes clear that this dig will exceed anything that had previously been imagined.

This is a slim volume, more of a novella than a novel, beautifully written in precise, literary prose. Sections are narrated in turn by Edith Pretty, Basil Brown and Peggy Piggott, each with their own distinctive tone. Peggy’s narrative in particular captures some of the wonder and awe inspired by the discovery of the burial; however, for the most part the ship burial is a backdrop for the characters’ emotions and relationships. Each character has their own concerns and preoccupations, and these form the main focus of the novel. Edith Pretty, widowed, lonely, in failing health and seeking solace in spiritualism, is increasingly anxious about her young son Robert and her ability to be a satisfactory mother to him. Peggy Piggott is intelligent and sensitive, and already uncomfortably aware that her marriage to her former university professor is in trouble, even though they are still on their honeymoon. She is at a loss as to why, or what to do about it, and even more uncertain about how she should react to Mrs Pretty’s nephew Rory, who is turning out to be something of a kindred spirit. Basil Brown, despite being “a tough old bird” for whom “it takes a lot to ruffle my feathers”, resents the high-handed manner in which he is pushed aside by the bombastic academic who muscles in on the excavation. All these contrasting people are brought together by the discovery of the ship, which holds its own significance and resonance for each of them.

The style is understated, and much is hinted at and left to the reader’s imagination. Expect to have to read between the lines and to be alert for small clues. In particular, the conflict between the academics, the Ipswich Museum staff and Mrs Pretty over who gets to run the excavation almost all happens off-stage. There are a few hints in Basil Brown’s narrative, but surprisingly little sense of the professional rivalries and passions that must surely have run high over such an important discovery.

An epilogue, narrated by Edith Pretty’s son Robert, gives the endings to most of the characters’ stories, although questions still remain.

Short, light, literary interpretation of some of the people involved in the discovery of the Sutton Hoo ship burial in 1939.

Hanging bowls

Replica of the large hanging bowl from the Sutton Hoo ship burial, in a reconstruction of the burial chamber at the Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre.

Hanging bowls are impressive and rather enigmatic artefacts mainly found in princely ‘Anglo-Saxon’ burials in what is now eastern England.

They are typically large circular bowls made from thin copper-alloy (bronze, brass or related alloys*) sheet, with three attachment points for suspension cords or chains. The large bowl at Sutton Hoo (see photo) was approximately 30 cm in diameter and 13 cm deep as reconstructed from the fragmentary state in which it was found. It had been hung on a nail on the chamber wall by one of its suspension rings, but presumably the bowls were normally suspended using all three rings.

The attachment points are sometimes simple rings or loops, or sometimes fashioned in the shapes of birds or animals whose heads or necks form the attachment ring. The large bowl at Sutton Hoo has attachments in the shape of animal heads that appear to be looking over into the interior of the bowl (Pollington 2003). Decorative mounts were typically applied to the attachment points. Sometimes the mounts were integrated with the attachment point to form a decorative structure. For example, a hanging bowl from York has mounts in the form of birds with the birds’ heads and beaks forming the attachment points (see picture on the York Museums Trust website here). Sometimes the mounts were separate, for example, in the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl the mounts have a geometric swirling pattern in coloured enamels and are not part of the animal heads that form the attachment points. The large Sutton Hoo bowl also has three decorative square panels applied to the outside of the bowl between the mounts (see photo).

Many of the bowls also have decorative mounts on the inside of the base. For example, the bowl from York has silver interlace panels on the inside and outside of the base (Tweddle et al 1999). Uniquely (so far), the large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl has a model of a trout or similar fish mounted on the inside of the base on a pin that allowed the fish to rotate (Carver 1998).

