Trian looked up at Louis’s face, illuminated by the candle, and Louis felt him relax under his hand.
“You won’t yell when I move my hand, will you?” Louis whispered and the boy shook his head. Louis moved his hand and, true to his word, Trian remained silent, though he still looked frightened enough.
“You know where Brother Lochlánn sleeps?” Louis asked and the boy nodded. “And you have a secret way out of here?”
Trian nodded again and pointed to some place in the shadows behind them.
“Good. Go, as fast as you can, to Lochlánn’s cell. Tell him the heathens are plundering the church, this very moment. Tell him they’re led by a heathen lord named Thorgrim Night Wolf. Tell him to turn out armed men if he can. Not monks. If monks come here and try to stop them they’ll be slaughtered. Do you understand?”
Trian nodded again.
“Good. Go,” Louis said and Trian was up like a rabbit and bolting for his secret way out, and in an instant he was swallowed up by the dark.
Louis stood and stepped quickly and quietly out of the sacristy and across the altar to the nave. Harald was standing near one of the banks of candles, apparently seeking out the best lit spot in that frightening and foreign place.
“Was there anyone there?” Harald asked in a loud whisper.
“No one,” Louis said. “Let’s call the others. It was just as I hoped.”
Chapter Nine
Alas, o holy Patrick
That your prayers did not protect it
When the foreigners with their axes
Were smiting your oratory!
The Annals of Ulster
Lochlánn mac Ainmire dreamt of battle. He dreamt of the close fighting with sword and shield, the jostling of men in the battle line, blows from right and left, coming fast, knocking him back.
And then he was awake and he realized that he was being jostled, hard. His right hand went under his pillow and his fingers wrapped around the horn handle of the dagger he kept there. He rolled over and his left hand shot out and grabbed his assailant by the shirt. The dagger came around, but Lochlánn had the presence of mind, half asleep though he was, to see who was shaking him before plunging the blade into his heart.
Whoever it was was no more than a shadow in the dark cell. Lochlánn jerked the stranger closer and could feel that he was pretty insubstantial, no more than a boy. He heard the stranger gasp and in a panicked, strangled voice cry, “Brother Lochlánn! It’s me, Trian!”
Lochlánn pulled the boy closer still and peered at him through the dark. It was indeed Trian, he could see that now, the boy who cleaned up the church and slept there at night. Lochlánn had cuffed him around on a few occasions, back when he was inclined to do that sort of thing.
He let go of Trian’s shirt and swung his legs around, putting his feet on the cold stone floor. “Forgive me, Trian, you surprised me, is all,” Lochlánn said.
The past month had been a strange and violent time for Lochlánn. He had gone from novitiate to soldier, had trained with Louis de Roumois and fought at his side. He had killed men. He had discovered that Louis, whom he had worshiped, was a murderer. Or at least was accused of murder. Louis, who had gone off with the heathens.
Lochlánn had found the body of Colman mac Breandan, enemy to Louis de Roumois, his throat slashed.
And then Lochlánn had been dropped right back into his old life as a novice monk. He felt like he was in some great river that was tumbling him along as he thrashed to regain his footing. It was little wonder to him that he felt the need to sleep with a dagger under his pillow.
He looked up. “What is it, Trian? Why are you here?”
Trian seemed to have forgotten. He opened his mouth, closed it, then opened it again as he remembered. “It’s Brother Louis!”
That made Lochlánn sit up straighter. “Louis?”
“Yes, Brother. He sent me. He found me…ah…”
“Yes, yes, everyone knows you sleep in the sacristy,” Lochlánn said. “Is that where he found you?”
“Yes, Brother. He told me to come get you, to tell you that the heathens are looting the church. Even now, Brother. A heathen lord named Thorgrim Night Wolf. He says to get some men-at-arms if you can and come quick. He said don’t bring monks or they’ll all be killed, sure.”
