Chapter Five #2
torment. I shall murder him, and then the one who held you back
from aiding me. Then the one who walks past my bed without seeing
when I thirst or hunger. Then the ones who do not meet your eyes
when you speak to them, or turn away from you discourteously,
or…”
“We can’t murder men for
bad manners. As for Aelfric, I’d like to kill him too, but the
others…” Cai pulled Fenrir’s arm around his shoulders. “The others
are afraid of you.” He tucked the deadly wolf’s-head blade into the
girdle of his cassock. “I can’t think why. Now come with
me.”
“No. If you won’t let me
slaughter these fools, turn me loose. I will go back to the beach,
fend for myself until my brother comes back for me.”
“Gunnar?”
Fenrir twitched. He emitted a faint
growl, twisted out of Cai’s grasp and slammed him against the wall,
just below the guttering torch. “You will not say that
name!”
Cai couldn’t say anything at all with
a sinewy arm pressed to his throat. He couldn’t breathe, either.
The Viking stared hard into his face. Freeing himself would have
been easy—a knee to the groin or a jab to the healing wound—but he
couldn’t bring himself to move. He wasn’t afraid. The press of a
living body against his was a terrible comfort, even like this. A
hot pressure like tears built up behind his eyes, and he ran his
hand down Fenrir’s arm.
The vulpine features altered. It
wasn’t exactly a softening—more the relaxation of a snarling hound
bewildered by a caress. “You will not say the name,” he repeated,
and sank to his knees at Cai’s feet.
“Oh, God.” Cai crouched
beside him. The makeshift kilt was soaked with blood. “You’ve torn
out your sutures. Come with me. Hold on to me. Come on.”
The journey back across the courtyard
and up to the ward was painful. Oslaf met them in the doorway, his
eyes wide. “Caius, forgive me. I only just noticed he was
gone.”
Cai hefted his burden over the
threshold and back into the quarantine cell. Fenrir was stumbling,
barely conscious. “That’s because you didn’t look. Is his bunk mat
clean? Fetch a fresh one before I lay him down.” Oslaf ran to obey,
and together they eased the Viking flat. Cai began to examine his
wound. “I understand your hate. I won’t force you to help with him,
but if you can’t, you have to tell me, so he’s not left on his
own.”
“Where did you find him?
Why… Why are you wearing his sword?”
Cai had forgotten that. He undid the
awkward weight from his girdle. “I need fresh sutures. Quick,
before he comes round properly. He was outside our new abbot’s
rooms.”
“With his sword? Cai, don’t
you see? He’s going to murder us all in our beds.”
Cai couldn’t argue. “Well, just now
he’d have a hard time getting back out of his own. I don’t care
what you think, Oslaf—as long as he’s in here, he must be treated
like anyone else.”
“Why?”
Cai frowned. It wasn’t like Oslaf to
argue or question him, not like that. Maybe Benedict’s new chill
was rubbing off. “Because I’m a doctor. Because—”
“No. Why bring him in the
first place? Everyone loves you here. And they know it’s you they
have to thank that we lived through the last raid. But they can’t
forgive this.”
Threading a strand of sheep gut
through a fine bone needle, Cai bent over his task. “I’m not
looking for forgiveness,” he muttered. “Sage oil, please. Rags. As
for my reasons…” I wounded him myself. He was alone. Theo spoke inside my
head and told me to. None of these would do. Because he was beautiful, my wolf from the
sea, and I couldn’t bear him to die. Cai bit his lip. “I don’t know. I don’t
know.”
He plunged the needle into the pale
skin. Fenrir jerked on the bed. Oslaf was ready to hold him down,
but this time instead of lashing out, the Viking only clutched the
edges of the bunk.
“Sorry,” Cai told him,
pulling the new suture tight. “I didn’t want to sedate you again.
But I can, if you can’t bear this.”
Fenrir gave a low rumble of laughter,
such a contrast to his pain-racked face that Cai and Oslaf both
jumped. “I’ve felt your blade, monk. Your little prick…doesn’t
bother me at all.”
Cai worked on. With an effort he kept
his face straight. “Ah,” he said, when he thought his voice would
be steady. “Viking humour. I’ve heard of this.”
“We do not call ourselves
Vikings. We bear the names of our ancestral clans—Hallgrimr,
Vigdis, Torleik. Nor do we raid in horned helmets, as your foolish
Saxon bards would have it. The horns are for rituals only, the
worship of Thor. Can you imagine—in a packed longship, or
close-quarters battle…”
He couldn’t go on, and Cai finished
stitching as deftly as he could. He pressed a wad of soothing
willow extract onto the wound. “Yes. I suppose you’d have someone’s
eye out.”
Fenrir smiled. It was the first time
Cai had seen him do so naturally, without his lupine snarl. He
turned away quickly, astounded at the charm of it—ashamed of his
response. He shook out a fresh bandage and began to bind the wound
up.
