Chapter Eleven
Another full moon, this time golden as
the barley Danan said would ripen in the husk by such light. Cai
wasn’t so sure of that. All his life he had worked alongside the
farmers at the hillfort to get the crop in at harvest moon, but
only because mornings could dawn grey and stormy at this time of
year, the summer beginning to wane. Tonight Cai would roll up his
sleeves and join his brethren in the one field well enough favoured
by the sun and good soil for the barley to grow. He stood in the
window of the scriptorium, the empty arch that had once glimmered
with sea-green glass, and he watched the gilded orb rise from the
sea.
He was tired, but he didn’t mind.
Since the moon’s last waning he had worked wherever he was needed.
He could see traces of Theo’s monastery rising up around him, and
there was no amount of time and energy he would begrudge to restore
that. Aelfric kept mostly to his study, a brooding adder. Fen had
warned that there was venom in him yet, but Cai thought the man’s
will had crumbled along with his little empire, built on the sands
of fear. He and the Canterbury clerics—including Laban, whose
rebellion had been short-lived—observed the canonical hours and did
not complain when the church was not full, although Cai had
observed that a surprising number of his brethren did go out of
their way to meet the new rule. Cai did it himself when he could.
There was a great beauty to it, a kind of stately dance, and there
were no more teachings of hellfire.
Freed of Aelfric’s interference, Cai
had given his orders with more conviction. Now if he hesitated, one
or the other of his brothers would come and demand to be told what
to do. So it was that he had begun the restoration of the
scriptorium. He had wondered at his own temerity—their bread and
butter didn’t depend on it, or even their education, since they had
no books to put in it. Still, it brought him a keen joy to see the
burnt-out chamber swept clean, the tumbled masonry being mortared
back into place. And perhaps the books would come.
Over winter, when there was less to be
done in the fields, he might journey down to the Tyne monasteries,
examine the libraries there, renew Fara’s supply of inks and
vellum. Brother Wulfhere, their carpenter, had died in the first
raid, but his apprentice was at work on a new writing desk in his
spare time. There was a man at Traprain Law who knew the art of
glass. Cai allowed his attention to drift, picturing the room in
all its glory, men working peacefully over their script and
illuminations, the light of knowledge kindling here
again.
There was a bloodstain where Theo had
fallen. Cai blinked, coming back to himself. None of them had tried
to scrub away the mark. If Cai breathed deeply, he would catch the
lingering stench of smoke and charred flesh—real, or just a memory
embedded in his senses, he couldn’t tell. He turned back to the
window. The clean sea air could continue to sweep through the
chamber for now. He leaned on the sill, let the salty evening
breeze cool his brow.
He wasn’t the only soul here with
solemn thoughts tonight. On the rocks below, the shadows had
gathered into the shape of a man—Fenrir, emerging from nothing and
almost disappearing into it again, halting at the very edge of the
cliff. There he sat and drew his knees up to his chest. Cai could
scarcely make him out from here. Conspicuous by day, with his
height and his bright hair, at dusk he became part of his
surroundings, as if…
As if the night could swallow him. He
was looking out across the sea. Even in the melting, merging light,
Cai read lonely yearning in the set of his shoulders. Oh, they had
had a month of it, he and his Viking. Cai didn’t think there was
one concealed refuge in the monastery grounds, one secluded hollow
of the dunes, where they hadn’t found each other—stripped and
sucked and fought their way into each other’s flesh. Cai was still
bruised from their last encounter. He had inflicted marks of his
own, and discovered that he too could make a man’s blood
sing.
He still didn’t fool himself that he
could fill up the empty spaces in Fen’s soul. Fen no longer spoke
about his brother or the Torleik tribe. His talk with Cai had
ranged broadly, and Cai had found himself expressing ideas and
thoughts no other companion had inspired in him, but Gunnar and
Sigurd had been consigned to silence. Cai hadn’t tried to rescue
them. They were the unknown forces still acting on Fen’s soul, and
how could Cai compete? All the life Fen had experienced before his
abandonment here, that whole world of seafaring, conquest,
brotherhood… No, much easier to let it fade.
As if poor Fen could forget. Suddenly
ashamed of himself, Cai turned away from the window. The steps from
the scriptorium were still ruinous, half the stairwell burned away,
and he made his way cautiously down them, slipping out through
cobwebby shadows into the night.
Fen didn’t stir at his approach. Cai
had made enough noise not to startle him. He crouched on the rocks
behind him—hesitated for a moment, then put his arms around him.