Dates

Most hanging bowls are found in rich furnished graves in areas that are now in eastern England and dated to the seventh or early eighth century. It is possible that all known examples belong to this date range (Geake 1999). This tells us when it was fashionable to place hanging bowls in graves, which is not necessarily the same as the period when the bowls were made and used. The hanging bowls could have been made and used for an unknown period before being placed in the graves, and they could have continued in manufacture and use for an unknown period after furnished burial ceased. The large Sutton Hoo hanging bowl and a further hanging bowl found in a cremation cemetery discovered at the Sutton Hoo Visitor Centre had both been repaired before being buried (Pollington 2003). This may simply suggest that hanging bowls had a hard life that made them prone to damage; the thin bronze sheet does not look particularly robust and perhaps they were vulnerable to being cracked or bent if dropped. Or it may indicate that the bowls had been in use for a while, perhaps a long while, before burial.

Hanging bowls are mainly found in furnished early medieval burials in eastern England, generally categorised as ‘Anglo-Saxon’. It may be that hanging bowls were only used in these areas, and perhaps had some special significance in the local high-status culture. However, the apparent distribution may also reflect selective survival of evidence. Rich furnished burials with their concentration of artefacts (many of which may be dateable) are highly ‘visible’ forms of archaeology. In western Britain, where furnished burials are rare to non-existent, hanging bowls may have been used but not survived because they were not buried. We can safely say that hanging bowls were used (at least as grave goods) in eastern Britain where they are found, but not necessarily that they were not used elsewhere.

Provenance

The decoration on the mounts often uses abstract spiral or scroll patterns of a style categorised as British or Irish ** (Pollington 2003). This may indicate that the hanging bowls (or at least the mounts) were made in Brittonic kingdoms or in Ireland and travelled to the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ kingdoms in eastern England where they are mainly found as part of trade, tribute, loot, diplomacy, gift exchange or marriage. Or the same artistic style may also have been in use by craftsmen working in eastern England, either as a local tradition or copied from itinerant craftsmen or both. Whether the hanging bowls were thought of as specifically ‘Brittonic’ by the people who deposited them as grave goods, or whether they were simply thought of as exotic luxury items suitable for proclaiming wealth and status, is open to question.

Function

This is what makes the hanging bowls enigmatic; their function is not known with any certainty. The thin copper-alloy sheet is not robust enough to make them useful cooking pots (Pollington 2003). Were they serving vessels or storage containers? If so, what did they hold and how might they have been used? More on this issue in another post.


References
Carver M. Sutton Hoo: Burial ground of kings? British Museum Press, 1998, ISBN: 0-7141-0591-0.
Geake H. When were hanging bowls deposited in Anglo-Saxon graves? Medieval Archaeology 1999;43:1-18, available online.
Pollington S. The mead-hall. Anglo-Saxon Books, 2003. ISBN 1-898281-30-0.
Tweddle D, Moulden J, Logan E. Anglian York: a survey of the evidence. Council for British Archaeology/York Archaeological Trust, 1999. ISBN 1-902771-06-0.

*In theory, bronze is an alloy of copper with a bit of tin, brass is an alloy of copper with a bit of zinc. In practice, both terms are somewhat imprecise and can refer to a range of alloys that are mostly copper with various amounts of other metals. Copper alloy is a useful catch-all term.

**The usual caveat applies (and should go without saying) that objects do not of themselves have ethnicity.

Ruso and the Root of All Evils, by RS Downie. Book review

Penguin 2010, ISBN 978-0-141-03692-2. 435 pages. Also published as Persona Non Grata, and the author’s name sometimes appears as Ruth Downie. Try not to get confused.

Third in the Ruso series of historical mysteries, Ruso and the Root of All Evils is set in the south of Roman Gaul (the area around modern Nimes) in the early second century AD. All the main characters are fictional.

When Gaius Petrieus Ruso, a surgeon serving with the Roman Army in Britain, receives an urgent summons home from his brother in southern Gaul, he guesses that the family’s long-standing debt problems have hit a new crisis. On arrival, things turn out to be even worse than he thought. The letter was a forgery, and Ruso’s absence on active service was the only thing stopping Severus, the principal creditor (who, in a further complication, is married to Ruso’s ex-wife), from taking out a seizure order on the family home. Now that Ruso is back, the repellent Severus can go ahead and ruin the family – until he is mysteriously poisoned in Ruso’s study. Not only is Ruso now the chief suspect, as he tries to find the real culprit he discovers that the poisoning is only part of a murky web of fraud, deliberate shipwreck and murder – and Ruso may be its next victim.

