Chapter Six

Dark of the moon, a month after the second raid. The church was completed, and Cai knelt on its stone-flagged floor between Benedict and Brother Martin. This was midnight office, the most ungodly, to Cai’s mind, of all the new canonical hours. He’d stopped objecting to them. He could see how they might work and be beautiful, in a monastery with plentiful resources and time on its hands—a kind of circle-dance of prayer so that no hour would pass without praise of God’s name.

Matins, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline, midnight office. The names had their own music. They blended with Laban’s plainsong chant and the flickering torchlight. No one needed Cai’s attention in the infirmary, and no less than three men had been set to watch the coast for raiders. Freed for once from anxiety, Cai felt the tug of sleep. Subtly he eased his hood forwards. Beside him, Martin emitted the tiniest snore. Theo had used to provide a chair for him during mass, but the old man had learned the art of sleeping on his knees whilst maintaining an attitude of perfect devotion.

On Cai’s other side, Benedict knelt with spine erect, tension radiating off him. These days he spent more time with the Canterbury clerics than amongst his brethren. Aelfric spoke to him often, too quietly for anyone else to hear, and Ben would listen, head bowed. Oslaf kept bewildered distance from him, lost weight and grew pale. Cai opened his eyes again. He’d never be free from worry, would he—not at Fara, not now.

The chanting stopped. That was the signal for the monks to rise and return to their bunks until matins three hours later, the real start of the monastic day. Cai put a hand to Martin’s elbow to wake him and help him up, but Aelfric stepped forwards from the shadows. “No,” he commanded, his voice more like a crow’s caw than ever. “Remain on your knees.”

Cai bit back a groan. Three hours was little enough time to prepare for a day of farming, weaving, rebuilding and all the other duties that fell upon the brethren now, with their reduced numbers, and no Theo to point each man to his right task and ease the labour. Normally even Aelfric released them without a further sermon.

“Remain on your knees. It is thus you must hear God’s word on the ultimate fate of your souls. Your former abbot, thinking to spare you, never taught you the one truth that could bring you to salvation. He knew his own heresy, and so he kept silent on the truth of hellfire. He knows it well enough now.”

Cai tried to lurch to his feet. Ben gripped his arm, and he subsided. Why should he care? Theo was safe, far beyond the reach of the carrion crow. The more Cai objected, the more of Aelfric’s grim attention he drew to himself, and he wished only to slip unnoticed through his shadowed days. Those were the terms of his uneasy truce with the abbot—silence and cooperation, in return for Aelfric’s blind eye to his various privileges. He was still allowed to train his men to fight—to keep a warhorse and chariot, and a wounded Viking raider in a quarantine cell. He lowered his head.

“Each one of you here will have undergone pain. Perhaps you have broken a bone, or had a colic fever in your guts, or burned yourselves with hot fat from the kitchen fires. Is it not so?”

Martin suddenly stirred. “Aye, aye. But we have our Caius to mend all of that for us.”

A ripple of laughter went through the congregated monks. “Hush, Martin,” Cai whispered, giving the old man’s hand an affectionate squeeze. “Just listen. We’ll be out the sooner.”

“The brother is old, and therefore we forgive him, although I see no need for a band of holy men to keep a brewery, and it is my intent to shut it down. Imagine the worst moment of your pain. Bring it back to mind and feel it now. What made you endure it?”

Silence fell in the church. Most of Aelfric’s questions during sermons were rhetorical, but he seemed to want an answer to this one. An owl hooted off among the ruins, and the torches rustled. Cai couldn’t think of a thing to say.

“Because it passes, my lord abbot.”

Oslaf had pushed back his hood. His pain-filled gaze was fixed not on Aelfric but on Benedict. “We endure because it passes. And…” He paused, focussing for an instant on Cai, a faint smile flickering. “And, in truth, we do have Caius.”

“I forbid further mention of Caius.” Aelfric took another step towards the congregation. The torchlight cast his shadow up across the ceiling until he was tall and thin as a storm-blasted ash, and his outstretched fingers sprouted long, clasping claws. “We endure because it passes. Yes. But I am here to tell you this—in hell, there is no such mercy as the earthly passage of time. You are pinned like an insect upon the most terrible moment of your agony, and…it will last forever.”

A sound like a low-moaning wind filled the church. The light of the torches remained steady, though. After a moment Cai identified the source of the keening. Laban and the other clerics had drawn close, heads together, faces invisible beneath their hoods.

“Forever,” Aelfric repeated, and their voices rose.

