Chapter Nine

Cai knelt by the old man on the cave floor. He couldn’t breathe, not even to let go of the horrified sob wedged tight in his chest. He didn’t know where to touch him. His throat looked intact, but there were a dozen places in his cassock’s folds where the wound might be concealed. You’re a doctor, he told himself fiercely, but it was no good. All hope was gone, all life long fled from a face like that—ravaged and hollow, grey as the dawn.

The sob tore free. Addy snorted himself awake at the sound, opened his eyes and stared up at him. A beatific smile spread across his face, as if he had expected this morning all his life, anticipated everything and awoken full of joy to find it fulfilled. “There’s a good boy,” he said, lifting a bony hand and patting Cai’s face. “There, you see? Don’t worry.”

Cai leapt to his feet. He cracked his head off the cavern’s roof, but the pain was meaningless. The thing that got released in men’s bodies in extremity, the heat in the blood that made them fight or run away like deer—he could feel it, raging through every vein. His heart would rip out through his ribs if he didn’t move. He gave Addy one last look and half-fell out of the cave.

The beach was empty, swathed in mist. No Fara devils seemed to be around, but God help them if he found any now. One line of footprints faded off into the distance. The blood-heat in him pitched, and he took off, heedless of the stones on his bare feet.

Fen had got far enough to let Cai run off some of his terror-born rage, but he was still throbbing all over in the grip of it when the lean figure emerged from the mist. Fen was motionless, his head down. He didn’t flinch or glance up when Cai tore across the last stretch of beach between them.

The knife was still in his hand. Cai knocked it free, and it sailed end over end to bury its blade in the sand. He crashed to a breathless halt beside Fen. “What were you going to do with that?” he yelled. When Fen didn’t stir, he grabbed him by the jerkin. “What were you going to do?”

Fen animated. He shoved Cai’s hand away, and Cai got ready for a fight. Instead Fen fell back a few paces. His eyes were wide, a lostness draining their amber fires to grey. “This… This is all your fault.”

Cai swallowed hard. The mist was catching in his lungs. “Mine?”

“Yes. You, with your blasted Christian ways—your doctoring, and your healing, and your damned compassion. With your body that makes me feel as if my own doesn’t belong to me anymore, and yours does, so that I feel your pain more than my own…” Fen paused for breath. “So that I feel another man’s pain before I inflict it! Damn you—I cannot even raise a knife to a useless old man!”

“Am I meant to be sorry for that? Fen—you murderous bastard…” Desperately Cai choked back the laughter that was trying to rattle out of him at Fen’s discomfiture, his baffled rage at not being able to commit cold-blooded murder. “Why the hell would you have wanted to?”

“Can’t you see? That old lunatic knows about the treasure. He’s hiding it somewhere on this island, and the only place we haven’t looked is inside that cave, the place where he sleeps. He’s defending something there.”

“Don’t be so stupid. There’s nothing in there but damp.”

“At the back, in the shadows where we couldn’t see. And you heard what he said about tunnels. Don’t look at me like that, monk—I wasn’t going to torture him for what he knows. Just kill him and get him out of the way.”

“Oh, is that all? Why didn’t you say?” Horror and laughter were winding themselves around in Cai like drunken serpents. What was he doing, out here on a barren island with this creature? Why did he want to take him in his arms? “My God. He’s just a poor old man.”

“I know that. Look, you’ve gained your point. I haven’t harmed him, have I? I…I couldn’t.”

He sounded so mournful. Cai reached out to him. “Come here.” Fen obeyed as far as coming to stand in front of him, but wouldn’t take his outstretched hand. “He isn’t hiding anything. Listen—our boat might be ready. I think the sooner we leave here, the better.”

“Why? In case your castrating bloody influence wears off?”

“You were going to murder our host. It might make things awkward over breakfast.”

Fen smiled—an involuntary flicker, quickly erased. “He was sleeping like a dog. He didn’t know.”

“I think he did, Fen.”

“All right. If you want to walk away from so much power, we’ll go.”

“Not yet. First we go back and see that he’s all right. Thank him.”

