The oarsmen stopped their efforts andbrought the boat to a smooth halt in the shallows.One of thempromptly leapt out and held up his hands.The old man accepted hisaid but waved off the attentions of the guardsman who was trying tohold his cloak and cassock out of the water.Once out of the boat,he hitched up his garments for himself, gave his escort a friendlynod and began to splash through the wavelets, digging his crozierinto the sand for balance.
Cai wanted to run to him, butsomething held him still.Fen too was motionless beside him.Theywaited until Addy was right in front of them, and then the threestood and looked at one another, all of them stilled with wonder atthe changes.Addy broke the seagull silence at last.“You see,” hesaid sadly, “it’s as I feared.They’ve come for me atlast.”
“Against your will?”Fenglanced at the soldiers, assessing his next fight.“Just make asignal.Caius and I will assist you.”
“No, no.”Addy chuckled andpatted Fen’s muscular arm.“What a wolf it is!No, I am here of myown will, if not of my own desire.They came in this great uglyboat of theirs.I tried to refuse, but the young man with them wasinsistent—quite insistent.He agreed to let me stop and say goodbyeto my friends at Fara, but I fear he’s anxious for my return.Imustn’t keep him waiting long.”
Cai followed Addy’s swift glance backover his shoulder.Standing at the rail of the ship was a slender,fair-haired man.He was dressed quite differently to the soldiers,in a gorgeous cloak of scarlet, richly embroidered all over ingold.It was fastened at the shoulder with a brooch whose jewelsflashed visibly even from this far away.He didn’t look like a manmuch accustomed to having to wait.
Fen’s distance vision was better thanCai’s.“That lad in the prow,” Cai said.“Is he wearing acrown?”
“Not byvikingrstandards.Our chieftains have better thanthat.But…”
Cai racked his brains for a name.Newscame slowly to Fara, and borderlines and monarchs changed fast.“Addy—did King Ecgbert of Bernicia come to fetch you?”
“Aye, it seems so.Apleasant young man.He took my spade from me—I was digging mygarden—and gave me this staff.Put this cloak on me with his ownhands.Still I would have refused him.I love my solitude, my sealsand my birds.But men like your new abbot are springing upeverywhere, and I can’t defeat them from here.So I shall go amongthem as a teacher and a leader, take up arms in my own way, and trywhat that will do.”He adjusted his cloak, one-handed and awkward,as if it weighed more heavily on him than he could bear.“Oh,Caius.Tell your brethren to stand—the occasion doesn’t warrantthis.”
Cai turned.Behind him on the sand,Hengist and Cedric and the others—even Eyulf, his mouth wide openin amazement—had drawn together into an orderly group and fallen totheir knees.
“Some of them know of yourlegend, sir,” Cai said hoarsely.“And all of them recognise thesigns of your authority.It’s what they wish.”
“Well, it seems strange tome, but…” The old man fell silent.His attention focussed on thecliff and the green shoulder of Fara’s great rock.“Caius.Whathappened here?”
“There was a raid.Theworst we’ve ever known, and Aelfric was killed in it.So you don’tneed to worry about him anymore, but God help the rest ofus—everything is gone.”
“My son…” Addy tottered asif he would fall, but he gently rejected Cai’s supporting hand.“There are so few of you.Who else has died?”
“Wilfrid, our goatherd.Marcus, one of Aelfric’s men who fought bravely with us.Demetrios,our shepherd, and a brother called John, who was hurt in the firstraid this spring and was meant to be protected.But I couldn’tprotect him.”Suddenly his failure, and the tally of the dead, wastoo much for Cai.He covered his face.
“My son, I can’t comfortyou.I can’t bring back your dead.All I have to give you is myblessing.Will you kneel for it—even though you are a soldier andthe new leader of these men?”
Cai hesitated.It wasn’t pride—hedidn’t have an ounce of pride left in him—but it seemed so strange,to be asked this under the clear northern sky, in the sunlight thatshone on all men equally.Addy, who had entered his mind as acreature at one with wind, sun and rain, wouldn’t have asked it.Perhaps it was part of his new work—and, after all, a king waswatching.Cai wouldn’t let him down.He dropped to his knees on thesand.
“And will even Fenrisulfr,the fierce warrior, kneel?”
Cai held his breath.Fen had changed,but could still flash out like a thunderbolt when occasion called.But Fen thumped down beside him, and the two knelt like theirbrethren, awaiting the old man’s word.
