Chapter Five

The evening light was sweet. Now that June was here, the scurvy grass was in full flower, masses of it carpeting the rocks and turf along the shoreline. Scattered sea thrift broke its fragrant snowdrifts with taller pink blossoms that danced in the wind. The combined scents, blowing in on a warm sunset breeze, washed over Cai where he sat on a bench outside the armoury. Cai set down the axe he had been polishing and leaned back.

He could pretend, here in the last light, that all was well. The armoury was just a barn. Its sandstone blocks had soaked up a day’s worth of heat, radiating out now against Cai’s spine. The tide was low, the spur of sand that led to the islets exposed. There, beyond the bright green mermaid’s-hair kelp and the stones that sometimes yielded tiny, intriguing beads Theo had called sea-lily stems, the first monks of Fara had made their homes. Traces were still to be seen of their cells, not rooms in a dormitory hall but individual huts made out of stone, each one shaped like a beehive. Cai had thought his own life at the monastery tough, after the relative riches of his father’s court, but these first comers—holy men from Hibernia and the far west of Scotia—must have existed on little more than seaweed and blind faith.

No, perhaps not blind. There was a peace and sense of purpose on this shore. The Hibernian saints had come here of their own free will, without an abbot or a settled Church to guide them, and here they had lived out their lives, listening to God’s word on the wind and the water. A hermit’s cave remained there still, marked by a poignant, plain wooden cross. Theo, too lively and sociable a creature to withstand a hermit’s life, had spoken with a kind of longing admiration of these men even while he prepared his brethren’s next lesson in astronomy or physics.

Music joined the flower scents and skeined itself through them on the breeze. Cai closed his eyes. In this world where all was well, his brothers were singing. The church walls were finished, new timbers arching over the space they enclosed. The work of thatching would take longer, so the voices rose unfettered, a rich chant for vespers. Laban, Aelfric’s grim-faced deputy, concealed a pure tenor inside his scrawny chest and an unexpected gift for teaching the ragbag voices of Fara to join in harmoniously with it. The labours of the fields were disrupted, brethren running everywhere in their attempts to keep up with the new routine of Hours, but in spring it could almost be done, and Cai had to admit the music was lovely. Leof would have delighted in it.

He allowed himself to drift, imagining he could pick out Leof’s clear note from the mingled voices. He had been up since dawn. The infirmary was clear of all but the most serious cases from the battle a fortnight before, but John required constant attendance, and the Viking, after his wild declarations of princedom and intended murder, had lapsed into a strange, half-waking passivity, watching Cai’s movements about the quarantine cell with dull, hooded eyes, accepting from him spoonfuls of broth before turning his head aside. He hadn’t spoken again, in Latin or his own language. Cai was beginning to think he’d dreamed their exchange after that night of fever and blood.

He tipped his head back against the stone. As well as doctoring, he’d put in his duty shift as shepherd, helped with the silage crop and carried out his daily drill with the warrior brethren of Fara. At least this last was getting easier. Now that they’d won a fight, his unlikely soldiers trained with confidence as well as hope. They slashed and parried in the ruined hall, and sang like angels for Laban. Wondering at the strangeness of the world, Cai let go, weary nature having her way with him.

He awoke in darkness. No one had come looking for him, but no one would, not now. A figure coalesced out of the gloom—Demetrios, collecting the fresh leaves of the scurvy grass by light of the thin new moon, a trick Danan had taught for capturing their freshness. Cai drew breath to greet him, then changed his mind. Demetrios was pretending with great sincerity not to have seen him. The Greek had been devoted to Theo. So had Benedict and Oslaf. There wasn’t a soul within the whole of Fara’s bounds who didn’t have cause to detest the vikingr—and equal reason to mistrust the man who had brought one into their midst, healed him and harboured him there. They took their fighting orders from Cai, did as he bade them on the training ground, and left him afterwards without a word.

Cai didn’t blame them. Sometimes he thought back to the night of Theo’s feast, the lights and the chatter and the smallpipe music, and a slow ache of loneliness would drag through him. Everything had changed since then. He lived in a world of hard work and readiness to fight, not companionship and learning. Even Aelfric was leaving him alone, just as he’d asked, not harrying him over his haircut or his failure to turn up nine times a day for prayers.

