Chapter Eight #3
“I don’t know, do I? He’s
the doctor, not me.”
“Is he sick?”
“No. He loved this
Theodosius, though, just as much as you do. And yesterday another
friend of his died.”
“A monk of
Fara?”
“Yes, by his own hand. They
have another abbot there now—a damned scarecrow called Aelfric. I’m
not of your faith, and they don’t let me into the church, but I’ve
been watching. He’s a brute. Cai’s been trying to stop
him.”
“This Aelfric—did the
churchmen of Canterbury send him?”
“Aye, that was the
place.”
Addy sighed deeply. “So it begins. And
I am little better, with my questions and my selfish grief, when
this boy is half-drowned and wholly starved. You too.”
“Such things don’t bother
me, old man.”
“Hm. Tough pirate. Immune
to the pangs of love too, I hope.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Just help him
up and bring him with you.”
Cai tried to say he didn’t need the help.
But he was so tired he could barely see, and when Fen bent down for
him, he reached up gratefully, skin heating with memories of that
strength closing round him in passion. “I won’t let love give you
any pain,” he said indistinctly, as Fen hoisted him to his feet. “I
won’t let anything hurt you.”
“Quiet. You’re half-asleep.
Let’s just go with this old lunatic and eat his fish, if he hasn’t
dreamed it.”
The fish
was real, and one of the biggest Cai had ever seen. They ate it
solemnly by Addy’s fireside. For a long time silence held sway,
made peaceful by the whisper of the flames in their stone pit and
the sense of a vast golden day beginning all around. The dawn mists
had cleared. The sea was returning pink lights to the roseate sky,
as if neither had ever roared and convulsed and tried to consume
them whole.
Addy’s
cave lay in the shelter of a dune. No more than a deep hollow in a
rocky outcrop, its sole comfort was the well-made fire pit outside
it. Cai couldn’t see how the old man lived. Addy, a big chunk of
salmon gleaming in his hand, returned his gaze tranquilly. If he
noticed that his guests sat shoulder to shoulder while they ate, he
didn’t remark on it. He passed them a flagon of cold heather ale,
and when they were done, produced a bowl of fresh water and a piece
of homespun linen so they could wash. “How is it with you
now?”
Cai
nodded, wiping fish grease off his fingers. “Better. Thank you.” He
gave Fen a violent nudge, and the Viking stopped appreciatively
tugging bits out from between the salmon’s bones long enough to
grunt an acknowledgement too. “But how can you afford to share your
food with strangers? And how do you come by the ale?”
“I have plenty.” Addy spread out his robes and settled himself
more comfortably by the fire. “As for the ale, that old woman I
told you about brings it to me on her devilish visits. Mead from
Fara too, in which I can still taste the good work of Brother
Martin, though he must be very old now. Is it so?”
“Yes. Martin’s still brewing, though Aelfric wants to shut him
down.”
“The Fara mead?” Addy chuckled. “He’ll have an uprising on his
hands. Tell me more about him—this new abbot of yours. What does he
profess?”
Cai
hardly knew how to begin. Fen was warm and solid at his side,
though, and not so occupied with his fish that he couldn’t spare
Cai a gentle shove. “That we’re all sinners, I suppose.”
“And didn’t Theo teach you the same thing?”
“Yes. Yes, if we did something wrong to one another. But with
Aelfric, everything’s wrong. Everything that comes from our bodies,
that is. If we want it with our flesh, it’s sending us to
hell.”
“He teaches you the doctrine of hellfire?”
Cai
hadn’t realised Aelfric’s grim vision was a doctrine. Belatedly he
noticed that Addy’s robes were a cassock like his own, patched and
worn almost beyond recognition. “I’ve heard of you,” he said
wonderingly. “When I was growing up. A crazy old hermit, a holy man
who lived on the islands alone. How long have you been out
here?”
“Long enough to gain a reputation, it seems.” Addy poked the
fire and gave Cai a wry look from under his wiry brows. “I was a
missionary, a priest in far west Hibernia. For a while I was at
Fara. Then I found that I could hear the voice of God much better
in the silences out here, and I stayed. The years have flown past
me—how many, I couldn’t say. Certainly more than your lifetime.” He
sighed. “And the truth is that my chosen seclusion has now become
necessity to me. They want to make me bishop, you see.”
Cai, who
had just been about to apologise for calling him crazy, caught
Fen’s sidelong look. “Bishop?” he echoed. “Who does?”
“The high men of the church. I prefer my solitude, though, so I
am in hiding from them. The beasts of the islands take care of me.
As I’ve told you, the eagles bring me fish to eat, and the seals
come also, to receive my benediction and sing me their
songs.”
