Conqueror

by Baxter, Stephen

  While this went on the looting of the church proceeded systematically. The raiders stripped out chandeliers and lanterns and the jewel-encrusted shrine, the altar services of silver and gold, and heaped it all up on the dirt outside.

  One frail monk sprawled over a wooden box, hugging it. This was the coffin containing the relics of Saint Cuthbert - and the monk who was spending his life to save it was Dom Wilfrid, the weak and foolish lover of Elfgar. Of course his efforts only served to draw the attention of the raiders, and an axe removed his head as casually as Belisarius might pluck a leaf from a tree. But when the raiders opened the blood-splashed box to find it contained nothing but dusty old bones, they abandoned it. Perhaps the saint who had already weathered centuries would survive this day of terrible destruction.

  There was nothing Belisarius could do here. Even to watch this desecration and slaughter shamed him. As the wreckage of the church’s walls leapt eagerly into flames, he turned away to make his way back to the cells.

  XIX

  Aelfric waited in the gloom of the cell, with Macson and Boniface. The walls were thick, but they could hear the screams, and smell the smoke that seeped under the door.

  There was a rap at the door, making them all jump. ‘It’s me. Belisarius.’

  ‘Help me,’ Aelfric whispered to Macson. The two of them shifted the heavy bed that blocked the door.

  Belisarius stumbled in. He sat on the floor, pressing his back to the stone wall. His handsome face was empty, soot-streaked. Aelfric thought he was trembling. He asked, ‘Have you any water?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Boniface murmured.

  ‘I was too late. They were there, the raiders. They burned the church, the scriptorium, the library.’

  Boniface’s eyes were closed. ‘The books?’

  ‘Robbed or burned. They destroyed mine too,’ he added with a bleak humour.

  ‘And the monks?’ Aelfric asked, dreading the answer.

  Belisarius looked at her with eyes that had seen too much today. ‘Dead. Some spared, the younger ones, the strong.’

  ‘Slaves,’ Macson said grimly. ‘German monks become wealisc.’

  Aelfric stared at him, disbelieving. ‘Is that triumph in your voice? Are you enjoying this?’

  Macson made to answer, but Belisarius raised a hand. ‘Enough.’ He turned to Boniface, who sat quietly on the bed, his eyes closed, his hands joined as if in prayer, the tumour on his face black in the uncertain light. ‘Domnus. They died at prayer. That must count for something. And the bones of the saint - the raiders found them, but saw no value. I think they can be saved.’

  Boniface nodded. ‘Thank you. That comforts me. But you must not be concerned for me, or the brothers. It is just as the prophecy foretold.’

  ‘Yes. And you knew it, didn’t you, old man? You knew the raiders would come -you went through the calculation; you knew it would be this month.’

  Boniface whispered, ‘Of course they would be Northmen in their dragon ships. What else could the Menologium refer to? And I knew that they would come this month. I’ve known it for years. I’ve been waiting for this day to come, this month, this year.’

  Aelfric said, ‘Why didn’t you warn us?’

  ‘Because the prophecy must be fulfilled. Because the Weaver willed it.’

  ‘And what about us? Don’t we matter at all?’

  ‘Our work has been to preserve the document through the long dark ages of illiteracy and ignorance and pagan superstition. I told you that, Aelfric. That task has been completed - you’ve helped me do it—and so, no, we don’t matter any more.’

  Belisarius shook his head, appalled. ‘You’re suggesting that the purpose of this monastery, of all your centuries of labour and devotion, perhaps the purpose of the whole monastic movement, was merely to protect one enigmatic scrap of prophecy? All those monks, all those dozens of generations?’

  Boniface smiled. ‘The Weaver sees all. The Weaver controls all. But now our usefulness is done. One stanza is complete; the next is about to be read. The Northmen have come, just as was foretold in the prophecy, and we are to be discarded. All that remains for us to do is to deliver the prophecy into their hands …’

  Macson slammed his fist into the wall. ‘What? Are you saying we should give the prophecy to the raiders? Has that tumour sucked the brains out of your head, old man?’

  Belisarius held him back with a hand on his arm.