He watched Demetrios fade into the dusk, his basket of herbs balanced on one hip. It was time he went back in too. Oslaf took shifts in the ward, but he wouldn’t feed or tend Fenrir. Cai had no idea why he did it himself.

Something clattered in the barn. Cai bolted off the bench and stood rigid, staring into the darkness beyond the open door. He’d thought nothing could scare him after two Viking raids, but like most of his brethren he jumped like a cat at sudden noises. Probably a sword had come down off its makeshift rack. Gathering his robes so he could move in silence, he eased into the barn.

There was just enough light, once his eyes had adjusted. Quickly he worked his way along the racks and shelves, checking that everything was in place. He kept the armoury as orderly as his ward cabinets now, restlessly tidying and cleaning after each drill. He needed to know he could run here and lay hands on any weapon he chose, dole them out in proper order to his fighting men. Nothing was on the floor. Hands outstretched, Cai made a fingertip count of dagger hafts, shields, longstaffs…

And came up one short on the swords. He froze, listening intently. The barn had ventilation windows on its landward side, high up in the wall but large enough to let a man climb through. A tall, determined one, anyway. Blindly Cai counted his broadsword handles again. Broc’s were all there, round and crude from the hillfort’s smithy. So were the better ones the monks had stripped from the bodies of the Vikings they’d killed. The only one missing had a wolf’s-head bronze casting on its hilt.

Cai ran. He didn’t try to follow the intruder through the windows. A dash down the overgrown track that edged the barn was quicker, if you didn’t mind nettle stings and scratches from the brambles. Lamps were still burning in the refectory. By their golden light, Cai made out a trail of crushed vegetation leading straight up to the main hall’s southern door.

The refectory was echoingly empty. No—there was Eyulf, sieving flour for the morning’s bread, his face as usual covered with white dust.

“Eyulf,” Cai called softly. “Have you seen…?” He remembered who he was talking to and shook his head. “Never mind. Just go to the dormitory barn and make sure the door is barred after you.”

He was turning away when Eyulf banged on the table with his spoon. He got up from the bench, stood on his tiptoes to make himself taller, drew down his brows in a terrible scowl and took a couple of prowling steps forwards. Then he pointed to the stairs.

At any other time, Cai would have laughed. “Thank you. Leave your bread for now, all right? I’ll find him.”

He should have rung the warning bell. He could have had a dozen fighting men at his side in a minute, helping him track down the rogue. Instead he padded softly down the torchlit corridor that led to Aelfric’s office and the rooms where the Canterbury men had established their base. No chance of those high dignitaries bunking down with the brethren in the barn. Maybe this was the night they would learn to regret their splendid isolation. Maybe they had already learned. Aelfric allowed only one torch to burn in each corridor, and only until the lights had exhausted themselves and burned out. It was a good economy. Cressets and lamp oil were lasting much longer at Fara these days, and darkness shut down all reading and study at sunset, as Aelfric’s God intended.

Cai slipped past Theo’s study, where lights used to blaze in improvident splendour halfway through the night. He rounded the corner into the narrow passageway beyond. Empty, and the doors to the clerics’ cells intact, as far as he could see…

Firelit shadows patched themselves into the shape of a man. The Viking, naked but for a blanket he’d hitched round his waist like a kilt, was leaning in a corner, his back pressed to the wall. His sword was clutched in both hands. His face was gaunt with pain, and Cai could count the hollows between each rib. “Fenrir!”

The Viking’s head jerked up. He swung to face Cai, raising the sword in a movement of practised, murderous beauty. “This isn’t your business, physician,” he hissed. “Go back to your ward.”

Cai strode to meet him, disregarding the blade. The Viking was about to drop it anyway. He was ready to fall. “You shouldn’t be out of your bed. What in God’s name are you doing here?”

“I have come to slay the scarecrow. My honour demands it. So should yours, but you are soft and puny. I shall do it for us both.”

Cai grabbed him. He took the sword from his hands before it could clatter onto the flags and wake the whole corridor, got a steadying grip round his waist. “I’ll show you how soft and puny I am in a minute, you stupid bastard. Nobody’s going to do any slaying here tonight. Come with me.”

