Fenrir (35 page)

One voice stopped singing and said, ‘Brothers Paul and Simon. Who are you?’

‘Brother Jehan, of Saint-Germain.’ It was as if he was shouting his name over a high wind. He felt tormented, almost unable to think.

‘The confessor of Paris?’

‘Yes.’

‘Have you come to save us?’

‘I cannot save you.’

The song of the man on his right continued:

‘A thousand may fall at your side,

Ten thousand fall at your right,

You, it will never approach,

His faithfulness is buckler and shield.’

‘Are you strong enough to sing, brother? We must keep the song going. This abomination has befallen us because we allowed it to stop.’

Jehan couldn’t reply. He moved his leg. Something bobbed against it.

‘We are to die,’ said the monk. ‘Thank God for the gift of our martyrdom.’ His words were brave but his voice was quaking. Jehan could tell the man was cold. Jehan was cold too, very cold.

‘Where are we?’

‘In the lower cave, at Christ’s well.’

The song went on:

‘See how the wicked are repaid,

You who have said, “Lord, my refuge!”’

‘Where is that?’

‘There is a tunnel from the crypt. It drops to here, a holy well beneath the earth. The Norsemen slaughtered us without pity. It is polluted now.’

Something else bobbed against the confessor’s arm. Something else too, tickling his hands. Weed? No, there was a solid form behind it. Jehan grasped it and felt around with his fingers. He ran them across something hard and smooth, a semicircle of ridges and bumps. Then he let go. What he had in his hand was hair, he realised, and they were teeth he felt with his fingers.

‘Can you move?’ said Jehan.

‘No. Are you not tied?’

‘I am tied.’

‘Then it is useless. He will be waiting for us. He means us to die here.’

Jehan swallowed. He was trembling too. The song to his right faltered.

He strained forward and coughed. Something was at his neck. A noose. He tried to work it free by twisting his head but that only made things worse. It was tight now, not crushing his windpipe, not even cutting off his blood, but he knew that any more struggling could kill him.

And then he saw it – a light coming towards him. It was a candle. Surely some of the monks had survived; surely some of the Vikings would become sick of waiting and break in. He saw where he was – a pool in a natural cavern, its ceiling an arm’s reach above his head. Three big pillars of limestone sank from the roof into the water, and it was to these that the men had been bound. To his right was the singing monk, spluttering out the words of the psalm. To his left another, fatter monk. Both men were chattering and shaking with the cold.

All around them, the bodies floated or hung in the water, pale as dead fish in a pond, their human juices, blood, shit and piss, voided from the body by death, turning the pool to a stinking soup. The monks had been murdered, no doubt – some by the sword, some by the nooses tied with three close-fitting knots.

The Raven put down the candle by the edge of the pool. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘This terror is … required.’

‘Unclean thing,’ said Jehan, ‘abomination, sorcerer—’ The rope dug into his neck, choking him. ‘I am not afraid of you.’

The Raven smiled at him but there was no humour in his eyes.

‘It is not your terror the god wants. He looks for mine. These …’ he searched for a word but could not find one, so he used the confessor’s ‘… these abominations are not my inclination. Do not mistake me for the Roman who gloried in torture.’

Jehan tried to speak but could only cough.

The Raven continued: ‘We will both have what we want, monk. I will have my vision and you will be a martyr. When they find you they’ll make some rare art to commemorate this death. The pilgrims will wear medallions for you, no doubt.’

‘I—’

Jehan couldn’t speak.

The Raven sat down at the water’s edge. He rocked backwards and forwards intoning a chant quite different to the plainsong of the monks. This was low, guttural, and its metre pattered and stuttered, raced and paused in a dizzying tumble of Norse words.

‘Fenrisulfr,

Pinioned and bound,

Wolf, ravenous and tortured,

Great eater,

Godbane and blight,

I will suffer as you suffer.

For my agony

Insight,

For my terror

A vision …

The chant went on and on, the plainsong rising above it. The monk to his right failed and the other took up the recitation. The psalms had been sung every day in that place for hundreds of years.
For what?
thought Jehan.
To keep this horror at bay
. Had this abomination lain unfed for so long because the monks had kept to their vigil?

The cold numbed him, the chants made his head feel like a ripe fig, straining to split its skin.
Do you know what they did to me? Do you know what they did?
There was a voice in his ear full of rage and hatred. He was in a different place. Or rather it was the same place but changed. There was no pool at all. The room was dry, in fact parched. His nostrils stung and his tongue seemed cased in sand. Around the pillar to his right wound a great serpent, gold, red and green, dripping venom from its lips. It stretched up over his head, curled about the pillar that secured him and down the pillar to his left. On that, pinioned like him, was an extraordinary sight.

A tall pale man with a shock of red hair was screaming as the serpent dripped venom into his eyes. His skin was red raw where the venom burned it, his hair singed to patches, his eyes dark as liver, his lips black and charred. Acrid steam issued from the flesh as the venom trickled and seared.

‘Can you not free me, my son?’ The voice was imploring, between a sob and a scream.

‘I am tied myself.’ Suddenly Jehan’s thinking was clear.

‘They tied you like they tied me, the gods of darkness and slaughter.’

‘Can we get out?’

‘We will get out. It is foreseen.’

‘Where is the Raven? Where is that creature?’ Jehan shouted.

‘Gone.’

‘He deserves death.’

‘He is death’s servant. He serves the god in the noose.’