  Boniface kept his eyes closed. ‘But that is what the verse instructs. “Old claw of dragon/pierces silence, steals words.” Steals words! The Northmen have come to take the prophecy—even if they don’t know it.

  ‘And as to why, you’ve all seen the text. The purpose of the Menologium is to ensure the coming of the Aryan empire of the future. And it will be an empire of the sea. “Across ocean to east/And ocean to west/Men of new Rome sail/from the womb of the boar./Empire of Aryans/blood pure from the north…” Who but the Northmen and their dragon ships could knit together an empire of oceans? And, can you not hear, the Menologium is telling us that we of the north, we Germans and Northmen—we Aryans—we have the purest blood, the better stock. Rome and Greece and Baghdad flame brightly today, but the world will belong to us in the future, not the Greeks or the Romans or the Saracens or any of that lot, for we are the superior race …’

  Aelfric remembered how Boniface had spoken of his own people as poor, illiterate, pagan barbarians, how Bede had been wrong to look back to the Romans. Perhaps the Menologium’s cruel poetry of race and blood was a consolation to him for his own poor birth - a confirmation that if the past had belonged to the south, the north would own the future.

  Belisarius said coldly, ‘And for this dream you have betrayed your brethren? Do you really imagine you are carrying out God’s will, Domnus, by allowing your monastery to bum?’

  ‘My brothers have been released from the prison of their lives,’ Boniface murmured. ‘And besides, our lives don’t matter. Not to the Weaver. To him, we are mere figures embedded in the past, locked in history as firmly as Romulus and Remus, Julius and Augustus. In a sense we are already dead, nothing more than ghosts invoked by the master of the future.’

  Macson lunged. He grabbed the old monk’s habit and shook him. Boniface flopped, limp as a doll. Macson shouted, ‘Enough of this rubbish. The prophecy was robbed from my ancestor, Sulpicia. I’m damned if I will allow it to be robbed again!’ He thrust his hand inside the monk’s habit, searching.

  Boniface tried feebly to resist. ‘Leave me be! You shouldn’t be here. You British are irrelevant - the prophecy doesn’t concern you - leave me be!’

  Macson dragged the Menologium out of his habit. It was a slim scroll.

  Boniface, slumped against the wall, lifted his head and began to scream, high-pitched but strongly. ‘Help me! You Northmen, help me! In here!’

  Macson jumped on him again. ‘They’ll hear! Shut up, you old fool!’ But he couldn’t quell Boniface’s yelling.

  Belisarius took Aelfric’s arm. ‘The game is played out. Aelfric - go now, quickly. There is no need for you to suffer, to die.’

  ‘But the Domnus, the prophecy—’

  ‘Boniface wants to die, and God will soon grant that wish. As for the prophecy -’ He extracted a slim scroll from his sleeve and passed it to her. It was the Menologium; she had not seen how he took it from Macson as he struggled with Boniface. ‘I’m not sure I want these “Aryans” to own the future of the world.’

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘We will look after ourselves,’ he said grimly. ‘Go. Hide. Return to your father.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go!’ He opened the door and shoved her out.

  XX

  The raiders came to the cell as rapidly as Belisarius had feared. Belisarius, Boniface and Macson were hauled out. They stood blinking in the bright fresh air. Belisarius had to support Boniface, who, murmuring his prayers, seemed too weak to stand.

  The three of them were surrounded. The Northmen were covered
in blood, their clothes, their axes, their faces, even their hair, as if they had waded through an ocean of it. They were strong, murderous, solid as trees. At this moment Belisarius envied them their moral emptiness, their lack of doubt.

  It was late in the morning now, and the sun was warm on Belisarius’s face. It had become a beautiful day, he noted, now the morning mist had burned off. Though fire licked only a few paces away, he could hear the calls of sea birds, undisturbed by all the human foolishness around them.

  One raider crawled through the vacated cell. When he emerged and spoke, his tongue was close enough to the German for Belisarius to guess his meaning. ‘It’s empty, Bjarni. Just these three.’

  The leader, Bjarni, glanced over them. He met Belisarius’s eyes, and the Greek thought he detected regret there, weariness. But he shrugged. ‘Very well. Askold, kill them.’

  ‘Wait.’ Macson stepped forward. ‘I have something you want.’

