Raef leaned past her toward Gemma. She had been wild against him before the priest came. “What do you know about truth?” he said. “What did your mother tell you?” He gave Laissa a sideways look.
Gemma cried, “Mama and I know Jesus. But she is two-faced.” Her head swiveled, and she gave Laissa a serpent’s glare. Then she whipped back to her father. Her cheeks shone red. “I am not. I will not live here until you kneel to Jesus and accept him as your Lord!” She turned and ran out the door, into the sunlight beyond.
Laissa wheeled after her, crying her name. Raef leaped down from the high seat. “You did this. You started this with her. Where did this priest come from? How did you get him here?”
She faced him, her mouth set and her eyes angry. “I know Jesus and did not leave you. This two-faced idea is just something new. She needs only to – to – see that Jesus loves everybody. And such talk as this will not bring her back. You know her mind; you can sway her, if you’d bend your stiff, kingly neck.”
“I don’t know her,” he said. “She’s shut herself off from me. Long ago. Now she’s gone. Because of this priest. Because of you.” Laissa turned and went out the door, stiff backed, after Gemma.
* * *
When Wulfstan came into the church on the Sabbath day, the long hall was only partly filled. The women he knew already stood at the front, but rapidly the rows behind them thinned until a long, open stretch lay before the door. Wulfstan said his homily, that certain signs portended the coming end of the world, and gave the message of the Mass, of hope and salvation and love.
The child Gemma especially moved him to a fatherly tenderness. She was pretty as a golden-headed dandelion. He would baptize her soon and give her a Christian name. After the Mass, she sat at his knee and soaked up the stories he told her. He began teaching her prayers, psalms, chants. He thought he would name her Maria, after the mother of God.
She opened her heart to him. She told him of her wicked, pagan father and of how he had kept her from her love, her foster brother, whom she had decided was a secret Christian, beat him, and then sent him away. Wulfstan told her of the higher marriage of the soul to Jesus and how she might become the bride of Christ.
He had not known there were many pagans in Jor’ck. It seemed the worst was this very father of his dandelion child.
Wulfstan was sweeping the little room behind the church where he lived when a man in a fine coat and a hat with fur trim came in. He took the hat off. He had thin red hair, and his front dogteeth stuck straight out. “Father,” he said, “welcome home to your church.”
His name was Goda; he was a butcher, but also a wool trader, and he sat on the town’s council. He had come from the council to swear their faith in God to him. Most of their faith. It took Wulfstan only a few minutes to discover the girl’s pagan father sat on this council too, and many thought he was some kind of wizard.
“He hasn’t been coming, though,” Goda said, “since the girl left. We’ve been doing it all. We’re all good Christian men. The sheepmen have formed a kind of company, and they – we – are talking about building a big hall in the town so we don’t have to sit under the oak tree and can keep out those we want out. I don’t think he’d come to that at all.”
“Are there other pagans in Jor’ck?”
“Maybe. A few, here and there. The church was long quiet here; many lost faith. They will come back. There’s no harm.” Goda crossed himself, looking around the walls, where ivy grew in through the corners. “It’s time to finish this church, anyway. Build a bell tower and a proper house for the priests. I’ve heard that the archbishop before you scratched out the plans somewhere.”
Wulfstan was thinking of the pagan, but Goda had cleverly led the talk away from him, and the idea of a bell tower seized him. “Bells call more people to Christ even than priests and monks.”
“Yes,” Goda said. “Yes. Many have long prayed for a true church here. We could lay aside some money. The city. And the sheepmen’s company.” Goda’s face was red, his blue eyes worried.
Wulfstan said, “It would take a quantity of money.” He crossed himself. This was the oldest church in England, but the one at Winchester was bigger. Even the one at Canterbury. He would build the finest church in England here. He wondered how much money the sheepmen of Jor’ck could give him.
More, he thought, if he cleansed them of this pagan wizard. Although it did seem Goda had brought the whole thing up to steer him off that track.
The next Sunday, there were more people at the Mass, and he preached another homily, this one about evil close at hand and the need to be on guard against the wiles of the devil.
* * *
Gemma said, “No, Mother, I am staying here. Or I will go with Miru.” She smiled at Miru, who shrugged; she had been putting up Raef’s strays for a long time. Laissa held the girl’s hands.
“You must see your father cannot be other than what he is.”
“Which is sinful and damned,” Gemma said, precisely. The priest’s very words. “How he treated Knut – I should have known then. I did know. I am never going home, Mama, until he has accepted Jesus and healed himself.”
Laissa flung her hands down and stalked away. Up by the altar Wulfstan had come out to pray. She almost started toward him. The little old man delighted her; his happy, wizened face; his wisps of white hair and broad, bare, homy feet; his kindness and love of God; and his learnedness – he had all the books in his head and knew all she had to know to become a perfect Christian. In him she loved all but this, how he turned Gemma against Raef.
How he and Gemma turned her against Raef.
She went around the corner of the altar rail and sat down on the step at the side, behind the stone bowl for the water blessing, where no one would see her. She shrank from thinking about this, but she had to do it. She caught herself starting to cross herself, and her hand froze.