Cai went cold with disgust. Surely men who had been taught by Theo to think for themselves could never fall prey to such theatrics. He began to get up. He would take his brethren with him out of here and into the clean night. Vikings and darkness were less to be feared than these lies.

But Ben was moaning too. His sound was deep and real, full of grief-stricken terror. Cai took hold of his wrist beneath the sleeve of his cassock. “Come with me,” he whispered. “It’s all right.”

“No! I can’t move. Don’t leave me.”

Cai knelt still. Aelfric’s shadow-arms extended, up and across the raftered ceiling, enclosing the whole congregation. “Brother Benedict knows,” he intoned. “He knows the sins that plunge the soul into hellfire. Worst among them all is impure love. What is impure love, Brother Benedict?”

“All love of the flesh is impure,” Ben gasped out. This was a lesson he’d clearly learned well. Rocking, clutching Cai’s hand, he began to recite. “All fleshly love is lust, a perversion of God’s love. Our bodies are sacred to Christ. To lie with a woman condemns our soul. To lie with one another as with women impales us like insects in the hellfire. Forever. Forever.”

Cai had had enough. He tore his hand out of Benedict’s and stood up, ready to take on Aelfric barehanded if he had to. Anything to stop this.

But Aelfric was already on the move. His face was calm and satisfied, as if he’d achieved his goal. The clerics had stopped keening and formed up into a protective phalanx around him. Together, like a river of black pitch through the very firelit hell Aelfric had created with his words, they swept out of the church.

Benedict sprang up to follow. Cai tried to stop him, and Oslaf, pale as death, made a helpless grab for his sleeve, but Ben left at a run, clumsy, a broken-down piece of machinery shambling in his master’s wake.

The rest of the brethren gathered together like frightened sheep. They too began to move, Oslaf in their midst. They bumped against Cai, who was rooted where he stood, jostling him blindly. Only Oslaf seemed to see him. They exchanged one glance, and then Oslaf too was gone, melting with the others into the night. A gust of wind rushed through the open door, extinguishing the last torch, and Cai was alone in the dark.

No. Not quite alone. At his feet, Brother Martin gave a twitch and woke himself with one mighty snore. He looked up peaceably at Cai. “Ah. I was sleeping. Is it over, then?”

Cai picked him up carefully, waiting till his legs were steady under him before letting him go. He brushed the dust and cobwebs off his robes. “Yes. Yes, it’s over.”

 

 

“You’re in a bad fettle this morning, monk.”

Cai looked up from the cabinet of herbs and potions he was rearranging. He had plenty of everything, having seen Danan the week before, but he felt a restless need to rattle bottles and slam doors. Just now there was little else for him to do. He had arrived in Fen’s cell that morning to find his patient on his feet, voluntarily washing his face and limbs with a cloth and a bucket of water. He had already fastened a clean linen strip round his loins. He had stayed still when bidden for Cai to check his wound, and dressed himself without complaint in a fresh cassock.

He was healing well. Cai, squinting fiercely into a bottle of willow salve, tried to forget the sight of him in morning light, splashing water into his face, the droplets in a rainbow aura round his head. How he had looked as he had straightened to greet him, something like a smile touching his elegant face. He could stand up properly now, not leaning to favour his side. For once Cai’s ward was empty, and he hadn’t objected when Fen had followed him out of the cell, seated himself on one of the bunks and watched him begin his routine.

“What is it? Has the scarecrow been after you to shave your head again?”

“No.”

“Good. Because…”

Cai tried to analyse the silence behind him. It was warm, he decided. Warm and getting tighter… Before he could turn, Fen’s hand was on his shoulder. Cai would have to remember how quietly he could move. The hand passed briefly, gently, through his hair.

“Because that would be a shame.”

Cai almost dropped the jar of valerian root powder he’d uncorked. “Careful! Do you know how long this stuff takes to grind?”

“It stinks of mouse.” Fen had calmly retreated to the window ledge, as if his caressing touch had never happened. “What does it do?”

“It soothes troubled spirits and promotes the health generally, as its name suggests.”

Fen gave this a moment’s thought. “Valetudo,” he said. “Yes, I see. You look as if you could use a dose of it yourself. What’s happened to trouble your spirits, then?”

“Apart from you?” Cai firmly corked the jar and set it back in the cabinet. He’d barely slept in the few hours between midnight office and matins. He’d come as a novice to Fara with every intent to become a good Christian. Much of the doctrine—subjugation of earthly desire—had been strange to him, but between Leof and Theo he had learned to see the beauty of it too. Aelfric’s version was completely alien to him. With his lover and his teacher gone, why should he stay, to see his friends tortured by threats of eternal damnation? “Nothing. I’m busy, that’s all, and I can’t concentrate with you asking me all these questions.”