Oslaf was staring too.
“He does speak like us.”
“Yes. I told you. His Latin
is better than mine.”
“I thought him merely a
beast.”
“Well, he isn’t.” Cai dared
a glance into the gleaming agate eyes. “He’s a man, and a bloody
dangerous one. So. Can you keep a watch on him while I’m not here,
and treat him like a man as well as guard him?”
“Yes. Ask him to pardon my
neglect of him—and my help in keeping him prisoner.”
You could ask him
yourself. But
Cai knew he was placing a huge burden on Oslaf as it was. He
gestured to the younger monk that he could go, and returned his
attention to his patient.
He worked on for a while in silence.
As well as his pulled stitches, the Viking was covered with other
cuts and grazes, trivial in a healthy man but each a possible
gateway for infection after long illness. He cleaned the injuries
methodically, making quite sure not to linger or let a swab become
a caress. “Why am I not allowed to call your brother by his name?
Am I considered too lowly?”
Fenrir focussed on him with an effort.
He’d exhausted himself with his abortive hunt and was on the edge
of sleep. “No. Well—yes, you are. But that isn’t the
reason.”
“What, then?”
“My brother is the heir to
Sigurd’s Torleik clan. Our lands are wider and richer by far than
all Sigurd’s rival tribes put together. I wish my lord Sigurd
health and long life, but when he dies, my brother will be powerful
beyond imagination.”
Cai shrugged. “I’m pleased for him.
Even a king has a name, though, and any peasant may use
it.”
“You don’t understand. Gunnar is
more than…” Fenrir’s brow furrowed as he searched for the word, or
perhaps steeled himself to use it. “He is mine—bróeir minn. He is coming back for me. Until he does,
his name belongs on my tongue only. How did you find it
out?”
“You called it when you had
a fever. And you still do, in your dreams.”
For the second time that night,
Fenrir’s mask softened. Then he flushed in what could have been
shame or anger, and he turned awkwardly away onto his side—not
before Cai had seen the glitter of tears. “I forbid you to listen,
then.”
“I’ll try.”
“And while we are discussing
names—do me a kindness and stop trying to call me
Fenrir. You cannot pronounce it, and the sound you make pains
me.”
“What shall I call you,
then?”
“Fen will do.”
“Very well. And since you
sound like a sheep giving birth when you say mine, you’d better
call me Cai.”
In the morning Fen was better. Cai,
who had fallen asleep on a spare cot in the ward, awoke to the
commanding ring of his voice. “You! Physician Cai’s dogsbody,
Odleaf or whatever you are called—fetch him to me instantly. What
has he done with my hair?”
Cai swung his legs off the bed. There
were days at Fara when things were more difficult than others, and
this one was off to a rare start. He took a moment to splash his
face with water, then strode to Oslaf’s rescue. Fen was bolt
upright on his bunk, his eyes bright with imperious life. Cai
pushed the door closed behind him. “Keep your voice down. What the
devil is wrong with you now?”
“My hair. Where is it?
Where did you put my sword, and where is my fine helmet with the
chased-silver cheek guards?”
“Your sword is locked up
out of your reach. Your helmet…” Cai hesitated. He’d thought about
using it, giving it to one of his warrior monks, but somehow the
thing had repelled him. Behind its cruel mask, even a friend’s face
would become a stranger’s. He’d locked it up inside a chest in the
armoury. “Your helmet was lost. And as for your hair, I gave it to
the tanner to stuff saddlebags.” That wasn’t true, but the look on
Fen’s face was worth the price of the lie. “Don’t worry, it’ll grow
back. You can look like a great louse-ridden thug again soon
enough.”
Fen’s brows shot up to the place where
his fringe had once been. “You’re a fine one to talk about lice.
I’ve heard about you dirty Christians, mortifying your flesh
beneath your robes until it rots—using your vows of poverty to
excuse yourselves for sleeping in flea-ridden filth.”
“There, Oslaf. Aren’t you
glad he’s started talking? Go and get your breakfast.” Cai advanced
on his patient. “And you—keep a civil tongue in your head when
you’re talking to the men who help you here. There’s precious few
willing to do it. Have you passed water this morning? Was there
blood in it?”
“You have no right to ask
me such questions. You must show respect for me. You
must—”
“A simple yes or no will
do.”
Again, that unlikely blush. Cai
couldn’t tell if it was rage or mortification, and wished he didn’t
find so fascinating the movement of blood beneath the pale
skin.
“Yes, then. And
no.”
“Well, that’s good. You can get
up. I’m about to teach you a few things about dirty Christians.” He
hoisted Fen off the bunk by his armpits and deposited him on a
bench. “This mattress—which I’m about to change for you yet
again—is filled with the dried flowers of a plant called bedstraw,