Avalon (22 page)

"True repentance, do you think — my Lord Bishop?" asked Merwinna softly.

"I believe so, Reverend Mother. And even that pimply, perverted son of his, Cild Aelfric, prayed and sighed during the Mass."

"Did the little King not go to Shaftesbury to honor his poor brother?"

The Bishop shook his head. "Ethelred is suffering from a flux, so they said, and was too much weakened for the journey. I think myself he suffers only from fears."

Merewyn, forgetting the decorum her aunt had taught her, burst out, "And Lady Alfrida? The Queen Mother — did she go?"

"Child!" said the Abbess, frowning, but the Bishop was not annoyed. "She did not follow the procession to Shaftesbury," he answered the girl, who had subsided in embarrassment. "She

tried to, but here again God gave a plain sign of her guilt. I did not see this myself, of course, but one of my monks told me of it. When the Queen mounted at Winchester Palace bound to join Edward's funeral cortege, her own palfrey, shivering as though in terror, braced its forelegs and would not budge, though the grooms whipped it and hauled on the bridle. I believe they tried another horse, which also refused to carry the Queen. Then she tried to set off on foot in the direction of her sainted victim, and swooned away at the West Gate. Upon my return to Winchester I found the whole town buzzing, and was told that the Lady herself was secluded in her Bower."

His listeners were silent. Not one of them doubted the tale. Merewyn's heart swelled with wonder — and with triumph too, at the thought of Alfrida's humiliation.

"I thought," said the Abbess, "that when she broke — or repudiated — her betrothal to Lord Rumon," she sent a glance toward her niece who winced, "she and the Earl of Mercia would be wed."

"Ah —" said the Bishop with a dry Httle laugh. "Lord Alf-here is in no condition of mind or body to wed. He has not even seen her since our return from Shaftesbury. And she, concerned at last for her own salvation — if indeed any be possible — is desperately planning to found nunneries. 'One perhaps at Amesbury, another certainly at Wherwell. They'll start building at Wherwell this summer."

The Abbess Merwinna stiffened. "Wherwell!" she cried. Her eyes flashed. "The village above here on our river Test?"

"Yes," said the Bishop, as startled as Merewyn was by the little Abbess's vehemence. "She owns property there and 'tis near where her first husband was — was slain by Edgar."

"Blessed Jesu —" whispered the Abbess. "Must that slut —" She paused mastering herself. "Must the Queen," she went on, "choose a place for the expiation of her crimes which will sully our river with all the ordure from her convent?"

"Oh," said the Bishop, distressed, "I see why you are upset,

my lady Abbess, but you exaggerate the danger. Water purifies itself every — I forget how many yards — but certainly in a mile, of which there are several between here and Wherwell."

Merwinna bowed her head. "Forgive me," she said. "I am very foolish, my lord. It is because nothing earthly concerns me as does the welfare of Romsey. I'll do penance for my outburst."

"You need not, Reverend Mother," said Ethelwold, his withered lips smiling. "I absolve you. It is your anxious care for Romsey which makes it the jewel of nunneries in my diocese — nay, I might venture to say in all England."

Color ran through the Abbess's sallow cheeks. She rose slowly and knelt to kiss the Bishop's ring again.

Merewyn thought of this scene as she sat beside Elfled on the well curb, basking in the hazy sunlit peace. It was so warm as to be sultry, yet there were hints of autumn in the air. A bonfire and the smell of apples from the Abbey orchard; the pungency of thyme, sage, rosemary from the herb garden where the Infirmaress grew her medications.. Roses too added their scent, those wonderful roses from countries far overseas — like Rumon's mysterious Provence, or so Bishop Ethelwold had told them, when he presented cuttings to Romsey. Besides these scents, which Merewyn's keen nose enjoyed, she detected a whiff of incense which still floated through the church's narrow windows — a reminder of High Mass this morning.

Merewyn watched a butterfly drift towards the shining pewter ribbon of the Test. Then she looked at the Abbey church and thought, as she often had, that it was like a huge gray mother cat, keeping a protective watch over all the little thatched convent buildings which surrounded it.

The church was venerable, and considered to be magnificent, with its long nave, its rounded apse, its chapels — all cunningly fashioned of alternating long and short stones, until the walls reached the lofty timbered roof. Few English churches were made of stone. This one had been built seventy years ago by

King Edward, the son of Alfred, for his holy daughter, St. Ethel-fleda, whose gilt and silver shrine was one of the wonders of Romsey. Though now, thanks to Bishop Ethelwold's generosity, Romsey contained a relic of such awe-inspiring sanctity that pilgrims came almost daily to worship it.

