Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.
Deliver me from the guilt of blood, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.
The guilt of blood, the guilt of blood. That taste was in his mouth now, the meat that had been forced through his lips. He could smell it too, coming from the little raft behind, blood and rot, putrefaction and something else. What was that smell? It was the body of Brother Abram, he could tell, but it wasn’t a smell he’d noticed in the streets of Paris or on the countless occasions when he had been brought to the sick, dying and dead. It was deeply disturbing. The odour, strong and deep, was almost pleasant. He was hungry, he realised, very hungry indeed, but curiously the idea of food repulsed him. Only the subtle flavours of decay that seeped from the little raft that bore the monk’s remains seemed appealing.
His mind wandered and the poetry he had heard in his agonies before came back to him.
Brother will fight brother and be his killer,
Axe age, sword age, shields are split asunder,
Wind age, wolf age, before the world plunges down.
No man shall spare another…
He forced his mind back to prayer. He needed to summon his powers of concentration, to hear nothing but the words in his head, but at the same time he had to surrender himself, to let go of ordinary thought and let God come to him. Why have I been chosen, Lord? What is it you want from me?
The budding trees beside the river stretched up their branches as if in supplication to the sky, as if they too were begging God for an answer.
There was a movement on the bank, something pale.
Jehan peered into the darkness. Someone was watching the boat, not twenty paces away. At first Jehan thought it was a child, but as the raft moved nearer he could see that it was a very strange figure indeed. It was a girl, he thought, or, rather, it was female. She was a pauper and all she had was a rough blanket of dirty wool pulled around her. Her face, though, was what really took his attention. It was not that of a child, but not quite that of an adult. It seemed to hover between youth and age, terribly drawn, pale and shrunken, with eyes that burned and hated. Jehan guessed she must be starving, though there was no need to starve so close to a river and easy fishing.
‘Do you see?’ said Jehan, gesturing to the figure.
‘What?’ said Fastarr.
‘The child, on the bank.’
‘I see nothing,’ said Fastarr. ‘Beware of tricks, monk. You’ll find we have a few of our own you might not like.’
Jehan could not believe the Viking couldn’t see her, but when he looked back, the child was gone. He returned to his prayers and tried to think no more about it. But that face kept coming back to his mind, the face of a child who had seen too much suffering for her years, a face that looked at him with an unswerving stare into which he could only read animosity.
The boat was coming to a bend in the river, where a broad but shallow beach bore a couple of huts. A big wooden cross marked the beginning of the road towards Mont Joux, and then on into Italy and Rome
‘Here, monk?’ It was Ofaeti, the fat one.
‘Here,’ said Jehan. ‘You will wait while I speak.’
‘It’s a bold slave who gives his masters orders,’ said Ofaeti.
The confessor looked hard at the big Viking. ‘You are in my country now,’ said the monk, ‘and everything you dream of, everything you are, depends on me. If you want to live you will do as I say.’
‘You gave your oath that you would serve us.’
‘And I am keeping it,’ said Jehan. ‘You need me now, do not let pride blind you to that. I serve you best by leading you. The first thing you will do is buy some blankets and, if you can, a tent or two here. The local farmers will have something. If you don’t have shelter in the mountains you will freeze to death.’
Ofaeti looked at the confessor and nodded. He turned to Fastarr. ‘These monks have more nuts than a squirrel’s larder,’ he said, ‘but they see the truth right enough. Let him be our voice for as long as he is useful.’
They were met with stares, but the fisherman at the beach was too mindful of the safety of his family to ask many questions of the Norsemen. Jehan again explained that they were his bodyguards, hired to take him on a pilgrimage to Rome. The fisherman nodded at the Vikings and said something about thanking God that such men could be bought, for if they couldn’t the whole country would be in ruins. Then he took their money and sent his boy off to buy blankets and two small tents.
When he returned, the berserks set off, Jehan at the front, up into the icy mountains and the valley of the black saint.
35
The way up into the mountains was hard. Rain turned to sleet as they climbed and then to snow. The winter snow had gone and the fresh falls came down on a cold, green landscape. On the lower slopes it didn’t settle. Further up, though, the mountains were shrouded in white.
They rounded a great lake with settlements all along it. They didn’t stop but Jehan cut a staff and made a cross, holding it high before them. Pilgrims were common on that route, if unusual at that time of the year, and the locals seemed reassured. The Vikings sounded their horns and trusted to luck. No one attacked them and they were even able to buy a little bread. Jehan did the talking and the Norsemen kept silent. The mules were loaded with firewood on the advice of the locals. The way into the mountains would be cold and they would need all the warmth they could get when they camped.
The body of the dead brother was dragged on a roughly constructed sled. The smell of rot was becoming unbearable to the Norsemen, though Jehan did not find it unpleasant.
‘We should boil his flesh off,’ said Egil.
‘And where’s the pot big enough for that?’ said Ofaeti.
‘Then burn him,’ said Egil. ‘Hey, monk, is a cooked saint as good as a raw one?’
Jehan said nothing.
As they turned south into the pass the snow set in properly, and the river they were following up began to turn to ice. The berserkers were northern men and so well dressed for such weather, but they had to keep moving throughout the day to keep the cold at bay. The nights were made tolerable, though not pleasant, by a fire, but there was little to eat, save some fish the Vikings had caught in the river and the bread they had bought.
Luckily the dead monk’s body soon froze and the smell abated. The mountains were closing in, dark walls rising up into grey cloud. It was as if they were trapped in a trough between gigantic waves that towered above them as though suspended in the moment before collapse. Five days in and the waves vanished, invisible in the snow. There was little shelter in the valley and the firewood was running low. The tents were a mercy, even though they bulged with the number of men they held. The cramped conditions at least meant they were warm.
They pressed on, faces cast down to the ground. Only the feel of the track beneath their feet, worn smooth by traders and pilgrims, kept them going, though often they stumbled and fell. None of the Vikings complained, though Jehan could see that they suffered. The confessor couldn’t get the face of the child who had watched him from the riverbank out of his mind. He imagined her watching him still, just out of sight. When rocks or icefalls loomed out of the mist, for a second he thought it was her.
On the sixth day the weather relented. The cloud was still low but the snow was lighter and they could see their way forward. Jehan saw Ofaeti looking at him.
‘You are a strong man, monk.’
Jehan kept going.
‘When did you last eat?’
‘I can’t remember.’