“You’re thinking of leaving.”

Cai repressed a twitch. How had Fen plucked that newborn thought from his head? “I’m thinking of remedies for constipation. You’ll see why, after a few more servings of Brother Hengist’s egg bread.”

“That stuff would bung up a bull. Maybe you should leave. I don’t see what a decent soldier’s doing amidst all these eunuchs anyway. But I for one am glad you were here on the night I arrived. Now—do you think you could take me for my daily walk?”

Closing up the cabinet, Cai turned away. He didn’t dare meet Fen’s eyes. There was a painful prickling behind his own. He was lost, if he let words of kindness from this enemy—however rough and fleeting—touch the loneliness gaping under his ribs. One of the blankets on the cots was rumpled. Cai snatched it off, shook it out hard and threw it back into place. “Go and put on your sandals, then.”

Cai had negotiated with Aelfric that the Viking prisoner should have an hour of exercise each day. He would get better sooner that way, Cai had argued, and then Cai would no longer have the flimsy excuse of protecting him as his patient. After that, Aelfric could do what he wished with him. Cai had enjoyed the furrow that had crossed the abbot’s brow at the thought of dealing with a six-foot Viking restored to full health. All the Canterbury clerics combined would be like gnats on the hide of a warhorse. Cai had to escort Fenrir personally during these outings, and any trouble that came from them would be visited—as usual—not on Cai himself, but on one of his friends.

Aelfric had wrapped chains around Cai. They were thin and meagre as the abbot himself, but he had chosen them well. They could tighten like wire, and none of Cai’s strength could avail him. Remembering poor Benedict moaning in the firelit dark, Cai realised that Aelfric knew how to choose the right chains for each man. Yes, it was time for Cai to go. Not back to his father’s stronghold but somewhere free. He’d take his chances among the robber bands who roamed the sunlit uplands of Cheviot and Traprain Law if he had to, shake off the shame and dust of this place forever.

“Cai. I need you to slow down.”

Cai had set off blindly across the courtyard and continued from habit along the track that led to the clifftop. Fine rain and sea fret were blowing into his eyes. Normally Fen walked beside him on these trips, his air one of resigned, almost exaggerated obedience—Cai’s prisoner, even if he could have picked his captor up and slung him off the cliff with barely an effort. Now he was lagging behind, one hand pressed to his side.

“What’s the matter?”

“You’re meant to be guarding me. I can’t keep up with you.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Cai slowed up and waited until Fen had limped to his side. Fen’s breath was rasping in his throat, his lips tinged with blue. Cai hadn’t intended to offer his arm, but the gesture came naturally, and Fen took it easily, as if their bodies had been made to fit together like this. They stood in the rain, both surprised by their sudden proximity. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. I thought that perhaps the next stage of my healing was…a route march.”

“No. You should still take things slowly. Lean on me.”

They set off again down the track. The north coast was wearing her wild summer face this morning, sealskin greys fighting it out with green and startling violet among the breeze-whipped waves. The wind was fierce but not cold. The sea met the sky with such purity here, and for all its austerity, its vivid scents and colours had pierced Cai’s heart from his first hour within Fara’s walls. He couldn’t imagine life anywhere else.

“If such a man as your scarecrow had been set in charge of the clan of Torleik,” Fen said, his voice still ragged, “we would have taken him and pulled his lungs out through his back. It is called the blood eagle.”

Cai frowned in disgust. “I’ve heard of it. Charming practice though it is, it’s not my solution to Aelfric.”

“Why not? Because of your faith? Your Christian convictions?”

“More than that. My convictions as a man.” Even as he spoke, Cai wondered if he was telling the truth. If he had Leof’s murderer in front of him, the heat of battle upon him and an axe in his hand…

“It wasn’t the Torleik who came here. That night—when your abbot was killed, and your boy—it wasn’t my men. A different tribe.”

Once more it was as if Fen had pulled a thought from Cai’s skull. This time Cai felt it as a violation, and he dropped Fen’s arm, striding on ahead. “Who told you about my…about Leof?”

“Your brethren are gossips. I hear many things in my cell. Many reasons why you’d just as soon poison as heal me. But it wasn’t the Torleik.”

“What difference do you think that makes to me? Would your lot have treated them any better—Leof and Theo?”

“No. Perhaps not. I only wish you to know, because…”

Whatever Fen’s reasons, they were lost in a rumble of hooves. Reflexively Cai drew Fen to the side of the track, out of the path of the monastery’s single overworked plough ox trotting determinedly towards them with her broken harness trailing in her wake. Normally the most stolid of creatures, she was moving like a compact landslide, the earth vibrating under her feet. Behind her ran Benedict, his face distraught.