“No. My flesh remembers his torment. I shall murder him, and then the one who held you back from aiding me. Then the one who walks past my bed without seeing when I thirst or hunger. Then the ones who do not meet your eyes when you speak to them, or turn away from you discourteously, or…”

“We can’t murder men for bad manners. As for Aelfric, I’d like to kill him too, but the others…” Cai pulled Fenrir’s arm around his shoulders. “The others are afraid of you.” He tucked the deadly wolf’s-head blade into the girdle of his cassock. “I can’t think why. Now come with me.”

“No. If you won’t let me slaughter these fools, turn me loose. I will go back to the beach, fend for myself until my brother comes back for me.”

“Gunnar?”

Fenrir twitched. He emitted a faint growl, twisted out of Cai’s grasp and slammed him against the wall, just below the guttering torch. “You will not say that name!”

Cai couldn’t say anything at all with a sinewy arm pressed to his throat. He couldn’t breathe, either. The Viking stared hard into his face. Freeing himself would have been easy—a knee to the groin or a jab to the healing wound—but he couldn’t bring himself to move. He wasn’t afraid. The press of a living body against his was a terrible comfort, even like this. A hot pressure like tears built up behind his eyes, and he ran his hand down Fenrir’s arm.

The vulpine features altered. It wasn’t exactly a softening—more the relaxation of a snarling hound bewildered by a caress. “You will not say the name,” he repeated, and sank to his knees at Cai’s feet.

“Oh, God.” Cai crouched beside him. The makeshift kilt was soaked with blood. “You’ve torn out your sutures. Come with me. Hold on to me. Come on.”

The journey back across the courtyard and up to the ward was painful. Oslaf met them in the doorway, his eyes wide. “Caius, forgive me. I only just noticed he was gone.”

Cai hefted his burden over the threshold and back into the quarantine cell. Fenrir was stumbling, barely conscious. “That’s because you didn’t look. Is his bunk mat clean? Fetch a fresh one before I lay him down.” Oslaf ran to obey, and together they eased the Viking flat. Cai began to examine his wound. “I understand your hate. I won’t force you to help with him, but if you can’t, you have to tell me, so he’s not left on his own.”

“Where did you find him? Why… Why are you wearing his sword?”

Cai had forgotten that. He undid the awkward weight from his girdle. “I need fresh sutures. Quick, before he comes round properly. He was outside our new abbot’s rooms.”

“With his sword? Cai, don’t you see? He’s going to murder us all in our beds.”

Cai couldn’t argue. “Well, just now he’d have a hard time getting back out of his own. I don’t care what you think, Oslaf—as long as he’s in here, he must be treated like anyone else.”

“Why?”

Cai frowned. It wasn’t like Oslaf to argue or question him, not like that. Maybe Benedict’s new chill was rubbing off. “Because I’m a doctor. Because—”

“No. Why bring him in the first place? Everyone loves you here. And they know it’s you they have to thank that we lived through the last raid. But they can’t forgive this.”

Threading a strand of sheep gut through a fine bone needle, Cai bent over his task. “I’m not looking for forgiveness,” he muttered. “Sage oil, please. Rags. As for my reasons…” I wounded him myself. He was alone. Theo spoke inside my head and told me to. None of these would do. Because he was beautiful, my wolf from the sea, and I couldn’t bear him to die. Cai bit his lip. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

He plunged the needle into the pale skin. Fenrir jerked on the bed. Oslaf was ready to hold him down, but this time instead of lashing out, the Viking only clutched the edges of the bunk.

“Sorry,” Cai told him, pulling the new suture tight. “I didn’t want to sedate you again. But I can, if you can’t bear this.”

Fenrir gave a low rumble of laughter, such a contrast to his pain-racked face that Cai and Oslaf both jumped. “I’ve felt your blade, monk. Your little prick…doesn’t bother me at all.”

Cai worked on. With an effort he kept his face straight. “Ah,” he said, when he thought his voice would be steady. “Viking humour. I’ve heard of this.”