  He snagged the raiders’ interest. The weapons were held still.

  ‘Ah,’ Boniface whispered to Belisarius. ‘The moment of destiny.’

  Bjarni studied Macson. ‘What? Don’t waste my time, boy.’

  ‘A prophecy,’ Macson insisted. ‘An augury, an omen. Do you understand? It tells the future. It is worth something to you.’

  ‘Bird guts tell me the future.’

  ‘Not like this. It is written down.’ Macson smiled, a ghastly grimace. ‘You will need me to read it to you.’

  ‘Show me.’

  Macson hunted through his tunic. When he realised he didn’t have the scroll he turned on Belisarius. ‘You! How did you take it?’ He lunged at Belisarius, but was easily restrained by the raiders.

  Another voice broke in. ‘I know him.’ A smaller man emerged from the ranks of the raiders, dark, weasel-like. When he spoke again it was in Macson’s tongue. ‘Macson, isn’t it?’

  Macson gaped. ‘Rhodri?’

  Bjarni turned to this Rhodri. ‘You know him, slave?’

  Rhodri smirked. ‘He’s another slave. I knew him in Brycgstow.’

  ‘If he’s known service, he might have value. Spare him.’ Bjarni turned away.

  But Macson protested, ‘I’m no slave. My father bought his freedom, and mine.’

  Bjarni seemed irritated. He said to Rhodri, ‘Explain that he can either live as a slave, or die free.’

  Macson bowed his head, his submission needing no more words.

  Bjarni approached Belisarius. ‘Now,’ he said, suspicious. ‘What of you?’

  The other man, Askold, looked interested. ‘Perhaps he’s a Roman.’

  ‘I am from Constantinople,’ Belisarius said. ‘I am an east Roman.’

  ‘Then he might be worth a ransom.’

  Bjarni thought this over. ‘Move away from the worthless old monk, east Roman, and you will be spared.’

  Belisarius stood his ground.

  Boniface closed his eyes once more. ‘You are a visitor, Belisarius. A traveller. A dilettante. And you’re an eastern orthodox. You have no need to die here.’

  ‘The Northmen’s ransom would break my poor family. Better for me to die now, leaving them rich. And I think I’ve seen enough of this world. Besides, do you want to die alone, monk? The truth now.’

  Boniface hesitated. ‘No.’

  ‘Then hold on to to me.’ Belisarius took the monk’s frail hand in his, and gripped it firmly.

  Bjarni shrugged and took a step back. ‘Your choice.’ Askold spat on his hands and lifted his axe, taking his time, while his companions laughed.

  Belisarius murmured to Boniface, ‘By the way. The Menologium has many possible interpretations, it seems to me. I am not sure you have found the correct path through its tangle, Domnus.’

  ‘Perhaps. But we’ll never know, will we? Even if we had survived this day, we would not. That is the glory of our faith. But we, less than dust, will nevertheless have played our part …’

  Belisarius squeezed his hand. ‘Hush now and make ready.’

  Boniface dropped his head.

  Askold boasted to his grinning companions that he could behead the two of them with a single stroke. To Belisarius his uncivilised phrases were much uglier than the calls of the sea birds, and, in the end, of much less interest.

  Askold swung his blade.

  XXI

  The sun wheeled across the sky. Still Gudrid stood alone, on the headland that led to the causeway to the mainland.

  She had stood here as the raid had unfolded, as people fled and died, as fires blossomed like flowers, and as the patient sea had fallen back, exposing the fine sandy spine of the causeway. All this time she had been alone. The two men, Leif and Bjorn, assigned to accompany her by her father, had quickly run off, convinced that the others were stealing their share of the loot.

  In the event people did escape the island, but by boat, in tiny fishing craft laden with families. Gudrid couldn’t have stopped them if she tried. They would take news of the attack, and terror would seep like poison into the mainland. But nobody tried to cross the causeway she guarded.

  Not until the end of the day.

  A monk came walking alone along the headland towards the causeway. Alone and unarmed. He hesitated when he saw Gudrid. Then he came on again, his steps heavy, for he had no choice. Gudrid hoisted her heavy axe on her shoulder, ready to swing, as her father had taught her. But could she kill - even if it meant that otherwise she would be killed herself?

