CHAPTER 39: How the queen falls ill and is healed [681]
CHAPTER 39
How the queen falls ill and is healed [681]
IN the meantime the king and queen were making their progress through the cities, fortresses, and villages with worldly pomp and daily feasts and rejoicings, in the course of which they came to the nunnery of Coldingham. The abbess, King Oswiu’s sister Aebbe, was a very wise and holy woman. At this same place the queen was possessed by a devil during the night and, as in the case of Pilate’s wife, the attacks were so severe that she was hardly expected to last till day. As dawn was breaking the abbess came to the queen and found her lying with the muscles of her limbs all contracted and screwed up. Obviously she was dying. Off went Abbess Aebbe to the king and with tears in her eyes gave her opinion of the cause of the calamity. Indeed she rounded on him.
‘I know for a fact that you ejected Wilfrid from his see for no reason at all. He was driven into exile and went to Rome to seek redress. Now he has returned from that see that has the same power as St Peter himself in loosing and binding. And what have you done but stupidly despised its injunctions and despoiled the bishop? Then to pile injury on injury you have had him locked away in jail. Listen, my son, to your mother’s advice. Loosen his bonds. Restore the relics your queen has taken from his neck and carried round from city to city like the ark of the Lord to her own doom. Send a messenger with them now. The best plan would be to reinstate him as bishop, but if you cannot bring yourself to do this, then at least let him and his friends leave the kingdom and go where they will. Do this and, as I see it, you will live and your queen will recover. Disobey and, as God is my witness, you shall not escape punishment.’
The king obeyed the holy matron, freed our bishop, and let him depart with his relics and all his friends. And the queen recovered.