Conqueror (13 page)

And Aelfric, though the novice scarcely said two words, seemed fascinated in turn by Belisarius, a man of the Roman east. The Greek recognised a deep curiosity in her.

Deacon Elfgar had brought them to the monastery in the middle of the afternoon. They had been welcomed by the abbot, who promised to look over Belisarius’s stock of books for sale - but not until the end of the monastery’s day. While Macson retired to a cell and slept, the death of his father still weighing on him, Belisarius had explored the monastery, with its little workshops and gardens tended by silent monks and novices. He sat in on no less than three services in the little church, intoned and sung beautifully by black-robed monks lined up like so many crows.

Theirs was a rigid, enclosed life, with every waking hour dedicated to some purposeful task or other, with little room for the exercise of free will. But, compared to the chaos outside, this was a calm, ordered, thoroughly civilised environment, and it was no wonder that the sons of kings fled here. Why, the monks even had a latrine that sluiced into running water.

The church, dedicated to Saint Peter, was very modestly constructed with walls of oak and wattle, though at some point in its history a thatch roof had been replaced by one of lead. Rather gruesomely the coffin containing the remains of the monastery’s greatest saint, Cuthbert, sat in the middle of the floor. But this wooden cathedral was crammed with treasures: an altar service of gold and silver, some quite exquisite stained-glass panels, and frescoes and vestments adorned with intriguing tangled designs, woven with glittering gold. Even Cuthbert’s coffin sat in a jewel-crusted shrine. Belisarius was astounded by the wealth he had found in this remote and rather shabby place. It augured well for his book sales, he thought.

And all of this in a monastery where not a hundred paces away people lived in a house built around a sacred tree.

After
cena,
supper, which the monks shared with their guests, and the last service of the day,
compline,
Dom Boniface had at last guided Belisarius and Macson to the library. It was a small collection, dwarfed, said Boniface, by a much greater amassing at the monastery of Saint Paul on the mainland, where the famous Bede had once worked. But still there were volumes here to be proud of - and Belisarius’s professional eye quickly spotted a few gaps his own stock would fill.

And here, Boniface promised, inscribed on cool vellum, were the enigmatic stanzas of the prophecy Macson had come so far to see.

Boniface was a ‘computistor’. His primary function was to calculate the date of Easter and other significant calendar days for his fellow monks. He was disfigured by a swollen, red-purple tumour on his cheek. Belisarius had been unable to resist remarking gently on the contrast with his monastery name, Boniface. The monk smiled, and called it ‘God’s joke on a sinner’.

As Belisarius listened absently, the old computistor spoke of the challenges of his life. ‘It’s a continual battle, to keep faith burning bright in the souls of the people,’ he sighed. ‘It gets harder every time there’s a
joint
in time - like the midsummer festival they will soon be celebrating - for joints in time, like joints in space at river banks or crossroads, are holy for these people. And every time there’s a plague, out come the straw dolls to be tied to the branches of their sacred trees.’

Belisarius nodded. ‘It seems to me that Christianity needs to be primitive here. I don’t mean that unkindly. You must combat the magic of paganism with the greater magic of Christ.’

‘Oh, yes, there’s no doubt about it,’ the computistor said, his tumour flaring hotly. ‘Not only that, we must colonise the pagans’ emblems of belief. Think of Christ nailed to His cross.
He is pinned to a tree,
the fount of wisdom for our German forefathers, and fixed with iron nails, like the elf-shot which brings the pagans sickness and death. What a rich mixture of symbols, eh, Belisarius? ...’

They talked on. And at last, with ill-concealed impatience, Macson brought the conversation around to the subject of the Menologium of Isolde.

 

Truth be told, this ‘Menologium’, as Boniface called it, was only a curiosity for Belisarius; he had let it guide his footsteps here but he expected little of it. But now he had a chance to inspect it he grew intrigued. It was written in some sort of German, competently transcribed, rather crudely illuminated. He counted a prologue, nine stanzas and an epilogue, all more or less puzzling. The poetry seemed authentically German, what he knew of that earthy art form, with each line composed of two balanced halves, each with two stressed syllables. It was peculiarly full of numbers for a product of a more or less innumerate people.