“We do not call ourselves Vikings. We bear the names of our ancestral clans—Hallgrimr, Vigdis, Torleik. Nor do we raid in horned helmets, as your foolish Saxon bards would have it. The horns are for rituals only, the worship of Thor. Can you imagine—in a packed longship, or close-quarters battle…”

He couldn’t go on, and Cai finished stitching as deftly as he could. He pressed a wad of soothing willow extract onto the wound. “Yes. I suppose you’d have someone’s eye out.”

Fenrir smiled. It was the first time Cai had seen him do so naturally, without his lupine snarl. He turned away quickly, astounded at the charm of it—ashamed of his response. He shook out a fresh bandage and began to bind the wound up.

Oslaf was staring too. “He does speak like us.”

“Yes. I told you. His Latin is better than mine.”

“I thought him merely a beast.”

“Well, he isn’t.” Cai dared a glance into the gleaming agate eyes. “He’s a man, and a bloody dangerous one. So. Can you keep a watch on him while I’m not here, and treat him like a man as well as guard him?”

“Yes. Ask him to pardon my neglect of him—and my help in keeping him prisoner.”

You could ask him yourself. But Cai knew he was placing a huge burden on Oslaf as it was. He gestured to the younger monk that he could go, and returned his attention to his patient.

He worked on for a while in silence. As well as his pulled stitches, the Viking was covered with other cuts and grazes, trivial in a healthy man but each a possible gateway for infection after long illness. He cleaned the injuries methodically, making quite sure not to linger or let a swab become a caress. “Why am I not allowed to call your brother by his name? Am I considered too lowly?”

Fenrir focussed on him with an effort. He’d exhausted himself with his abortive hunt and was on the edge of sleep. “No. Well—yes, you are. But that isn’t the reason.”

“What, then?”

“My brother is the heir to Sigurd’s Torleik clan. Our lands are wider and richer by far than all Sigurd’s rival tribes put together. I wish my lord Sigurd health and long life, but when he dies, my brother will be powerful beyond imagination.”

Cai shrugged. “I’m pleased for him. Even a king has a name, though, and any peasant may use it.”

“You don’t understand. Gunnar is more than…” Fenrir’s brow furrowed as he searched for the word, or perhaps steeled himself to use it. “He is mine—bróðir minn. He is coming back for me. Until he does, his name belongs on my tongue only. How did you find it out?”

“You called it when you had a fever. And you still do, in your dreams.”

For the second time that night, Fenrir’s mask softened. Then he flushed in what could have been shame or anger, and he turned awkwardly away onto his side—not before Cai had seen the glitter of tears. “I forbid you to listen, then.”

“I’ll try.”

“And while we are discussing names—do me a kindness and stop trying to call me Fenrir. You cannot pronounce it, and the sound you make pains me.”

“What shall I call you, then?”

“Fen will do.”

“Very well. And since you sound like a sheep giving birth when you say mine, you’d better call me Cai.”

 

 

In the morning Fen was better. Cai, who had fallen asleep on a spare cot in the ward, awoke to the commanding ring of his voice. “You! Physician Cai’s dogsbody, Odleaf or whatever you are called—fetch him to me instantly. What has he done with my hair?”

Cai swung his legs off the bed. There were days at Fara when things were more difficult than others, and this one was off to a rare start. He took a moment to splash his face with water, then strode to Oslaf’s rescue. Fen was bolt upright on his bunk, his eyes bright with imperious life. Cai pushed the door closed behind him. “Keep your voice down. What the devil is wrong with you now?”

“My hair. Where is it? Where did you put my sword, and where is my fine helmet with the chased-silver cheek guards?”

“Your sword is locked up out of your reach. Your helmet…” Cai hesitated. He’d thought about using it, giving it to one of his warrior monks, but somehow the thing had repelled him. Behind its cruel mask, even a friend’s face would become a stranger’s. He’d locked it up inside a chest in the armoury. “Your helmet was lost. And as for your hair, I gave it to the tanner to stuff saddlebags.” That wasn’t true, but the look on Fen’s face was worth the price of the lie. “Don’t worry, it’ll grow back. You can look like a great louse-ridden thug again soon enough.”

