Chapter Seventeen
Eldra was magnificent and ready for
her journey. There was no longer a barn or a stable to shelter her,
so Cai had tied her to a post in the field to knock a week’s worth
of mud out of her sleek coat. His palm was raw from the many
handfuls of straw the job had taken. Exhausted, he leaned back
against the fence.
Yes, she was fine. Cai looked at her
for something else to do, but she tipped her head at him and blew a
derisive snort through clean pink nostrils. She knew she was good
enough. That left Cai alone with the knowledge of his own failings,
and the rest of the day on his hands.
No good. He pushed upright. If he’d
still had Broc’s chariot, he could have killed some time and truth
in checking it over. Fittings to be polished, wheels squinted at
from back and front to make sure they were properly aligned.
Linseed oil to rub into leather till it was supple and resistant to
salt sea winds. But the raiders had turned Broc’s sacred heirloom
to ash along with the monastery’s ox-ploughs, carts and hay wagon.
There was nothing to stand between Cai and the knowledge that
Fenrir was leaving tomorrow at dawn.
All these preparations had been his
way of staving off the truth. Irrational, because with every swipe
of the straw across Eldra’s coat he had made her more fit for her
new owner, but this way he brought the racing minutes under some
kind of control. If Cai was giving Fen a horse to aid his journey,
it would be the best horse available. If he was providing supplies
to send him on his way, they would be fresh and wholesome. And that
reminded him—he had told Hengist to pack up some saddlebags with
victuals, dried fish and oatcake that would serve Fen if his
perishable food ran out on the long road south. Cai had better go
and check there was enough. That Hengist was doing it right. Then
another aspect of this departure would be his, a thing inside him,
not a hook in his guts hauling them out.
He led Eldra up into the pasture at
the top of the slope. It was drier here than anywhere else, so that
even if she did choose to roll and besmirch herself, the damage
wouldn’t be too bad. What Cai wanted to do was let her go. He
wanted to slap her on the rump and send her pelting off to some far
distance where no one could ever retrieve her. He wanted to fasten
up the gates of Fara, hide every loaf and apple in the place and
tell Fen that if he wanted food, he damn well could stay here and
grow it like anybody else.
Cai’s throat contracted. He gave a
low, wrenching moan he was grateful nobody could hear. No one but
Eldra, anyway. She thumped him with her muzzle, right in his
slow-healing stitches, then trotted away with her freshly groomed
tail bannered high.
He took the clifftop path to
avoid passing through the new huts. Since yesterday and his visit
to the graves, he was formally up and about, the reprieve of
sickness ended. He couldn’t get from his bunk to the latrines
without half a dozen interceptions, questions. Brother Cai, Brother
Cai.
Abbot Cai.
He didn’t mind. He knew most of the
answers and remembered how it was. In troubled times, good to have
a benign elder to direct your works, or simply bestow upon them a
nod and a smile. Yes, the church would be rebuilt. No, there would
be no canonical hours, only morning and evening prayers, as in
Theo’s time. Who was Cai to decide such things? He didn’t know, but
the answers came to him clearly and cleanly when they had to, based
on common sense and his long acquaintance with these few surviving
men. No one had ever asked Aelfric anything. Theo had usually
travelled about at the heart of a small group, eager for his
teachings and his word.
Cai had no teachings to offer, but he
would do what he could. He just couldn’t do it now, not until he
had once more strangled into submission his infantile rage. A
benign elder? Emerging onto the clifftop, taking deep breaths of
the fresh breeze, Cai choked on bitter laughter. He felt like a
child.
And, dear God, there was a ship on the
horizon. He stumbled, grabbing at a fence post for balance. No.
There wasn’t a single thing, not a scrap of resistance left, inside
him or in the remains of the monastery, to fight off another raid.
“No…”
“No!”
Cai glanced down the track, startled
at the echo. Fen was running towards him, as little like a monk as
Cai had ever seen him—a proud, athletic figure, his cassock only
incidental, a becoming second skin, even with a waxed-linen apron
on top. “No, Cai,” he called, coming into sight of him. “Not this
time. Just take them and get them inland.”
Make a run for it.
Even now Cai’s
hillfort blood rebelled at the idea. Fen came to a breathless halt
at his side, and Cai shielded his eyes, trying to make out the
details of this new terror. It was one ship only. That was
something, except that it was huge…
A vessel such as Cai had never seen.
She was ungainly, more like a river barge than a seagoing carrier.
