She felt like saying something, saying it soft, to herself, but nothing would come. So she just looked back in the dark and let the images move through her head. She felt the tears running cool down her cheeks, tickling her skin. She turned and hopped over the fence and walked out into the night.
Chapter Thirty-Two
There are also in the same parts many
other nations still following pagan rites…
Venerable Bede,
Ecclesiastical History
of the English People
There was no moon, but the light of the stars was enough to provide some visibility, enough to create lighter and darker places, enough to allow Failend to navigate over the dark country.
It felt odd, walking in a shift and gown and not the leggings and tunic to which she had become accustomed in the past few years, but she was not really thinking about that. Mostly she was concentrating on making her way toward Winchester, which was marked by a few spots of light too low down to be stars: lanterns in high windows, perhaps, or small fires tended by the watchmen on the walls.
Once she stumbled over a rock jutting up from the ground, stubbing toes through her soft leather shoes. She cursed under her breath and continued on, ignoring the pain. Soon, off in the distance, she was able to make out the smooth, straight expanse of the Roman road and she headed that way, knowing that the going would be easier.
Fifty feet from the edge of the road she stopped. She turned around and looked back toward the farm where Thorgrim and the others were hunkered down, now lost to sight in the dark. If they had discovered her gone and were making an effort to find her, she would see the pinpricks of light from lanterns and torches swirling like fireflies, even from that distance, or so she imagined. But there was nothing to see save for darkness, and the only pinpricks of light were the stars.
She continued on and soon she reached the road, and the bricks felt smooth and permanent through the soles of her shoes. The road was nearly straight and it stood out against the darker grass of the fields through which it ran, and Failend was able to easily follow it toward the few distant lights that marked Winchester.
There were no other travelers on the road that she could see, no sounds save for the insects in the grass and an occasional owl or the sharp cry of a nightjar. Even her shoes were silent on the smooth pavers. Her senses were sharp, eyes and ears and nose all searching the night, but there was nothing she could pick out that was not as it should be.
Soon she could make out the hulking presence of the town ahead, the high stone walls and the tops of the buildings beyond. No details, nothing distinct, just the darker, more solid looking blackness ahead. There would be gates, of course, and they no doubt had been shut up at sunset. But there would be a sally port certainly, and a guard standing there. A small woman alone, such as herself, would look particularly unthreatening. A young, pretty woman could usually talk a guard into doing as she wished.
She stopped suddenly, stood straight and frowned as a thought came to her.
I can’t speak to a guard, she thought. I can’t speak to anyone…
For most of her time with the Northmen she had still been in her native Ireland, where she spoke the language. As she became more fluent in the Norse tongue she had even served as translator during those times when Thorgrim wished to speak to the people with his words rather than his sword.
She had not been long in Engla-land and during that time she had been solely in the company of Thorgrim and the others. Over the past day her thoughts had been roaming far afield, and it only now occurred to her that she had no way to communicate.
I’ll think of something, she decided as she continued on. In the church they’ll understand what I want.
She looked up at the sky as she walked. She saw no hint of dawn, and had no sense for how far off it was. But she figured there was no reason to arrive at the gate before then, and probably good reason not to, so she searched around for some place to hunker down. About fifty feet off the road she saw a spot where some high brush made a natural screen. She walked over to it, lay down and made herself as comfortable as she could.
I can lie here and rest at least until daylight, she thought. It was the best she could hope for. She knew she would not sleep.
She woke sometime later to the loud clatter of a cart’s wheels on bricks. She sat up and looked around. She could not see the road through the brush that concealed her, but overhead she could see that the sky was the palest of blue, and she knew it was just a little ways past dawn.
Good… she thought. Good.
She stood slowly, looking around as she did. The cart that had woken her had rumbled past already, heading for the gates of Winchester. Her eyes moved past the cart and onto the town itself. She had been looking at it from a distance all the day before, but now she was just half a mile away. The stone wall looked more formidable than it had, and the towers and roofs of the great hall and cathedral rose up behind it to impressive, commanding, almost frightening heights.
Failend pulled her eyes from the walls and towers and swept the countryside all around. There were clusters of houses in every direction, huddled close to the city walls and spreading out from there, something she had not realized walking that way in the dark. She was surprised she had not stumbled into one. She could see the smoke from fires rising up from each as embers were stoked into flames. She could hear roosters far off, giving their morning alarm. She could see cows moving slowly in the fields. She could see nothing else. No people.
Do they know I’m gone? Failend wondered. She could imagine Thorgrim thinking she had left the stable and gone back to the hall, and the men in the hall thinking she was still with Thorgrim, and it taking them some time to sort it all out.
Then what will they do? she wondered next. Come looking for me? Shrug their shoulders and forget I was ever with them?
