by Harper Fox
“No. Wilfrid was so eager for the fight that he didn’t pen them in properly. They escaped.”
“Then the goats will probably make their way home. And we might be able to round up the sheep. Yes, we can weather that—no thanks to you, shepherd.” Cai laid a tender hand on Wilfrid’s grave. “Now tell me the rest.”
“When Gunnar took over from Sigurd, it threw the tribe into chaos. They fought among themselves until half their warrior chieftains were dead, and when the rival clans who live in the marshlands around knew their weakness, they moved in. They are besieged. They have no winter stores, and now—with Gunnar gone—they have no leader. Caius, beloved—”
“Quiet. I’m tired now. Please take me back.”
Cai knew how to make a man love him. The mechanics of desire were simple. Theo had taught that plainly, to men thrown together night and day, most of them healthy and young. They could and did operate without permission from the mind or soul. A monk could be as devoted as he wished, and still be plagued by them, and it was not a source of shame. Control them as best you can—cold plunges, meditations, prayer—but all can still be lost. Even when the mind says no and means it, the flesh can have its way.
Fen’s mind was certainly saying no. His mouth too, until Cai had clapped a hand across it. Fen had left him alone until darkness fell, and then he had come as always since the raid, to sleep beside him, warm him, make sure he came to no harm in the night. And Cai had seized him and begun to change his body’s no to yes. Cai knew men’s flesh and how it worked—knew this one best of all.
Fen fought his way out from under. He took hold of Cai’s shoulders and dumped him down onto the bed. “What are you doing? Don’t make me hurt you!”
“You are going back to them.”
A terrible silence, Fen’s eyes blazing down into his. “Caius. Stop.”
“The next time we meet could be on a battlefield. Why the hell don’t we start now?”
He smacked Fen hard across the face. Other demons could be called up too, and this one lived close to Fen’s surface. He wasn’t a tolerant man. The trick worked instantly—Fen cuffed him back. He had laughed until he wept when Cai had told him the doctrine of turning the other cheek. But he wasn’t the same creature who had been marooned here in the spring. His eyes filled with tears. “Stop this.”
Cai dragged him down into a kiss that tasted of blood. There was the surge of his erection. Even unwilling, Cai could command his body. Perhaps the soul would follow. “You are going home. Why? They betrayed you.”
“My brother. Not my whole clan. They are starving, diseased. I can’t abandon them.”
“I can’t let you go.”
“Then come with me. Leave your brethren behind and sail with me. Can you?”
Cai stopped struggling. He lay still, his breath coming in great gulps. The prospect unrolled itself before him. At first it felt like an answer. He could taste the salt now, hear the rush of the wind as it had sung to him on their way back from Addy’s island. It wouldn’t be easy. He would be a Christian among hostile strangers, lucky to escape with his hide. But to be on shipboard with Fen, perhaps with one of those great dragon heads dipping and rising with the motion of the prow…
Leaving his brethren behind. Oslaf and Eyulf and the rest of them, the little community that had been smashed to pieces again and again, this time almost to oblivion. The men who looked to him to lead them, flawed though he was.
For many years now, Cai had thought of himself as a grown man. He had left his father’s kingdom and come here, stiff with pride and independence. He had trained an army, fought and killed with them. He had taken a lover, in the teeth of hellfire doctrine and the religion he had vowed to serve.
But he had been a child. Adulthood didn’t lie in action, or the assertion of his will. It was here in this moment. Fen couldn’t have imposed it upon him more deeply. Forget them so you can be with me… Impossible. But Cai had asked that very thing of him.
Cai grew up fiercely, gasping at the pain of it. Fen was still holding him fast at the focus of that merciless gaze, making him see. No nobility, no fire. Just the slow, cold dawning of realisation. He had taken the men of Fara into his hands, and now he couldn’t let them fall. “Go and look in the box in that far corner.”
“What?”
“Just go and open it. I had Oslaf bring it up from the cellar, after you had talked to me by the graves and I knew what you were going to do.”
Fen detached himself stiffly from their embrace. After a moment he returned, his expression wondering. In his left hand he clasped the magnificent helmet Cai had found on the beach and hidden away from them both. “You told me this had been lost.”
