14

The wind bit at me as I came out, so that I dragged my robe up close around my neck. Good, thick cloth is the mark of civilisation, I have always thought. Who could imagine Romans without their togas and cloaks, when they walked in these lands, six hundred years ago?

The street was already busier than it had been – and this time I noticed ranks of trudging men and mule-drawn carts, full of the sort of supplies an army needed. The king’s capital was readying itself to throw a spear into the north. I was fascinated – and nervous of what it meant. For all of my childhood, there had been a threat of war, of raiders slipping inland in shallow-draught boats, scraping onto sloping shores and peering through shutters, looking for women and silver, whatever they could take away in the night. I had seen my father’s men bring torches more than once when they heard some sound they could not explain, or when the dogs started howling at wolves in the darkness. I had never seen a battle, but I knew very well what violence meant. I shuddered and told myself it was the chill of winter on the air.

As I stepped off the doorstep, I turned my head and looked into the face of Beatrice. She was laden with bags, returning from whatever errands Lady Elflaed and my uncle had arranged, to give them time to lecture me. I must have looked about as aggrieved as she felt, for she smiled in sympathy and patted my shoulder, vanishing inside only long enough to drop her parcels. I waited. A team of horses could not have dragged me from that step.

When she reappeared, she took my arm as if we did so every day, as if we were old friends. She moved me away from the house and out onto the street. I felt we’d vanished into a river almost, the crush was so bad. I was buffeted and turned about, so that I was hard-pressed to keep her arm in mine. Yet I did. I would not have let go if Æthelstan himself had commanded it.

I knew I was expected at the forges later that morning, with the master smiths. Lady Elflaed had arranged all manner of tutors and craftsmen to continue my studies. After noon, I had arranged to meet the archivist in the king’s personal library, there to examine texts that existed nowhere else. If there was time, I hoped to spend the evening in the king’s arboretum, studying rare plants with the herbalist there, or if that door was locked, visiting the surgery where men had wounds and cankers treated – and survived, some of them. For one of my interests, with the lady’s influence and coin to back me, Winchester was a joyous place. Yet in the instant I swept into the crowd with Beatrice, all that was forgotten.

Chattering together, we bought bread, cheese and boiled eggs. I had no coin myself, but Beatrice had a pouch with change from what they had given her. She waved away my promises to pay her back, making no bargains with me. I knotted it all in a piece of white linen that was too fine for the task and carried it over my shoulder. We left the city behind us, walking out to where the cobbles ended and the road stretched into ploughed fields all around.

I saw then what I had not understood before: an army was already gathering at Winchester, waiting for the king’s command in a vast encampment, invisible from inside the walls. Group after group rested or trained, or galloped horses, or worked anvil and hammer. I saw scores of banners in great coloured ribbons stretching across the hills around the city, some so far off they were no more than a smudge of mustard or sea blue. I did not know so many warriors existed in the world.

Roman eagles stood on rods of ebony, left by legions centuries before. I saw the red dragon and the white, the Wessex wyvern, the Holy Cross, the Greek fish or ‘ichthus’, that stands for – ‘Jesus Christ, God’s Son, the Saviour’. These were the armies of Æthelstan the king – and they were still coming in. I had never seen so many souls. I felt their gaze, on Beatrice in particular, as we walked the dusty road away from the safety of the city. I swallowed nervously, but they did not trouble us. The king’s peace held and we passed through without injury or insult. Though I was not ordained, I imagine my robe played a part in that. Some men have no fear of a king’s wrath, but then damnation, ah now, that is for eternity. There is no way back, after that cold judgement.

The trees in the wheat stubble and lining the road were all bare, the day cold and grey. It was no stroll of lovers, but the two of us shivering as we sheltered by a bridge out of the wind, tearing fresh bread with our teeth and skinning boiled eggs by rolling them on the flagstones. Beatrice had paid for a flask of ale from one of the street vendors – it was better than the city water.

‘Your uncle believes I am a corrupter of young men,’ Beatrice said. I could only blink at her, hardly able to say that I certainly hoped so. ‘I heard him talking to my aunt, about how important you were. How you must not be led astray.’

‘Led astray?’ I said, my voice muffled by egg. Or it was just that my tongue had grown thick, or perhaps that I had. Beatrice had that effect on me. She was short, but lithe in a way that made me feel clumsy and slow. Perhaps I should not dwell too long on her charms. I will say that I remember her eyes and her grace, as fine as a greyhound. Her hair curled, which I found pleasing. There was always humour in her eyes. If not for the way her breasts moved and the way my breathing deepened – if she had been a man, I mean – we might have been friends.

