Brothers of the Wild North Sea (9 page)

Cai looked down at his own, clamped tight around the weapon. His faith was in tatters. Was this what old Danan had meant? “Yes, my lord abbot,” he said clearly. “I believe that they certainly are.”

Cai waited for punishment to fall on him—or, worse, upon one of the brave souls who still joined him each day to learn to fight. Aelfric hadn’t forbidden it. He was allowing the rebuilding of the church in timber, wattle and daub, and Theo’s bones lay undisturbed beneath it. Still, he spent most of his days in whispered consultation with one or other of his retinue, and Cai had little doubt that whatever balance of power his own efforts had disturbed, soon the scales would swing back with a vengeance.

He wasn’t given time to find out. And Aelfric’s plans, whatever they had been, died in the bud. On a full-moon night barely two weeks after the abbot’s arrival, the raiders came again.

This time they met with a frightened, ferocious resistance. The men sleeping in their makeshift dormitory started awake at the frantic ringing of the bell. Aelfric had allowed a night watch too, and the appropriation of the bell Hengist used in the kitchen to summon Eyulf to scrub turnips.

Cai stood up in the middle of the bunks, gesturing for silence and calm. “We knew this would come,” he said softly. “My men, you know what to do. The rest of you—find Aelfric and go with him to the crypt.”

Cai had never meant to divide them. He took no joy in military prestige, but he saw the difference in demeanour between those who had become
Cai’s men
and those who would go to huddle with Aelfric in the crypt. His father would have enjoyed it—the nervous, proud vigour of the soldiers as they tucked up their cassocks into their belts and headed for the armoury, even the most graceless of them made noble by purpose. Cai followed them out. He found poor Eyulf blubbering in a stack of sheepskins in his favourite storage barn, unearthed him and sent him running with the others for shelter. Then he too armed himself and strode out onto the cliffs.

The longship had ridden in fast on the wind. Hefting his sword, Cai took deep breaths of salt air. By cloudy, scudding moonlight, he saw Benedict at the top of the path, the narrow gully through which the invaders must come. Ben had kept his longstaff in preference to a sword, and was crouched like an avenging troll in readiness, Wilfrid opposite to him. For Ben’s sake, Cai had tried to assign Oslaf a safer place away from the front line, but Oslaf, bewildered by Ben’s new coldness, had refused to let him far out of his sight, and was stationed on the clifftop. He looked up at Cai’s approach. “I can’t see them yet, Caius.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll be here.”

“Perhaps they sailed by after all.”

“No. I saw from the infirmary—the longship is drawn up right under the cliffs. Be at the ready.”

Oslaf nodded staunchly, and Cai felt sudden pity for him. “Listen. Aelfric’s given Benedict one of his hellfire-and-damnation talks.”

“About… About me?”

“That’s right. Ben’s trying to look after you by backing off, that’s all. So be a good lad and play the game. You understand?”

Oslaf looked up at him, anger and relief in his eyes. “Thank you. Oh, I wish Theo was still here.”

“So do I, believe me. So do I.”

There wasn’t time for more. The air beyond the cliff’s edge glowed bronze and resounded with shouts. Confused movement filled the gully, and Ben leapt off the rock where he’d been perched, straight into the path of the oncoming raiders.

“No!” Cai yelled. He’d told Ben to wait, wait till he’d picked out the leader and could drop on him from behind, get that stick across his throat. By red Viking torchlight he saw Ben tackle the first huge pirate head-on, as if all he wanted was to kill someone or die trying. Oslaf, instead of holding position to defend the main buildings with Cai, dashed straight into the fray, howling his lover’s name like a battle-cry—and Cai, before he could think or reflect, found himself tearing off in Oslaf’s wake.

Cai’s strategy went to the devil. He should have known. He could wield a sword, more or less, and show others how to do it, but he had no more idea than his father of how to coordinate men. He’d been their doctor, their friend, not their leader. He crashed to a halt face-to-face with a young man whose surpassing beauty was visible even behind the nose guard of his iron helmet. The noble face registered—what—surprise? A strange recognition? Red-bronze hair streamed in the wind. Golden wolf’s eyes flickered wide. The moment passed. A lean arm arced up, sword blade flashing, and he and Cai were nothing but beast meeting beast, both rigid with the will to stay alive. The Viking failed to lift his shield. Cai drove forwards into the gap, the burnished flesh for an instant revealed between a leather jerkin and a belt. His sword tip sank deep. He hauled back, ready for his next man—God, another beauty, so like the first they had to be brothers. This time his arm was knocked aside by a vast, roaring mountain of muscle and hide, the leader, who’d emerged from his tussle with Ben in a bloodstained fury.

