The Sword of Damascus a-4 Read online

  ‘Perhaps My Lord is right,’ he said, still in Greek, with another of his bows. ‘Perhaps the past is best not revisited.’

  I nodded and pushed my empty cup towards him. He muttered something about my years, and I scowled at him. After a momentary hesitation, he poured out the second refill. He’d dropped the matter, and I’d not take it up again. I had little doubt, though, that Joseph had fought for the Saracens before taking holy orders. But where was the shame in that? Syria had been out of our hands so long, it could no longer be considered a shame for Christians to fight for its new rulers – even if it was to spread the Desert Faith. And I really was too old and out of things to care. It was all too far away – thousands of miles from Jarrow. Even with the Emperor’s agents snapping at my heels, it had taken me months to get across the wild desolation that was the fate of what had been the Western Provinces. So what if Joseph had been on the other side in my last stroke of Imperial policy? I was glad to have him here and now. But for him, I’d be all alone with these wretched women – young and old – of the male sex.

  ‘I’m going to my cell,’ I said, heaving myself to my feet. I sat down again. ‘No. Before I go, I want you to bear in mind the threat I made to Cuthbert. If he goes near that gate again, I look to you to see that he doesn’t undo it. And’ – I dropped my voice, although we were speaking in Greek – ‘I want you to keep an eye on young Edward.’ I noticed the slight questioning look. ‘He’s the pretty one with big hands.’ I paused again. ‘You kicked him out of mathematics for idleness.’ Joseph nodded. I went on: ‘Well, he may not be up to learning any of the languages I can teach. But he’s good enough in whatever it is those savages speak. I’d like you to keep an eye on him as well.

  ‘Now, it really is time for bed,’ I ended, getting up once more. ‘Do have a jug of that stuff sent in to me. I have work to do that always goes better with a slight lubrication.’ I giggled tipsily again, wondering when I’d last held a pen without some mood-altering substance to ease its passing across whatever surface was available. I might have said something else. But as I went back to the chair to gather up my things, I heard Benedict behind me.

  ‘Brother Aelric,’ came the shaking voice in Latin, ‘something more is happening out there, and none of us can imagine what it could be.’

  Chapter 3

  With the fading of day, the rain had ceased, and the unbroken grey of the sky had somehow been replaced by a moon that shone from a sky of pure blackness. There was still a mist out there, but it had contracted itself to a dense whiteness that lingered, in the cold, breezeless night, perhaps nine feet above the ground. Here and there, it was broken by the tops of the rather scrubby trees that grew about the monastery. As far as my eyes could see, it was like looking over a field of ethereal snow. I listened again for the neighing that came from somewhere within that whiteness.

  ‘If they did come ashore at Yellow Tooth Creek,’ I said, cutting through the quiet babble of prayers, ‘it must have been in one of those little boats they have with a shallow draught. Getting horses across the northern ocean in one of those things doesn’t seem likely to me. Fitting in even the dozen men we’ve seen would be a tight squeeze. It’s fair to say, then, that we have a fresh arrival.’ I fell silent and looked down again over the smooth whiteness that concealed whatever might be happening outside the monastery.

  ‘Could it be His Majesty?’ one of the older monks quavered. ‘Could it be that God in His infinite mercy has spared us for continued labours in the world?’

  ‘Could be,’ I said, without turning. ‘You’re all certain you heard a clash of weapons earlier, and then a scream?’

  Someone beside me nodded eagerly in the gloom.

  ‘Well, perhaps Aldfrith has sent over a warning for these people to leave now or face the consequences. Or it might be something else.’ I fell silent and listened. Whatever had happened earlier, it now sounded less like a battle down there than a conference. That didn’t rule out some intervention by the secular authority. Just as likely, though, the northerners had got lucky with their thieving, and there had been a falling-out over the horse.

  ‘We wait until morning,’ I said firmly to no one in particular. ‘Until we can know what’s happening down there, I don’t see the point of further discussion.’

