“No.No, never.I justdon’t want the others to see.”
“No one saw.”
“Why… Why did you bring mehere?”
“You know why.”
Cai lifted his head.Fen had made himcomfortable on the stone flags.Only one torch was burning in thechurch now, its light low and fitful.Fen had found a blanket fromsomewhere and sat him at the foot of Addy’s coffin—settled downbeside him and held him in his arms.
“Is this my free-thinkingheathen?You look good in that cassock, but…” Cai paused and waitedtill the need to cough had passed by.He didn’t have the strengthfor another seizure.He remembered now—he hadn’t gone to sleep.Histhroat and lungs had closed, and Fen had helped him out into theair, and he had gasped and choked until scarlet had splashed ontoFen’s sleeve, and then he had known nothing.The stains were stillthere.“You told me the other day you’re not sure you believe inany god.”
“Well, I’ve never met one.I did meet Addy, though.”
Cai caressed the broad chest.“Fen—Eyulf banged his head.”
“Yes.He was little betterthan a beast, and we left him telling Ecgbert of Bernicia about hispolitical views.But you’re right—he banged his head.”
“Is that what you think Ishould do—crack my skull off this poor old man’scoffin?”
“Of course not.I have justbrought you here to pass the night.Addy deserves ourvigil.”
“He does.But I can’t keepmy eyes open.”
“Then sleep,beloved.”
Cai burrowed back into the deep,sacred warmth of his embrace.He knew what was happening to him.Hetried to fight it—the sudden lapses into sleep, the dark thatawaited him after each struggle for breath—but it was merciful, thelong, slow process of his body shutting down.Not tonight,he prayed—to God orto Addy or Fen, sinking his fingers into Fen’s robes and hangingon.It was always his last cry on the brink of the dark.Not tonight.Onemore morning with him, one more waking in his arms.
A long grey time passed.Immeasurable,deep, a limitless sea fret shot through with scents like sunlight,a tang of sex-heated skin… Cai woke up in the dawn, his prayergranted.
Oh Christ, for the last time.Sunrisegold was pouring through the little unglazed arch at the east end.Fen was sleeping peacefully, and something inside Cai had reachedits end.The sense of his lung being stitched into his ribs, theunremitting pain that had stopped him from standing upright formonths… All that was gone, and in its place was a void.A floating,dreadful freedom.He couldn’t draw breath.
He lurched upright.He tore out ofFen’s embrace and staggered a few steps—crashed to his knees on theflagstones, then hauled up again and ran for the doors.He had toget outside.He wanted the sun on his face—one last sight of winterdawn.Tearing the doors open, he fell out into the day.
His lungs inflated, frosty air blazingdeep into his chest.An ecstatic heat filled the void.He let thebreath go in a wail and sucked the next one in.Strength floodedhim.He wasn’t torn or broken.He was free.
When Fen reached him, his face a blankof terror, he was standing with his arms stretched to the sun.“Caius!Cai, what is it?”
Cai couldn’t tell him.He whirled toface him—seized his face between his hands and kissed him.He hadbreath for it.He had breath for everything.Kiss after kiss, untilFen was laughing and cursing him, demanding he explain.Cai had noexplanation.He flung his arms round his lover—his tall, proud,solid Viking—and swept him off his feet.
Epilogue
In the Year of Our Lord 692, the floodof pilgrims to Addy’s shrine overwhelmed the monks’ ability to feedand house them all.And although Fara monastery, uniquely among thenorth-shore holy lands, had its own formidable guard—warrior monksand proud Dane settlers who now called themselves Britons—theViking raids still swept the coast.Fara had two treasures, now tooprecious to be risked at any cost.There was the body of Aedar,which whether or not it was still whole in its coffin every fewmonths was reported to have restored someone’s sight, set some lameman walking on his withered limbs or revived a dying child.Miracle, or only the faith of the thousands who came there, burningwith hope and belief?It scarcely mattered.The healing was thesame, and Aedar of Fara was called a saint.
And then there was the book.Many deputations had come from the south, men sent by the newbishop of Hexham, and even from the Canterbury heartlands of thenew Roman church.TheGospel of Science, blasphemous or not, was too precious athing to be left in the hands of half-heathen monks in the north.It should be taken to the proper authorities, submitted forexamination.The deputations came and put their case, and then theywent away.
But still the raids went on, and soone morning at the perfect pitch of spring, a strange processionset out from the lonely rock of Fara.At its heart, flanked byoutriders in cassocks and animal hides, was Addy’s funeral bier,the coffin worn silkily smooth by all the hands that had touchedit.Behind it, fat and old but still as burly as a bear, the Vikingwarlord Sigurd proudly rode.And at his side, not ceasing to remindhim with haughty gesture and look that he had still more reason forhis pride, the mighty chieftain Broccus kept his place.The two oldmen were deadly rivals, and intimate, mead-swillingfriends.
The hawthorns were flowering, great,pungent heaps of white blossom with pink hearts all round themonastery graves.Cai and Fen, at the head of the exodus, drewtheir horses to a halt for a moment.Fen snapped off one thornybranch and passed it to his abbot, who took it from him tenderly,their hands lingering over the touch.
Behind them they left the greatmonastic school established by Caius of Fara.Cai didn’t fear forits future.All around it on the plain were new, thriving villages,their roundhouse huts enlivened by the shouts of first-generationchildren, in some of whose faces Saxon blood had merged into theDane.Viking and Saxon still guarded the land, and martial artswere taught along with Latin, Greek and studies of the stars.Fara’s new abbot Oslaf was young, but seasoned in fires few oldermen would have borne and survived.
“This place that we’regoing to—this new citadel up on its cliff…”
Cai rode on a few paces.The sunlightwas brilliant, the whole coastal plain laid out and glimmeringbeyond the salt flats and dunes.The air was sweet in his lungs.Hebreathed in the hawthorn and waited for Fen, who had loved hisreborn body with such skill and devotion all night, to finish histhought.
“You do realise they justfollowed a cow.”
“Who did?”
