Chapter One
Year 687 Christian Era,Britannia, northeast coast
The sea bells were ringing.Caius,walking by the side of a shaggy pony who needed no leading thisclose to home, listened in wonder.The dunes were scattered withthem—fragile purple flower heads the children called hare’s bells,dancing in the wind.Twenty summers ago, a child himself, Caius hadheard them often.Then time had passed, and like all childhoodsongs, their music had vanished into the sounds of theworld.
He halted the pony on the crest of adune.From here, the whole coastal plain was laid out before him, along, wild stretch of salt flats and grassland that paralleled theglimmering sea until both melted into the distance.A vision ofheaven, on a spring day like this one.Drawing a deep breath, Caiuslet himself forget the long winters, when the gale swept downuntrammelled from the north, scouring every living thing to tattersin its frozen, sand-filled blast.He did love it here.Unlike hisfather’s stronghold in the hills, his new home stood unsheltered, acollection of low buildings on a small tidal island whose causewaytwice a day was sunk beneath the restless sea.
And the tides come highest atthe dark and full of the moon, because then both sun and moon lineup to pull the water.Caius smiled in pleasure at the memory of hislatest heretical lesson in astronomy, taught him in the darkenedchurch with an apple and a candle flame, Abbot Theodosius spinningthe round apple Earth by its stalk—yes, round!—and Caius and the other monks watchingopen-mouthed.Cai loved Theo’s teachings.There was nowhere else tolearn a thing other than farming and warfare in the whole of thisbleak northern land, not until you reached the monasteriesclustered round the River Tyne fifty miles to the south.Caicouldn’t regret the path he’d chosen.The eldest son of achieftain, he’d walked away from a rich inheritance of land andmen.But all old Broccus cared about was feasting, fornication andclobbering the daylights out of the warlords who occupied thehillforts next to his.
Here, the very soil was sacred.Cai was an uncertain convert to the new faith, but he could feelthat much, sense the rightness of the ancient name the tidal islandbore, a name like the yearning cry of a bird.It rose up in hisheart—FaraSancta.Theisland of the holy tide.Fara.
Movement in the distance caught hiseye.The trackway here was lined with odd green mounds.Theo taughtthat these were the burial places of men and women who’d lived herelong before Christians or old Roman warlords had ever been thoughtof, but sometimes Cai wondered if the local superstitions might betrue, tales of fairy creatures you should never name aloud as such,addressing them respectfully as the good folk, the kindly ones.Attwilight on the dunes, it was easier to believe in fairy tales thanhistory.And even in the brightness of noon, when a green moundstirred and a shape detached itself from the top, leapt down andbegan to stump towards him…
“Danan,” he called, hopinghe’d managed to conceal his nervous twitch.“Why must you lurkthere?”
“Where better to waylay abonny young monk on his way back from trading?”
Cai blinked, not quite trusting hisvision, though the air was crystalline.The old woman had anuncanny knack for covering ground.Cai remembered her as ancientwhen he’d been a baby in the hillfort stronghold, and she hadn’tseemed to age since then.Still, she was stooped and fragile, andhe couldn’t quite see how she’d closed the gap between them sofast.
“But I’m early,” he said,watching in amusement while she shamelessly began to open thepony’s baskets and leather sacks.“The weaver I was meant to meetat Traprain Law never came.How did you know I’d behere?”
“How do I know that theweather will change?How do I know where to find the snowboundlambs?What’s in this satchel here?”
“Don’t youknow?”
She stopped in her efforts to undo thesatchel’s thongs.She shot Cai a look of withering scorn andlaughter.“You’re a devil, Caius, even if you do wear a dress andsing songs to your new god.Is it beads?And gold?”
Cai affected to brush flies from thepony’s ears.He was glad of the reminder concerning his cassock,which he’d folded up into a pack in favour of his travelling gear,tough deerskin trousers and a homespun shirt.That was all verywell for the road, but now he was within sight of Fara, he’d bettersoon get changed.
“Perhaps it is,” he saidmysteriously.Danan had a weakness for finery.She never wore thejewellery she accumulated from traders and goldsmiths, and rumoursswirled that she kept them as a hoard for some dragon she’d tamedin the hills.“Perhaps I have old Roman blue glass and nicelywrought gold earrings hung with coral flowers.”
“Coral?Or just redenamel?”
Cai smiled.She’d taught him carefullyto know the difference.“Coral,” he said.“Pink asstrawberries.”
“And how will you tradethose amongst your joyless brethren at Fara?”
“I didn’t buy them for thebrethren.I bought them to trade with you—depending upon whatyou’ve got.”
She stamped her foot.“Vows ofpoverty,” she cried, shaking her badger-grey hair into a cloudaround her head.“Humility, charity.You’re as sharp a dealer asyour father, boy, for all your noble ideals.What is it you wish,then?What would you charge a poor old woman for your filthygold—or tin, I shouldn’t wonder, judging by the last sorry bargainyou made?”
“The usual.My medicalsupplies are running low.”Cai changed tack and gave her his mostcharming smile.He’d become Fara’s informal doctor in the two yearssince his conversion.He wasn’t quite sure how the role had creptup on him, except that the brethren had lacked a physician, andhe’d brought with him a steady hand and a knowledge of herbs gainedby tagging Danan around the fields.“Most of all I need the plantsand powders only you know how to find and prepare, Lady Danan.Theroots that give peace and help for pain.”
“Aye, aye.Very well.Turnyour back, boy, or see what no monk should.”
Cai turned briskly.Danan kept herwares stitched into little pouches secreted inside her voluminous,brightly dyed skirts.Once he hadn’t looked away fast enough, andthe sticklike limbs in rabbit-skin undergarments had haunted himfor days.He cleared his throat.“How is Broccus?Have you seen himlately?”
“Oh, the old fool’s wellenough.He’s got his latest girl with child, if you’ll believeit—another little step-sib for you, to add to the clan of themalready swarming round his regal mud huts.All right—you maylook.”
She’d done him proud.Eagerly he eyedthe array of vials and pouches she was setting out on the sunnyturf.He took the heaviest packs off the weary pony’s back and leftit to graze, settling beside the old woman on a stone.As alwayswhen they met to trade, she handed him the preparations one by one,carefully explaining their use, dosage, effects both good and ill.Extract of willow bark, to cool fevers and inflammation.Thepowerful juice of foxgloves, an aid to struggling hearts.A dozenharmless tonics, and finally a carefully stoppered bottle in thecloudy, thick glass the art of whose making Cai’s people had almostlost along with the occupying Romans, and were only slowlyrecovering now, for church windows and the most precious ofdomestic wares.Cai had seen the oily liquid inside the vialbefore.Essence of poppy, so sweet a remedy for sleeplessness insmall amounts.And in large… “Danan, I’m not sure I can buy thisfrom you.”
“That depends upon thebeauty of my earrings.”
“No.I mean I’m not surethat I ought.”
“Why not?You’ve taken itbefore.”
“Yes.I used it up insleeping draughts and tonics for the nerves.Then when BrotherGregory sickened with the tumour, I wished I’d had more,because…”