“Catch her,” he yelled, as soon as he saw Cai. “Something scared her. She bolted.” Benedict stumbled and fell, then dragged himself upright and staggered on. “I couldn’t stop her. I can’t do anything. I am useless—a sinner—a worm.”

Cai caught Benedict, and Fen caught the ox. He seized the beast’s trailing harness as she passed, and without seeming effort pulled her head round, forcing her to a snorting halt with her great-horned head leaning into his chest. Cai dropped to his knees with Benedict. “Ben! For God’s sake, what’s the matter?”

“I am nothing. All the works of my hands fail me. Aelfric said it would be so.”

“What has he told you?”

“Enough. Enough. A life of sin here, and an eternity in the fire.”

He was shuddering, sobs racking his big frame. Cai rocked him, clasped him roughly. “You know better than that. How often have you helped me in the infirmary? You’ve seen what happens when men die. All pain of that kind—burning, hurting—it stops when the body does. None of it could possibly follow the soul.”

“But what if it can, Cai? What if it’s true? In that case I’ve not just damned myself to eternal torment…I’ve damned Oslaf too!”

“I swear, I will make a Viking angel out of that scrawny…” Cai fell silent, fire rising up in his throat. He looked over Benedict’s shoulder to Fen, who was now watching from a few feet away, the ox standing tamely at his side. What could he say to wipe off Aelfric’s dirt from his poor friend’s soul? He wasn’t Theo, with philosophical arguments at his fingertips for any occasion.

But Theo had never turned to philosophy when faced with unhappy men, had he? He had listened, then asked questions. Simple ones that brought forth equally simple, powerful answers. “Don’t you believe in a merciful God?”

“What? Yes, but…”

“An infinite God, infinitely merciful. Come on, Ben. It’s one of the dearest beliefs we hold, the first things they taught us.”

Ben caught his breath. “I…I remember.”

“Then how can that same God do as Aelfric teaches? How?”

Benedict didn’t reply. But his rigidity eased, and after a moment he laid his brow to Cai’s shoulder. Fresh sobs shook him, but they sounded easier now, less fraught, as if a dry riverbed inside him had suddenly flooded after rain.

Fen gathered up the ox’s reins. His expression was unfathomable. “I will leave you,” he said softly. “I will mend this beast’s harness and hitch her to the plough.”

Cai glanced up at him. “Can you do that?”

“I can. Princes are farmers in my land too, just as they are in yours.”

 

 

Caius left Ben with the plough. The ox had been harnessed to it and tethered, the rein repaired and one wayward ploughshare knocked back into place, but the field was empty. Distractedly bidding Ben to mind his work and not think, Cai scanned the landscape. Fen was nowhere to be seen. Cai set off at a run.

On instinct he headed for the armoury. Fen’s sword, Head-cleaving Bloodsucker or whatever vile thing he’d named it, was still safe in its rack, and that was something, but…

But Eldra and the chariot were gone, and that was something else entirely.

Cai bolted out of the barn’s shadows. He was breathless from his dash down the hill, and now his heart was trying to punch through his ribs with fear. Had he managed to unleash upon his brethren and the coastal villages a Viking raider with a chariot and warhorse at his command? And worse than the fear of that, sliding around in Cai’s guts like a hungry snake—betrayal, tiny and cold. What had he expected? The softening in amber eyes, the brief touch to his hair—what had Cai taken from that, to make him think Fen would do anything other than rob him and run at his first chance?

Hoofbeats again. Cai whipped round, expecting to be mown down, not by an ox this time but by his own father’s horse. There in the pasture that edged the sea, sudden sunlight flashing off her trappings, Eldra was circling. She had been expertly hitched to the chariot, and Fen was standing casually on the footboard, guiding her round in a wide arc. He saw Cai, transferred the reins to one hand and raised the other in greeting. “Come along, physician. I’ve just been warming her up for you.”

Cai stumbled across the grass. He was dreaming, surely. Fen trotted Eldra over to meet him and drew her to a halt at his side. “Come on. Jump up.”

“No. God almighty, Fen—you jump down. Quick, before somebody sees us.”

“Who? The scarecrow?”

“Anyone, you idiot. I’ll be killed for letting you do this.” Cai made to grab Eldra’s bridle, but Fen edged her deftly out of his reach. “Besides, I have duties. The infirmary, and…” He paused, listening, as a bell began to clang. The tower was still in ruins, but Eyulf had learned how to climb to the top of it and ring his refectory bell to summon the brethren to prayer. “It’s time for terce.”

