Chapter One #4
of the world and its vainglory.”
“In that case, I should
like it to be done.” Leof cast a wistful glance at Cai, as if he
might like the hair he’d run his fingers through in worldly,
vainglorious pleasure to be left well alone. “To me, at any
rate.”
“Then so it shall be,
child—as soon as I get my shears back from Brother Petros. Caius,
you’ve arrived home in good time. Did Leof tell you my first
chapter is complete?”
“No, my lord abbot.”
We’ve been a little
busy. Cai
pushed the thought away from him. “But that’s good news. Did you
decide yet on a title?”
“Yes.” They had reached a turning
in the long stone flight. Theo took up position on a flat rock and
spread his arms as if to address the sunny infinity of moorlands
and dunes that lay before him. “Poor copy though it is, I shall
call it the Gospel of Science.”
Leof flinched. Like all the brethren
of Fara, he loved and feared Theo in equal measure. He would never
contradict him, but Cai had observed how he’d sit in Theo’s
lectures, head bowed, his hands clasped in his lap, as if silently
begging God to overlook the blasphemy one more time. Well—good and
conventional churchmen did not get appointed to world’s-edge
outposts like Fara, and Theo had not been so much sent as banished
there. He was a renegade, a once-powerful teacher caught in the
rebellious possession of books now deemed heretical by the Roman
Church. Stripped of his treasured volumes, his power and authority,
he had been shipped off to the far west—where, according to the
beliefs of his masters, he might well tumble right off the planet’s
rim and trouble them no more.
He had noticed Leof’s involuntary
twitch. Cai tensed. A man of sublime patience, a father to his
flock who would help Cai bathe their wounds with his own hands, he
could still fly out in rage at wilful ignorance and superstition.
“Does my choice trouble you, child?”
“Yes,” Leof said bravely.
“The gospels are the words of Christ, not…arrows and dots, and long
strings of numbers fit to bewilder all God-fearing men.”
Theo smiled. “Well, I do hope
not all of them. Not forever, anyway.” He resumed his climb, making
room beside him on the path for Leof to walk at his side. Cai,
bringing up the rear, looked at them both in affection. “Remember,
Leof. All I am doing is trying to recall and write down a fragment
of the books that were lost. My gospel—we can call it something
else for now—will only ever be a copy, a shadow, of that great
wealth. I use mathematics and diagrams because, in their neatness,
they can convey what an army of monks writing all day and night
could not teach. You, the best and most godly of my brethren, need
not be disturbed by it at all.”
“Yes, my lord abbot. Thank
you.”
“And although it would
distress me, I will give you dispensation from illuminating my
heresies—if you wish.”
Leof jerked his head up. Cai could
have laughed aloud at his open-mouthed dismay. “Why—no, sir. Please
not that.”
“Good. Because I value
them, your vines and grapes and little dancing stoats.”
“Those are foxes,
sir.”
“Ah. Well, nonetheless.
You’ll carry on?”
“Of course. I wish I saw
what my plants and my beasts have to do with your—your gospel,
however.”
Theo put an arm around his shoulders.
“Science makes an error,” he said, the gentle laughter fading from
his voice, “in cutting itself off from nature. In thinking of
itself as separate. I feel a chill inside my heart when I imagine
where such an error might lead. So, my clever painter, though your
vines and foxes may not illustrate the turning of the Earth upon
its axis, or the distance to the moon, I hope they will remind the
men of some future day that foxes, moon and Earth are one, and all
the work of one great hand. Yes—I do believe that, for all my
blasphemous ways. It’s not so hard, as a doctrine—even for the
likes of Brother Cai.”
Cai, who had been dreaming, surfaced
at the sound of his name. “The distance to the moon?” he echoed
longingly.
“Indeed. We do it with
mathematics, and that triangle whose sides are three, four, five.
I’ll show you all tonight, after our feast.”
“Are we
feasting?”
“As far as our duties and
our resources allow. A chapter’s end deserves a celebration, don’t
you think? I only wish we had some of old Danan’s cure for sore
heads in the morning.”
“Ah, we do. I ran into her
on the trackway coming home. I traded her some jewellery for
comfrey, poppy, tonics—everything we need.”
“Good boy, good
boy.”
“Danan told Cai that the
Vikings are coming,” Leof said suddenly, as if he’d been dreaming
too. “It was one of her prophecies.”
Theo patted him. “The Vikings always
come. We don’t need to worry yet, though. It’s still too cold and
rough for raiding.”
“Yes, I know. That’s what I
told Cai.”
Cai left them outside the scriptorium.
By then the two were arguing contentedly over the relative virtues
of vellum and non-calfskin parchments, and they barely noticed him
go.
Shaking his head, Cai made his way
straight to the infirmary, to see that his precious supplies were
being properly stored away. He glanced in satisfaction round the
sunny room, one of the few in the monastery that were glazed,
allowing his patients the benefits of warmth and light at once. All
but one of the narrow cots were empty, assuring Cai that he was
doing his job well. Sitting on the edge of the occupied bunk, he
treated Gareth’s warts and tried to ease the painful hypochondria
that lay behind them with kindly admonitions as to letting the
imagination run rife over faith, work and good common sense. Then
he discharged him, to his patient’s disappointment, and went down
to the laundry.
He was sticky and sandy from his
interlude with Leof in the dunes. Taking a fresh cassock from
Brother Hengist’s neatly folded supply, he found himself reluctant
to put it on over his dirty skin. He glanced at the angle of the
sun and decided he had time to run down to the bathing pools to
wash.
He wasn’t really qualified to lecture
poor Gareth on the perils of imagination. The pools were deserted
at this time of day, and the tide had come in far enough to fill
their natural granite basins with salty, crystalline blue. Cai swam
about among the drifting seaweeds, diving and huffing at the
pleasure of the water on his limbs, then scrubbed himself clean as
best he could with handfuls of soft sand. By the time he was done,
his skin was tingling with wellbeing, and what he’d have liked more
than anything else was for Leof to appear, ready to cast off his
garments and his new restraint.
Cai drew a shuddery breath. It was all
very well to agree on a celibate life not five minutes after
satiation. Keeping the resolve would be much harder, he could see.
His shaft had risen at the thought of Leof’s pale, lithe body in
the water with him. Leaning his shoulders on the shell-encrusted
rock, he allowed his spine to stretch, his hips to float. His palm
ached to explore his aroused flesh, and briefly he reached down,
stroking, lifting the warm, compact weight of his balls. An idea
flitted through his mind that maybe his own touch didn’t
count.
He groaned aloud at his own weakness.
Of course it did. What chance did he stand of purging his earthly
desires, if he couldn’t keep his hands off himself? Cursing his
father for bequeathing him not only a large, restless cock but a
need to use it often and hard, Cai scrambled out of the water. The
cracked church bell was ringing again, this time to announce Theo’s
feast.
Perhaps he’d moved too fast.
Perhaps—although he did his best to discourage such beliefs—the
fear of the na?ve younger monks was true, and undischarged
seed could rush up into the brain and wreak havoc there. The sunlight
around him darkened to black, with fringes and tassels of
scarlet. The
Vikings are coming… He dropped to his hands and knees, lowering his brow onto
the stone.
The fit lasted only a few seconds. The
sunlight returned. Trembling, he sat up and looked around him at
the brilliant day, the rich spring light only now beginning to take
on a russet flush in the west. High on the crag above him,
Demetrios and Wilfrid were making their way home, to all
appearances the best friends in the world, the goats trotting
peacefully in front of them. Wilf was even carrying the Greek’s
basket of leaves. Cai was only hungry, tired from travel. All was
well.