Fenrir c-2

by M. D. Lachlan

  ‘I’m afraid the years have not improved my looks, Lady Aelis.’

  ‘I hope they have improved my manners,’ she said. The girl sounded genuinely shocked, and the confessor could hear she was struggling to control her voice.

  ‘May I sit a while with you, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There were more screams from outside. The defenders would be fighting, thought the confessor, largely without armour. There would have been no time to put it on. His whole conversation, he thought, could very quickly become an almost grotesque irrelevance if the northerners got into the city. How many of them were there? Thousands. How many men-at-arms in Paris? Two hundred and fifty? While the towers held they were safe. If they fell then the city would be swamped. There was nothing for it but to proceed and to trust to the will of God, as he had always done.

  ‘Set me down,’ he said to the monk, ‘then draw your sword and go to the ramparts to perform the office of a faithful man.’

  The monk put him down then left, clumping his way from pillar to pillar as he walked out of the candle glow.

  ‘You are…’ She hesitated.

  ‘Worse than I was? There is no need to hide from it, lady; it is a plain fact.’

  ‘I am sorry.’

  ‘Do not be. It is a gift from God, and I welcome it.’

  ‘I will pray for you.’

  ‘Do not. Or rather, pray as I pray. Thank God for visiting this condition upon me and the opportunity it has given me to prove my faith.’

  Aelis caught the implication of his words. He felt blessed to have been tested in his faith. She should feel the same. She did not, however.

  She looked at the figure in front of her in the candlelight. When she had seen him before he had been blind and confined to a chair. Then, she had been struck by his eyes, which didn’t focus at all but ceaselessly scanned the room, as if he was trying to follow the flight of an annoying fly. His face too had been twisted into a permanent grimace. Though she had thought him ugly, she had seen worse deformity on any market day in Paris. Now, she thought, he could be the king of beggars, if he chose. His body seemed to have shrivelled, his arms to have withered and twisted; his head was cast back as if permanently looking upwards. She knew the joke was that he always looked to heaven, but, faced with the reality, she could not find it funny. The monk swayed back and forth as he spoke, like someone in deep contemplation. Aelis found the whole effect very unsettling.

  Ever since she had been a little girl, and more since she had become a woman, she had been able to perceive people in a way that went beyond the normal understanding of the five senses. It was almost as if she could hear people’s personalities like music, sense them as colours or symbols. She had grown up around warriors, seen their scars and heard their stories of battle and fortitude against the northerners. When they had spoken, the colour of iron had come into her mind, of swords and armour, and the dark skies of war. Her brother had a presence like a mailed fist, hard, uncompromising, but nevertheless insubstantial compared to that of Confessor Jehan. The monk’s body may have been broken, but his soul, his will, seemed to sit like a great mountain in the dark, solid and immovable.

  She took up the candle and went to the altar. The gold of the candlesticks and communion cups caught its flame and glittered as she moved. The abbot would not have them removed — that would be to admit that the Norsemen might get in. There had been hope that the monks at Saint-Germain would send over some of their relics. They could hardly expect the bones of Saint Germain himself, but there had been talk that the stole of Saint Vincent might be sent across. However, the abbot of Saint-Germain had pointed out that the monastery had been sacked by Norsemen three times already and the stole had provided no protection then.

  Aelis kneeled beneath the altar.

  ‘God has tested me too in a smaller way. Should I be thankful?’

  Jehan measured his words carefully.

  ‘We should be grateful for anything that comes from God.’

  The confessor was just a voice in the darkness to her.

  ‘I am not afraid of the Norsemen,’ she said.

  ‘Then what are you afraid of?’

  Aelis crossed herself. Jehan heard her mutter a prayer. Her voice trembled, though she fought to suppress it, not to appear weak in front of a low-born man.

  ‘Something is coming for me, and I know that if I consent to go with the Norsemen, or even if I leave this church, it will find me and take me. It brings peril for us all.’

  ‘You can’t stay inside a church all your life,’ said the confessor. ‘What is coming for you?’

