Chapter Three #2
uncertainty. “Your faith is imperfect, Caius. Do you not believe
these things are in God’s hands?”
Cai looked down at his own, clamped
tight around the weapon. His faith was in tatters. Was this what
old Danan had meant? “Yes, my lord abbot,” he said clearly. “I
believe that they certainly are.”
Cai waited for punishment to fall on
him—or, worse, upon one of the brave souls who still joined him
each day to learn to fight. Aelfric hadn’t forbidden it. He was
allowing the rebuilding of the church in timber, wattle and daub,
and Theo’s bones lay undisturbed beneath it. Still, he spent most
of his days in whispered consultation with one or other of his
retinue, and Cai had little doubt that whatever balance of power
his own efforts had disturbed, soon the scales would swing back
with a vengeance.
He wasn’t given time to find out. And
Aelfric’s plans, whatever they had been, died in the bud. On a
full-moon night barely two weeks after the abbot’s arrival, the
raiders came again.
This time they met with a frightened,
ferocious resistance. The men sleeping in their makeshift dormitory
started awake at the frantic ringing of the bell. Aelfric had
allowed a night watch too, and the appropriation of the bell
Hengist used in the kitchen to summon Eyulf to scrub
turnips.
Cai stood up in the middle of the
bunks, gesturing for silence and calm. “We knew this would come,”
he said softly. “My men, you know what to do. The rest of you—find
Aelfric and go with him to the crypt.”
Cai had never meant to divide
them. He took no joy in military prestige, but he saw the
difference in demeanour between those who had become
Cai’s men
and those who would
go to huddle with Aelfric in the crypt. His father would have
enjoyed it—the nervous, proud vigour of the soldiers as they tucked
up their cassocks into their belts and headed for the armoury, even
the most graceless of them made noble by purpose. Cai followed them
out. He found poor Eyulf blubbering in a stack of sheepskins in his
favourite storage barn, unearthed him and sent him running with the
others for shelter. Then he too armed himself and strode out onto
the cliffs.
The longship had ridden in fast on the
wind. Hefting his sword, Cai took deep breaths of salt air. By
cloudy, scudding moonlight, he saw Benedict at the top of the path,
the narrow gully through which the invaders must come. Ben had kept
his longstaff in preference to a sword, and was crouched like an
avenging troll in readiness, Wilfrid opposite to him. For Ben’s
sake, Cai had tried to assign Oslaf a safer place away from the
front line, but Oslaf, bewildered by Ben’s new coldness, had
refused to let him far out of his sight, and was stationed on the
clifftop. He looked up at Cai’s approach. “I can’t see them yet,
Caius.”
“Don’t worry. They’ll be
here.”
“Perhaps they sailed by
after all.”
“No. I saw from the
infirmary—the longship is drawn up right under the cliffs. Be at
the ready.”
Oslaf nodded staunchly, and Cai felt
sudden pity for him. “Listen. Aelfric’s given Benedict one of his
hellfire-and-damnation talks.”
“About… About
me?”
“That’s right. Ben’s trying
to look after you by backing off, that’s all. So be a good lad and
play the game. You understand?”
Oslaf looked up at him, anger and
relief in his eyes. “Thank you. Oh, I wish Theo was still
here.”
“So do I, believe me. So do
I.”
There wasn’t time for more. The air
beyond the cliff’s edge glowed bronze and resounded with shouts.
Confused movement filled the gully, and Ben leapt off the rock
where he’d been perched, straight into the path of the oncoming
raiders.
“No!” Cai yelled. He’d told
Ben to wait, wait till he’d picked out the leader and could drop on
him from behind, get that stick across his throat. By red Viking
torchlight he saw Ben tackle the first huge pirate head-on, as if
all he wanted was to kill someone or die trying. Oslaf, instead of
holding position to defend the main buildings with Cai, dashed
straight into the fray, howling his lover’s name like a
battle-cry—and Cai, before he could think or reflect, found himself
tearing off in Oslaf’s wake.
Cai’s strategy went to the devil. He
should have known. He could wield a sword, more or less, and show
others how to do it, but he had no more idea than his father of how
to coordinate men. He’d been their doctor, their friend, not their
leader. He crashed to a halt face-to-face with a young man whose
surpassing beauty was visible even behind the nose guard of his
iron helmet. The noble face registered—what—surprise? A strange
recognition? Red-bronze hair streamed in the wind. Golden wolf’s
eyes flickered wide. The moment passed. A lean arm arced up, sword
blade flashing, and he and Cai were nothing but beast meeting
beast, both rigid with the will to stay alive. The Viking failed to
lift his shield. Cai drove forwards into the gap, the burnished
flesh for an instant revealed between a leather jerkin and a belt.