  More to the point, I was in need of a piss. All that drink had gone in and done its job. Now, I could almost feel it trickling into my bladder like water through a rain pipe. I set trembling, frozen hands on the ladder and prepared to heave myself into another descent. After all this clambering up and down, I could feel a nosebleed coming on. As Joseph reached down to make sure my feet were properly on the rungs, I heard the faint braying of ‘ Deus uult! Deus uult ’ – ‘God wills it! God wills it!’ Far below, Cuthbert was back in full cry.

  ‘The moment of deliverance is at hand!’ I could just make out. ‘As the Lord smote the host of Sennacherib, so has He now smitten the northern devils who dared infest this house of peace. Let us give thanks to God for the preservation of our lives. Let us gather up the rich spoils that lie abandoned beyond these gates, and dedicate them to the Lord…’

  ‘Brother Cuthbert seems to have much amended his tune,’ Joseph observed drily.

  ‘Not really,’ I sighed, looking up at his moonlit face. ‘It’s all any excuse to open that fucking gate. Do see to him when you come down. I’d like some peace tonight.’

  I nearly trod on Wilfred as I stumbled off the last rungs of the ladder. ‘Why aren’t you asleep?’ I asked. ‘It’s been dark some while.’

  The boy stood back from me and bowed. ‘Is it true, Master, that the northerners are preparing to leave?’

  I sniffed impatiently, then dabbed at my nose. I opened my mouth to speak, but caught another gust of ‘ Deus uult!’ from the great hall.

  ‘What’s that mark on your face?’ I said eventually.

  Wilfred stepped out of the pool of lamplight, and put up a hand to cover the bruise.

  I heard a noise overhead, and looked up to see Joseph’s little Syrian feet on the upper rungs of the ladder. I thought of the increasingly imperious itching in my bladder. I set it aside. Given this opportunity, it could wait for the moment. I took the boy by his arm. I led him along the corridor to a point just outside my cell where there was a little recess in the wall with a wooden bench set into it. I sat down and carefully stretched my legs. Over on my left, I could hear people grunting and scraping away beyond the side gate. The table now jammed tight between it and the wall was as good as any bars. No one would get through that – not, at least, without a fire, and that wouldn’t do much with all the rain that had been soaking into the wood. I pressed my hands into my armpits and waited for another of my shivering attacks to pass. Wilfred was wearing the new outer robe I’d demanded for him. Even so, his face looked pinched. If the light had been better, I might have seen the bluish tinge that had begun to frighten me. I wondered if the brazier in my cell had been refilled. I thought of going in to see. But the fit was passing, and moving was too much trouble.

  ‘I did fall this time, Master,’ Wilfred said defensively. ‘It was the stairs into the pantry. I was fetching scraps to feed the people from the village, and…’ He trailed off.

  There was no point trying to corner him. It was obvious what had happened. But no one likes a grass, and Wilfred wouldn’t turn grass on the other boys. Bede usually looked after him. But Bede was off with the King; we’d needed one of the boys to show off his Latin, and Bede was easily the best candidate. Not for the first time in these few days, I wished I’d also recommended Wilfred.

  ‘How old are you?’ I asked with a slight change of subject.

  ‘I shall be fourteen in March,’ he said.

  I sniffed. Of course, he was telling the truth now. But no one could have guessed it. The boy’s height didn’t say more than ten, and he might have disappeared altogether by turning sideways.

  ‘But, Master,’ he said again, ‘surely we shall not all soon be dead. Is
it true the northerners will be gone by morning?’

  ‘Could be,’ I said, trying to sound non-committal. Then I leaned close to him and dropped my voice lower still. It came out somewhere between a whisper and a croak. ‘Listen,’ I said, now urgent, ‘do you remember the gap behind the bread oven – the crack in the outer wall made by the heat? It can’t be seen from the outside because of all the brambles. Well, I want you to gather yourself a bag of food and water from the kitchen and be prepared to get out through that gap.’ I took hold of his arm and shook him as he began his protests. He trailed off into another of his coughing fits. A drop of opium in wine would fix that. Sadly, opium is just another of the civilised luxuries that can’t be had in England. ‘No,’ I said, ‘I know you can squeeze through. There’s no point my even trying. All else aside, I still have the chest and shoulders of a big man. If anything happens, I want you straight out. Get out and run. Don’t look back. Don’t fall in with anyone else who may know about the gap. Get out, run, and don’t stop running until you hear men talking English.’