Ruso and the Root of All Evils is very much in the same vein as its two predecessors, Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls and Ruso and the Demented Doctor, an enjoyable lighthearted mystery told with humour and wit. As with the previous two, the mystery is fairly slight and is constantly upstaged by Ruso’s complicated personal life. Ruso’s chaotic family have been a major off-stage presence in his life while he was stationed in Britannia in the first two books, and in this third instalment the reader gets to meet them at first-hand. Arria, Ruso’s spendthrift stepmother, doesn’t grasp – or has chosen not to grasp – that there never was any money for retail therapy and home makeovers, and is still trying to persuade Ruso that the house absolutely must have a new outdoor dining room. Marcia and Flora, Ruso’s two younger half-sisters, are scatty teenagers with a penchant for hanging round gladiators. Lucius, Ruso’s younger brother, is trying desperately to keep the farm afloat on a sea of debt, and his kind wife Cassiana is grieving for her brother Justinus (lost at sea a few months earlier in suspicious circumstances) and just about keeping up with her ever-expanding brood of children. They have no idea what to make of Ruso’s girlfriend Tilla, the beautiful British girl he rescued from slavery (see Ruso and the Disappearing Dancing Girls), which is entirely Ruso’s own fault since he didn’t bother to tell his family anything about Tilla’s existence.

On top of this, Ruso’s elegant ex-wife Claudia is now the widow of the repulsive Severus, and as well as being another suspect she is wondering whether trying to get Ruso back might be a better bet after all – except that Ruso’s stepmother is attempting to get him to marry the rich and attractive businesswoman next door. It’s all reminiscent of a PG Wodehouse farce, except that the crime is murder and if Ruso doesn’t solve it his absurd, helpless, harmless family will all find themselves destitute and Ruso himself may end up being executed for murder. The seriousness of the situation makes a sharp, and at times jarring, contrast with the family comedy.

Tilla is even more of an enigma in this third novel than in the previous two, especially as she is out of place in this strange foreign culture and Arria keeps trying to treat her as a servant. She develops an interest in a strange new religion called Christianity – her first Christian prayer is priceless, not to be missed – much to Ruso’s alarm as he disapproves of Christians. Not surprisingly, her relationship with Ruso comes under strain (in fact, the more I see of Ruso, who can be astonishingly obtuse for an intelligent and decent man, the less surprised I am that his previous marriage ended in an exasperated divorce). The relationship between Tilla and Ruso reaches a significant milestone in this book, and it will be interesting to see how that works out in Book 4.

The mystery, or rather two linked mysteries, is intriguing. One is the poisoning of Severus, investigated by Ruso, the other is the death of Cassiana’s brother Justinus in a rigged shipwreck, investigated by Tilla. At first appearing completely separate, the two sub-plots jog along independently for most of the book, and then converge in a dizzying rush of events in the last few chapters. The resolution happens so suddenly that I got lost and had to re-read a couple of chapters, and I’m still not entirely sure I understand the villain’s motive. Not that this matters, because the mystery is secondary to the charm of the book, which comes from the humour, the characterisation, and Ruso’s attempts to make sense of an illogical world.

Entertaining blend of historical mystery and lighthearted comedy, set in early second-century Roman Gaul.

May recipe: Stir-fried pork with asparagus and bean sprouts

The succulent green spears of asparagus are always welcome, appearing in May and June to herald the beginning of the summer vegetable season. Asparagus is usually cooked by boiling for a few minutes or steaming. You can also cook it in a stir fry, especially if using fairly young shoots.

Bean sprouts work well in stir fries, and are especially useful in spring when many vegetables are not yet in season. You can grow your own in a jam jar in a warm place, like the airing cupboard. They take about a week, and a tablespoon of seeds will produce about 4 oz of bean sprouts. If you haven’t planned that far in advance (!), some shops sell bean sprouts in packets, or you could use mushrooms instead.

