Chapter Twenty

A strange, wild faith was kindling inside Cai at last. It was nothing like Leof’s, nothing even Theo could have taught him. Its fires had first touched him during the storm, when he had been shipwrecked and Fen had pulled him from the waves. He had been nothing but a heartbeat in a skeleton, nothing but breathing flesh, and so it was now. His purpose was only to meet the next rush of sunlit wind against his face, and the next, as the horse bore him onwards.

Fen was near. Cai knew it, as certainly as if he were back in the sea with that strong arm reaching down for him. Perhaps he was already at Fara, dishing out orders and chivvying the brethren into action. The very air was sweeter in Cai’s lungs for his closeness. The perfection of the moment wrapped him round.

He could hear voices now. He could make out separate figures through the glimmering light. At the head of the Viking force, a vast charioteer was tearing across the plain. His hair flew out behind him, thick as a sheepskin. When he raised his arm and roared, a noisy chorus roared back at him.

Sigurd! Sigurd! Sigurd!

Sigurd, Fen’s warlord. The leader of the Torleik clan, deposed by Fen’s brother and cast out. How had Gunnar ever managed to defeat such a bear of a man? Well, he had risen from his ashes. His warriors were yelling his name like a battle cry, like the song of a war god. His two-horse chariot was flying full pelt towards Broc’s front line, so fast that he was opening a gap between himself and his own men.

Only one horseman was able to keep up with him. The beautiful horse he was riding kept perfect pace with the chariot. The contrast between him and Sigurd could not have been greater—the one a solid wall of muscle, flesh and fur, the other a lean, graceful shape whose flag of copper hair seemed to take light from the sun.

Cai saw and understood. The burgeoning faith in his heart snapped out, a candle snuffed in brutal fingers. Clover sensed the change in him and lost momentum, and he let her falter to a halt right in the middle of the plain.

“Caius! Damn you, boy—get the hell out of my way.”

Cai didn’t move. He couldn’t turn his head—not even for his father. He had let Fen go. The sorrow of that had eaten him alive. But nothing in his loneliness had taught him what it would be to see him return as his enemy. Despair seized him, colder than death.

And Fen had seen him too. He peeled away from Sigurd’s side, his magnificent russet-red cloak floating out behind him. Briefly the sight of him wiped Cai’s mind clean of anything but his beauty. Cai had fallen in love with a Viking, a warrior. The warrior had taken on a cassock and gone about his duties at Fara as a monk, but he was a Viking still, and now for the first time Cai saw him restored. His throat went dry as dust. Fen was heading straight for him. So be it. Cai wouldn’t so much as draw his sword. Even now, a voice of unbreakable trust told him Fen would strike neatly, end his life fast and cleanly.

“Gleipnir! Bring back Gleipnir!”

That wasn’t Broc’s voice or Fen’s. It wasn’t in Cai’s own tongue, but the words of the Dane Lands were part of his heart’s language now. Sigurd’s troops were slowing up, all of them gazing after Fen. And Fen was holding at arm’s length a thin banner, a streamer flying behind him on the wind.

“Fenrisulfr!” Sigurd was hauling his chariot to a stop. His mouth was open, his face a blank of outrage and dismay. “Fenrir, you devil—bring Gleipnir back.”

“No!” Fen rode Eldra full tilt to Cai’s side. He didn’t stop there, but reined her in hard so that she made a circle round him, one then another, as if seeking to shield him not only from Sigurd but from someone behind him. At last Cai broke his paralysis and saw Broccus pounding down on him, howling with rage at the sight of his son in league with an enemy soldier. “No!” Fen yelled again, brandishing the ribbon. “Hætta! All of you stop!” And then, in full view of his warlord and his Viking comrades, he held out the ribbon to Cai.

“Take it,” he said quietly. “Take it now, beloved. Can you translate to the Celts for me?”

If I can speak at all. Cai took the fluttering strip of leather in a numbed-out grasp. “I will try.”

“Hold that up. Let them see I’ve given Gleipnir to you. Sigurd!”

A roar like an avalanche came back. Cai could barely pick out words from it, but Sigurd’s livid face gave him the gist. Still, not one of the Viking men moved. Cai didn’t understand. He and Fen were an easy target out here. If Sigurd wanted Gleipnir, he could come and get it, unless… He lifted the ribbon as Fen had told him. He gestured with it, letting the wind make it fly.