I have read poems of Greece that speak of beauty. That is not my purpose here, to drag a hook through old forgotten sands of my life, stirring silt back into clear water. I could describe her laugh or the way she could leap and twirl and stand on her hands, revealing her flashing legs. I liked her. That is why she was a danger to me. I might have become a merchant trader in the Winchester docks, just to please Beatrice in that year. If I had, abbeys would have gone unbuilt, tombs ungilded, great works undone.

In truth, that first day is mostly lost to me. Yet it was one of dozens that we stole together while the king’s forces grew all round the city. My studies suffered and I cared not. I spent my time making her a perfect rose in iron. It had taken on spots of rust by the time spring warmed the air and the roads were dry – and by then all we knew between us had come to ruin.

I don’t know whether news of our continuing association came first to my uncle Athelm or to Lady Elflaed. I was sixteen and in love. There is no other age like it, for impetuous youth. Of course we were seen. Of course we were caught.

Beatrice knew the stakes and the dangers. If we had been two village lovers, or a shepherd and a maid, I’m sure we would have eased our passions early on. Perhaps we would have married first, with some bare ceremony of simple folk. Instead, we let desire build like a river rising up against a dam, until it was far too high and crashed over. I could have been a simple man, I think. If I’d married her, she would have been beyond their reach.

I don’t know if Beatrice was entranced by me, or by the thought of stealing me away from the vocation, from the oaths I might take. Perhaps it was just to prove she had power over her aunt Elflaed’s influence, I cannot say.

She and I had known one another at last. In the long grasses of sweet pastures, we took eternity in our hands, and her thighs in my hands – and risked our immortal souls. And then again, in a hayrick belonging to some farmer.

As in the Garden of Eden, all things were changed from then on. No longer did we meet to sigh and talk of love. We fell on each other’s necks as soon as we were alone. I tried not to think of my experience with Aphra in the infirmary, with her foul bag of goose fat. Yet I could not put it completely out of my mind. To my dismay, the old rash returned and caused me the sort of itching that maddened. It began with a pattern of tiny blisters. I thought to endure them until they went away, but of course I scraped them off instead, rubbing at them through the wool of my robe until I had great patches weeping and sticking, tearing free as I stood up. It was the price of sin, I do not doubt. I sprinkled drying powders on the parts affected and I do not believe Beatrice ever knew. There were times, in my passion, when I thrust harder to stop an itch than I would have done from mere desire.

Between my love and my most intimate torment, my studies could find little purchase. I had to duck and dart whenever I returned to the royal estate, for fear of meeting one of my tutors as they searched for me. I sweated more in my sinfulness. I ate and slept less, though I washed myself with jug and cloth each morning, the one time I felt clean.

Around noon most days, when the crowds were thickest, Bea and I had fallen into the habit of meeting at a carters’ kitchen we knew well, where the food was thick with horseradish paste, no matter what meat formed the stew. The crossroads lay halfway across the city and my feet were light as I went to meet her. I knew the way so well I hardly looked around me, certainly not to see if I was followed or watched.

It was not uncommon for Beatrice to get there first, if we had agreed to meet. We had our habits by then. If I was able to get away unexpectedly, I’d leave a flower from the royal garden between two tiles over her aunt’s door. I always worried someone would take it down, but they never had. I’d left a sprig of lavender the night before, in moonlight. I suppose I had been followed then as well, though if so, they were uncommon quiet about it.

I thought the foodseller was a little curt that day. Perhaps it was just my worry showing, when Beatrice didn’t appear in the first moments. I bought a bowl and took a spoon. The old woman tending the stall had grown used to me and she knew I paid, so she did not insist I take one of the chained spoons that meant you had to stand right next to her cart. Yet I finished my bowl and watched her wipe it clean for the next customer with no sign of Beatrice. I looked for my love in the streaming crowd, for the shape of her bonnet and the first glimpse of her that would spring on me with a joy that was a little like pain.

Instead, a hand clamped down on my arm and I swung round with a snarl, bristling. A sallow-faced man stood there, all grease and sharp bones. My hand dropped to my knife, only to have my wrist held in a firm grip. I jerked against that in sudden fury, pulling free and surprising us both. I was half-turned to run when he laid on once more and dragged me to a halt.

‘Your sweet flower won’t be coming, son,’ he said.

The words stopped me cold.

‘Who are you? Take your hands off me!’ I said. ‘How dare you lay claim to me . . .’