At last Fen took his hand. He did it reluctantly, but their palms met with a sensual warmth, and after a moment he gripped tight. “Very well, Saint Caius of Nowhere.”

 

 

Addy was pacing back and forth along the high-tide line, the hem of his cassock snagging on dried seaweed. He was anxiously watching the sky. He didn’t appear to notice his guests’ approach until Cai called out to him, and then spared them only a distracted glance. “He is late. He is late, and you two must be hungry.”

“Who is late, sir?”

“The eagle.”

Cai shot Fen a warning look. “I see,” he said cautiously, getting into the old man’s path and stopping him gently, afraid his restless movements would wear him out. “You know, if you wished, Fen and I could patch together a fishing net and…”

“Ah, no. No. If you provide for me, how will I know the love of God in the beat of the eagle’s wings?” Cai couldn’t answer that. After a moment Addy returned his attentions to earth and gave him a wide smile. “But I would have liked to have given you your breakfasts. Perhaps you had better pursue your own ways now. You mustn’t starve here.”

“We can catch this next tide, if our boat holds up. Are you sure you won’t come with us?”

“No, no. These fools who wish to place me on the bishop’s throne would find me too easily on the mainland. You won’t tell them I’m here, will you? If anyone asks, you will say you met a mad old hermit, and Addy is a legend.”

Cai shrugged. “I promise.” It seemed true enough to him now. Perhaps some shipwrecked monk had become marooned, assumed the name and grown old here in his delusions of power. “Well, if you change your mind or you’re ever ill, light a signal fire on your western beach. We’ll see it from Fara.” Once more he looked around the featureless strip of dunes, where not so much as a rabbit or a goat cropped the turf. “I still don’t see how you live.”

“I told you. God provides.”

Even if He’s a little late this morning. Cai had been turning away. Then something in the old man’s voice made him pause. There was such certainty in it, the deep note of conviction that had drawn Cai to him the day before.

“Caius, listen. I have said that your new abbot Aelfric is a poor example of the coming faith. Whatever you profess—even if it’s no more than belief in yourself as a man—you must be a good example. Do you understand?”

“No,” Cai said honestly, spreading his hands. “Even if I did…I don’t know how.”

“We can’t lead men to purer lives unless our own are pure.” His benign gaze encompassed Fen, and he smiled. “I don’t mean the flesh. For myself, I believe the flesh must have its way, governed by love and by will. But I am a heretic. By the example of your own life, I mean. Cai, you grieve over Theo, and I thought I did too—but there is really very little need.”

“Why?” Cai could hardly get the question out past the pain in his throat. He didn’t think he’d ever grieved for him more poignantly than now, when for all his words the old man’s eyes were bright with tears for him too.

“You’ll see. You’ll see. Now, catch your tide. Unless…” He suddenly focussed on Fen, his smile broadening. “Unless, son, you would like to go and take a look around inside my cave. It’s daylight now, and your search will be easier. Caius and I will wait.”

Fen’s lips parted. Then he stared at the ground, his brow knitting ferociously. “I don’t wish it. No.”

Cai had seen him flush before, in rage and arousal, and sometimes mortification at the forced intimacies of medical care. But this was pure shame. Cai hadn’t thought him capable. Shame at his aborted deed, or only at being found out in it? Addy didn’t seem to care. He was chuckling now, rocking himself back and forth in amusement. “Poor wolf, poor wolf. I would have made a sorry meal for you. Tell me, Fenrisulfr—there being no secret of Fara, what would you have by way of treasure? Can it be attained in this life? I’d grant you it myself if I could.”

Fen looked up. “Vengeance,” he said suddenly, as if Addy had fished the word out of him on a hook. “My kinsmen who abandoned me here among Christians and lunatics—I would have revenge.”

“Ah.” Addy sobered. He folded his hands into his sleeves. “That, I can’t grant. But you will have it one day. Yes—knee-deep in water and blood.”

“Fen, come on.” Cai took hold of him, a firm grip on his rigid arm. “Sir, we should go now.”

“Yes,” Addy said absently, distances opening up in his eyes. “Go in God, blessed be Her name.”

