In his mind’s eye, the warrior saw Harald Redteeth and the bloody pile of his victims in the burning village. If this were true, every lost life rested on Alric’s shoulders. Now he understood why the monk always looked so haunted, and whined about making amends at every turn.
It seemed he had been too trusting. He sensed his anger begin to rise at the monk’s deception. Pretending to be a man of God, allowing the warrior to save his life, while in truth he really was no better than the bastards Hereward had slaughtered in Gedley.
Crying out, Acha wrenched away and he realized that in his anger he had been tightening his grip on her arm. Apologizing, he fought to control his simmering rage and asked, ‘What now? He is to be brought before the hundred court? He will pay the weregild? Or will they throw him to those Viking dogs and be done with it?’
‘The monk pleads his innocence. I overheard some talk of trial by ordeal. But for now, as he is a churchman, the archbishop aims to keep this matter secret while a decision is taken.’
‘Innocence, you say?’ Hereward brooded; perhaps the matter was not as clear-cut as it seemed. ‘Where is he being kept?’
‘They have him imprisoned at the minster, under the eye of the churchmen who pray for his soul.’ Her brow furrowed. ‘I met him at the minster. He is your friend?’
‘I care less for him than the rats that run over the spoil heaps,’ the warrior spat. ‘Let him burn his hands to the bone with the glowing iron rod to try to prove his innocence. I will lose no sleep over him.’
Kraki lurched round the corner and paused when he saw them. Swaying, he tried to focus his eyes, then shrugged and pulled his member out of his tunic, spraying urine in a wide arc. ‘You tamed her, then?’ he grunted.
Hereward felt Acha grow tense in his arms. Her expression became murderous. At that moment, the warrior thought she was capable of anything. Just as he was.
In the hall, the feasting and revelry continued long into the night. The archbishop left early with Tostig and his wife for the evening mass, accompanied by some of the guests, but not all, for though everyone there claimed to pray to the Christian God Hereward had heard some of the Vikings invoke their old deities. By the end of the festivities, the huscarls were slumped on the benches, the timber floor and the tables, soaked in ale and sweat. The servants nibbled on scraps of food, and only snoring and the crackling of the fire disturbed the quiet.
Hereward took Acha to her bed and they lay together, lost to their passion. But when he made his way to his own bed not long before dawn on the feast of St Stephen, he found his meagre possessions, his shield and his axe had been moved. The bed had been shifted to one side, as though it had been lifted to see if he hid beneath it. If he had been sleeping there, would he ever have woken, he wondered? Would he have been found in the morning in blood, like the man slain by the abbey in London?
His enemies were as close as he feared, and they had already made their first move against him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
1 January 1063
The wolf howled to the rooftops. Red eyes shone in the sunlight as the man in the predator’s mask prowled at the head of the crowd. Ducking down, he leapt up suddenly, howling once more, the delicately carved wood of the wolf head making the illusion complete. He whirled, sweeping one arm towards a boy of about twelve perched on the shoulders of a man in a boar mask. ‘Here then is the Abbot of Unreason! Now let us turn this world on its head!’ Someone tossed the boy a red cap and he slapped it proudly on his head. The crowd cheered loudly in response.
Shrieking with laughter, the throng surged through the streets of Eoferwic towards the church. More lovingly carved masks bobbed in the flow: horses, cows, ravens, salmon. Strips of colourfully dyed wool fluttered from wrists, waists and ankles. In the centre of the mass, swaying on the shoulders of his mount, the red-capped boy waved to his followers with the unspoken promise that chaos would rule.
Keeping his head down, Hereward allowed himself to be washed along by the rush of bodies. He ignored the horns of mead thrust in his direction by the drunken revellers. He wanted his wits clear.
The morning was crisp and bright, a perfect day for the Feast of Fools. The throng swept through the gate of the minster enclosure and milled among the halls, the barns and the school in front of the church’s western door. For a moment, he watched the man in the wolf mask bound and frolic. ‘Follow me now, good men and women,’ the wolf called, ‘into this stone house so that we may consecrate our boy pope. And when we are done, he will rule over an upside-down kingdom. The Lord of Misrule!’
Hereward pushed his way towards the edge of the crowd.
‘Let the deacons, the priests, even the archbishop himself, keep well away from this festival,’ the wolf-man continued loudly, ‘or be prepared to pay the full price. A drenching in freezing meltwater. Let that wash their pious faces!’ The crowd laughed. Hereward could sense the hope that one of the clerics would accidentally stumble out to get a soaking. The mockery served its purpose, he knew: release from the burdens of a straitened life, if only for a while. A moment when the lowest in the land could be the highest and dream the world their way before power was torn back from their fingers. The warrior saw true value in that disordered world. There were times when he felt every one of the highest in the land plotted only to their own ends. Where was concern for the weak, the innocent, the women? In this land of wolves, where was the strong protector? Perhaps the world should be turned on its head. And perhaps he should be its Lord of Misrule.
With raucous cries, the crowd thundered into the church. Few paid attention to the glory of the soaring stone tower as its builders had intended. When most were inside, the man in the boar’s mask carried the boy in and approached the altar. Two men dressed in the white tunics of clerics followed, each wearing a mask with the nose and mouth shaped like human private parts, one male, one female. The mock-clerics intoned words in a made-up language that echoed the solemn Latin tones of the priests. The profane consecration of the Abbot of Unreason would have sickened the churchmen if they had not been in hiding, Hereward knew, but the throng laughed more loudly at each new mockery in the fake ritual.
Seizing his moment, he pulled up his hood and crunched through the deep snow from house to shack to hut in the jumble of ecclesiastical structures surrounding the stone church. Some were the dwellings of the churchmen, and he kept away from those, as he did Archbishop Ealdred’s grand hall. But he searched the stores and the scriptorium and the school and all the other buildings where the churchmen organized their lives.
At the back of a room thick with a dusting of white flour where the daily bread was made, he found Alric slumped on dirty straw. Fettered, the monk looked miserable and exhausted, but his face lit up when he saw Hereward. His joy faded quickly.
‘I should kill you where you lie,’ the warrior spat. ‘It would be a mercy, compared to what lies ahead for you.’
‘You know, then.’ The monk hung his head.
‘That you live a lie? That you pretend to be a man of God, but are no more than a common killer of women? It is no surprise that you kept your filthy secret when I saved your life.’
Alric looked up with a fierce expression, his eyes bright with tears. ‘Do not judge me. You do not know the truth. Nothing is ever as simple as it seems in the telling.’
Leaning against the wall, Hereward folded his arms, his face cold and accusatory. ‘Enlighten me, then.’
Kneading his hands, Alric looked as if the strain of keeping his secret was finally about to tear him apart. ‘I had taken the word of God to a village not far from where we met. They had no church, no priest, not even a stone cross where I could preach. It felt a godless place, and a lawless one too, with too many still worshipping the old ways, even now in this Christian land. It was a place where I could do good works. Or so I believed.’ The young monk fell silent for a moment, and then wiped the snot from his nose with the back of his hand. ‘I did my duty well. I was a good monk, hard-working, visiting every home, preaching whenever I could, teaching the children what I knew. The men and women accepted me, liked me even, I think. They kept me fed. There was one man, a merchant, who asked me to tutor his son and he would send payment to my monastery in return. And the merchant had a daughter.’
‘You fell in love with her.’
‘Yes. I am a fool. It should be me out there, made king of this feast.’