This was a lock of the Blessed Virgin's hair. Several strands of the sacred hair had been sent as a gift by Pope Benedict VII to Dunstan in Canterbury. Dunstan then shared a portion with Ethelwold for a shrine at Winchester, and the Bishop in turn conveyed three of the precious hairs to Romsey which was dedicated to God's Mother. Merwinna thus was able to install on the High Altar, below the elaborately carved stone Crucifixion, a relic more impressive than any of the saints' bones, or even splinters of the True Cross which other churches boasted. The Abbess had the hair enclosed in a golden box, studded with crystals and moonstones, and often did she admonish herself, and all her nuns against the grievous sin of pride.

The great iron bell began tolling for Vespers, and Elfled, carefully folding her embroidery and tucking it in her pocket, said, "You coming, Merewyn?"

Merewyn hesitated. As soon as she entered the novitiate, she would be obliged to attend every service from Matins to Compline, and gladly would she do so, of course, but this afternoon she felt too lazy for the unrequired discipline of joining the nuns and novices in plain song, and she shook her head. "I'm going to see if I can wheedle a peach from the farmer's wife."

"Oh, Mere-uyn!" Elfled was half amused, half reproachful. "Sometimes I think gluttony is your besetting sin!"

"Well —" said Merewyn laughing, "I've had Uttle chance to try the other six deadly ones, and you wouldn't have me go to Confession with nothing to say, would you?"

"Shame!" Elfled primmed her mouth, but her eyes r^vinkled. She was fond of Merewyn though the girl sometimes shocked her.

Elfled walked off to join the procession of black and gray-

robed figures who were filing into the church. Merewyn sHd off the well curb, and leaving the convent garden — or "Paradise" as they called it — began to climb a stile over the hedgerow which separated the Abbey precincts from the Abbey Manor farmlands. She turned as she heard her name, and saw Sister Herluva, the Infirmaress, standing in the cloister garth and making urgent gestures.

Merewyn ran back towards the nun. "What it is, Sister?"

"Our Reverend Mother," said Herluva panting — she was portly and she had sought Merewyn all over the convent — "Our Reverend Mother has had a fainting spell. I've given her foxglove tincture, and it has helped," added the Infirmaress, who was a renowned herbalist and skilled nurse. "I've put her to bed, and she asks for you. She summons you to her lodgings at once."

Merewyn nodded, and sped past the Infirmaress. As she ran she felt foreboding, which she at once denied. Aunt Merwinna had had fainting spells before, usually at the end of Lent, when her habit hung like a sack over her spare body. The Abbess asked no self-denial of her nuns which she did not doubly inflict on herself. But this was not Lent, it was a High Feast Day. It's the sultry weather, thought Merewyn, explaining her apprehension. Thunder in the air.

The portress peered through the grille in the entrance door of the Abbess's lodgings, and greeted Merewyn with a worried nod. "Something's amiss," she said, while her huge iron key grated in the lock. "Not an hour ago, I let in a man in a mailed sark, and helmet, his face covered wi' a metal nose mask."

"Why did you let him in?"

"He'd a paper wi' writing on it for Reverend Mother, and she told me to let him in. Then she had her fainting spell, and one o' the servants got Sister Herluva."

"Is the man still in there?"

The portress shrugged. "He's not come out."

Merewyn, puzzled but scarcely disturbed — the Abbess received many visitors of all kinds — walked through the parlor

and knocked at the door of the inner cell. The Abbess was lying on her wooden cot, propped high by pillows filled with wood shavings. Each fold of her black habit was in place, her wimple and veil framed her pale face with their usual precision. Her eyes were very grave. "Come in, child," she said.

"Are you all right?" cried the girl, running to the cot, and taking Merwinna's hand.

"Quite recovered," said the Abbess, scornful of her own weakness. "But I want you to hear of a matter so shocking — and so preposterous — that I can hardly credit it. Gunnar!" she added, raising her voice.

Merewyn looked around in astonishment. Homespun curtains screened off the Abbess's private chapel from the cell. Through the curtains, Gunnar, Thored's son, appeared. Merewyn gaped at him.

