Brothers of the Wild North Sea (7 page)

“Well, go back and have about ten more.”

“What? You’ll be an old man by then!”

Cai shook his head. He reached up and lifted the boy from his perch. Springing onto the board in his place, he took up the reins. They were soft and worn and came more sweetly to his hands than befitted a humble follower of Christ. He couldn’t help but think how much faster he would cover the ground between here and the monastery now. He smelled fresh bread and noticed the satchel of provisions his unpredictable father had also packed in among the swords. Some of his sickness and grief had receded. His imagination pounced forwards to how it would feel to bring a Briton’s broadsword slicing down onto a Viking’s hairy skull.

“Tell Broccus I’m grateful,” he said. “Very.” It struck him that Broc had picked out for him a lad with fair hair and eyes as close to blue as the stock of the inland strongholds ever showed. He shivered. “Be sure and tell him I wasn’t dissatisfied with you. I can’t take anyone back with me, and…I’m done with that kind of thing. That’s all.”

He shook the reins. The pony danced around, making the harness jingle. Cai had only driven a handful of times, Broc cursing him and bawling out instructions, but he found his balance easily, measuring tension on the reins where they ran through the loops. The boy stepped out of the way, and he drove the chariot sharply forwards, lifting his face to meet the wind.

A mile north of Fara, Oslaf appeared, blue around the lips from desperate running. As soon as Cai saw him, he set the warhorse to a gallop. He’d instructed Benedict as well as he could in the care of the injured men, but knew he shouldn’t have left them. Nothing—not even life—had seemed so important as getting to Broc and acquiring the instruments of death. He drove the chariot on to meet Oslaf, reining in hard when he approached the panting monk. “Here,” he called, reaching down. “Get in. Tell me as we drive.”

“No.” Oslaf lurched at the movement of the unfamiliar vehicle, grabbed the rail and hung on. “At least… Slow down. I saw you coming home, and Ben said I should get to you and warn you…”

“Is Cedric worse? John?”

“No. They’re healing. Take this side track, Cai. Stay out of sight of Fara for now.”

“Why?”

“Follow round so you’ll come in at the foot of the cliff. What
is
this devil’s contraption?”

“It’s my father’s, which amounts to the same thing. What’s wrong?”

“We have a new abbot.”

Cai steadied the pony, who’d enjoyed her wild dash over the moors and was skittering impatiently in the confines of the lane. He calculated the time it took for a message to reach even the nearest of the brother monasteries. “How? No one can have heard about Theo yet.”

“They haven’t. This man was dispatched from the south weeks ago to replace him. His name is Aelfric. He’s…” Oslaf relinquished his grip to gesture with one hand, clearly lost for words. “Just don’t let him see you come in, not with this rig. And…” He glanced incredulously into the baskets. “And an arsenal. Caius…”

“We have to defend ourselves.”

“He won’t let you. He says the raid was a punishment from God.”

Cai almost dropped the reins. “He says
what
?”

“Because we don’t obey Rule. Because Theo was wicked and heretical. He wants his body taken out of the crypt and—”

The lane was very narrow. Broc’s chariots had been designed for close combat, though, and his horses could turn on a sestertius. The mare swung obediently at Cai’s shout and tug on her left rein. The chariot lumbered round, almost tipping Oslaf off the side. “Cai, what are you doing?”

“Going home. The fast way. Where is this idiot from?”

“Canterbury. He has other men with him, senior clerics. Please turn round again. You can’t just…”

“Oslaf, be silent. And hang on.”

The scene before him was dreamlike. Urging the pony on, Cai struggled to make sense of it. He had been fighting for his grasp on reality all the way down the coastal plain, memories overlaying themselves onto his bleak present moment. He’d driven hard past the place where he’d first seen Leof on his journey home from trading, averted his eyes from the dunes where they’d lain down. Now it was as if time had slipped, doubled back on itself with incomprehensible changes. Men were congregated, motionless but for the wind-driven flap of their robes, in the place where the church had been. Shaken by the speed of his approach, Cai could almost take the vision wholesale, believe in it as he wanted to—the brotherhood nearly back at full complement, close to thirty of them standing in the sun.