Stir-fried pork with asparagus and bean sprouts

Serves 2

7 oz (approx 200 g) boneless pork steak
7 oz (approx 200 g) asparagus
Half a red pepper
Half a small onion
4 oz (approx 100 g) bean sprouts*
1 piece root ginger, approx 1” cube (approx 2.5 cm cube)
1 large clove garlic
2 Tblsp (2 x 15 ml spoon) light soy sauce
1 Tblsp (1 x 15 ml spoon) dry sherry or rice wine

Cut the pork into thin slices.

Wash and trim the asparagus, and cut into sections about 2” (about 5 cm) long. Halve the stalk sections lengthwise, leave the tip sections whole.

Remove the seeds from the red pepper and cut into strips. Wash the bean sprouts.

Peel and chop the onion. Peel the root ginger and shred into fine strips. Peel the garlic

Heat approx 1 Tblsp cooking oil in a wok or large frying pan.

Add the pork strips and stir-fry over a medium heat for approx 1 minute.

Add the chopped onion, ginger and asparagus stalks and stir-fry another minute.

Add the asparagus tips and chopped pepper. Crush the garlic and stir in. Stir-fry another 1-2 minutes until the meat is cooked and the vegetables soft and starting to colour.

Add the bean sprouts and stir-fry for about half a minute. Stir in the soy sauce and sherry and mix well.

Serve immediately with rice or noodles.


*If you can’t get or don’t like bean sprouts, you can substitute mushrooms. Peel and slice the mushrooms and add them along with the red pepper.

Moon In Leo, by Kathleen Herbert. Book review

Trifolium Books, 2011. ISBN 978-0-9568104-0-3. 402 pages.

Moon In Leo is set in Furness in northern England in 1678, against the background of the Popish Plot. Historical figures including the Earl of Shaftesbury, Earl of Rochester and Titus Oates play important off-stage roles, and others such as the Quaker Margaret Fox appear as minor characters. All the main characters are fictional.

Highly intelligent and educated by her father as a scholar in alchemy, Rosamund Halistan has expected that she and her beloved twin brother Stephen will carry on their father’s work together, unaffected by the political, social and economic troubles brewing in Restoration England. When an attempt is made on Stephen’s life, Rosamund realises that political turmoil is not some distant irrelevance but a real threat to her and her family. Trying to protect her brother and then in danger of her own life, Rosamund comes into contact with two contrasting men, the gentlemanly scholar and fellow-alchemist Simon Challis, and the notorious rake Henry Ravensworth. Both want to marry her, but Rosamund fears that one or both is an enemy with designs on her brother’s life and her inheritance. As treason and plot turn murderous, Rosamund must decide who – if anyone – she can trust.

Moon In Leo is set almost exclusively in the small area of the Furness peninsula in what is now south Cumbria (then Lancashire-over-sands), south of the main Lake District mountains and jutting out into the vast tidal flats of Morecambe Bay between the estuaries of the Leven and Duddon rivers (see map link here). So powerful is the sense of place in the writing that not only can every step of the action be precisely located, the landscape itself almost seems to be an actor in the drama, from the brooding hills around dark Frith Hall to the sunny farmland at Scales and the wide skies and mercurial tides of the Cartmel sands. (Lest anyone think that the quicksands and rip-tides are a melodramatic invention, Morecambe Bay can and does claim lives even today). Readers who know the area will recognise many of the locations, and readers who don’t will find themselves transported there by the writing. I’m reasonably familiar with the Coniston fells, less so with the plains and the coast, and I had great fun tracing the routes and places on a large-scale topographical map.