  ‘And you, Master?’ he asked, trying not to cry.

  I tried for a laugh, but felt it turning to a cough. ‘At my advanced age, dear boy,’ I said, ‘I can’t say death is such a loss as it might seem to you. I already stand far over its threshold. There isn’t much the northerners can do that would make it more inconvenient than if I just stopped breathing one night in my sleep. Now, I want you to promise that you won’t stick around if any of the gates are forced. And I want you to promise that you will help write the Universal History that I’ve been promising the world these past fifty years, and still haven’t delivered.’

  I sat back and gritted my teeth as the chill of the wall went straight through my bones. ‘Listen,’ I said, fighting for control, ‘I don’t know more than anyone else about what tomorrow will bring. But it never does any harm to prepare for the worst.’ I got up. ‘Now, you get yourself off to the kitchens. Get something proper to eat, and sit as long as you can in the warm. If anyone challenges you, just say that Brother Aelric sent you.’ Wilfred stood before me in silence. I waved him about whatever duties had made him cross my path. I’d said what I’d wanted. There was no more to discuss. I listened as his racking cough vanished into the maze of corridors that spread out behind the great hall. Expecting him to run more than a hundred yards without falling down was optimistic. But I’d now done all that I could given the limits imposed.

  I looked angrily at the fifteen feet between me and the closed door of my cell. Now I was up, my bladder was letting off trumpet blasts of urgency. I could already feel a warm dribble on my left shin.

  It is much later. It may be around the midnight hour. It may be later still. With the disruption of regular observances, there are no bells or chanting to let me know the time of night. It may be a waste of my dwindling papyrus to sit here writing up new events. But I’m sure you will pardon me, dear Reader, if I dwell on the siege. So far, pestilence and the cold have been the main perceived dangers in Jarrow. Barbarian raids are not a common occurrence.

  And there is yet more of the here and now to write up before I can settle back down to my narrative of the past. I got to my cell and had a piss. I sat awhile, warming myself and brooding over another cup of the beverage that inebriates and only sometimes cheers. I did then write the whole of the above. When I’d finished, I sat up and wiped the ink from the end of my nose. I looked at my pens. The steady scraping across cheap papyrus had blunted all the reeds. It was now I noticed that my knife was missing.

  Fucking nuisance! I thought. For old times’ sake, I had the usual suspicious attack, and began looking through my stuff. There are no locks on the cell doors. But since I’d been with Joseph – or been aware of his movements – all day, there was no cause for suspicion. He’d not been snooping through my cell. No one else can read the sort of Greek in which I normally write. No, someone had most likely been in to sharpen my pens and then simply gone off with the knife. Just to be sure, I had another look in all the likely places, then got up to see if anyone else might be awake and have a bladed instrument to hand.

  I was about to lift the catch on the door to my cell when I heard voices in the corridor outside. It was Cuthbert, whose cell was next door but one to mine. For once, I was glad to hear his voice. He’d surely have a penknife. All I had to do was paint on a toothless grin and overlook our little differences of earlier in the day.

  But he was in a hurry. By the time I’d got the door open, he was already disappearing round the corner towards the front of the monastery.

  ‘I feel the hand of God on my shoulder,’ he was saying to someone else – as if any Supreme Being might give a toss about the doings of some broken-down teacher of logic out here in the middle of nowhere. ‘My work is plainly not yet done.’

  Knowing Cuthbert, his work would be some while in the doing. I wasn’t standing out here in the freezing cold on the chance he’d cut it short. There was a candle guttering away in his cell. So I shuffled down the corridor and pulled his door shut behind me.

  Mine was hardly luxurious, but this place was bleak to the point of uninhabited. The cot was of bare boards. The one blanket was folded ostentatiously on the table, which was devoid of writing materials. There was a wooden cross hung on the wall. That was just beside the window – which was wide-sodding-open to the courtyard.

