Brothers of the Wild North Sea (42 page)

A show would do everyone, monks and villagers alike, a world of good. Cai got up and brushed off his robes. The leader of the group was driving a sturdy black pony at a sharp pace over the sands. He was well-matched to his beast, burly and dark haired. It took Cai a minute more to recognise his father.

Broccus slowed up in a flurry of mud-splash outside the monastery gate. Cai no longer kept it closed, his friends all being welcome and his enemies unstoppable now by means of any barricade. Nevertheless the old man halted. He raised a hand. Cai returned the gesture, wondering if he were still asleep. For once in his life, Broc had asked for permission.

He rattled up the track and came to a stop outside the church, the other drivers flanking him. Cai went to meet them. He had pulled up his hood against the sharp autumn wind, tucked his hands into the sleeves of his cassock. Broc looked down at him from the seat of his cart. He gave a derisory chuckle, much more familiar to Cai than the show of politeness at the gate. “Well, freeze my balls if it isn’t my firstborn, looking every inch the monk.”

The last time Broc had seen him, Cai had been wearing his travelling clothes. He’d never set eyes on him in his cassock. “What did you expect?”

“From the stories I’ve been hearing—chain mail perhaps, and a sword. I heard my godly son became a warrior. Took up arms and fought off Viking marauders—saved this place, for what it’s worth. I heard they made you abbot.”

Cai pushed back his hood. He didn’t want to be angry. He didn’t have the strength for it, and he hated the dull surge of rage the old man could make him feel. “Nobody made me anything. What do you want here?”

“I thought I’d come and look at my son’s domain. See what made him give up a kingdom. So far I see a church with no roof and what I hope are your pigsties.”

Cai began to walk away. A cold, thin rain was falling, and he could smell Fen in the folds of his damp robes. Laundry was less of a priority these days, though Hengist did his best. The scent was a reality. Broc had to be a bad dream. He’d vanish if Cai ignored him for long enough.

“Caius!”

Something different in that voice, as alien as the hesitation at the gate. Remonstrance, and a rasp of—what? Fear? Unable to imagine it, Cai turned back to see. But Broc was leaping down from the cart, his face hidden.

“Here!” he shouted, dragging down a sack and hefting it as if it weighed nothing. “Barley grain for your bread and your next planting. Half a dozen of those, and…” He gestured to his companions, who also began unloading their carts. “Where is your sheep pasture?”

Mutely Cai pointed uphill to the enclosure where three lonely beasts now grazed, the only remnants of Wilf’s runaways. Broc’s second wagon seemed to burst apart in a surge of bleating life, and Cai found himself knee-deep in the hardy little black-faced crossbreeds who thrived on the hillfort’s bleak slopes. Before he could speak, Broc nodded to his companion, who whistled to a grizzled herding dog and turned the flock into a river, flowing away uphill. “Ten ewes and a tup, to restart your stock. Half a dozen sacks of corn. Half a dozen oats. Two decent-sized horses, fit for plough or cart.”

“Why, Broccus?”

“Why what?”

“This. Now.”

Broc balled his hands into fists. He braced them on his hips and looked about him. “I heard the last raid cleaned you out, that’s all.”

“I can’t give you anything to pay for these.”

“If I’d wanted barter, I’d have taken them to Traprain market, not this ruin. When I heard how boldly you’d fought, boy, and trained other men to do likewise…” Broc hesitated, then went on as if being forced to confession at sword point. “I was proud of you.”

Cai came to stand in front of him. His heart was beating fast, the shrieks of dying friends and enemies resounding in his ears. “Proud of me?” He swallowed. “I came here a raw, ignorant brat. I have learned to read, write, speak Latin. I can doctor men and teach them. And now—now when you hear that I’ve broken my every vow, grabbed a sword and learned how to hack men to bits with it—
now
you’re proud?”

Broc stared at him blankly. His face was Cai’s, sculpted by a few more rounds of summer light and winter hail, a mirror of the future Cai had come here to avoid. “I should load these wagons back up and go, you brat.”

“If you wish.”

“Caius—what do you expect of
me
?”

Cai blinked. The old man sounded bitter, but the anger had vanished from his voice. “What do you mean?”