Once
more Cai nudged Fen, in warning this time. However insane this old
man might be, he had rescued them, shared with them his fireside
and his food. “Wouldn’t it be better,” he said cautiously, “to come
back and live on the mainland? To have shelter and
companionship?”
“In my lunatic dotage, you mean?” The old man grinned lucidly,
making Cai blush. “Possibly. But the church I knew has altered so
much in her ways.” He paused and frowned, as if this was a puzzle
he’d tried to work out for himself many times before. “Not that
they’re all bad ways. The word of God must reach the whole world,
and you can’t do that with a handful of crazed Hibernian saints and
visionaries, can you? So the church—the Roman church, in her wish
to reform our wild island ways—is sending out men like your
Aelfric. And since the voice of the wind and the sea won’t make men
behave themselves, they bring with them doctrines like Aelfric’s,
to hasten them into the fold.”
“Like sheep,” Fen said suddenly. “To frighten them into
belief—whether the creed be good or bad.”
“I’ve lived in this creed all my life. I have to believe it
good. But yes—like sheep, Fenrir the wolf.”
They
stared at one another—the holy hermit and the Viking, each on his
own side of a divide whose ancient depth Cai could sense almost as
a physical thing. Into the crackling silence, he said, “Fen doesn’t
see men as sheep. Nor do I, and…nor did Theo. He tried to teach us
to think for ourselves.”
“He was a good man. A Gnostic, if you understand what that
is.”
“Yes, thanks to him. One who finds God for himself through
learning and prayer, not following in blind obedience.”
Addy’s
eyes gleamed in what might have been approval. “As good a
definition as any. Now, Caius—the monk who sits at the side of a
Viking wolf, and understands gnosis, and has no truck with sheep or
bad shepherds—what do you want to ask me? What did Theo say to you
before he died?”
Cai drew up his knees. Theo’s last behest had been such a
weight on him, and yet now that the time had come, he was reluctant
to speak. His abbot had been living proof to him that a man could
combine deep religious convictions with sanity. Cai was quite
certain that Fara held no treasures, and it hurt him to think that
Theo had believed otherwise—that such a chimera had been his last
thought. “He said there was some kind of treasure at Fara. A
secret. The vikingr believed in it too—it’s what they were raiding for that
night.”
“That was all?”
“No.” Once more Cai hesitated. He hadn’t told even Fen this
much. “He said this treasure would stop the raids, and I don’t
think he meant the vikingr
would just go away when they got it. I think he
meant it had some sort of power. And—he was delirious by this time,
dying—he said that the treasure lies not in the book but in the
binding.”
He
waited. His heart was thumping. He didn’t want to look at Fen,
because something in his words had made a difference—Fen was
listening intently, all the weight of his attention suddenly
brought to bear. The old man too had leaned forwards, about to
speak.
Then he
looked both of them over. His examination was compassionate, but
unhurried and stripped of all sentiment. He released a long sigh.
“I am sorry,” he said. “My poor Theo. He was a rational man. But he
loved his books above all else, and I fear his last thoughts became
tangled up in them. Were they all lost?”
“Yes. But he wasn’t worried about that—at least, not about the
one he was writing. He said that was only a copy.”
“Theo’s book? What was it?”
“He called it the Gospel of
Science.”
Addy
almost laughed. He caught the reaction, pushed it firmly down. Cai
saw himself and Fen through the old man’s eyes—a dishevelled,
faithless monk in fisherman’s clothes, and a barely tamed Viking
raider whose face had lit up at the idea of treasure. “A little
blasphemous of him,” Addy said, settling back. “Very typical,
though. I wish he’d had time to complete it. And I wish I could
tell you his message means something to me, but I know of no
treasure. No secret. Young men, I must think about this, and pray,
and I must do so in solitude. You lost your boat last
night?”
“Yes. She was smashed to pieces.”
“How you escaped the same fate is a mystery greater than
Theo’s. God cares for children and fools.”
“It was not God.” Fen clambered onto his feet, hoisting Cai
easily up with him. Cai remembered how he’d blanched with pain on
the training ground just the morning before, and wondered if the
shipwreck had been good for him. “It was me. I am an excellent
sailor.”
Once
more the old man fought laughter. “Well, whichever of you takes
credit,” he said solemnly, “I’m glad of the result. Companionship
is rare for me, and I will gladly shelter you here for the night.
But go away now. There is a stone hut down by the shore with the
remains of some boats in it, perhaps belonging to the devils when
they were still human enough to know how to sail. You may be able
to patch one together for yourselves.” He nodded, gazing into the