The Miracle Thief (19 page)

The man in the red tunic rode over and leaned down to take it from me, but the Dane took up his spear and threw it in our direction. It landed with a vibrating twang.

The man backed his horse away from me.

In spite of the throbbing of my wounded hand, I clasped the parcel more firmly, using the pressure to keep my mantle from slipping to reveal my immodesty. As they moved out toward the road, I prayed my feet would last the journey. I must have walked several dozen paces, following along behind them, before the world began to crumple at the edges and dissolve into a bright white haze of nothingness. And then, I knew no more.

***

When I woke, I was no longer alone. I was no longer cold, and I was no longer walking.

“When is the last time you ate?”

I might have started at the voice that whispered in my ear, but the words were spoken in the accent of the man with the red tunic. By the light of the moon, I saw I was riding nestled into the crook of his arm. “Two days. Or three.”

He gave me some bread to eat.

At some point during that long night, we passed a city as church bells rang. It could have been the midnight office or matins, for all I knew. A Dane rode close, hand on his knife until we were well by. The village had been set in a valley between mountains. After we passed it, we began to climb in earnest. The gentle lurching of the horse and the rhythmic clop-clop of its steps sent me into a stupor of sorts, but always I woke as my chin dropped to my chest.

As dawn glimmered, brightening the night sky, the Danes parted from the road and led us to a depression in the land, where they dismounted and began to set up a camp.

The man in the red tunic slid from the horse and then reached up a hand for me.

When my skirts lifted up during my descent, he averted his eyes. He was not like the others. He did not stare at me like the Danes, nor did he avoid my gaze like the clerics.

“I am grateful to you and your horse. I am Anna from Autun.”

The corners of his mouth lifted, though the gaze from those red-rimmed eyes was sad. “I am Godric of Wessex.”

I did not know where Wessex was, but of one thing I was certain. “You are not a Frank.”

“I am Saxon.” He was regarding me with hooded, watchful eyes.

Saxons were nearly as bad as Danes. My mother had told me Charlemagne had slain many thousands of them during the wars.

“I am from Britain, a land bedeviled and beset by Danes like those.” He nodded toward the group of them.

I did not know where Britain was, but if his words were true, they made no sense. “So, you are not one of them?”

“One of the Danes?” He threw a glance at them. “No.”

“You are with the monk, then?”

“No. I'm going to the abbey, like you. And at this time of year, it's better to go in numbers than to go alone.”

“If you are not of them, and you do not approve of them, then why do you travel with them?”

“I have my own reasons for inquiring of Saint Catherine.”

“You do not wear the pilgrim's hat. And you do not have the pilgrim's scrip.”

“No, but then neither do you.”

I did not. Without the warmth of his chest and the support of his arms, the cold slipped through my tunic and seeped through my skin down into my bones. It was markedly colder at these heights. The chill of the air stung my nostrils. Leaves had frozen into clumps where they had fallen, and frost dusted the branches of the trees, where it sparkled with the sun's rising.

The Danes passed around a costrel and filled their cups with it. One started some sort of song, and the others joined in. The older cleric looked on with a sour face. Behind me, Godric from Wessex unpacked his horse. When he finished, he came to stand beside me. “They will stop singing soon. Though there are few travelers so late in the year, they seem not to want their presence known. As soon as the sun fully rises, they will sleep. And so should you.” He gestured toward a bed of blackened, frost-bent ferns.

I lay down on the ferns, my mantle tight about me, but I could not bring myself to close my eyes.

Godric sat down beside me, one leg drawn up in front of him, an arm looped about his knee. “I never sleep, so have no fear. I will not let them harm you.”

I woke with a cry and the sensation of being stabbed in the chest.

As I flailed, Godric fell back onto his heels. “I am sorry, I was just—” He held up a…a needle?

My eyes contracted with pain as they took in the day's light. Dazed from the sudden abandonment of slumber, I put my hand to the place where I had been stabbed. It was above my flattened bosom at the place where my tunic had been torn. I collected the torn edges with my bandaged hand and held them tight beneath my chin.

“I was trying to repair it. I did not think you could do it with your…” His gaze dropped toward the hem of my right sleeve. The fabric had slipped, exposing my bad hand. The skin had gone blue from the cold. Resisting the urge to warm it with my breath, I folded it in on itself, pulling it back up into my sleeve. Over in the glade beyond us, the Danes were snoring.

“…I did not think you could…that you would be able to…”

I released my hold on the tunic, and then fingered the fibers that had sprung free about the torn edges of my collar. “No.” I could not repair it. In fact, I could do nothing that needed doing.

“Do you wish that I continue?” He held up the needle once more.

I nodded.

He blinked hard, bringing water to his reddened eyes. Then he reached toward my neck and took up the two pieces of rent material, folding them together. His breath brushed my skin.

Trembling, I turned my eyes from his work.

He pressed the fabric down and pushed the needle through it. It slipped, scratching into my skin once more.

I pressed my lips together.

He took a deep breath and then blinked hard once more. “I am not used to such fine work.”

I turned my head away again, burying my chin in my shoulder and closing my eyes against the tears that had begun to leak from them.