She had been going to sign herself in the western way. She remembered, though, the other way, the way the Greeks did it, as she had grown up. How in Italy she had worked to change that habit, doing it over and over and over, lest she be stoned for a heretic.
Something was going on here that ran back past the archbishop. Always before, though, she had kept the cracks from showing.
She thought of Raef, sunk in thought, as he battled his demon, and of Gemma, gone down this flower path to Jesus. She missed them. She could not be with both of them. She turned her head against the hard wood of the altar rail and thought she must choose, and soon.
* * *
Leif came back and said, “They are both in the church.”
“Yes, yes,” Raef said. He was standing in the doorway, his shoulder against the frame. Leif put his hand on his arm and went past into the hall. Raef looked down into the city, grown so big now, that had eaten up his wife and daughter, and wondered if his time were passing, with his task undone.
* * *
The next Sunday, Wulfstan preached against the wizard directly. There were many more people in the church now, and he felt himself lifted by the spirit, his arms swaying as he talked of the devil’s tempting that had taken root here in Jor’ck, and of how the pagan had to be driven away or converted. The crowd surged up, agreeing, but then a woman in the front took a step forward.
“I will not hear this. I prayed you would come, but I regret that you did. My husband is not evil. This is evil, that you see as sin everything you did not already know.”
It was Laissa, who had so welcomed him. She turned and walked out, but the crowd pressed in close behind her, as if she had not been there. He stumbled only a moment in the homily. She had been one of his first, his dearest flock. And her friend Miru also was leaving. He saw with gladness that the girl Gemma stayed, her eyes shining at him, her hands clasped in prayer.
She cried, “I will pray for his conversion, Father.”
“Yes,” Wulfstan said. “Let us pray for the pagan to be saved.” His voice rose again, confident.
* * *
In the twilight Raef stood in the doorway to his hall, looking out, his arms folded, hiding his bad hand. People walked by in the street, men going home from the fields with their hoes and rakes, their dogs at their heels. Now and then, an older man nodded to him as he went past, but most ignored him.
He saw Leif coming toward him, smiling wide, but the fat old Icelander went by him without a word.
After him came Laissa. She walked slowly toward him up the road, her eyes on his face. As if she was uncertain how he would welcome her. He would have fallen at her feet if he had not been propped up against the hall. He saw in her the beautiful wild child she had been and the woman she was, more beautiful, still wild, and true. She came up to him, and he bent and kissed her, and they went into the hall together.
* * *
Every day Wulfstan preached against the pagan. He called the city back to Christ and reminded the flock that here was the oldest church in England and that it had to be made pure after long years unkempt. More people came to his sermons. Most of these, it seemed, were newcomers to Jor’ck; the older people stayed away. But there were many more newcomers, especially young people. And the girl Gemma was fiercest of them all.
“We must save the world, all the world, if it is to end so quickly,” she said once, and he pressed her hand, moved by her stout spirit and her love for all.
From the crowds came voices. “Tell us what to do. Tell us. Tell us.”
So he called them to witness with him. Easter was coming; he brought them all before the altar of his church, to swear that Jor’ck would be cleansed of pagans before the rising of the Lord. He said, “We will start with the man in the old King’s hall. He will convert—” he smiled at Gemma, “for the sake of love. Come.”
He took holy water and a cross and walked up the road toward the pagan’s hall. Some called this the King’s hall, but he knew that the last King of Jorvik had died years before. As he went up the stony hill, other people fell in around him and came after him.
The man Goda came rushing up, saying, “This is no good. This will do no good.” Wulfstan brushed by him.
“If you love this city you will join us.”
Goda dropped back. Wulfstan marched toward the hall, the great thatch looming up ahead and the oak tree beside it. Without looking back he knew a crowd followed him. And he had the Lord’s blessed water and the cross. When the door opened and the pagan came out, he did not falter.
He raised the cross. “What gods do you profess? Speak true!”
The pagan stood, his arms folded. He was missing an ear. His hands were strange. He looked not at Wulfstan but at the people behind him.
He said, “You ask this to trick me. You want only one answer.”
“You confess by your very refusal to confess. Choose Christ instead, I beg you. Now – become one of us, in the true Church.” Wulfstan took some of the water and sprinkled it on him. “Join us, in the true faith.” The water sparkled, but Wulfstan wasn’t sure if that was only because of the sunlight. The pagan ignored him, anyway, was looking at the people behind him.
“So,” the pagan said. “I see how it is. You’ve forgotten who did this for you. You’ve forgotten who opened the river, and made Uhtred kneel, and brought the trade back and the law, and raised Jorvik up again. Thus it goes. Do it yourselves. If you don’t want me, I don’t need you.”
He lifted his maimed left hand, as if he saluted them, and turned and went back inside the hall. The door shut. Wulfstan wondered what to do next. Before him the hall stood there, solid against the edge of the sky, closed against him.
Then the stone walls began to waver, like something seen through fire, and fade away.
