Brothers of the Wild North Sea (39 page)

“I’ll hurt you.”

“I want that, this once. Carve your shape into me. So I won’t ever forget.”

Chapter Seventeen

Eldra was magnificent and ready for her journey. There was no longer a barn or a stable to shelter her, so Cai had tied her to a post in the field to knock a week’s worth of mud out of her sleek coat. His palm was raw from the many handfuls of straw the job had taken. Exhausted, he leaned back against the fence.

Yes, she was fine. Cai looked at her for something else to do, but she tipped her head at him and blew a derisive snort through clean pink nostrils. She knew she was good enough. That left Cai alone with the knowledge of his own failings, and the rest of the day on his hands.

No good. He pushed upright. If he’d still had Broc’s chariot, he could have killed some time and truth in checking it over. Fittings to be polished, wheels squinted at from back and front to make sure they were properly aligned. Linseed oil to rub into leather till it was supple and resistant to salt sea winds. But the raiders had turned Broc’s sacred heirloom to ash along with the monastery’s ox-ploughs, carts and hay wagon. There was nothing to stand between Cai and the knowledge that Fenrir was leaving tomorrow at dawn.

All these preparations had been his way of staving off the truth. Irrational, because with every swipe of the straw across Eldra’s coat he had made her more fit for her new owner, but this way he brought the racing minutes under some kind of control. If Cai was giving Fen a horse to aid his journey, it would be the best horse available. If he was providing supplies to send him on his way, they would be fresh and wholesome. And that reminded him—he had told Hengist to pack up some saddlebags with victuals, dried fish and oatcake that would serve Fen if his perishable food ran out on the long road south. Cai had better go and check there was enough. That Hengist was doing it right. Then another aspect of this departure would be his, a thing inside him, not a hook in his guts hauling them out.

He led Eldra up into the pasture at the top of the slope. It was drier here than anywhere else, so that even if she did choose to roll and besmirch herself, the damage wouldn’t be too bad. What Cai wanted to do was let her go. He wanted to slap her on the rump and send her pelting off to some far distance where no one could ever retrieve her. He wanted to fasten up the gates of Fara, hide every loaf and apple in the place and tell Fen that if he wanted food, he damn well could stay here and grow it like anybody else.

Cai’s throat contracted. He gave a low, wrenching moan he was grateful nobody could hear. No one but Eldra, anyway. She thumped him with her muzzle, right in his slow-healing stitches, then trotted away with her freshly groomed tail bannered high.

He took the clifftop path to avoid passing through the new huts. Since yesterday and his visit to the graves, he was formally up and about, the reprieve of sickness ended. He couldn’t get from his bunk to the latrines without half a dozen interceptions, questions.
Brother Cai, Brother Cai.

Abbot Cai.

He didn’t mind. He knew most of the answers and remembered how it was. In troubled times, good to have a benign elder to direct your works, or simply bestow upon them a nod and a smile. Yes, the church would be rebuilt. No, there would be no canonical hours, only morning and evening prayers, as in Theo’s time. Who was Cai to decide such things? He didn’t know, but the answers came to him clearly and cleanly when they had to, based on common sense and his long acquaintance with these few surviving men. No one had ever asked Aelfric anything. Theo had usually travelled about at the heart of a small group, eager for his teachings and his word.

Cai had no teachings to offer, but he would do what he could. He just couldn’t do it now, not until he had once more strangled into submission his infantile rage. A benign elder? Emerging onto the clifftop, taking deep breaths of the fresh breeze, Cai choked on bitter laughter. He felt like a child.

And, dear God, there was a ship on the horizon. He stumbled, grabbing at a fence post for balance. No. There wasn’t a single thing, not a scrap of resistance left, inside him or in the remains of the monastery, to fight off another raid. “No…”

“No!”

Cai glanced down the track, startled at the echo. Fen was running towards him, as little like a monk as Cai had ever seen him—a proud, athletic figure, his cassock only incidental, a becoming second skin, even with a waxed-linen apron on top. “No, Cai,” he called, coming into sight of him. “Not this time. Just take them and get them inland.”

