“Fen.”
The figure in the shadows stirred.Hecame to Cai’s bedside slowly, a sculpture brought unexpectedly tolife and still stiff in its limbs.Neither spoke.Then Cai summonedup all his strength and hitched his lead-weighted body to the farside of the bed.
Fen lay down beside him.He proppedhimself on one elbow and gazed into Cai’s face, a scrutiny Caireturned with silent fervour.Fingertips brushed lips, new hollowsunder cheekbones and eyes, taking an inventory of damage.Togetherthey tugged up Cai’s robes far enough to examine the stitched-uphole in his side.They were matching scar for scar now—Cai strokedthe place under Fen’s ribs where his own blade had entered, and Fenbent to press four solemn kisses around the new wound, above,below, one to each side, as if in benediction, to set a seal on thelife that had almost spilled itself from there.His hair was likewarm silk on Cai’s belly.If he’d touched him, brushed his lips aninch further south, Cai would have raised his flag for him,half-dead as he was.But Fen rested his brow for a moment, thenshook with a convulsive yawn.
There was something better even thantheir coupling.Cai discovered it, drawing Fen’s head down to hisshoulder, tears stinging the roots of his lashes at the revelation.There was the place where all passion and strength had been spent.Fen was asleep the instant he lay down, warm as winter fire atCai’s side.There was the place where they would seek one another,beyond the furthest reach of desire.On battlefields, beaches,hollows in the dunes where they had loved one another till theircoming was only dry spasms, scraping, painful… Beyond all of thoseplaces, here they would be.He pressed tighter into Fen’s embrace.This place had forever in it.Time couldn’t end it, nor even thelimits of life.Not distance—not even the wastes of the wild NorthSea.
When he was well enough, Fen took himoutside to see the new world.He stood, leaning on Fen’s arm,looking down across the sweep of green turf.The monastery Cai hadhelped rebuild had been only a shadow of Theo’s, but there had beena church, a refectory, the remains of the hall where Theo and thenAelfric had kept their quarters.Cai had had his infirmary, and adream of the restored scriptorium.A dormitory barn, and half adozen outbuildings for their beasts and crops…
Now the place looked as it must havewhen the first pilgrim monks from Iona and the western coasts hadcome here.Every building had fallen.The brethren had made Cai hisshelter in the corner of the dormitory, where two tumbled wallsremained, but other than that they hadn’t tried to restore what hadbeen.They had started again.The stones from the ruins had beencleared, and all across the turf, small round huts wererising.
Beehive cells.Cai had admired theremains of them on the tidal islets, where the plain wooden crossmarked the far edge of faith and devotion.They were easy to build,if you knew the art of corbelling.They needed no roof andcontained no timbers for Vikings to burn down.They were pure intheir way, returning to nature’s simplest and most perfect shape,all the centuries of mathematical learning that had given birth tothe right angle—how to make it, measure it, build with it—blownaway on the sea wind.They were one step forwards from a cave, themost basic human habitation that could be endured.
“They had to haveshelters,” Fen said quietly.There was an edge of unease in hisvoice, as if he had read Cai’s thoughts.“A man came from thevillage—that idiot who wanted to burn Danan.He still makes thehuts for his beasts like this.He showed us how.”
Cai squeezed his arm.“You did right.The village… Is it still standing?”
“More or less.And the menand women left when you told them to.They are grateful for theirsurvival.That’s why Godric came up here to help us.He seems achanged man.”
Cai chuckled.“You should have checkedhis rump for the mark of Barda’s sandal.This is good, Fen—all thethings you’ve done.I am grateful too.And I have to get back towork.”
“Worry about that when youcan walk a straight line on your own.”
“But…who is looking afterthe sick men?Where are they?”
“It was a sharp fight,beloved.Sometimes it happens this way.There were only survivors,who got away with scratches, and…”
“And the dead.”Caiswallowed.Fen’s arm went powerfully tight round his waist, and hebraced himself not to huddle into his embrace, plead exhaustion andbe taken back to the world behind the willow screen, where sicknesshad shielded him from all the things he didn’t want to know.“Willyou help me down to the churchyard?”
“Can you walk thatfar?”
“I don’t know.But I haveto see.”
Five new mounds beneath the hawthorns.Cai, who had managed the walk but poured out the last of hisstrength, asked which one was Wilfrid’s and knelt beside it.Thiswas the season when the yarrow’s long flowering made its blossomssignificant and lovely on the open turf.Most of the summer’scolour was fading back to green and tawny gold, but the yarrowshone bright on this overcast day, its tough, aromatic heads like asprinkling of snow.It had feathery leaves.Crushing one betweenhis fingers, Cai breathed in the scent of its oil, counting off itsmedicinal properties in his head to ward off newer knowledge.Fevers, bleeding, healing—one, two, three.It was no good.Marcus,Demetrios, Wilf.“Who else?”A cold pain struck him.“NotEyulf.”
“No.No, we’ve kept himaway from you because he would have leapt on you like a dog andpulled out your stitches.One of these is Aelfric’s.Your brethrenwouldn’t have him down in the crypt with Theo, and I thought himbetter out here.”
“He’d have thought so too,”Cai said dully, “at the very end.And the other?”
“Brother John diedtoo.”
“John?He shouldn’t havebeen fighting.He was broken.He was…”
“I know.The noise scaredhim and he ran.It was a night when fighting was safer than tryingto hide.”
Cai choked faintly.“Much good thatdid Aelfric.Much good it did any of us.”
Fen came to stand beside him.Cairested his head against his thigh, and Fen roughly stroked hishair.“Much good it ever does.But what is the choice?”
“I thought you lived forthe battle.”Shame burned through Cai as soon as the words wereout.“Forgive me.God, forgive me, Fen—your brother.Where does helie?”
“I have to tell you aboutGunnar.”Again came that caress.Cai closed his eyes, surrendering,listening.“In the Dane Lands we are brought up to love whatever isstrongest.So I loved my brother—without question, although he wassavage, rapacious, so full of greed and bloodlust he wanted toswallow the whole world.A few months ago, he deposed old Sigurd.He took the Torleik for his own—violated all our laws of clan andrightful succession.”Fen let go a painful breath and knelt stifflyat Cai’s side.“Still I honoured him in death.Your brethren helpedme.We placed him and the othervikingrfallen in the ship they left behind, andwe torched it and cast it out to sea.”
Beyond the grey clouds, the rainbeginning to patter onto the fresh graves, Cai could see it.Vikingburials were legend along the north shore.That beautiful boat, herfinal cargo laid out on her deck—the night, and the hungry flamesreflecting off the water… “I grieve for you.Your love for him wasmore than the worship of brute power.”
“That love has died in me.The decision to leave me here was his.He knew that I was stillalive.He told the crew my injuries were hopeless and ordered themto leave.I was Sigurd’s other heir, his only rival.He seized hisopportunity.It’s raining, Cai.Let me take you back.”
“Wait.How do you knowthis?About Sigurd and what Gunnar did to him—what he did toyou?”