“And you.” Cai hesitated, wondering if he’d misheard. “Her name?”

“Ah. Yes. I forget sometimes—forgive me. But that reminds me. That old woman Danan—you said you know her.”

“Yes. I’m a kind of physician at Fara. Not much of one, but…”

“She has told me you are very good. A healer by spirit as well as by skill.”

“Really?” For a moment Cai was distracted. She’d called him a hit-and-miss quack last time they’d talked about his medical skills. “Yes, I know her. She trades me the herbs I need for my work.”

“Take care of her. It matters little really—she’d be back with the corn in spring—but I wouldn’t wish her to die that way.” Addy shivered. “How strange, that the word of God should be put into practice so! No, not that way. Keep watch, Cai. Look out for her.”

 

 

The incoming tide ran strongly, but it was still a long haul from the island of Fara to shore. The sun had driven off the ghostly fret and was making the sea dance in sapphire and green before Fen called a halt. They had passed a halfway point. Cai, glad enough to take his cue from so superior an oarsman, stopped rowing and rested his oar. Fen had pulled rhythmically all the way out, patterns of purposeful muscle rising to meet each stroke. He hadn’t so much as broken a sweat, and now he was looking at Cai as if in surprise that he was tired.

“I’m not,” Cai said defensively, trying to hide the tremor in his arms. “Who the hell could keep up with a Viking, though?”

They were side by side on the boat’s wooden bench. “Only another Viking,” Fen admitted easily. “Maybe it’s best you don’t try. I can take her from here.”

“What? No. I just need a rest.”

“At risk of wounding you, I may be better on my own. A second oar who isn’t quite as…”

Cai broke into reluctant laughter. “Oh, God. Don’t start worrying about my feelings now.”

“Very well. A weak second oar can unbalance a strong one, make his job harder. Just go and sit in the prow.”

Cai got up, still smiling. “Are you saying I’ve been holding you back? Let me see your wound before you take over this longship. You can… You can just lift up your jerkin for me this time.”

Their eyes met in burning recognition of what Cai’s routine check had unleashed yesterday. Fen did as he was told, and Cai crouched in front of him long enough to ascertain that the vigorous rowing hadn’t done any damage. No—the muscle was repairing itself, smoothing out. “You’re fine,” he said, glad his recent exertions allowed him to sound breathless. “You can cover up. We’d better not rock the boat.”

He went to sit. Fen watched him closely. “I was afraid,” he said, “that you wouldn’t wish it. To lie with me anymore, I mean—knowing what I am.”

Cai glanced up in surprise. “I don’t know what you are. I only know what you did. Theo used to say that was what mattered—what we did, not what we’d thought about doing.”

“That’s good. Because if we are judged on our wicked thoughts, I am headed fast for Aelfric’s hell.”

“With me right behind you.” And yes, I would lie with you there, though you were the devil himself. Cai couldn’t say it, but he held Fen’s gaze until he was sure the message had got through.

“I feel as if I know your Theo. Through you, and everything you’ve said about him. Maybe that’s what the old man meant when he told you there was no need to grieve.”

Cai shifted in the prow. He dipped his fingers into the water, thoughtfully fretting its surface. It was lovely here. Fen picked up the oars, and Cai almost put out a hand to stop him. What was it all about—this effort to get back to a shore, a home, where he had lost all sense of belonging? What awaited him at Fara? “I’m beginning to think,” he said slowly, “that my poor abbot—though I loved him, Fen, and I always will—might not have been sane when he died.”

“Well—for what it’s worth, I too am losing certainties. I believed in the legend of the amulet, the treasure. But perhaps it was only an excuse for rapine. Our prophet did come up with Fara this year. The year before, he was just as convinced it was White Bay.”

A helpless chuckle shook Cai. “Really? He said a different place…”

“Every year. Yes.”

Their laughter rang out across the water, scaring up a piebald cloud of Addy ducks. “Oh, God,” Cai managed at length, wiping his eyes. “Have we both been such fools? And as for that old lunatic in his cave, with his seals and his eagle…”

“Cai. Hush.”