The crowd let up a collective gasp. Wulfstan crossed himself; he spilled his holy water. Now before him on the hilltop where the hall had stood was nothing but a crumbled ruin, no two stones on top of one another, the grass blowing. Wulfstan gaped at this. The child Gemma screamed. The wind gusted, and the branches of the oak tree creaked as if dead.
* * *
The crowd drifted away, and after thoroughly dampening everything with holy water Wulfstan went home to his church. Gemma went back and forth around the min, climbing over rocks. She could find the hearth, even the min of a loom. She began to cry.
She had always thought she was running away from them. She had never imagined they would not be here when she wanted to come back. She could not find the way in; she felt the magic gone out of the world, the ordinariness gathering around her, the dull rocks and weeds and decaying wood. She went back out to the street. She remembered the shield she had made around herself. She had broken what bound her to this place. She had built some wall against that greater world. She did not deserve it anymore. She crossed herself and went down to the church, praying again to be allowed to be a nun.
* * *
Laissa said, “Can we go out?”
“Yes, do as you please. It’s just a little later. You can even—” he smiled, “go to church. Wulfstan won’t be there. Just remember where the door is; it may be hard to see from outside.” He flung himself down on the high seat, his long body awkward, all angles. “I need to think.”
She said, “What do you mean, later?”
“Never mind.” He looked down the hall.
Laissa could hear them, talking down there, as if nothing had happened: Leif, Edith, and a few others. She heard little Simon laugh, Edith’s son. Maybe nothing had really happened. Raef blurted, “I don’t know what to do now.”
Laissa did not see this was too much different than before either. He was always blundering along. She shrugged. Giving up the church made her see him clearly, and she felt nothing lost. Whatever he was, she loved him; she had faith in him. She needed something strong, and alive, not a wooden doll. When she went to the table and got him some ale, she saw the clump of red cloth on the floor by the high seat.
“What is this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “There was an old story. Corban had a coat.”
She sat on the edge of the high seat beside him and laid the red coat on her knees. Nothing had changed in here; they were “later” outside than in here, she thought. He had taken the hall back to the time before they came. She ran her hands over the red coat. The fiber was rotten and crumbling; as she stroked it, more of it shredded into fluff and dirt. Raef leaned on the arm of the high seat, watching her. Then she suddenly swung the coat up in the air, shook it hard, and showed it to him.
“Look.”
The coat was in separate pieces, but they did not fall away. Even when she shook it again the red patches, seeming unconnected, stayed in the form of a coat. She spread it on her knees.
“What kind of enchantment is this?”
“I don’t know,” he said. He was staring at the cloth in her hands, his face intent.
She ran her hands over the coat, slowly, feeling its surface with the pads of her fingers. After a while she took it down to her loom. The thatch overhead was gone now, leaving only the open sky, as if moving the hall out of the present had made the pretense unnecessary. The sun shone in: a little crooked, an older sun.
Shutting her eyes, she turned the coat over and over, wearing off the outer stuff, until she could feel the thread underneath. This was as fine as the breath of a fish, the footfall of a cat, as the old poem went, but when to keep it fast she wound a little around her finger, it tightened suddenly as if to bite her finger off.
She unwound it swiftly, her eyes opening. She could not see the thread, but she could see the red gash around her finger. She found a stick and wound the thread around that. It seemed not to tighten on the wood. Maybe it needed living flesh. Drank blood. Snake thread. She began to unravel the whole coat onto the bit of wood.
* * *
Raef lay wrapped in his bearskins, his wife in his arms, and wondered what he had done now.
It had been easier than he expected to hide the hall. He had only had to take it forward by two years, and it was gone.
He drew slowly, softly, away from Laissa so she wouldn’t waken and lay still, and shutting his eyes drifted into the light field. The deep blue surrounded him, rising and falling; he could not tell if the color was the music or the music was the color. He lay still in it, longing to let himself go into it forever.
It would not be forever. The Lady would end it, and soon.
He did what he had done before to know the future: he gathered and flung himself forward, deeper into the field.
Instantly his mouth, eyes, and ears were stuffed with stinking, foul, unbreathable smoke, and the shrieks of the Lady pierced him like needles; he could not move, as if he lay under a thousand feet of rock. The tidal draw of the light field pulled him back, and he opened his eyes, lying beside Laissa again, shaking.
He turned toward her; she had not roused but lay with one arm flung up beside her head, her hair all around her. He bent and kissed the place where her neck joined her shoulder, and she stirred, smiling, murmuring his name. He slid close to her, his arms around her, and buried his face in her hair.
Do not be afraid, Corban had said. You cannot be afraid. But he did not know how else to be.
* * *
Laissa sat at her loom and hung a warp of white wool, and then wove across it with grey wool, carrying along with this weft the invisible thread from Corban’s coat. Raef stood there watching her. Steadily the piece grew longer and very beautiful, but no matter what yarn she wove on, the color always came out red.
Chapter Twenty Eight
“There she is,” said the helmsman.
Knut said nothing. Under him the ship rocked easily along a wave. He stood by the mast crutch, staring west at the narrow shoreline, the faint blue rise of hills behind it. Something in him came unbound and flew: He had come back. It startled him how good that felt.
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