She was magnificent, though. The sunlight was dancing off golden
trimmings on her prow. Her sides were decked with purple cloths,
and her sail… Cai took Fen’s hand. He hadn’t meant to—had meant to
teach himself how not touching him would feel and start to live
with it. But it was so natural, and natural as breathing the
returning embrace of Fen’s arm around his waist. So there they
stood—lovers, brothers, comrades, watching the sea. “That sail. The
sign on it—that’s the bishop’s crozier.”
“His what?”
“His staff, you heathen. Do
you see it—the spiral curving back on itself?”
“Yes. Who would bring such
a ship out here?”
“I don’t know. That’s the
emblem of the diocese at Hexham. Only the bishop himself would have
the authority, or…well, a king, but that’s even less likely than a
bishop, this far north of civilisation.”
“It looks as if it’s
heading to East Fara. The island.”
Cai wasn’t certain which of them had
begun the walk down to the beach. Fen’s hold on him distracted him
from many things, quieted his mind even when he wished to stay
alert, cogent, angry. He only came to surface again when the cliff
track narrowed and Fen let him go, pushing him gently ahead to take
the lead. Why were they coming here? Cai had a dozen things to do,
and Fen from the look of him had been helping with the slaughter of
their few remaining pigs. But as they made their way downslope, he
saw that the vision of this strange, majestic ship had exerted its
pull on others of his brethren too. One by one they appeared among
the dunes, leaving their tasks behind them. Perhaps they were only
relieved that the vessel hadn’t heralded another raid, and wished
to watch it out of sight. Or maybe, like Cai, they couldn’t take
their eyes off the misty place on the horizon where it was slowly
fading, in flickering purples and flashes of sun.
The Fara brethren settled on the
beach, on the dry sand and the scattered rocks where the seals
liked to bask. Cai knew he should send them back to work. He was no
Aelfric, but he shouldn’t allow a reasonless midday idleness like
this. They were working monks, and outside of mealtimes and prayer,
their labours were mapped out for them—especially now, when barely
a stone lay on a stone at Fara to show what the place was meant to
be. There was no excuse for Cai himself to be here, hitching up the
hem of his robes and scrambling onto a rock so he could
see.
Fen took his elbow to give him a boost
and steady him, and then he too clambered up and sat at Cai’s
side—to windward, Cai noted, shielding him, keeping him warm. “Is
she still heading out?”
“I’m not sure. She seems to
be just…hanging there. Drifting.”
An attentive silence fell. The
survivors of the last raid had been subdued men, but still when
they came together there were murmurs about aching limbs, the
occasional burst of laughter. They were quiet now, their attention
fixed on the gilded ship.
She came about. The movement was
imperceptible at first, and then the noonday sun caught her helm in
a blaze. At first Cai was surprised by her new heading, but then
everything faded away but her beauty. She was making for shore. All
around him, the gathered men came to their feet, shielding their
eyes to watch. Cai got up too, and he and Fen picked their way down
past the rock pools and over constellations of pale cockleshells
and barnacles until they were standing at the sea’s
edge.
The ship was too deep in the
hull to draw very far into the shallows. A couple of hundred yards
out, her crew trimmed the sail. They were vigorous men in neat
uniforms, a match for any interested vikingr pirates. Cai could make them out clearly
now, as well as the ancient gateway symbol on the canvas. Not just
episcopal authority, then, but secular, and the highest in the
land—the mark of the kingdom of Bernicia.
The vessel came to a standstill. First
the crew ran to drop anchor, and then a burly quartet of them
winched up a smaller craft, a tender-boat fit to make the run
between ship and shore. In it was a solitary figure, balancing with
fragile dignity while the tender swayed on its ropes and was
lowered by slow, careful degrees into the water. Three of the
crewmen scrambled down rope ladders and boarded it too. Two of them
took up the oars, and the third stood behind the passenger,
apparently as a kind of honour guard. All were heavily armed,
showing rich purple cloth beneath their breastplates, their shields
also marked with the crozier and gate.
Only when the tender was far enough
inshore to rock on the breakers did Cai understand. “My God. Who
have they got there?”
“They stopped off at Addy’s
island, didn’t they? He told us they were after him to make him
bishop.”
“Didn’t we agree he was
mad?”
“Well, does he look sane to
you?”
Addy—Aedar, the hermit of Fara—was
sitting bolt upright in the boat. His hair and beard were streaming