Raven of the Waves

by Michael Cadnum

  “I sleep easily,” said Aethelwulf. He stretched a hand and patted Redwald’s arm. “Lindisfarne is far from here. Look how bravely my student hears all this terrible news!”

  Wiglaf was pleased that his eyes betrayed none of his feelings. He would dream that night of strangers, he was sure of it, and throats cut with flashing swords.

  Redwald drank hard.

  “If you spent more time in your spear hall, you would have heard of this before,” the abbot chided gently.

  Redwald gave a pained laugh. “I heard talk of this before, from Lord Hunlaf. He’s a sightless old ring giver, but he hears everything. I chose not to heed.”

  “And is blind Hunlaf worried?” asked Aethelwulf. Hunlaf’s upriver village was called Beckford, because a horseman could cross the river there during dry late summer weeks. The folk of Dunwic, however, called the place Hunlafwic, because the old man had been lord there for over forty years.

  “Hunlaf says seafaring men would drown in our mud.”

  The abbot chuckled. “Hunlaf is a wise man.”

  “I’m off to the city again soon,” said Redwald. “King Aethelred loves to meet at the ale table, full of plans for river wharves and well roofs.”

  “Enjoy the city, Redwald, and all its charms.”

  The nobleman gave the abbot a guarded glance. “My place is at the king’s planning bench, good Father.”

  “Indeed it is. And we are safe.”

  Wiglaf crept over to Stag and stroked the dog. Stag was brave, Wiglaf knew, and would guard this holy place with his life.

  “Safe, under Heaven’s shield,” said the abbot.

  If only, thought Wiglaf, the good priest did not have that strained, uneasy note in his voice.

  6

  The late afternoon air was thick with smoke, the spice of manure, and the smell of wet thatch. The youth and the dog ran, Wiglaf avoiding puddles, the crook-jawed dog going out of his way to splash through them.

  Wiglaf knew that he bothered Father Aethelwulf with his questions, but he wanted to know everything about medicine so that when he was old and wise, like the father, he would be a great healer. Medicine, Wiglaf had learned, was in the hands, but it was also in the voice. A hurt man who believed he would recover was stronger than a man sweaty with fear. Father Aethelwulf stewed alder leaves for the bowel flux, but offered it with a kind word, and advised what prayers to murmur.

  Wiglaf knelt by Stag. “Hwaet!” he whispered. “Be still!”

  Stag’s crooked jaw made him look eternally happy, and perhaps he was. The little hamlet was quiet. Stonemasons muttered about the tethering in the crutch of a winch. One man swore by Saint Peter that it was tight enough, but another said he did not desire a mother stone intended for a corner of the tower to slip and make muck out of the limbs he had gotten up with that morning.

  It was late in the day, but with the easing of winter and the longer hours of light, the men were still working in the fields or hammering in their shops, each man responsible for the mending of his own adze, each wife for her own brewing, each ox for his own digestion.

  The sheep were in, the mud of the street unstirred by foot of man or beast. All the countryside was busy, except for Wiglaf. Wiglaf the tick. Wiglaf the bright-eyed, the spider. This was how he thought of himself. Wiglaf, the one who had to know and be alert and think, because he was not strong.

  He was quick across the road, up to where the rolling cooking smoke flowed from the long white cottage with its peaked thatched roof.

  He knelt in the doorway. He had street mud on his shoes, and he could not pretend to anyone that he was anywhere but where he was. Wiglaf made a whistle, sounding no note, only a long, thin wind.

  A figure turned. The inside of the cot was smoke. It was always smoke, so that most people crept in the floor straw to avoid weeping because of the haze. The smoke found its way up out of a hole in the roof and out of the open, empty holes of the windows.

  The figure rose through the smoke to the white rectangle of smoke around the door. Wiglaf held his breath. “I came to see you,” he said before he knew who it was, and then a hand fell to his shoulder.

  “Good Wiglaf, out of the books and into the mud,” said Forni, one of the twins—his favorite brother, the one whose kicks had been mere jokes and had never hurt. “You’ve come back at a bad time to avoid a beating, Wig. Father is still furious about the bull, which has just now broken its tether. He’s madder still that Lord Redwald spied the beast out in the water.”