‘Your uncle said he’ll see you today, Master Dunstan. He said I was to bring you – and I will, even if I have to knock your teeth out first. He was that angry, I don’t think he’d curse me for it if I did.’

I examined him more closely. He was rangy and thin, but his face had a haggard look. I took the hand that had wrapped itself in my robe and I crushed it in a grip more used to holding forge hammers. He gasped and went a paler shade of grey under his dirt.

‘Ah! You’re breaking my fingers. Damn you, leave me be!’

It gave me no satisfaction to overcome him, after what he had said.

‘What has my uncle done?’ I said. I kept my voice soft, with the ears of the stew-seller and who knew how many others twitching behind us. Aware of that, I moved him away, though I did not release my grip and turned his hand further in mine, so that tears appeared in the corners of his eyes.

‘He just told me to fetch you. I don’t know nothing more about it!’

I gave him one good twist more and he shrieked.

‘Please! He said she was to go away to a convent. That’s all I know, I swear. On my oath.’

I felt a great stillness come upon me, as I had felt only once or twice before.

And where is my uncle now?’ I asked, as gently as I could. The tone I used frightened him somehow, so that he shook like a beaten dog.

‘He’s at the cathedral, in one of the chapels there. That’s where I was to bring yer.’

‘I’ll go there, don’t worry. Now get out of my sight.’

I don’t think I had ever bullied another man before, unless you count Wulfric, which I don’t. I felt my power over him and it was a pleasure.

I walked fast, considering what I might have to do to save Beatrice. Some women choose the life of prayer and solitude, just as my brothers did at the abbey. Those who fall into sin, who grow great with child, yet are unmarried – noble or not, rich or poor, they are shuttered away from the world. Those poor fallen creatures are our failures, made to spend their lives in prayer and hope of redemption. One thing was certain, if they had Beatrice locked away, I would not see her again.

I burned as I walked. I felt hot and ill and my skin crawled. My anger was like iron: slow-heating, but all the more dangerous for that.

I had to make my way past a queue of pilgrims as I drew close to the cathedral. The Benedictines there had a reliquary of St Swithun, very fine in gold and glass. They kept a record then of whether it rained on his feast day, when it was said to pour down for another forty if it did. They wrote too of the miracles that occurred there, in a book of wonders.

It meant that those who came to that spot were often the most deformed to be found anywhere on these islands. Children had gathered to stare at the strangest of them and I confess, even in anger, my attention was snagged by some shambling boy with one eye much higher than the other. Whether he hoped to be healed or for death, I could only guess.

A couple of them thought I was jumping to the head of the queue and hissed at me, so that I was stiff with indignation when I reached the great door, guarded by men in robes as black as mine own.

One of them put up his hand to prevent me walking past him, but the other murmured something I could not catch and they both stood aside. They were strangers to me, but I was not to them, it seemed. My uncle had left orders for me to be admitted.

The shrine to St Swithun was not a quiet place. Men and women wailed out their grief and their failures, pleading aloud for redemption. I made the sign of the cross as I passed them by, heading down the nave to one of four side chapels. I peered into two before I saw Uncle Athelm celebrating Mass, with a dozen men and women praying before him.

My anger cooled as I waited. He had two stern-looking lads guarding the chapel against rough folk. The two fellows carried no visible swords in a house of God, but somehow I did not doubt they were well armed. My uncle was a man of power and great influence, after all. He would not walk the streets without guards to keep him safe.

When the service ended, men and women in fine cloth came out, made solemn and at peace. I recognised a few of them from Æthelstan’s court and I bowed on instinct, rather than offend anyone else who had the king’s ear. It took but moments for them to file out, and then one of my uncle’s men bowed almost mockingly, gesturing for me to enter.

Athelm was not a fool, in forcing me to meet him there. He had privacy, but also the timbered ceiling far above and sweet incense on the air to cool my wrath. I could not stamp and demand in such a place. I rather admired him for his choice, even as I fixed my gaze and tried to bend him to my will. I had given it some thought on my stalk through the streets.

‘Uncle, I wish to marry Beatrice. I will ask Lady Elflaed for her hand, as I understand she is her protector, her guardian. I am of age and I will make my life as a merchant and craftsman in this city, or perhaps in London. Beatrice is old enough to choose me and I would like to see her. No, I demand to see the lady who will be my wife, wherever you have put her.’

I felt I was running away with my anger and clamped my jaw shut on more. Uncle Athelm raised his eyebrows at me.

Are you finished, Dunstan? Now, you have spoken your foolishness . . .’

‘It is not foolishness, Uncle . . .’