Rosamund Halistan is the central character, and most of the novel is told in third person from Rosamund’s viewpoint. So it is through Rosamund’s eyes that the reader sees most of the world, and forms a first impression of most of the other characters. Nothing is as it seems, however, and Rosamund often finds herself having to revise her original assessments – sometimes drastically so – as she learns more about the other people and the complicated relationships between them. Everyone is an individual with their own foibles and motivations, past history, values, hopes and desires. As the story unfolds, hidden connections are revealed, and Rosamund comes to realise that many people are far more complex than she originally assumed. For all her intelligence and learning, Rosamund has been educated for all her 18 years in an academic ivory tower, leaving her ill-equipped to navigate the world outside, especially when she comes into contact with the murky world of politics and plot. Warm-hearted and deeply loyal to her family and the philosophy in which she was raised, she is inclined to leap to conclusions that often turn out to be unfounded and lead her into trouble. Her cleverness and courage go a long way towards extricating her from problems, though she also has to rely on help from other, often unexpected, quarters. Rosamund’s alchemical philosophy is all about the search for truth and perfection, and this is neatly paralleled by her search for the truth about the events and people in her life.

As Rosamund, her father and Simon Challis are all practitioners of the occult, supernatural elements such as demons, visions, out-of-body travel through time and space, and use of a crystal ball to see and control distant events play a large part in the novel, almost tipping into historical fantasy. I say ‘almost’, because although these incidents are all too real to Rosamund and are central to her beliefs and actions, not all the characters believe in the occult and it’s largely left up to the reader to decide which beliefs to share. As one of the characters wryly observes, “He took a sigil [magical symbol used to conjure demons] to Chapel Island, but he also took a loaded gun.” Or “... they had a stroke of luck, as Harry would have put it. Rosamund would have said that the Power guiding the universe was looking kindly on their intentions.” Conjuring tricks and charlatanry feature alongside the alchemy and occult practices, and are just as readily accepted as real by some of the characters. Indeed, one of the most magical episodes in the novel is explicitly shown as an elaborate trick performed with benign intent and happy outcome. I wonder if there is a subtle point there about the nature of magic and belief.

The range of beliefs and cultures in the novel is a particularly attractive feature. As well as alchemy and black magic, there are roles for Puritans, Catholics, gypsies, rational materialism bordering on atheism, and a mother-goddess fertility cult closely tied to the traditional rhythms of the farming year. There is a range of political ideas as well, with Royalist versus Parliamentary rivalries left over from the English Civil War only a generation before, disputes over the royal succession, factions disaffected at corruption in government and licentiousness at court, and the egalitarian ideas of the Society of Friends*. The characters think and believe as well as feel, and there is a real sense of turmoil and political upheaval as competing ideas clash.

A list of characters at the front of the book is very helpful for keeping everyone straight, especially in the early chapters as different groups of people are introduced in quick succession. A hand-drawn map at the front is also useful for following the characters’ movements (and the 1:25,000 topographical map in the link above provides even more detail).

Compelling tale of a young woman’s search for truth and love, set in the romantic landscape of Furness in turbulent post-Restoration England.

*Also known as Quakers

Raedwald’s queen

In the early seventh century, the kingdom of the East Angles was ruled by a king named Raedwald. He is a likely candidate for the occupant of the magnificent ship burial at Sutton Hoo, and Bede lists him among the kings who held some sort of overlordship over all the English (‘Anglo-Saxon’) kingdoms south of the Humber (Bede, Book II Ch 5). Clearly, Raedwald was a powerful king. His queen was evidently also an influential woman, as two episodes in Bede make clear. What do we know about her?

Evidence

Bede

Eadwine (Edwin) of Deira/Northumbria was in exile at Raedwald’s court in East Anglia for an unknown period before 617 AD, on the run from Aethelferth of Bernicia who had annexed Deira and wanted rid of Eadwine:

[Aethelferth] sent messengers to offer Raedwald a large sum of money to murder him [Eadwine]. Obtaining no satisfaction, he sent a second and third time, offering even heavier bribes and threatening war if his demand were refused. At length Raedwald, either intimidated by his threats or corrupted by his bribes, agreed to his demands and promised either to kill Eadwine or to surrender him to Aethelferth’s envoys...

[...]

