Raven of the Waves (5 page)

“What,” proceeded Redwald, “do holy men know that the rest of us have to discover?”

Aethelwulf bowed his head.

“Why haven't you told me?” Redwald asked.

Aethelwulf did not answer.

“This is my land, my people,” said Redwald. “Every cowslip is dear to me—I am ring giver here. If there is any danger—”

“I know very little,” said Aethelwulf, “but I'll tell you what I have heard.” He clasped his hands, as if in prayer. And, indeed, he did pray for a moment.

Redwald waited.

“One night last summer ships of strange men streamed across the sea road out of the rising moon. They did not bother to comb downward along the coast. They knew they had no road enemy. They did not need to hide in the dark. They fell upon Lindisfarne, on the abbey there, and sacked it.”

These words made Wiglaf stop his work, pestle heavy in his hand.

“Men died,” Aethelwulf continued. “There was burning.” Aethelwulf surprised himself. He wanted to weep. He was growing old. Or perhaps he could no longer think of human suffering. “And then they left with the gold from the altar. They didn't disturb Saint Cuthbert's bones. They slit only the throats of the living.”

“Who were these brutes?”

“No one knows.”

Redwald was a handsome man, Wiglaf thought, with a sunrise-red beard, the only red-haired man Wiglaf had ever seen.

But the abbot saw quite a different guest from his open-eyed assistant. Redwald's habitual cheerfulness hid a nature given to nightmares—Redwald sometimes confessed them to the abbot. His fingernails were bitten to the quick, and weeks passed without Redwald being truly sober for more than a brief hour. Redwald's land extended along the river, all the way to Hunlaf's village, and south almost all the way to Bodeton, a town of fishers and boatbuilders, a worthless place despite its many dwellings. Lately Redwald had been spending his days drinking in the distant city of the king, or perhaps visiting the women who entertained men with fat purses.

“They won't come to our little place,” said the abbot. “It was a punishment from God, no doubt for sins the monks had committed. We are in no danger. I didn't tell you because I knew you would tremble, and because it makes me sad to think of all the pain of that night. The strangers left to the east, and they haven't been seen since. If there were danger, it would have befallen us by now.”

“Were the monks of that holy island unusually sinful?” asked Redwald.

Not even Brother Aelle dared ask the abbot such a straightforward question. Of course the monks of Lindisfarne were as chaste as most others and hardworking, by reputation. The abbot could not guess why they had been punished. “God looks upon the heart,” said the priest.

“What sort of warriors,” asked the nobleman after a long moment, “would do such harm to innocent men?”

“Don't ask questions I cannot begin to answer,” said Aethelwulf.

“Summer's coming. Men sail when the sea is clear. It would be easy to sail the Humber and sweep up along our gentle river.”

“I sleep easily,” said Aethelwulf. He stretched a hand and patted Redwald's arm. “Lindisfarne is far from here. Look how bravely my student hears all this terrible news!”

Wiglaf was pleased that his eyes betrayed none of his feelings. He would dream that night of strangers, he was sure of it, and throats cut with flashing swords.

Redwald drank hard.

“If you spent more time in your spear hall, you would have heard of this before,” the abbot chided gently.

Redwald gave a pained laugh. “I heard talk of this before, from Lord Hunlaf. He's a sightless old ring giver, but he hears everything. I chose not to heed.”

“And is blind Hunlaf worried?” asked Aethelwulf. Hunlaf's upriver village was called Beckford, because a horseman could cross the river there during dry late summer weeks. The folk of Dunwic, however, called the place Hunlafwic, because the old man had been lord there for over forty years.

“Hunlaf says seafaring men would drown in our mud.”

The abbot chuckled. “Hunlaf is a wise man.”

“I'm off to the city again soon,” said Redwald. “King Aethelred loves to meet at the ale table, full of plans for river wharves and well roofs.”

“Enjoy the city, Redwald, and all its charms.”

The nobleman gave the abbot a guarded glance. “My place is at the king's planning bench, good Father.”

“Indeed it is. And we are safe.”

Wiglaf crept over to Stag and stroked the dog. Stag was brave, Wiglaf knew, and would guard this holy place with his life.

“Safe, under Heaven's shield,” said the abbot.