Cai frowned, leaning forwards. He could hear something. Was it the echoes of their own voices off the distant rocks? No—more musical than that, familiar to Cai and yet strangely altered. He shaded his eyes against the sun.

The seals were hauling out onto the rocks. They had come in their droves, the light striking off their sleek fur. Instead of tussling for the sunniest places on the rocks, flopping and jousting with one another on the way, they seemed to be moving as one.

Their focus was the old man standing on the rocks at the top of the beach. He was only a skeletal outline at this distance, but Cai could make out that his hands were extended, as if in benediction. “He said… He said the seals came to sing to him.”

“Which would be madness, except…”

Except that they were singing. It was a music Cai couldn’t have imagined in this world. Their eerie barking stretched out and clashed in wild harmonics, as if the great North Sea itself had found a voice. Cai got up, making the boat lurch wildly beneath him. He pointed, unable to get a word out, and Fen stood beside him, grabbing his arm. They were just in time to see a vast sea-eagle sail out of the dawn, golden talons wrapped around a fish.

 

 

The monastery was silent, its tumbledown buildings held in quiet sunlight. It was like a future vision of itself—moss beginning to take hold among the ruins, the pride of human life that had built her long vanished, sleeping beneath the hawthorn graves. Cai and Fen dragged the boat ashore, then climbed the steep path up the cliff face without meeting another soul. At the top they came to a halt, looking around them. Cai hadn’t expected to be missed, for anyone to be watching or waiting on their return, but this was a better opportunity than he’d anticipated. He turned to Fen.

“This could be a good moment, you know. For you to go, if you wish.”

“I…I could still have your horse?”

“Yes. I told you. If you wanted.”

“And what if I didn’t want?”

“The horse, or…?”

“To go.” Fen evaded Cai’s look. He was surveying the barns, the fields and the infirmary building that had been his prison for so long. He still slept in the quarantine cell, Aelfric having forbidden him to join the others in the dormitory barn. He was still locked away from compline to matins, though Cai knew he could make short work of the window and the ivy beneath it if he wished.

“You’re strong now. I can’t believe you’d want to stay.”

“Would you come with me?”

What a wild, strange thought. It sent a shiver down Cai’s spine and he briefly closed his eyes to savour it. He’d been on the verge of departure when Benedict had come to cling to him, renewing for a time his sense of a place here, an obligation. But whatever Ben had needed, whatever guiding light or rock, Cai hadn’t been able to provide. No—he hadn’t been expecting a lookout, much less a welcome party for his return. For the place to be this quiet, all his brethren must have gone about their usual daily tasks. “The waters close over our heads, don’t they?”

“Not over yours. Not if I can help it.”

Blindly Cai put out a hand. Fen took it immediately this time. “No. You didn’t let me drown, did you? I like to lie with you. I think you’re a dangerous, bloodthirsty nutcase, but…I see in colour again when I’m with you.”

“So?”

“So… Yes. I will go.”

He didn’t have a thing to pack. All he had to do was walk with Fen down to the armoury, collect a few weapons—Broc’s sword, Fen’s ancestral head-splitter—and help him pull the chariot out into the yard. He could see Eldra from here. The only living creature to remark their arrival, she at least seemed pleased to see them, trotting the length of her paddock with her head held high. Cai had no right to either of Fara’s ponies, but Eldra was his, and between the shafts of the chariot she would take them anywhere. South, perhaps. There were cities down there, places where if Leof’s gentle god was long dead, Aelfric’s monstrous one was not yet in the ascendant—Roman towns, where for every Christian you met you would find five who still bowed to the ancient shrines of Jupiter and Mars. Zoroastrian cults too, followers of the soldier’s god Mithras, Broc’s particular favourite. The world was large.

Yes, large. But all the voices of this little one were rising from the timber church. Cai drew Fen to a halt as it came into view. They stood together, wordlessly listening. The church doors were wide open. Only this way could the building accommodate the full complement of monks. It seldom was required to, even when Aelfric made Eyulf ring the bell and stood eagle-eyed with his great black staff, counting his flock through the doors. There were always tasks to be done that Aelfric still recognised as essential, or at any rate didn’t dare yet deny. But everyone was there today, the stragglers crowding on the steps outside.