She had always seen the young Danish thane dressed as a courtier, in mantles and tunics and cross-gartered stockings scarcely less splendid than his erstwhile master's — King Edward and Martyr. Today Gunnar wore a coat of chain mail, a conical brass helmet with a hinged brass fighting mask pushed up. There were leather greaves on his shins, an immense scabbard hung from his belt, and a round wood and bronze shield painted with a black raven was fastened to his left forearm. He had grown a brown beard, which aged him. Strangest of all was the expression of his hazel eyes which had always gazed at her with hurt devotion — even two years ago when she had finally and impatiently refused the marriage proposals he proffered through Merewyn's guardian — the Abbess.

There was no devotion now in Gunnar's eyes. They were cold, unswerving, and topped by a scowl. "It is," he said to Merewyn, "for the reason that I once luffed you that I come here today. "Also," he added with a grating laugh, "for the reason that I vas once — a Christian."

Merewyn gasped. The Abbess made a sound and clasped

her hands over her crucifix, but she spoke quietly. "You are no longer a Christian, Gunnar?"

"Vy should I be?" he cried. "My King, for whom I vould haf died, vas a Christian, did this help him? Those who killed him are Christians. Should I be one vith them? My father, Thored, my mother, Hilde, they are Christians — so meek — so mild — that do you know vat they are doing!" He lifted his bearded chin, and spat on the floor of the chapel.

"What are they doing?" said the Abbess in the same controlled tone.

"Elgifu!" shouted Gunnar. "My sister! Who vas to marry Edvard, who luffed her! They are giving her to Ethelred. To Ethelred, for whom Edvard vas murdered, they make her ved that pretty little milksop — that coward — and for vy? So that my father, Thored, gets his earldom in the North, so that my mother may be mother to a Queen of England. England stinks of treachery and Christians. So I am no longer English, and I am no longer Christian!"

"And if you are not," said the Abbess, her eyes fixed on the angry young face, "what are you, Gunnar?"

"I am a Norseman," he said, proudly touching the raven on his shield. "I am the loyal servant of Thor and Odin. England shall soon see which gods are most powerful. You shall see it here, tonight — or at dawn perhaps."

There was a silence. Merewyn, uncomprehending, saw her aunt's face quiver, and take on new pallor. The girl turned on Gunnar furiously. "What nonsense is this!" she cried. "No wonder I wouldn't marry you. Always I felt the taint of your Danish blood, always I must have guessed how shallow was your faith. And now you come here dressed — dressed up as some sort of warrior — to frighten women. To threaten them!"

"No, Merewyn," said the Abbess. "Gunnar came to warn us."

"Ja!" he agreed violently. "And if they knew 1 vas so soft they'd split my brainpan vith a battle axe!"

"Who would?" whispered the girl.

"The Jomsburg Vikings," said Gunnar with relish. "And I haf joined them at Southampton."

"Southampton?" repeated Merewyn blankly. Southampton was the harbor down the Test, less than eight miles from Rom-sey.

"Vikings in Southampton?" she said. "What are they doing there? Why, I've not heard of any in all my lifetime. The raid on Padstow which killed my father was twenty-one years ago."

"True," said Gunnar, shrugging. "For all those years England vas strong. Now she is not. And our young chief Sweyn is shrewd. He is the son of the Danish King Harald Bluetooth — who is now my King. Sweyn too vas baptized once. He like me is disgusted vit a religion fit only for silly vomen and puling monks. He worships Thor, the Thunderer — as I do," said Gunnar, making the hammer sign of Thor.

Merewyn shrank, her heart thumping. It still seemed unreal, ludicrous that this arrogant Viking could be the dull courteous Gunnar whom she had so disdained. Nor had she quite grasped the meaning of what he was saying.

The Abbess, however, had, and she no longer felt the first shock of Gunnar's revelations which had caused her to swoon. She saw that the young man was growing restless, that the impulse which had brought him here was waning. She forced herself to smile at him, for she needed more knowledge of the danger.

"Gunnar," she said, "where did these — Vikings — come from on Friday? You told me they landed Friday?"

"They sailed from Normandy," he answered after a moment. "The Norsemen rule Normandy. They are our cousins."

"How many are at Southampton?"

"Seven shiploads. Four hundred and twenty men."

"And what do they want?"

"Plunder — slaves, gold and vomen — the destruction of the false god's temples. Last night they burned the little monastery of St. Michael — they killed the priests and monks, but got little plunder. Sweyn has heard of Romsey, how rich you are, your gold shrines and relics, your silver plate, and he knows that some of the nuns vill be young enough to appease the lust long voyages have incited in his men. So he vill come here."