Brother Louis? The name was like a slap in the face. Stunning. Lochlánn did not know how to react. He still had not sorted out what he thought of Louis de Roumois, if the man was a killer and his enemy, or still his dear friend who was wrongly accused. He knew only that he wanted to find him, to bring him before the law, to find the truth.
He would welcome with all his heart the discovery of Louis’s innocence. At the same time, he would rather see the Frank hanged than get away with the murder of Aileran and Colman. Lochlánn still had every intention of hunting Louis down. But he had thought the man would be many leagues from Glendalough by now, not two hundred yards away.
“Heathens?” Lochlánn said, somewhat stupidly. This would have been hard to fathom if he had been fully awake. Stepping from sleep into this new reality was perplexing at best.
“Yes, Brother. Heathens, come to sack the church.”
“You saw them? The heathens?”
“No, Brother Lochlánn. I only saw Brother Louis. And he told me to come tell you.”
Lochlánn nodded. It was sorting itself out in his mind now. Louis had sent a warning, and it might be genuine or it might be a trap, and Lochlánn could not know because he did not know where Louis’s loyalties were. So he had to meet this new threat, the heathens plundering the church, but he had to be careful about it as well.
“Do you know the home of Colman mac Breandan?” Lochlánn asked the boy.
“Yes, Brother, God rest his soul,” Trian said, making the sign of the cross. He did it quickly, as if trying to head off any evil spirits coming his way.
“Senach and the rest of the house guard are there. Do you know Senach?”
“Yes, Brother.”
“Go to him now. Quick as you can. Tell him I want him to turn the men out immediately. Armed. Mail if they have time. I’ll meet them in the alley behind Colman’s house.”
“Yes, Brother,” Trian said. He waited half a second to see if there would be more to his instructions, but Lochlánn jerked his head toward the door and Trian bolted off.
Lochlánn stood. He was awake now, but his mind was still whirling, too much coming at him at once. He focused on the immediate concerns. Arms, meeting his men, determining what was going on. He crossed his small cell to the plain wooden chest against the wall, flipped the lid up. There were rough wool blankets and a spare robe and a cloak and a leine inside and he pulled them out and tossed them to the floor. He lifted out the false bottom he had paid a carpenter to install and set that aside as well.
He could not see to the bottom of the chest, but he knew well enough what was there. His fingers felt the rough, cool links of his chainmail shirt. He pulled that out and slipped it over his head, then pulled out his belt from which hung his sword and seax and he fastened that around his waist. There was no shield; that was too big to fit in the chest and so was left with the others at Colman’s house. Lochlánn wondered if Senach would think to bring it.
Much as he longed to be gone, he took the time to put the false bottom back in the chest and the other things on top of it, then closed the lid. He crossed to the door, which still gaped open, Trian having not bothered shutting it. Lochlánn peered out into the hall. No one moving, no sound save for the muffled snores coming from the other cells.
Very well, Lochlánn thought. He stepped out, closed his door. He hoped he would be back before his absence was discovered, since the time had not yet come for him to toss the monastic life aside. He hurried down the hall to the big oak door that led out onto the grounds.
The night was cool and quiet, nothing out of the ordinary that Lochlánn could sense. It certainly did not seem as if there was a heathen raid taking place, which made
Lochlánn more suspicious still.
He headed off through the monastery, every inch completely familiar, even in the dark. He cut across the trampled earth toward the place where the late Colman mac Breandan’s big house backed up against the outer wall. It was no longer Colman’s house, of course. It was no longer a house at all. It was now an ad hoc barracks, home to his men-at-arms, the twenty soldiers who had once formed Colman’s house guard.
Lochlánn had taken Senach’s words to heart, his suggestion that he, Lochlánn, could remain as captain of the guard and they could ride after Louis de Roumois and the heathens he had joined. There was no one who could realistically stop them. The abbot would forbid it, of course, if Lochlánn asked him, which he did not intend to do. And if he was not willing to obey the abbot’s directions voluntarily, there was no one who could make him obey by force of arms. The strongest contingent of men in Glendalough was Colman’s house guard, and they were his men now.