Fen was still holding Cai’s hand. “What’s going on?” he asked softly. “Is it a holy day? Some saint’s miserable, pointless bloody death to be celebrated?”

“I don’t think so.” Cai found he was grinning. He didn’t see things quite the way Fen did—not yet, anyway—but he’d come to appreciate the external point of view. Men like Aelfric could hammer down a black iron bowl across the whole world, and so far God hadn’t seen fit to help those trapped underneath. Poor Ben… “I don’t know. It’s not even a prayer hour.”

“Well, it’s good timing for us, whatever the fools are about.”

Cai hesitated. If Aelfric had herded his brethren together for another dose of hellfire, didn’t Cai, their physician, owe them whatever antidote he could give? Then again, he’d learned to his cost that he could only doctor their bodies, not their souls, and sporadically at that. Whatever Danan had said to Addy about his skills, he was only really the hit-and-miss quack she had called him to his face. He rubbed his thumb gently over the top of Fen’s hand. “You’re right. Come on.”

Eyulf was perched on the tower, the dinner bell laid neatly in his lap so he wouldn’t forget it or what it was for. As soon as Cai noticed him, he sprang to his feet, sending the bell flying, dislodging stones in a terrifying scatter. He let go one yell of mixed joy and fear, slithered to his backside and began to fall.

Cai ran. Fen was on his heels, and Cai had a moment to reflect on the strangeness of that—as far as the poor Viking was concerned, this flight was in the wrong direction. But there he was, a shadow, then a force that took substance and shot right past him, far faster than Cai could hope to run, and so it was that Eyulf tumbled down into the most unlikely salvation of all—the arms of a Viking, who went down quite gracefully beneath his weight and rolled them both out of danger, shielding the howling lad’s body with his own from the last few plummeting rocks.

Coming to a halt, Cai let the laughter building in him surface. The danger was over, and Eyulf clearly didn’t appreciate his rescuer—had recoiled from him as soon as Fen had let him go, and now they were both on their feet, was circling him, face contracted in the hideous scowl that meant Viking. Cai went and stopped the boy, brushing dust out of his robes. Eyulf stood on tiptoe in his agitation, attempting to reproduce Fen’s height and prowling walk, pointing frantically at him over Cai’s shoulder, as if Cai hadn’t noticed he was there.

“I know,” Cai said. “It seems odd to me too. But he’s…” He paused, long enough to meet Fen’s eyes. “A good Viking. Sometimes.”

“It was instinct,” Fen growled. “Next time I will let him fall. Cai, you idiot—we’ve missed our chance.”

Cai whipped round. All his surviving brethren were standing in the sunlight, staring at him as if he and not Eyulf had just dropped down from the sky. Wilf the goatherd was in the front line. A handful of others were still emerging from the church, among them Oslaf, pale as death, supported between Gareth and Demetrios.

Cai spread his hands. “What’s wrong?” Still Wilfrid just gawped. “Where is Aelfric? Has he got you all here to listen to more of his ranting? Gareth—that boy should be in bed. Who made you bring him down here?”

“He wanted to come,” Wilf answered at last. “No one made us. The storm, Cai—we thought it had taken you. And Fenrir went after you—the only one who dared. We thought you were both lost to us. We came here to pray for your souls.”

Cai pushed his fringe back. He couldn’t take this in. Not so many faces breaking into astonished grins, not for such a reason. “And… And Aelfric allowed you?”

“No. But he couldn’t stop us. He can’t, can he…?” Wilf paused, as if realising this for the first time. “Not if it’s all of us.” He stepped forwards and suddenly enveloped Cai in a painful embrace, redolent of the barnyard and warm goat. “You came home.”

The brethren crowded round him. Cai resisted for a moment, trying to step back, but then he saw that the circle of chattering, smiling men had absorbed Fen into its boundary too. Fen was wide-eyed, attempting to look haughty. Cai doubted he had ever been clapped on the back by a man half his size, or told—as old Martin was telling him, beaming at him toothlessly all the while—that he wasn’t so bad after all, for a murdering infidel pig. Brother Cedric, who had lain so deadly ill in the infirmary after the first raid, came jostling up to grab Cai in his arms, and the small, unruly sea began to bear him and Fen off.