Fen’s brows shot up to the place where his fringe had once been. “You’re a fine one to talk about lice. I’ve heard about you dirty Christians, mortifying your flesh beneath your robes until it rots—using your vows of poverty to excuse yourselves for sleeping in flea-ridden filth.”

“There, Oslaf. Aren’t you glad he’s started talking? Go and get your breakfast.” Cai advanced on his patient. “And you—keep a civil tongue in your head when you’re talking to the men who help you here. There’s precious few willing to do it. Have you passed water this morning? Was there blood in it?”

“You have no right to ask me such questions. You must show respect for me. You must—”

“A simple yes or no will do.”

Again, that unlikely blush. Cai couldn’t tell if it was rage or mortification, and wished he didn’t find so fascinating the movement of blood beneath the pale skin.

“Yes, then. And no.”

“Well, that’s good. You can get up. I’m about to teach you a few things about dirty Christians.” He hoisted Fen off the bunk by his armpits and deposited him on a bench. “This mattress—which I’m about to change for you yet again—is filled with the dried flowers of a plant called bedstraw, a natural repellent to fleas and other vermin. If it smells sweet, that’s because of the Tanacetum vulgare—tansy—that drives away ticks. We also use it to flavour our bread. As for mortifications of the flesh…” He threw a blanket at Fen and shook out the new mattress. “I can’t answer for the abbot and his clerics. But the man who used to rule us here—Abbot Theodosius—forbade us all such things. He said…” Cai paused, waiting till his voice would be steady again. He was remembering Theo catching Wilfrid by the arm one day, asking him why he was limping, and with gentle firmness making him hitch his cassock up to show the circlet of bramble thorns round his thigh. “He said it was monstrous to misuse the bodies God gave us. Like breaking a beautiful gift. Now, do you think you could walk with me down to the courtyard?”

“Walk with you? I could sling you over my shoulder and carry you there,” Fen returned, but with less of his customary snarl. He was watching Cai oddly, as if reassessing him. “Why should I, though?”

“I haven’t finished teaching you. Come on.”

“In my blanket?”

“No. In one of these.” Cai took a fresh cassock out of the linen chest. He waited for the outcry, but perhaps he’d shocked his patient speechless. Making the most of it, he shook the garment out. “As you say, it has a skirt. It’s also warm, comfortable and practical. Put it on.”

“Where… Where are my other clothes?”

“Incinerated, mostly. We salvaged what we could, but you’re not walking round this monastery dressed like a pirate.”

To his surprise, Fen took the garment from him. He stood up, letting his blanket drop. He showed no sign of consciousness at his nakedness, and Cai studiously failed to notice it either, waiting while Fen pulled the cassock over his head.

“With what shall I gird up my loins?”

He made a fine figure in the long brown robes. They had belonged to Brother Petros, who’d been about the same height. With his shorn head and his direct gaze, he was pleasing to Cai somehow in the way of an oak sapling—young enough to bend, set to last a hundred years. “You’ll gird them as you usually do. The linens are in that box. But don’t bother now—I’m taking you for a bath.”

Fen refused assistance down the stairs with a haughty gesture that made Cai want to slap him. In the fresh air of the courtyard, though, he swayed and grabbed at the low stone wall that surrounded the well.

“Sit down,” Cai ordered him, looking out across the fields. The little packhorse he used on his travels and the monastery’s only other pony were both hard at work in the hay pasture. “Wait. Sit there, and…” He tugged up Fen’s hood to conceal his bright hair. “Just for a moment, try not to be conspicuous.”

Broc’s chariot horse was feeding her head off in the paddock to the south. She had proven useless between the shafts of cart or plough, rearing and kicking in a fit of royal rage to match Fen’s own. Cai had expected from day to day that Aelfric would order her slaughtered and salted away for winter meat, but there she was, looking glossy and bored in the sun. She came when Cai whistled, as if he might at last have something interesting for her to do, and bumped her chestnut muzzle hard against his chest. As far as Cai knew, she’d never been tried as a saddle horse—not that Fara, or indeed Broc’s stronghold, ran to saddles. He clambered the drystone wall and took her by the halter.