‘It is enigmatic,’ Boniface said, watching Belisarius’s reaction.
‘But as a prophecy it is true.’

‘How do you know?’

And Boniface summarised the first four stanzas, explaining the meaning of each of them, leading to the summoning of Cuthbert by the King in the year 684 by the Christian calendar.

Macson sat up straighter, his greed evident in his posture.

Belisarius asked, ‘Are prophecies possible in your theology, Domnus?’

Boniface said, ‘Ah! Interesting question. Can even God know the future? Augustine of Hippo believed that God stands outside time, and sees past and future all of a piece - as a scholar might survey the pages of a book, laid out on a table before him. But even Augustine put limits on God; he didn’t believe God could change the past, for instance.’

Belisarius grunted. ‘It seems to me heretical to put limits on God.’

‘Perhaps. Our friends in the village would think differently altogether. To them we humans are woven into the tapestry of all things, the tapestry of time. Every event that is to come grows out of all that went before. You have free will, to some extent, but only within the greater embedding of the universe. In our German tongues, the word for “weave” has the same root as that for “fortune”.
Gewaef
and
gewif.
Only the Sisters of the Wyrd, who endlessly weave their tapestry, have greater power.’ He winked at Belisarius. ‘In such a world prophecy is possible, of a sort, but only in that one may dimly guess at the continuation of the pattern in the tapestry from the lines of its threads. No god could see the future, not even Woden, for the
future does not exist.
The future is a process of becoming from the present, as a tapestry emerges from the loom.’

‘But you do not believe in the Sisters of the Wyrd.’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then who made your prophecy? I don’t mean Isolde—who poured these words into her head?’

Boniface closed his eyes and smiled. ‘The author of this document - man or angel or demon—is said by legend to inhabit not the root of the tree of destiny but its topmost branches -
not the past but the future.
He is known as the Weaver. And he has a plan ...’

Belisarius was not impressed by this vague mysticism. But his attention was drawn to the next stanza, the fifth. For if Boniface was right, this was the first of the remaining stanzas which described the future. He read it aloud:

 

‘This sounds gloomy, Dom Boniface. What can it mean? A dragon is a pagan symbol, hardly appropriate in a Christian poem. And what is this silence?’

 

Macson’s eyes widened. ‘There is a Great Silence here in this holy house. You’ve spoken of it yourself, Domnus, the Great Silence of your monkish lives. Is it possible this dragon, whatever it is, will disrupt your lives?’

Boniface did not respond. But the three of them, Belisarius, Aelfric and Macson, shared glances.

Belisarius said, ‘If this is true, the question is when.’ He looked again at the Menologium with its lists of numbers of months. ‘We have that specific date, when your Cuthbert was called by his King. From that we should be able to work out the date of your fifth stanza.’ He stared at the words. ‘Nine hundred and twenty-one months: how many years is that?’

‘Don’t try,’ Aelfric warned. ‘You can’t work out sums that big. That’s what the Domnus says.’

Belisarius smiled at her. ‘Yes, if you count the way the Romans always did. But I have Saracen acquaintances who have taught me some new tricks. I wish I had my abacus, though ...’

He imagined a table of Saracen numerals, complete with that marvellous invention the
zero,
and worked through the division in his head. Seventy-six years and nine months. Very well, but what was this talk of ‘midsummer’, and ‘nine of seven’? The words clearly meant the ‘midsummer’ of this Great Year marked out by the comet, and ’nine of seven’ surely referred to nine times seven
months,
to be subtracted. Half of 921, less sixty-three, gave 397, rounded down, or thirty-three years and one month. That had to be reckoned from the beginning of the fifth great year; the fourth began in Anno Domini 684, and was 907 months long ...

Boniface sat still, eyes closed, as Belisarius worked this through.

At last Belisarius had his result - and he was stunned. He turned to Aelfric. ‘Tell me today’s date, novice.’

Aelfric said, ‘May the twenty-fourth.’

