Chapter Seventeen #3
truth? You were nothing but flotsam, thrown up on my shores by the
wind and the sea.”
Cai swallowed hard. “I still don’t
understand. This book—no matter how marvellous it is… Theo said it
would bring peace and stop the raids. How can any book do
that?”
“I’ve wondered the same
thing. I had hoped—I still do hope—that Theo saw in you a wisdom
that would grow to interpret his words. What else did he say to
you?”
“That the secret wasn’t even in
the book. That it was in the binding.” Cai drew a rough breath.
“Oh, I have failed him. My wisdom didn’t grow. I’ve tried all I can to be like him,
but…”
“Hush. Who could be like
him? Who could ever be like you? Each of us has his path. They run
close together sometimes—for life, if we are fortunate—but they
never cross. Do you understand?”
“No,” Cai said miserably.
He was faint and sick, the hole in his side aching fiercely. Fen
disentangled his hand and put an arm round his shoulders instead,
and Cai leaned gratefully into his warmth. “No.”
“Poor boy. You’re sick, and
I have kept you talking out here in the cold. I must go now and
be…” He paused, gathering up his staff and using it to push onto
his feet. “Aedar, Bishop of Hexham, it seems. Understand this one
thing only. I love my faith and my church, and shadows are falling
upon it. Only men like you can keep a light of knowledge burning
till the darkness has passed. Will you try?”
“I’ll try. I don’t know
how, but…”
“It’s enough. You won’t be
hindered by any more abbots from Canterbury, I believe. These north
lands are considered beyond salvation now, and Rome won’t throw
good men after bad. Fara is yours.” He straightened up, lifting his
crozier high so its ivory curve caught the light. “I will bless you
and your brethren now. They’ve waited long enough. Er, Caius, that
boy…”
“Which one, sir?
Eyulf?”
“The one who seems weak in
his wits, unless he knows some benefit to eating sand… You should
bring him to me. Not now, but the next time we meet.”
“Will there be a next
time?”
“Of course. Creation being
eternal, all things must happen in time.” He raised his free hand,
extending it towards the gathered men. “Benedicat vos omnipotens Deus, Pater,
et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus…”
Cai closed his eyes and tried to take
the blessing in good part. Creation might be eternal, but he was
only flesh. With a few exceptions, men did not live long in the
harsh north. He had seen more than twenty summers. Broccus, barely
sixteen years older, was considered an old man, and Cai knew the
wound draining strength from him now would take its toll in years
at the end of his life. Perhaps that was the nature of the
blessing. Cai was certain he had seen his finest days, his hottest,
sweetest hours.
He opened his eyes and found twenty
golden ones staring back at him. A flock of the black-and-white
ducks who haunted the Fara isles had gathered out of nowhere and
waddled close to Addy until they formed a kind of honour guard,
their faces at once comical and solemn. One was so close that its
beak had gone under his robe.
Addy finished his blessing. He looked
down and gave a groan of exasperation, as if this was a regular
problem for him. “Ah, you fools—found me out here, have you?” He
gathered up his hem and gently shooed out the intruder. He turned
and began to walk away, and they followed him, sea-gilded rumps
swinging. “You fools,” he continued, addressing them as if no one
else existed, his voice fading into the breeze. “Didn’t I tell you?
I am not really going away. Or, if I am, I will be back. If not, I
never was here, or I always was and always will be—sometimes I
can’t remember which it is.” He reached the water’s edge. The king
in the ship looked up eagerly, and the soldiers jumped down to
assist him, but he hitched his robes up and waded out alone, the
Addy ducks swimming in his wake.
Cai sent his brethren back to
their work. At first he felt like an impostor, as he always did
when ordering men older, better, longer-serving than himself, but
then despite his pain and weariness, his voice firmed.
These north lands
are considered beyond salvation now. Perhaps he need not be so afraid, if Fara
was already lost. Perhaps the lost souls who lived there could do
worse than him as a leader. They went without a murmur, as if his
commands were what they expected and desired.