Make a run for it.
Even now Cai’s hillfort blood rebelled at the idea. Fen came to a breathless halt at his side, and Cai shielded his eyes, trying to make out the details of this new terror. It was one ship only. That was something, except that it was huge…

A vessel such as Cai had never seen. She was ungainly, more like a river barge than a seagoing carrier. She was magnificent, though. The sunlight was dancing off golden trimmings on her prow. Her sides were decked with purple cloths, and her sail… Cai took Fen’s hand. He hadn’t meant to—had meant to teach himself how not touching him would feel and start to live with it. But it was so natural, and natural as breathing the returning embrace of Fen’s arm around his waist. So there they stood—lovers, brothers, comrades, watching the sea. “That sail. The sign on it—that’s the bishop’s crozier.”

“His what?”

“His staff, you heathen. Do you see it—the spiral curving back on itself?”

“Yes. Who would bring such a ship out here?”

“I don’t know. That’s the emblem of the diocese at Hexham. Only the bishop himself would have the authority, or…well, a king, but that’s even less likely than a bishop, this far north of civilisation.”

“It looks as if it’s heading to East Fara. The island.”

Cai wasn’t certain which of them had begun the walk down to the beach. Fen’s hold on him distracted him from many things, quieted his mind even when he wished to stay alert, cogent, angry. He only came to surface again when the cliff track narrowed and Fen let him go, pushing him gently ahead to take the lead. Why were they coming here? Cai had a dozen things to do, and Fen from the look of him had been helping with the slaughter of their few remaining pigs. But as they made their way downslope, he saw that the vision of this strange, majestic ship had exerted its pull on others of his brethren too. One by one they appeared among the dunes, leaving their tasks behind them. Perhaps they were only relieved that the vessel hadn’t heralded another raid, and wished to watch it out of sight. Or maybe, like Cai, they couldn’t take their eyes off the misty place on the horizon where it was slowly fading, in flickering purples and flashes of sun.

The Fara brethren settled on the beach, on the dry sand and the scattered rocks where the seals liked to bask. Cai knew he should send them back to work. He was no Aelfric, but he shouldn’t allow a reasonless midday idleness like this. They were working monks, and outside of mealtimes and prayer, their labours were mapped out for them—especially now, when barely a stone lay on a stone at Fara to show what the place was meant to be. There was no excuse for Cai himself to be here, hitching up the hem of his robes and scrambling onto a rock so he could see.

Fen took his elbow to give him a boost and steady him, and then he too clambered up and sat at Cai’s side—to windward, Cai noted, shielding him, keeping him warm. “Is she still heading out?”

“I’m not sure. She seems to be just…hanging there. Drifting.”

An attentive silence fell. The survivors of the last raid had been subdued men, but still when they came together there were murmurs about aching limbs, the occasional burst of laughter. They were quiet now, their attention fixed on the gilded ship.

She came about. The movement was imperceptible at first, and then the noonday sun caught her helm in a blaze. At first Cai was surprised by her new heading, but then everything faded away but her beauty. She was making for shore. All around him, the gathered men came to their feet, shielding their eyes to watch. Cai got up too, and he and Fen picked their way down past the rock pools and over constellations of pale cockleshells and barnacles until they were standing at the sea’s edge.

The ship was too deep in the hull to draw very far into the shallows. A couple of hundred yards out, her crew trimmed the sail. They were vigorous men in neat uniforms, a match for any interested
vikingr
pirates. Cai could make them out clearly now, as well as the ancient gateway symbol on the canvas. Not just episcopal authority, then, but secular, and the highest in the land—the mark of the kingdom of Bernicia.

The vessel came to a standstill. First the crew ran to drop anchor, and then a burly quartet of them winched up a smaller craft, a tender-boat fit to make the run between ship and shore. In it was a solitary figure, balancing with fragile dignity while the tender swayed on its ropes and was lowered by slow, careful degrees into the water. Three of the crewmen scrambled down rope ladders and boarded it too. Two of them took up the oars, and the third stood behind the passenger, apparently as a kind of honour guard. All were heavily armed, showing rich purple cloth beneath their breastplates, their shields also marked with the crozier and gate.