  Wiglaf was pleased to hear Forni’s voice.

  “Mother’s out there too. She heard Father bellowing. I’ve never seen him angrier, and if he sees you again today, he’ll thump the brains right of here.” Forni tapped Wiglaf’s head with his finger.

  “Mother’s no doubt been mending rope,” said Wiglaf. “She does that while the dough swells. Check her window box.”

  Forni disappeared into the smoke, and then his silhouette eclipsed the distant window. The leather hinge of a chest creaked.

  “Wiglaf the quick wit,” said Forni, flourishing a rope. “Wiglaf the ever right. Wiglaf quicker than a flea. How did you know we had new rope hidden away?”

  “Tie the bull with it,” said Wiglaf. “Father will be pleased.”

  Their father entered the room, a grin cracking his muddy face. “I don’t need this new handwork,” he said. “I mended the old rope on the very spot, dear Forni. Between you and your brother, a goodwife could make brain mash enough for a finch. And you, my wandering cripple, my lord’s gift to the house of God, what brings you to see me twice in one day?”

  “Redwald and Aethelwulf have been sharing secrets,” said Wiglaf.

  His father found a three-legged stool and sat, his elbows on his knees.

  “What sort of secrets, dear Wiglaf?” he asked.

  There was no one more hige-thitig—stouthearted—than his father, and perhaps his family would not need a warning after all. And besides, Wiglaf wondered, wasn’t it wrong to repeat what he had heard at the churchman’s table?

  “Leave him.” A broad woman swept by them. “Leave him; he’s come to see us, and you needn’t cause him hurt.” She marched to the fire and stirred the soup—barley and turnip, judging by the smell—with a wooden paddle.

  Wiglaf’s father reached a hand and placed it on Wiglaf’s head.

  “Strangers burned a house of churchmen,” said Wiglaf, “on the coast last year.”

  His father removed his hand from Wiglaf’s head.

  It was extremely bad luck to mention certain things, or to say certain words. No one ever spoke of Morcar, the eldest brother of Wiglaf and the twins. Morcar had broken a leg only last summer, striding home at dusk, his foot caving in a mole’s tunnel, his shin giving like a rotted stick. His leg had turned the color of land, and his tongue had turned black. He had swollen like an oak gall and died. No one ever mentioned the walkers in the night, wood spirits and earth giants and the evil beings who killed travelers.

  It was warm in the cot after the wind of the open field, and Wiglaf coughed. All of them busied themselves with opening a chest or tucking straw into place, preoccupied with Wiglaf’s news, unsure how to respond.

  Sigemund eyed his family: the two horselike twins and the bulk of a woman who had given him such pleasure and such day in-day out annoyance. And the little mouse of a lad—taller now, though, and quick-eyed. Not so much a mouse now, but something else. This was his family, and despite his hard nature he loved them. “I have heard,” he said. “But I thought it was market gossip.”

  “The good abbot believes it’s true,” said Wiglaf. “Strangers burned the buildings and stole holy gold.”

  His father laughed. “Where did all this horror happen, Wiglaf?”

  “At Lindisfarne.”

  “Where is that?”

  “Off the coast,” said Wiglaf, uttering words the meaning of which he did not entirely understand. He had never seen the coast, or the sea.

  His father laughed. “That ha
s nothing to do with us, lad.”

  Eadgifu poked the belly of the dough. It puckered like a navel, and then the dimple healed. She thanked Saint Giles that her husband had not struck dear Wiglaf. It had made her sick in her bones when he struck her youngest son all those years. When Lord Redwald had taken Wiglaf away, it had been a golden day. She had wept with happiness. She missed Wiglaf. Anyone would miss the boy—he was like a summer morning—but he was safe, and only a walk across the road and down a field would bring him here for a wedge of bread.

  Sigemund drank deeply from his ale cup. “You get filled with words and pictures sitting around listening to a churchman,” said Wiglaf’s father. “Father Aethelwulf has a good heart, but little field sense. And Lord Redwald is well enough, in his way, but what do these men know about a strong arm and a hungry ax?”

  The twins left to call the cows. Their falsettos reached through the walls, almost like song.