  The monk stopped ten paces away. He was slim, his face young, his tonsured scalp smeared by soot and blood.

  ‘Don’t try to pass,’ Gudrid called. ‘I will kill you.’

  ‘You’re a woman,’ the monk said. His accent was strange but comprehensible.

  ‘I am a woman, but I am a Viking, and the daughter of Bjarni, son of Bjarni. And I will kill you if I have to.’

  The monk waited. The sea birds wheeled and cried.

  Perhaps it would be enough to rob this monk, Gudrid thought impulsively, and let him live. ‘What do you have?’

  The monk would not reply.

  She stepped forward, axe ready, and began to rummage through the monk’s heavy habit. The wool stank of sweat. She found nothing but a scroll. She took it.

  The monk sighed. ‘So the Weaver’s will is done. Just as Boniface said.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you must take that, at least know what it is. It is a prophecy. It is called the Menologium of Isolde.’

  Gudrid’s eyes widened. Was it possible that after all that had happened the treasure she had sought, the impulse behind the ancient story of Sulpicia and Ulf, had fallen into her hands? She peered at the scroll, but of course could not read a word.

  No scroll would satisfy her father. She needed more. Perhaps the monk wore a Christian cross around his neck; she had seen missionaries wearing such things. She stepped up to the monk and pulled at the front of his habit, ripping it.

  And to her astonishment, she exposed small breasts.

  ‘You are a woman!’

  The monk pulled up his - her - habit. ‘It’s a long story.’

  ‘If my father catches you, or my husband—’

  They both knew what would happen to her, how exciting the raiders would find this woman dressed as a man - and how she would be used, before she was sold into slavery, or killed.

  ‘You are a woman, as I am. In God’s mercy let me pass.’

  Gudrid, frozen by indecision, kept her axe high. Then she stepped back stiffly.

  The monk walked forward. Her feet were bare, Gudrid saw, and they left indentations in the soft, damp sand. She paused by Gudrid. ‘Thank you.’

  Gudrid shook her head wordlessly.

  The monk said suddenly, ‘Come with me.’

  Gudrid’s thoughts raced. ‘I long to,’ she said. ‘I can’t. My place is here.’

  The monk nodded. ‘Take care of the prophecy. And beware it.’ Then she turned and walked on.

  Gudrid didn’t turn to see her go. She kept her place on
the headland, keeping guard, until the sun touched the western horizon, and her father came to find her.

  III

  SCHOLAR

  AD 878-892

  I

  It was with a glad heart, that bleak January evening, that Cynewulf at last came to Alfred’s hall at Cippanhamm. With Aebbe at his side, Cynewulf had to line up with the other petitioners at the gate to be checked over by the guard, a thickset thegn with a handful of hardfaced warriors. The royal estate was outside the village, and the hall and its subsidiary buildings were protected by their own palisade of cruelly barbed stakes.

  The sky was clear, the sun low. There was no snow, but the midwinter frost made the mud hard as Roman concrete under his leather shoes, and the heavy woollen cloaks of the people in the line, musty with a winter’s use, steamed softly.

  The cold did nothing to dampen Cynewulf’s spirits. He murmured to Aebbe, ‘In the King’s hall we will be warm.’

  ‘Nowhere in England is warm,’ the girl said cynically.

  Aebbe, twenty years old and ten years Cynewulf’s junior, was dark, compact, wary. She wore a cloak so filthy it was almost as dark as Cynewulf’s own priest’s habit. With her hair matted and pulled back from her brow, she barely looked female at all. But then she had born on Lindisfarena, in a community of fisher-folk eking out a living in the ruins of the abandoned monastery, and had been a refugee from the Northmen since she had been an infant.

  ‘This is the belly of Wessex,’ Cynewulf said, forcing a smile. ‘There are no Danes here. We really will be safe.’

  ‘If they let us in.’

  ‘Have faith,’ Cynewulf murmured.

  At last they reached the gate. From here Cynewulf could glimpse the hall itself, the door posts elaborately carved with vine motifs, the gables adorned with horns. It was built according to old pagan traditions, although a crucifix had been fixed above the door. They were nearly there, nearly safe.