“Truly, I am sorry. I did not mean to hurt you.”

He had not hurt me. He was the first person, in a very long time, who had been kind to me. The first person since my mother had died who had taken care of me. Who had touched me with the intent of offering aid instead of guile. I would have stopped my tears if I could have, but the more I tried, the more I trembled.

At last he finished, knotting the thread, and then, lowering his head to my chest, he took it between his teeth and broke it off, though not before my cheek was brushed by his soft and wildly curling hair.

My tunic hung strangely from my neck now. I put a hand to his work. The stitches were long and uneven. But though clumsily done, they would probably hold. “Thank you, Godric of Wessex.”

His gaze had dropped from me toward the sleeping Danes, but at my words, it swung back.

I was trembling still.

He unfastened his mantle and put it about my shoulders.

I moved to give it back, but he stayed me, placing his hand on mine. “You need it more than I.”

It was a generous thought, but the weather made it impractical. His fingers had been frigid as he had worked at my tunic. “I think, perhaps…can we not share it?” I sat upon the ferns once more, and then opened out one side.

He stared down at it for a moment, and then he glanced off toward the Danes again.

“Please.” It was not right that I should benefit from the mantle he had brought for his own warmth and comfort.

He sat beside me, back straight, gaze fixed upon the Danes, keeping a distance between us. I did not blame him. Others who had seen my hand had kept themselves farther away than he. Securing my end of the mantle around my arm, I drew my knees up beneath my tunic. Resting my cheek atop them, I turned my head away from him. I had just closed my eyes when he spoke.

“Do you truly have no one?”

I opened my eyes and looked off into the wood. There was no end to it. It seemed to go on and on forever. I had not known a forest would be that way. “I was a child alone, and my mother has just died.” But I did not fear the wood now. Not the way I had, back when I had been alone, fleeing from the wolves.

“But what of your father?”

“He is long dead.”

“There is no one who would claim you?”

“With my hand?” Not even my father had wanted to claim me. “I belong to no one. No one wanted me.”

He was silent for some time. Tired of staring at the trees, I had let my eyes flutter shut, and I had almost found sleep, when he spoke once more.

“I will not let them hurt you.”

Though he whispered the words, he had such a sure way of speaking. I turned my head, laying my other cheek atop my knees so I could see him. “Thank you.”

I saw his gaze stray from the Danes toward me. It lingered on my hair, my eyes, my nose, and by then my eyelids had grown too heavy to stay open, and my arms began to twitch with sleep. As I slipped from wakefulness to slumber, I wondered where exactly Britain was. And why he had chosen to leave it behind.

***

That forenoon, the Danes began to stir. They were restless and ill-tempered, uttering their words in vile tones as they stalked into the wood to do what was necessary, and then stalked back. They set up a board to play at some game or other. One of them took up a piece of wood and began to whittle on it. But always, one of them watched me.

The clerics kept to themselves, hands pulled into their sleeves, sitting upon a rock in sullen silence. At the appointed hours, we could hear bells tolling from several directions, signaling the offices. The canon and monk observed each one, and I asked if I could join them. They seemed surprised at my request and not as pleased as I would have expected, but I did not wish to miss any chance to impress upon God the earnestness with which I would be making my plea to Saint Catherine.

As the sun hid itself behind the mountains, and all danger of encountering pilgrims had passed, several of the men went out into the wood with their weapons. They came back, carrying a hart, which they proceeded to skin and then roast over the fire. The sizzle of its flesh and the scent of it made my stomach churn in anticipation.

Godric added some salt to their meal, and they gave him a joint of venison, which he shared with me. We sat together on our bed of ferns as they ate and drank and then drank some more. And still they did not let me long leave their sight. There were five of them. Even when I took my turn in the wood, one of them followed me. That night, it was the youngest of them, he whom I liked least of all. His eyes protruded from his face, and he always seemed to look overlong at me. Upon my return from the wood, he stepped toward me, halting my progress. And then he lurched and fell into me. Murmuring some pagan words, he gave my left bosom a sharp squeeze. Then he grabbed me about the waist and pressed himself against me.

I tried to push him away, but he only gripped me tighter.

As I began to fear I would never escape his grasp, someone grabbed him at the shoulder and threw him far from me. It was not Godric who had saved me this time, but the older cleric.

The young Dane snarled something at him, but the cleric grabbed him by the ear and dragged him over to the fire where the others were playing at their game.

“You will not do this—this—
despicable
thing! We journey to acquire a holy relic, and I will not have the journey profaned by your pagan ways!”

Their chieftain could not have understood what the man was saying, but he rose as the cleric was speaking and went to stand in front of him, staring at the man through unblinking eyes. When the man had ceased his tirade, the chieftain drew his knife and reached out to grasp the cross that dangled by a silken cord from the cleric's neck.

The man went ashen.

Wrapping the cord around his fist, drawing it taut, the Dane severed it with one quick slice. Stripping the cross from the cord, he threw it into the fire. And then, clutching the silver hammer he wore around his own neck, he showed it to the cleric, uttering something in his heathen tongue.