  “We have many stonemasons here in the village,” said Sigemund.

  Wiglaf’s mother knew that a dozen stoneworkers lived in the spear hall, and all of them were from far away, up the river from the city, or even beyond that. They had strange accents. Who knew what harm might come from the evil-eye glance of a strange man upon a pregnant woman? Still, they added strength to the small collection of villagers.

  “Those stories of terrible things in faraway places should not worry your mother. Look at her—already afraid! Don’t give Wiglaf’s stories a thought, wife. He’s been listening to church prattle.”

  New things were rare and unimportant. What was handed down, from mother to daughter to daughter, achieved value by all the lives it spoke for. Eadgifu had a precious jet brooch she kept in a birch-wood chest in the corner. It was the sole treasure this peasant family had worth stealing.

  Wiglaf’s mother knew all the charms by heart. She knew the magic to keep a bee swarm from traveling far (Take earth, cast it with your right hand and say …) and she knew land remedies, both the one for pastureland and the one for plough land. She knew the charms for winning a lover, how to think of your beloved as you uncovered the moon before your eyes and hope that you dreamed of him that night.

  But in the face of disturbing tidings from far away, there were only the saints to seek for help. She said that Heaven would protect them from the Devil and from blood-lusting strangers.

  “Of course Heaven will,” said Wiglaf’s father.

  “Don’t you think a stoneworker would be like stone?” said Wiglaf’s mother, smiling at Wiglaf.

  “Unforgiving?” offered Wiglaf.

  “No, that’s not what I mean. Strong.”

  “So a man who herds sheep would be sheeplike,” joked Wiglaf.

  “And a man who lives in a monastery would turn dark and damp,” said Wiglaf’s father. This playful speech was a favorite game among the folk of Dunwic, each one trying to outdo the other. Wiglaf believed his father, for all his roughness, was nearly as shrewd as Father Aethelwulf, though not half as wise or merciful.

  His father began telling the old story of the dragon that lived in an aldwark, an ancient stone ruin, and how a man from Dunwic had killed the fiery beast with a wood ax. “Cut him head and spine,” said Sigemund, lifting his own ax from its place against the wall and letting the firelight play along its edge. “And so I’ll cleave the head of any stranger,” he added, showing his yellow teeth. “I wish they would come soon.”

  7

  Aethelwulf and Redwald still sat in the light from a beeswax candle when Wiglaf returned that evening. The scent of the honey wax and the light were precious to Aethelwulf, like the love he felt for his Savior.

  Redwald and Aethelwulf ate the roast cockerel and drank brown ale. They drank mead, and they drank from a silver pitcher of Rhône wine. Redwald enjoyed speech sport as much as any man in Dunwic, and he asked Wiglaf if the lad had heard any new riddles.

  “One or two, my lord.” It was both polite and wise to wait for a ring giver like Redwald to offer permission, especially when one was seeking to baffle him in a game.

  “Go on,” urged Redwald.

  “I am cut, polished, stirred, dried, bleached, softened—”

  “Too easy, Wiglaf. The answer is ale.”

  “You tell one, then,” prompted the abbot.

  “I believe I shall. A crafty one indeed. My nose is downward. As I travel on one side, all is grassy; on the other track, gleaming black—”

  “A riddle fit for a child,” laughed Aethelwulf. “A plow. Everyone knows that.”

  Wiglaf said that he knew yet another, one Brother Aelle had told him.

  “Brother Aelle knows a riddle?” said Aethelwulf.

  “A foe stole my life. He dipped me in hot sun where I shed my hair. A bird’s joy and power sprinkled me over with meaningful drops. It made frequent tracks with its swallowed tree dye—”

  Redwald lifted a hand in mock surrender. “A monkish riddle, and I’ll never guess it.”

  “A book, my lord!” said Wiglaf.

  Redwald laughed, and then said, “But I know nothing of books. They are always in Latin, every verse, and I have a head only for the English tongue, which only a monk would ever write down.”

  Wiglaf listened in fascination as the two men began gossiping about the women of Fulford, a town of lascivious female folk, shameless as mares in heat, just outside the big city itself. “Pray for the souls of these women,” said Redwald. “And for the souls of the poor sinners who have to pass by their village on the way to see the king.”

