by Iris Anthony
He looked first at the mantle and then at me.
“I wish I could do as you would like, but I cannot.”
Finally, he nodded. Accepting the mantle, he leaned back against the face of the cliff, pulling me close and tucking my head beneath his chin.
I turned and curled into his side, and there we slept until morning.
***
“Saxon! Where are you?”
The words startled us out of our reverie. The rain had been so plentiful, a veritable stream had formed, and now it fell in a chute from the cliff.
Godric lifted his chin from my head. “They cannot see us through the water. We could stay here.”
We saw the monk stop in front of our shelter. He cupped a hand to his mouth and called out again.
Godric pressed my head to his chest as if to hide me from the world beyond the cave. “Say nothing.”
“But I must go.” Though I wanted nothing more than to stay within the circle of his arms, I could not renounce my journey to Saint Catherine.
His arm tightened about me for a moment, but then he sighed and released me from his embrace.
As he stood, I clutched at his fallen side of the mantle and wrapped his warmth about me. Rising, I went to stand beside him.
He held out his hand to me. “If you are sure…”
I was.
Together we slid past the cascade and stepped away from it.
The monk blanched at our appearance as if we might have been some apparition. Godric pushed past him, and we met up with the others.
Not long after we started out that evening, we rode into snow. At first, after the stinging, pelting drops of rain, it seemed a wondrous thing. It sifted down around us like the smallest of feathers, reminding me of the great bed I had left behind at home. I had not been out in snow before. My mother had feared I would do myself harm; she had lived with the constant worry I would damage myself more than I already was.
Though it was dark, we rode through a world become softer and brighter. But then the snows began to come down faster and thicker, and the wind changed, throwing it into our faces. It piled up on my lashes and my nose. The flakes that had seemed so light now collected on the shoulders of my mantle and at my knees.
I pulled my mantle up around my neck and buried my chin in its depths. The path, which had unfurled so plainly in front of us, became cloaked in drifts. It was then I understood snow’s menace. Whiteness was no blessing. Its brightness was a curse. It covered hummock and hollow with perfect equanimity, pulling up the depressions and pushing down the peaks. It was then I understood how great was our peril.
***
We battled snow all the night long. At length, it began to lessen, but by then the horses had wearied from the work of walking.
It was cold. A cold such as I had never felt before. One that sank through my skin and into my bones. The world shrank until it was smaller even than my mother’s bed in Autun. It existed between the top of my mantle, into which I had sunk my chin, and the tips of my shoes. And it survived within the space of my heart’s beat, the one place in which I still retained a degree of wavering warmth.
Godric pulled me closer against his chest. “You could still escape. I would help you.”
“You would come with me?”
It might have been several minutes before he answered me, or it might have been an hour. Time had ceased to have any meaning.
“I cannot.”
My thoughts had slowed. It took great effort for them to congeal and then to transfer them to my tongue. But it did not matter. There was day and there was night. Light and dark. And constantly, there was white, unrelenting snow. “Where would I go?” Where in this snow-swept, whitewashed world could I flee?
“Home.”
“I have no home.” As I pondered the idea of being from nowhere at all, the Danes pulled off into the shelter of a group of trees with long, swooping, low-hanging branches.
We dismounted and followed after them, ducking beneath the limbs, letting them sweep the snow from our backs as we went. But though we had stopped, it was not restful. We huddled together for warmth and watched the snow blow by. I was almost thankful for the wound the Dane had given me. Bound as it was in a cloth, at least that hand was warm.
“You truly have no home?” Godric continued the conversation as if we had never stopped talking. The Danes did not care anymore if we spoke. And I did not care if they heard us speak of escape. It could not matter. Our footsteps were obliterated, torn from our feet almost before we had finished making them. There was no path for us to take. No road by which to make an escape.
“I have nothing. Just the hope that I can reach the abbey.” Even if the Danes took the relic, if I stayed with them, perhaps they would let me touch it. What would they lose by doing so? And if Saint Catherine did heal me, would I not be more valuable to them whole? “I wish to be healed.”
“And what if you are not? What will you do then?”
I did not know. I had not thought on it. “I will go where the Danes take me.”
“And what if you are healed?”
If I were healed, then I would be healed. But still I would have no place to go and nothing to return to. “I do not know.”
“I will help you.” His words were as futile as the driving snow. He would help me. It was a useless offer, for what good, in a world gone white and fraught with Danes, would his help do me now?
***
What miserable days we endured to reach the abbey. The mountains became steeper, the valleys deeper, and the summits higher. In our travels by night, the moon’s light turned the snows into a pale, shimmering blue. The night before we gained the abbey, our journey ended beside a massive fall of snow that had tumbled from the heights down into the narrow, steep-sided valley we were traversing. Our road clung fast to the side of the mountain, and so the fall had blocked our way.