“I picked it up from the beach that night. I put it away in a box in my infirmary.”
“Well, I could have used it before now, you idiot.”
“I know. I couldn’t bear the sight of it.” Despite his words, Cai took the beautifully worked thing from Fen, and when his lover knelt beside him, carefully drew it down over the shining red hair. “There. Now you look as you did when I first saw you. How you’ll look when you become a stranger to me again.”
“Cai, don’t.” Fen’s voice cracked, giving the lie to the blank ferocity of the helmet’s mask. “Take it off me, for God’s sake.”
“All right.” Cai obeyed him. “But when you go, you will have that, and your shield and your sword.” He buried his fists in Fen’s hair. He drew his head down, barriers of resistance dropping inside him.
Fen kissed him with a tenderness that was new, even after all their exchanges. “Forgive me, Cai. I swear I will come back to you.”
“Don’t make any promises. You don’t know what you’ll find there.”
“Nothing like you. Not ever.”
“And…” Shifting, Cai took his weight more thoroughly, welcoming the blossom of pain in his side. “Understand me, love. You have to go now.”
“What? No. I will wait till you’re well. Till the rebuilding is done and you have some defences against—”
“Listen. I can behave myself like a good soldier—a good monk, a good leader, whatever kind of man I’m meant to be. I can do that, maybe for a day, maybe two. More, if I have to. But if you drag out your leaving any longer than that…”
“Don’t.” Another of those kisses, lingering, deep. “Oh, don’t.”
“If you drag it out, I’ll fall. I’ll weep at your feet in front of the very men I have to lead.”
“You know,” Fen said hoarsely, “making my decision wasn’t hard—not once I’d seen I had to. No, it was easy, because I pushed it away and made it little. I told myself I wouldn’t leave for weeks—and it wouldn’t really matter even then, because I would come back. I’d promised you that. Already in my mind I was back.”
“And I won’t let you promise.”
“No.”
“Won’t let you push it away.”
Fen’s expression didn’t alter. But two hot splashes hit Cai’s face—just two, as if all the grief in the world had been distilled into them. The tears of a Viking warrior.
Cai wrapped his arms around him. That wasn’t enough, and he lifted his thighs, groaning, and embraced him that way too. Fen’s hard shaft pushed into the crease of his body, ploughing in tight behind his balls, the dear familiar trackway. Cai nodded, pressing consent to Fen’s face and neck in mute kisses. Yes. Fen smelled of apples—he must have been helping to store the crop they had left up in the drying lofts. His skin was warm as if printed with the memory of sunlight, and Cai’s ailing flesh yearned and opened to the sheer health and strength of it, starving for his heat. “Yes. Push in.”
“Not like this. I’ll get something.”
“No. No wheat oil, no butter filched from Hengist’s kitchen, no flax.” They’d tried all of those and managed on less—on seawater, sweat, spit. “Not now. There isn’t time.”
Fen froze for an instant, confusion palpable. “No time? You want me to leave so soon as—”
“No, you idiot. I mean I can’t wait for you.”
“Oh…”
“What do you do to me? Don’t let me come on my own, empty and alone like this.”
“I’ll hurt you.”
“I want that, this once. Carve your shape into me. So I won’t ever forget.”
Chapter Seventeen
Eldra was magnificent and ready for her journey. There was no longer a barn or a stable to shelter her, so Cai had tied her to a post in the field to knock a week’s worth of mud out of her sleek coat. His palm was raw from the many handfuls of straw the job had taken. Exhausted, he leaned back against the fence.
Yes, she was fine. Cai looked at her for something else to do, but she tipped her head at him and blew a derisive snort through clean pink nostrils. She knew she was good enough. That left Cai alone with the knowledge of his own failings, and the rest of the day on his hands.
No good. He pushed upright. If he’d still had Broc’s chariot, he could have killed some time and truth in checking it over. Fittings to be polished, wheels squinted at from back and front to make sure they were properly aligned. Linseed oil to rub into leather till it was supple and resistant to salt sea winds. But the raiders had turned Broc’s sacred heirloom to ash along with the monastery’s ox-ploughs, carts and hay wagon. There was nothing to stand between Cai and the knowledge that Fenrir was leaving tomorrow at dawn.