The Viking men fell back.

“Fen. What’s going on?”

“Tell the others what I say. Sigurd, stop this fight! There won’t be a battle here today.”

Strong, simple words. Lost in disbelief, Cai turned to his father and the mismatched group of chieftains and farmers hauling up to a disorganised halt all around him. He could translate easily. “Stop,” he cried, the beginnings of a grin tugging at his mouth. “Stop the battle. Nobody fights today.”

“Sigurd, I couldn’t stop you from coming here. But no Torleik warrior will lay hands on the man who saved my life. Who became to me more than a brother. Nor will they harm his tribe, or his…” Fen looked quickly from Broc to Cai, making the connection, “…or his family.”

These words were harder to convey, but Cai did his best, blushing with pleasure at the sound of them. “Fenrir forbids the Torleik to harm me. I am his… More than his brother. So they won’t harm my tribe either. Not even you, old man.”

“Caius, you whelp. Is that Viking on my bloody horse?”

“No. On mine, since you gave her to me. She’s called Eldra now.” Cai stopped, distracted by a rumble of hooves and wheels. Sigurd had finally broken rank. “Fen, is he frightened of Gleipnir? Take it back.”

“No. I have to make him frightened of me—it’s long past time.” Fen waited. He manoeuvred Eldra so that she stood fearlessly between Sigurd’s oncoming chariot and Cai, and as Sigurd tried to rush past him, seized his rein. A sound of disbelief rose from the vikingr troops, and Cai understood that this was Fen’s challenge—a head-on contest for leadership, one warlord to another. “Sigurd, I have given Gleipnir to this man, to do with as he wishes. He is worthy.”

“Worthy? You have given our power to him, you traitor.”

“This poor strip of leather? You believe that?”

Sigurd’s face suffused with rage. He tried to jerk the rein free, but Fen held fast. “Of course not. But they all do, and so I can command them.”

“Not anymore. I give my allegiance to the Britons, and they aren’t easy prey, not now. There will be resistance…” Fen paused, glancing in amusement at Broc’s army. Some looked like fierce Roman soldiers. Others were brandishing pitchforks. “As you’ll find out, if you start a fight. Go back and tell them that. Now.”

Cai braced. Sigurd’s brow lowered until he looked ready to spit thunderbolts. Fen was going to lose this standoff, surely. Cai would live with the results. He wrapped Gleipnir round his wrist and reached for his sword. It wouldn’t be a bad end, to vanish fighting underneath a wave of vikingr wrath. To drown there with Fen by his side.

“Traitor,” Sigurd repeated, but his voice rasped on it. He shook his rein again, and this time Fen let him go. Cai watched in disbelief as he pulled his horses round and began to retreat.

Fen brought Eldra snorting and prancing to Clover’s side. “Holy gods almighty,” he declared, swallowing audibly. “I never thought that would work.”

“You never did…”

“Oh, Cai. Listen to me, please.” He laid a hand on Cai’s arm, and Cai put his own hand on top, heat rushing through him at the touch. “When I left you… I promise you, beloved, I thought I could help my people. I thought I had to. For nothing less would I have…”

He faltered. Cai squeezed his fingers. “I know.”

“But when I got there, Sigurd wasn’t in exile. He’d come back, and he was rousing an invasion force to come here and ravage this country for everything we need at home. I tried to stop him. I told him the only way to mend things was to mend our land. But winter is coming. The Torleik are starving.”

“And he wouldn’t listen to you.”

“No. When he knew I had Gleipnir, he put all his faith in it and set out here. So all I could do was ride with him, then take my chance once I got here. I’ve backed him down in front of his men now, and given you Gleipnir.”

“What happens now?”

“He’ll obey me. And you, if you’re strong enough.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Speak to them—my men and yours.”

Cai nodded. Fen was so close that he could catch his longed-for scent in the air. He would have done anything. “I will. What else?”

“What else?”

“Something more you want to ask me, love. I can see it in your eyes.”

Fen shivered. “Breath wasn’t worth drawing for me once I’d left you behind. I want your forgiveness. To stand once again at your side.”

