Cai, who had been dreaming, surfacedat the sound of his name.“The distance to the moon?”he echoedlongingly.
“Indeed.We do it withmathematics, and that triangle whose sides are three, four, five.I’ll show you all tonight, after our feast.”
“Are wefeasting?”
“As far as our duties andour resources allow.A chapter’s end deserves a celebration, don’tyou think?I only wish we had some of old Danan’s cure for soreheads in the morning.”
“Ah, we do.I ran into heron the trackway coming home.I traded her some jewellery forcomfrey, poppy, tonics—everything we need.”
“Good boy, goodboy.”
“Danan told Cai that theVikings are coming,” Leof said suddenly, as if he’d been dreamingtoo.“It was one of her prophecies.”
Theo patted him.“The Vikings alwayscome.We don’t need to worry yet, though.It’s still too cold andrough for raiding.”
“Yes, I know.That’s what Itold Cai.”
Cai left them outside the scriptorium.By then the two were arguing contentedly over the relative virtuesof vellum and non-calfskin parchments, and they barely noticed himgo.
Shaking his head, Cai made his waystraight to the infirmary, to see that his precious supplies werebeing properly stored away.He glanced in satisfaction round thesunny room, one of the few in the monastery that were glazed,allowing his patients the benefits of warmth and light at once.Allbut one of the narrow cots were empty, assuring Cai that he wasdoing his job well.Sitting on the edge of the occupied bunk, hetreated Gareth’s warts and tried to ease the painful hypochondriathat lay behind them with kindly admonitions as to letting theimagination run rife over faith, work and good common sense.Thenhe discharged him, to his patient’s disappointment, and went downto the laundry.
He was sticky and sandy from hisinterlude with Leof in the dunes.Taking a fresh cassock fromBrother Hengist’s neatly folded supply, he found himself reluctantto put it on over his dirty skin.He glanced at the angle of thesun and decided he had time to run down to the bathing pools towash.
He wasn’t really qualified to lecturepoor Gareth on the perils of imagination.The pools were desertedat this time of day, and the tide had come in far enough to filltheir natural granite basins with salty, crystalline blue.Cai swamabout among the drifting seaweeds, diving and huffing at thepleasure of the water on his limbs, then scrubbed himself clean asbest he could with handfuls of soft sand.By the time he was done,his skin was tingling with wellbeing, and what he’d have liked morethan anything else was for Leof to appear, ready to cast off hisgarments and his new restraint.
Cai drew a shuddery breath.It was allvery well to agree on a celibate life not five minutes aftersatiation.Keeping the resolve would be much harder, he could see.His shaft had risen at the thought of Leof’s pale, lithe body inthe water with him.Leaning his shoulders on the shell-encrustedrock, he allowed his spine to stretch, his hips to float.His palmached to explore his aroused flesh, and briefly he reached down,stroking, lifting the warm, compact weight of his balls.An ideaflitted through his mind that maybe his own touch didn’tcount.
He groaned aloud at his own weakness.Of course it did.What chance did he stand of purging his earthlydesires, if he couldn’t keep his hands off himself?Cursing hisfather for bequeathing him not only a large, restless cock but aneed to use it often and hard, Cai scrambled out of the water.Thecracked church bell was ringing again, this time to announce Theo’sfeast.
Perhaps he’d moved too fast.Perhaps—although he did his best to discourage such beliefs—thefear of the naïve younger monks was true, and undischargedseedcouldrush up into the brain and wreak havoc there.The sunlightaround him darkened to black, with fringes and tassels ofscarlet.TheVikings are coming…He dropped to his hands and knees, lowering his brow ontothe stone.
The fit lasted only a few seconds.Thesunlight returned.Trembling, he sat up and looked around him atthe brilliant day, the rich spring light only now beginning to takeon a russet flush in the west.High on the crag above him,Demetrios and Wilfrid were making their way home, to allappearances the best friends in the world, the goats trottingpeacefully in front of them.Wilf was even carrying the Greek’sbasket of leaves.Cai was only hungry, tired from travel.All waswell.
Chapter Two
For the brethren of Fara, a feast wasa modest affair.Theo, knowing that fields had to be tended andgoats fed no matter how many chapters of his book had beenfinished, allotted his guests one good tankard each of mead androlled out a small vat of heather ale to be shared around.A sheephad been killed, and Caius finished bottling up his remedy for soreheads, then followed the scent of roasting mutton down to therefectory.
The sight he found there pleased him.He took his place quietly between Brothers Leof and Benedict, andaccepted his mead from the abbot’s own hand.This was verydifferent from his father’s idea of a celebration.By now adrunken, coerced girl would have been dancing on the table.Withnot enough women to go round between Broc’s friends, Cai would havefound himself fighting off the sweaty attentions of a warlordbefore the main course had been served.