So he and Senach had been making plans. They had been amassing supplies, making certain that horses were available, plotting out where they would search out the renegade Frank. The men-at-arms had taken up residence in Colman’s house. That residence, the largest in Glendalough, would have gone to Colman’s widow, Failend, but she apparently had run off with Louis. So it stood empty, as Colman’s more distant relatives haggled over who could claim rights to it. And while they did, Lochlánn’s men made it their home.
Lochlánn could see the peak of the roof of Colman’s house, a dark point against the night sky. He thought he could hear the bustle of men turning out in a hurry, and that was good. If Trian had been prompt, the men-at-arms should be ready by the time he reached them. The door in the back of Colman’s house opened onto an alley ten feet from the outer wall of the monastery. Senach and the others could go right over the wall at that point and there was no chance that anyone in the town would see them do it, no alarm raised.
It seems we’ve moved things up a day, Lochlánn thought, if Louis has really come here with the heathens.
It was not that night, but the following night, that he and Senach had set as the time for the hunt to begin. That was when they and the other men-at-arms would descend on the stables in the dark hours, bringing with them the supplies and weapons and silver they had amassed. They would saddle up the horses they had picked out and lead them, hopefully unnoticed, out of the monastic grounds and into the town. They would leave silver for payment, then mount up and ride, and by the time they and the horses were discovered gone they would be many miles into their hunt for Louis de Roumois.
That was the plan. And like so many plans, it might have all turned into a big dung heap before it was even started.
Lochlánn was nearing the wall that enclosed the monastic grounds when he heard a noise to his left, a clattering sound, but muffled. He turned and froze, facing the church. He listened. There was nothing more. Still, he was all but certain he had heard it: something falling on the church’s stone floor. A chalice? A reliquary? Whatever it was, it meant that there were men in the church at an hour when there should not have been. He turned and broke into a jog, closing the distance to the wall and his men hidden behind.
Thorgrim Night Wolf followed behind Louis the Frank and Harald as they led his men to the small door in the side of the church, leaving Vali and Armod behind to keep watch. He had an idea what to expect; he had been in Christ temples before, a dozen or more times. Usually to plunder. The Christ priests liked their silver and gold and they seemed able to gather quite a bit of it, which drew the raiders like moths to a candle.
He stepped through the door and into the vast space inside. He stopped and took it in, awed by what he saw, and that did not happen very often. It was certainly the biggest such temple he had ever seen, the roof soaring fifty feet above the stone floor, the main part of the building the length of three longships. There were clusters of candles here and there throwing pools of light around. The rest was all but lost in the darkness. It made him very uncomfortable.
“There,” he said, pointing to the raised area at the eastern end of the church. There were silver chalices and plates and candleholders on the altar and on either side of it. “We’ll start there. Move quietly.”
“What will we carry the plunder in?” Olaf Thordarson asked.
“We’ll need to find something,” Thorgrim said, cursing himself for his stupidity, coming to plunder and forgetting to bring something in which to carry what they took.
Harald turned to Louis and spoke a few words. Louis nodded and hurried off. “He knows of something,” Harald said.
The Northmen walked further into the wide space, moving slowly, carefully. They knew they had to be silent, that the intention was to raid the church without anyone knowing. But Thorgrim understood that that was not the true reason for their cautious steps. The place frightened them. They did not know what sort of magic might reside here. They did not know how powerful the Christ God was.
This was not new to any of them, this plundering of the Christ men’s temples. But most often it was done during the day, a frenzied and violent affair, a fast raid, sometimes met with resistance, and that meant fighting. It was easy to trample fear under the feet of chaos and action.
But this was different. The church was dark and silent and the Northmen were taking care to make little noise, and that just seemed to invite whatever spirits were there to make themselves known. The raiders found it unsettling. Unnerving.
Thorgrim knew they felt that way because he felt that way himself. He realized he was clutching the Hammer of Thor and the silver cross he wore around his neck. He let go of the amulets and cursed himself for a coward and a fool.