“Yes. Always. Go back to Sigurd now, though.”

“Oh, gods. Why?”

Cai raised the hand he held. He pressed its knuckles to his lips, in full view of Broc’s warrior’s and Sigurd’s. “Because if I’m going to speak to him, you’ll have to translate for me.”

Caius held the sacred relic high. It was like a powerful wave, he thought, rushing up a wide, lonely shore. The vikingr warriors shifted like kelp in the currents, leaning towards it yearningly, shrinking back when the wind made it swing round towards them. Only Fen sat proud and still. He had taken up a place by Sigurd’s chariot. The warlord was waiting. He looked tired, as if some vital essence had passed out of him. Off to Cai’s left, Broc was waiting too. It was time.

Cai rode Clover slowly into the middle of the sun-blown turf. When he moved, he felt invisible shapes move with him in the wind, keeping close to him, casting no shadows. Leof, he thought, for the first time with no pain. Theo—now I know how the treasure of Fara can bring peace.

“Hear me!” he called. For a moment he wanted to laugh. Who was he, to stand between armies and demand that they listen to him? Then the breeze caught Gleipnir, and it tugged in his fist like a living thing, a sea serpent coiling. He let it fly out like a banner. The runic words burned into it seemed to swirl and dance around him. The cord that binds the wolf…

“Hear me. I wield Gleipnir. No man will fight here today.” He waited for the roar of derision, but none came. Sigurd was frowning, listening to Fen for translation, and as for Broccus… Once more Cai swallowed down laughter. He’d never seen such a face before. One of Broc’s hounds could have spoken and astonished him less. “I wield Gleipnir, and…I command you to look around you. Look at the men gathered here—vikingr and old Roman, Saxon farmers, and…” he patted himself on the chest, then gestured at the looming rock of Fara, “…and my kind too, the soldiers of Christ. Each convinced the land belongs to them. At least these vikingr pirates know they’re invaders. The rest of us have forgotten—we are too.”

A rumble from the hillfort warriors. Cai turned to them—to Broc, meeting the dark eyes that were so like his own. “Yes. The waves of change break on this shore, over and over again. There never was such thing as a pureblood Briton, and…” He paused. Maybe Danan’s draught was working on him still. He seemed to stand on a brink. There would be a time when conflicts like this one would devour a whole nation. A world. “And there never will be, Broc. Not even you.”

The flickering visions faded. All that was left was the light, the sea air, the vast sky above him owned only by the wind. “Look at this land,” he said. “It’s huge. It’s empty—I can walk for days and not meet another living soul.” Clover shifted, and he let her turn so that he too could see the great wide spaces of his home. “There’s room for every one of you here—for settlers, not raiders. Men who will come to build houses and farms, sustain themselves by work, not theft and plunder. No, Broc—listen. We too came here as conquerors. Our Roman fathers tried to seize the land and…and they found they could only become a part of it. At least—the only ones left are men like you, who did, who stayed and had children and…”

Cai jerked his head up. He had started to speak to Broccus only, and the Vikings were waiting. “And now I tell you, men like me—Christians, who say they serve the word of Christ but have gone deaf to its meaning—are starting to put out the lights of learning and freedom. I won’t let anyone—vikingr or Saxon, Roman or Celt—bring down that darkness. Not while I have a breath in my lungs.”

Gleipnir stopped its dance. It fluttered down and lay tamely over Clover’s neck. If there had been any magic in it, the power was spent. And Cai was finished too. He sat quietly, letting Clover shake her head and snort. Whatever would come next would come.

“Caius!”

Cai turned. Fen was looking up from low-voiced conference with Sigurd, and he was smiling. Cai knew that smile. Good luck with this one, monk…

“Sigurd has something to say to you. He says…” The grin widened. “He couldn’t care less about learning and freedom. But he’ll take the land, if you’re giving it away.”

Cai shook his head. His answering smile rose up. “Not mine to give. If it’s anyone’s, it’s my father’s. I’m sure he’ll be willing to step forwards now and deal with Sigurd for it—by negotiation.” He shot a glance at Broc, who was puce, his mouth hanging open. “Or they could fight. They’re pretty well matched up, aren’t they—his farmers and your pirates. They’d do a grand job of wiping each other out.”

