Brothers Of The Wild North Sea

Chapter One

Britannia, northeast coast

The sea bells were ringing. Caius,

walking by the side of a shaggy pony who needed no leading this

close to home, listened in wonder. The dunes were scattered with

them—fragile purple flower heads the children called hare’s bells,

dancing in the wind. Twenty summers ago, a child himself, Caius had

heard them often. Then time had passed, and like all childhood

songs, their music had vanished into the sounds of the

world.

He halted the pony on the crest of a

dune. From here, the whole coastal plain was laid out before him, a

long, wild stretch of salt flats and grassland that paralleled the

glimmering sea until both melted into the distance. A vision of

heaven, on a spring day like this one. Drawing a deep breath, Caius

let himself forget the long winters, when the gale swept down

untrammelled from the north, scouring every living thing to tatters

in its frozen, sand-filled blast. He did love it here. Unlike his

father’s stronghold in the hills, his new home stood unsheltered, a

collection of low buildings on a small tidal island whose causeway

twice a day was sunk beneath the restless sea.

And the tides come highest at

the dark and full of the moon, because then both sun and moon line

up to pull the water. Caius smiled in pleasure at the memory of his

latest heretical lesson in astronomy, taught him in the darkened

church with an apple and a candle flame, Abbot Theodosius spinning

the round apple Earth by its stalk—yes, round!—and Caius and the other monks watching

open-mouthed. Cai loved Theo’s teachings. There was nowhere else to

learn a thing other than farming and warfare in the whole of this

bleak northern land, not until you reached the monasteries

clustered round the River Tyne fifty miles to the south. Cai

couldn’t regret the path he’d chosen. The eldest son of a

chieftain, he’d walked away from a rich inheritance of land and

men. But all old Broccus cared about was feasting, fornication and

clobbering the daylights out of the warlords who occupied the

hillforts next to his.

Here, the very soil was sacred.

Cai was an uncertain convert to the new faith, but he could feel

that much, sense the rightness of the ancient name the tidal island

bore, a name like the yearning cry of a bird. It rose up in his

heart—Fara

Sancta. The

island of the holy tide. Fara.

Movement in the distance caught his

eye. The trackway here was lined with odd green mounds. Theo taught

that these were the burial places of men and women who’d lived here

long before Christians or old Roman warlords had ever been thought

of, but sometimes Cai wondered if the local superstitions might be

true, tales of fairy creatures you should never name aloud as such,

addressing them respectfully as the good folk, the kindly ones. At

twilight on the dunes, it was easier to believe in fairy tales than

history. And even in the brightness of noon, when a green mound

stirred and a shape detached itself from the top, leapt down and

began to stump towards him…

“Danan,” he called, hoping

he’d managed to conceal his nervous twitch. “Why must you lurk

there?”

“Where better to waylay a

bonny young monk on his way back from trading?”

Cai blinked, not quite trusting his

vision, though the air was crystalline. The old woman had an

uncanny knack for covering ground. Cai remembered her as ancient

when he’d been a baby in the hillfort stronghold, and she hadn’t

seemed to age since then. Still, she was stooped and fragile, and

he couldn’t quite see how she’d closed the gap between them so

fast.

“But I’m early,” he said,

watching in amusement while she shamelessly began to open the

pony’s baskets and leather sacks. “The weaver I was meant to meet

at Traprain Law never came. How did you know I’d be

here?”

“How do I know that the

weather will change? How do I know where to find the snowbound

lambs? What’s in this satchel here?”

“Don’t you

know?”

She stopped in her efforts to undo the

satchel’s thongs. She shot Cai a look of withering scorn and

laughter. “You’re a devil, Caius, even if you do wear a dress and

sing songs to your new god. Is it beads? And gold?”

Cai affected to brush flies from the

pony’s ears. He was glad of the reminder concerning his cassock,

which he’d folded up into a pack in favour of his travelling gear,

tough deerskin trousers and a homespun shirt. That was all very

well for the road, but now he was within sight of Fara, he’d better

soon get changed.

“Perhaps it is,” he said

mysteriously. Danan had a weakness for finery. She never wore the

jewellery she accumulated from traders and goldsmiths, and rumours

swirled that she kept them as a hoard for some dragon she’d tamed

in the hills. “Perhaps I have old Roman blue glass and nicely

wrought gold earrings hung with coral flowers.”

“Coral? Or just red

enamel?”

Cai smiled. She’d taught him carefully

to know the difference. “Coral,” he said. “Pink as

strawberries.”

“And how will you trade

those amongst your joyless brethren at Fara?”