The monk had come near, and now he translated. “He says, when your words can save your cross, then he will do what you tell him. Until then, the girl is a slave, and it is for her master to decide her fate.”

***

Godric fairly pushed me toward his horse that evening. “Do not
ever
stray beyond my sight.”

“I won't.”

“How can I protect you if I cannot see you?”

“It was not your fault.”

He gripped my arm even tighter.

“You hurt me.”

He dropped my arm as if I had been the one to hurt him. Such shame showed upon his face that I tried to comfort him. “The cleric was there. He saved me.”

“But churchmen cannot always be present. And what happens if the Danes come upon you all alone?”

“I have lived my life alone.” It seemed to me now as if I had always been alone.

He helped me up onto his horse and then mounted behind me. “I had a wife once, but my lord called me to his counsel, and while I was gone, the Danes came. They murdered her. I should not have gone. If I had been there, then I could have saved her.”

“It was not your fault.”

“Then whose fault was it? God's?” The accusation was spoken without passion, as if it were a familiar refrain. “They tell me God can do anything, so why then did He not save her? Her faith was very great. If anyone deserved His favor, she did. But He abandoned her when she needed Him most.”

“Perhaps He was there with her.”

“Doing what?” His cry rang through the wood. “What did He do while the Danes raped and murdered our mothers and our sisters and our daughters? Nothing!”

We rode on in silence for a while. When Godric spoke again, it was in a low tone, though his words were no less vehement. “The priests said the Danes were sent as punishment for some great sin of ours. But my Winifred was kind and good. It should have been me. I ought to have died in her place.”

He had his Winifred, and I had my hand. Both evidence of some sin great enough for God to punish, but not important enough that we had ever been told what it was. It seemed a great injustice.

“If I were God, then I would reward those who loved me and punish those who did not.”

“Who is to say your Winifred has not received her reward? And who is to say the Danes will not receive an eternal punishment?”

“But what about me? What about me, who loved her? And how can I hate the God who took her and yet long to be with her in His presence?”

“Maybe it was not God who did the taking.”

“He allowed it.”

He allowed it. He had allowed it. My heart ached with sorrow for him. “But that does not mean He approved of it. And no matter what she suffered from them, they could not have stolen her soul.”

“N–no.” He spoke the word with tear-choked grief, and he did not say anything more.

The road was difficult, and the way was steep, but the stars shone down upon us. How could they have been there all this time without my knowing? And how could there be so many of them? I marveled at their blinking brightness and great number as we rode.

When dawn broke, we repaired to the wayside, where Godric and I shared his mantle again. As I drifted to sleep, it was, if not in peace, then at least with a sense of safety. But I woke to muffled cries, the twitching of a leg, and the thrashing of an arm.

It seemed Godric had finally succumbed to sleep.

In my own slumber I had curled myself into his side, and at some point, he had turned toward me and slipped his arm beneath my waist. But now, with his other one, he seemed to reach out, to try to grasp something only he could see.

The Danes slumbered on, shaking with great snores.

“
Winifred!
” Godric spoke the name with great anguish as he kicked out at…nothing. And still his spirit was not eased.

I sat and put my good hand to his flailing arm, patting it, stroking it, telling him it would be all right. That whatever ills assailed him would be gone when he woke.

As I whispered, his agitation eased. His hand grasped mine and pulled it close. And then he pressed my head to his chest. I could not have moved from his embrace if I had wanted to, but perhaps he had need of it more than I.

***

“I slept.” Godric spoke the words with great wonder as I eased myself from his grip. His eyes were clearer; the redness had lessened.

“Yes.” I smiled at him.

“And you…” He glanced down at the arm he had wrapped about me. “I did not…?” His eyes searched mine.

Did not? “Oh! No. You did not assail me. But you suffered from your dreams.”

“I have not slept a night through. Not since Winifred…” Grief and guilt and shame pooled in his eyes. “I said her name… I remember it… I remember saying it.” He passed his hand before his face and then stared out into the distance. “I was saying good-bye.”

***

Long before evening, the rains began. The sky threw down handfuls as the wind blew it first this way and then that. I had known rain before, at home; by times it had chased me from the window and threatened the fire, but I had not known just how very wet and cold it could be. How relentless raindrops were in finding a way to worm beneath my tunic. Nor how one raindrop atop another and another and another could saturate my mantle, bringing the weight of the world to bear upon my shoulders.

I took refuge with the young monk beneath the overhang of a rock as the others readied themselves to leave.

The rain seemed to cloak us from the others, and he soon became quite loquacious. He told me he was converted by a priest who had wandered to their clan, performing miracles. “When not even our witch could repeat them, I realized Odin and Thor and Freya could not stand against the god he served. And so I asked myself why should I not worship this most powerful of gods. When they let him leave, I went with him.”

“Our God is not just the most powerful of gods, He is the
only
God.”

“So the priests say. But what does it matter whether He is the only one or simply the most powerful of many? But I know you must understand this. How is it you can worship someone who cursed you?” He nodded toward my right hand. “You would not do it because you wish to. It must be that you believe there is no one else powerful enough to help you.” He spoke as if he was trying to convert me to his strange beliefs.