“Oh, more God-bothering… Do you think he likes being woken up nine times a day by your importunities? If they’re all in church, no one will see us go.”

“Go where? I can’t just leave. I can’t—”

Fen held out his hand. It was wide and capable, and Cai knew the heat that coursed beneath its pale skin. “Oh, I’ve no doubt that you’re needed here, even if you’ve started to doubt it yourself. But you have to get away for now. Look at you—hollows under your eyes, half the life drained out of you. A gallop on the sands will set you right. And unlike you, I really know how to drive this thing.”

Cai let Fen take his hand. He used it for balance only, not wanting to pull at his patient’s healing wound, and he leapt up onto the board. He took his position at the rail next to Fen. “This is madness. I’ll be defrocked.”

“Defrocked…” Fen grinned and gave the reins a shake so that Eldra trotted forwards out of the paddock. “That would be a sight to see. Is that what happens when you disgrace yourself beyond forgiveness?”

“Among other things. Fen, you’d really better stop.”

“Once we’ve had a run. Did you manage to console him—your friend with the ox?”

“Not much.”

“What ailed him? Why does he think himself a worm and a sinner?”

Cai adjusted his grip on the rail. Fen had the chariot going at a steady pace, as if they had all the time in the world, covering the turf between the outer walls and the long stretch of beach to the north. If this was madness, Cai couldn’t deny that it was sweet to him—the sense of movement, the rush of the salt wind. Of leaving everything behind. “Aelfric preached us a sermon last night. About hellfire.”

“Hellfire? Ah, not that again!”

Cai broke into laughter. He couldn’t help himself—the fresh air, and Eldra’s lively shift from a trot to a canter, shook his spirit loose. “What? Last night was the first I ever heard of it. How does an infidel Viking raider know?”

“That slave monk of Sigurd’s. The one who taught me Latin… He used to rant about the eternal torments of hell that awaited us infidels.”

“Well, I’m sure you gave him good reason.”

“We thought at first he meant our goddess Hel, or the Hel river to the underworld. When we understood him at last, we laughed at him. As if any god—or even your Christian devil—would spend all eternity spiking mere humans with forks, or burning them on fires.”

“I suppose the arrangements for your damned souls are far better.”

“Oh, we have our Underworld. It is called Helheim—the house of Goddess Hel, and so you Christians haven’t even come up with an original name for the place. I am not sure that we have damned souls, though. Only those unfortunate enough not to die a hero’s death in battle.” Fen snapped Eldra’s reins, and she picked up speed, neatly rounding an outcrop of rocks. “The rest of us gallop straight across Bifrost, the rainbow bridge into Valhalla. So no fears of the afterlife trouble our hearts, monk.”

“I should’ve let you talk to Ben. I brought him little enough comfort.”

“Ah, half of it depends upon the man. You heard the same sermon, and you are not on your knees weeping over your sins. Are you?”

No. Cai was bolt upright, his spine straight. He could see for miles, and he felt fine. “Maybe I ought to be.”

“Nonsense. Die on the battlefield—you seem fond enough of fighting—and you too might fly to Valhalla. I’m sure Thor will overlook the skirt.”

Cai didn’t point out that two sets of skirts would have to be overlooked at present. Fen was beaming, thoroughly pleased with his joke and his spiritual prospects. Cai let him get on with it. Somebody around here should be happy. And Cai could see the virtues of the warrior’s way. It didn’t have to be the same as Broc’s, low and dirty, though Broc had shown him enough of it to give him the skills. Speaking of which… “Who says I can’t drive this thing?”

“I didn’t. I just said I would do it better.”

“And what makes you think so?”

“I have to do it better than a monk. You’re free to prove me wrong.”

Fen offered him the reins with exaggerated courtesy. Cai stepped into the place he’d conceded. The leather was warm and smooth where Fen had held it, Eldra’s mouth a willing, vigorous tug on the bit. Instinctively Cai adjusted his grip so he wouldn’t restrict her. He leaned forwards over the rim. “Go on, girl,” he called, paying her out a little more rein. “Go on!”

Fen had left him with the easy part. The rocks and the turf were behind them, the beach ahead. The tide was out, the sand hard-packed and firm. Eldra stretched her pace out to a battlefield gallop and took off.

It was a beautiful run. Eldra, sturdy and tireless, flew across the strand. Cai straightened her out along the water’s edge, so that her hooves sent up explosions of spray. The chariot wheel hit a stone, jouncing the carriage, and Fen yelled with laughter and slung an arm around Cai’s waist, steadying himself, securing them both.