Cai extricated himself far enough to get to Oslaf. Gareth stepped aside for him, allowing him to give the stumbling boy his arm. “Oslaf. Forgive me for leaving you. Benedict—”

“Don’t, Cai. I can’t hear his name.”

“I should have stayed and looked after you.”

Oslaf shook his head. His face was calm, but Cai had seen that deadly serenity before, in men tried beyond their strength, their passions poured out into a well that knew no filling. “He loved you,” Oslaf said. “I do too, and I prayed so hard for you to be safe. Nobody can look after me now, though. Do you understand?”

Cai understood with painful clarity. To deny the boy’s despair would have been a further outrage, and he didn’t argue—just put an arm around his waist and led him on gently. “All right. Where is he?”

“Aelfric wants him buried on the north side of the church. He hasn’t done it yet—Gareth and Wilf and Hengist have been watching over him.”

“In the crypt?”

“Yes. But I don’t know how long they can keep watching. They’re afraid.”

Cai had heard of north-side burials. The need to place the dead in earliest morning sunlight to the east was older by far than Church doctrine, and doctrine rode easily on those beliefs to assign the north to winter, darkness, a fit place for suicides and lost souls. Theo had done his best to blow away the cobwebs of such superstition, but they clung, always the stronger in dark times. “The north side is sacred too. All earth is holy.”

“But how will he know where to rise on the last day? And…he’ll be all alone.”

“Oh, Oslaf.” Cai tightened his grip. “I don’t believe that’s how it works. We’ll have him buried with his brothers, though—I swear it. Where is Aelfric?”

“I don’t know. He came down to the church—he didn’t want us all together like this, praying for you. But Wilf said we had to, and then one of his own men—Laban—came and joined us.”

“Did he?” Glancing back, Cai saw a black-robed figure being borne along with the rest, looking mortally embarrassed but not displeased with himself. “We’re making strange friends, aren’t we?”

“You made the strangest of all. And yet your Viking shamed us with his courage, and when he didn’t return, we grieved for him too. Look, Aelfric is there, down by the…” Oslaf stopped dead. He would have fallen without Cai’s embrace. His eyes opened wide. “Oh, God. No.”

An odd group had gathered by the monastery gate. On one side of the drystone wall—nominal barrier between the sacred and profane worlds, easily scaled by the smallest errand boys but in general respected—Aelfric was standing, flanked by his clerics. They looked like four burned larch trees, black and bare of ornament, stiffly upright. On the gate’s far side, gaudy and chaotic by contrast, a stout old woman had planted herself, fists bunched tight on her hips. She was dressed in bright north-village weaves, holding a donkey on a long, frayed rein. At her shoulder, a young man in shepherd’s breeches and waistcoat was casting a shadow to match his formidable height. She was red in the face, expostulating loudly with Aelfric. As Cai watched, she unclenched one strong hand and poked a finger at his chest to emphasise her words.

“Oslaf, what is it? Do you know them?”

“Yes, but it must be a dream. My grandmother, Hilde. My brother Bertwald. What are they doing here? Oh, no. He’ll hurt them. He’ll—”

Cai cut him off. “I know what they’re doing here. They made good time. And nobody else is going to get hurt.” He transferred Oslaf’s weight—not much, just grief-stripped bones and a cassock—to Fen, who was at his shoulder, waiting. Cai didn’t have to look. He knew the Viking would be there, would make the catch and follow him. Striding ahead of the group, he made his way across the tussocky ground. He felt as if native Saxon sunlight were springing back at him from the buttercups, dazzling flakes of release and relief in the yarrow. Aelfric had put out the lights in Oslaf’s life, and now his family had come, nature reasserting herself, rushing to fill the gap. “Aelfric!”

The abbot turned. He caught his heel on the hem of his robe and almost fell over, arms flailing to save himself. Something had changed, shifted—not one of the obsequious Canterbury clerics put out a hand. “You,” he snarled, when he’d regained his balance. “I might have known. Not even the ocean could swallow your disobedience and pride.”

