Hawk Quest (32 page)

He was still hidden when the warhorses came rearing up out of the sand-sea behind him, swinging their heads like mallets, their hooves smashing breaches in the crest.

‘Run!’

Arms windmilling, they raced down the face. The Normans rode in different directions, weaving across each other, the horses galloping haywire though the warren of gullies.

Sliding down the next scarp, Richard tore his shoe and stumbled on with one sole flapping. They reached another summit and risked a backward glance. By some quirk of timing, all the Normans were hidden in the depressions. Then suddenly, like marionettes jerked on a string, up they rose, whipping their horses, bracing back in their saddles for the next crashing descent. Richard’s breaths came in wheezing gasps. Hero was so winded that he scrabbled up the last slope on all fours.

Raul and Wayland were waiting by the boat. Hero gave a feeble shout and they looked up, idly curious for an instant before springing into action. Hero launched into space, lost his footing and somersaulted down to the beach. Head spinning, he looked up at Wayland and found enough breath to speak.

‘Normans. Chasing Brant.’

Wayland lugged them down the beach. Raul was pushing the boat into the surf.

Wayland dragged them through the waves. Raul seized them one in each hand and plucked them aboard. They grabbed oars. Hero squirmed round to see Brant stagger on to the last dune. He covered his face with his hands at the awful sight of the boat rowing away. A spear flew past him and he plunged off the crest.

‘We can’t just leave him,’ Hero cried.

‘He left us,’ Raul panted, not breaking rhythm.

Brant fell down the dune as if part of him were broken. When he gained his feet, he seemed disoriented, limping away up the beach before turning towards the boat. His right leg had an arrow in the thigh and dragged behind him. He was halfway down the strand when the first Normans rode on to the sand ridge. They saw that he couldn’t escape and halted while the rest of the force gathered. Upwards of twenty crested the skyline by the time Brant staggered to the water’s edge. He spread his arms, his mouth gaping in a howl of outrage.

Some of the Normans dismounted and left their horses and descended on foot. Others led their mounts sideways down the face, while the bolder cavaliers kicked with their spurs, their steeds sliding down the dune on their hindquarters. One soldier drew a bow and aimed at Brant, but an officer shouted and the archer slackened off.

Raul grabbed his crossbow. ‘Stop rowing!’

‘He’s a dead man,’ said Wayland. ‘Don’t waste your bolts.’

Raul backhanded him across the chest. ‘Stop rowing.’

He knelt, resting one elbow on the thwart to steady his aim.

Brant turned to face his hunters and held up his hands in a gesture so abject that Hero groaned for pity.

‘Everyone keep still,’ Raul ordered.

The boat slopped up and down. Raul muttered something and froze into greater concentration. Hero heard a small explosion as the pent-up energy of the bolt was released. Brant arched back, hands fluttering, took a couple of steps sideways and pitched into the shallows.

Raul picked up his oar. ‘I had to kill him. He’d have told them our course and destination.’

Two soldiers ran into the sea to recover the body. The rest gathered around their commander. Hero could see him giving directions. The force split, half a dozen men riding back up on to the dunes, the rest galloping hard up the beach.

‘What are they up to?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Raul, ‘but they ain’t given up on us.’

*

On board
Shearwater
, Wayland reported that the island was cut off from the mainland by a shallow bay riddled with banks and bars.

‘Is there a way out?’ Vallon asked.

‘There’s a narrow channel at the other end.’

‘That’s probably where the cavalry are making for,’ said Raul.

‘Any shipping in the bay?’

Wayland shook his head.

‘What about the island? Is it inhabited?’

‘I saw only ruins.’

Vallon studied the dunes. Against the gloomy evening sky, the Norman soldiers waited in menacing silhouette. The detachment that had galloped north was out of sight. The tidal current had eased and the wind had fallen. ‘We’ll take a look at the bay,’ he said.

They rowed parallel with the beach, the soldiers on the dunes reining in their horses to keep pace with them. The fugitives reached the point at the end of the beach. The bay was draining to mud, veined by dozens of channels gleaming in the gathering dark. ‘We won’t cross it without stranding,’ said Vallon. He studied the island and pointed at its rocky southern point less than a mile away. ‘Make for the shelter of the cliffs.’

Night caught up with them before they reached the lee. They felt their way in and dropped anchor when they heard the sound of waves sucking among rocks. Hero tried to conjecture some form in the darkness. Seals moaned out on the flats. Surf boomed on the cliffs around the headland.

