by Harper Fox
“My command…” Cai shook his head. Ecgbert would think he ran this place like a Roman fort. “Thank you, Hengist. Now, the rest of you…take orderly places around the church, just as when you come to prayers. This is a solemn occasion.”
Hard for him to say, when Godric’s rosy wife was standing before him, beaming from ear to ear, one laughing infant peering at him from her skirts, the baby in her arms flailing and crowing at the fun of it all. “Abbot Cai, they say he died in the odour of sanctity. Can it be so?”
“I don’t know.” Cai said that to them often—always disappointing them but increasing their respect for his answers when they came. Not knowing didn’t scare him as it once had. He didn’t know if he would last out these torchlit minutes, even with Fen’s warm presence at his back. His chest was tight, a coppery taste in his throat. “It’s a very wide world, Barda, isn’t it? I have come to see. Now, my friends, be mindful—we are in the presence of a king.”
Poor Ecgbert, for all his gold and brocade, had almost been forgotten. Now he stepped forwards, and Cai’s brethren and friends did him honour after their own fashion, ceasing to shuffle and murmur, touching fringes, bowing heads. Nobody knelt. Distractedly Cai wondered if their education was taking effect, and whether it would bring them in the end to liberty or destruction.
He had to open the coffin. That was what he had come here to do. Why was he suddenly reluctant? It was best, wasn’t it, to dispel any illusions beginning to gather around the old man’s death? He went and laid his hand upon the casket. It was a very plain one. Cai caressed the grain of the wood—Addy’s choice, he was sure, not the gorgeous Northumbrian king’s.
“My friend,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry you died so far from your seals and your birds. Forgive me for disturbing your rest.”
Footsteps pounded on the turf outside. Cai didn’t have to look to recognise Eyulf’s uneven, shambling gait. He turned in time to see the boy gallop into the church. Hengist had clearly sent him off like an arrow for supplies, and he was coming back the same way. His arms were piled high with wineskins and loaves wrapped in linen. He couldn’t possibly see.
The night had spread a fine, barely visible carpet of frost into the church. Eyulf tried to slow, and his feet shot out from under him. Before anybody could move or try to catch him, he had crashed to his backside on the flags. His loaves and flagons went flying. The next thing Cai heard was the deep hollow thud of his skull cracking off Addy’s bier.
Cai put a hand to his mouth. Fen crossed his arms—turned aside and hid his eyes. All around the church, jaws were dropping, the first snorts of laughter—echoes of the one Cai was still fighting to restrain—breaking out.
Cai bit his lip. “Hush,” he commanded, his voice unsteady. He strode over and knelt by the poor boy. So much for the solemn occasion. “For the love of God, Eyulf. Don’t you know that’s King Ecgbert over there?” Eyulf was flat on his back, staring up at the newly thatched roof. “Well, never mind. Are you hurt? Sit up and let me see.”
“Brother Cai?”
Eyulf hadn’t moved. His gaze was still fixed on the rafters, or some fascinating point beyond them. Cai hadn’t heard himself called Brother for such a long time. He smiled at the sound of it. And then he realised who had said the words. “Eyulf?”
Eyulf looked at him. Not through him, or past him, or with dim comprehension that someone was there. Not as a sheep or an ox. “Brother Cai,” he repeated, his voice rough but clear. “Caius.” He sat up, Cai putting a hand to his elbow in wonder and easing him upright. “It’s Caius, isn’t it? My friend.”
Cai had never heard him form a single complete word. “Yes,” he said faintly. “Yes, I’m your friend.”
“You hid me in the barn, Cai. You saved me from the raider. And Fenrir…” He twisted to look at Fen, who had crouched wide-eyed beside him, and broke into laughter. “Do you remember?” Growling, he twisted his face into the old mask that meant Viking. “And yet Brother Fen caught me when I fell down from the tower.”
He started to struggle to his feet. Cai helped him, oblivious to the surge of pain in his lungs. “Eyulf, is it…? Is it you?”