The Viking sat up straight at the scrape of hooves in the courtyard. He pushed his hood back, his face becoming keen and intent. “Roman,” he declared, as Cai led the mare up to him. “Yes. Roman, with two hundred years of your Briton puddle-jumpers mixed in, and…” He pushed upright, pain and weakness forgotten. “And a strain of the Barb. You won’t know what that is, monk. You think the world ends at the Oceanus Britannicus.”

“I do know. My abbot Theo told us of places far beyond that—Barbary, Arabia, where men called Berbers live in silken tents and ride about the desert on beasts that can gallop as easily on sand as soil. What does a vikingr pirate know of horseflesh, though?”

“It’s true that we are masters of the sea.” Fen ran a thoughtful hand down the mare’s flank. “And the ponies we use for raids are scrappy beasts, not like this. They take us to the battle, then we fight on foot, our stupendous skills in warfare bearing all before us. This explains what I saw in your weapons barn. I thought it a fever dream.”

“The chariot?”

“Yes. What does a Christian monk know of those?”

“I told you—my father is no Christian. He’s a Roman warlord, or he likes to think he is, and he gave me this beast and the chariot to help me defend Fara against monsters like you.” Cai paused, distracted. The morning breeze was full of the scent of kelp and thyme, too pleasant in his lungs to fuel hostility. “You really think she has the Berber strain?”

“Mm. Look at her high forequarters, her crouped rump.” He leaned stiffly, patting her fetlocks, and Cai crouched beside him to take a closer look. For a moment monk and Viking dropped away and they were simply men, heads together over an intriguing piece of horseflesh. “Her hooves are rounder than the Roman breeds. What’s her name?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think she has one.”

“You should always name things—beasts, ships, swords. It brings down the spirit upon them. Speaking of which—where is my wolf’s-head blade?”

“Safely locked up.” Cai took a step back, renewing the distance between them. This man was his enemy. He had forgotten. “Out of bounds to you. Listen—while you’re healing, I can treat you like any other sick man. But once you’re well, you’ll be a prisoner here. You’d better behave like one, or…” Cai fell silent. He had to have imagined the flicker of hurt in those dark eyes. “Here. I’ll give you a leg-up.”

“I can manage for myself.” Fen grasped the horse’s mane just in front of her withers. He braced to spring up. Then his knuckles whitened, and he let go a gasp that would have been a scream from a lesser man. He rested his brow on the mare’s flank. Cai reached for him, but he flinched away and scrambled, grey-faced, to stand on the low wall that bounded the well. “I can do it from here, if you will hold her.”

Cai held the mare’s halter while she danced and sidled. She wasn’t used to a weight on her back, but Fen sat quietly, and after a moment she settled, head high, exhaling in wide-nostrilled snorts.

Cai led her out of the courtyard. Once out on the wide sweep of turf, the salt wind warmly buffeting his face, he was ashamed. “All right,” he said, not glancing to see how his magnificent prisoner looked on horseback. “What is its name, then? Your wolf’s-head sword?”

“Blóðkraftr dauði. The mighty blade of blood and death.”

Cai shook his head. “It would be.”

“And I shall call this horse Eldra—the fire.”

 

 

There was no one else at the bathing pools when Eldra had picked her way down the cliff path and onto the rocks. Cai was relieved. He knew that every kindness shown to Fen was an insult to the memory of his slain brethren, and more so to the living ones who had to witness it. He looped the horse’s leading rein round an outcrop of rock in the shade, then turned to Fen, who had remained silent for the last part of the journey. “I know you wouldn’t let me help you up there. But I think you’ll have to let me help you down.”

Fen regarded him blankly. “Yes. To my undying mortification.”

“For God’s sake. All right. Swing your leg over her forequarters, not her rump. It’ll pull your stitches less that way.”

“It is an unmanly way to dismount.”

“So is landing on your face in the kelp. Come on.”

Cai held his arms up for him. Reluctantly Fen consented to be aided down, slithering into Cai’s embrace, where he stood for a moment, trembling. “Enough. I can stand now. Let me go.”

“Is every little thing a matter of life-and-death Viking honour for you?”

“Of course.”

