Brothers of the Wild North Sea (26 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Caius.”

“What?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Because you’ll need help.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“And if you need mine, I will stay.”

Chapter Ten

Full moon, midsummer—the Feast of St. John, and a sweet, sultry darkness had come down at last. The sea stirred restively, little white horses whispering to painless destruction on the warm sands. Bronze wands of hypericum nodded in shifts of night air too lazy to be called a breeze, the tiny glands in their leaves glistening with oil. Great trumpets of bindweed gaped their silent music, and silvery seedpods of honesty, their skins already shrivelled after a fortnight of heat, gave the moon back her light. In the spectral, shifting radiance, the so-called abbot of Fara crouched by a stream, washing streaks of afterbirth from his hands.

A lantern appeared briefly in a gap between the dunes. Brother Hengist’s broad face shone beneath it, grinning. On his hip he bore the grain sack for the night’s baking, ten good loaves that would rise in the dark hours and be thrust, as if into the fires of dawn, into the monastery oven at first light. “Is all well, Abbot Cai?”

Cai plucked a water-lily root from the streambed and lobbed it at him accurately, muddy end first. “Yes, all’s well. Once there was one ox and now there are three.”

“Nature is bountiful. Good night, Abbot Cai.”

Another lily root, this time bouncing harmlessly off the baker’s broad rump. Alone, Cai finished washing his hands, then splashed water into his face for good measure. “Abbot?” he said to the moon, who seemed to be expecting conversation, her weary face attentive. “I’m not sure an abbot has to doctor beasts as well as men. Or spend his day up to the hips in mud before that, helping dig ditches and drains.”

“But you looked so fetching while you were about it.”

Cai jumped. He tried to smooth the reflex away but knew he failed. He didn’t look up—plunged his hands into the stream again and watched smilingly as the water wove patterns through his fingers. “How would you know? You were off with Wilfrid.”

“The view is good from those hills. A handsome soldier with his cassock hitched up and a spade in his hand… A much finer sight than the goats.”

“I should hope so. But I notice they fascinate you, whenever there’s work involving mud, blood or innards to be done.”

“Abbot Cai, you’re a false-tongued excuse for a Christian.”

A shadow fell over the water. Still Cai didn’t look. It had become a complex pleasure to deny himself the sight of his lover until the last instant. He didn’t want to see too soon. He didn’t want Fen to know the changes seeing wrought in him each time—the heat, the helpless flush. And Fen was right—he was a liar. There wasn’t a single task the Viking had evaded since their return from the sea. He had built walls, helped unblock the channels that ran from the latrine, turned his hand to the dozens of jobs where his strength and persistence had been needed.

Fara was coming to life again. All the daily work that had fallen into abeyance after the raids, set aside through grief or lack of manpower… It wasn’t so hard, Cai had discovered, to see where men should go and send them there. With Fen at his side, he had even been able to do it, overcoming the shame of giving orders to his friends. He had told Aelfric—dispassionately, standing in the abbot’s study while the old man looked at him like a snake—that the monks of Fara would come to prayer when they could. That prayer in a field or a ditch was as good as—better than, maybe—prayer in a church, under God’s clear skies.

Aelfric had conceded. The brethren had gone willingly to their work, their new leader amongst them, as embroiled as they were in the labour and mud. Cai didn’t know how Fen’s presence had made these things possible, but he felt the Viking’s power like his own, like sunlight. They had seldom worked together over the last two weeks. Fen could administrate a task as well as carry it out, and had gone without Cai’s request to the field where the new dormitory hall was rising, or tumbled drystone walls being repaired. To Cai, their separation had been essential, and Fen hadn’t questioned it. They were leading by example, and Cai knew—as Leof had known, as even broadminded Theo had taught—that to live as a monk in this church of Christ, a man ought to be chaste.

They had barely touched one another. Had spent their days apart, their nights in the communal hall. But Fen was here now. “Yes,” Cai said softly, looking at him at last. “I am a very poor Christian indeed.”

“How did your mother ox fare?”

“Very messily. The twin was a surprise. Would you like to see them?”

They made their way quietly back down the track to the barn, pushing aside the long stalks of hypericum as they passed. St. John’s wort, Danan called the plant, the power of the ancient sun god disguised behind the name. As if the thought had summoned her, there she was—far off on the seaward slope, moving like a ghost through the moonlight. This was a fine night for gathering herbs, she had taught—full moon, and the midsummer tides of the earth at their height. The oil from the hypericum leaves made a tonic that eased men’s griefs, caused the sun to shine within them and disperse their sadness. She had a basket on her arm. The moon lit up her cloud of white hair like a halo. Cai wondered how Addy was, and if the old woman had lately brought him mead, threading the legendary tunnels beneath the sea or sailing the night air on her broom. Then Fen’s shoulder brushed his, and all thoughts beyond the moment deserted him.