If only, thought Wiglaf, the good priest did not have that strained, uneasy note in his voice.

6

The late afternoon air was thick with smoke, the spice of manure, and the smell of wet thatch. The youth and the dog ran, Wiglaf avoiding puddles, the crook-jawed dog going out of his way to splash through them.

Wiglaf knew that he bothered Father Aethelwulf with his questions, but he wanted to know everything about medicine so that when he was old and wise, like the father, he would be a great healer. Medicine, Wiglaf had learned, was in the hands, but it was also in the voice. A hurt man who believed he would recover was stronger than a man sweaty with fear. Father Aethelwulf stewed alder leaves for the bowel flux, but offered it with a kind word, and advised what prayers to murmur.

Wiglaf knelt by Stag.
“Hwaet!
” he whispered. “Be still!”

Stag's crooked jaw made him look eternally happy, and perhaps he was. The little hamlet was quiet. Stonemasons muttered about the tethering in the crutch of a winch. One man swore by Saint Peter that it was tight enough, but another said he did not desire a mother stone intended for a corner of the tower to slip and make muck out of the limbs he had gotten up with that morning.

It was late in the day, but with the easing of winter and the longer hours of light, the men were still working in the fields or hammering in their shops, each man responsible for the mending of his own adze, each wife for her own brewing, each ox for his own digestion.

The sheep were in, the mud of the street unstirred by foot of man or beast. All the countryside was busy, except for Wiglaf. Wiglaf the tick. Wiglaf the bright-eyed, the spider. This was how he thought of himself. Wiglaf, the one who had to know and be alert and think, because he was not strong.

He was quick across the road, up to where the rolling cooking smoke flowed from the long white cottage with its peaked thatched roof.

He knelt in the doorway. He had street mud on his shoes, and he could not pretend to anyone that he was anywhere but where he was. Wiglaf made a whistle, sounding no note, only a long, thin wind.

A figure turned. The inside of the cot was smoke. It was always smoke, so that most people crept in the floor straw to avoid weeping because of the haze. The smoke found its way up out of a hole in the roof and out of the open, empty holes of the windows.

The figure rose through the smoke to the white rectangle of smoke around the door. Wiglaf held his breath. “I came to see you,” he said before he knew who it was, and then a hand fell to his shoulder.

“Good Wiglaf, out of the books and into the mud,” said Forni, one of the twins—his favorite brother, the one whose kicks had been mere jokes and had never hurt. “You've come back at a bad time to avoid a beating, Wig. Father is still furious about the bull, which has just now broken its tether. He's madder still that Lord Redwald spied the beast out in the water.”

Wiglaf was pleased to hear Forni's voice.

“Mother's out there too. She heard Father bellowing. I've never seen him angrier, and if he sees you again today, he'll thump the brains right of here.” Forni tapped Wiglaf's head with his finger.

“Mother's no doubt been mending rope,” said Wiglaf. “She does that while the dough swells. Check her window box.”

Forni disappeared into the smoke, and then his silhouette eclipsed the distant window. The leather hinge of a chest creaked.

“Wiglaf the quick wit,” said Forni, flourishing a rope. “Wiglaf the ever right. Wiglaf quicker than a flea. How did you know we had new rope hidden away?”

“Tie the bull with it,” said Wiglaf. “Father will be pleased.”

Their father entered the room, a grin cracking his muddy face. “I don't need this new handwork,” he said. “I mended the old rope on the very spot, dear Forni. Between you and your brother, a goodwife could make brain mash enough for a finch. And you, my wandering cripple, my lord's gift to the house of God, what brings you to see me twice in one day?”

“Redwald and Aethelwulf have been sharing secrets,” said Wiglaf.

His father found a three-legged stool and sat, his elbows on his knees.

“What sort of secrets, dear Wiglaf?” he asked.

There was no one more
hige-thitig
—stouthearted—than his father, and perhaps his family would not need a warning after all. And besides, Wiglaf wondered, wasn't it wrong to repeat what he had heard at the churchman's table?

“Leave him.” A broad woman swept by them. “Leave him; he's come to see us, and you needn't cause him hurt.” She marched to the fire and stirred the soup—barley and turnip, judging by the smell—with a wooden paddle.