 

 

Caius left the battleground. He touched his heels to Clover’s sides and turned her head towards the sea. Was it a battleground that lay behind him, or a chamber of council, roofless and open to the light? For himself, he couldn’t care anymore. He was done. He had all his work cut out to stay aboard his rocking mount as she surged to a choppy gallop and took him away.

Other hoofbeats, faster and lighter. Cai cared about those. Still he didn’t look back. No plough horse could make such a sound. He risked closing his eyes for a moment. Instantly vertigo grabbed him and he opened them again, and it had been enough—Fen was right there at his side. Eldra fell into effortless pace, a swan beside a hard-swimming Addy duck.

Fen put out a hand. “Where are we going?”

“I don’t know. The dunes. Just…away.”

“Yes. Good.”

“Not too fast. Clover can’t keep up.” And nor can I. Why is it so hard to breathe?

“You called your warhorse Clover?”

“It was short notice. Just ride.”

Off the coastal plain and into the hills, where earth turned to sand beneath the turf, where marram whipped freshly in the wind. Where salt and the manes of white horses made the air crackle with life, sustaining Cai a little longer—long enough to gallop after Fen deep into the maze of crests and sandy troughs.

“Here,” he called, when his hold on Clover’s reins began to slip. “Fen, stop here.”

Eldra came snorting to a halt. Fen turned her neatly and brought her to stand beside Clover. “Is it far enough?”

“Yes. It’ll have to be.”

“Cai…” Fen took hold of his shoulder once more. He looked into Cai’s face. Cai didn’t dare look back. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Can you see them from here—Sigurd and my father?”

“If I ride back up this crest. Wait a moment. Yes.”

“Are they fighting?”

“No. They’re still where we left them. They’re…talking, I think, if you’ll believe it.”

Cai chuckled. “Just barely. If you’re here, though—who’s translating?”

“Does Broccus speak Latin?”

“A little.”

“Well, Sigurd speaks a little less, but maybe it’s enough. Your father seems to be drawing something on the ground.”

“Partitioning his lands, perhaps.”

“Does he really own them?”

“Not an acre. But if that’s what it takes…”

“Yes. Sigurd won’t ask to see his deeds. Cai…?” Fen leapt off Eldra. He came running down the dune and took hold of Clover’s bridle. “Why are you so pale? You were mending when I left, weren’t you?” He reached up. Cai began to dismount. Fen would help him down, and then he would be fine. But something went wrong between Clover’s broad back and the sand. The noise of the sea had got inside his head. When he tried to tell Fen about this—to lean down and find his embrace—his eyes filled with salt water too, blinding him. And then the sun went black.

 

 

My only grief is that I can’t deceive you. Cai lay listening to the thud of a heart that was now so much stronger than his own. He was curled up with Fen in the sheltering arm of the dunes. The wind was growing chilly as the dusk came down, but he could scarcely feel it. He had awoken wrapped in a beautiful cloak, its soft red wool drawn closely all round him. Fen had been holding it there, holding him. Briefly he had tried to lie. But the damn cough had started, racking him, for the first time bringing blood.

“Why is it happening?”

“The wound’s healing badly, I think.” Cai was calm now. His words no longer came in crimson rags. His head was on Fen’s shoulder. “Binding up one of my lungs.”

“What can I do? I will bring you a physician.”

Cai smiled at the imperious tone. “Knock one over the head and bring him to me hogtied?”

“If necessary.”

“It isn’t. I’ve had the opinion of the best doctor for miles around. The only one, as it happens. It’s all right, love. It doesn’t even bother me now.”

“It doesn’t hurt?”

“It did until today.”

Fen took his face between his hands. He brushed back Cai’s fringe, wiped a trace of blood from his lips with the pad of his thumb. He was so lovely to Cai in the fading light—his haughty features softened, the breeze blowing his hair to kestrel’s-wing feathers across his brow. “But it will get better?”

Cai couldn’t deceive him. He could hold his peace, though. He buried his hands in the heavy, warm hair, kissed the sculpted profile where the setting sun was limning it in gold.

Fen shuddered deeply and moved to lie over him, bearing his weight on his arms. “Tell me the truth,” he growled. “I’ll take your silence for your answer otherwise.”

“Don’t. Just touch me. I have been hungry for you.”