“Fen.”
He made a deep sound of welcome,
turning far enough to rub his face against Cai’s. “Is it time for
us to go and start the harvest?”
“Not yet. I know you grieve
for your comrades and your family. Forgive me if I haven’t spoken
of them.”
“My comrades…” Fen’s smile
brushed Cai’s cheek in the dark. “In fact I was thinking about
you.”
Something shifted in Cai’s chest, a
relief and pleasure so pure that it hurt. “Were you?”
“Yes. The moon casting her
track across the sea like this… It seemed so strange to me that the
waters divided us for so long, I had to come and look at them.
Maybe there is an earthly bridge as well as the rainbow one into
Valhalla. Maybe the moon creates it, and allows men’s souls to know
one another before they meet in the flesh. Even… Even if they never
do.”
Cai remembered the dream of the
wolf, and he nodded. “Maybe,” he said hoarsely. “I rejoice
that we did.”
“As do I. Even if I was
trying to kill you at the time.”
You’re killing me now.
Cai kept that
thought to himself, his throat aching and burning. “I’ve been in
the scriptorium. I want to rebuild it, but Theo died in there. Leof
too. And I felt such sorrow for them, but then I saw you out here,
and…” He shut up. What had he been about to say? His tongue kept
bringing him to this brink, as dangerous as the cliff edge where
they now sat. He rested his brow on Fen’s shoulder, closing his
eyes.
Fen laced his fingers through Cai’s.
“I too am struggling to understand. I am a warrior. And, yes—I have
lost my comrades. I ought to be dead—from shame, if nothing
else.”
“There was no shame in it.
Not for you.”
“I will never make you understand
our laws of battle. Sigurd would say the weakness was in me, to
permit them to leave me behind. Hush, Cai—I know what you think of that. It’s not what
concerns me. Despite all these things, I am happy here. I wouldn’t
leave if I could. I…I wouldn’t leave you.”
Cai didn’t move, not even to open his
eyes. If he stayed quite still here, the world might never move on.
He might remain in this moment, hearing the song of his own blood,
or perhaps of Addy’s seals far off over the glittering sea. He
didn’t want, didn’t need, didn’t think he could bear anything more.
But Fen tightened his grip, binding them together, making Cai see
in the dark behind his eyes the intricate knotwork Leof had used to
paint down the margins of Theo’s book.
“I am trying to
understand,” Fen said, “just as you are. So much grief, and such a
waste of water that divided us! And yet I have come to love you.
And you, my fine man, whispering in the dark, as if I couldn’t read
your words on my skin, even in your own language… How have we come
to this?”
“I don’t know,” Cai
whispered. “Is it…bad? Do you regret it?”
“I regret the years without
you. I used to see the other young men bind themselves to one
companion, whether in lust or friendship, and I tried to believe I
wasn’t made like that. It was my last thought on the beach that
night, while I lay dying in the waves—that if I’d had such a
companion, he wouldn’t have allowed me to be left
behind.”
“I never will.”
“And you—I will fight for
you until we are stricken down together and our spilled blood
mingles in the sand.”
“That’s a lovely
thought.”
Fen caught the tremor of laughter in
Cai’s voice. “It is not given to me to express my feelings more
gently. Will you accept this?”
“Absolutely.”
They knelt for a long time in silence,
only the rush and in-breath of the moon-swollen tide to accompany
their thoughts. Then Cai smiled, recalled to the moment by the
demands of his importunate flesh. “This is all very noble and
pleasant, isn’t it?”
“Yes, I suppose so. What
about it?”
“It makes me want to fuck
your noble Viking bones right through the nearest rock.”
Fen gave a bark of laughter. “That
would seal our bargain very well. Do we have time?”
“No. I can see the men
coming down for the harvest. Addy said we have to lead by
example.”
“To be accurate, I believe he
said you had to. But come along. The rock will still be here when we
are done.”
Their path took them down through the
churchyard. Out of habit, Cai paused by Leof’s grave. The small
mound was greening over now, merging back into the moorland. All
summer wildflowers had blossomed around it, a handful of campions
or sea pinks to gather, and now the hawthorns were starring the
night sky above the wall with moonlit fruit. Cai broke off a stem
and laid it at the foot of the plain wooden cross. When he looked
round, Fen was brushing fallen leaves and clumps of moss off the
grave. The last time Cai had gone through this ritual in his
presence, Fen had stood aloof, as if bewildered by tenderness shown
to the dead.
Cai was about to thank him. Then he