She shook her head, as if trying to shake those thoughts free, and told herself it did not matter what the heathens did. She brushed the grass off her wool gown and wrapped the cloth around her head the way she had seen the English women wear it. She pushed through the brush and across the field and back onto the Roman road. The cart was well ahead of her now but it was the only thing on the road, so she followed in its wake.
The closer she came to Winchester the more frightening the town seemed, the walls looming higher and higher, the towers more menacing. She could see there were indeed massive wooden gates in the wall: the Roman road ran right up to them. As the ox cart leading the way came up with them the gates swung open, giving Failend a glimpse of buildings inside, and the cart rolled through without pausing in its lumbering progress.
Failend could see now that there were guards, men standing on either side of the gate with spears and helmets and green tunics with red crosses on them. She took comfort in seeing the symbol of the cross once again, to see it and know she had not come to plunder God’s house. She had been very long and very far from the church in which she had been raised.
She approached the gate, trying to walk with a confidence she did not quite feel, trying to navigate all the conflicting tides in her mind. She could not help but think she was stepping into danger. She reached down to rest her palm on the handle of her seax, an unconscious gesture after all that time of wearing it on her belt. But her hand found nothing there and she remembered that she no longer had the weapon. She felt thrown off balance by that truth.
Must I stop for the guards? she wondered. She did not know if the guards would demand she give some reason for entering the town or just let her walk right past. They did not look terribly attentive or even interested in their task. The cart had not stopped, but then the guards might well know the carter. It might happen every morning that he drove his cart through the gates.
Just walk through, bold as can be, she decided, and that plan worked well for the next half dozen steps. She had another six steps to go before she was through the gate when one of the guards lowered his spear to the horizontal, bl
ocking her way.
She stopped and looked at him and smiled as coyly as she could. The guard had a quizzical look on his face, and Failend guessed it was as unusual for a young woman to be walking alone in Engla-land as it would have been in her native country. He spoke to her, a string of words that might as well have been an animal grunting. She continued to smile, unsure what else to do.
The guard frowned and squinted as if that might give him some insight into who she was, but Failend could see he was no more than mildly curious. She crouched down as if genuflecting and made the sign of the cross, touching her forehead, stomach and shoulders. Then she pointed through the gate in the general direction of the cathedral.
With that the guard seemed to relax. He stood and smiled a bit and raised his spear, gesturing with his head for her to enter. She smiled and nodded and walked through the gate as casually as she could, wondering what the guard must think.
Does he think I’m a mute? Do they get so many folk here who don’t speak English, so that it attracts no notice? That would be a useful thing to know.
And why was he so certain I’m no threat? she wondered next, aware that she was slightly offended by that.
She kept walking, stepping along with feigned confidence, but as her eyes took in the town of Winchester that attitude became harder and harder to maintain. The massive stone wall ran off in either direction until it bent around and disappeared, so that it seemed as if it must continue on forever. Within its confines, houses built of heavy wooden planks with high-peaked thatched roofs, some two stories tall, rose up around her, separated by muddy streets that twisted and disappeared between the buildings. Fenced off yards were crammed with the tools and materials of the craftsmen’s trades: blacksmiths and woodworkers, bakers and coopers and potters.
The streets were not empty, not even at that hour. Women in coarse gowns and aprons were already bustling around, baskets or bundles in their arms or sacks on their shoulders. Some were tossing grain to chickens in the yards or the contents of chamber pots into the streets. The men were ambling out into the yards, some staring at their tools as if seeing them for the first time, other settling down to work.
It was stunning, like nothing Failend had ever seen. She had always considered Glendalough, her home, to be an impressive place, a monastic city that had risen up around the great stone church founded hundreds of years before. She figured that it must rival in grandeur almost any place in the world. But now she realized that her understanding of the world was completely wrong.
The towers of Winchester that had guided Thorgrim’s band across the countryside now guided Failend through the city. She walked along past the houses that crowded up to the streets and past the yards with their workshops, delineated by low wattle fences. Men and occasionally women would look up and watch her pass, but she seemed to attract no undue notice, and she was happy about that. She scrutinized the clothes the women were wearing, and as far as she could tell her own clothes did not differ in any important way.
She continued to move toward the towers, like a headland seen from the ocean. Sometimes they were lost from view, and then she would pass one of the larger houses and there they were again, getting closer each time.
Finally the press of houses and shops seemed to come to an end, as if they were pushed against the shore of a lake, and in the open space that was left stood a massive building, with walls and gates of its own and towers at either end and a great hall that was longer than any building Failend had ever seen, rising thirty or forty feet in height.
The king’s hall… Failend thought as she walked slowly past. Ireland had many kings, and as a result few of them were terribly grand. She had been to the halls of several of them and had not been much impressed. But this was something different. Whatever king occupied such a place as that must be a powerful man indeed.
She continued along, skirting the royal compound, her destination the building now hidden behind the hall but marked by Winchester’s highest tower. The cathedral, or so she guessed. She could not imagine what other structure might rival the king’s hall in size and height.