All these preparations had been his way of staving off the truth. Irrational, because with every swipe of the straw across Eldra’s coat he had made her more fit for her new owner, but this way he brought the racing minutes under some kind of control. If Cai was giving Fen a horse to aid his journey, it would be the best horse available. If he was providing supplies to send him on his way, they would be fresh and wholesome. And that reminded him—he had told Hengist to pack up some saddlebags with victuals, dried fish and oatcake that would serve Fen if his perishable food ran out on the long road south. Cai had better go and check there was enough. That Hengist was doing it right. Then another aspect of this departure would be his, a thing inside him, not a hook in his guts hauling them out.
He led Eldra up into the pasture at the top of the slope. It was drier here than anywhere else, so that even if she did choose to roll and besmirch herself, the damage wouldn’t be too bad. What Cai wanted to do was let her go. He wanted to slap her on the rump and send her pelting off to some far distance where no one could ever retrieve her. He wanted to fasten up the gates of Fara, hide every loaf and apple in the place and tell Fen that if he wanted food, he damn well could stay here and grow it like anybody else.
Cai’s throat contracted. He gave a low, wrenching moan he was grateful nobody could hear. No one but Eldra, anyway. She thumped him with her muzzle, right in his slow-healing stitches, then trotted away with her freshly groomed tail bannered high.
He took the clifftop path to avoid passing through the new huts. Since yesterday and his visit to the graves, he was formally up and about, the reprieve of sickness ended. He couldn’t get from his bunk to the latrines without half a dozen interceptions, questions. Brother Cai, Brother Cai.
Abbot Cai.
He didn’t mind. He knew most of the answers and remembered how it was. In troubled times, good to have a benign elder to direct your works, or simply bestow upon them a nod and a smile. Yes, the church would be rebuilt. No, there would be no canonical hours, only morning and evening prayers, as in Theo’s time. Who was Cai to decide such things? He didn’t know, but the answers came to him clearly and cleanly when they had to, based on common sense and his long acquaintance with these few surviving men. No one had ever asked Aelfric anything. Theo had usually travelled about at the heart of a small group, eager for his teachings and his word.
Cai had no teachings to offer, but he would do what he could. He just couldn’t do it now, not until he had once more strangled into submission his infantile rage. A benign elder? Emerging onto the clifftop, taking deep breaths of the fresh breeze, Cai choked on bitter laughter. He felt like a child.
And, dear God, there was a ship on the horizon. He stumbled, grabbing at a fence post for balance. No. There wasn’t a single thing, not a scrap of resistance left, inside him or in the remains of the monastery, to fight off another raid. “No…”
“No!”
Cai glanced down the track, startled at the echo. Fen was running towards him, as little like a monk as Cai had ever seen him—a proud, athletic figure, his cassock only incidental, a becoming second skin, even with a waxed-linen apron on top. “No, Cai,” he called, coming into sight of him. “Not this time. Just take them and get them inland.”
Make a run for it. Even now Cai’s hillfort blood rebelled at the idea. Fen came to a breathless halt at his side, and Cai shielded his eyes, trying to make out the details of this new terror. It was one ship only. That was something, except that it was huge…
A vessel such as Cai had never seen. She was ungainly, more like a river barge than a seagoing carrier. She was magnificent, though. The sunlight was dancing off golden trimmings on her prow. Her sides were decked with purple cloths, and her sail… Cai took Fen’s hand. He hadn’t meant to—had meant to teach himself how not touching him would feel and start to live with it. But it was so natural, and natural as breathing the returning embrace of Fen’s arm around his waist. So there they stood—lovers, brothers, comrades, watching the sea. “That sail. The sign on it—that’s the bishop’s crozier.”
“His what?”
“His staff, you heathen. Do you see it—the spiral curving back on itself?”
“Yes. Who would bring such a ship out here?”