But five were strangers. They were gathered around a tall, thin man whose resemblance to Theo vanished after one cruel sting. The remaining Fara brethren were facing them. Through a flash of red fury Cai saw John and Cedric amongst them. Cedric was propped up in Wilfrid’s arms, John on his knees, his face grey and drawn.

Cai let the mare pick up speed. She liked open ground, and the church—the remains of it, the undefended space with its tumble of stones and burnt rafters—stood all by itself on the hillside. The monks were beginning to turn in response to the thunder of hooves. Mouths opened, fingers pointed. The thin man pushed back his hood to see, revealing a harsh tonsure and a face like a carrion crow’s. Repulsion crawled in Cai’s marrow, an antipathy that curdled his blood. Deepest instinct told him that this carrion bird was his enemy, more certainly than the
vikingr
who had plundered and burned with blind malice only. For a moment he wanted to plough straight into the group, smashing himself and the chariot to bits in the process, but he eased the speeding pony’s head around, drawing her through an arc to slow her down.

“You,” he cried as soon as he was within earshot. “What in God’s name are you doing? Why are those men out of bed?”

Benedict detached himself from the group and ran to intercept him. “Caius, wait.”

“No! Take the horse. Hold her.” Cai leapt down, not caring whether Ben had obeyed his order or not. He vaulted into the church over the tumbledown wall and ran to Brother John. “All right,” he said to him, crouching at his side. “Just hold on and…” He broke off, lifting a scarlet hand. “He’s bleeding,” he yelled, and thrust out his red palm at the newcomers. “Who the devil are you? What have you done?”

The tonsured man stepped forwards. If he was startled by Cai’s intervention, his face didn’t betray it. In fact he looked coldly amused. “I am Abbot Aelfric of Canterbury, sent to mend the devil’s work in this blasphemous pigsty. God and the Vikings have begun my mission for me. Now—before I order you tossed from the cliffs—who are
you
?”

Cai hauled in a breath. Before he could expel it, a shadow fell across him—Ben’s huge bulk, interposing itself between him and Aelfric. “My lord abbot,” he said, planting a hand on Cai’s shoulder and pushing him down. “This is our physician, Brother Caius. Forgive him. The men killed in the raid were his close friends, as—as they were to all of us.”

“This wild-eyed savage is a monk? Where is his cassock?”

“He’s been travelling. Abbot Theodosius used to permit him to wear—”

“Where is his tonsure?” Aelfric turned back to address the brethren, dismissing Benedict without a glance. “And all of yours? Where are your hours for prayer? Why have I come here to find you doing as you wish, through all the day and the night? You say the Vikings raided here. I say again—God wielded his sword over you, and sent a cleansing fire. In truth…” He paused, eyes shining coldly. “Cast your minds back to that night. In truth, did Vikings come? Or were they demons, cast up from your own blackened consciences to reprove your sins?”

Caius burst into laughter. “You think we
dreamed
this raid?” He stood up, knocking aside Ben’s restraining hand. “Wilfrid—press the hem of John’s cassock here, as I have been doing. To staunch the hole the dream-demon made in him. Tonsures, Aelfric? Hours for prayer? You try both, in a freezing winter here. You’ll want every hair on your shiny pate by the end of it. Ask the newborn lambs in the snow if Brother Shepherd can come home to pray nine times a day.”

“Caius!”

“What?” Cai swung round to face Ben. “Why is anyone listening to this man?”

“Because he’s our abbot,” Ben replied flatly. Cai opened his mouth, but Ben took his shoulders. Low and urgent, too soft for anyone else to hear, he went on, “Besides, what if…? Oh God, what if he’s right?”

The sense of nightmare had lifted from Cai for a while, during his wild gallop from Broc’s stronghold. Now it came down again, like a killing jar over an insect. Strength ran out of him. If Ben, the strongest and best of his friends here, had fallen under the spell of this lunatic… All the light and warmth in Cai’s world lay buried in the shallow mound beneath the hawthorn trees. He had briefly forgotten. “I don’t care,” he said dully. “I just want John and Cedric out of here. Will you help me or not?”