A pitched fight broke out on the cliffs. Men who’d been ordered to stand guard at the infirmary, storehouses and crypt came racing down, yelling like the blue-painted savages Broc’s Roman ancestors had driven from the hills, and joined hand-to-hand in the fray. They were beyond Cai’s control, wild with anguished recall of the last raid—of how it had felt to be sheep in the path of these wolves. Most had never lifted a weapon in anger in their lives. They hacked and jabbed indiscriminately, their training thrown to the winds. Cai yelled out orders unheard. The Vikings would slaughter them wholesale, surely. He was too occupied with his own battle to look, to try to save them.

His sword descended through air. Thrown off balance, he staggered. His man—a snarling weasel who’d been doing his best to disembowel him with an axe—was gone. All along the clifftop was unfolding a sight he could never have dreamed of. He sat down hard on the turf, hand going slack round the hilt of his sword. The Vikings were running away.

He leaned back, laughter shaking him. They wouldn’t have expected resistance at all, let alone a suicide-dash by madmen. No strategy Cai could have planned for them would have worked so well. He didn’t understand the cry going up among the last of the raiders rushing back down the cliff path, but he could guess.
Retreat! Retreat!

A warm weight hit his shoulder, and he almost turned and ran Brother Oslaf through on raw-nerved reflex. Oslaf skidded to his knees, throwing his arms around Cai. “We did it! They’re going!”

“All right. No need to strangle me.”

“I killed one myself. I lifted my shield, and I lowered it, and…” Oslaf demonstrated, Cai wriggling out of the way. Then Oslaf’s eyes went wide and dark. “I… Oh, God. I slew a man.”

Cai took the boy’s sword from him. He tucked it back into its sheath. “You helped save your brothers.”

Oslaf nodded. But Cai knew for some men that answer could never be enough. It wouldn’t have satisfied Leof. Cai dismissed the thought. For himself, he looked at the fallen shapes on the turf with unmixed satisfaction. None of them wore a cassock. Not only had they repelled this raid, but the
vikingr
would think better of it next time. Oslaf would have to work out his own salvation. He was trying now, his gentle face frowning and lost beneath its bloodstains.

Cai put a hand on his shoulder. “You did well.”

But Oslaf wasn’t listening. A big shape was emerging from the smoke, chilling Cai’s marrow until it resolved itself into Benedict’s familiar form. Cai hadn’t seen him since the beginning of the fight. He hadn’t yet had time to fear the worst, but he grinned in relief and waved.

Oslaf’s joy burst like a leaping salmon. He shot away from Cai and ran full pelt for Ben, who opened his arms wide to catch him. Cai looked away. So much for playing the game…

And that reminded him. He got to his feet and made his way through the crowd of his laughing, shouting brethren, dodging their embraces and slaps to his back. Once out on the open hillside he began to run. The church was deserted and terribly quiet, though the new construction work was still in place, the door to the crypt intact. Cai raised his hand to knock, then saw candlelight all the way around its edges. That meant the bolts were undone, the wooden bar out of its catch.

He let himself in. Aelfric was kneeling in the candlelight, at the centre of a tight-packed circle of monks. All were on their knees, their faces in their hands. Cai’s entrance, the creak of the great door, did not interrupt the low, thrumming chant of Latin prayer, although from the outer periphery—Fara monks, Cai noted angrily, not the Canterbury clerics—a few terrified moans broke loose.

“Aelfric,” he demanded, letting his sword drop with a clatter onto the cover of a tomb. “What is happening here?”

Aelfric snapped upright. The brethren jerked their heads up, smiles cracking their pale masks as they saw Cai. Aelfric spread his arms. “
Deo gratias
,” he cried. His hair was standing up like spines around the edge of his tonsure. A light of keen, pure madness filled his eyes. “Praise be to God, we are saved. Did I not say it would be so? Saved, by the power of our prayers.”