Cai led him down to the pools. The tide was rising, as it had been on the day when he’d come here alone, yearning for the earthly pleasures Leof had just renounced. The water in the rocky basin was bright with the same green-blue reflection of sky. But Cai’s world had ended since then, burned to the ground and grown back again in a shape he still could barely comprehend. Who had that boy been, stretched out in the pool with nothing more on his mind than the hungry tension in his loins? All such needs had fled from him. In the few short hours of sleep he got, his cock remained quiescent, and the idea of his own touch scarcely occurred.

Ironic that he’d achieved his monastic ideal in such a way. Leof would have said it didn’t count, if he was no longer tempted, but that was one of the many nuances of Christian thinking Cai had never understood. Achieving the result was surely good enough. “Take off your robe and get into the water.”

“Into the…”

“Yes. Come on. It’s not too cold on a day like today.”

The look Fen gave him could have been bottled and used as a wound-cleansing liniment. “My whole body? Into that?”

“Yes. We dirty Christians do this once a week, whether we need it or not. Theo insisted on it. Come on—the salt water will help heal you.”

Fen put out a defensive hand when Cai reached to help him lift the cassock over his head, so Cai stepped back and let him get on with it. He kept his attention on the rocks, the rainbow gleam of sea urchins and cockleshells through the sunlit water. He’d seen a hundred naked men before, and once they passed into his hands as patients their bodies lost all significance to him but the parts of them that needed healing. Fen’s splendid shadow was only an image, a thing to admire from his new, cold distance.

He took the cassock wordlessly, choosing not to complain that Fen had thrust it at him with a princely disregard. Not this time, anyway. “All right. Get in slowly. If you stay off the kelp, you won’t slip.”

“You too.”

“What?”

“You too. Prove to me that this insane immersion is truly your practice, and not just your effort to freeze me to death, or drown me.”

“Oh, for God’s…” Cai began to strip off his own robe. He didn’t want to get into the water. He didn’t want to be reminded of his last visit here, the warmth inside his marrow, the pleasant exhaustion that came after loving. Now that he’d gone to the trouble of getting Fen down here, he didn’t really care what happened to either of them. If this was the quickest way of dealing with him, so be it. He splashed into the water, slithering himself on the seaweed, righted himself and reached up his hands. “Here. Get in.”

Fen picked his way down the rock. For a big man, he moved with a cautious grace that made Cai want to laugh despite the chilly numbness in his breast, and he clutched Cai’s wrists like a scared child. “Gods, monk!” he rasped when he was knee-deep. “No wonder you can keep your vows. Who would care for the pleasures of frig after this?”

“That’s not exactly how it works. Anyway, how can a rock pool be so cold to you after you’ve crossed the North Sea on a raid?”

“We cross the sea in boats, in case you didn’t notice. How is it that your bollocks haven’t crawled up into your belly forever?”

Cai, not quite hip-deep in the water, struggled not to follow Fen’s gaze. “Well, if yours do,” he said, pulling him down to stand beside him, “it’s surely the least you deserve.” He waited till Fen was off balance, then put a hand between his shoulders and shoved him into the pool.

He listened with interest. Some of the language he was hearing was similar to Broc’s, when a horse or a dog had annoyed him beyond endurance. Fen struggled in the water, submersing completely, then flipping back out like one of the silver-skinned porpoises Cai saw from time to time on fishing trips out beyond the islands. He shouldn’t have been out of his depth, and even if he was…

The fear that this great seafaring pirate couldn’t swim seized Cai like a cold hand. He plunged in after him, stilling his frantic movements with an arm around his chest. “Easy. Don’t thrash about so. What’s wrong with you?”

“Nothing.” Fen fought for a few seconds more, then lost a sobbing, coughing breath, the back of his skull resting on Cai’s shoulder. “I am cold. I hurt where you stabbed me. And I don’t…”

“Yes?” Cai was interested in this string of nothings. “What else?”

“I don’t understand why my brother hasn’t come back to slit all your throats in the night and rescue me.”

It was on Cai’s lips to tell him that one Viking raider was as treacherous as the next—to ask him what he had expected. The ragged wound with its crude stitches gaped a dreadful blue-black beneath the water. Where you stabbed me… Fen had never said as much before, as if he hadn’t taken the injury personally, accepting it as one of the chances of war. “What happened that night? Why did they leave you behind?”