  She said nothing for a moment. Then: ‘When your blindness came upon you, Confessor, you had a vision?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of the Virgin Mary.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did she speak to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So how did you know it was her?’

  ‘I knew. And from the gift she awoke within me.’

  ‘The prophecies?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jehan remembered the day that had changed his life. He had been found by hunters in the woods at the age of around five or six, and then deposited at a monastery in the East Frankish lands of Austrasia. He had been delirious. All that was certain was that someone had taught him to speak Roman and he had suffered a great shock that had left him with few memories. He had been taken west to Paris by a travelling monk, where he had been given a place at Saint-Germain by the mercy of the Church. His recovery had been as remarkable as it was quick. By the age of nine he was helping the monks, studying, playing and laughing. In many ways he outshone his peers. His facility for writing would have been surprising in a child who had been raised to it from his earliest years. Languages too came easily to him: the common tongue of Roman, Francique, as spoken at court, Latin for official business, Greek, even the Norse and Saxon that the missionaries taught him. More amazing was his ability at chess. He had watched two monks play the game and then sat to try for himself. In his first game he beat one of the abbey’s strongest players. The boy, it was said, was blessed.

  Then the Virgin had appeared to him. It was high summer, the hungry month of July, and he had nothing to do but walk the fields of unripe crops. The sun was over the corn and the sky was a burning blue. When the monks spoke of visions he had always imagined that an angel or the Virgin would appear on a cloud or in a haze. But she had stood beside him so real he felt he could touch her. She had spoken to him, or rather he had heard her voice in his mind, though he had never admitted it to anyone, too unsure of what she had meant. He had pondered her words for years, and he had never revealed them.

  ‘Do not seek me.’

  He had taken it for a warning against the sin of pride, of trying to be too holy and putting himself above other men in piety. Seeking heaven, he felt, was the surest way to lose it.

  She had walked away from him and he had run after her, but the blindness fell upon him and he had been discovered wandering by the hives, lucky not to blunder into one and be stung.

  His prophecies had been correct — raids along the coast, Rouen in flames, Bayeux, Laon and Beauvais ruined, the sons of the Church executed. The abbot had declared him a saint on earth — a confessor — and God had blessed him with further afflictions and further visions.

  ‘They made you a saint because you saw her?’

  ‘Yes. That and the monastery’s desire to have a confessor among its monks. It was just and it was politic,’ he said.

  ‘What would they make you if you had seen…’ She couldn’t finish.

  Jehan was quiet, allowing her to compose herself.

  ‘Do you need to ask for penance?’

  Aelis gave a short laugh. ‘I have nothing to confess, Father, no sin to be forgiven, but if I was to stand in front of the congregation, call what I have experienced a sin and ask a priest for forgiveness, my life might be over before I left this church. Can I ask you privately? Will you swear nev
er to reveal what I have to say?’

  ‘The sacrament of penance must be conducted publicly,’ said Jehan.

  ‘I have nothing to be sorry for. Will you swear?’

  ‘This path is strewn with briars,’ said the confessor under his breath. What if the woman told him she was an adulteress or, worse, a murderer? He could not, in conscience, hold on to a secret like that.

  The noise of the fighting was getting closer. Had the Norsemen taken a tower? That was impossible, he thought, without mining. The enemy had already tried that, and to no success.

  The cries and the curses focused the confessor on his task.

  ‘I will swear,’ he said.

  ‘They made you a saint because you saw the Virgin,’ said Aelis; ‘what would they call you if you had seen the devil?’

  ‘The common people might cry witch,’ said the confessor, ‘though belief in witchcraft is heresy. Someone might be held a heretic if they declared themselves a witch, but a vision is a vision. Of itself it means nothing.’

  ‘So what would you call me?’

  ‘You have seen the devil?’

  ‘Yes. Am I a witch, unknown to myself?’

  ‘Christ saw the devil in the wilderness — was he a witch?’

  She bowed her head.

  Jehan swallowed and began to rock more rapidly.

  ‘There are many explanations for this sort of thing. An illness, perhaps, a passing brain fever. A dream is often just that, lady, a fancy without any connection to the day-to-day.’

