Cai got up.What surprised him wasthat he wasn’t more surprised.He unfolded the garment and slippedits familiar weight over his head.In the musky dark of his ownscent, a bitter anger touched him.He wasn’t quite used to Leof’sgod even now, and he felt as if he’d lost to a rival.He emerged,tossing back the hood from his head, and saw Leof white andstricken, tears beginning to gleam on his face.
“Oh, Cai.You do still loveme, don’t you?”
Cai strode over to him.He kneltbeside him and hauled him into his arms.“Of course.”Yes, he hadbeen waiting for this.Leof becoming his lover at all was anexample of something Theo called irony.Leof’s gentle teachingsabout peace, detachment, release from the hungers of theflesh—these had drawn Cai to him in the first place.He kissed thebowed head on his shoulder, remembering his first sight of thatflaxen hair across a rowdy marketplace in Alnwick.Cai had barteredwith him for Fara mead, and then while the wagons were being packedup towards sundown, had walked with him up onto the hill thatoverlooked the town.
Cai had had a bad day.He’d gone toseek his father and found him grunting and sweating over a slavegirl young enough to be his grandchild.He’d had a bad week,trailing the old goat around the strongholds, joining in brief,bloody skirmishes when Broc took a fancy to a neighbour’s cow,plough or daughters.Leof hadn’t preached.He’d simply talked aboutFara—the wide, quiet spaces, the companionship of like-minded men,the chance to learn.Cai had met him three times after that.On thethird occasion he’d decided he wanted to become a monk, and hadcelebrated by rolling the wide-eyed, willing Leof down into the hayin an abandoned barn.And willing Leof had remained, but Cai knewhe had pulled the lad out of his natural ways.“How could I notlove you?Please don’t weep.”
“Don’t youmind?”
“Yes.”Just not as much as I’d expected to.You touch my innermost soul, but not like that—even when I’m comingwith you, racked by that fierce joy, I still can hear the gullscall, the waves wash on the sand.“It’s your choice, though.”
“I want to try to becelibate again.We did take vows of chastity, you know.”
“Yes, but that meanskeeping clear of village maidens, doesn’t it?”
Leof chuckled wistfully.“I think itmeans this too.”
“Well, Theo neverspecified.”
“No.He leaves us to choosefor ourselves—perhaps too much.”He sat up, and Cai offered him arag from his provisions pack to blow his nose.“Cai—will you try ittoo?You say you don’t hear God when he speaks to you, and maybethat’s been my fault, letting us both be distracted by… Oh.Kissingme that way is not a good start, is it?”
Cai sat back, ashamed.He didn’t mindLeof’s choice, but his own nature was sensual, contrary, his fleshalready missing what it knew it could no longer have.“I’m sorry.Come on.We should go, before Theo spots us out here with hisspyglass.I didn’t tell you—I met Danan on the path not half anhour ago.”
“Did you?”Leof put out ahand to be hoisted up, gratitude for the change of subject in hiseyes.“What gossip did she have for you?”
“Not much.She did have aprophecy, though.The Vikings are coming, she said.”
“The Vikings always come.Not yet, though—it’s still much too cold for goodraiding.”
“That’s what I told her.”Cai putan arm around Leof’s waist.The gesture was only fraternal, andLeof seemed to perceive it that way, relaxing into his embrace andbeginning to walk at his side.Perhaps I’ll make a good monk afterall.PerhapsI can separate it out—flesh from spirit, and hear the voice of Godas you do.“Oh, that reminds me.I have to listen.”
“Wonders will never cease.To what?”
“The music of the bells,Danan said.The sea bells.”
The tide was out, the causewaycrossing easy.The pony tossed its head in the salty wind thatswept across the mudflats and started to pull ahead of Caius on itsleading rein.Cai restrained it gently.He didn’t want his bottlesand supplies to be jostled about, but he shared the little beast’senthusiasm for home.The monastery stood on a vast outcrop ofrock—the final flourish, so they said, of a great spine of it thatran right across the country to the west coast, bearing for many ofits rippling miles the remains of Emperor Hadrian’s great wall.Onits northern side, where windswept slopes ran down to the beach,the brethren had terraced the land and persuaded from it—with theaid of many tons of stinking kelp—crops of oats and barley.Therewas Brother Benedict now, the only one of them strong enough tohandle the plough unaided, pacing the length of one terrace behinda patient ox.Beside him walked his inseparable companion Oslaf,chanting Saxon myths and Christian psalms to him to keep himentertained and his furrows running in a straight line.On therocky landward side where little else grew, Demetrios wascollecting scurvy grass and bellowing in Greek at Wilfrid’s goats,who also loved the succulent green leaves.
Oslaf spotted Cai and Leof and lifteda hand in greeting.Cai grinned, waving back.Leof was lit up withpleasure too.It was a good place for a homecoming.A hard-worked,hand-to-mouth existence, but a rational one, with time forcontemplation and learning.Cai was young enough, sickened enoughby his father’s bestial ways, to imagine he’d found his path.If hedidn’t believe as Leof did—if he couldn’t yet kneel in Fara’schurch and truly accept he was bathed in the presence of God—thatwould come.
A powerful voice boomed out across thesalt flats.“Wilfrid!”
Cai was close enough to see thegoatherd jump as if slapped.At the top of the narrow trail thatled up Fara’s western flank, a tall, spare figure hadappeared—Abbot Theodosius, never far from the workday crises of hismonks.His desk in the scriptorium was placed to give him a viewout over the widest possible sweep of the land.“Wilfrid, do youwish a flaking rash to break across your skin?”
“No, my lordabbot.”
“Do you wish...Let me see… Doyou wish for loose teeth, a dry mouth, mysterious bruising andseizures?”
“No, my lordabbot.”
“Nor do any of us.Keepyour goats under control and let Demetrios gather his weeds.Well,Caius, my physician—did I miss anything out?”
Cai brought the pony to a halt.Othersof his brethren were running to take charge of the beast, unsaddlehim and carry Cai’s packages upslope.Theo was bounding down thesteps that still divided them.
“Bloodlessness andhaemorrhaging in the late stages,” Cai called up to him, “butotherwise, well done.”
“Ah, you see—I attend, Ilearn.Still, I’m glad to see you back—Brother Gareth hasplague.”
“Yes, so I’mtold.”