He didn’t take the arm away when they were running smooth again. Cai didn’t question the continued embrace. It felt right, to be pelting through the hoofbeat thunder with a brother warrior’s hold on him. Doubts and tormented thoughts dropped away from him. He drew deep breaths of the rich air. Spray and sand stung his face, and he drove Eldra on, faster and faster. He was pinned from the waist down between the chariot’s rail and Fen’s warm, whipcord frame. The rhythmic jolting made his flesh begin to ache, a yearning like music, like the relief of tears. He was still alive, wasn’t he? No matter how hard he’d wished himself buried under the hawthorns at Leof’s side, here he was. Energy surged in him.

“Still think you can do better, then?”

“I don’t want to try. I’ll just watch you.”

Cai sent Eldra flying out along the strand. Here, if he’d wished, he could have galloped for hours—the sea margin ran flat and golden-white all the way to Berewic in the north, a great, long, welcoming smile of a place, now at this pitch of late spring nothing but wide, empty beauty, singing to him from the sky. He wasn’t sure what impulse made him turn the horse’s head a little inland, so that her hooves struck softer sand, the drag on the wheels slowing the chariot up. The dunes were tall here. Their crescents echoed the crescent of the great bay, music in shapes and forms. When Eldra tore along their edges, following their curve, she and Cai and Fen were part of the music too. This conviction seeped into Cai’s blood, and he eased back on the reins to listen. Oh, it was like the sea bells, only deeper, overwhelming…

“Had enough, monk?”

No. Cai was quite sure that he hadn’t had enough—not of anything. He was young. He’d barely had a chance to set his lips to life’s cup, and he was hungry and thirsty in a hundred ways at once. Ignoring Fen’s laughter and tightening grip round his waist, he drew Eldra to a trot, and then a sweaty, snorting standstill. He hitched the reins to the rail. You never left your horse loose, no matter what tides were rising inside you. Beyond that, Cai’s thought systems failed him. His mind was a dazzled blank when he turned, eyes closed, mouth opening like a rose, into Fen’s arms.

Fen grunted, as if despite everything, this had surprised him. It was only for a heartbeat. He seized Cai hard. He closed his hand on Cai’s throat and jaw, tight enough to send a splash of fear into Cai’s arousal, and stilled him with a grip to the back of his skull. Their mouths met in hot, salt-rimed impact. Cai groaned, pushing back at him, shoving off the chariot rail to meet him. He wanted to kill him, devour him, pounce with him into the sand, wolf to wolf. Violent images flashed through his mind, cravings and needs he’d never come close to feeling when he’d gone and lain down in the dunes with…

With Leof. Oh, God. Cai tore back, so hard that Fen’s restraining grip on him almost cracked his ribs. “Stop. Let me go.”

“What? You’re stiff as a spear.”

“I know. But I can’t—”

Fen released him. Cai was briefly relieved—disappointed—but only long enough for Fen to leap down off the board and hold up one imperious hand to him. “You can. Come here, monk. Do as you’re bidden.”

Cai sprang down. “Do as you’re bidden?” he echoed incredulously. He knocked aside Fen’s grasp and seized the front of the raider’s cassock. “Who the devil do you think you are?”

“A prince of the Torleik Danes,” Fen informed him. “I honour you with my touch.” Cai tried to punch him to show how honoured he felt, but Fen didn’t blink, catching his fist in midair. “I am not like some of my kind, who rape the Saxon peasants in their huts. I will lie only with my equal.”

“Whether he likes it or not?”

“A prince in his own land, and…” For the first time Fen’s voice faltered. “And a fine man who has healed me. Besides, he will like it.”

Cai crashed down with him into the sand of the dunes. Only one sea-grass ridge shielded them, but no one came out here. They were alone in the sight of God, a god Cai knew from the marrow of his bones did not send men to hell for love. Had he dragged Fen the last few yards off the beach, or had he succumbed to the Viking’s grip? He couldn’t remember, and it didn’t matter now. Fen rolled on top of him, and that was a first—that full weight, a man of his own size and strength pinning him down. He moaned in fear and pleasure, turning his face to find the rough kiss he’d broken off before.

Fen met him hungrily, tongue thrusting deep. “Caius!”

Not like a sheep giving birth now. Now the sound of his full name made Cai’s shaft lift still harder, as if summoned by royal command. “Say it again,” he growled, biting at the side of Fen’s neck.

“Caius. Caius. You fine man… Lie on your belly for me.”

“Oh, God. No.”