  ‘I dream him while waking. He is always there.’

  More screams. Jehan heard a shouted word in the Norse tongue: ‘Die.’

  He didn’t pause. ‘And how do you know him for the devil?’

  ‘He is a wolf. A man and a wolf at the same time. He comes from the shadows and the side of my sight. He is beside me as I fall to sleep and there in the instant of my waking. He is a wolf and he speaks to me.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  Aelis crossed herself again. ‘He says that he loves me.’

  There was a clamour right outside the cathedral. The fighting was close now. Aelis looked up. The darkness around the weak candle glow seemed to swim and to seethe, a liquid black. There was a thump against the door, so hard that it seemed it would splinter.

  ‘Are we to die, Confessor?’ said Aelis.

  ‘If it is God’s will,’ said Jehan.

  ‘Then pray for us.’

  ‘No,’ said the confessor. ‘Pray for our enemies, that they might find the light of Christ in their hearts before our soldiers kill them and so have a chance of heaven. We are believers and so can be more hopeful we will go to God.’

  She stood and Jehan heard her draw in breath. To Aelis the dark had now taken on a different quality. It seemed to bristle, to move and even to shine, like the fur on a hog’s back. Then the shadow at the edge of the candle glow took form, moved and stepped forward into the light.

  The lady gasped. There, like a creature of wrapped shadows, stood the figure of the wolfman, his savage head leering down at her from the darkness, his pale skin taut and smeared with blood.

  ‘He is here,’ she said. ‘He is here!’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The wolf, the wolf! The devil is come!’

  Jehan cast his head around. There was a dark, animal scent away to his left. He could hear the breathing of a third person now, hear the girl trying to catch her breath in her panic.

  ‘We are clothed in the armour of God, Satan; you cannot harm us,’ said the monk. His voice was steady and calm, almost bored, like a teacher speaking to a naughty child.

  ‘ Domina,’ said the wolfman. He hacked out the word as if it was stuck in his throat, his accent guttural and strange. ‘ Domina.’ Aelis tried to make herself think. She had been taught Latin since her earliest years but she couldn’t even make her mind translate this simple word. The monk, however, was unafraid.

  ‘Do not call for the lady, devil; your business is with me.’ The confessor spoke in Latin too.

  The wolfman ignored him.

  ‘ Domina. My name is Sindre that is called Myrkyrulf, and I am here to protect you.’

  Finally Aelis found her Latin. ‘Against what?’

  ‘Against this,’ he said, and the doors of the church flew in.

  3

  Death and the Raven

  Aelis would later recall only impressions of the first moments of the attack. There had been the flash of something, like a curve of flame, like a sliver of a blood moon glinting from the dark. It was the sword, she realised later, the sword that belonged to that hideous thing. It had caught the fire of the buildings that were burning behind the church, the blade sparking to life in an instant before turning from the light and vanishing from the sight but not the mind.

  She had never seen a weapon that was curved like that. Its shape seemed like a symbol for murder, a shallow crescent of malice. And then that word that sounded like a talon tearing through the darkness.

  ‘Hrafn!’ It was the wolfman who spoke and though she did not understand what he meant it seemed to wake something in her, to bring images with it, smells and sounds. She saw a wide plain of the battle dead, saw ragged banners streaming in the breeze. The air was thick with what she at first thought was smoke but, when she identified the sound that accompanied it, she knew was not smoke. It was the buzzing of numberless flies. He was there on that plain, the wolf. She couldn’t see him but she could sense his presence, a hot snuffling and grunting thing creeping at the side of her eye that she could not turn to see with her full sight.

  She stood up, blinked and shook her head, forced reality to return. She put her hand to a pillar for support. The vision had been so sharp and had come on her so quickly that she feared she was going mad.

  The church was suddenly crazy with battle. Men hacked, kicked, bit and punched at each other in the dark. In the firelight she saw her brother, Eudes, his shield strapped on his back, slashing with his long and short swords into the enemy. The Danes had come, for sure.

  Axe heads glinted in the dark, faces loomed and fell, spears were thrust and hacked down, friend became indistinguishable from foe.