Only when the tender was far enough inshore to rock on the breakers did Cai understand. “My God. Who have they got there?”

“They stopped off at Addy’s island, didn’t they? He told us they were after him to make him bishop.”

“Didn’t we agree he was mad?”

“Well, does he look sane to you?”

Addy—Aedar, the hermit of Fara—was sitting bolt upright in the boat. His hair and beard were streaming in the wind, untamed as ever, but over his cassock he was wearing a sumptuous gold and purple cloak. He had an air of having been bundled into it. In his hands he was clutching a staff, at once like his old shepherd’s crook and entirely alien to it—the mark of the shepherd of souls, its old functional shape wrought out of use and into beauty, the bishop’s spiralled crozier. He saw Cai and Fen, and used this mighty symbol of authority to wave at them, a broad grin breaking across his face. “My friends!” he yelled across the windswept distance between them. “I am pleased to see you. Wait there.”

The oarsmen stopped their efforts and brought the boat to a smooth halt in the shallows. One of them promptly leapt out and held up his hands. The old man accepted his aid but waved off the attentions of the guardsman who was trying to hold his cloak and cassock out of the water. Once out of the boat, he hitched up his garments for himself, gave his escort a friendly nod and began to splash through the wavelets, digging his crozier into the sand for balance.

Cai wanted to run to him, but something held him still. Fen too was motionless beside him. They waited until Addy was right in front of them, and then the three stood and looked at one another, all of them stilled with wonder at the changes. Addy broke the seagull silence at last. “You see,” he said sadly, “it’s as I feared. They’ve come for me at last.”

“Against your will?” Fen glanced at the soldiers, assessing his next fight. “Just make a signal. Caius and I will assist you.”

“No, no.” Addy chuckled and patted Fen’s muscular arm. “What a wolf it is! No, I am here of my own will, if not of my own desire. They came in this great ugly boat of theirs. I tried to refuse, but the young man with them was insistent—quite insistent. He agreed to let me stop and say goodbye to my friends at Fara, but I fear he’s anxious for my return. I mustn’t keep him waiting long.”

Cai followed Addy’s swift glance back over his shoulder. Standing at the rail of the ship was a slender, fair-haired man. He was dressed quite differently to the soldiers, in a gorgeous cloak of scarlet, richly embroidered all over in gold. It was fastened at the shoulder with a brooch whose jewels flashed visibly even from this far away. He didn’t look like a man much accustomed to having to wait.

Fen’s distance vision was better than Cai’s. “That lad in the prow,” Cai said. “Is he wearing a crown?”

“Not by
vikingr
standards. Our chieftains have better than that. But…”

Cai racked his brains for a name. News came slowly to Fara, and borderlines and monarchs changed fast. “Addy—did King Ecgbert of Bernicia come to fetch you?”

“Aye, it seems so. A pleasant young man. He took my spade from me—I was digging my garden—and gave me this staff. Put this cloak on me with his own hands. Still I would have refused him. I love my solitude, my seals and my birds. But men like your new abbot are springing up everywhere, and I can’t defeat them from here. So I shall go among them as a teacher and a leader, take up arms in my own way, and try what that will do.” He adjusted his cloak, one-handed and awkward, as if it weighed more heavily on him than he could bear. “Oh, Caius. Tell your brethren to stand—the occasion doesn’t warrant this.”

Cai turned. Behind him on the sand, Hengist and Cedric and the others—even Eyulf, his mouth wide open in amazement—had drawn together into an orderly group and fallen to their knees.

“Some of them know of your legend, sir,” Cai said hoarsely. “And all of them recognise the signs of your authority. It’s what they wish.”

“Well, it seems strange to me, but…” The old man fell silent. His attention focussed on the cliff and the green shoulder of Fara’s great rock. “Caius. What happened here?”

“There was a raid. The worst we’ve ever known, and Aelfric was killed in it. So you don’t need to worry about him anymore, but God help the rest of us—everything is gone.”