“Are you afraid? Did Leof never fuck you?”

Leof. Cai froze, clutching at Fen’s shoulders. That ancient word fuck, the same in both their languages, rang in his ears. They weren’t far from the place where Cai had last loved him. Just over the dunes from here, the boy’s fine hair fanning out on the turf as he lay down in surrender. “You know how you won’t let me say your brother’s name?”

“What of it?”

“Don’t say his.”

“Why not?” Fen tugged at the girdle of Cai’s cassock, then gave up on that and ran a hand under its hem, his palm warm as life on Cai’s chilly thigh. “I can do anything for you he did. More.”

“I don’t doubt it. He was gentle. There was no fucking.”

“Pitiful. Wasn’t he able?”

“Shut up.” Cai pushed Fen off him. “He was… You’ve no idea what he was.” And the thing Cai couldn’t forgive was not Fen’s ignorance but his own forgetting. “He’s only been dead for six weeks. And your lot killed him.”

“I told you, not the Torleik.”

“I don’t care! You’re all the bloody same to me!” Cai scrambled upright. When Fen reached to grab him, he slapped him aside, the blow connecting this time, a sharp crack. “I loved him. And now you’ve turned me into a beast like yourself.”

Fen stared at him. Cai struggled to read the changing lights in his eyes. Fires of lust were blazing there—a heat to match his own—but what was the darkness behind? He couldn’t have caused this creature serious pain. Not that kind—not a raw hurt of rejection.

“I loved him,” he repeated. “I shouldn’t have come here. Take… Take my horse. Take the damn chariot if you want. You’re not my prisoner anymore.”

Fen stood up. He had consented to being shaved once a week along with the Fara monks, and the mark of Cai’s blow stood out clearly on his white skin, a crimson handprint. Cai forced himself not to step back in fear of him. Whatever barbaric world had spawned him, he was the prince of it—a real one, unlike Cai, with his few muddy acres and his brawling sot of a father.

He looked down on Cai from a pitch of enraged royalty. “Your horse? You think I’d consent to take that mongrel nag—or your father’s hay cart?”

“All right. To hell with you. Don’t.”

“Do you imagine I offer myself—my flesh, my manhood—without meaning? For a brainless fuck on the sand?”

Cai swallowed hard. “How do I know what you do? You’re my enemy. I should never have forgotten it.”

“I would have made your blood sing.”

Cai turned away blindly. He grabbed the chariot’s rail and hauled himself aboard. He was shaking in every limb, barely able to untangle Eldra’s harness. She didn’t respond to his shout, as if holding opinions of her own about his decision to leave, and for the first time he struck her—the lightest sting to the rump with the loop of the reins, but enough to make her start forwards, dancing in outrage. “Go on,” he called again, voice breaking like a boy’s. “Get on with you. Go!”

 

 

Fara was in sight before Eldra slackened her pace. The stark outlines of the monastery—more than half in ruins now—broke Cai from a trance.

He hadn’t meant to come so far. For the last couple of miles, rage dying out of him, he’d known what he was doing and let the horse thunder on anyway, hiding his thoughts in the beat of her hooves. But he’d abandoned a wounded man. Friend, enemy, lover—it didn’t really matter. He was a doctor, and Fen had been under his care.

He turned Eldra and drove her back the way she’d come, cold fear tightening his throat. If Fen had gone into the dunes, Cai’s chances of tracking him in the soft, windblown sand were slim. There would only be a gap in the world, as Leof and Theo were now empty spaces to him. Cai didn’t feel as if he could bear another hole. He was a cobweb already. The next gale would blow him away. As he approached the place where he and Fen had parted, he gripped the reins hard, legs weakening. He didn’t know how it had happened, but if Fen was gone, Cai had lost far more than a patient or a prisoner. The beach was empty. He felt sick.

He could hear something. He pulled Eldra to a halt and dismounted, this time forgetting to tie up her reins. It was a kind of chanting, not melodious like Laban’s plainsong but broken and rough. The sea fret was thickening now, riding the incoming tide. Spectral figures danced in it, and Cai shielded his eyes against the glare from the cloud-wrapped sun. Far out in the water, just before the place where the beach shelved down to unknown depths, a solitary human figure was standing. He was breast-deep, his hands raised and pressed to the back of his head in an attitude of prayer—or desperation, Cai realised, beginning to run. The dark shape at the water’s edge was a discarded cassock. Barely breaking pace, Cai hitched up and tore off his own. The heavy wool would drag him under instantly once it got soaked through.