For the first time in his life Jehan felt afraid. This thing in front of him was in torment but it had a presence that seemed to make the air heavy around it. An awful thought came to him:
This is hell
. His pride had undone him and he had been sent to the lake of fire. ‘You are a devil,’ he said, ‘and this is hell.’

‘Hell fears you, Fenrisulfr. Its halls tremble to hear your voice.’

‘Why do you call me that?’ The name seemed to resonate in his head like the bell of hours.

‘It is your name.’

‘Release me from this place, devil.’

‘Would you be free?’

‘I would be free.’

‘Then run free.’

Suddenly Jehan was choking again, drowning, back in the pool. Something was beside him in the dark, its great head lolling against him, its breath hot on his skin, the monstrous note of complaint and agony that issued from its throat threatening to burst his ears. The wolf was next to him, held down with bonds cruel and thin. Its agony consumed him, and he was no longer himself; he was the wolf, trying to stand, trying to breathe even, beneath the awful constriction of the vicious threads that held and cut him. He broke his bonds behind him and ripped at the noose around his neck with his fingers, tearing the rope to nothing.

Something at his side was in its death throes. The seductive beat of a failing heart, constricting veins and muscles, the shallow, frozen breath filled his mind. His body responded to it and he forced his way through the water to drink in the delicious rhythm of death, to take it in and express it like a dancer expresses music.

There was a great cry. It was so near that at first he thought it had come from himself. But it had not. It had come from the man lashed to the column of rock, the man dying under Jehan’s fingers and teeth. More noise, more howling. The other monk was screaming for him to stop. Jehan went to him and made him quiet.

When he was done, Jehan lay a while in the water, like a corpse among corpses. He thought nothing, felt nothing. He did not question, did not think, as the pale child took his hand and led him from the pool.

Leshii was dreadfully tired. The fire was warm and hypnotic and he allowed himself an old man’s fancy of picking faces in it as he thought about his options.

The only hope he had was that the lady would arrange some sort of compensation for him when they returned to Paris. But how certain was that? The whole town was surrounded by a seething mass of Danes, like so many ants around the discarded core of a pear. There would be a fight to get in and Leshii wasn’t up to that.

Even if he did get in, how would he get out, this time with no warriors to help him?
Accept it, you fool. You’re a poor man now. All your labours have come to nothing
. He said the words to himself and felt very bitter.

Warriors – Franks or Danes – might think it noble to have striven and lost but he couldn’t see it that way. He had planned an old age in a courtyard garden warmed by the sun. He had thought he might have a fountain in the Roman style, a woman to cook and clean for him, perhaps even a bed slave if he could afford one. All that was gone, just the memory of a dream.

He fell towards a miserable sort of sleep but his anxiety brought him jolting back to consciousness.

How long could he go on trading for? He could make a living, of course, scratch together enough for food and some mean lodgings, but he knew what faced him when his eyes failed, his back seized up or his knees – already painful – became unbearable. He would starve or have to cast himself on the mercy of the temple of Perun. It was no way to end your life.

The warmth of the fire lulled him and he started drifting away once more. A noise broke his dozing. It was the call of a bird. He looked around him. Two ravens were perched on the sleeping Frank. All the feelings he had been suppressing inside him seemed to come bursting out – anger, disappointment fear – and he picked up a stick to hurl it at the birds. Then he stopped himself. The Frank was Renier, the one who had implied Aelis was a whore for cutting her hair. Leshii had had a thought.

He put the stick back down and looked around him. There was no raven coming for him. He went across to the horse and the mule they had brought with them. Both animals were hobbled – a forefoot and a back leg tied together to make it impossible for them to wander too far. He removed the hobbles and tied the beasts loosely to a tree. He wanted to saddle up the horse but feared too much stamping and blowing would wake the Franks. Then he took his knife and went to Aelis’s tent. As he passed the Frank, he saw in the moonlight that the bird had taken a peck at his cheek.

It hadn’t woken the warrior, though the man was mumbling in his sleep: ‘She is not of my party. She will counsel against me for my angry words. She will produce sons to frustrate the claims of my line. Eudes is not the man to lead the Franks. She is not of my party. She will counsel against me for my angry words. She will produce sons to frustrate the claims of my line. Eudes is not the man to lead the Franks.’ He repeated the words again and again.

The raven flew from the man’s shoulder up into a tree, fading to invisibility against the dark mass of the branches.

Leshii knelt by the flap of the tent. ‘Lady, lady!’

There was no answer.

‘Lady, lady. Quickly, before it’s too late. The Frank is enchanted.’

‘Who is there?’

‘Shhhh! Do not attract his attention. You must come away with me now. The Frank is enchanted and who knows how many more of them. You are not safe with these men, lady.’

‘What do you want, Leshii?’

‘Quick, pull on your boots. You are in danger. Hurry.’

Aelis came to herself and did as Leshii asked. She looked out of the tent across the glade. The Frank sat, his sword drawn, looking down at it and mumbling to himself as if he didn’t quite know what it was.

Aelis crawled out of her tent. ‘Alert the others,’ she said.

‘No, I think they may be enchanted too, we have no way of knowing.’ Leshii’s voice was an urgent whisper.

‘So what do we do?’

‘Come away, now. You are not safe. The ravens will find you everywhere. Ladoga is your only course. Helgi can save you if we can keep the enchantment away until then. I have a plan how we might do it.’