Chapter 2 #3
Cai, come quickly—he’s hanging on for you.”
Two shapes coalesced from the mist.
One of them prised Eyulf off him and set the poor boy on his feet.
The other rolled the dead Viking away far enough for Cai to realise
one of his legs had been trapped beneath the corpse. Sensations
weren’t registering properly with him. As a physician and as Broc’s
son, he’d observed this happen to men who’d been frightened past
their nature’s boundaries. For a while they were numb, distant,
slow to respond. Cai had considered it a merciful thing, the soul’s
emergency poultice. He didn’t try to fight it in
himself.
“Cai! Caius!”
That was Benedict. He was waving a
hand in Cai’s face. Cai nodded to show that he’d heard. He was very
fond of Ben, and even of Demetrios, who had been some kind of
prince in the land of Theo’s banishment and drove the brethren near
demented with his lordly airs. Cai was glad they’d both survived
the night. Then a thought pierced to the heart of his detachment,
and he sucked in one raw breath. “Benedict! Oslaf?”
“Alive.” Ben gripped his
hand, and they exchanged a glance. “He’s hurt, though. He needs
you. We all do.”
“Ben, who’s holding on for
me? Leof?”
Ben closed his eyes. “No. Theodosius.
He wants to speak to you.”
Cai allowed himself to be hoisted onto
his feet. He could walk, he discovered, once blood had been
restored to his crushed limb, and he dispensed with Ben’s support.
He didn’t look to left or right, clambering up the steep path. The
cries he was hearing from the burning ruins each had their claim on
him, but he kept moving, his eyes fixed on the ground.
No one had tried to carry Theo out of
the scriptorium. Cai understood why at a glance—the Viking’s sword
was still buried deep in his chest. The angle was awkward, the haft
jammed up against the charred remains of a desk. Brother Wilf the
goatherd was kneeling behind him, propping his head and
shoulders.
“My friend,” Theo said
calmly, as soon as he set eyes on Caius. “Come and kneel by
me.”
Cai obeyed. He had to—his legs had
folded under him. “Let me send to the infirmary. I can get you
something for the pain.”
“There’s no need. This
won’t take long, and I want to be clear.” The abbot’s voice was
steady, but Cai could hear on every in breath the telltale hiss of
a wounded lung. “You mustn’t worry, dear Caius…about the book. It’s
only a copy.”
Cai nodded. There were a thousand
things he could think of to worry about, and not one of them was a
book, not even the precious vellum pages drifting in ashy rags
around the room, from which Theo had taught him so much. Had been
going to teach him the distance to the moon. “All right.” Gingerly
he probed the ragged edge of the hole in Theo’s cassock, in the
pale flesh underneath, but there was no chance. “I won’t worry.
Don’t you worry either.”
“You have to find Addy.
Addy will give you the treasure—the secret of Fara.”
The secret of Fara.
In jagged echoes Cai
recalled the abbot shouting those words at an enraged Viking face.
“Yes, my lord abbot. I will.”
“Don’t…humour me, you
knuckleheaded son of a Roman hill-farmer. Find it. The
vikingr
will raid again and
again until you do. Only the treasure can stop them—stop the dark
from coming down. Addy has it.”
“Who’s Addy? Can you tell
me?”
“Remember, Cai—the secret
isn’t in the book. It’s in the binding. In the binding.”
Theo couldn’t speak anymore. A
lonely panic seized Cai. How long would this death take? The
abbot’s lips were moving in silence, bloodstained now, repeating
the words that meant nothing to Cai, no matter how hard he tried to
focus. In
the binding…
“Please,” Cai whispered.
“Rest now, my lord.” How long?
A kind of bundle of rags thumped down
at his side. Cai jumped, then with a shock recognised Danan. His
loneliness eased just a fraction. “What are you doing here? How did
you know…?”
“I know what I need to. I
have come to help. Why are you letting this good soul die in this
way?”
“I can’t save him. You can
see that.”
“Yesterday you bought from
me the means to set free what you couldn’t mend.”
“Yes, but…” Cai shivered.
Unorthodox as he was, the abbot of Fara had trusted in a power and
mercy outside himself. “Isn’t it in God’s hands?”
Danan took out of her sleeve a small
vial, its contents gleaming softly in the grey light. She uncapped
it and took hold of Cai’s wrist. She turned his hand palm up and
gazed at it intently for a moment. “Yes,” she said, gripping it
hard. “Yes. In God’s hands.”
Unsteadily Cai pressed the vial to
Theo’s lips. The abbot was wheezing now, making faint sounds of
incomprehensible pain. The dose ran passively into his throat, but
after a moment he swallowed, and his gaze sought Cai’s, lucid and
full of forgiveness. Barely ten heartbeats later, his anguished
breathing ceased.
“Caius?”
