Cai frowned.This view of hisresemblance to the old man was too startling to take in all atonce.“Youwillbe with me.As long as the Fara brethren aretogether—”
“No.With you as Benedictwas with me.As you were with… Cai, I’ve grown afraid to say hisname to you.”
Cai knew why.He’d been walking aroundwith his grief held before him like a frozen shield, deflecting allattempts at human kindness.“I’m sorry.Say it.”
“With you like Fen was,then.What can be the harm?Yours is over the sea, and mine is…” Hechoked faintly.“Mine is under the earth.We can comfort eachother.You don’t need to show it in the daytime, Cai, not to theothers.But I can come into your bed at night, and you can touchme—warm yourself on me, lose your pain for a while in my flesh.And…I can lose mine.”
“No,” Cai said softly.“Youcan’t.”Oslaf had lifted his head.He was nose-to-nose with Cainow.His lips were parted, his breath sweet with the mead that hadgiven him the courage to come here.To kiss him would have beeneasy—the easiest thing in the world.But Cai knew he could lay himdown here, wring pleasure from both their bodies from now untildawn, and make no real difference to either of them.“You can’tlose it.You can only learn to live with it, and that’s not theway.”
Oslaf thumped a fist off hisshoulder.“Why not?Whatisthe bloody way?”
“I don’t know.I’mbeginning to think…time.Only time.”
“That’s no use to me.Iwant you now.”
“Lie down.”
Oslaf sucked a breath.Despite hisdeclarations, he was rigid in Cai’s arms.Fear as well as arousalrolled off him in waves.Cai turned him so that he was lying withhis back pressed to Cai’s belly.Once more he adjusted the blanketto cover the poor naked limbs.
“When I lie here at night,”he said, “I have so many stories about Fen that go through my head.I can’t seem to get at them during the day.”Oslaf had lapsed intolistening stillness, and Cai stroked his hair.“I certainly can’ttell them to anyone else.That’s why I’ve been…such a block of ice,I suppose.Is it like that with Benedict too?”
“Yes.But I don’t want tothink about it.I just want—”
“You do.”
“No!Why can’t you be likethe others?They’re afraid to say his name to me, and I don’t wantto make them weep and pat my head and not know what to do withthemselves by saying it to them.”
“It’s always so whensomeone dies or…goes away.Death is too big for us.We jump to getout of its way.”
“Not you,though.”
Cai held him tight.“No, not me.Tellme a story about Benedict.Just one.”
“If you will tell me oneabout Fen.”
Shrugging, Cai nodded.Oslaf’s hairwas soft.His body was lithe, coming to a fine, strong maturity.Everything about him was sweet and good and right, and utterlywrong.“Very well.You first.”
“I don’t know where tostart.”
“From the beginning, if youlike.”
“The beginning…” SuddenlyOslaf twisted over onto his back, pushed his fringe out of his eyesand looked into the long-vanished world beyond the stone hut’sroof.His head was pillowed comfortably on Cai’s arm.“I remember.My brother Bertwald brought me here.He hated you lot, you know—hethought you were going to whip me or crucify me for the good of mysoul.And as I was half-dragging him up the track, this fine tallman—not even in a cassock—it was a hot day, I remember, and Theomust have let him work in a shirt… This fine tall man pulled his oxto a halt in the field and asked us if we were all right.Well,Bertie’s a farmer too, and I had to stand there in the blazing heatfor an hour while the two of them talked about how Ben got hisplough rows so straight.”
Oslaf chuckled.“Bertie was almost aconvert, though I’m not sure he knew what to.And my first nighthere, when I had bad dreams and woke up shouting for mygrandmother… Ben had the cell next to mine.I hadn’t really lookedat him at supper or during prayers.He knocked on my door, and Iwas so surprised to see my ploughman there.He sat on the edge ofmy bunk and talked to me until I fell asleep—all about Theo,everything I’d learn to be and do…”
In the first faint silvering of dawn,Cai left the hut.He paused for a moment in the doorway.Oslaf wascurled up tight in the blanket, sleeping with the thoroughness ofexhausted grief.
Cai hadn’t told a single story aboutFen.He smiled, pulling the willow screen over the door.Oslaf hadtalked all night.After a while he had forgotten Cai was there andbegun to address something or someone beyond the hut’s confines,and he had confided to that vast and merciful unknown the wholehistory of his time with Ben, from their first awkward kiss to thealien misery of Ben’s estrangement from him, a deeper hell than anyAelfric could have devised.Cai had let him run on.He had takenthe boy’s drooping head on his shoulder when finally he had lapsedinto sleep, and lain wide-eyed himself.
Maybe it was just lack of sleep thatwas gilding the sunrise, but Cai had never seen a more beautifulone at Fara.The silver was turning to a fresh rose gold.Theeastern horizon was clear, a thin arc of sun already poised overthe water.Once the whole orb had risen, Cai’s duties wouldbegin—leading his brethren in prayers, seeing they all got asufficient breakfast, assigning them their labours for the day.Such a sunrise should be seen from the dunes.He had just enoughtime.
The tide had swept the beach clean.The only marks on it were those of the water’s pure dance, ripplesand sandbanks whose crests were beginning to dry out already andcatch diamond light from the sun.This was Cai’s earliest memory ofit.Benedict had been instrumental in his own first days here—hadbrought him down to the sands to show him that his new life was notall self-discipline and Latin verbs.Cai, itching for exercise, hadrun like a lunatic along the shoreline, splashing his new cassockto the waist.The sand had been like a blank canvas and so had he,for all his turbulent upbringing with Broc.Now when he settledamong the long grasses and looked down, every inch of the strandwas marked for him in event.Here the sea had brought Fen to him.Here they had fought, and once boldly fucked in the open, a thicksea mist keeping their secret.Here Fen had taken Gleipnir, thecord that could bind when fetters failed, and kissed Cai on thehead and walked away.
Cai had done everything he could.Hehad filled his days, and endless insomniac nights, with every goodaction Theo could ever have prescribed for him.He had worked untilhis body failed, and then strapped his mind to the plough and readand learned until his vision had turned to dazzle.He had subduedhis sorrows in the griefs of others—sat with new widows andwidowers, with mothers of stillborn children.He had taught hisbrethren and the villagers, guided their minds and physicked theirbodies.
He might as well have sat here on thedunes and moped from dawn till dusk, for all the good he’d donehimself.The weary pain inside him had never ceased, and he was solonely he wanted to fill up his pockets with rocks and walk outinto the sea.Fen had imagined a moon-bridge that brought soulstogether before they met in the flesh.Perhaps Cai could follow thetrack of this rising sun on the water, leave his aching skin andbones behind him with his cassock and…
He jerked upright, scattering sand,sliding halfway down the dune before he could stop himself.Whatwas he thinking?He had spent the night immersed in Oslaf’sgriefs—had begun to mix them with his own.Fen wasn’t lying coldand still beneath the soil.He was vividly alive somewhere, perhapsriding Eldra hard across the Dane Land marshes, pursuing his dutyas sincerely as Cai had tried to follow his own.