His sword tip sank deep. He hauled back, ready for his next
man—God, another beauty, so like the first they had to be brothers.
This time his arm was knocked aside by a vast, roaring mountain of
muscle and hide, the leader, who’d emerged from his tussle with Ben
in a bloodstained fury.
A pitched fight broke out on the
cliffs. Men who’d been ordered to stand guard at the infirmary,
storehouses and crypt came racing down, yelling like the
blue-painted savages Broc’s Roman ancestors had driven from the
hills, and joined hand-to-hand in the fray. They were beyond Cai’s
control, wild with anguished recall of the last raid—of how it had
felt to be sheep in the path of these wolves. Most had never lifted
a weapon in anger in their lives. They hacked and jabbed
indiscriminately, their training thrown to the winds. Cai yelled
out orders unheard. The Vikings would slaughter them wholesale,
surely. He was too occupied with his own battle to look, to try to
save them.
His sword descended through air.
Thrown off balance, he staggered. His man—a snarling weasel who’d
been doing his best to disembowel him with an axe—was gone. All
along the clifftop was unfolding a sight he could never have
dreamed of. He sat down hard on the turf, hand going slack round
the hilt of his sword. The Vikings were running away.
He leaned back, laughter shaking
him. They wouldn’t have expected resistance at all, let alone a
suicide-dash by madmen. No strategy Cai could have planned for them
would have worked so well. He didn’t understand the cry going up
among the last of the raiders rushing back down the cliff path, but
he could guess. Retreat! Retreat!
A warm weight hit his shoulder, and he
almost turned and ran Brother Oslaf through on raw-nerved reflex.
Oslaf skidded to his knees, throwing his arms around Cai. “We did
it! They’re going!”
“All right. No need to
strangle me.”
“I killed one myself. I
lifted my shield, and I lowered it, and…” Oslaf demonstrated, Cai
wriggling out of the way. Then Oslaf’s eyes went wide and dark. “I…
Oh, God. I slew a man.”
Cai took the boy’s sword from him. He
tucked it back into its sheath. “You helped save your
brothers.”
Oslaf nodded. But Cai knew for
some men that answer could never be enough. It wouldn’t have
satisfied Leof. Cai dismissed the thought. For himself, he looked
at the fallen shapes on the turf with unmixed satisfaction. None of
them wore a cassock. Not only had they repelled this raid, but
the vikingr would think better of it next time. Oslaf would have to
work out his own salvation. He was trying now, his gentle face
frowning and lost beneath its bloodstains.
Cai put a hand on his shoulder. “You
did well.”
But Oslaf wasn’t listening. A big
shape was emerging from the smoke, chilling Cai’s marrow until it
resolved itself into Benedict’s familiar form. Cai hadn’t seen him
since the beginning of the fight. He hadn’t yet had time to fear
the worst, but he grinned in relief and waved.
Oslaf’s joy burst like a leaping
salmon. He shot away from Cai and ran full pelt for Ben, who opened
his arms wide to catch him. Cai looked away. So much for playing
the game…
And that reminded him. He got to his
feet and made his way through the crowd of his laughing, shouting
brethren, dodging their embraces and slaps to his back. Once out on
the open hillside he began to run. The church was deserted and
terribly quiet, though the new construction work was still in
place, the door to the crypt intact. Cai raised his hand to knock,
then saw candlelight all the way around its edges. That meant the
bolts were undone, the wooden bar out of its catch.
He let himself in. Aelfric was
kneeling in the candlelight, at the centre of a tight-packed circle
of monks. All were on their knees, their faces in their hands.
Cai’s entrance, the creak of the great door, did not interrupt the
low, thrumming chant of Latin prayer, although from the outer
periphery—Fara monks, Cai noted angrily, not the Canterbury
clerics—a few terrified moans broke loose.
“Aelfric,” he demanded,
letting his sword drop with a clatter onto the cover of a tomb.
“What is happening here?”
Aelfric snapped upright. The
brethren jerked their heads up, smiles cracking their pale masks as
they saw Cai. Aelfric spread his arms. “Deo gratias,” he cried. His hair was standing up
like spines around the edge of his tonsure. A light of keen, pure
madness filled his eyes. “Praise be to God, we are saved. Did I not
say it would be so? Saved, by the power of our prayers.”
By the edge of my sword,
Cai thought, but
didn’t say it. There was no point now. Aelfric was lost amidst
demons and angels. He turned to the first sane face he saw—Martin,
the ancient monk who made up the mead and heather ale. “The Vikings
are gone. You can come out now. Why didn’t you lock the damn
door?”
“He told us not to. He told
us to put our faith in God and pray.” Martin lowered his voice.