“Because you’d havereleased him?”
“Yes.I was afraid I would.And surely life and death are in God’s hands.”
“Is that what they teachyou?How did Gregory die?”
Screaming and blaspheming,after a life of perfect sanctity.Cai looked away.He hadn’t asked to becomephysician to the Fara brethren, but he took his duties seriouslyand hated to fail.“I will take the poppy.”
“In that case, I will takemy jewels.”
He unpacked the satchel and watchedwhile Danan transformed from wisdom-filled herbalist to cacklingcrone.She snatched up the rose-pendant earrings and dangled themfrom her shrivelled lobes, wrapped the beads around her head in alopsided crown and danced on the spot, piping out a wordless,tuneless chant.Cai let her get on with it, gathering up hispurchases.
He frowned and shook his head.Thehare’s bells were ringing once more, their silver whisper-musicincreasing as if in response to the old woman’s song.“Lady Danan,can you hear that?”
She didn’t interrupt her dance.Her eyes were closed, her expression blissful.“Of course I can.”Then she froze.She swung on him.“Canyou?”
“Yes.I think so.Something.”
“Ah, that’s not for mortalears.”
Her own looked far from divine inthose earrings.Cai grinned.He slung his packs across the pony’sback, checking to see the heavy grain bags hadn’t rubbed the beastsore.“What is it, then?”
“It means something.Something.”She scampered up the side of the green mound closest to the trackand stood there swaying, scenting the air.Cai waited.She wasprone to sudden bursts of prophecy, mostly too vague to be useful,sometimes clear and starkly accurate.“Ah.”She clapped her hands.“Yes.Yes.Thevikingrare coming.”
Cai shivered.He had no ideawhat they called themselves, the raiders from beyond the northernsea, whose dragon-head boats had haunted the shores of hischildhood for as long as he could remember.Cai’s people and thebrethren used the word picked up from traders to the south, some ofwhom ventured west to do business with the less ferocious Saxonsoverseas—vikingr, the pirates.The final R was awkward to local tongues andoften got dropped.The meaning was forgotten, too, subsumed in theterror the name could evoke.Not just pirates—a race, a force, animplacable visitation from hell.The Vikings… “They always come,”he said uneasily.“Not yet, though.It’s too soon in the year.Thestorms are still bad.”He took the pony’s rein.“Anyway, theyalways sail past us at Fara.We’re too poor to botherwith.”
“Things have changed.Youhave something they want.They will come.”
Fire, burned-out villages, womenstumbling round the charred remains in search of vanished children…Cai shook off the memories.He’d ridden with his father through thecoastal settlements on mornings after raids, smelling smoke andblood, Broccus grimly assessing the damage and giving such aid ashe could.“Not yet,” he repeated flatly.“No.”
“Can you hear the musicanymore?”
Cai listened.All he could hear wasthe anxious thud of his own heart and the stir of the wind in thedune grass.“No.Wait, though… Yes.”
“That’s your own churchbell, foolish boy.Seems you’ll miss your lunch.”
Cai smiled in relief at the rough,ordinary sound.Theo had done his best to introduce Hours, theelegant rhythms of monastic life—matins, lauds, prime and the rest,dividing the day into twelve equal parts—for the spiritual andtemporal regulation of his community, but it hadn’t worked on Fara.Cai’s brethren were subsistence farmers, out in far-flung fieldsall day, tending such livestock and crops as they owned.Now thebell rang twice a day—once at noon and once at dusk, announcingfood was ready for those close enough to come and eat.“That’sprobably what I was hearing.”
Danan looked down at him.Herexpression was gentler than usual.There was a trace of pity there,a sorrow whose source Cai couldn’t read.“Yes,” she said.“Probablythat was all.”
“I have to go.”
“Yes.Be well, Cai.Just…listen for the music of the sea bells when you can.Listen forit.”
He shrugged.“I will.Goodbye,Danan.”
He was almost at the foot of the dune,the pony trudging patiently at his side, when she called to himagain.“Caius.”
He turned, shielding his eyes from thesun.She was weirdly outlined by it, her shape seeming to coruscateand shift.She could have been a girl standing there, or a proudyoung woman.“Caius, your father grieves for you.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Caishouted back cheerfully.“He threw me out when I converted.Disinherited me too.”
“Nonetheless.”
“He told me to keep mycastrated Christian carcase out of his sight until I’d learned whata real man was.So I shall.You can pass that on to him when younext see him—if he’s still grieving, that is.”
Cai strode on briskly, the ponybreaking into a resentful trot beside him.He always felt betterwhen he’d restated, to himself or anyone else, his reasons forleaving Broccus and the hillfort far behind him.Broc regarded anyform of learning as a pitiful waste of time.He lived for hunting,bloodshed and noisy copulation with the endless stream of women hebought from slave dealers or stole along with cattle from hisneighbours during raids.Cai had had to get away.And he had toremember the bad things, because the stupid truth was that Caigrieved for his father too.
They were so alike.That was thetrouble.Broc could be forgiven for thinking his firstborn son, whoresembled him in every detail, would have followed in his rampagingfootsteps.Coal-black eyes, hair to match.Strong frames saved fromsquatness by a length of well-nourished bone carried somehow downthe line from Broc’s Roman ancestors, soldiers who’d mannedHadrian’s great wall in the last days of the empire, married intothe people they calledBrittunculi—dirty little Britons!—and stayed behind when theoccupying forces went home.That had been three hundred years ago,but Broc still kept among his prized possessions a Roman armystandard, indescribably blackened by time.Yours,he’d told Caius again and again.Yours when youreach manhood and perpetuate my name.