By the edge of my sword,
Cai thought, but didn’t say it. There was no point now. Aelfric was lost amidst demons and angels. He turned to the first sane face he saw—Martin, the ancient monk who made up the mead and heather ale. “The Vikings are gone. You can come out now. Why didn’t you lock the damn door?”

“He told us not to. He told us to put our faith in God and pray.” Martin lowered his voice. “I’d rather have been out splitting Viking skulls with you, Cai. Did you get a lot of them?”

Cai found a smile for the old man’s innocent bloodlust. “A nice lot. I’m glad you were here. We can’t spare our brewer.” He raised his voice. “Come on, all of you. It’s safe. And we need help clearing up.”

“No!” Aelfric strode through his bewildered flock, knocking the slower ones out of his way. Crazed or not, he looked down through the foot of height he had on Cai with grim power, and he carried his own nimbus of authority with him. “We must all go to our cells and pray in solitude, in thanks for this deliverance.”

“Aelfric—they don’t
have
cells anymore.”

“Then let us go and pray in their ruins.”

Cai gave it up. “You must do as you think fit. I have wounded men to tend.”

He turned away. A clawlike hand landed hard on his shoulder. Still raw with battle nerves, Cai tore out from under it. “Leave me be, scarecrow.”

He hadn’t meant to say it. Despite everything, he’d learned—come to believe—that an abbot’s place at Fara was sacred. That his person was due all respect. Now Cai had insulted him, in front of the Canterbury crows and his faithful. Worse, if that hand descended again, Cai would lash out. He was trembling still, the scent of blood and Viking torches in his nostrils. Aelfric was silent. With eyes like that he didn’t have to speak. Cai read there all his intentions of cold-hearted vengeance.

“Forgive me, my lord abbot,” he rasped. “I must go.”

Cold-hearted vengeance. Theo had taught that idea as one of his few examples of sin. Men were animals, he had explained—another heresy—and, when injured, turned upon their attackers with words or blows before their better selves could prevent it. That was bad. But to go away and brood upon a crime, and then exact a punishment—no, not even the beasts would stoop to that. Perhaps sometimes the animal
is
the better self, he had mused at the end of his lesson, and walked off abstractedly, leaving the brethren looking at one another in outrage and wonder.

But Caius had taken his point. He’d tried to work on reining in his own quick temper, secure in the knowledge that he’d never be cold, clever or mean enough to have to worry about the greater sin. He’d dared to entertain a little rare pride in his Christian qualities, glad for once that his blood was warm, his reactions quick and instinctive.

He had been wrong. He was as bad as Aelfric. A wolf was howling on the beach, and Cai’s blood was ice-cold.

He washed his hands in the bucket for the tenth time, watching red spirals float in the moon-silvered water. He had just dismissed Benedict and Oslaf to their rest. Both were becoming good medics under his instruction, and his patients were at peace. The warrior monks of Fara had sustained a few injuries—some, as Cai had feared, from their own blades—but none would be fatal, and the infirmary had been almost a merry place that night, as they laughed at one another and swapped tales. All were sleeping now, clean and calm and dreaming poppy dreams.

Not a wolf. A man. The cry came again, long and desolate. The Vikings had left behind one of their own.

Cai looked out of the window. He had heard the first cry hours ago. He’d known for all that time that a man was dying on the beach alone. His patients had heard it too, and agreed among themselves, low-voiced and shuddering, that a slow, lonely death was no more than these devil-men deserved. Only Oslaf had looked troubled over the verdict, but Cai had sent him about his errands with a sharp word.

One day,
Theo had said, tugging at his hair in frustration,
I will set us all an exercise of treating one another no better than we deserve, and we will see at the end of the day how many of us are left standing.

But Theo was dead. Leof was dead, killed by a Viking, and with him had been buried the best of Cai’s Christian intent. Ben had forgotten all about Aelfric’s orders, it seemed, and all night Cai had watched how he and Oslaf worked together, how in every unoccupied moment gaze had found devoted gaze. Cai wondered if they’d found some quiet place in the moonlit ruins to celebrate their impurity, their soul-condemning love.