  Aethelwulf did not like to hear of such sinful bed play. And yet it did have a certain curious wonderment to it, an entire village of such fallen beauties. “And you have to ride through this town, my good Lord Redwald—there is no other route?”

  “I ride north again in a day or two, back to another hall counsel, and my path will take me straight through this town of dazzling sinners.”

  “How terrible for you,” said Aethelwulf.

  “It is a strain, good Father,” he agreed, with a wry smile. “A challenge indeed.”

  But both of them knew there were dangers in the wild spaces, descendants of Cain or children of Hell. This was why timber-stout walls were built, and why good men and women lived together. The threat of sinful women was a trifling matter.

  “When I was young I used to converse with Alcuin the great scholar,” said Aethelwulf. “I had much to unlearn. I was as lusty as any hay cutter during the long summer twilights. I thought that dipping my goose-quill pen in oak-gall ink would cure me of lust, spending long hours writing holy texts.”

  “And did it?”

  Rain breathed against the shuttered window. The candle flame shivered. Aethelwulf gathered his robe around him. “Lust is a sin, Redwald,” he said. “But the greatest sin is not to trust God.”

  “Indeed, I put my faith in Heaven,” said the nobleman.

  “When you see the king again—” Aethelwulf was about to say, Ask for shields and spears and helmets. Ask for chain mail and sword gloves. But instead he said, “Give him my blessing.”

  The abbot saw the drink-sodden Redwald onto his horse, Wiglaf helping the nobleman into the saddle. The lord’s hall was a not a long ride through the night, and Redwald had been known to drink a goatskin of red wine at one sitting, and then ride all night to the king’s table.

  “I’ll tell of the church tower, how it rises skyward,” said Redwald, gesturing into the dark. “In the great city walls I sing of the glory of Dunwic,” he half chanted, sounding like a tale sayer. Redwald was very drunk indeed. His horse splashed off into the darkness.

  “Wiglaf, you will show me to my bed,” said the old priest. “My eyes are not as keen in darkness as they used to be. And I am weary from a day of study.”

  “And perhaps, Father, the Rhône wine argued with the ale in your belly,” said Wiglaf with a certain politeness.

  “A physician should learn of such things,” said Aethelwulf.

  The abbot woke in the night and without wonderin
g why, groped for his staff. There was no reason to expect it beside his bed. But when he could not find it he sat up and crept toward the wall to the place where it was leaning.

  Such a terrible dream! Aethelwulf struck the span of ash wood on the stone floor. The staff made a ringing whisper.

  He was a man of God, but in his youth he had handled an ax with skill. He stood in the darkness, holding his staff like a weapon. Could I now, wondered the priest, lift my arm and strike a man, knock him to the ground?

  Could I fight hard enough to save the lives of the people I love?

  8

  Wiglaf read in a clear, careful voice.

  Aethelwulf had never been a compassionate person in his early years but now, after decades of study and effort, he had become exactly what he had hoped to be: loving, and at peace. Saint Benedict had taught that to work was to pray. Now Aethelwulf believed that on some blessed days, to breathe was to pray.

  Wiglaf was struggling through the lives of the saints. This was a precious book, one of the most holy in the abbey. The boy read of Erkengota, a saint whose corpse had exuded a balsamlike odor. He read of Dismas, the good thief, who died with Our Lord. And he read of Giles, the patron saint of cripples. That holy man had lived in solitude in a forest, and had been wounded by an arrow intended for a hind.

  The boy stumbled on a word. “Excepit,” said Aethelwulf. “Excipere—you remember, surely.”

  “‘Capture,’” said Wiglaf.

  “Very good. ‘To capture.’ And that’s ferum, ‘wild animal.’ They are hunting the wild deer, the hind, with a saevo cane—a fierce dog.” He gave a quiet laugh. “Perhaps it’s as fierce as Stag.”

  Wiglaf could learn as quickly as Aethelwulf could teach. It was a challenge, and Aethelwulf relished it. In his old age he had discovered this joy. As the boy read the handsome Latin sentences, the storied archer raised his weapon.

  The arrow left the ignorant hunter’s bow and pierced the saint.