Crowbone

water in a fjord and cleared his throat.

‘I will restrict my arguments to three,’ he declared in a firm, clear voice. ‘I could easily adduce more, but three will do.’

Everybody fell silent, for this was new. Here was a monk, calmly announcing he had more than three ways to denounce his faith and his White Christ god. Atli laughed and declared that this was even better than seeing stumbling Styr try to walk oars. Styr offered back a scouring brow.

Adalbert stepped forward suddenly and slapped Styr’s shield, back-slung to leave his hands free. Styr grunted angrily and raised a meaty fist, but Crowbone merely leashed him with a blue-brown stare. Adalbert, ignoring all this, held up his first finger.

‘A shield, which you all have, has been made by someone. The very fact of it reveals such a thing as a shieldmaker. So the existence of the cosmos and all of nature, the flow of time and the greatness of the heavens, require a prior cause and a creator, one that does not move or change and is not confined, but infinite.’

He paused, looking round at the gape-mouthed and those who had a dim idea of what he meant. Gjallandi shifted slightly. ‘Parturient montes, nascetur ridiculus mus,’ he said. Adalbert bowed.

Atli growled. ‘Fucking Latin — what does he say?’

‘Mountains labour and only a silly mouse is born,’ Gjallandi told him, which left him none the wiser.

‘It is a quote by an Old Roman called Horace about verses and really means something about a lot of work and nothing to show for it,’ Gjallandi declaimed and Crowbone rounded smoothly on him, that beacon stare silencing him, too.

‘If you know your Horace, perhaps you also know your Aristotle,’ Adalbert continued, folding his hands and bowing graciously to Gjallandi. ‘If so, you will recall that he said that this Unmoved Mover was God. In short, if there is a shieldmaker to make shields then there must be a God to make trees and the sea, raiders who come out of it and poor monks from the isle of St Columba the Blessed.’

This everyone understood and they nodded admiringly. Atli threw back his head and howled like a wolf, which made Styr laugh. Adalbert held up his second finger.

‘It has been argued,’ he said, ‘that no God exists because He could not allow such bad things to happen in the world — such things as this, for example. Evil events. In truth, the opposite is true.’

‘Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus,’ Gjallandi intoned.

‘There you go again, you fat-lipped arse,’ roared Atli, exasperated. ‘If the monk can speak fucking Norse, why can’t you?’

Gjallandi scowled, but Atli glowered right back.

‘He said,’ Gjallandi offered, before things forged up to melting, ‘that sometimes even good Homer sleeps.’

‘Who the fuck is this Homer and what has he to do with any of this?’ growled Styr, scrubbing his head.

‘A better way of saying it is “you cannot win every time”. I am thinking the priest is losing,’ Gjallandi explained.

‘Why not say that, then?’ grumbled Atli. ‘Not that it is a secret, as anyone can see.’

He then glared at Adalbert. ‘What does this Aristotle Homer have to say on cutting your own throat? You are supposed to be arguing that your god does not exist. Good arguments you have — but you are charging the wrong way.’

Even Crowbone laughed and Adalbert inclined his head as Mugron declared desperately, breaking from Latin to Irish in his passion, about how Adalbert would die a martyr.

‘The very existence, the utter conception of evil requires the existence and the concept of good, likewise the freedom of the individual will to choose between the two,’ Adalbert went on, seemingly unmoved. ‘Only God could confer such freedom on us, his creations — otherwise we should be bound by the necessity of being, like the sheep or the ox. The fact that we know we have such choice, such free will, thus shows not only a divine presence but also that a spark of His divinity lives in us, in our immortal souls.’

‘My head hurts with this,’ moaned Styr.

‘You are a dead man,’ Crowbone declared, puzzled, ‘unless your third argument is good enough to undo all that you have said so far.’

Adalbert held up his third finger. There was a silence, save for the wheeze of Olaf’s breathing; even Notker and Mugron held their breath.

‘If there is no God,’ Adalbert said, voice like a bell, ‘then you, Prince of Norway, would not have to be struggling so much against Him.’

There was a hoot of laughter, then another and Atli clapped Adalbert on the back, grinning. For a moment it made Crowbone as mad-angry as a smouldering bag of cats — but he suddenly saw it, how the wolves and bears that were Atli and Styr liked the spirit of this Adalbert. Even Murrough was grinning, thumping the butt of his axe on the floor. Mugron, he saw, was bow-headed, hands clasped in silent prayer; Notker was slumped on the floor, as if all his bones had deserted him, the hem of his robe mopping up the pools of blood.

Still, Crowbone thought, slightly bewildered, Adalbert had argued badly. He was supposed to disprove the existence of his god and had done the opposite. He and Notker were the ones who should die. He said so, though his voice was weak with confusion — that last proof of Adalbert’s had had a barb to it. Still, the silence that followed was thick enough to grasp.

‘On the contrary,’ Adalbert said quietly into the middle of it. ‘No-one should die. For the proposition we had to put has lost — yet it is clear that your men have voted me to live. Under the terms you set for this game all of us have won.’

Right there is why law-makers will rule the world, Crowbone thought — if they live long enough. The monk dazzled him, all the same, so much that he laughed with delight and stroked his coming beard with wry confusion; this was the game of kings, right enough, but played in a strange and excitingly different way.

‘Now I will make you a proposition,’ Adalbert declared. ‘Mugron will tell you the content of the letter and you will take it and leave quietly, harming no-one. But I will come with you.’

Mugron’s head came up at that. Crowbone cocked his own and stared at the monk, who thought he resembled a curious bird.

‘Why would you?’ he asked softly and Adalbert smiled.

‘To bring you to God,’ answered the priest. ‘Probae etsi in segetem sunt deteriorem datae fruges, tamen ipsae suaptae enitent. A good seed, planted even in poor soil, will bear rich fruit by its own nature.’

Crowbone laughed, the hackles on his neck stiff with the wyrd of it all. Was this the sign he looked for?

‘At the least, you can teach me this Latin tongue,’ he declared, ‘so that I know when Gjallandi lies to me.’

The skald’s face was stone and Crowbone’s good-natured smile died away at the sight. Mugron unsteepled his fingers and looked up at Adalbert.

‘You do not need to make this sacrifice,’ he declared piously, but Adalbert’s returning gaze was cool, grey as an iced sea.

‘You did as much when Gudrod strung up your predecessor,’ he declared and there was iron in his voice. ‘I merely did it before an abbot died.’

Mugron flinched and bowed his head.

‘Pulvis et umbra sumus,’ he said and, in unison, Adalbert and Gjallandi translated: ‘We are dust and shadow.’ They stopped and looked at each other, one cool, the other glaring.

Crowbone laughed with delight as the abbot closed his eyes so that the letter was as clear as if it was before him. Then he started to speak.

Later, when Murrough came up to the fire, Kaetilmund raised a questioning eyebrow.

‘Do not ask,’ Murrough said, shaking his head and the Swede was stunned by the elf-struck bleakness of Murrough’s eyes.

Bay of Seals, Finnmark, some weeks later …

The Witch-Queen’s Crew

Men blew on their numbed fingers and huddled close to the snow-frosted ground, where the mist fingered