CHAPTER NINETEEN

1 January 1063

THE WOLF HOWLED TO THE ROOFTOPS. RED EYES SHONE IN the sunlight as the man in the predator’s mask prowled at the head of the crowd. Ducking down, he leaped up suddenly, howling once more, the delicately carved wood of the wolf’s head making the illusion complete. He whirled, sweeping one arm toward a boy of about twelve perched on the shoulders of a man in a boar’s mask. “Here then is the Abbot of Unreason! Now let us turn this world on its head!” Someone tossed the boy a red cap, and he slapped it proudly on his head. The crowd cheered loudly in response.

Shrieking with laughter, the throng surged through the streets of Eoferwic toward the church. More lovingly carved masks bobbed in the flow: horses, cows, ravens, salmon. Strips of colorfully dyed wool fluttered from wrists, waists, and ankles. In the center of the mass, swaying on the shoulders of his mount, the red-capped boy waved to his followers with the unspoken promise that chaos would rule.

Keeping his head down, Hereward allowed himself to be washed along by the rush of bodies. He ignored the horns of mead thrust in his direction by the drunken revelers. He wanted his wits clear.

The morning was crisp and bright, a perfect day for the Feast of Fools. The throng swept through the gate of the minster enclosure and milled among the halls, the barns, and the school in front of the church’s western door. For a moment, he watched the man in the wolf’s mask bound and frolic. “Follow me now, good men and women,” the wolf called, “into this stone house so that we may consecrate our boy pope. And when we are done, he will rule over an upside-down kingdom. The Lord of Misrule!”

Hereward pushed his way toward the edge of the crowd.

“Let the deacons, the priests, even the archbishop himself, keep well away from this festival,” the wolf-man continued loudly, “or be prepared to pay the full price. A drenching in freezing meltwater. Let that wash their pious faces!” The crowd laughed. Hereward could sense the hope that one of the clerics would accidentally stumble out to get a soaking. The mockery served its purpose, he knew: release from the burdens of a straitened life, if only for a while; a moment when the lowest in the land could be the highest and dream the world their way before power was torn back from their fingers. The warrior saw true value in that disordered world. There were times when he felt every one of the highest in the land plotted only to their own ends. Where was concern for the weak, the innocent, the women? In this land of wolves, where was the strong protector? Perhaps the world should be turned on its head. And perhaps he should be its Lord of Misrule.

With raucous cries, the crowd thundered into the church. Few paid attention to the glory of the soaring stone tower as its builders had intended. When most were inside, the man in the boar’s mask carried the boy in and approached the altar. Two men dressed in the white tunics of clerics followed, each wearing a mask with the nose and mouth shaped like human private parts, one male, one female. The mock-clerics intoned words in a made-up language that echoed the solemn Latin tones of the priests. The profane consecration of the Abbot of Unreason would have sickened the churchmen if they had not been in hiding, Hereward knew, but the throng laughed more loudly at each new mockery in the fake ritual.

Seizing his moment, he pulled up his hood and crunched through the deep snow from house to shack to hut in the jumble of ecclesiastical structures surrounding the stone church. Some were the dwellings of the churchmen, and he kept away from those, as he did Archbishop Ealdred’s grand hall. But he searched the stores and the scriptorium and the school and all the other buildings where the churchmen organized their lives.

At the back of a room thick with a dusting of white flour where the daily bread was made, he found Alric slumped on dirty straw. Fettered, the monk looked miserable and exhausted, but his face lit up when he saw Hereward. His joy faded quickly.

“I should kill you where you lie,” the warrior spat. “It would be a mercy, compared to what lies ahead for you.”

“You know, then.” The monk hung his head.

“That you live a lie? That you pretend to be a man of God, but are no more than a common killer of women? It is no surprise that you kept your filthy secret when I saved your life.”

Alric looked up with a fierce expression, his eyes bright with tears. “Do not judge me. You do not know the truth. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems in the telling.”

Leaning against the wall, Hereward folded his arms, his face cold and accusatory. “Enlighten me, then.”

Kneading his hands, Alric looked as if the strain of keeping his secret was finally about to tear him apart. “I had taken the word of God to a village not far from where we met. They had no church, no priest, not even a stone cross where I could preach. It felt a godless place, and a lawless one too, with too many still worshipping the old ways, even now in this Christian land. It was a place where I could do good works. Or so I believed.” The young monk fell silent for a moment and then wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. “I did my duty well. I was a good monk, hardworking, visiting every home, preaching whenever I could, teaching the children what I knew. The men and women accepted me, liked me even—I think. They kept me fed. There was one man, a merchant, who asked me to tutor his son and he would send payment to my monastery in return. And the merchant had a daughter.”

