Cædwalla; or, The Saxons in the Isle of Wight: A Tale

by Frank Cowper

At that time, and indeed until long after, that part of the island on which Ceolwulf and his companions had been cast was known as Binbrygea or Bembridge Island, as the other end of the Isle of Wight, which was equally separated from the middle part of the island by an inlet of the sea, was called Freshwater Island; and as the internal communication at that early time was very defective, there was no bridge over the Yare, and the inhabitants who wished to pass from Bembridge to the centre of the island had to go round by the sandbanks cast up by the sea along the shore where Sandown now flourishes.

There was a ford at low water over the marshes, but it was very difficult to find, and impassable if there were any extra water in the small river Yare. The homestead where Wulfstan and Ædric were brought up was built at the head of what until a few years ago was Brading Haven, and which at that time was a large and magnificent sheet of water stretching up nearly to where Sandown Railway Station now is. The home and farm buildings stood among some old trees, the ancestors of the present Park of Nunwell, and were sheltered from the north-west and north-east by rising ground and the woods that spread in an uninterrupted forest right through the island to Yarmouth, covering all the north side of the island with a dense growth; the only clearings being about Whitgaresbyrig, now Carisbrooke, and Cerdicsford, now Yarmouth. The few patches of land ploughed up by the Romans had rapidly gone out of cultivation during the wild period of the fifth and sixth centuries, and the sparsely scattered inhabitants lived chiefly on the results of the chase and such dairy produce as their rude methods of farming could raise, and in this part of their domestic economy the Jutish conquerors of the Isle of Wight were much assisted by the more cultivated race whom they conquered, and many of whom they kept as their slaves.

Ceolwulf once more fell into his former long swinging stride, and, turning more to the left, directed his steps towards the shore of the open sea.

After proceeding for about a mile and a half, until he had nearly reached the sea beach, he suddenly turned to the right, and plunging through some thick reeds he came to the edge of the river Yare. There was evidently a ford here, for the reeds were broken and trodden down. Groping his way with his spear, Ceolwulf at last emerged on the bank on the other side.

He had now reached a level tract of land rising gently to the foot of the Downs, which had faced him when he first emerged from the wood; he was still a good couple of miles from the old homestead, but as he was now in a more populous part it behoved him to be rather more cautious in his advance.

A little ahead of him and to his left was a belt of thick, low scrub and brushwood, through which could be seen here and there a whiter patch, looking like the walls of some building; but in the dim light it was difficult to make out anything clearly, excepting that in one place a pile of masonry rose above the bushes, and stood out against the stars in a jagged and broken outline.

Ceolwulf now paused a moment and listened intently for any sound, but all was still; occasionally a dull thud reached his car, caused by the sea breaking on the shingly shore behind him, and the fast dying leaves of an old oak near shivered in the scarcely perceptible breeze, but all else was still as the grave.

Suddenly a sharp whirr rose on the silence, and a sound of heavily flapping wings beat the quiet air as a nightjar started out of the old oak tree to search for his evening meal. Ceolwulf was superstitious, like all his race, and he especially disliked the place where he now found himself.

He well knew what those ruins were, and firmly believed, like all the dwellers round, that the place was haunted. Men had lived there who were as gods compared to the rough, uncultured Jute, and now their dwelling was become a ruin, and desolation brooded over its halls.

Little more than two hundred years ago that house had been a stately mansion, from which civilisation and Christianity spread their soothing influences around, where a cultivated Roman gentleman dwelt with his family of well-regulated servants, slaves in name, but as much attached to their master and mistress as any free servants could be, and perhaps still more so from the knowledge that their treatment was the pure result of the humanity of their master, who, as far as the laws were concerned, could have treated them far otherwise. In the wreck of the Roman empire all the life of an expanding culture was crushed out of Britain, and the old civilisation, religion and government were but as myths dimly told by the rude conquerors to their children. The house whose ruins were faintly delineated in the doubtful light had been a Roman villa of very elegant proportions, and fitted with all the appliances a luxurious civilisation knew well how to adapt to domestic comfort; but since the fatal night of slaughter, fire, and rapine, when the invader had harried the island, and remorselessly put to the sword all the men who were likely to show courage or ability, and had made slaves of the young women, the gaunt and blood-stained ruins had been left desolate, haunted by the memories of past happiness, and the horror of that awfully evil night, to which the superstition of the Jutes added the terror of their weird mythology.