“I didn’t buy them for the

brethren. I bought them to trade with you—depending upon what

you’ve got.”

She stamped her foot. “Vows of

poverty,” she cried, shaking her badger-grey hair into a cloud

around her head. “Humility, charity. You’re as sharp a dealer as

your father, boy, for all your noble ideals. What is it you wish,

then? What would you charge a poor old woman for your filthy

gold—or tin, I shouldn’t wonder, judging by the last sorry bargain

you made?”

“The usual. My medical

supplies are running low.” Cai changed tack and gave her his most

charming smile. He’d become Fara’s informal doctor in the two years

since his conversion. He wasn’t quite sure how the role had crept

up on him, except that the brethren had lacked a physician, and

he’d brought with him a steady hand and a knowledge of herbs gained

by tagging Danan around the fields. “Most of all I need the plants

and powders only you know how to find and prepare, Lady Danan. The

roots that give peace and help for pain.”

“Aye, aye. Very well. Turn

your back, boy, or see what no monk should.”

Cai turned briskly. Danan kept her

wares stitched into little pouches secreted inside her voluminous,

brightly dyed skirts. Once he hadn’t looked away fast enough, and

the sticklike limbs in rabbit-skin undergarments had haunted him

for days. He cleared his throat. “How is Broccus? Have you seen him

lately?”

“Oh, the old fool’s well

enough. He’s got his latest girl with child, if you’ll believe

it—another little step-sib for you, to add to the clan of them

already swarming round his regal mud huts. All right—you may

look.”

She’d done him proud. Eagerly he eyed

the array of vials and pouches she was setting out on the sunny

turf. He took the heaviest packs off the weary pony’s back and left

it to graze, settling beside the old woman on a stone. As always

when they met to trade, she handed him the preparations one by one,

carefully explaining their use, dosage, effects both good and ill.

Extract of willow bark, to cool fevers and inflammation. The

powerful juice of foxgloves, an aid to struggling hearts. A dozen

harmless tonics, and finally a carefully stoppered bottle in the

cloudy, thick glass the art of whose making Cai’s people had almost

lost along with the occupying Romans, and were only slowly

recovering now, for church windows and the most precious of

domestic wares. Cai had seen the oily liquid inside the vial

before. Essence of poppy, so sweet a remedy for sleeplessness in

small amounts. And in large… “Danan, I’m not sure I can buy this

from you.”

“That depends upon the

beauty of my earrings.”

“No. I mean I’m not sure

that I ought.”

“Why not? You’ve taken it

before.”

“Yes. I used it up in

sleeping draughts and tonics for the nerves. Then when Brother

Gregory sickened with the tumour, I wished I’d had more,

because…”

“Because you’d have

released him?”

“Yes. I was afraid I would.

And surely life and death are in God’s hands.”

“Is that what they teach

you? How did Gregory die?”

Screaming and blaspheming,

after a life of perfect sanctity. Cai looked away. He hadn’t asked to become

physician to the Fara brethren, but he took his duties seriously

and hated to fail. “I will take the poppy.”

“In that case, I will take

my jewels.”

He unpacked the satchel and watched

while Danan transformed from wisdom-filled herbalist to cackling

crone. She snatched up the rose-pendant earrings and dangled them

from her shrivelled lobes, wrapped the beads around her head in a

lopsided crown and danced on the spot, piping out a wordless,

tuneless chant. Cai let her get on with it, gathering up his

purchases.

He frowned and shook his head. The

hare’s bells were ringing once more, their silver whisper-music

increasing as if in response to the old woman’s song. “Lady Danan,

can you hear that?”

She didn’t interrupt her dance.

Her eyes were closed, her expression blissful. “Of course I can.”

Then she froze. She swung on him. “Can you?”

“Yes. I think so.

Something.”

“Ah, that’s not for mortal

ears.”

Her own looked far from divine in

those earrings. Cai grinned. He slung his packs across the pony’s

back, checking to see the heavy grain bags hadn’t rubbed the beast

sore. “What is it, then?”

“It means something. Something.”

She scampered up the side of the green mound closest to the track

and stood there swaying, scenting the air. Cai waited. She was

prone to sudden bursts of prophecy, mostly too vague to be useful,

sometimes clear and starkly accurate. “Ah.” She clapped her hands.

“Yes. Yes. The vikingr are coming.”

Cai shivered. He had no idea

what they called themselves, the raiders from beyond the northern

sea, whose dragon-head boats had haunted the shores of his

childhood for as long as he could remember. Cai’s people and the

brethren used the word picked up from traders to the south, some of