‘Do you want me to go ashore and explore?’ Wayland asked Vallon.

‘Wait a while.’

Just then a light appeared high above them.

‘The Normans must have crossed on to the island,’ Raul muttered.

‘They wouldn’t wave a lantern. Everybody stay quiet.’

Hero watched the lantern bobbing down the black face of night. The light reached sea level and stopped. A voice called.

‘Anyone catch that?’

‘Sounded like English,’ said Wayland. ‘English and then another language.’

‘Don’t you go answering,’ Raul hissed. ‘They could be wreckers.’

The voice called again and the lantern swung like a censer.

‘He’s speaking Latin,’ said Hero. ‘
Pax vobiscum
. Peace be with you.
Venite in ripam. Nolite timere
. Come ashore. Don’t be afraid.’

Raul spat. ‘Not likely. Wreckers try all sorts of tricks to lure sailors into their clutches.’

Vallon snorted. ‘How many wreckers do you know who speak Latin? Maybe there’s a monastery on the island. Hero, ask him who he is.’

Hero made a trumpet with his hands. ‘
Quis es tu?
’

Laughter in the dark. ‘Brother Cuthbert,
erimetes sum
.’

‘He says he’s a hermit monk.’

‘Ask him if there are any Normans on the island.’

Hero turned to Wayland. ‘You ask. I think English is his native tongue.’

Wayland called out. An answer came from the night. ‘He says there aren’t any Normans. The island’s been deserted for many years. He’s the only man left on it.’

Vallon tapped his mouth. ‘Hero, go ashore with Raul and question the hermit. Find out if the Normans can reach the island. Learn as much as you can about the coast.’

‘Can I go, too?’ said Richard.

‘I suppose so. But don’t take all night. Tell the hermit to snuff out his lamp. The Normans will be able to see it from the mainland.’

Raul rowed towards the light. Hero gathered himself in the bow and sprang on to a boulder slippery with sea wrack.

‘
Salvete amici
,’ called the hermit. ‘Are you monks? Have my brothers sent you?’

His head was cowled and the glow from his lantern threw his face into shadow.

‘Put the light out,’ Raul growled.

‘But the night is dark and you don’t know the path.’

Raul whisked the lamp away and extinguished the flame. ‘I ain’t following you up any path. What is this place?’

The hermit gave a bronchial laugh. ‘You must have travelled from far away. This is the holy island of Lindisfarne, the place where Christianity first reached England.’

‘Deserted, you said.’

Another phlegmy laugh. ‘Nobody has lived on Lindisfarne since Vikings destroyed the monastery two centuries ago.’

‘Can anyone sail to it across the bay?’

‘Not on an ebbing tide and the night so dark.’

‘That’s all we need to know,’ said Raul. ‘Let’s go back.’

‘Not just yet,’ said Hero. ‘I’d like to hear the history of the place.’

‘Me, too,’ said Richard.

‘Well, I’m staying right here,’ said Raul. ‘If you hear me yell, don’t stop to wonder why.’

Hero could just about descry the hermit’s shape. ‘Sir, please take us to your shelter.
Duc nos in cellam tuam, domine, quaeso
.’

Brother Cuthbert led them up a gully, guiding them around invisible hazards. It was so dark that Richard had to cling to Hero’s sleeve. They negotiated pillars of rock and then Cuthbert stopped.

‘Here we are.
Intrate
. Come in, come in.’

Hero worked out that the hermit’s retreat was a cave with a patch of sailcloth for a weather-shield. When he put his head inside, the stench made him gag. Like rats rotting under a sack.

Richard clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘Urgh!’

‘Ssh. Think of the purity of his soul.’

Dying coals reddened fitfully on the ground. Hero and Richard sat on one side of the fire, Cuthbert on the other.

‘You’re the first visitors I’ve received since Easter,’ Cuthbert said across the gulf. ‘Which one of you speaks such polished Latin? Have you come to Lindisfarne on pilgrimage?’

‘We’re pilgrims of a sort. We’re voyaging to the far north.’

‘Carrying the word of Christ?’

‘No, we’re on a trading mission.’

Hero spoke in Latin and had to translate for Richard’s benefit. The young Norman was uneasy.

‘Ask him to light the lamp.’

Cuthbert met the request with an apology. ‘I have little fuel to spare. There is light in this place, though – a light bright enough to illuminate the darkest of nights.’

