An oath helper was someone who would swear that someone else was telling the truth, or simply that he was an honest man. The weight of the oath was greater if the swearer was someone of high status.
Edgar said: “I call Blod.”
“A slave can’t testify,” said Degbert.
Edgar had seen slaves testify in Combe, though not often, and he said: “That’s not the law.”
“I’ll tell you what the law is and is not,” said Degbert. “You can’t even read.”
He was right, and Edgar had to give in. He said: “In that case I call Mildred, my mother.”
Mildred put her hand on the pyx and said: “By the Lord, the oath is pure and not false that Edgar swore.”
Degbert said: “Any more?”
Edgar shook his head. He had asked Erman and Eadbald, but they had refused to swear against their father-in-law. He had not even bothered to ask Leaf or Ethel, who could not testify against their husband.
Degbert said: “What does Dreng say to the accusation?”
Dreng stepped forward and put his hand on the pyx.
Now, Edgar thought, will he risk his immortal soul?
Dreng said: “By the Lord, I am guiltless both of deed and instigation of the crime with which Edgar charges me.”
Edgar gasped. It was perjury, and his hand was on the holy object. But Dreng seemed oblivious to the damnation he was risking.
“Any oath helpers?”
Dreng called Leaf, Ethel, Cwenburg, Edith, and all the clergy of the minster. They formed an impressively high-status group, but they were all dependent in some way on either Dreng or Degbert. How would the villagers of the hundred weigh their oaths? Edgar could not guess.
Degbert asked him: “Anything else to say?”
Edgar realized that he did. “Three months ago the Vikings killed my father and the girl I loved,” he said. The crowd had not been expecting this, and they went quiet, wondering what was coming. “There was no justice, because the Vikings are savages. Theyworship false gods, and their gods laugh to see them murder men and rape women and steal from honest families.”
There was a hum of agreement. Some of the crowd had direct experience of the Vikings, and most of the others probably knew people who had suffered. They all hated the Vikings.
Edgar went on: “But we’re not like that, are we? We know the true God and we obey his laws. And he tells us: Thou shalt not kill. I ask the court to punish this murderer, in accordance with God’s will, and prove that we are not savages.”
Degbert said quickly: “That’s the first time I’ve been lectured on God’s will by an eighteen-year-old boatbuilder.”
It was a clever put-down, but the onlookers had been rendered solemn by the horror of the case, and they were in no mood to laugh at witticisms. Edgar felt he had won their support. People were looking at him with approval in their eyes.
But would they defy Degbert?
Degbert invited Dreng to speak. “I’m not guilty,” Dreng said. “The baby was stillborn. It was dead when I picked it up. That’s why I threw it in the river.”
Edgar was outraged by this blatant lie. “He wasn’t dead!”
“Yes, it was. I tried to say that at the time, but no one was listening: Leaf was screaming her head off and you jumped straight into the river.”
Dreng’s confident tone made Edgar even angrier. “He cried when you threw him—I heard it! And then the crying stopped when he fell naked into the cold water.”
A woman in the crowd murmured: “Oh, the poor mite!” It was Ebba, who did laundry for the minster, Edgar saw. Even those whodepended on Degbert for their living were shocked. But would that be enough?
Dreng continued in the same sneering tone: “How could you hear him cry, with Leaf screaming?”
For a moment Edgar was floored by the question. How could he have heard? Then the answer came to him. “The same way you can hear two people talking. Their voices are different.”
