“They’re medicinal plants.This is valerian, and this lady’s mantle.She likes to get them atfull moon and from a graveyard if she can.They’re at their mostpowerful then, and… Well.They’re well-nourished.”
“She must have droppedthem.”
Cai chuckled.“You haven’t met her.She never lets go of anything.I’ll send to the village tomorrowand see that she’s all right.”
“Addy said something to youabout her, didn’t he?”
“Yes.To take care of her, andabout a bad death.”Down in the barley field, the villagers werestreaming to join the monks in their labour.A song much older thanany of Fara’s hymns was rising up in the warm air.We have sworn asolemn oath, our lady Gráinne must die…Scythes were gleaming in themoonlight.Cai shook his head.“He also said she’d rise up with thenext harvest, and that won’t happen unless we get this one in.Comeon.”
On the third morning after theharvest, the milk from the villagers’ dairy herd refused to come tobutter.Cai frowned down at the small, panting boy who’d been sentto inform him of this, as if it was anything to do with him.Still,on previous occasions Theo had been known to go and say some wordsof benediction over the churns.The brethren were dependent on thevillagers’ few cows for their butter and cheese, and so Cai wentdown, blushing with embarrassment, and did his best, the entirepopulation turning out to watch in critical expectation.
He was no Theo, that was certain.Heshould have sent Aelfric, whose face alone would have curdled themilk.He said his Our Father, hands outstretched over the churns,and added for good measure a bawdy chant Broc sang to get the bullto go to work in the springtime, translated into Latin to render itholy, but the paddles continued to splash in the churns and stillno butter came.
Reduced to practicalities, Cai advisedthem to empty out the buckets, churns and troughs, clean them alland try again.He was lifting the first churn to give them a handwhen Brother Hengist slipped into the dairy barn, moving asdiscreetly as such a big man could, and took up position on theother side of the barrel.“Caius!There’s ergot in thegrain.”
It was meant to be a whisper, butHengist was used to bellowing out to monks three fields away thattheir dinners were ready, and the villagers tending to the cowsaround the barn looked up.
“Hush,” Cai admonished him.“What, in the crop we brought in the other night?There can’t be.We’d have seen it.”
“I know.Butlook!”
He pulled from his sleeve an earof golden barley.Cai set down his barrel and took it from him, hisheart sinking in dismay.The purple-black fungus pods scattered inamong the healthy grains were impossible to deny.Cai had seen thembefore, and their effects on the men and beasts who consumed them.Danan had taught him to make that his first diagnostic check, incases of hallucination and sudden madness.He crumbled the dark podbetween his fingers.Danan…Where was she?The messengers Cai had sent toTraprain and the hillforts hadn’t returned, but that could simplymean the old woman was out on one of her long peregrinations amongthe hills, or drinking mead with Addy in his cave.“Find Fenrir.Hewill help you start bringing the crop back out of thebarn.”
“It was Brother Fen whospotted it.He’s already put some of us to work.He says we’ll haveto go through it ear by ear.”
Brother Fen…Cai almost smiled inspite of his anxiety.Had any of them dared call him that to hisface?“Well, he’s right.We have to save what we can, but itmustn’t get into our bread or our grain stores.”
“Is it really so bad?Mymother ate it once, and she dreamed she was flying.”
“One kind can do that.Butit gives you seizures too, and the other sort brings on fiery painin the limbs and makes your toes drop off.So let’s not chanceit.”
“No,” Hengist agreed,wide-eyed.
“Go back and help them.I’ll be right behind you, after I’ve—”
“Ergot?”
Cai and Hengist turned at the shrillcry.Godric, the village’s informal leader, had scrambled onto anupturned bucket.He was a fat, mean-eyed little man whose authoritywas largely self-assumed, and the people normally paid him noattention.They were turning to him now, though, the fearful wordechoing among them.“Ergot—the punishment of holy fire!”
Cai released a breath of irritation.He wiped his hands on a cloth and stepped into the middle of thebarn.“There’s nothing holy about it.And it’s a fungus, not apunishment.”
“Holy fire!”Godric shoutedagain, making Cai wonder if he’d been at the infected grainalready.“And milk that will not churn.And Friswide’s hens havestopped laying, and last night my hearth burned with a cold greenflame.Perhaps there is a witch!”
Cai had never heard the wordspat out in such a way.Weika,the Saxon villagers said, and with reverence—menor women who could take and turn the forces of nature in theirhands.Cai took a good look around the circle of faces in the dairybarn.Fears and doubts were dawning there, a darkening of innocenteyes.“A witch?”he queried grimly.“I think perhaps we are lackingone.And—tell me,HlæfordGodric—has anyone from the monastery been down to preach toyou here?”
Godric had plainly been told to keephis mouth shut.He did so now, smugly, enjoying a secret.His wife,less subtle, and indebted to Cai and Danan for the safe delivery ofher three children, gave him a shove, which knocked him straightdown off his bucket.“Aye, Brother!That new one that looks like acrow.He has been here—not preaching, but telling us strangetales.”
Yes.Once more Cai felt a bitter twistof admiration for the real abbot of Fara.Whether some among thesevillagers were nominally Christian or not, they were all of themtoo hard-nosed and busy to make time for a sermon.Offer them astory, though, and there they would be, gathering round the fire,their Saxon blood hungry for narrative.Not one of them could reador write, but their recall of a song or a story-telling poem wasinstant, perfect and largely uncritical.You had to be careful whatyou told them—unless it suited you not to be.
There would always be somebody tolisten, if you chose the right sort of tale.And there would alwaysbe somebody like Godric to let you in.“All right,” Cai said.“Doyou remember Abbot Theo?”
Godric’s wife beamed.“Ofcourse.A good man.Hecould always make the butter come, no offence to you,Brother Cai.”
“None taken.Do youremember some of the things he said—about thinking for yourselves?Deciding for yourselves what’s right, no matter what others maysay?”
“Oh, yes,” Godric grunted.“Agood man, but a fool.He even used to tell us we should disagreewithhim,if we wished.Aelfric says we should obey.”
“And is thatbetter?”