One of the Danes started up and over the slide, but the snow began to give way beneath him, and he barely avoided being swept down with it into the abyss. Beyond the slide, we could see the road continue on. The distance to it was not very great, but with the slide intervening, it was lost to us.
The chieftain strode to the edge of the road and peered down into the ravine. Another Dane stood, hand on his sword, looking up behind us where some snow still overhung the cliff. They began to dispute, the one pointing to the slide, the other pointing up at the cliff.
The monk sat his horse, listening, while the canon gazed at the road beyond the snow. “If there were another way to reach the abbey, they would not have built the road here.” He spoke the words to no one but himself.
The chieftain left off arguing and pulled his spear from his saddle.
From behind me, Godric pulled his own knife from its sheaf with a jerk.
The monk raised his hand. “He will let the gods decide what we should do.”
The canon spurred his horse forward, crying out, “Saint Catherine has already decided. We will not be permitted to take her. She wishes to stay where she is.”
My heart leapt within me, but then my hope died as I realized, if the Danes could not reach her, then neither could I.
The chieftain, ignoring the canon’s cry, let fly his spear. It flew through the night, tip flashing. It must have found a rock beneath the snow, for it pitched backward before it came to rest. The Danes dismounted and followed their chief through the snow to find it. By the time Godric and I reached them, they were gesturing at it. Though the shaft of the spear was pointing toward the cliff, its tip was bent toward the snow slide.
The chieftain gestured at the slide.
The other Dane pointed up at the heights.
Gathering together at the edge of the ravine, the Danes conferred with many words until the chieftain finally broke his spear in two and then tossed it over the edge.
&nb
sp; Godric raised his voice so it would reach the monk. “What do they decide?”
“They will try to cross here.”
“Through the slide?”
“They will leave the horses, and we will go on by foot.”
“This is madness!” The canon broke in to their conversation.
The chieftain strode up to the monk and seemed to make a demand.
The monk turned to the canon. “He asks, ‘What does your god say?’”
“It’s clear what God says. He tells us to go back. We cannot have the relic.”
The monk translated. The chieftain spit an answer back at him.
“Then your God does not know Rollo, and Rollo wants the relic.”
Before any more could be said, the youngest Dane, the one who had accosted me, started off into the snow slide.
The chieftain let loose a shout, but he continued on.
After several steps more, he turned around with a grin and a wave, and then he started off again. But as he continued, a great crack ran through the slide, and the snow began to crumble before starting a slow drift toward the abyss. He threw his arms out, trying to balance, but he could not keep his feet. As the snow plummeted toward the ravine, he rolled onto his side. Stretching his arms out to us, he shouted something.
The chieftain ran toward him, but there was no way to arrest his fall, and he went over the edge in a flurry of snow.
The chieftain stared into the abyss for a long while, and then he turned and made some pronouncement, which caused all the Danes to turn and look at me.
I shrank against Godric as he threw an arm about me and tried to turn his horse. But the chieftain strode toward us and grabbed me by the arm, dragging me from the horse. Then he shoved me toward the slide.
“I do not—”
He did not seem to care what I did not want to do. Pushing at my shoulder, he kept edging me toward that great pile of fallen snow.
“I cannot—”
When I tried to stop, he drew his knife and pressed the tip to my cheek.
“Don’t—please don’t!”
Godric had run up behind him and was reaching for him, but somehow the chieftain seemed to know it. He grabbed me by the hair before turning and slashing at Godric with the knife.
“I will do it. I will go!”
The chieftain released me as he grabbed Godric around the neck with his arm.
I walked out onto the snow slide.
“Anna, don’t do it!”
Turning my back on them both, I placed my attention on what lay ahead. The new slide had not cleared all the snow from the road. The top had simply fallen away to reveal a lower layer. Unlike the snow we had been traveling through, this layer was topped by a glaze of ice. With each step, my feet broke through the crust. The farther I walked, the deeper the snow became.
From the slope high above me, a trickle of snow began to fall from the overhang, gathering in both volume and fury as it came. I retreated to let it pass, praying it would not take me with it. As it swept by with a rumble, it ruffled my hair and assaulted my ears.
A cry from behind made me turn.
The Dane had forced Godric to his knees and was holding the knife to his neck.
Trembling, I started forward once more. The slide had filled my footsteps and added depth to the snow. As I advanced this time, plunging my feet into the slide and then pulling them out, the snow reached well above my gartered stockings, halfway up my thighs. Soon I was panting from the effort. But as I took another step, the snow separated beneath me in a great spreading crack.
I stopped, closing my eyes in anticipation of death.
But it did not come.
Opening my eyes, I saw the crack had gone around me through the snow, and as I watched, that portion slipped away toward the ravine. As it fell, I moved as fast as I could and eventually gained the other side.
My triumph was short-lived.