Failend skirted the wall of the king’s enclosure and soon the cathedral came into view. It was stone built, unlike the king’s hall, but bigger and more impressive in every way. Failend walked toward it, slowly, as if she was approaching something that might do her harm. As if she was approaching the Holy of Holies. She stopped fifty feet away and looked up.
The walls stood to an impossible height, fifty or sixty feet at least, all made of stone, some of it much like the stones that made up the Roman road. The roof, shingled in slate, made a steep angle up to its peak. At the far end a square tower rose up even higher than the roof of the nave, and on top of that a conical spire reached higher still, with a massive cross perched at its tip.
All along the length of the nave were tall windows with rounded tops. The bottoms of those windows were about ten feet above the ground, and higher up, near the top of the nave, were more windows, smaller versions of the lower ones. Each window was complete with glass panes. Failend stared for a long time at that. She had seen glass panes only a few times in her life. She would never have thought that one church could boast so many.
She looked down at the heavy wooden door that was set into the side of the building and she swallowed hard. She would have to go in through that door, but the majesty and size of the building filled her with trepidation. She was certainly aware of how ridiculous that was — over the past years she had charged headlong into many battles, and it was unlikely that anyone in the church would be as great a threat as an English spearman on horseback, or a man-at-arms with a sword and shield.
Failend took a deep breath and began walking again, crossing the open ground that encircled the church. She reached the door and grabbed the big iron door pull. It occurred to her that it might be barred from the inside, but as she tugged it swung open easily on its hinges, never making a sound.
Slowly she stepped through, putting her feet down softly so as not to make a sound. She walked into the nave, down the length of the massive space. It was lit by the weak sunlight coming in through the windows high above and lower down, and from dozens of candles, but still the light seemed swallowed up by the great building. The walls were smooth with daub and painted white which helped to make the space lighter. Far overhead an elaborate structure of wooden beams supported the wood-and-slate roof.
It was very quiet. Failend was the only person in the cathedral at that hour, as far as she could see. She continued walking slowly toward the sanctuary where the altar stood, and behind it the tabernacle with the Holy Eucharist. She was almost halfway there before she remembered to bow and make the sign of the cross, which she did.
I truly am a heathen, she thought. Or nearly so.
With careful steps she continued toward the front of the church when she heard a bang, like a door being shut, and she jumped in surprise. A young priest appeared from the side of the sanctuary. He wore a long brown hooded robe, and a line of light brown hair delineated his tonsure. He held a bunch of candles like flowers in his hand. He knelt and crossed himself and then began to replace the stumps of candles in the many candleholders with the new, taller ones.
Failend stood motionless, watching the young man, not sure what she should do. She wanted to call out, but she did not want to startle him. She wanted to get his attention, and she also wanted to remain unseen.
But then the priest turned and stopped in mid-movement and looked over at her and she could see the surprise on his face. He apparently did not expect anyone to be there. But then he seemed to relax as he saw she was just one person, and a woman at that. Strange as it might be to have a woman, alone, come sneaking into the church at that hour, he did not, apparently, regard her as a threat.
He came down the steps from the sanctuary and walked over to her, a trace of a smile on his face. He stopped and spoke, and his words were the same incomprehensible jumble that the guard had spoken. She could hea
r traces of the Norse tongue in them — the languages were similar in some ways — but not similar enough that she could make sense of them.
“I’m sorry, I don’t speak English,” she said in Irish, hoping the young priest might know that language. After all, many priests studied in Ireland and then were sent to churches all over Engla-land and Frankia and beyond. But the priest just frowned and looked at her in an odd way and shook his head.
Failend frowned as well. She would not try Norse. There was little chance he would speak Norse, and she did not care to reveal that she did, so she was not sure what to do.
Then the young priest seemed to brighten. He held a finger up which Failend took to mean she should wait a moment, and she nodded. The young priest nodded as well, then turned and disappeared the way he had come.
The cathedral fell silent again, a silence deeper than that of a still night or an empty house. A silence that felt to her as if there was nothing there at all, nothing save for her and God.
Then the door banged again and the young priest was back with another, a bit older than him, with a kind-looking face and dark hair that must have been an unruly mop before the bulk of his head was tonsured. They approached Failend together, and then the new priest said, in Failend’s native tongue, “Do you speak Irish?”
It felt to Failend like clouds parting to reveal bright sunlight. She had not heard Irish spoken in some time, and certainly not spoken by a young and kindly-sounding priest, a man of God. She smiled and nodded.
“Yes, father,” she said. “Yes, I speak Irish. I am Irish.”
She nearly added that she was from Glendalough but she held her tongue. She was wanted for murder and other crimes in Glendalough, and it was possible the priest had heard those tales and might guess at her identity.
The Midgard Serpent Page 36