“And I for you. I have starved. Why did we do it?”

“We thought we had our duty.”

“Yes. But I missed weeks of you, months of…”

Months of whatever I have left. Cai captured Fen’s mouth before the words could come. “Never again,” he whispered, between one fervid kiss and the next. “My only duty is to you.”

“And mine to you.”

Solstice to solstice, hand to hand… Their rough interchange called into Cai’s head the words of the vow, the chant Danan had begun for them and then stopped when she caught sight of their futures. She had been right—Fen hadn’t had a year and a day to give, and now neither did Cai. And yet here they were. He wrapped his arms round Fen’s shoulders, and something tugged at his wrist, restricting him. “Fen, I’ve still got… Look. Gleipnir.”

“Bury it. Chuck it in the sea. It took me away from you.”

“And brought you back. Give me your hand, love.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t want…”

“No. To finish what Danan started.”

Fen caught his breath. Carefully he unwound the relic from around Cai’s arm. “The handfasting?”

“Yes. I know the words.”

“Then say them.” Fen wrapped the ribbon tight round their joined wrists—awkward, and not in the intricate pattern Danan had begun, but it was tight and hot and it would do.

“It feels like using up the last of the magic in it.”

“If it’s so, then you can only use it once. Not like Danan’s ribbon—not just for a year and a day.”

“I would never take your freedom, Fen.”

“You are my freedom. Bind us. Bind the wolf.”

Cai swallowed. “Solstice to solstice, hand to hand, from blood-mother earth to the heart of man…” He couldn’t go on. Instead he hung on to his end of the strand, and Fen grasped the other, tighter and tighter until their veins ached and pounded with the force of pent-up pulse.

Then Fen released them both, gasping. “Can I love you? Can I have you without hurting you?”

“I don’t care if it bloody kills me. Find a way.”

Fen undid Cai’s shirt. He knelt over him, unthreading its leather fastening one loop at a time. With the same deliberation he pulled out its hem from Cai’s belt, and lifted, exposing his belly. Cai hadn’t looked at his own flesh in daylight in months. He didn’t look down now—kept his gaze fixed on Fen’s, reading there all the changes in himself, the message of the wound that hadn’t healed. Fen caressed the scar. Cai arched his back in response, his skin sending wild mixed signals of pleasure and pain to swirl around in his head, raising waves of goose bumps, suddenly lifting his cock. “God. I wasn’t sure I could anymore.”

“That’ll be the last thing to go, if I know my Caius.” Fen’s grin was too bright, and he swiped the heel of one hand across his eyes before returning his attention to his task. “Sit up a little way. I want this shirt off you.”

Cai shivered in the wind, until Fen drew the cloak round him tighter and leaned over him, shielding him, kissing his shoulders. He brushed the flat of his palm over Cai’s groin, teasing and promising before he tore his belt buckle open and pushed his hand down inside.

His grip was perfect. He had learned Cai’s body in the waves of Addy’s island, in the summer hayfields, in these dunes. He knew the tender dip between his balls where a light touch was unbearable but an outright grasp, a squeeze of one finger into the sensitive gap, would wring out cries of pleasure, call up climax even from exhausted flesh.

Cai writhed and clutched at him. “Yes. Like that. No.”

Fen gave a muffled grunt of laughter. “Yes? No?”

“It wasn’t just your hand I missed on all those nights. It was all of you.”

“I want you comfortable on a bunk somewhere before you get…all of me.”

“Not like that. I mean I want you in my arms.”

“I don’t want to put weight on you.”

“Beside me, then. I’m still good for that. Oh, God, Fen, please.”

Fen stretched out at his side. Cai drew him in so that they were sharing the warmth of the beautiful cloak. He undid the wolf’s-head belt, and Fen’s fingers tangled with his in the urgent undoing of his leggings. He gasped with impatience—his Viking was girded for battle, another of those cunningly worked bronze cock-pieces shielding his manhood, stitched into his subligaculum. “That can’t help you now.”

“Help me? It’s strangling me. Help me get it off.”

Between them they unwound him. Cai sobbed in relief as at last the garment was out of the way and Fen shoved his hips forwards, his hand on Cai’s backside holding him still to receive the long, shuddering stroke. Held and braced like this, Cai could push back. He groaned beneath the next thrust and the next, an anvil where the white-hot fetters of the wolf were being forged, and then he hurled himself into the fire, all pain and injury and shadowing death forgotten.