“When I said you looked like a monk, you asked me what I expected. You were right. It was a foolish thing to say.” Broc ran a hand through his hair so that it stood up in a perplexed crest. “What do I look like to you? A saint? A priest? I am the man you have known all your life. I steal cattle, swive women, defend my hillfort. My boy ran away from me to become everything I am not. Forgive me, that my heart burned with joy to hear he had become a warrior.”

He unhitched the two horses from their leading rein, tethered them with a wooden ground spike, and clambered back into the cart. He shouted at his herdsman, pointing off down the track to indicate that he should catch up with him there, and shook his pony’s reins.

Cai watched his retreat. Dusk was falling, and it wouldn’t take long for the mist to swallow him up. There would be no evidence for his existence, apart from some tracks in the turf.

Those, the two horses, the black-faced sheep now terrorising Wilf’s three sorry survivors, and the lifesaving abundance piled up all around Cai’s feet. Cai stood frozen for a few seconds more, and then he ran after him.

“Broccus! Broccus…” Cai couldn’t run far anymore. It hadn’t mattered until now. His lungs were too tight for him to throw his voice ahead of him, or at any rate Broc was affecting not to hear. Slipping on the muddy track, Cai forced his heavy limbs on. The wagons drew further ahead. Once they were on the flats, Cai would lose them. “Father!”

Broc reined in. He didn’t turn or look down as Cai stumbled up to him, panting, grabbing at the cart shaft for support. “Father. These things you’ve brought…” A spasm of coughing seized him, and he tried again. “They’re the difference between life and death. I tried my best, but…we haven’t got enough. We’d have starved.”

“Well? Am I taking them away from you?”

“You’ve got a long trip home. Will you stay?”

The old man’s shoulder twitched. His grip on the reins relaxed. “What—in your pigsties? No. We’ll bed down in one of the villagers’ barns for the night.”

“At least eat with us.”

“Lentils and scurvy grass?”

“No.”
Just as well you didn’t turn up yesterday, though.
“A good fish supper tonight.”

“Very well. Turn around, Gowan!” Broc held out a broad, calloused paw to his son. “You’d better climb up. What’s the matter with you, boy? You look like a ghost that’s been left out to bleach in the rain.”

Only one cresset flickered in the church that night. The light was enough for the two men and the book they held between them. Cai had spared his brethren their lesson for that night, sending them off to their cells with an extra jug of ale in honour of Broc’s visit. Then he had awkwardly asked the old man if he would come to the church—not to meet God, or anything so injurious to digestion. Just to see the book.

Broc was as uneasy as a bear, even in the stripped-back nave, which apart from its stark wooden cross now scarcely betrayed any signs of its function. He occupied old Martin’s chair as if it had been his hillfort throne, thighs splayed, only a vague notion of courtesy preventing him from propping up his feet on the stool in front of him.

Cai sat on a bench at his side. “My abbot Theo brought this back from the East with him. He hid it with Addy—with Aedar, I mean, the new bishop—and Aedar gave it to me.”

“From the East? Kent?”

“Further even than that. A land called Arabia, beyond the Mid-Earth Sea.”

“Why did he leave it with you?”

“I’m still not sure. He told me I should learn and teach from it, spread light. And I will, as long as I’m able.”

Broc’s attention had been on the book. Now he looked up thoughtfully at his son. “As long as you’re able? Why shouldn’t that be for a long time yet?” Cai didn’t reply, and the old man pursed his lips, brow furrowing. “You know, I’d thought there was no hurry, but…isn’t it time you had a child?”

“A child?”

“Yes. A boy, an heir—someone to carry on what you are. I will raise him, if you are… If you couldn’t keep him here.”

Cai chuckled. “Well, I couldn’t sit with him in my lap while I talked to my monks about chastity. Broc, you have dozens of sons. Go and tell them to get heirs.”

“None of them are firstborn,” Broccus returned grimly. Cai, who’d heard that sole argument for his value all his life, shook his head, and Broccus sighed. “I mean…none of them are my Caius. Could you not consider it, lad? If I sent you down the choicest of my women? I have one girl—good birth, willing, fertile as a springtime coney. Couldn’t you bring yourself to have her just once?”

