Brothers of the Wild North Sea

by Harper Fox

  Cai ran. Fen was on his heels, and Cai had a moment to reflect on the strangeness of that—as far as the poor Viking was concerned, this flight was in the wrong direction. But there he was, a shadow, then a force that took substance and shot right past him, far faster than Cai could hope to run, and so it was that Eyulf tumbled down into the most unlikely salvation of all—the arms of a Viking, who went down quite gracefully beneath his weight and rolled them both out of danger, shielding the howling lad’s body with his own from the last few plummeting rocks.

  Coming to a halt, Cai let the laughter building in him surface. The danger was over, and Eyulf clearly didn’t appreciate his rescuer—had recoiled from him as soon as Fen had let him go, and now they were both on their feet, was circling him, face contracted in the hideous scowl that meant Viking. Cai went and stopped the boy, brushing dust out of his robes. Eyulf stood on tiptoe in his agitation, attempting to reproduce Fen’s height and prowling walk, pointing frantically at him over Cai’s shoulder, as if Cai hadn’t noticed he was there.

  “I know,” Cai said. “It seems odd to me too. But he’s…” He paused, long enough to meet Fen’s eyes. “A good Viking. Sometimes.”

  “It was instinct,” Fen growled. “Next time I will let him fall. Cai, you idiot—we’ve missed our chance.”

  Cai whipped round. All his surviving brethren were standing in the sunlight, staring at him as if he and not Eyulf had just dropped down from the sky. Wilf the goatherd was in the front line. A handful of others were still emerging from the church, among them Oslaf, pale as death, supported between Gareth and Demetrios.

  Cai spread his hands. “What’s wrong?” Still Wilfrid just gawped. “Where is Aelfric? Has he got you all here to listen to more of his ranting? Gareth—that boy should be in bed. Who made you bring him down here?”

  “He wanted to come,” Wilf answered at last. “No one made us. The storm, Cai—we thought it had taken you. And Fenrir went after you—the only one who dared. We thought you were both lost to us. We came here to pray for your souls.”

  Cai pushed his fringe back. He couldn’t take this in. Not so many faces breaking into astonished grins, not for such a reason. “And… And Aelfric allowed you?”

  “No. But he couldn’t stop us. He can’t, can he…?” Wilf paused, as if realising this for the first time. “Not if it’s all of us.” He stepped forwards and suddenly enveloped Cai in a painful embrace, redolent of the barnyard and warm goat. “You came home.”

  The brethren crowded round him. Cai resisted for a moment, trying to step back, but then he saw that the circle of chattering, smiling men had absorbed Fen into its boundary too. Fen was wide-eyed, attempting to look haughty. Cai doubted he had ever been clapped on the back by a man half his size, or told—as old Martin was telling him, beaming at him toothlessly all the while—that he wasn’t so bad after all, for a murdering infidel pig. Brother Cedric, who had lain so deadly ill in the infirmary after the first raid, came jostling up to grab Cai in his arms, and the small, unruly sea began to bear him and Fen off.

  Cai extricated himself far enough to get to Oslaf. Gareth stepped aside for him, allowing him to give the stumbling boy his arm. “Oslaf. Forgive me for leaving you. Benedict—”

  “Don’t, Cai. I can’t hear his name.”

  “I should have stayed and looked after you.”

  Oslaf shook his head. His face was calm, but Cai had seen that deadly serenity before, in men tried beyond their strength, their passions poured out into a well that knew no filling. “He loved you,” Oslaf said. “I do too, and I prayed so hard for you to be safe. Nobody can look after me now, though. Do you understand?”

  Cai understood with painful clarity. To deny the boy’s despair would have been a further outrage, and he didn’t argue—just put an arm around his waist and led him on gently. “All right. Where is he?”

  “Aelfric wants him buried on the north side of the church. He hasn’t done it yet—Gareth and Wilf and Hengist have been watching over him.”

  “In the crypt?”

  “Yes. But I don’t know how long they can keep watching. They’re afraid.”

  Cai had heard of north-side burials. The need to place the dead in earliest morning sunlight to the east was older by far than Church doctrine, and doctrine rode easily on those beliefs to assign the north to winter, darkness, a fit place for suicides and lost souls. Theo had done his best to blow away the cobwebs of such superstition, but they clung, always the stronger in dark times. “The north side is sacred too. All earth is holy.”

  “But how will he know where to rise on the last day? And…he’ll be all alone.”

  “Oh, Oslaf.” Cai tightened his grip. “I don’t believe that’s how it works. We’ll have him buried with his brothers, though—I swear it. Where is Aelfric?”

  “I don’t know. He came down to the church—he didn’t want us all together like this, praying for you. But Wilf said we had to, and then one of his own men—Laban—came and joined us.”

  “Did he?” Glancing back, Cai saw a black-robed figure being borne along with the rest, looking mortally embarrassed but not displeased with himself. “We’re making strange friends, aren’t we?”

  “You made the strangest of all. And yet your Viking shamed us with his courage, and when he didn’t return, we grieved for him too. Look, Aelfric is there, down by the…” Oslaf stopped dead. He would have fallen without Cai’s embrace. His eyes opened wide. “Oh, God. No.”