A friend warns Eadwine of the plot to murder him, but Eadwine refuses to flee, and the friend goes away to find out what else is happening. A short time later the friend comes back with more news, saying:

“...the king [Raedwald] has had a change of heart. He now intends you no harm, and means to keep the promise that he made you. For when he privately told the queen of his intention to deal with you as I warned, she dissuaded him, saying that it was unworthy in a great king to sell his friend in the hour of his need for gold, and worse still to sacrifice his royal honour, the most valuable of all possessions, for love of money.” In brief, the king did as she advised.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book II Ch. 12

Raedwald had [...] received Christian baptism in Kent, but to no good purpose; for on his return home his wife and certain perverse advisers persuaded him to apostasize from the true Faith.

[...]

He had in the same shrine an altar for the holy Sacrifice of Christ, side by side with a small altar on which victims were offered to devils.

--Bede, Ecclesiastical History, Book II Ch. 15


William of Malmesbury

His [Raedwald’s] son, Eorpwald, embraced pure Christianity and poured out his pure spirit to God, being barbarously murdered by the heathen Richbert. To him [Eorpwald] succeeded Sigebert, his brother by the mother’s side

--William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, chapter V, available online

This indicates that Eorpwald was the son of Raedwald, while Sigebert was the son of the same mother but not a son of Raedwald.

Interpretation

From Bede’s two mentions of her, we can reasonably deduce that Raedwald’s queen had considerable influence over King Raedwald’s religious policy (maintaining or returning to his non-Christian gods after he adopted the Christian religion) and foreign/military policy (defying Aethelferth of Bernicia). On one occasion the queen is mentioned along with ‘other advisors’, which may indicate that she was acting as part of a group, perhaps representing a strand of opinion or a political faction at Raedwald’s court. On the other occasion she appears to have been acting alone, since the friend says “.. when he [Raedwald] privately told the queen...”. One can argue as to quite how ‘private’ the occasion was, since the friend evidently knew the content of the conversation, but it seems clear that it was not a formal or public occasion such as a councillors’ meeting. Whether the queen’s influence was purely personal, or derived from her formal position as queen, or reflected a role as spokesperson of a group or faction, is open to discussion. Similarly, it is not possible to say whether the political and religious influence she wielded was normal practice or unusual. However, Raedwald’s queen is not the only influential royal woman in Bede’s history; for example, he says of Abbess Hild of Whitby that kings and princes used to ask her advice and take it. So the authority displayed by Raedwald’s queen may or may not have been normal, but it was not unique.

Since Raedwald’s queen is specifically listed among the advisers who talked him out of his conversion to Christianity, it is a reasonable inference that she honoured the non-Christian gods. It is worth noting that we do not know Raedwald’s reasons for accepting baptism in the first place, nor anything about the circumstances except that it occurred in Kent. Nor do we know the background to Raedwald’s dual-religion policy. Bede, as an orthodox Christian, clearly regarded the church with two altars as an abhorrence, but to people accustomed to a polytheistic religion it may have seemed quite natural. Raedwald may not have thought of himself as an apostate at all.

Bede attributes a strong sense of honour to Raedwald’s queen. It is the main argument she uses for persuading Raedwald to reject Aethelferth’s envoys. The circumstances and motives may well have been more complex at the time; a decision to go to war against a king as powerful and as militarily successful as Aethelferth is unlikely to have been taken lightly. It may have reflected an ongoing power struggle for overlordship or territory, as much as a matter of friendship or honouring a promise. However, it seems reasonable to accept that the motivation of upholding honour was the one accepted in Bede’s day, or at least in the source he was using. Bede’s account of the incident is unusually detailed, and he may well have drawn on a tale or saga or heroic poem that was in circulation and available to him at the time but has not come down to us. Honour is a lofty and high-minded motive, and it is specifically attributed to the queen. This in turn suggests that Raedwald’s queen was regarded as an admirable figure (at least in this instance), by Bede or the source he was using or both.