My Caius.
Cai, who’d been about to snarl at the old man to mind his business, lost a breath as the words sank in. “Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m grateful. But…I couldn’t lie with a woman. Not now.”

Broccus blanched. “Are those rumours true, then? What have they done to you?”

“Nothing. No.” Frowning, Cai gave his father an amused, disgusted grin. “No! Not for that reason.”

“What, then? Oh, is her place taken?” Broc exhaled noisily. “I see. And around here, not by a woman, I assume.”

“No. Not by a woman.”

A silence followed, broken by the crackle of the torch in its cresset. “Which one is he, then?”

More silence. Cai clasped his hands round the back of his head and curled over until his fringe was brushing the
Gospel of Science
, the page where a small man was standing on the surface of the moon to demonstrate her phases, and Cai dearly wished he could join him there.

“I heard it said, not that I believed it, that you fought with a half-tame Viking at your side. I didn’t see that kind of fox in your chicken coop tonight. Is he gone?”

“Yes.”

“And is that why the bones of your back are sticking out like a starved hound’s?”

How could the old man know that? Cai, returning from the moon, realised that for the first time in his grown-up life, his father’s arm was around him. “No. I’ve been ill, that’s all. I was wounded in the last raid.”

“You took a blade?”

The old sod sounded more delighted than concerned. Still, his arm was warm, and as he had pointed out to Cai, he had never pretended to be other than he was. “Yes, a sword. Right through my side.”

“That’s a brave lad! Let me see the mark of it.”

“Not here. I’d have to hitch up my robes too high, and that’s unbecoming…”

“In the house of God.” Broc snorted. “I’m sure old Martius and Cernunnos wouldn’t faint to see your tackle. Never mind. Look at what that bastard Bren did to me in the last cattle raid!”

He pulled open the neck of his tunic, and Cai saw a livid scar snaking up his throat. He gave a low whistle. “You were lucky. That one missed your carotid by an inch.” Broc beamed as if he’d been given a gift, and Cai remembered he had marks of battle he
could
show without getting undressed. “A Viking I was fighting slashed my arm. Look.”

Broc whistled in his turn. “That must have gone to the bone.”

“Near enough. And here, where I fell from the scriptorium onto the rocks.”

“I can see grit in it still. This is where Edulf lobbed a javelin at me. That was a grand battle.” Broc rolled down his sleeve and sat nodding in satisfaction at the memories for a moment. “Next time you’re troubled with raiders, you should remember that I can raise an army. I have enemies all over these hills. They’d just as soon fight Vikings as fight me.”

An army… Cai hid a smile. That would be Broc himself in a chariot, and a handful of old-timers like himself on ponies. “Thank you. But I’m not sure if I’d stand up to another raid. We’ve lost so many men, and our best warrior is… He had to leave.”

“That damn Viking. Ah, you’d feel different once your blood was up.” Broc patted the open book, turned another couple of pages. “I bet you would fight for this, if nothing else.”

“Perhaps. It’s a fine thing, isn’t it?”

“Aye, fine enough. But your own Roman ancestors knew more than this. It’s these bloodless Christians who are trying to make such knowledge rare.” Stretching and yawning, Broc glanced at the night sky through the open rafters. “Still, it’s good that someone wrote it down. I must go while there’s still some light.”

Cai accompanied him as far as the door. Once there, the old man surveyed the darkening hillside, starred all over with faint light from the beehive cells. “Forgive me,” he said—a low growl expressive of anything but remorse, but nevertheless a shock to Cai. “I have seen this place now. Your monks have told me how you built it up from less than nothing. You’ve done well. You should take care of that book, boy—and yourself.”

The breeze snuffed Cai’s lantern in the doorway to his cell. He thought about lighting it again, but then set it aside in its niche. He was tired. That was good. His one hope tonight was that he would drop into the profound sleep where all his memories of Fen seemed to be stored, fresh and vivid as if just laid down. Yes, tales with the ink still wet on them, of a monk and a Viking who met in combat and defied two worlds to live in love. Wild fantasy, of course, on a chill north-coast night with the wind moaning through every gap in the stonework. Awake, Cai was losing belief in the stories himself.