“Yes!” Eyulf beamed at him. He stared around him. “I have been lost in the dark for so long. But here are all my brethren… I knew you were there. My God—all those years, and not a cross word from any one of you. Not one single act of unkindness. My God, my God…”
He began to sob. Cai took hold of him, and he collapsed into his arms. Cai placed a hand on his skull. He looked across his shoulder to the gaping villagers, to the monks who did not know whether to laugh or burst into tears with the boy—to the poor bewildered king, and finally to Fen, who would see that his words were brought into action. Fara was not a Roman fort, but Fen was now Cai’s general. Cai loved him more than sunlight, more than breath.
“I do not wish this coffin opened,” he said. “Do you understand me? The man inside it was my friend. And His Majesty Ecgbert, king of this realm, has declared and witnessed that Aedar has died and remained incorruptible. Who are we to doubt his word? Go back to your work and your homes now, all of you, and be at peace.”
“Fen, what are we doing here? Oh, God—did I fall asleep again?”
“No. You did well.”
“I fell asleep. Please not at the table.”
“No. You were a perfect host—good enough for a king. You just became tired at the end, and I brought you away.”
“Carried me.”
“You weigh less than a goat wet through. Does it shame you?”
“No. No, never. I just don’t want the others to see.”
“No one saw.”
“Why… Why did you bring me here?”
“You know why.”
Cai lifted his head. Fen had made him comfortable on the stone flags. Only one torch was burning in the church now, its light low and fitful. Fen had found a blanket from somewhere and sat him at the foot of Addy’s coffin—settled down beside him and held him in his arms.
“Is this my free-thinking heathen? You look good in that cassock, but…” Cai paused and waited till the need to cough had passed by. He didn’t have the strength for another seizure. He remembered now—he hadn’t gone to sleep. His throat and lungs had closed, and Fen had helped him out into the air, and he had gasped and choked until scarlet had splashed onto Fen’s sleeve, and then he had known nothing. The stains were still there. “You told me the other day you’re not sure you believe in any god.”
“Well, I’ve never met one. I did meet Addy, though.”
Cai caressed the broad chest. “Fen—Eyulf banged his head.”
“Yes. He was little better than a beast, and we left him telling Ecgbert of Bernicia about his political views. But you’re right—he banged his head.”
“Is that what you think I should do—crack my skull off this poor old man’s coffin?”
“Of course not. I have just brought you here to pass the night. Addy deserves our vigil.”
“He does. But I can’t keep my eyes open.”
“Then sleep, beloved.”
Cai burrowed back into the deep, sacred warmth of his embrace. He knew what was happening to him. He tried to fight it—the sudden lapses into sleep, the dark that awaited him after each struggle for breath—but it was merciful, the long, slow process of his body shutting down. Not tonight, he prayed—to God or to Addy or Fen, sinking his fingers into Fen’s robes and hanging on. It was always his last cry on the brink of the dark. Not tonight. One more morning with him, one more waking in his arms.
A long grey time passed. Immeasurable, deep, a limitless sea fret shot through with scents like sunlight, a tang of sex-heated skin… Cai woke up in the dawn, his prayer granted.
Oh Christ, for the last time. Sunrise gold was pouring through the little unglazed arch at the east end. Fen was sleeping peacefully, and something inside Cai had reached its end. The sense of his lung being stitched into his ribs, the unremitting pain that had stopped him from standing up
right for months… All that was gone, and in its place was a void. A floating, dreadful freedom. He couldn’t draw breath.
He lurched upright. He tore out of Fen’s embrace and staggered a few steps—crashed to his knees on the flagstones, then hauled up again and ran for the doors. He had to get outside. He wanted the sun on his face—one last sight of winter dawn. Tearing the doors open, he fell out into the day.
His lungs inflated, frosty air blazing deep into his chest. An ecstatic heat filled the void. He let the breath go in a wail and sucked the next one in. Strength flooded him. He wasn’t torn or broken. He was free.
When Fen reached him, his face a blank of terror, he was standing with his arms stretched to the sun. “Caius! Cai, what is it?”
