From somewhere beyond the walls they heard a bell tolling. “That is the bell calling the monastery to compline,” Louis whispered. “Time to go. Over by where the wounded were laid out, I saw some of those monk’s robes, the long brown ones. Do you think you can get two of them?”
Harald nodded. He handed the candle to Louis and slipped out of the room, moving quietly across the stone floor of the church. He waited for someone to call his name, ask what he was doing, but no one did. No one seemed to notice him, or if they did, they did not seem to care what he was about.
He found the robes, tucked them under his arm and made his way back to the room behind the altar and still no one challenged him. He handed one of the robes to Louis, who slipped it on over his head and over his tunic and sword. Harald did the same, pulling the rough wool cloth over his mail shirt and tugging it down. It would be very awkward indeed if he had to draw his sword, but apparently Louis’s plans did not involve fighting.
Once they had the robes settled, and the hoods up over their heads, Louis bent down and ran his hands along the painted wood section of wall. His fingers found a grip, painted to look like a gap between stones. He grabbed it and pulled and the door swung in a bit. Harald felt the cool evening air on his face.
Louis looked up and pointed to the candle and Harald blew it out. “Here we go,” Louis whispered. “Let me speak to whoever we run into.”
“Very well,” Harald whispered. Then Louis pulled the door open another foot, and half crawling, ducked through the space, with Harald right behind.
It was like waking from a dream, coming from a world of sleep into the world of the living, stepping though that small opening. The cool night air wrapped itself around them, and there were torches burning far off, casting patches of light on the buildings in the monastery.
There were men-at-arms, spears leveled, standing five feet away.
“Hey!” one of the soldiers cried, the surprise and the fear audible in his voice. There was light enough that Harald could make out the man’s outline, and that of the man next to him, could see light glinting off a polished iron helmet.
“Peace! Peace!” Louis said. He had his hands raised and Harald did the same. The soldier took a step closer, but remained a far spear-thrust away. Louis made the sign of the cross. “Oh, it is God’s blessing you are here!”
“Who are you?” the soldier demanded. “Northmen?”
“No, I’m not a Northman, would a Northman speak your tongue?” Louis asked, his tone indicating how stupid he thought that question to be. “I’m Brother Louis, this is Brother Roumois.”
The soldier took another step closer and leaned in a bit, as if trying to get a better look at them. “You don’t sound like a Christian,” he said.
“We’re Frankish priests,” Louis explained. “Not Irish. We were studying in Glendalough. We came to Ferns on a pilgrimage.”
Harald could see the soldier squinting as he peered at Louis. “What are you doing here, coming out of this door like that?” the spearman asked. He was not buying Louis’s words entirely, but from his tone he seemed to be not dismissing them outright, either.
“We were at prayers when the heathens came bursting in,” Louis explained. “We hid in the sacristy. The heathens are all half-drunk now, on the wine they found. We waited until then, until it was dark, to get out by this secret way.”
“How did you know about this secret way?” the soldier asked.
Louis sighed and let his hands drop. “Because we are priests and the others told us the secrets of this church,” he said. “See here, if you are in doubt, go ask Brother Bécc, who will tell you the truth of my words.”
The soldier frowned, glanced around. “Brother Bécc’s at compline,” he said.
“Of course he is,” Louis said. “And that’s where we need to be, so I beg you put your spear up and let us go. We’ll see Brother Bécc after prayers and get this straightened out.”
The soldier stepped back and lowered his spear, satisfied, apparently, with that explanation. “Very well, you go,” he said. Louis raised his hand and gave what Harald guessed was some sort of blessing and then he hurried on, Harald at his heels.
They walked on in silence, setting a deliberate pace as if they knew where they were going. Once they rounded the corner of the abbot’s house, hidden from the view of the soldiers, they stopped.
“That worked better than I hoped,” Louis said.
Harald felt as if he had been holding his breath since they had ducked through the small door. He breathed deep and nodded.
“I suppose you mean to kill Airtre in a fight, am I right?” Louis said.
“Of course,” Harald said.
“This would be much easier if you would just sneak in and murder him in his sleep, you know,” Louis said.
“I can’t do that.”
“Of course not,” Louis said, half agreement, half resignation. “Very well, we must find where Airtre is sleeping, and then we’ll figure the next thing after that.”
“How do we find him?” Harald asked.
“We listen,” Louis said. He waved Harald on and they walked past the abbot’s dwelling and further into the monastery. The big, round houses with their conical thatched roofs loomed ahead, just visible against the sky, and with some difficulty they managed to follow the beaten dirt roads.
Louis stepped into a dark place near one of the buildings and held his hand up and he and Harald stopped. Louis took the hood off his head and Harald did as well, though he did not know why. Louis cocked his ear toward the distance.
At first Harald heard nothing, only the great blanket of night silence that had settled over the place. But then, as he strained to listen, he heard an odd, rhythmic, musical sound. He turned his head toward it. Voices. Chanting. He could hear the sound but not the words, and he suspected he would not understand the words in any event.
