In the Court of the Yellow King (2 page)

ulls cried faint and unseen through a heavy morning mist that cast all the world in damp and dripping grey. Distant waves rushed foaming upon the pebbled shore, filling the cool air with scents of salt and brine. Here, where the river widened to meet the sea, the waters mixed in eddying whorls. Ripples lapped the muddy banks. Splashes sounded where fish leaped, or struggled in the nets and traps.

Wigleof led the way from one spot to the next. His little sons followed, lugging the baskets that would soon be filled with this day’s rich catch. They whispered to each other, joking, teasing. They were good boys and dutiful, twins, sturdily built, curly-haired like their mother. He loved them well.

At their home, a small thatch-roofed hut walled in wattle and daub, Wigleof’s sweet-natured wife Aelda would be hard at work, helped by their daughters and tending the baby. Perhaps later, she’d walk to the village by the abbey, to trade smoked fish for milk, eggs and honey.

Or she might send Aeldwyn, their eldest, who greatly admired the nuns – Sister Gehilde most of all – and spoke of joining their order. Wigleof had no objections to this, though he held a private measure of doubt for her reasons. If Aeldwyn thought the life of a nun was nothing but restful prayer, candle-making, clean robes of soft wool and hymn-singing, he suspected she might be in for a surprise.

He chuckled to himself as he hauled up the first wicker-woven fish traps. They were well-full with sleek silver-scaled bodies that flapped and flailed, gulping. The boys chattered eagerly as they opened and loaded the baskets.

Then they hushed, frowning.

“Father,” said Leofric, his tone unusually subdued, “what happened to this one?”

Wigleof looked at what the boy held in his small hands. The fish did not flail, flap or gulp. “That one’s dead,” he said.

“But what happened to it?” Leofwald asked, his tone also subdued.

Expecting to find nothing out of the ordinary, Wigleof took the fish, and frowned himself. An odd oiliness sheened its skin, and its flesh felt strangely warm. He had never pulled a warm fish from the river, or from the sea. Its eyes bulged, yellow-white and murky, rather than shiny black. It might have already been partially stewed.

Upon a closer-yet inspection, he found that its fins and tail were tipped with fine barbs curved like cat’s claws, and in its mouth were not teeth but stringy tendrils. Something about it struck him as altogether loathsome, unnatural, and vile.

Both boys gazed at him, solemn, waiting for him – their trusted father – to have all the answers. He found himself speechless. His mind was torn, half of it wanting to hurl the fish as far away as he could, the other half thinking to take it to the village as a curiosity.

It twitched in his grasp. He dropped it with a stifled cry of revulsion. Leofwald bent as if to reach for it and Wigleof drew him back. The three of them watched as the fish writhed and clenched.

“You said it was dead,” Leofric said.

“I thought that it was.”

“It’s trying to burrow into the mud,” said Leofwald.

“Father, I don’t like it.”

“No. Nor do I.”

The frightened tremors in their voices decided him. Wigleof seized a nearby branch, snapping it off so that the end came to a rough point. He drove this down into the fish, puncturing it through the gills, nailing its body to the river bank. Thin blood oozed out, almost more yellowish than red. The fish thrashed a bit more, then fell still.

Silence held.

They watched it warily.

It did not move again.

Silence yet held, a silence that seeped into Wigleof’s consciousness. The gulls, which had been shrieking their cries, had fallen mute. He could not hear the steady rush of the surf, a noise as constant and familiar to him as his own breathing. The moisture, which had been collecting on the leaves, making them glisten, dripping off in a soft wet patter, now made no sound. Nor did the water lapping along the shore, although he saw its regular ripples.

Each of his boys held him by an arm. He felt their touches, felt their trembling, felt them press close against his legs. They looked up at him with identical pleading expressions, but did not speak. Perhaps could not speak, just as he was unable to find his own voice to reassure them.

A stirring in the heavy, silent grey gloom caught his eye. Out on the river, a shadow appeared, mist-blurred and indistinct, then coalescing into a shape... a long, low, narrow shape that brought dread to his heart... a shape with graceful curves rising at prow and at stern, curves topped with carven beast’s heads... a shape, a ship... a ship with a single mast, from which belled a striped sail of yellow and white... a ship with many slim oars jutting out to each side... oars dipping and stroking in unison... the oar-blades slicing without splashing... the hull gliding in utter silence, water parting ahead of it and sluicing together in pale roils in its wake....

Terror welled up within him.

He should have fled already, run for the village to warn them, run for his house, for his wife and daughters, to take what valuables they could and seek refuge, seek safety hiding in the woods and the hills.

A Viking ship, a longship, a ship of pagans and killers from the savage north! A raid! Fire and plunder, murder and rape!

He should have fled already.

Yet he was unable to so much as move. The boys clung to him, quaking.

The oars rose and fell, rose and fell. Upon its oar-benches sat men in mail-coats, men in leathers and furs. Their faces were pale, their hair fair and stirred by the same wind that filled the striped sail, though no wind rustled the leaves on the shore and no wind tugged at Wigleof’s own hair or clothing.

A row of shields hung along the ship’s side. Round shields of lime-wood, some with rims and bosses of iron. Shields painted... painted not with horses or ravens, dragons or wolves... painted with... symbols? letters?

Wigleof of course could not read, but he had seen some writings. And if these were letters, they were like none he had ever seen. They were...