It was not Godric who followed in my footsteps. The Danes sent the clerics across first, on foot. And then, after leaving their horses, they took up their weapons and crossed as well. Several times, more pieces of the slide broke off and cascaded into the abyss. Finally only Godric and the Dane who had claimed me for his own were left.
As Godric bent to shoulder his pack, the Dane kicked him in the stomach and then kicked him again as he fell to the ground. As the heathen ran through the slide, just short of the middle, the rest of the overhanging snow on the cliff above him broke off in a thundering cloud and slid down the hill, taking him with it. His screams echoed through the night.
As the snowy mist roiled and then blew away, I saw the form of Godric in the moon’s light as he advanced through the remains of the slide. As he reached us, I caught up his hand in my own, and I did not let it go.
***
It took me hours to stop shaking. When my trembling would not cease, Godric pulled me close and shared his mantle with me. We walked on for some time together, ragged of breath, struggling to keep to the path.
I concentrated simply on putting one foot in front of the other, stepping neither to the right nor to the left, trying to keep free from the encumbrance of the drifts. We walked and walked, and it seemed we hardly went anywhere at all.
The world was white and only kept getting whiter.
Eventually, when the road turned, we found shelter from the wind and the snow. Though we stopped there, we did not sleep; it was too cold for sleep. But we rested. And there, I listened to a conversation between the Danes and the clerics.
“They say the best is to attack with no warning. Then they will have no time to prepare.”
The canon was scowling. “Tell them this is an abbey. They are nuns and—and laypeople. They must be given the chance to give us the relic of their own volition.”
“This is not the way they prefer to conduct their raids.”
“But this is not a raid! And we will ask for the relic, we will not just take it.”
The monk translated and then listened as the chieftain spoke. “You may ask if you like, but he will still plan on taking it.”
“That’s not the way it’s done!”
“Not your way, perhaps, he says, but this is his way.”
“He must at least give me a chance to warn them!”
As dawn came, the snow stopped, and the winds slowed. We could hear quite clearly now the ringing of church bells. And as the sun crept over the mountains, down at the bottom of the hill, we could see the abbey’s snowcapped palisade, a church’s spire rising from within it.
At a nod from the chieftain, the canon started down the snow-swept road.
And so, we sat there in our shelter, and we waited.
CHAPTER 24
Gisele
ROUEN
“You might have left the chest there, my lady.” I was finishing my supper as Hugh’s voice broke into my thoughts.
I looked over to find him at the window.
“I did not wish to betray your secret entrance.” My knife trembled as I applied more butter to my bread. I had not been expecting him. I had been expecting no one at all.
“Why don’t you eat with the rest of them?”
“Do you want to come down from there?”
“Are you asking me in?”
I was, in fact, though I did not wish to admit it. In my solitude, I had found myself poor company. “I fear if you sit there much longer, you might topple from your perch.”
He made a show of pushing away from the window and sailed through the air, arms stretched above his head. He landed with a grand flourish like some tumbler. Then he came over and stood, staring at me as I ate, as if he were some poorly fed hound.
“You aren’t going to eat it all, my lady?”
“I was planning to.” But I could hardly bear his sorry face. “You can have the bread
if you wish.”
He reached out and took it from me before I could give it to him, and then leaned over to inspect the rest of my plate. “That meat looks rather spoiled.”
“I suppose you wish to test it for me.” I pushed it toward him with the tip of my knife.
He shoved it into his mouth and chewed. Then he shook head quite violently. “It’s no good. You won’t want it.”
“I am grateful for your concern.”
Once done with eating, he took a tour of the room, standing at length in front of an embroidered panel I’d had hung from the wall. Turning his head this way and that, he studied it. “What is it?”
“Charles the Great.”
“What’s he doing?”
“Converting the heathens.”
“What for?”
“Because they’re heathens. They have no faith.”
He frowned. “They don’t seem very happy about it.”
“It was either that or be executed. But now they all have eternal salvation.”
He turned toward me. “They say the Dane you’re to marry is going to convert.”
“How did you hear about that?”
“Everyone knows about it. So what will you do?”
I blinked. “About what?”
“I mean…where will you go? What will you do after? Once you’re married?”
“I suppose…I suppose I will do what I do now. Only I shall do it elsewhere.” I had not thought on it before.
“You do not seem very happy about it.”
“How would you like to be married to a pagan?”
He stooped to poke around at the ashes in the middle of the room where a fire should have been. “But he won’t be a pagan when you marry him. He’ll be a Christian.”
“I rather suspect he’ll be a Christian pagan.” I could not imagine him kissing the archbishop’s ring or kneeling in front of the altar of a church. I could not envision him humbling himself before anyone.
“Or maybe he’ll be a pagan Christian.”
“There is no such thing as a pagan Christian. One either is or is not.”
“But you just said he’ll be a Christian pagan.”