Life wasn’t perfect here at Fara.Mensquabbled, petty grudges were borne.Around him at the long woodentable Cai found every type of human face, from Leof’s etherealbeauty to the lumpen grin of poor Brother Eyulf, a halfwit rescuedby Theo to work in the kitchens, who closely resembled the turnipsof his trade.But they all turned to Theo, as he stood to give themgrace, and Cai could see nothing but goodwill, as if by commonconsent each one of them had left the unworthy parts of himselfbehind for now, and come with warm fraternal hearts to join thefeast.
Theo led the ancient Latin grace witha careful sincerity that made the words new.Then he blessed eachone of the thirty men gathered, thanking them briefly for theirwork—the shepherd and the weaver, the doctor and the cook.Henodded to Brother Michael, who struck up a north-shores ballad onhis smallpipes—music during dinner being the rarest of treats—andsignaled for the meal to begin.
Caius took an early leave.His longday’s walk was catching up with him, and he needed to put distancebetween himself and Leof, partly for his own sake and partlybecause Leof, after half a cup of heather ale, was losing hisconvictions.Cai could see it in the lambent softening of his blueeyes, perceive it in the lingering press of his elbow when hepassed the bread.Although on a night like this Cai would gladlyhave led him out to the moonlit slopes beyond the farmland, hedidn’t want to be the means of his undoing.
He paused for a moment on hisway out of the refectory.A story came into his mind—one of themany Theo had told him, of a sparrow that flew into a king’sfeasting hall through one window and just as swiftly vanished intodarkness on the other side.Even so, man appears on earth for a little while,but of what went before this life or what follows, we knownothing.
He shivered.He knew that life wasshort.That it could be bloody, and grasped in dirty hands until itspilled out its juices and died, he had learned from his father toowell.Cai didn’t know how he would succeed in his efforts torenounce it, but he could only try, and certainly he could step outof the way of Leof’s much more promising struggle.He could seeLeof as an abbot himself one day, pure-minded and serene,counselling novice monks of his own.Now he was chattering toEyulf, who adored him with the mute passion of a hound.Quickly,before Leof could glance up and see him go, Cai slippedaway.
The night was calm and still.The shadows in the courtyard were deep, but Cai’s feet knew eachdip of the well-worn flagstones, and he made his way easily pastthe well and up the mossy outer stairs that led to the dormitorychambers.He was relieved to have his own cell to lie down intonight.He’d spent his novitiate year in the communal chamber withonly five other brethren, and hadn’t exactly been cramped, buttonight he meant to say his prayers as taught and stretch out insolitude, receptive to the voice of God.Cai thought he could givehis life away, devote himself body and soul, if he were quite surehe had heard it for himself.Just once,he asked silently, letting himself into his celland pushing the heavy oak door shut behind him.
The dormitory building wasperched on the very edge of Fara rock, and Cai’s unglazed cellcommanded a view out over the moon-silvered bay and far beyond it,right to the glittering horizon.He opened the shutters, leaned hiselbows on the sill.Just once, God—and the great crescent moon seemed to roll on herback among the clouds and offer herself languorously up tohim.
He sighed and turned away.He gotundressed quickly, as he’d been taught, paying his nakedness noattention.He lay down flat, placing his hands at his sides.No,wait—he was meant to fold them on his chest, wasn’t he?Theo’sinstructions hadn’t been very precise, and Cai had suspected theabbot didn’t care much how his novices slept, as long as they didso contentedly and awoke refreshed.Clasped on his breast, Cai’shands were at least out of mischief, and he drew and released adeep, calming breath and closed his eyes.
He just wasn’t destined to have thismade easy tonight.Even the dried bedstraw herbs in his thinsleeping mat smelled wonderful, heady and sweet.No sooner had hedismissed the scent from his mind when the door of the cell next tohis creaked and banged hard against the wall.That meant Benedict,who despite his bulk moved quietly, was drunk.And if he was drunk,caution would be thrown to the winds, his beloved Oslaf clutchedtight in his huge farmer’s hands and half-carried into hiscell.
Cai rolled over.Monks had no pillows,so he pressed his hands to his ears.The cells ought to besoundproof and normally were, their great doors once closed, butBenedict had left his shutters open to the warm spring air, andOslaf’s first laughter-cracked groan carried effortlessly through.Images leapt into Cai’s head.It would be so good, to be thumpeddown onto a bunk tonight and ploughed under by a nice warm weightlike Ben’s.For the life of him, Cai couldn’t see what was wrongwith it.Well, Leof had never said that it was wrong—justdistracting.
