Chapter Nine #4
the clerics fading off into the background. Fen had left the
others. He had taken up position a few yards away and was watching
Cai unfathomably. Cai remembered the sea, and the broad, windswept
moors, and Eldra waiting in her paddock. He thought about freedom.
Looking at Aelfric, but speaking more to Fen, he said, “I think the
men here will obey me. They know me, and they know I mean them
good. I think they will do as I say.”
Aelfric gaped. “What do you mean, you
heretic?”
“You can frighten them into
submission for a while. I don’t doubt that. And I have no desire
for leadership. You will remain abbot, with all due deference paid
you.”
“You… Are you daring to
offer
me this? My own
God-given place?”
“Yes,” Cai said frankly. He
didn’t want to. He wanted to run to Fen where he was waiting—yes,
waiting for whatever the outcome of this would be, his own freedom
granted and untaken. “It’s not much of a place, Aelfric. A handful
of monks on the edge of the world. But you’ve failed with them,
haven’t you? Not even your own men have the heart to help you
now.”
“Be silent, you
cur.”
“In a moment. You can leave
if you wish, take back the news of your failure to your masters and
leave us in peace. I don’t think you will, though. These men need a
leader. I can do it kindly, and you’ll have a community here, under
your authority in name if not in fact. I won’t humiliate
you.”
“You won’t what?” Aelfric began a low cackle. It was a
terrible sound, hysteria and madness seething an inch from the
surface. “Kneel to me, brute! Abase yourself!”
Cai shivered. The breeze was warm, and
Aelfric was making this so hard, holding open a door onto the whole
wide world. Cai’s resolution wavered, his newborn ideas of his duty
too fragile to bind him down. Fen was waiting. He began to walk
away.
“Caius!”
Thin fingers closed on his sleeve. He
shook his arm free, but came to a halt, watching the sun burnish
Fen’s hair to copper and fire.
“Brother Caius. If you do
this…what is it that you want?”
I just want Fen.
Cai almost said it,
the wave of need so intense he wondered that it didn’t knock
Aelfric down. Aelfric had run after him. Cai doubted he had ever
run a step after any man in his life. His eyes were murderously
bright at having been forced to it now.
“I want,” Cai began,
choosing his words carefully, “for my abbot Theo’s body to be left
in peace in the crypt. I want my brother Benedict given his funeral
rites and sanctified burial in our graveyard here.” He waited, but
Aelfric just stared. “And I want you to step aside and let that
woman take her grandson home, with no more threats or fulminations
from you to darken his mind.”
A keening wail from up the slope made
him turn. Oslaf had fallen. The old woman, her face a mask of
grief, was hauling him up across her lap, so pale that Cai wondered
if grief and shock had snapped the fragile cords of life in him.
The other monks were clustered round, not touching or
helping—bewildered at having a woman in their midst, even one like
this, as plain and good as the bread they all had been brought up
on. Even Theo had taught that a monk should stay clear of them. For
the first time, a flame of impatient questioning sprang up in Cai’s
heart. What kind of faith made strangers, enemies, of half the
world?
He was about to run to Oslaf’s aid
when Bertwald stepped forwards. He leaned down over his fallen
brother, raised him tenderly off Hilde’s lap. He lifted him
effortlessly, and Oslaf gave a short, lost cry and hid his face
against his shoulder. Without a word, Bertwald set off, cradling
his burden, Hilde scrambling to follow.
Cai stopped her as she passed. “You
must be weary.” He glanced at Aelfric, who had stepped aside as
bidden and was waiting with his hands locked white-knuckle tight by
the gate. “The abbot will give you shelter for the
night.”
“Shelter?” She peered at
him from reddened eyes. “You’re a good boy. You sent that message,
didn’t you? But there’s no shelter to be had here, not for our
kind.”
“All right. In that
case…the abbot will send someone after you with food and drink.” He
waited. After giving him a look that should have shrivelled him to
dust on the ground, Aelfric turned and stalked off in the direction
of the kitchens.
Cai sank down on the turf bank that
curved round inside the monastery wall. The bank was ancient, the
wall by comparison new, the invention of yesterday. Untold
generations of men and women had found this place desirable, worthy
of defence, had built their banks and grown their crops and lived
and died, long before the creed of Christ had been thought of. Cai
put his face into his hands. What had happened to them—all those
people? He envied them their peace, their very absence. They were
nothing but the traces they’d left in the sunny earth. “What have I
done?”
A warmth settled by him. “You’ve taken
this place for your own.” A low, rumbling laugh. “And no blood
spilled. My people have no word for such a victory.”
“Victory…” Cai clutched at his
skull. Soon he would start laughing too, and that was no good—it
would undo him, and then he would weep. After Bertwald, good
brother shepherd, had loaded Oslaf up onto the donkey and led him
away, Hilde bringing up a dignified rear, Cai had found the whole
remaining congregation of Fara looking at him, awaiting their
orders. He’d given them—quietly, hands spread in
surrender—What are you waiting for? The beasts in the fields are
hungry. Bread needs to be made, mead brewed for the market. Go to
your work. “I
don’t want such a victory. What are you still doing
here?”
The warmth became a pressure. Fen’s
arm closed around his shoulders, so deep a pleasure that Cai swore
he wouldn’t look, not until he had to. He would have this moment,
and not see the farewell in Fen’s eyes.
“Caius.”
“What?”
“You’re staying, aren’t
you? Since you just made yourself the abbot of this
place.”
“No! I did not. All I did
was help them.”
“You took them into your
hands.” Fen tightened his embrace. “You’re not a man to let go of
them, not after that. You’re going to stay.”
Cai lifted his head. The tears had
come anyway, shaming him. He knocked them away. “Well?” he asked
roughly. “What of it?”
“Aelfric has taken your
terms. He had to. But he isn’t sane, and you have made him hate
you. Such natures breed poison, and can poison men’s minds even in
their own madness.”
Cai looked at him in disbelief.
“Thanks,” he said faintly, the marrow of his bones trying to melt
in the heat of the amber gaze fastened on him. “You think I don’t
know all that? Why are you telling me?”
“Because you’ll need
help.”
“I don’t doubt
it.”
“And if you need mine, I
will stay.”