Ben hesitated. Peripherally Cai saw Aelfric smile, as if winning a finely calculated point. Then Oslaf, who had finished securing horse and chariot to a post, pushed through the crowd towards them. “Benedict,” he demanded breathlessly. “What’s wrong with you? We must help Cai.”

He took Ben’s hand. The gesture was potent—much more than brother to brother. Cai wanted to shield them, but Aelfric had seen it too. His gaze had focussed, knife-blade predatory, upon their joined hands.

Benedict shook himself and seemed to come out of a trance. “Yes. Sorry.” He lifted his head. “Forgive me, my lord abbot, but Caius is right.”

Aelfric let it go. He did so easily, as if he had found something better to pursue. “Go, then. I have said what I wish to for now. All those who need to, go with your physician. For now.”

Cai and Oslaf took charge of Cedric, who had stayed upright somehow, his eyes blank and lost. Benedict picked John up bodily and cradled him. Leading the way out of the church, Cai saw his new abbot’s thin lips working, moving as if in prayer.
Abominations,
Cai lip-read, and averted his gaze so as not to know any more. Aelfric was watching Oslaf and Ben like a hawk.
Abominations.
A few of the monks who had suffered no injury during the raid did their best to creep out with the others, but Aelfric’s retinue, starved-looking men like himself, moved to block their path.

Aelfric spread his arms. “I will purify this place of all abomination,” he declaimed aloud, his voice a crow’s caw on the wind. “I will rebuild it in sanctity. You who remain here—never mind your goats and your laundry. Dedicate daylight today to gathering these fallen stones. Your church must be built out of rock, like Peter’s of Rome.”

Cai stopped dead. Oslaf had started up the stairs to the infirmary with Cedric. He shielded his eyes from the sun. “Don’t be a fool, Aelfric,” he said. His anger had gone. To himself he sounded reasonable. He had to stop this stranger in such a fundamental mistake. “The Vikings knock down churches wherever they raid. I don’t think they care what we worship, or who, but the sight of our churches provokes them. We build in willow and thatch so it won’t matter so much—so we can put them back up again.”

“Blasphemy!” Aelfric swung a finger at Cai, who thought he would soon become very tired of that gesture. And that word. “Blasphemy, to say the burning of a church matters not! A church built out of faith and sacred stone can never fall. We will build it. You will help us the moment your duties are done.”

Cai shrugged and turned away. He didn’t know what battle he was facing here, if there was a battle at all. Benedict and all the Fara brethren had been devoted to Theo. A stranger marching into Theo’s monastic realm, threatening to desecrate his corpse… Cai would have expected to find Aelfric and his men in a heap at the foot of the cliff, hurled there by Benedict’s great hands. How had the crow taken charge? If Cai could bring himself to care, he’d have to find out, discover the nature of his power. And meanwhile… “Oslaf,” he called softly, running up the stairs to catch up with him. “I’ll take Cedric now. Can you get back down to the chariot—take it down to the stables without our new friend noticing?”

“I’ll try.”

“Good. And if he stops you—well, for God’s sake don’t let him see the swords.”

To stay out of Aelfric’s way was the best. Over the next couple of days, Cai managed this well. John took fever from his enforced attendance in the church, and Cai stayed at his bedside, wrestling away the dark angel more by sheer force than medical skill. Half a dozen times he reached for Danan’s poppy vial, but held off, reading the lights in John’s eyes as a will to survive and praying he was right. Aelfric didn’t intrude into the infirmary, and Cai didn’t encounter him again until at last he could leave John for long enough to go in search of food.

His route took him past Theo’s office. That was how the brethren had referred to the bare little cell by the scriptorium, though Theo had dispensed most of his administrative wisdom directly, outdoors or looking over his charges’ shoulders while they worked. The room had been the storehouse for his curiosities and teaching aids—a row of skulls, some from beasts whose living forms Cai couldn’t begin to imagine, some human—and on the shelves below, the array of devices he had used to teach the brethren his wild, anticlerical science.
The
Gospel of Science
,
Cai thought, Theo’s last words resounding in his head again.
Only a copy, dear Caius. Don’t worry.