“That’s right,” Cai called cheerfully into the breeze. “She spat me out, and here I am. Welcome, hlæfdige. You must have travelled all night.”

The old lady stopped in her diatribe at hearing a word of respect in her own language. Aelfric looked from her to Cai. “You know this woman?”

“No, but I invited her here. She’s come to take Oslaf home.”

“So she says. I tell her—and you listen too, you serpent, striking at the faith that has fed you and sheltered you here—no man leaves. Tu es sacerdos—”

“Sacerdos in aeternum!” the old woman snapped, to Cai’s surprise. She didn’t look as if her grasp of Latin was broad, but Cai guessed she might have heard the phrase a few times since beginning her confrontation with Aelfric. “A priest forever!”

“Yes. The truth of it penetrates even to these vulgar ears. Those vows once taken, no man’s soul escapes the service of God. No matter where his body lies—and I forbid any member of this community to take one step beyond its boundaries—his spirit belongs to the priesthood.” He threw out one hand in a gesture of banishment. “Be off. The boy belongs to me.”

“Sacerdos in aeternum…” Now that Hilde had a good hold on the words, she rolled them round with a kind of disgusted relish in her mouth. “He wasn’t anybody’s sacerdos when his mother squeezed him out of her belly and into my hands, wet and red and raw.” Aelfric blanched, but she ploughed on. “And in my hands he’d have stayed, if the wench hadn’t kittened off three more and died and left them to starve. I sent him here to get learning and his dinners. Why does a child bring me a message to fetch him home, if I care for his life? Where is my boy?”

Bertwald the shepherd suddenly came to life. He seized Hilde’s shoulder. “Grandmother. Oslaf is there!”

Shielding her eyes, Hilde searched the group of men on the hillside. She emitted a shriek. “That skeleton? No!” She tried to seize the gate out of Aelfric’s hand, and when that failed, dodged aside and started scrambling over the wall. Bertwald gave her an assisting shove from behind, and Cai, seeing that nothing would prevent her from barrelling down the other side, darted to catch her. Bertwald followed her, and the two ran off upslope.

Cai was left standing with Aelfric. Alone? No, not quite, although the abbot seemed suddenly deserted, the clerics fading off into the background. Fen had left the others. He had taken up position a few yards away and was watching Cai unfathomably. Cai remembered the sea, and the broad, windswept moors, and Eldra waiting in her paddock. He thought about freedom. Looking at Aelfric, but speaking more to Fen, he said, “I think the men here will obey me. They know me, and they know I mean them good. I think they will do as I say.”

Aelfric gaped. “What do you mean, you heretic?”

“You can frighten them into submission for a while. I don’t doubt that. And I have no desire for leadership. You will remain abbot, with all due deference paid you.”

“You… Are you daring to offer me this? My own God-given place?”

“Yes,” Cai said frankly. He didn’t want to. He wanted to run to Fen where he was waiting—yes, waiting for whatever the outcome of this would be, his own freedom granted and untaken. “It’s not much of a place, Aelfric. A handful of monks on the edge of the world. But you’ve failed with them, haven’t you? Not even your own men have the heart to help you now.”

“Be silent, you cur.”

“In a moment. You can leave if you wish, take back the news of your failure to your masters and leave us in peace. I don’t think you will, though. These men need a leader. I can do it kindly, and you’ll have a community here, under your authority in name if not in fact. I won’t humiliate you.”

“You won’t what?” Aelfric began a low cackle. It was a terrible sound, hysteria and madness seething an inch from the surface. “Kneel to me, brute! Abase yourself!”

Cai shivered. The breeze was warm, and Aelfric was making this so hard, holding open a door onto the whole wide world. Cai’s resolution wavered, his newborn ideas of his duty too fragile to bind him down. Fen was waiting. He began to walk away.

“Caius!”

Thin fingers closed on his sleeve. He shook his arm free, but came to a halt, watching the sun burnish Fen’s hair to copper and fire.

“Brother Caius. If you do this…what is it that you want?”