He went on over me, raising his hand once more as if about to give a bishop’s blessing. It was a strangely powerful gesture.

‘You have spoken, Dunstan. I believe it is my turn. You have come here for answers, have you not? Perhaps it might go better for you if you show patience and restraint instead of this, this . . . vulgar display.’

I waited, though I could feel my heart thudding in my wrists and neck. I imagine I was as swollen as a bullfrog, watching him, convinced I was in the right. As if to torment me, my groin grew an itch I could hardly bear, so strong was it. I wanted to scratch more insistently than I could ever remember before. I rearranged the rope belt of my robe and used the motion to rub the area, but it was too brief and made it all the worse.

‘I promised your father once I would look after you, Dunstan, if he died. Did you know that? Heorstan was my older brother and I adored him. He was the cleverest of us and he made a fine life, with sons to make up for those I would not bring into the world. You don’t remember it, but I was there in your home many times in those first years. Before my work took me to Winchester and to London, I would visit you every summer and dandle you on my knee. I told Heorstan and Cyneryth then that I would see you and Wulfric safe, if the worst came.’

He paused as I scratched myself, looking oddly at me before he went on. My itching grew worse, so I was almost trembling with it. I know now it was because I stood on holy ground. I had rotted my body with sin – and that sin was tormented in turn by the body and blood of Christ, by the centuries of prayers in the beams and stones around us.

‘I tried to warn you about Beatrice, did I not? I tried to tell you she was no virgin. Perhaps I should have spoken more bluntly. She had a child, Dunstan, born dead. She would not name the father to her aunt, saying she did not know it, that she had been taken by some fellow passing by on the road. I wonder now if she tempted him, as she tempted you.’

‘I will marry her,’ I stammered, though he had shocked me and made me wonder.

‘Oh, Dunstan! Did you think lust and sin are covered in flies? Did you think evil was unattractive? Would men be tempted by women if they were foul and not fragrant? No! Wide is the gate, Dunstan! Broad is the way that leads to destruction.’

‘I . . . love her, Uncle. I will make my way with trade and the skill of my hands.’

‘Skills that were given to you in the abbey and by the tutors Lady Elflaed paid to . . . What are you doing, Dunstan? Why do you keep twitching at yourself . . . Oh, son, is your flesh corrupt? Have you lain with her?’

I could not tell an untruth, not in that place, with God and St Swithun and all the saints looking on. My eyes filled with tears and I nodded, expecting him to erupt. Instead, he came forward, putting an arm around my shoulder. I shrank back from him. Lepers are unclean and I felt the same way. He seemed to read my mind and his eyes were kind as he looked on me.

‘I fear it not, because I have not sinned. Come, be brave now. Let me take you to the king’s doctor. He is a fine man and he has seen, well, many things over the years.’

‘What about Beatrice, Uncle?’ I said.

‘The one who tempted you and made your skin foul? You are rotting, lad. Your sin is mortal and it will destroy you. Do you not understand? If you want to live and be clean again, come with me, deny her, denounce your sin and repent. If you do, Christ will raise you up. If you persist in your sin, in your unhealthy desires, you will know pain and anguish and death. I have seen it all before.’

He took my hands and sniffed the air as if he could smell my powders.

‘Please, Dunstan. Choose to repent. I cannot force you in this. She has corrupted you, but you can still turn away.’

‘Will she be taken to a convent, Uncle?’ I asked. I had to know, though I could see my questions were eroding his patience with me.

‘Lady Elflaed said as much. Now, there is a woman of faith, Dunstan, a fine, strong branch without rot. Her sister was a pitiful creature and the daughter . . . well, you have seen. There is a bad apple, Dunstan. I only pray it has not turned you too far to corruption and foulness, so that you are beyond saving. Now, will you come with me? Will you repent and be free of them all?’

I nodded, unable to see for the tears that blinded me. I did not ask about Beatrice again. I chose my way, my path, on that afternoon in the cathedral.

That spring, Æthelstan joined his armies. He and his elite horsemen had trained together in formations and patterns, charges and sudden wheels and strikes. I think it was some Roman tactic, rather than simply reaching the battlefield before those on foot. He had gathered eighteen thousand soldiers in his name and they rode out against three kings and all the traitors who stood with them.

When the king’s men left Winchester, I went too, as my uncle’s eyes and ears. Under my cloak, I wore the black robe of the Benedictines, my brothers. I had given oath as a monk and I had taken holy orders as a priest. I rode into the north, lost and raw in my grief. I never saw Beatrice again. I cannot recall her face.