Brothers of the Wild North Sea by Harper Fox Page B

reminded him. He got to his feet and made his way through the crowd of his laughing, shouting brethren, dodging their embraces and slaps to his back. Once out on the open hillside he began to run. The church was deserted and terribly quiet, though the new construction work was still in place, the door to the crypt intact. Cai raised his hand to knock, then saw candlelight all the way around its edges. That meant the bolts were undone, the wooden bar out of its catch.
    He let himself in. Aelfric was kneeling in the candlelight, at the centre of a tight-packed circle of monks. All were on their knees, their faces in their hands. Cai’s entrance, the creak of the great door, did not interrupt the low, thrumming chant of Latin prayer, although from the outer periphery—Fara monks, Cai noted angrily, not the Canterbury clerics—a few terrified moans broke loose.
    “Aelfric,” he demanded, letting his sword drop with a clatter onto the cover of a tomb. “What is happening here?”
    Aelfric snapped upright. The brethren jerked their heads up, smiles cracking their pale masks as they saw Cai. Aelfric spread his arms. “ Deo gratias ,” he cried. His hair was standing up like spines around the edge of his tonsure. A light of keen, pure madness filled his eyes. “Praise be to God, we are saved. Did I not say it would be so? Saved, by the power of our prayers.”
    By the edge of my sword, Cai thought, but didn’t say it. There was no point now. Aelfric was lost amidst demons and angels. He turned to the first sane face he saw—Martin, the ancient monk who made up the mead and heather ale. “The Vikings are gone. You can come out now. Why didn’t you lock the damn door?”
    “He told us not to. He told us to put our faith in God and pray.” Martin lowered his voice. “I’d rather have been out splitting Viking skulls with you, Cai. Did you get a lot of them?”
    Cai found a smile for the old man’s innocent bloodlust. “A nice lot. I’m glad you were here. We can’t spare our brewer.” He raised his voice. “Come on, all of you. It’s safe. And we need help clearing up.”
    “No!” Aelfric strode through his bewildered flock, knocking the slower ones out of his way. Crazed or not, he looked down through the foot of height he had on Cai with grim power, and he carried his own nimbus of authority with him. “We must all go to our cells and pray in solitude, in thanks for this deliverance.”
    “Aelfric—they don’t have cells anymore.”
    “Then let us go and pray in their ruins.”
    Cai gave it up. “You must do as you think fit. I have wounded men to tend.”
    He turned away. A clawlike hand landed hard on his shoulder. Still raw with battle nerves, Cai tore out from under it. “Leave me be, scarecrow.”
    He hadn’t meant to say it. Despite everything, he’d learned—come to believe—that an abbot’s place at Fara was sacred. That his person was due all respect. Now Cai had insulted him, in front of the Canterbury crows and his faithful. Worse, if that hand descended again, Cai would lash out. He was trembling still, the scent of blood and Viking torches in his nostrils. Aelfric was silent. With eyes like that he didn’t have to speak. Cai read there all his intentions of cold-hearted vengeance.
    “Forgive me, my lord abbot,” he rasped. “I must go.”
     
     
    Cold-hearted vengeance. Theo had taught that idea as one of his few examples of sin. Men were animals, he had explained—another heresy—and, when injured, turned upon their attackers with words or blows before their better selves could prevent it. That was bad. But to go away and brood upon a crime, and then exact a punishment—no, not even the beasts would stoop to that. Perhaps sometimes the animal is the better self, he had mused at the end of his lesson, and walked off abstractedly, leaving the brethren looking at one another in outrage and wonder.
    But Caius had taken his point. He’d tried to work on reining in his own quick