“I don’t know. That’s the emblem of the diocese at Hexham. Only the bishop himself would have the authority, or…well, a king, but that’s even less likely than a bishop, this far north of civilisation.”
“It looks as if it’s heading to East Fara. The island.”
Cai wasn’t certain which of them had begun the walk down to the beach. Fen’s hold on him distracted him from many things, quieted his mind even when he wished to stay alert, cogent, angry. He only came to surface again when the cliff track narrowed and Fen let him go, pushing him gently ahead to take the lead. Why were they coming here? Cai had a dozen things to do, and Fen from the look of him had been helping with the slaughter of their few remaining pigs. But as they made their way downslope, he saw that the vision of this strange, majestic ship had exerted its pull on others of his brethren too. One by one they appeared among the dunes, leaving their tasks behind them. Perhaps they were only relieved that the vessel hadn’t heralded another raid, and wished to watch it out of sight. Or maybe, like Cai, they couldn’t take their eyes off the misty place on the horizon where it was slowly fading, in flickering purples and flashes of sun.
The Fara brethren settled on the beach, on the dry sand and the scattered rocks where the seals liked to bask. Cai knew he should send them back to work. He was no Aelfric, but he shouldn’t allow a reasonless midday idleness like this. They were working monks, and outside of mealtimes and prayer, their labours were mapped out for them—especially now, when barely a stone lay on a stone at Fara to show what the place was meant to be. There was no excuse for Cai himself to be here, hitching up the hem of his robes and scrambling onto a rock so he could see.
Fen took his elbow to give him a boost and steady him, and then he too clambered up and sat at Cai’s side—to windward, Cai noted, shielding him, keeping him warm. “Is she still heading out?”
“I’m not sure. She seems to be just…hanging there. Drifting.”
An attentive silence fell. The survivors of the last raid had been subdued men, but still when they came together there were murmurs about aching limbs, the occasional burst of laughter. They were quiet now, their attention fixed on the gilded ship.
She came about. The movement was imperceptible at first, and then the noonday sun caught her helm in a blaze. At first Cai was surprised by her new heading, but then everything faded away but
her beauty. She was making for shore. All around him, the gathered men came to their feet, shielding their eyes to watch. Cai got up too, and he and Fen picked their way down past the rock pools and over constellations of pale cockleshells and barnacles until they were standing at the sea’s edge.
The ship was too deep in the hull to draw very far into the shallows. A couple of hundred yards out, her crew trimmed the sail. They were vigorous men in neat uniforms, a match for any interested vikingr pirates. Cai could make them out clearly now, as well as the ancient gateway symbol on the canvas. Not just episcopal authority, then, but secular, and the highest in the land—the mark of the kingdom of Bernicia.
The vessel came to a standstill. First the crew ran to drop anchor, and then a burly quartet of them winched up a smaller craft, a tender-boat fit to make the run between ship and shore. In it was a solitary figure, balancing with fragile dignity while the tender swayed on its ropes and was lowered by slow, careful degrees into the water. Three of the crewmen scrambled down rope ladders and boarded it too. Two of them took up the oars, and the third stood behind the passenger, apparently as a kind of honour guard. All were heavily armed, showing rich purple cloth beneath their breastplates, their shields also marked with the crozier and gate.
Only when the tender was far enough inshore to rock on the breakers did Cai understand. “My God. Who have they got there?”
“They stopped off at Addy’s island, didn’t they? He told us they were after him to make him bishop.”
“Didn’t we agree he was mad?”
“Well, does he look sane to you?”
Addy—Aedar, the hermit of Fara—was sitting bolt upright in the boat. His hair and beard were streaming in the wind, untamed as ever, but over his cassock he was wearing a sumptuous gold and purple cloak. He had an air of having been bundled into it. In his hands he was clutching a staff, at once like his old shepherd’s crook and entirely alien to it—the mark of the shepherd of souls, its old functional shape wrought out of use and into beauty, the bishop’s spiralled crozier. He saw Cai and Fen, and used this mighty symbol of authority to wave at them, a broad grin breaking across his face. “My friends!” he yelled across the windswept distance between them. “I am pleased to see you. Wait there.”