“That is compline,” Louis said. “They would have normally had it in the church, but I guess they didn’t want to disturb you heathens.”
“You think Airtre will be there?”
Louis shrugged. “Probably. I don’t know if he’s a man of God, but if he’s hoping to win the favor of Bécc and the abbot, he would at least pretend to be.”
Louis put the hood back over his head and headed off toward the sound. “We should try to not be seen,” he said. “It would seem odd that we’re not at prayers with the others.”
They kept close to the side of the building, sticking to the darker places on an already dark night. The sound of the prayers came and went, but Louis seemed to have an idea of where they were coming from, and he led them unfailingly in that direction. Finally he stopped again, crouching low behind a wattle fence, and Harald did the same. They raised their heads and peered cautiously over the top.
There was another rectangular stone building about forty feet away, much like the church but smaller. There were windows high up, and Harald could see light coming through, the light of the torches or lanterns or candles or whatever the Irish were using to illuminate the interior. They could hear the chanting again.
“This must be a chapel or some such,” Louis said.
“What is a ‘chapel’?” Harald asked.
“Like a small church. We’ll wait until they’re done, and if Airtre is there, we’ll try to follow him back to wherever he is making his quarters.”
“And then what?”
“I have no idea,” Louis said. “I guess we’ll see if your gods will help you with this quest. I’m quite certain my God will not.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Bringer of death in battle,
from words spoken by poets,
take and learn only what is good…
Gisli Sursson’s Saga
It seemed to Harald that whatever ceremonies the Christ men were performing were taking an awfully long time. Just when he was certain they must be finished there would come more chanting, or the sound of a single voice speaking in some language that
did not sound like Irish. There were bells ringing every now and then.
“How much longer will this go on?” he whispered to Louis, unable to contain his impatience a moment longer.
Louis said nothing, just nodded his head toward the building and made the gesture that the Christ worshipers made, touching his forehead and stomach and both shoulders. Then they stood and Louis pushed Harald gently back into the shadows and stepped back himself, and from there they watched across the way.
A door opened and two of the Christ men came out, dressed in the same sort of robes as Harald and Louis wore. They were holding torches aloft, and the flames threw odd moving shadows on the rough stone of the building and made pools of light around their feet. Two more torchbearers came next, then behind them a procession of men in robes, and then others in robes with white garments draped over their shoulders.
Behind the holy men of the monastery came people in the clothes of the laymen, but clean and rich-looking, signs of wealth. And men-at-arms as well, with mail shirts reflecting the light.
“There,” Louis said, whispering. “The man who just came out, that’s Brother Bécc. Airtre is beside him.”
Harald studied the men and saw Louis was right, at least about Airtre. He had never seen Brother Bécc, would not recognize him, but even from that distance he could see that the man’s face had suffered some damage, just as Thorgrim had described to him.
They waited until the people leaving the chapel walked off in various directions before stepping from the shadows and following after Airtre and Bécc, walking with the surety of men with purpose who knew where they were going.
Airtre and Bécc were not alone. Two men-at-arms led the way, torches held aloft, and behind them four spearmen followed, two abreast. Harald guessed this was for show, a display of the men’s importance. After all, they could not expect to be in danger walking across the grounds of the monastery. To the best of their knowledge all the heathens were securely trapped in the church.
“We can take them now,” Harald whispered. “Come on them by surprise, we could kill the guards before they even draw their swords.”
“No,” Louis said. “Airtre would run before you got to him, or summon more men. We must be more clever than that.”
Harald said nothing, but he was not entirely pleased with that answer. He tended to be suspicious of the clever approach, preferred action that was more direct. But Louis had got them that far, so he figured he would follow the man’s lead for at least a little while longer.
The small parade surrounding Airtre and Bécc came at last to one of the large, round wattle buildings. The torch men stood on either side of the canvas-covered door which Airtre and Bécc pushed through. The spearmen behind them moved off in another direction, back to where the foot soldiers were bedded down, Harald assumed. He and Louis paused in a dark place beside a small stable and watched.
Once Bécc and Airtre had disappeared inside, the torchbearers rolled the burning ends of their torches on the ground until the flames were out. They laid the torches down and then they, too, headed off to wherever they would spend the night. A deep quiet settled over the monastery once more. And once more Harald felt like a dog that had come to the end of the rope around its neck and was able to go no farther.
The two of them watched and waited for what seemed like a very, very long time, but there was nothing to see, nothing to hear, no movement of any kind. If they were the last two living things in all the monastery it could not have been more still. Finally Louis spoke.
“This bird will not fly on its own,” he said. “I think we must flush it out of the bush.”
“I agree,” Harald said. “He’s fast asleep, I’ll warrant.”
“Sleeping the sleep of the innocent,” Louis said. “So, how do we flush him out?”
“Among the Northmen, if we want to get people out of a house, we usually set it on fire,” Harald said.
Louis nodded. “Simple, direct. That would work, I think. Let’s do that.”