I just want Fen. Cai almost said it, the wave of need so intense he wondered that it didn’t knock Aelfric down. Aelfric had run after him. Cai doubted he had ever run a step after any man in his life. His eyes were murderously bright at having been forced to it now.

“I want,” Cai began, choosing his words carefully, “for my abbot Theo’s body to be left in peace in the crypt. I want my brother Benedict given his funeral rites and sanctified burial in our graveyard here.” He waited, but Aelfric just stared. “And I want you to step aside and let that woman take her grandson home, with no more threats or fulminations from you to darken his mind.”

A keening wail from up the slope made him turn. Oslaf had fallen. The old woman, her face a mask of grief, was hauling him up across her lap, so pale that Cai wondered if grief and shock had snapped the fragile cords of life in him. The other monks were clustered round, not touching or helping—bewildered at having a woman in their midst, even one like this, as plain and good as the bread they all had been brought up on. Even Theo had taught that a monk should stay clear of them. For the first time, a flame of impatient questioning sprang up in Cai’s heart. What kind of faith made strangers, enemies, of half the world?

He was about to run to Oslaf’s aid when Bertwald stepped forwards. He leaned down over his fallen brother, raised him tenderly off Hilde’s lap. He lifted him effortlessly, and Oslaf gave a short, lost cry and hid his face against his shoulder. Without a word, Bertwald set off, cradling his burden, Hilde scrambling to follow.

Cai stopped her as she passed. “You must be weary.” He glanced at Aelfric, who had stepped aside as bidden and was waiting with his hands locked white-knuckle tight by the gate. “The abbot will give you shelter for the night.”

“Shelter?” She peered at him from reddened eyes. “You’re a good boy. You sent that message, didn’t you? But there’s no shelter to be had here, not for our kind.”

“All right. In that case…the abbot will send someone after you with food and drink.” He waited. After giving him a look that should have shrivelled him to dust on the ground, Aelfric turned and stalked off in the direction of the kitchens.

 

 

Cai sank down on the turf bank that curved round inside the monastery wall. The bank was ancient, the wall by comparison new, the invention of yesterday. Untold generations of men and women had found this place desirable, worthy of defence, had built their banks and grown their crops and lived and died, long before the creed of Christ had been thought of. Cai put his face into his hands. What had happened to them—all those people? He envied them their peace, their very absence. They were nothing but the traces they’d left in the sunny earth. “What have I done?”

A warmth settled by him. “You’ve taken this place for your own.” A low, rumbling laugh. “And no blood spilled. My people have no word for such a victory.”

“Victory…” Cai clutched at his skull. Soon he would start laughing too, and that was no good—it would undo him, and then he would weep. After Bertwald, good brother shepherd, had loaded Oslaf up onto the donkey and led him away, Hilde bringing up a dignified rear, Cai had found the whole remaining congregation of Fara looking at him, awaiting their orders. He’d given them—quietly, hands spread in surrender—What are you waiting for? The beasts in the fields are hungry. Bread needs to be made, mead brewed for the market. Go to your work. “I don’t want such a victory. What are you still doing here?”

The warmth became a pressure. Fen’s arm closed around his shoulders, so deep a pleasure that Cai swore he wouldn’t look, not until he had to. He would have this moment, and not see the farewell in Fen’s eyes.

“Caius.”

“What?”

“You’re staying, aren’t you? Since you just made yourself the abbot of this place.”

“No! I did not. All I did was help them.”

“You took them into your hands.” Fen tightened his embrace. “You’re not a man to let go of them, not after that. You’re going to stay.”

Cai lifted his head. The tears had come anyway, shaming him. He knocked them away. “Well?” he asked roughly. “What of it?”

“Aelfric has taken your terms. He had to. But he isn’t sane, and you have made him hate you. Such natures breed poison, and can poison men’s minds even in their own madness.”

Cai looked at him in disbelief. “Thanks,” he said faintly, the marrow of his bones trying to melt in the heat of the amber gaze fastened on him. “You think I don’t know all that? Why are you telling me?”

“Because you’ll need help.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And if you need mine, I will stay.”