Addy looked them over.Something aboutthem seemed to please him.He smiled unsteadily and gave anotherawkward tug at his cloak.“Not boys anymore,” he said.“Not therolling pups who washed up on my island a few months ago.How didthat come to be, Caius?From fighting your fellow man?”
“No.It came from fightingwith myself.”
“Aye.And so are all ourlonely, worthy victories won.I don’t have a faithless rebel monkand a murderous Viking here with me now.I have battle-forged menwho…” he paused, long enough to push a strand of red hair back fromFen’s brow, “…who have both understood the nature of sacrifice.Thank God.”
Now Addy in turn fell to his knees.Hewent down hard, as if beneath the weight of something.“Thank God,”he repeated.His back was turned to the guards and the king on theship.“At last I can get this damned treasure of Fara out fromunder here and into worthy hands—quick, before anyonesees.”
He reached into his cloak.Something tumbled out into his lap—a box so heavy that he barelycaught it before it slid into the sand.Cai had no idea how he hadcarried it or even stood upright.The box—no, a casket, with hingesand elaborate fastenings—was made of solid gold.Not Hibernianorvikingr… Danan the magpie had taught Cai to recognise both, andthis was richer than either, a deep buttery yellow that glowed inthe sun.It was beautifully worked.All around its edges littlecreatures danced, beasts that might have found their way fromLeof’s imagination, when he was drawing things Theo had describedto him but he had never seen.Horses with long noses andawkward-looking humps to their backs, another breed whose neck hadstretched to monstrous length, and glimmering all around thisfantastic bestiary, jewels in colours Cai could never have dreamedof, let alone believed could be captured in stone.He put out ahand to touch the marvellous thing.He found Fen’s hand in his way,and instead of finishing the gesture, turned his palm up.Fenseized it, grasping tight.
Addy watched them, hisexpression hard to read.“Yes,” he said after a moment.“Worthavikingrraid or two in itself, though greater treasures are to befound nearer to home, as you’ve found out.Listen to me carefully.This is not the secret Theo told you of while he was dying.Thetreasure lies inside.Don’t open it now—wait till I am gone andyou’re alone.”He shifted, drawing the edge of his robe across thecasket to conceal its rainbow fires.“It is a lovely thing.Itholds a book.Theo had travelled to the east, right to the ends ofthe Mid-Earth Sea, and he found a place where rebel pagan priestswere guarding a small library, barely more than a cellar.In itwere relics—brands snatched from the burning of a temple called theSerapeum, which in its turn had held the ancient treasures of thegreatest library of all.Did Theo ever speak to you ofAlexandria?”
Cai cast his mind back.He graspedFen’s hand, his one anchor in this strangeness.“Yes.Not often,though—it seemed to give him pain.”
“He was a man who mindedsuch things.Alexandria burned too, and scattered the learning ofcenturies to the four winds.The Christian Roman emperors needed towipe out such scholarship.Much of it came from the Jews, fromArabs, from pagan Greeks, and by Theo’s time—our time—it had allbeen deemed heretical.And Theo himself was under suspicion ofheresy.That’s why he was banished to his post on the world’swestern edge, and why you monks of Fara got such a splendid abbotfor a while.”
Addy sighed, patting the box.“He wasa saint, a holy fool with little thought of his own safety.Hebought as many of these forbidden books as he could afford, andwhen he was exiled he chose just one to carry with him, as much ashe could conceal about his person.The rest were destroyed.When Imet him on my voyage back from Rome, he was still grieving,clutching this one relic to his breast as if it had been a child.We spent weeks aboard that ship, and by the time we parted, hetrusted me.He had heard of the raids on the north-coastmonasteries, heard to his sorrow that Christianity even in thesefar-flung lands was beginning to fear science, mathematics,astronomy, all the wisdom of the ancient world.So he left thebook, and this glorious casket, with me.I buried it on my island,Fenrisulfr, and you slept within yards of it.You were quiteright—there are hidden tunnels at the back of my cave.How could Itrust either of you then, even if Theo had told you part of thetruth?You were nothing but flotsam, thrown up on my shores by thewind and the sea.”
Cai swallowed hard.“I still don’tunderstand.This book—no matter how marvellous it is… Theo said itwould bring peace and stop the raids.How can any book dothat?”
“I’ve wondered the samething.I had hoped—I still do hope—that Theo saw in you a wisdomthat would grow to interpret his words.What else did he say toyou?”