From the far end of the church Louis reappeared with bundles of cloth in his arms, and a tangle of cords. He pulled a cloth bundle free and tossed it to Thorgrim and Thorgrim held it up. It was a white robe, the cloth a fine linen, well worth taking in its own right, and it would make a tolerably good sack to bear plunder away. Thorgrim nodded and Louis tossed the others, five robes in all, to the waiting men. He handed them the cords, which Thorgrim recognized as the rope belts the priests wore around their waists.
“There,” Thorgrim whispered. He pointed to various places around the interior where he could see silver glinting in the light. “And there. Go. Look in the shadows as well.”
They moved off, working in pairs, mostly, Thorgrim guessed, because none of them wished to be alone in this place. He headed up toward the main altar with Harald and Failend. He climbed the few steps to the raised area at the church’s far end and paused. He looked up over his head, up to where the upper reaches of the church were lost in the darkness.
It was magnificent, he had to admit. The intricate carvings of stone, the paintings depicting the Christian gods, or perhaps stories from the Christians’ beliefs, the statues painted so real they looked as if they might step off their pedestals. The Norsemen had nothing like this. They did not build such monuments to their gods. He wasn’t even sure that they could. He wondered if that angered Thor and Odin, if they were jealous of the Christ God.
He wondered who he could ask.
“Father?” Harald interrupted in a whisper. “Should we take this?” He gestured to the silver and gold pieces on the altar, the tall candleholders, gleaming with jewels.
“Yes, yes,” Thorgrim said. Harald was not so much asking as bringing Thorgrim’s mind back to the task at hand. He shook out his robe and laid it on the floor. “Get this lot,” he said. “I’ll get the things back there.”
He pushed past Harald, past the altar to the back of the church. Candlesticks of various heights stood like sentries, and in the middle, inset into the elaborate stone carvings, was a small door, not much more than a foot square, but lovely, made of silver and tricked out with ornamentation of gold and jewels. That door alone would make the raid on Glendalough worth the effort. He wondered what greater riches might be hidden behind it.
He took hold of the door’s small handle a
nd tugged and the door swung open. That surprised Thorgrim, as he assumed it would be locked in some manner. More surprising still, the small space behind, carved into the stone wall of the church, contained only a gold plate, and on it a half a loaf of bread.
Thorgrim shook his head. I cannot imagine what it is that these Christ men believe, he thought.
He reached in to grab the bread and toss it aside and take the plate, but he felt a hand on his arm. He turned. Failend was there beside him, her small hand resting on his mailed arm. She shook her head slowly, then reached in and picked up the gold plate. She walked back to the altar, which Harald had cleared of the various candlesticks and platters and chalices, and slid the bread off the plate onto the polished surface, seeming to take care never to touch it. Then she tossed the plate on top of the other things that Harald had piled on the linen garment on the floor.
Thorgrim watched her and made no protest. He found himself more mystified still by the Christian beliefs, but that was not really his concern at the moment. As long as the Christians believed that their gods wanted a church filled with silver and gold, that was all he needed to know.
He turned back to the small silver door. He put a hand under it and pushed up, hoping to wrench it from the hinges. It moved, just a bit, but remained securely spiked to the stone wall. He pushed again, then pulled down. It shifted a bit more.
Harald stepped up beside him, and without a word he put his hand next to Thorgrim’s on the bottom edge of the door. Together, father and son, they heaved up and felt the hinges buckling under the pressure. They put their hands on the top edge and pushed down and to their surprise the heavy door pulled free of its moorings and fell with a great clatter on the stone floor.
Thorgrim froze and Harald froze, and then slowly they turned and looked toward the front of the church. The rest of the men stood motionless, looking back, frozen in whatever stance they had been in at the moment that the door fell. They looked like the statues of the gods the Christians had set around the church. Thorgrim might have laughed if he was not so concerned that he had just announced their presence to all of Glendalough.
Night Wolf: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 5) Page 10