He’d left a lantern burning in the barn, hung safely from a rafter while he worked. The ox dam had taken hours about her labour, finally depositing one slithery bundle into the straw, the second one coming so fast after it had almost dropped into Cai’s hands. Now the pair were on their feet, their eyes wide in the lamplight, their matching expressions of astonishment so absolute that Cai began to laugh. “There they are. One of each. The bull looks a bit like Eyulf.”

“Don’t wish that on him.” Smiling, Fen went to look them over. Neither they nor their mother flinched at his approach. His touch was careful, almost tender, as he felt the little limbs, brushed drying afterbirth out of the silky coats. Cai was surprised. Fen had liked Eldra, but she was a war machine. His pleasure in these domestic young was unforeseeable, so far a cry from the man who had wanted to slay Addy that Cai struggled to fit the two images together in his mind.
You don’t know him,
his fading sense of self-preservation warned him.
Knowing should come before love.

But it was too late for that now.

Fen looked up. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Tired, maybe.”

“They’re fine little beasts. Shouldn’t she be up and feeding them?”

“Aye, that she should, the lazy old girl.” Cai slapped the ox dam’s rump. She turned her placid head in his direction but lay still, chomping serenely. “She thinks she’s earned a rest. Come on, your ladyship. Hup!”

Fen took hold of one great curving horn. “You heard him, Dagsauga. On your feet.” Immediately the beast gave a snort, spread her hooves on the packed-earth floor and lurched upright. Her calves needed no second invitation, wobbling over on uncertain legs, bumping bony brows against her udder.

“All right. What magic word was that?”

“Just her name. All female oxen are called Dagsauga in my country, or Smjőrbolli.” He paused as if struggling for the Latin w
ords, then said in Cai’s own language, “Daisy. Buttercup.”

Cai gave a snort of laughter. “Viking raiders call their oxen Buttercup?”

“No. Viking farmers. We only raid in season, and then we tend our homes and crops, just as you do. So that takes care of the little heifer. What are you naming the bull?”

“I hadn’t thought about it. He’s just a farm beast—he’ll go to market when he’s weaned.”

“Still, you should name him. It—”

“Yes, I know. It brings down the spirit on him. Well, we’ll call him Yarrow, then, if that isn’t too ordinary.”

“No. Very suitable.” Fen gave Dagsauga an encouraging pat. Then he rested his hands on his hips and looked around him into the barn’s golden shadows. “It’s late. Will you be missed in church? Or the dormitory hall?”

Why are you asking?
The words burned on Cai’s tongue. He had kept his distance. Yes, he and Fen had been busy, but there had been times, solitudes. Fen had made no move. It was one thing, Cai supposed, to seize a man after a storm, or on a wild island with no one to care for but the gulls. “No. I told Aelfric I’d be out here all night, making sure the calves are safe. And you?”

“I told him I was going out to hunt.”

Cai swallowed. They both still deferred to Aelfric, paid lip service to his authority, and so kept within the terms of their uneasy truce. He wasn’t here now, and the night—for both of them—was secured. “Hadn’t you better get on with it, then?”

Fen raised one finely marked brow. “With what?”

“With your hunt. While the moon is still high.”

“Caius…”

It was low and soft, a plea not to be teased further. Cai surrendered, letting go a breath. “Sorry. I thought maybe we had to be shipwrecked first.”

“Everything’s changed here. You’ve been busy. I didn’t wish to…disturb your balance.”

“My balance?” Cai chuckled. “What happened to the man who knocked me onto my arse in the dunes?”

“Still here.”

“And offered to do to me things I was stupid enough to refuse?”

“Still offering.”

The barn was large, extending off behind Dagsauga’s stall into deep, fragrant spaces. The year’s first cut of hay was loosely piled and drying all around, muffling footsteps to silence. Cai unhooked the lantern from the overhead beam. He held it ahead of him and concentrated on that, on following his own light. Lupine shadows leapt and crouched all round him—some his own, others cast by the man moving noiselessly behind him, and soon Cai couldn’t tell which was which, and fear clashed with the arousal mounting inside him. Why was he afraid? He could handle himself—handle Fen if he had to. He’d done it before. Their very first meeting had been a fight, and Cai had won.