  ‘God-bothering shitbag!’ I snarled softly. Little wonder it was always so cold. ‘No consideration for others,’ I muttered again. ‘Just self, self, self.’ I thought of pulling the shutters to. Then again, Cuthbert would only reopen them, and wouldn’t take kindly to the attack on his humility. I looked round the room. It really was bare. I couldn’t see so much as a teaching note, let alone a penknife. I could feel the advance warnings of another shivering attack, and was about to go when I saw the box. The candle was at the far side of the room, and the box was the same colour as the bed boards under which it had been pushed. It’s more of a surprise that I saw it at all than that I’d almost missed it. I stared at it a moment, wondering if it was worth the effort of bending down. But old habits die hard. If something was worth any degree of concealment, it was worth looking at. I opened the wind shield and pressed the candle into shape until its flame was clear. Setting it on the edge of the bed, I bent creakily forward and pulled the box into the open. About fifteen inches square, it had been adapted from some original use that I couldn’t guess. There was no lid. Instead, a mass of stained rags covered whatever lay within. I sat carefully down on the floor. Taking care not to disturb any arrangement that might have been methodical, I lifted out the rags so far as possible in a single mass.

  Oh, joy! I hadn’t been so lucky with snooping since that time in Ctesiphon when, got up as a Nestorian bishop, I let myself into the diplomatic archive and found those letters that helped us win the Persian War. First thing I saw was a dildo. It was a big, alarming thing – twelve inches of finely stitched leather over a thick wooden dowel. I picked it up and sniffed. It had the smell of recent use. I sniggered and blotted the cold out of mind. I’d think about this thing stuffed up his arse as often as I saw Cuthbert in prayers. The way he walked about so stiffly, perhaps he had it with him in prayers. Remembering its position in the box, I put it on the floor. Ditto with the many-headed whip coiled up beside the dildo. That showed signs of less frequent use. Underneath was a little book of parchment sheets sewn together. There was no name or other details on the binding. I opened it at random and held it up to get what help there was from the guttering flame of the candle. It was the buggery small writing you get on parchment, and I thought at first it was beyond my old eyes. But I squinted hard and found a distance where the neat lines of blurriness resolved themselves into something legible:

  Puer decens decor floris gemma micans uelis noris quia tui decus oris fuit mihi fax amoris…

  So it went on in a paean of love to some unnamed boy. As it didn’t even try to keep to any of the quantitative rules, I’ll not call it poet
ry. Still, it had a nice accentual rhythm, and the end-rhymes were interesting. Was this something Cuthbert had picked up on his travels before settling in Jarrow? Was it his own work? Hard to say. The script had a vaguely English look about it, and Cuthbert was a native. One thing, though, I could say, was that he’d have every word of this stuff whispered back to him the next time we sat together in prayers. That would wipe the pious look off his face.

  I carried on looking into the box. The revelations were not exhausted. There was a bag of silver coins. They were the crude, heavily clipped money issued by the French kings. I counted thirty of them. I’d learned all I needed to know about Cuthbert’s vow of celibacy. So much now, I’d found, for his vow of poverty.

  Then, right at the bottom of the box, hidden under more of those disgusting rags, I found a canvas document pouch. Weighing about half a pound, it had once been sealed. It reminded me strongly of the pouches used in the Empire for sending out confidential instructions to provincial governors or generals in the field. The seals were now cut away. In their place, the pouch was closed with a set of tight knots. I pressed it all over, trying to guess the nature of the documents it contained. Of course, I didn’t get much further than knowing they were written on parchment. Given time, I could get the knots undone. Getting them retied would be the problem. My hands might still be up to that sort of work – but not here, not now. I’d keep quiet for the moment, I decided, on the poetry. Instead, I’d come back with Wilfred. I knew he’d have scruples about snooping. I also knew I could get round those easily enough. I’d already lectured him half to death about a historian’s need for an enquiring mind.

  I was just about to put everything back as I’d found it when I heard voices in the corridor outside. Oh shit! I thought. It was Cuthbert, back already.