Cai looked up. What did Ben want of
him now? Danan was gone. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been kneeling
by the dead man’s side. “Yes?” he said hoarsely.
“The others need
you.”
“The others? What can I
do?”
“You’re our doctor. Help
them.”
“I’m not a doctor. I’m
a…knuckleheaded son of a hill-farmer.” Something about this struck
Cai as appallingly funny, and he forced back sobs of laughter. “No
one ever trained me. I don’t know what to do.”
Benedict put down a hand to him.
“Well, you’re all we’ve got. I’ll help you.”
“Ben, you’re a
ploughman.”
“More of a man than you, it
seems.”
That stung. No one save Broccus had
ever accused Cai of any failing there. He got up and almost fell
over the blanketed shape on the ground at his feet. “Leof,” he
said, not as a question.
“Yes. Cai, I am so
very—”
“How many are dead?” It
came out low and fast, with an odd note of command in it. Ben’s
response was stranger still—he let go of Cai’s hand and stepped
back, drawing himself up straight.
“Five of us now. Brother Petros,
trying to defend Theo. Andreou, trying to avenge him. Aethelstan,
when he tried to stop the vikingr from getting to the forge. And…”
“Yes.” Cai cut him off with
a motion of the hand. Poor Brother Blacksmith, who’d made all the
hinges and hasps for the medicine cabinets… He shook himself. “Why
weren’t there more?”
“I don’t understand that
myself. They seemed to be hunting something, and when they didn’t
find it, they left.”
“Not without torching us.
Is my infirmary still there?”
“Yes. The dormitory wing is
down, and the church, but—”
“Get the injured there. Who
is worst?”
“Brother
Gareth—”
Gareth, with his warts and imaginary
plague. “Damn Brother Gareth.”
“Gareth has an axe-cut like
a slice of pie out of his shoulder, but he says it’s a mere scratch
and you should tend the others first. Brother John is probably
dying. Cedric and Wulfhere too. The rest are walking
wounded.”
“Very well. Bring them to
me in order of need. Get water boiling—lots of it—and send to the
village to see what supplies they have there. Did the Vikings raid
inland?”
“No.” Benedict made a sound in
his throat, as if he’d swallowed a sir. “The village is safe.”
“Good. And what...” Cai
hesitated, but only for a moment. “What have you done with the
bodies?”
“The crypt is still
standing. We took them there.”
“Why not Leof?”
“We were just about to move
him when we found out you were alive. We thought you might want
to…”
“No. Take him down with the
rest, straight away.”
“If they come again, they
will destroy us.”
Cai paused in swabbing down his
surgical table. He had changed his awkward cassock hours ago for
his travelling clothes, and fastened a homespun apron around his
neck and waist. He was up to his rolled-back shirtsleeves in blood.
“Perhaps I missed something,” he said to Benedict, who was renewing
a rope strap at the corner of the table, the one Brother Cedric had
torn through in his agony. “I’d have staked my life that we were
already destroyed.”
“If they come again, they
won’t leave one stone standing on another in this place. Nor one
heart beating in its bone cage.”
“That’s almost poetic, Brother
Ploughman.” A trickle of shame made it through Cai’s weariness. His
friend had been so much more than a farmer on this long, grim
afternoon, which was at last melting down into dusk.
Yes—last time the
light was angled so, I was a mindless boy with no greater care than
my appetite for food and the joys of the flesh. Oh Leof.
Leof… Cedric
and John were still alive, thanks to Ben’s steady grip on them, the
stolid application of brute force while Cai had plied his blade and
sheep-gut sutures. “I’m sorry. You’ve done all you can for now. Go
and eat.”
“If you will
too.”
“No. The next few hours
will be crucial. I have to watch out for infections, delirium.” Was
it only yesterday he’d looked around his clean infirmary and
congratulated himself on its unoccupied beds? A truly good
physician, Danan had told him, would put himself out of a job. As
things stood, Cai couldn’t envisage ever being able to stem the
tide of blood and pain pouring out of his orderly rooms. His
patients were quiet now, sleeping or making their silent last
dialogues with death, but the walls—and Cai’s skull—still resounded
with their screams. “I’ll be all right. Go on.”
The door creaked open. Cai suppressed
a raw-nerved jump, but it was only Oslaf, his latest consignment of
hot water from the kitchens in a bucket-yoke across his shoulders.
He watched while the young man set his burden down, then collected
up the soiled rags for the fourteenth or fifteenth time that day.
Cai had better things to do, but he couldn’t seem to tear his gaze
away. He saw that Oslaf made no move without first glancing over at
Ben, as if checking that he was still there. And Ben returned each
look with an equal warm hunger. Cai was sure they were quite
unaware of their exchange. Once Oslaf had finished his tasks, he
came to stand in front of Cai. “Is there anything else I can do for