Since the queen was advising Raedwald on foreign policy in 617 AD, and on religious policy some time before that, she was evidently married to Raedwald before 617. We do not know which of Raedwald’s sons were also her sons. However, if Raegenhere and Eorpwald were both her sons, they were of fighting age in 617 AD and old enough to rule in 627 AD, respectively. Raegenhere cannot have been born much later than 600 AD, or he would have been too young to fight in 617 AD, and Eorpwald cannot have been born much after 610 AD or he would have been too young to be a credible king in 627. If both were the sons of Raedwald’s queen, this would be consistent with her being nearer middle age than youth in 617. This is also consistent with her influence; a lady of mature years might be expected to have more authority than a very young girl. If Sigebert was her son by a different father (see below), it also raises the interesting possibility that Raedwald may have been her second husband.

Unfortunately, the name of Raedwald’s influential queen is not recorded in any surviving source, and nor is there any record of her family connections. There may be some clue to her family background in William of Malmesbury’s account. William is quite clear that Eorpwald was Raedwald’s son and that Sigebert was Eorpwald’s brother on the mother’s side, i.e. that they shared the same mother but that, by implication, Sigebert was not Raedwald’s son. Caveat that William of Malmesbury was writing centuries after the events and information would have had plenty of opportunity to get confused in the interim; however, this seems an odd sort of detail to have been interpolated or made up. It is not certain that the mother of Eorpwald and Sigebert was also the same woman as Raedwald’s influential queen. Raedwald may have had more than one wife, sequentially or simultaneously, for all we know. However, since both Eorpwald and Sigebert became kings of the East Angles, it seems likely that their mother was an important figure, and Raedwald’s influential queen would be a logical candidate.

If Eorpwald and Sigebert were the sons of Raedwald’s unnamed queen, Sigebert may provide some clues to her background. First, his name. There are no other S- names in the surviving genealogy of the kings of the East Angles but there are a lot of S- names in the genealogy of the kings of the East Saxons, including at least one Sigebert in the 650s (Bede Book III Ch. 22). This may indicate that Raedwald’s queen had connections with the East Saxon dynasty (although other families may also have used S- names). If she did have East Saxon connections, she could have been an East Saxon princess who married into the neighbouring kingdom of East Anglia, or she may have been previously married to an East Saxon king or prince (or, indeed, both).

Second, Sigebert was clearly accepted as king of the East Angles, even though (if William of Malmesbury is right) he was not a son of Raedwald. Although it is possible that the East Anglian dynasty had simply run out of other suitable candidates, it may indicate that Sigebert had a claim to the kingship that did not derive from Raedwald. One possibility is that Sigebert’s claim came through his mother, if she was herself a member of the East Anglian royal dynasty. This would be consistent with her evident importance at Raedwald’s court. A second possibility is that Sigebert’s father was a member of the East Anglian royal dynasty, perhaps a previous king. It was not unknown for new kings to marry the widow of the previous king. Bede tells us that the new king of Kent, Eadbald, married his father’s widow (second wife, so presumably not his own mother!) on his accession, much to the horror of the Christian Church (Bede Book II Ch. 5). If Raedwald of the East Angles had done something similar, this would also be consistent with the influence clearly held by Raedwald’s queen and with Sigebert’s (eventual) succession to the kingship. I need hardly say that this is speculative.

Although we do not know the name of Raedwald’s influential queen (how very remiss of Bede), we can therefore draw some conclusions about her. First, it is clear that she held sufficient authority to influence her husband’s decisions on matters as important as religion and war. The source of this authority is open to speculation; it could have been derived from strength of personality, the emotional relationship between her and Raedwald, a role as representative or figurehead for a political faction, a position within the East Anglian royal dynasty in her own right or as the widow of a previous king, or any combination of these. Second, it is very likely that she followed the Old English pre-Christian religion, since she was part of the group who talked Raedwald out of his Christian conversion. Third, she was strong-minded and confident enough to argue with her husband. Fourth, if Sigebert was her son, his name may indicate East Saxon connections. Speculating further, if Sigebert was her son, and if his claim to the East Anglian kingship came through her (two notable ifs), she may have held an important position in the East Anglian royal court in her own right, independent of her marriage to Raedwald.


References
Bede, Ecclesiastical history of the English people. Translated by Leo Sherley-Price. Penguin Classics, 1968, ISBN 0-14-044565-X.

William of Malmesbury, Chronicle of the Kings of England, chapter V, available online