Hawk Quest

Hero turned to Wayland. ‘You ask. I think English is his native tongue.’

Wayland called out. An answer came from the night. ‘He says there aren’t any Normans. The island’s been deserted for many years. He’s the only man left on it.’

Vallon tapped his mouth. ‘Hero, go ashore with Raul and question the hermit. Find out if the Normans can reach the island. Learn as much as you can about the coast.’

‘Can I go, too?’ said Richard.

‘I suppose so. But don’t take all night. Tell the hermit to snuff out his lamp. The Normans will be able to see it from the mainland.’

Raul rowed towards the light. Hero gathered himself in the bow and sprang on to a boulder slippery with sea wrack.

‘Salvete amici,’ called the hermit. ‘Are you monks? Have my brothers sent you?’

His head was cowled and the glow from his lantern threw his face into shadow.

‘Put the light out,’ Raul growled.

‘But the night is dark and you don’t know the path.’

Raul whisked the lamp away and extinguished the flame. ‘I ain’t following you up any path. What is this place?’

The hermit gave a bronchial laugh. ‘You must have travelled from far away. This is the holy island of Lindisfarne, the place where Christianity first reached England.’

‘Deserted, you said.’

Another phlegmy laugh. ‘Nobody has lived on Lindisfarne since Vikings destroyed the monastery two centuries ago.’

‘Can anyone sail to it across the bay?’

‘Not on an ebbing tide and the night so dark.’

‘That’s all we need to know,’ said Raul. ‘Let’s go back.’

‘Not just yet,’ said Hero. ‘I’d like to hear the history of the place.’

‘Me, too,’ said Richard.

‘Well, I’m staying right here,’ said Raul. ‘If you hear me yell, don’t stop to wonder why.’

Hero could just about descry the hermit’s shape. ‘Sir, please take us to your shelter. Duc nos in cellam tuam, domine, quaeso.’

Brother Cuthbert led them up a gully, guiding them around invisible hazards. It was so dark that Richard had to cling to Hero’s sleeve. They negotiated pillars of rock and then Cuthbert stopped.

‘Here we are. Intrate. Come in, come in.’

Hero worked out that the hermit’s retreat was a cave with a patch of sailcloth for a weather-shield. When he put his head inside, the stench made him gag. Like rats rotting under a sack.

Richard clapped a hand to his mouth. ‘Urgh!’

‘Ssh. Think of the purity of his soul.’

Dying coals reddened fitfully on the ground. Hero and Richard sat on one side of the fire, Cuthbert on the other.

‘You’re the first visitors I’ve received since Easter,’ Cuthbert said across the gulf. ‘Which one of you speaks such polished Latin? Have you come to Lindisfarne on pilgrimage?’

‘We’re pilgrims of a sort. We’re voyaging to the far north.’

‘Carrying the word of Christ?’

‘No, we’re on a trading mission.’

Hero spoke in Latin and had to translate for Richard’s benefit. The young Norman was uneasy.

‘Ask him to light the lamp.’

Cuthbert met the request with an apology. ‘I have little fuel to spare. There is light in this place, though — a light bright enough to illuminate the darkest of nights.’

‘Tell us about your island,’ Hero said.

Cuthbert related how, in the seventh century, St Aidan had brought Christianity to Northumbria and founded the monastery on Lindis — farne. In that same year, Cuthbert’s sainted namesake was born. After ten years of missionary work, Cuthbert retreated to a hermitage on Inner Farne — one of the sea-swept islands they’d sailed past earlier. Asked by pope and king to become the second bishop, Cuthbert reluctantly agreed, but after two years he retired to his hermitage to die. Eleven years later, at the ceremony of Cuthbert’s Elevation, the monks opened his coffin to find his body complete and uncorrupt. News of the miracle brought pilgrims flocking to the shrine. Then Vikings sacked the monastery and the surviving brothers took St Cuthbert’s body to the mainland and enshrined it in their monastery at Durham.

Several times during his narrative, Cuthbert broke off, coughing. His breathing had a stertorous quality that Hero found as disturbing as the stink.

‘You’re ill,’ he said. ‘You should be in a hospital.’

‘If there’s a cure for me, I’ll find it here by the divine power that preserved Cuthbert’s flesh after death.’

‘What’s he saying?’ Richard whispered.

Hero had stopped translating. A chill settled on his body. ‘If the saint’s relics can cure all ills, you should be in Durham where his body lies.’

Cuthbert gave another choking cough and swallowed a bolus of mucus. ‘My community expelled me.’

Hero fingered his throat. He’d heard that racked coughing before.

‘Light your lamp. We brought some gifts for you. They include oil.’

Cuthbert blew life into the coals and kindled a twist of straw. The flames singed his hands as he set the taper to the wick, but he didn’t flinch. Shadows crept up the walls. Cuthbert set down the lamp and squatted with his cowled head downcast. Hero picked up the light.

‘Show us your face.’

‘I’d rather spare you the sight.’

‘I won’t be shocked. I know what ails you.’

Cuthbert slowly raised his head. Hero drew a sharp intake of breath. The hermit’s eyes looked out from behind a carapace of scales and nodules. Half his nose had rotted away, corrupted by an infection he couldn’t even feel.

‘A leper!’ Richard shouted, jumping up. ‘We’ve been sitting with a leper.’ He backed out of the cave so violently that he tore the windbreak from its mounts.

Cuthbert’s anguished eyes stared out at Hero. ‘Aren’t you frightened?’

‘I was a student of medicine. I’ve visited leper hospitals.’

‘To cure them.’

‘There is no cure.’

Cuthbert stared past him. ‘Yes, there is. I’ve witnessed many miracles on Lindisfarne.’

‘How long have you been here?’

‘This is my second year. The local fishermen leave food for me and I sometimes take eggs from the seabirds. Last winter was hard, but now that summer is approaching, pilgrims will be returning to the island. Sometimes a dozen or more cross the causeway in a single day.’

‘Causeway?’

‘I forget. You don’t know the island. The causeway is a path exposed at low tide.’

‘You said nobody could reach the island by night.’

‘I said no one would sail here in the dark.’

Hero looked over his shoulder at the entrance. ‘The tide must be almost at its lowest now.’

‘But who would make such a crossing?’

‘Excuse me, I have to go.’ Hero stood. ‘We’re fugitives from the Normans. They’ll be here soon. For your own sake, you mustn’t tell them you’ve seen us.’ He remembered the bundle and held it out. ‘This is for you. It’s not much. Some bread and fish. A blanket. I’m sorry, I have to go.’

Cuthbert’s blessings followed Hero as he stumbled down the gully. On the shoreline he blundered into Raul and Richard. The German laughed.