  The wolfman grabbed her by the arm and pushed her forward. ‘Walk towards the door,’ he said. ‘You will not fall.’

  ‘Aelis, Aelis!’ her brother was screaming but he couldn’t get to her, he was hemmed in by two opponents. The flickering light of the flames outside fought the darkness of the church; things flashed from the shadows, metal, wood, blade and spear tip, shields, faces, arms and feet. Three times men came at her, trying to grab her and pull her away, but three times the snarling shadows seemed to engulf them before they could touch her and they fell with terrible cries. She kept walking towards the door. Ten pillars from it, eight, now five, now two. She was nearly free. Then the arc of the crescent was sweeping down on her, the curve of flame that was that terrible sword.

  ‘Aelis, Aelis!’ Her brother’s face was contorted in anguish, as though melting in the heat of the burning buildings. Fire seared her skin; the taste of ashes and blood was in her mouth. The sword was a tongue of lightning stretching towards her. There was a blur of movement, a sound like a sack falling off a cart as the shadows reached out to smash the swordsman to the floor. Then she was running, bundled through the narrow streets by an unseen hand. She glanced behind her, tried to see who was driving her on. It was the wolfman. Even though she was running as fast as she could, he was just sidestepping down the alleyways, watching for pursuers as he drove her forward.

  ‘Hrafn!’ he screamed back towards the church, then he said something unintelligible, though she could tell it was in the Norse tongue. The words meant nothing to her but she caught their intent clearly. The wolfman was warning away his enemy, telling him that he would die.

  She stumbled but the wolfman held her up. Where was he taking her? The moon was a lantern, casting the streets in a bright and empty light but leaving deep shadows beneath the eaves of the
buildings.

  Then they were out into the square and she saw where they were going — down the alley to the Pilgrims’ Gate. There it was, but locked and guarded. Two men-at-arms came forwards with spears.

  ‘Lady, we are here for you.’

  The wolfman pulled her to a halt, ignoring the advancing warriors, still looking behind him.

  ‘Up into the house,’ he said. ‘Jump into the water and swim. He will not follow you that way. Fall prisoner to any but him. Do not let him see your face. Do not let him see your face!’

  ‘Who?’

  There were two soft thumps, followed by a sound like the fall of a thousand coins. Both the men-at-arms had collapsed, hauberks crashing to the cobbles. Black-plumed arrows had caught one in an eye, the other through the neck.

  ‘Go!’ The wolfman leaped to shield her. Another soft thump and a heavy exhalation. The wolfman had taken an arrow to the back. He still had the strength to push her towards a door. She pulled it then pushed it. It opened and she fell into a small house.

  Moonlight split the darkness inside and she saw the huddled faces of women and children looking at her in terror. She pushed through them to a ladder to the next floor. The room erupted in screams and clatter, as the crowd tried to avoid her, to get out, to do anything but sit in frozen fear. She went up one level, where sleeping mats were strewn around, and then to another above it, a lightless place. She felt around the walls, trying to locate a window. She bumped into something — a loom. It was a weaver’s house; there had to be a window for light to work by. She tripped and hit the floor heavily, stood up and pressed on, her hands frantic on the walls.

  Then she found it. Cloth had been nailed across the window in a poor attempt to keep out the cold. She tore it back and looked out. She was not on the river side but looking into the street. Something down there slipped from shadow to shadow. Was it the wolfman? There was movement beneath the arch of a doorway. Then it stopped. A figure walked forward from the direction of the great church. He went to the arch and knelt at the edge of the dark. She shivered to look at him. He was a lean dark man, his hair thick with tar so it stood up in a shock. Something had been put into it — feathers, black feathers standing up in a horrid crown. He was completely naked, his body smeared in white clay and ashes so it shone under the moonlight, pale as a corpse. In his hand he carried a bow and on his back was an empty quiver and that cruel curved sword she had seen in the church, now housed in a dull black scabbard. There was something wrong with his skin too, she realised. It had a rough quality to it. She squinted forward through the dark. It didn’t look like smallpox, but she was too far away to tell.