Wiglaf's father reached a hand and placed it on Wiglaf's head.

“Strangers burned a house of churchmen,” said Wiglaf, “on the coast last year.”

His father removed his hand from Wiglaf's head.

It was extremely bad luck to mention certain things, or to say certain words. No one ever spoke of Morcar, the eldest brother of Wiglaf and the twins. Morcar had broken a leg only last summer, striding home at dusk, his foot caving in a mole's tunnel, his shin giving like a rotted stick. His leg had turned the color of land, and his tongue had turned black. He had swollen like an oak gall and died. No one ever mentioned the walkers in the night, wood spirits and earth giants and the evil beings who killed travelers.

It was warm in the cot after the wind of the open field, and Wiglaf coughed. All of them busied themselves with opening a chest or tucking straw into place, preoccupied with Wiglaf's news, unsure how to respond.

Sigemund eyed his family: the two horselike twins and the bulk of a woman who had given him such pleasure and such day in-day out annoyance. And the little mouse of a lad—taller now, though, and quick-eyed. Not so much a mouse now, but something else. This was his family, and despite his hard nature he loved them. “I have heard,” he said. “But I thought it was market gossip.”

“The good abbot believes it's true,” said Wiglaf. “Strangers burned the buildings and stole holy gold.”

His father laughed. “Where did all this horror happen, Wiglaf?”

“At Lindisfarne.”

“Where is that?”

“Off the coast,” said Wiglaf, uttering words the meaning of which he did not entirely understand. He had never seen the coast, or the sea.

His father laughed. “That has nothing to do with us, lad.”

Eadgifu poked the belly of the dough. It puckered like a navel, and then the dimple healed. She thanked Saint Giles that her husband had not struck dear Wiglaf. It had made her sick in her bones when he struck her youngest son all those years. When Lord Redwald had taken Wiglaf away, it had been a golden day. She had wept with happiness. She missed Wiglaf. Anyone would miss the boy—he was like a summer morning—but he was safe, and only a walk across the road and down a field would bring him here for a wedge of bread.

Sigemund drank deeply from his ale cup. “You get filled with words and pictures sitting around listening to a churchman,” said Wiglaf's father. “Father Aethelwulf has a good heart, but little field sense. And Lord Redwald is well enough, in his way, but what do these men know about a strong arm and a hungry ax?”

The twins left to call the cows. Their falsettos reached through the walls, almost like song.

“We have many stonemasons here in the village,” said Sigemund.

Wiglaf's mother knew that a dozen stoneworkers lived in the spear hall, and all of them were from far away, up the river from the city, or even beyond that. They had strange accents. Who knew what harm might come from the evil-eye glance of a strange man upon a pregnant woman? Still, they added strength to the small collection of villagers.

“Those stories of terrible things in faraway places should not worry your mother. Look at her—already afraid! Don't give Wiglaf's stories a thought, wife. He's been listening to church prattle.”

New things were rare and unimportant. What was handed down, from mother to daughter to daughter, achieved value by all the lives it spoke for. Eadgifu had a precious jet brooch she kept in a birch-wood chest in the corner. It was the sole treasure this peasant family had worth stealing.

Wiglaf's mother knew all the charms by heart. She knew the magic to keep a bee swarm from traveling far (
Take earth, cast it with your right hand and say
…) and she knew land remedies, both the one for pastureland and the one for plough land. She knew the charms for winning a lover, how to think of your beloved as you uncovered the moon before your eyes and hope that you dreamed of him that night.

But in the face of disturbing tidings from far away, there were only the saints to seek for help. She said that Heaven would protect them from the Devil and from blood-lusting strangers.

“Of course Heaven will,” said Wiglaf's father.

“Don't you think a stoneworker would be like stone?” said Wiglaf's mother, smiling at Wiglaf.

“Unforgiving?” offered Wiglaf.

“No, that's not what I mean. Strong.”

“So a man who herds sheep would be sheeplike,” joked Wiglaf.

“And a man who lives in a monastery would turn dark and damp,” said Wiglaf's father. This playful speech was a favorite game among the folk of Dunwic, each one trying to outdo the other. Wiglaf believed his father, for all his roughness, was nearly as shrewd as Father Aethelwulf, though not half as wise or merciful.