He ran until the resistance of the sea against his thighs became too strong, then arced forwards into a dive. Waves slapped him hard in the face, and his lungs and gut clenched at the chill, the implacable north-shores bite that never eased, even in the heart of summer. Brine flooded his sinuses, and he coughed and forced a rhythm on himself, four powerful strokes, then a breath. Four and a breath, looking for his target each time he surfaced. Expecting each time for Fen to be gone.

When he was close enough, he stopped and trod water. Fen must be on a spar of sand—Cai was out of his depth here, the riptide current tugging at him. He made one last effort against it. “Fen! Fenrir!”

Fen didn’t move. Cai could distinguish individual words now. Words for gods, and darkness, and revenge. He covered the last space between them and seized Fen’s shoulder, anchoring himself as best he could on the sand underfoot. “What are you doing?”

Fen’s hair was slicked down, his eyes wide and vacant. It took him a moment to focus, and when he did, an expression of mild surprise crossed his features, as if he’d encountered Cai unexpectedly in a corridor of Fara. “I am placing a curse upon my comrades. They should have returned for me by now.”

“All right.” A swell of the tide tore at them, and Cai fought to hold him still. “But can’t you do it from the beach?”

“No. The sea must bear my vengeance away to those who deserve it. To Sigurd, to the Torleik warriors who swore their loyalty to me. To… To Gunnar.”

“Don’t. You love your brother.”

“You may say his name now. He is nothing to me.”

“You don’t mean that.” Fen was warm beneath Cai’s hands, his skin burning under the water’s chill. “You’re feverish again. Come ashore with me.”

“I haven’t finished cursing.”

“Well, you can do the rest some other time.” Cai took his shoulders and turned him around. “Come on.”

Cai got him back to shore with a mix of persuasion and brute force. He was shaking with exhaustion by the time he pushed him up the final rise of the beach. Eldra was waiting patiently where he had left her. He paused for long enough to dry Fen down a bit with one cassock and bundle him into the other, then quickly got dressed himself. He climbed onto the chariot’s board and hoisted Fen up after him. There was barely room for a man to sit, but Fen didn’t fight when Cai eased him down so he was huddled at his feet.

“You’ve undone all my good work,” Cai told him, pulling the hood up over Fen’s head.

“I don’t care.” Fen blocked Cai’s next move, thrusting his hand away. “Don’t touch me.”

“Very well.” Cai shook Eldra’s reins. She set off at a smooth-running canter, as if aware of her precarious load. Cai guided her onto the firm strip of sand between the high-tide seaweed mark and the incoming waves. Soon this flat strand would be under the water, but perhaps he would have time to get Fen home. He didn’t really care about anything else. He didn’t want to think any further than the next few yards of sand ahead of him, any deeper than the warmth of Fen’s shoulder pressed against his thigh. Cai had found him. He wasn’t drowned or lost. He was here, awkward and fever-racked, simmering with almost-palpable rage. For the first time in a month, Cai was happy.

“I retract my curse on Gunnar.”

“That’s good. I don’t know much about cursing, but Danan says they can come back and strike you.”

“Danan?”

“A friend of mine. You’ll meet her.”

“Ah. A girl.”

Cai bit back a smile. There, on the crest of the furthest dune he could see, a female figure was standing, long grey hair blowing in the wind. Had she been there all along, watching over the beach and everything that had played out there today, or had Cai’s naming just conjured her up? “No. Very much not a girl.”

“I understand now. About Gunnar.”

Cai didn’t prompt him. He let Eldra run on in silence, and the next time he looked Danan was gone.

“I have been here long enough to know…you have no treasure in Fara, secret or otherwise.”

“I did try to tell you. My abbot Theo thought there was something too. Believe me, I’d have handed over anything we had to stop the raids.”

“So Sigurd will have taken the Torleik men to raid elsewhere in search of it. But my brother would have come back anyway. You understand nothing about him. No puny Christian could. He had a warrior’s heart. He could lift a sword as soon as he could walk. He never ceased in slaying and striking from that moment on.”

He sounds lovely. Cai kept that thought to himself. Fen was shivering now, a tense vibration where he was pressed against Cai.

“So he would have come for me. There is no doubt. I am still here, trapped among you paltry excuses for men, and therefore… Therefore Gunnar is dead.”

Cai took the reins in one hand. Blindly he put the other one down, seeking Fen’s head. It was lowered, pressed to his knees. This time Fen didn’t push him away.

“Listen,” Cai said. “I can’t be your lover. But I won’t be your captor, either.” He ran a rough caress over the bowed skull in its hood. “Once you’re well, I’ll help you leave here. You’re not my prisoner anymore. I’ll help set you free.”