They were hideous, those painted symbols, those yellow signs. Hideous and horrible. Loathsome to the eye, to the mind, in much the same way as the strange fish had been. Unnatural. Vile.

The ship glided on. The oarsmen never turned from their labor. If they noticed the fisherman and his sons on the river’s bank with their fish-traps and baskets, they gave no indication.

At the stern, upon the steering-platform, stood a tall figure, wrapped in a long and tattered cloak of yellow leather trimmed with the jaundiced-looking fur of a far-northern bear. He wore a gilded helm with a lank yellow horse-tail for a plume, the coarse strands blowing about his shoulders in that same unfelt wind. His helm’s visor was made from ivory or bone, its aspect pallid and inhuman.

He alone among the men turned his head as the ship passed by. His gaze sought and held the three of them, there on the shore. Through his visor, his eyes seemed to blaze as black as the stars.

...as black... as the stars?

How could that be? That could not be. That made no sense. No sense at all.

Rising and falling, the oars cut the water. The striped sail swelled full from the mast. The yellow-cloaked Viking kept a thin-fingered hand curled to the steering-oar. He tilted his helmed head ever-so-slightly in wry acknowledgment, then faced forward again, faced the carved prow, faced upriver in the direction of the unsuspecting village and abbey beyond.

Skeins of mist whirled and wafted about the longship’s stern. It became shape again, shape and shadow. Then it was no more to be seen.

Wigleof blinked, as if one emerging from a dream. He glanced at the baskets and fish-traps, and saw that every last fish – even those not yet pulled to land – lay or floated lifeless.

Somewhere, very faint and very far, a lone gull cried a dirge. Rain began to patter on the leaves, in the mud.

The boys looked at their father. Both had soaked their breeches. Becoming aware of the clammy wetness at his crotch and thighs, Wigleof realized he had done the same.

The village. The abbey.

His house. Aelda and the girls, and the baby.

Raid, rape and plunder. Fire and murder and blood.

Those shields, painted with those yellow signs.

He crouched and put an arm around each of his sons. He hugged them tight to his sides, picked them up, held them to him. They twined their little arms around his neck, and buried their faces against his shoulders.

Neither of them struggled as he carried them into the river, wading deeper to the dark channel where a strong current swept toward the sea. Nor did they make a sound, even as the cold water closed over their heads.

The blinded monk had passed another bad night. His urgent wordless gurgles grew louder, into raving grunts and groans. Though his hands were swaddled in soft wool wrappings, he tugged at them, pulled at them with his teeth, until Sister Gehilde was forced to restrain his wrists with strong bonds.

At last, she’d been able to persuade him to drink a sleeping-draught, though the sleep to which he finally succumbed was shallow, and fitful. His head tossed. Low, guttural mumbles issued from his sore-scabbed lips.

Only when the sky began to lighten and the fog gave way to rain did the monk sink into a true slumber. Gehilde, her own weariness weighing upon her, drew a blanket to his shoulders. The bandage about his face had come askew, and with a murmured prayer she adjusted the cloth over the weeping wounds where once were eyes.

She stretched. She sighed. She rubbed her brow, and temples. For a moment, the thought of her narrow bed beckoned, tempting her with its promise. But day had dawned, if damp and dreary. The morning business of Marymeade Abbey must be done.

It had been built about the remains of a stone fort of the old Romans, moss-grown ruins, tumbled walls and archways, a few intact inner chambers with floors of tiled mosaic. From a hilltop, it overlooked the winding ribbon of the river valley. Behind it, beehive-dotted flower meadows and orchards sloped away toward the green farms and grazing lands around the village.

The nuns kept the bees, collecting combs and honey, making candles and sticks of colored sealing-wax. These were their main source of livelihood in addition to what they received from the church. They also brewed fruit-wine to sell and trade.

At any given time, some three dozen women called it home. Not all were sworn to holy vows; some were lay-sisters, widows or forsaken wives. Their father-monastery was St. Neot’s of the Stave and Crook, located further inland and upriver, some days’ ride away at Shepsbury. Twice monthly, or more often during holidays, priests would come from St. Neot’s to lead services, and supervise the running of the abbey.

And, when one of their monks might fall injured or ill, Marymeade was where they were sent to be tended as they recovered.

Monks such as Brother Oston, this poor and damaged soul. And Brother Camden, to whose room Gehilde now went. She found her sister there – Gamyl, her sister by birth as well as in their holy order. Gamyl was the younger, and of slighter frame. Otherwise they much resembled one another, with fine features, fawn-brown hair beneath head-coverings of white linen, and eyes the blue of ripe bilberries.

“How does he fare?” Gehilde asked.

Gamyl glanced up from where she sat upon a stool at the monk’s bedside. “He woke for a while, spoke for a while,” she said. “But he still does not know me, or himself, where he came from or where he is.”

Brother Camden, though gone to grey, had been a hale and hearty, vibrant man... jovial in his humor, stalwart in his faith. Now he lay stricken, the entire right side of his body gone feeble and frail. The right half of his face hung slack, those corners of eye and mouth drooping. Age seemed to have draped him in a sudden cloak of additional years. If not for the slow swelling of his chest with each breath, he might have been a corpse awaiting the shroud.

“He inquired again after someone called Silvia,” Gamyl went on, “then wept a bit, bade me be sure to remember to feed the cat, and...” She trailed off with an expressive, hopeless gesture at the monk.

“Did he take any broth or gruel?”