Cai couldn’t tell him. He whirled to face him—seized his face between his hands and kissed him. He had breath for it. He had breath for everything. Kiss after kiss, until Fen was laughing and cursing him, demanding he explain. Cai had no explanation. He flung his arms round his lover—his tall, proud, solid Viking—and swept him off his feet.
Epilogue
In the Year of Our Lord 692, the flood of pilgrims to Addy’s shrine overwhelmed the monks’ ability to feed and house them all. And although Fara monastery, uniquely among the north-shore holy lands, had its own formidable guard—warrior monks and proud Dane settlers who now called themselves Britons—the Viking raids still swept the coast. Fara had two treasures, now too precious to be risked at any cost. There was the body of Aedar, which whether or not it was still whole in its coffin every few months was reported to have restored someone’s sight, set some lame man walking on his withered limbs or revived a dying child. Miracle, or only the faith of the thousands who came there, burning with hope and belief? It scarcely mattered. The healing was the same, and Aedar of Fara was called a saint.
And then there was the book. Many deputations had come from the south, men sent by the new bishop of Hexham, and even from the Canterbury heartlands of the new Roman church. The Gospel of Science, blasphemous or not, was too precious a thing to be left in the hands of half-heathen monks in the north. It should be taken to the proper authorities, submitted for examination. The deputations came and put their case, and then they went away.
But still the raids went on, and so one morning at the perfect pitch of spring, a strange procession set out from the lonely rock of Fara. At its heart, flanked by outriders in cassocks and animal hides, was Addy’s funeral bier, the coffin worn silkily smooth by all the hands that had touched it. Behind it, fat and old but still as burly as a bear, the Viking warlord Sigurd proudly rode. And at his side, not ceasing to remind him with haughty gesture and look that he had still more reason for his pride, the mighty chieftain Broccus kept his place. The two old men were deadly rivals, and intimate, mead-swilling friends.
The hawthorns were flowering, great, pungent heaps of white blossom with pink hearts all round the monastery graves. Cai and Fen, at the head of the exodus, drew their horses to a halt for a moment. Fen snapped off one thorny branch and passed it to his abbot, who took it from him tenderly, their hands lingering over the touch.
Behind them they left the great monastic school established by Caius of Fara. Cai didn’t fear for its future. All around it on the plain were new, thriving villages, their roundhouse huts enlivened by the shouts of first-generation children, in some of whose faces Saxon blood had merged into the Dane. Viking and Saxon still guarded the land, and martial arts were taught along with Latin, Greek and studies of the stars. Fara’s new abbot Oslaf was young, but seasoned in fires few older men would have borne and survived.
“This place that we’re going to—this new citadel up on its cliff…”
Cai rode on a few paces. The sunlight was brilliant, the whole coastal plain laid out and glimmering beyond the salt flats and dunes. The air was sweet in his lungs. He breathed in the hawthorn and waited for Fen, who had loved his reborn body with such skill and devotion all night, to finish his thought.
“You do realise they just followed a cow.”
“Who did?”
“The founding monks. They prayed for a sign about where they should put their new church, and a bloody cow turned up, and they just followed it.”
“Well, what of it? Perhaps the cow knew best.”
Fen gave a snort. “Well, I see why we’re taking our priceless holy relics out of danger there, then. Speaking of which…”
“Don’t worry. Eyulf has the book. He asked if he could read it as we went, if he travelled with the linen in the cart. By the way, there was no need for you to call the latest ambassador from Canterbury quite what you did.” Cai smiled. “Cow or no cow, beloved, you can be sure the monks chose their place well. A great rock by a river, out of reach of raiders—defensible water supply, three sides protected by the cliffs…”
“Oh, Abbot Cai—how like a soldier you sound.”
“Well, it isn’t Abbot Cai anymore. I am just a monk again, and Addy’s guardian. And I am not the only one transformed.”
Cai didn’t need to explain. Fen brought Eldra into perfect step beside him, and they rode on, so close their knees would brush from time to time, always within reach of an outstretched hand. Fen the warrior, now Fen the teacher, a companion and equal beyond any yearning heart’s dream. A warrior still, his sword belt slung over his cassock, his great wolf’s-head sword ready to meet trouble as it came. He was Cai’s general—his right-hand man and faithful lover, their passion as fresh as their first wild collision in the island waves.