“You fell in love with her.”

“Yes. I am a fool. It should be me out there, made king of this feast.”

Hereward saw the remorse in the monk’s face. “And you murdered her because she gave you ungodly thoughts.”

“No!” Alric brushed the tears from his eyes. “I … I followed the wishes of my father and mother. I had given myself to God. I was content with my path, dedicated. I wanted nothing else. But then the daughter and I talked about my mission, and God’s plan, and she paid more heed to my teaching than her brother. And we laughed, and we walked together, and from nowhere feelings rose. Love, a pure love, of the kind I had never felt before for any human, only for my.…” The word choked in his throat, and he almost spat it out. “God.”

“What was her name?”

“Sunnild.” The monk swallowed. “The force of that passion, it almost drove my wits from me. Something that powerful could only come from God.” He looked to the warrior for approval, and then hung his head again when he saw none. “I fought against my feelings. Time and again I could have taken advantage of her. She made her own feelings for me clear. But I resisted, even though my heart was breaking. And then, one evening before the snows came, we walked in the woods and I became consumed by madness. I could hold my feelings in check no longer. And I kissed her.”

“That is all?”

“Yes, I swear. And, Hereward, though God strike me down, I felt as though I had been transported to heaven.”

“From one kiss?” the warrior asked with wry disbelief.

“But then her brother found us in the midst of our embrace.”

Alric’s face darkened. “He flew into a rage, accusing me of deceiving him and his father. He acted as though all I had done in that place had only been a ploy to steal Sunnild’s honor. And he drew the knife he used for carving toys for the children, and attacked me to defend that honor.”

Hereward listened to the squeals of delight from the women and the drunken bellows echoing from the church. Time was short. Soon the ritual would be over and the people would rush back into Eoferwic to continue their celebrations.

“We fought,” the monk continued in a flat tone. The warrior guessed Alric had played the moment over so many times that all life and emotion had been sucked from it. “There was no time to reason. I was struggling for my life. Sunnild was in tears, pleading with her brother to spare me. She claimed that she was to blame. Even then, when other women would have protected themselves, her love for me was clear. As the brother and I fell around the wood, she came between us to try to separate us. Somehow I had the knife in my hands. And I struck out, in panic, and the blade plunged into her heart.”

Alric held out his hands as if he could still see the blood upon them.

“She died instantly. In shock, I ran, with her brother’s cries of vengeance ringing in my ears.”

“And her kin set those Viking pirates upon your trail. A blood-feud.”

“Believe me or not, Hereward, but in that moment I wanted to die too, so I could be with Sunnild, and for a while I considered taking my own life, to my shame.” The monk began to cry silently. After some moments, he steadied himself and added, “But I would never reach heaven or Sunnild’s side if I wasted what God had given me. I have to make amends in this world if I am ever to scrub the stain from my soul.”

“And you thought I was your path to salvation.” The warrior laughed bitterly.

“I must save a soul to balance the one I released from this world too soon.”

“You are a fool,” Hereward said—adding, after a moment’s thought, “as are we all.” The warrior almost felt pity for the young monk, but a vision of the woman stabbed to death in the wood jarred too sharply with his own memory of Tidhild and his mother. Three women dead, all stained in blood. And then he recalled with a flash of unease what the wise woman had told him in her smoky hut about hidden patterns.

The jubilant cries grew louder. The crowd was ebbing from the church.

His raw emotions receding, the monk started. “Hereward, I am a fool. Forgive me. You are in great danger. I thought I would never have the chance to warn you, and I had driven it from my mind—”

The warrior knelt and thrust his fist into the neck of the monk’s habit, hauling him up. “Then speak and stop your babbling. What danger?”

“I am rotting here because Harald Redteeth revealed my crime to the archbishop—”

“He lives?”

“The Viking was saved from your rope by four men who had been in pursuit of you. And so our destinies continue to be bound together.”

Hereward shook the monk roughly to quiet him and then thought for a moment. “And those four are here in Eoferwic?”

Alric nodded. “Redteeth told me that for some reason—what reason, I do not know—they would not confront you in public, only in stealth.”

“They fear drawing attention to me, or to themselves,” the warrior replied after a moment’s reflection. “You saw their faces?”

Alric described the four men. “They are from the south. You will know them easily when they speak,” he added.

Hereward returned to the door and glanced back at the pitiful figure. “Men are like wolves in the woods. Worse, for they have the capacity to deceive and betray as well as to kill for base motives. But the life of a woman is a prized thing, and you have taken one. Whether accident or not, you must pay a price for that crime.”

The monk nodded, his face etched with grief. “I know.”

And with that, the warrior nodded in parting and slipped outside to join all the other fools.