They stepped from the shadows and looked in every direction but still could see nothing moving. No doubt the guards encircling the church where the Northmen were holed up were wide awake and quite alert, but the rest of the monastery, thinking their enemies were sealed up tight, seemed to be taking its ease.
Harald and Louis walked across the open ground. They picked up the torches that had been left on the ground and examined the ends, hoping to find embers, something that could be coaxed into a flame, but there was nothing.
“Maybe a lamp inside,” Louis said, and before Harald could reply, and to his astonishment and horror, Louis drew back the canvas cloth over the door and disappeared into the building. A moment later he was back, a small clay oil lamp in his hand, a weak flame dancing at the end.
“See, in and out, unseen. I told you it would be easier if we could just murder him in his sleep,” Louis said as Harald held his torch end in the flame. He rolled it back and forth until the charred cloth began to catch, and soon there was a satisfying ball of flame at the end of the three-foot handle.
Louis picked up the other torch and lit that from Harald’s. They glanced around one more time. No one. Harald ran around to the west side of the building, Louis to the east. They touched the flames to the thatch as they went, and when at last most of the edge of the roof was well lit they tossed the burning torches as high up on the roof as they could, then trotted back to the shadowy place by the stable.
For some time the flames climbed up the roof, engulfing more and more of the thatch, and no one inside or outside the house seemed to take any notice.
“Vigilant bastards, no?” Louis said.
“Guess they feel safe,” Harald said. But if so, that feeling did not last much longer. From somewhere off to the west they heard a single voice cry out, and then another, and right on the heels of those cries the night seemed to burst into chaos. From three directions men came running at the round wattle house. They beat at the spreading flames and pulled at the thatch where they could, trying to jerk it free from the rest of the roof. They were black silhouettes against the brilliant orange flames and they looked like some ancient tribe dancing around the fire of their gods.
It was only then that the people inside the house understood the danger as well. The canvas cover over the door was ripped down and the men inside came pouring out. Most seemed to be men-at-arms, the captains of the two armies. They wore only the leines in which they had been sleeping and they staggered like drunken men as they stumbled out of the burning building.
“There’s Airtre,” Louis said, nodding toward the group of men who had come from the burning house and now stood in a group watching the flames grow, as others fought to put them out and more and more men ran to join them.
“Let’s get closer,” Louis said. “No one will notice us in all this.” They stepped away from the stable and half-ran toward the burning building. From thirty feet away they could feel the heat on their faces, and the crackling and roaring of the fire seemed to drown out any other noise, save for the occasional shout from one of the men wrestling with the thatch.
They stopped fifteen feet away from Airtre and Bécc, who stood in the middle of a cluster of men. Both Airtre and Bécc held their swords and belts in hand, having apparently snatched them up as they ran from the building. Now Airtre strapped his belt around the leine in which he had been sleeping and let the sword hang at his side.
As Louis predicted, no one paid them the least attention. Nor were they the only ones dressed in the manner they were. Even Bécc was wearing the long brown robe of his new calling.
“They’re out of the house,” Harald said, just loud enough for Louis to hear, “but now we need to get Airtre off to some place where I can kill him. It may take me a few moments to do it.”
“Very well,” Louis said, but before he could say more he heard Bécc call to the men around him.
“This is the heathens’ doing, I know it!” Bécc shouted. “I don’t know how, but
somehow they’ve done this. I must go see all is well at the church!” With that Bécc ran off, a few of his men following behind.
“You remember that place by the chapel, the open ground where we watched compline?” Louis said, and Harald nodded.
“Go there and wait. I’ll tell Airtre we’ve found some of his men there, drunk, and we think it was them who lit this fire. Airtre will not want anyone else to know, he’ll come with me to see, I’ll wager.”
“You think he’ll believe you? Come with you?”
Louis shrugged. “I can only try.”
“But Airtre knows you,” Harald argued. “You were with my father and the others when they took him from his camp, weren’t you?”
“Yes, but it was dark then and it’s dark now. He won’t remember. And I can’t think of any other plan. So go.”
Harald nodded. No time to think of better. Once the chaos of the fire subsided they would not get another chance. In the dark he retraced the route he and Louis had taken when they followed behind Bécc and Airtre and their entourage.
He came at last to the place Louis suggested. It was dark, the various buildings surrounding the area just darker places in the night. That would make it hard to fight, and easier for Airtre to slip away.
Then Harald noticed the chapel. He could see a dull glow of light from the windows, suggesting that lanterns or candles had been left burning inside. The dimmest of light, probably, but light nonetheless. He trotted across the open area and pushed the door to the chapel open.
It was like all of the Christ temples he had been in
, which were not many. The space was about fifty feet long, thirty feet wide, a big open floor covered with rushes. The far end was raised a few feet above the rest, and the altar was there and several tall candle holders and a book on a stand. A statue stood against the far wall and a half dozen candles flickered in front of it, providing the weak light Harald had seen.
They light fires to their gods, just like we do, Harald mused. He looked around. This would do. They would be hidden from view here, and there was no place for Airtre to run.
Loch Garman: A Novel of Viking Age Ireland (The Norsemen Saga Book 7) Page 35