‘The year! Tell me your Popish year, according to Bede’s calendar.’ ‘793, the Year of Our Lord,’ said Aelfric. And her eyes widened when she saw Belisarius’s shock.
‘Is that the date of the fifth stanza?’

Belisarius could not deny it. In fact the prediction was even more specific: the dragon’s claws would be unsheathed in the month of June, in this very year.
Next month.
Belisarius felt a faint whisper of fear, like a rumble of thunder from far across an ocean. He was a rational man, he liked to believe, in the tradition of Aristotle and others of his forebears. Though a Christian, he preferred to keep angels and demons in a separate corner of his mind, away from the business of real life. But now, in the body of this prophecy, that separateness was breaking down, and some impalpable threat was breaking through. Boniface’s eyes were closed, as if he were sleeping, but a slight smile lingered on his lips. Belisarius had the feeling that Boniface the computistor had known all along exactly what the prophecy would reveal - and when this threat was due.

He straightened, trying to think. ‘Our safest course is surely to assume this stanza is as true as the earlier verses, that this threat is looming. We must seek protection. Who can help?’

Macson shrugged. ‘The King commands the fighting men. But how could we reach him?’

To Belisarius’s surprise, Aelfric said, ‘I know how.’

In the morning Belisarius and Macson rose early - though later than the monks - and impatiently waited out the latest service, after which they hoped to speak to Boniface again.

Macson complained of a growling stomach. ‘These monks might fill up on the word of God, but my belly needs something more.’ He jogged down to the village.

Hunger wasn’t Macson’s problem, Belisarius knew. In the end Belisarius had relented, and pointed out the obvious truth about Aelfric: that he was a she, that this boy monk was a girl. Suddenly Macson’s helpless attraction to the novice made sense to him, but he was humiliated, and angry. Belisarius was careful not to mock him.

Macson returned with some heavy last-winter bread. Standing in the chill morning light amid the huddled buildings of the monastery, as birdsong competed with the high, thin chanting of the monks, they both chewed at the hard bread until it was soft enough to swallow.

When the monks filed out of the little wooden church to continue their day, Aelfric came to find the two of them. ‘Dom Boniface is resting. He has a dispensation from the abbot not to join in the
opus manuum
in the middle of the day. He will speak with you then.’

Macson sneered at her. ‘How good of him.’

Aelfric turned on him. ‘Are you angry with me? Why?’

Belisarius said, ‘I had to tell him you are female, which he couldn’t work out for himself. You have muddled up his flinty British heart, Aelfric—or is that not your true name?’

‘My father christened me Aelfflaed.’

Macson blushed. ‘You are a liar,’ he spat. ‘Your whole life is a lie. Is that the way Christ and your Saint Benedict would have you live?’

Aelfric shot back, ‘What’s it to you?’ In her anger she looked more feminine than at any time since Belisarius had met her, despite her grimy habit and the ugly tonsure cut into the crown of her hair. ‘Perhaps the truth is you’re disappointed I’m not a pretty boy after all.’

Belisarius said, ‘I’m intrigued to find you here, Aelfric. Why is a girl hiding away in a monastery full of men?’

‘There is nowhere else for me to learn. And my father thought I would be safe here.’ She said that her father, called Bertgils, was a thegn of the current King of Northumbria, Aethelred. ‘They call him Aethelred the Butcher,’ Aelfric said gloomily. ‘He is Northumbria’s twelfth king in a century, of whom four have been murdered. Indeed Aethelred was once exiled, but won his throne back. And then to secure his position he put to death the infant sons of his rivals.’

Belisarius could see that for a thegn like Bertgils, to be close to such a king as the Butcher gave a chance of advancement, but was also supremely dangerous. And this father certainly seemed to have the measure of his daughter. ‘I’m getting the impression Bertgils is a wise man. And it is through your father that you will win us an audience with the King?’

‘My father is on the witan. The King’s council.’

‘So,’ Macson snapped, ‘he sent you to masquerade as a man inside a monastery. Your husband should protect you.’

Aelfric’s nostrils flared. ‘I have no husband.’

‘Why? Are your legs withered, your womb dry?’