They hadn’t seemed to expect him to
dismiss Fen too, any more than they’d intruded on their privacy in
the makeshift shelter. Perhaps they thought an abbot could do as he
wished, keep whoever he wanted close to him. Pushing back that
bitter thought, Cai went back to Fen’s side. He settled on the sand
beside him and turned the precious casket in his hands. He and Fen
were alone. It was time to open up the treasure of Fara. He turned
the box so that its hasps were facing Fen. “Will you? I’m almost
afraid.”
Fen smiled, shook his head. “No. This
is your abbot Theo’s gift to you.”
“The man I once knew was
ready to kill for this.”
“The man you once knew
would have killed for just one of its jewels.”
Cai looked up. Fen was gazing at him
through strands of windblown hair, his eyes bright with sorrow and
mischief. In some ways he was transfigured—in others just the same,
unapologetically the man he had always been. With unsteady fingers,
Cai unfastened the clasps. No fleck of rust could corrode the
magnificent gold, and the box opened easily.
By contrast, the book inside was
plain. Its cover, though made of good leather, was worn thin in
patches that corresponded to fingermarks. How many hands must have
lifted and opened it, over how many centuries, to wear away that
thick hide? Lifting it out, Cai found how easily his own fingers
fitted into the same gaps. Yes, the cover was almost worn away. A
dirty leather strip was wrapped round the whole book to prevent it
from falling apart. It was only loosely knotted—cradling the volume
in one arm, he undid the strip and let it fall. A little sand went
with it, skittering in the breeze for long enough to show its deep
red tint, then flying off to vanish in the pale north-lands gold.
Desert sand… Cai remembered now that Theo had talked of the
hump-backed horses depicted on the casket’s sides, not horses at
all but beasts of burden called cameli. Maybe this book was a bestiary, an account of
desert travels, or…
No. Nothing to do with palm trees or
beasts. The first page was a diagram, beautifully laid out and
labelled—first in a strange foreign scrawl, and then in crisp
Latin—of the three heavenly bodies. Sol, Terra, Luna. Sun, Earth
and Moon—with the sun at the centre, and the moon going stepdance
around and around the round Earth. The next page showed a man in
exotic robes kneeling at the foot of a building such as Cai had
never seen before, nothing but four triangular faces that met at an
apex. The man had a compass like Theo’s, and he was busy taking
measurements from this apex to a brilliant overhanging
star.
Cai closed the book. He couldn’t see
for tears. Fen’s arms went round him from behind, and he clutched
him, hard enough to bruise, still keeping the volume held tenderly
close to his chest. “Fen, it’s Theo’s book. The one he was copying
bit by bit from memory.”
“The Gospel of Science?”
“Yes. Oh, God—all his
learning. All here.”
“I’m glad. Is it what you
imagined?”
“A thousand times more. But
I still don’t understand.” Cai struggled round, leaned his brow
against Fen’s. It was a gesture of tenderness from the earliest
days of their short time together, when words had almost failed,
when two heads were better than one, when words and thoughts alike
were both about to melt into a kiss. “I don’t know how it can bring
peace.”
“Have you looked into the
binding? Theo said the answer was there.”
“Yes. Not in the book but
in the binding… It scarcely has any left. The pages were all held
together by…”
The dirty leather ribbon was still
fluttering on the sand. The wind was about to take it. Fen shot out
a hand and pinned it down, catching its tail at the last instant.
“This?”
“Yes. It was tied round it,
binding it all together.” Realisation hit. “Oh, Fen. The
binding.”
It was nothing but a dirty ribbon,
more tattered than the book itself. A cloud had passed before the
sun, and not until it was gone did Cai make out the markings. He’d
seen something like them on grave-marker stones in the older Saxon
villages. A series of straight lines burned into the leather—mostly
vertical, easy to carve into stones, broken by angles, horizontals.