Fen clutched him close. Their mouths met roughly, muffling howls of climax. Sand shifted under them, receiving their struggle, cushioning its aftermath as Cai rolled up and onto his lover’s body, hammering out the last of his strength. He fell and Fen caught him, easing him into the endless embrace of the dunes.

 

 

“Cai, when did Addy come home?”

Cai stopped brushing sand out of his clothes. There was little point to it anyway—he’d be washing it out of his crevices for weeks. He thought of the weeks, and the washes, perhaps down in the sapphire pools, Fen splashing and complaining of the cold beside him. How many days might be left to him? It didn’t matter, he decided. His lung was tight and aching now. The next fit of coughing might tear him apart and finish it, and he’d never think himself short-changed, not after…

He looked up at Fen, who was standing on the crest that overlooked the plain, holding the two horses. He had just retrieved them. They had wandered off placidly together, united in their good opinion of the turf at the foot of the dunes. The plain was now deserted. Had Broc and Sigurd too found peace for the sake of good land?

His passion-fogged brain cleared a little. “Addy? He didn’t—not that I know.”

“Look.”

Cai stumbled up to join him. Fen’s arm closed tight round his waist. He pointed off into the dusk. “There. Down by the islets, the place where you said the first monks from Hibernia settled. Near the green mounds.”

Cai leaned on him to look. The night was falling fast, the light shifting before his eyes could adjust. He’d never really noticed that the ancient beehive cells were surrounded by mounds, but they were. In the spring they were covered with every scented and dancing shoreline flower you could imagine—celandine, harebells and yarrow, sea pinks and thyme, snowy drifts of scurvy grass. It must always have been such a beautiful place, its sanctity held, deep and potent, in its very rocks. And yes—down by the worn wooden cross, a frail but vigorous figure in a plain brown cassock. “I can see him. I didn’t hear anything about him coming home—he’s still the bishop of Hexham.”

Fen broke into laughter. “Perhaps they threw him out. He’s got a girl with him.”

The girl was leading Addy by the hand. The old man was following her serenely. The sun dipped down between two bands of cloud and threw one final bright lance across Fara and the sea. Cai’s distance vision was no match for Fen’s, but suddenly the whole scene crystallised. She was wearing a green robe. Her hair blazed around her like an aura, and in this light Cai couldn’t tell if it was fair or…

Fair or white. “Fen, that’s Danan.”

“What—your old salamander from the fire?”

Salamander, witch, hare. Traveller by unknown tunnels beneath the sea and currents of air in the night. “She’s wearing all her jewellery. She made me trade for it over the years, but she never put it on, just hid it like a dragon in a cave. Do you see her earrings?”

“Yes, but…”

“Those are coral flowers in Roman gold.”

“It’s her daughter, then. Her granddaughter.”

She doesn’t have one, as far as I know. But the lives of our fellow souls are strange to us, most of them hidden like a dragon’s gold, and perhaps Fen is right. Cai leaned his brow on Fen’s shoulder, and shuddered in pleasure as the grip around him tightened. “What is she doing with Addy?”

“I don’t know, but he seems pleased about it. Look, they’ve seen us.”

The girl raised her free hand. It was gleaming from wrist to elbow with Danan’s horde of bracelets, and her smile was just as bright. Addy’s too, when he turned and waved to them. They were standing at the foot of the largest green mound. Slowly, as if in a dream, Cai lifted his hand and waved back.

“Cai, look at all the seals.”

“Seals? Where?”

“All over the rocks there. I thought they were the rocks. Is it a haul-out time?”

“No. The tide’s wrong. God—listen to them.”

The seals began to sing. Hundreds of them—grey, mottled, inky-wet black, from smallest pups to mountainous grand-dams—were congregated on the rocks of Fara. They tipped up their sleek heads. The noise that rose up should have been a raucous clatter, huffing and barking, echoing off the cliffs. Instead it took flight on the wind and whirled up to fill the dusk from sea to zenith like a mermaid’s song of worship to the sky. And when Cai looked back to find Danan and Addy, they were gone.