  An odd group had gathered by the monastery gate. On one side of the drystone wall—nominal barrier between the sacred and profane worlds, easily scaled by the smallest errand boys but in general respected—Aelfric was standing, flanked by his clerics. They looked like four burned larch trees, black and bare of ornament, stiffly upright. On the gate’s far side, gaudy and chaotic by contrast, a stout old woman had planted herself, fists bunched tight on her hips. She was dressed in bright north-village weaves, holding a donkey on a long, frayed rein. At her shoulder, a young man in shepherd’s breeches and waistcoat was casting a shadow to match his formidable height. She was red in the face, expostulating loudly with Aelfric. As Cai watched, she unclenched one strong hand and poked a finger at his chest to emphasise her words.

  “Oslaf, what is it? Do you know them?”

  “Yes, but it must be a dream. My grandmother, Hilde. My brother Bertwald. What are they doing here? Oh, no. He’ll hurt them. He’ll—”

  Cai cut him off. “I know what they’re doing here. They made good time. And nobody else is going to get hurt.” He transferred Oslaf’s weight—not much, just grief-stripped bones and a cassock—to Fen, who was at his shoulder, waiting. Cai didn’t have to look. He knew the Viking would be there, would make the catch and follow him. Striding ahead of the group, he made his way across the tussocky ground. He felt as if native Saxon sunlight were springing back at him from the buttercups, dazzling flakes of release and relief in the yarrow. Aelfric had put out the lights in Oslaf’s life, and now his family had come, nature reasserting herself, rushing to fill the gap. “Aelfric!”

  The abbot turned. He caught his heel on the hem of his robe and almost fell over, arms flailing to save himself. Something had changed, shifted—not one of the obsequious Canterbury clerics put out a hand. “You,” he snarled, when he’d regained his balance. “I might have known. Not even the ocean could swallow your disobedience and pride.”

  “That’s right,” Cai called cheerfully into the breeze. “She spat me out, and here I am. Welcome, hlæfdige. You must have travelled all night.”

  The old lady stopped in her diatribe at hearing a word of respect in her own language. Aelfric looked from her to Cai. “You know this woman?”

  “No, but I invited her here. She’s come to take Oslaf home.”

  “So she says. I tell her—and you listen too, you serpent, striking at the faith that has fed you and sheltered you here—no man leaves. Tu es sacerdos—”

  “Sacerdos in aeternum!” the old woman snapped, to
Cai’s surprise. She didn’t look as if her grasp of Latin was broad, but Cai guessed she might have heard the phrase a few times since beginning her confrontation with Aelfric. “A priest forever!”

  “Yes. The truth of it penetrates even to these vulgar ears. Those vows once taken, no man’s soul escapes the service of God. No matter where his body lies—and I forbid any member of this community to take one step beyond its boundaries—his spirit belongs to the priesthood.” He threw out one hand in a gesture of banishment. “Be off. The boy belongs to me.”

  “Sacerdos in aeternum…” Now that Hilde had a good hold on the words, she rolled them round with a kind of disgusted relish in her mouth. “He wasn’t anybody’s sacerdos when his mother squeezed him out of her belly and into my hands, wet and red and raw.” Aelfric blanched, but she ploughed on. “And in my hands he’d have stayed, if the wench hadn’t kittened off three more and died and left them to starve. I sent him here to get learning and his dinners. Why does a child bring me a message to fetch him home, if I care for his life? Where is my boy?”

  Bertwald the shepherd suddenly came to life. He seized Hilde’s shoulder. “Grandmother. Oslaf is there!”

  Shielding her eyes, Hilde searched the group of men on the hillside. She emitted a shriek. “That skeleton? No!” She tried to seize the gate out of Aelfric’s hand, and when that failed, dodged aside and started scrambling over the wall. Bertwald gave her an assisting shove from behind, and Cai, seeing that nothing would prevent her from barrelling down the other side, darted to catch her. Bertwald followed her, and the two ran off upslope.

  Cai was left standing with Aelfric. Alone? No, not quite, although the abbot seemed suddenly deserted, 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 t
heir 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.”

  Chapter Ten

  Full moon, midsummer—the Feast of St. John, and a sweet, sultry darkness had come down at last. The sea stirred restively, little white horses whispering to painless destruction on the warm sands. Bronze wands of hypericum nodded in shifts of night air too lazy to be called a breeze, the tiny glands in their leaves glistening with oil. Great trumpets of bindweed gaped their silent music, and silvery seedpods of honesty, their skins already shrivelled after a fortnight of heat, gave the moon back her light. In the spectral, shifting radiance, the so-called abbot of Fara crouched by a stream, washing streaks of afterbirth from his hands.

  A lantern appeared briefly in a gap between the dunes. Brother Hengist’s broad face shone beneath it, grinning. On his hip he bore the grain sack for the night’s baking, ten good loaves that would rise in the dark hours and be thrust, as if into the fires of dawn, into the monastery oven at first light. “Is all well, Abbot Cai?”

  Cai plucked a water-lily root from the streambed and lobbed it at him accurately, muddy end first. “Yes, all’s well. Once there was one ox and now there are three.”

  “Nature is bountiful. Good night, Abbot Cai.”

  Another lily root, this time bouncing harmlessly off the baker’s broad rump. Alone, Cai finished washing his hands, then splashed water into his face for good measure. “Abbot?” he said to the moon, who seemed to be expecting conversation, her weary face attentive. “I’m not sure an abbot has to doctor beasts as well as men. Or spend his day up to the hips in mud before that, helping dig ditches and drains.”

  “But you looked so fetching while you were about it.”