‘Tell us about your island,’ Hero said.

Cuthbert related how, in the seventh century, St Aidan had brought Christianity to Northumbria and founded the monastery on Lindis -farne. In that same year, Cuthbert’s sainted namesake was born. After ten years of missionary work, Cuthbert retreated to a hermitage on Inner Farne – one of the sea-swept islands they’d sailed past earlier. Asked by pope and king to become the second bishop, Cuthbert
reluctantly agreed, but after two years he retired to his hermitage to die. Eleven years later, at the ceremony of Cuthbert’s Elevation, the monks opened his coffin to find his body complete and uncorrupt. News of the miracle brought pilgrims flocking to the shrine. Then Vikings sacked the monastery and the surviving brothers took St Cuthbert’s body to the mainland and enshrined it in their monastery at Durham.

Several times during his narrative, Cuthbert broke off, coughing. His breathing had a stertorous quality that Hero found as disturbing as the stink.

‘You’re ill,’ he said. ‘You should be in a hospital.’

‘If there’s a cure for me, I’ll find it here by the divine power that preserved Cuthbert’s flesh after death.’

‘What’s he saying?’ Richard whispered.

Hero had stopped translating. A chill settled on his body. ‘If the saint’s relics can cure all ills, you should be in Durham where his body lies.’

Cuthbert gave another choking cough and swallowed a bolus of mucus. ‘My community expelled me.’

Hero fingered his throat. He’d heard that racked coughing before.

‘Light your lamp. We brought some gifts for you. They include oil.’

Cuthbert blew life into the coals and kindled a twist of straw. The flames singed his hands as he set the taper to the wick, but he didn’t flinch. Shadows crept up the walls. Cuthbert set down the lamp and squatted with his cowled head downcast. Hero picked up the light.

‘Show us your face.’

‘I’d rather spare you the sight.’

‘I won’t be shocked. I know what ails you.’

Cuthbert slowly raised his head. Hero drew a sharp intake of breath. The hermit’s eyes looked out from behind a carapace of scales and nodules. Half his nose had rotted away, corrupted by an infection he couldn’t even feel.

‘A leper!’ Richard shouted, jumping up. ‘We’ve been sitting with a leper.’ He backed out of the cave so violently that he tore the windbreak from its mounts.

Cuthbert’s anguished eyes stared out at Hero. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’

‘I was a student of medicine. I’ve visited leper hospitals.’

‘To cure them.’

‘There is no cure.’

Cuthbert stared past him. ‘Yes, there is. I’ve witnessed many miracles on Lindisfarne.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘This is my second year. The local fishermen leave food for me and I sometimes take eggs from the seabirds. Last winter was hard, but now that summer is approaching, pilgrims will be returning to the island. Sometimes a dozen or more cross the causeway in a single day.’

‘Causeway?’

‘I forget. You don’t know the island. The causeway is a path exposed at low tide.’

‘You said nobody could reach the island by night.’

‘I said no one would sail here in the dark.’

Hero looked over his shoulder at the entrance. ‘The tide must be almost at its lowest now.’

‘But who would make such a crossing?’

‘Excuse me, I have to go.’ Hero stood. ‘We’re fugitives from the Normans. They’ll be here soon. For your own sake, you mustn’t tell them you’ve seen us.’ He remembered the bundle and held it out. ‘This is for you. It’s not much. Some bread and fish. A blanket. I’m sorry, I have to go.’

Cuthbert’s blessings followed Hero as he stumbled down the gully. On the shoreline he blundered into Raul and Richard. The German laughed.

‘That’ll teach you to follow strange voices in the night.’

‘He spat his vile humours over me,’ Richard cried.

‘Both of you shut up!’

In silence they rowed to the ship. Hero told Vallon about the causeway and nothing else. Cuthbert had descended with his lamp to the shore again. Vallon looked away from it into the dark sky.

‘The wind’s easing all the time. Raise the anchor.’

The crew strained over the oars, heading around the point. Cuthbert followed them along the shore as if to light their way. They had almost reached the tip of Lindisfarne when out from the mainland crept a column of flares, processing over the face of the sea like communicants bound for midnight mass.

‘Forgive my outburst,’ Richard said, brushing Hero’s shoulder. ‘I was shocked.’

Hero reached up and for a moment their fingers locked. ‘Of course I forgive you.’ He gave a long groan. ‘What an awful day it’s been.’