“This looks like lettering.”
“It is. Runic. My people
use a pure form, the Saxons a degraded one.”
“Oh, of course.”
“This is pure.” Fen took the
ribbon, passed it slowly through his fingers. “It’s old,
though—older almost than I can translate, and the first few letters
are gone. Wait, though. I have it. The cord…” He turned the ribbon, held it to the
light. “The
cord that binds the wolf where fetters fail.”
His colour drained. Still clutching
the ribbon, he sat down hard on the sand.
“Fen? What is
it?”
“It is Gleipnir. In the legends
of the Dane Lands, the people you call vikingr… No. It can’t be.”
“Tell me
anyway.”
“In vikingr legend, there is a great wolf. I have told
you of him. I was named after him—Fenrisulfr. This wolf became
troublesome, even to the gods—he was a god himself, you see—and so
they tried to defeat him. They tied him with huge iron chains. But
the wolf broke through those as if they had been spider
webs.”
Cai closed his hand on Fen’s fist. It
was chilly as marble. “A strong wolf.”
“Yes, but a stupid one. The gods
commanded the dwarves to create a new binding—thin as a ribbon of
silk, but unbreakable. Now, this wolf being arrogant, he laughed
when he saw it. And when the gods challenged him, he let himself be
bound.” Fen’s voice softened and caught. “And he found out, as I
have, that any strength may be conquered by the right chains. The
ribbon was named Gleipnir. It passed into our legends as a symbol,
a thing that could bind and defeat all vikingr power. It’s what Sigurd was looking for,
raiding so fiercely to find. I didn’t realise. This is the treasure
of Fara.”
“This poor scrap of
leather?”
“Yes. You don’t understand
what it means to us. More than gold, more than any plunder.” Fen
shivered, as if a ghost had touched him, a spectre from a future
opening up to him for the first time. “If I have this… With this, I
can command the Torleik. They will see it as their strength being
returned to them. When the other tribes know that we have it, they
will fear us. If I bear it home with me now, perhaps I can control
them. Perhaps I can bring an end to the slaughter on these
shores.”
Cai didn’t let go of his hand. “Eldra
is ready for you. Hengist has prepared some travelling clothes and
packed up supplies for your journey.”
Fen glanced up. His gaze returned from
wide inner vistas to the detail in front of him, and pain creased
his brow. “I don’t have to go now. We said tomorrow, didn’t
we?”
“Aye, but think what will
happen. I am very tired—I’ve sat down here for too long. Halfway up
the cliff, my strength will run out, and you will pick me up. Is it
not so?”
“Yes, of
course.”
“I will protest and tell
you I’m not a village maiden or a pig for you to run off with. And
you will take no notice and carry me back to our shelter, and kick
the willow door into place so no one can see. By that time your
hold on me will have become more than I can bear.”
“Yes.” A terrible
comprehension dawned in Fen’s eyes. “And your weight in my arms,
your warmth and your scent…”
“Yes. So you will lay me
down, and even though I am half-dead from weariness, I will open my
body to you, my heart, any thing of me you want, and we will
struggle and fuck until sleep takes us. And wake in the knowledge
that you must go, and I must stay here, and comfort each other for
that until we are fucking again. Is it not so?”
Fen couldn’t speak, but his silence
gave Cai the answer he needed.
“And so it will go on. We
will tear each other apart.”
Fen lurched upright, a huge spring of
a movement that almost knocked Cai over on the sand. “I will go. I
will send someone down to help you home.”
Gleipnir, that worn scrap of nothing,
was fluttering from his hand. Cai caught the end of it. “This
cord,” he whispered, not looking up. “This thing that has the power
to bind all Vikings… Won’t it bind just one?”
“Yes. Yes, if you choose to
use it that way.”
Cai let go. He felt one last touch to
his shoulder—a kiss, warm as life, to the top of his bowed head.
Then he was alone.