“They did not. They would not.”

“And yet here you are.”

“Through no fault of Gunnar’s. Or Sigurd’s, for that matter. They must have thought I was dead.”

“I’ve heard legends that your kind leave no one behind. Not even a corpse.”

Fen dispensed with his grasp. After an ungainly movement or two, he seemed to find his rhythm. Of course he could swim. He struck out across the pool, putting as much distance as he could between himself and Cai. On the far side, he tried to haul out, finely corded muscles straining in his back. Then his strength failed him. He slid halfway back into the water, clutching at the rocks. “You will get me out of here, monk.”

“In a minute.” Cai swam over to him. Before Fen could object, he turned him, seizing his narrow hips and settling him so that he was sitting on a ledge, in the place where the jade-blue water was most strongly warmed by the sun. Cai scooped up a handful of sand and rubbed it over Fen’s thigh, or tried to—he dodged a cuff aimed at his head and retreated. “Do it yourself, then.”

“What is it for?”

“It cleanses you. Scrapes all the scabs and the lice off you.” Treading water, Cai watched him. He needed some attention himself. He hadn’t cared, over the last couple of weeks, whether he was dirty or clean, and Aelfric certainly hadn’t taken any trouble over the matter. He rubbed sand onto his own limbs, and Fen did the same, hands moving uncertainly over his powerful shoulders. When he tried to reach down, though, pain shadowed his face.

“I cannot.”

“Let me. You must know by now I’m not going to hurt you.”

“No. But you shame me—every day, with your touch and your interference about my person, and your questions about my water and my bowels.”

“I’m a physician. There’s no shame in that.”

“A Dane warrior should need no physic. A Dane warrior should need no…”

Cai let him run on. His voice was somehow consonant with the wind and the splash of the water, and if it helped him to complain and lay down his warrior’s laws while he submitted to having his legs rubbed with sand, so be it. Cai allowed his mind to drift. These beautiful limbs were longer than Leof’s, carved with a strength Leof’s quiet life had never demanded of him. Badly scarred from what looked like untreated axe wounds. The big, tense muscle that ran up the back of the thigh made Cai’s ache in sympathy—and something darker, a vibration of longing. But all that had died in him, hadn’t it? Cai was glad that Leof had been his last, that he’d bear onwards into his life with him memories of such purity.

“Who is Theo?”

Cai looked up. Fen was regarding him, his gaze like sea-light through honey. Salt had caught his lashes together, and his shorn hair had grown out enough to spike as the sun dried his crown.

“You wouldn’t be interested.”

“Theo who makes you bathe. Theo who thinks man’s flesh is a beautiful gift from God.”

Surprised that he’d remembered, Cai shrugged. “He used to be our abbot here. Before Aelfric.”

“Aelfric the scarecrow?”

Cai almost smiled. “I didn’t think you were listening then. Yes, Aelfric the scarecrow.”

“I shouldn’t think you ever called your abbot Theo names.”

“No. He was a good man. He taught us about the movements of the stars, and how to treat one another well. I loved him.” Suddenly Cai recalled who he was talking to, and he finished the rubdown ungently, making Fen wince. “Much good it did me. Your lot killed him in the raid before the one that bestowed your gracious presence on me.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes. He died defending our library and scriptorium. He was armed with a book. You can get out of the water now.”

Fen couldn’t. Cai watched him struggle for long enough to satisfy the new surge of pain and hatred in his heart, then went to give him a hand. He thrust Fen’s discarded cassock at him, and bent to pick up his own.

“Is that why you took up the sword, warrior priest?”

Cai couldn’t read Fen’s stare. It was comprehensive—taking him in from the top of his head to the soles of his bare feet, paying thorough attention to those places where he was much less priest than warrior. His shoulders, the musculature of his arms, as if any moment he might be recruited for some lightning raid up the coast…

“That’s right,” he said coldly. “The only throats that will get slit around here will be Viking ones. Fara is defended. Tell that to your brother, if he ever comes looking for trouble here again.”