Cai glanced back at the procession. It gave him a reason to steady himself on Fen’s arm—just the briefest touch, a promise. “Lover, is there nothing you regret? Not your homeland? Not the freedom of the sea?”
Fen caught his hand—a promise kept—and held on. “I have often wondered,” he said, “about the true meaning of Gleipnir. It was nothing but a scrap of leather—lost again now.”
“Yes. I think we left it in the dunes.”
“But you see, I still have it. To me you are home—my tribe, my honour. To me you are Gleipnir—the cord that binds the wolf where fetters fail. Forever, my beloved Cai.”
About the Author
Bestselling British author Harper Fox has established herself as a firm favourite with readers of M/M romance. Over the past two years, she’s delivered nine critically acclaimed novels, novellas and short stories, including the CAPA-nominated The Salisbury Key. Harper takes her inspiration from a wide range of British settings—wild countryside, edgy urban and most things in between—and loves to use these backdrops for stories about sexy gay men sharing passion, adventure and happy endings.
Harper lives in beautiful rural Northumberland with Jane, her partner of twenty-six years, and three high-maintenance cats. She’d love to tell you what she does when she’s not writing, but the sad truth is she simply can’t remember.
To find out more about Harper and see updates on her current writing projects, please visit www.harperfox.net.
Look for these titles by Harper Fox
Now Available:
Driftwood
The Salisbury Key
Scrap Metal
Is there room for love in a heart full of secrets?
Scrap Metal
© 2012 Harper Fox
One year ago, before Fate took a wrecking ball to his life, Nichol was happily working on his doctorate in linguistics. Now he’s hip deep in sheep, mud and collies. His late brother and mother had been well suited to life on Seacliff Farm. Nichol? Not so much.
As lambing season progresses in the teeth of an icy north wind, the last straw is the intruder Nichol catches in the barn. He says his name is Cam, and he’s on the run from a Glasgow gang. Something about the young man’s tired resignation touches Nichol deeply, and instead of giving him the business end of a shotgun, he offers Cam a blanket and a place to stay.
Somehow, Cam quickly charms his way through Nichol’s defenses and into his heart. Even his grandfather takes to the cheeky ci
ty boy, whose hard work and good head for figures help set the farm back on its feet.
As the cold Scottish springtime melts into summer, Nichol finds himself falling in love. When tragedy strikes, Cam’s resolutely held secret is finally revealed and Nichol must face the truth. He’s given his heart away, and it’s time to pay the price.
Warning: Contains explicit M/M sex and the disruption of a quiet Scottish town by a fistfight and some tight designer jeans.
Enjoy the following excerpt for Scrap Metal:
It was almost dark by the time we set off, the only light left in the sky a serpent of rose gold across the sea. Our famed Arran sunsets had been wiped out by rain for so long that I was reluctant to spoil it, but I flicked the quad bike’s beams to full as we left the track and struck out over the fields.
I took it easy in deference to my passenger. It was a long time since Archie had deigned to hell around on a bike with me, but I knew it was a rough ride. The quads were single-seaters technically, one and a half at a stretch—or a crush, more like it. The pillion either hung on to the back of the saddle, or…
I hit a tussock and bounced the bike hard. Cameron gave a startled yelp then burst into wild laughter. I pulled up, grinning too. God, what a sound—unfettered, like a kid’s. “Sorry. You okay?”
“Aye. Nearly went crack over nips into yon bloody bush, but I’m fine.”
“Crack over nips, eh? What a nice Larkhall lad.” I let the engine idle. “I know we’ve barely met and all, but if you hang on to me, you’ll be safer.”
“You don’t mind?”
“Course not.”
He put his arms around me tentatively. I gave his hand an encouraging pat—it was only a business arrangement after all, never sparking the slightest frisson in me when Kenzie was hitching a ride—and he closed his grip.