Jehan shouted up the hill in Norse. His head was still swimming. ‘Ofaeti, you have one chance. The treasure is lost. You have the choice: if you want you can die for it.’
‘I’ll do that then!’ shouted Ofaeti.
‘Give it up. I’ll lead you to greater fortune than this, I swear it. I led you here, didn’t I? I’ll bargain for your lives and lead you to ten times this gold.’
‘It may seem hard for you to understand, Christ man, but dying in a damn good scrap up to my knees in gold has been an ambition of mine for years. Bring your Frankish cowards up here, and we’ll make a nice pile of them for you.’
The pale girl at his side looked at Jehan and words came into his mouth: ‘I can take you to the girl. Aelis, the count’s daughter. I can take you to her.’
‘How?’
‘I know where she has gone.’ Jehan didn’t know where the words came from or what they meant, but he heard them spilling from his mouth. ‘You will-’
He never finished his sentence. The Vikings had decided to take advantage of the distraction caused by his attempt at persuasion to mount an attack. Ofaeti leaped down the mountainside with his sword swinging, Astarth and Egil behind him.
The Burgundian with the knife thrust it at Jehan.
The monk’s torpor seared away like silk under a flame, and Jehan’s thoughts shrivelled in his head, burned to nothing in the fire of his temper. He dashed the blade from the knight’s hand and the wolf ran free through the forest of his mind.
When it was done, when the bodies of men and animals lay broken, dead and dying on the frozen ground, when the snow was red with blood, and the fog fell on the valley as if the mountains could no longer bear to look at the slaughter, Jehan felt a small cold hand in his and recovered his calm.
In front of him nine men knelt, their heads bowed, their swords held forward like crosses. The damp rattle of a dying horse’s breath filled up his mind and made thinking all but impossible.
‘We are Christ’s men.’
Jehan looked around him. The Burgundians had been shattered as if a giant fist had descended from the heavens. A few had been cut down — fingers hacked to bloody stumps, a plume of scarlet spreading out from an eye — but most had not been so lucky. Limbs were twisted to impossible angles, heads wrenched to look almost backwards, ribcages dented like so much metal. The bodies had been stripped already and he noticed the men in front of him were wearing fine mail coats. Loose horses were collecting down the valley, seeking each other’s warmth.
‘We are Christ’s men.’ The fat one was on his knees.
There was a taste in Jehan’s mouth. Blood, rich and salty.
‘Lord, we must move or the rest of them will be upon us.’
Lord?
Again, Jehan felt dazed and dizzy. The young girl held his hand. He managed, ‘Would you be baptised?’
‘For a warrior such as you are we will undergo any trial,’ said Fastarr.
‘It is not a trial; it is to wash away your sins.’
‘Let that be done, but first let us be gone. We can’t stay here, lord.’
‘Why do you call me lord?’
‘You are a great man. A warrior, a berserker as they saw in my father’s day.’
‘I am not a warrior.’
‘If you’re not then I’ve never met one,’ said Ofaeti. ‘This is your work. No sooner do I think about following your god than riches beyond measure are deposited in my lap and my enemies are dashed to pieces in front of my eyes. Lord Tyr never brought such bounty. Christ has driven him out, as you said he would. We are for your Jesus and him only from now on. He is a warlike god indeed!’
Jehan looked around him, at the broken lances, the wide-eyed corpses. He now remembered how he had broken the knife man’s arm and taken his throat. He remembered the screams of the warriors who had leaped upon him with sword and axe. He had cast them down and they had not stood again.
His attack had taken the attention of the Burgundians, distracting them for just a breath, enough for Ofaeti’s charge to be upon them. And then Jehan had gone to work, dashing spears from men’s hands, tearing, biting and killing.
He trembled. He had killed Christian men and now his soul was in peril.
He looked at the Vikings in front of him. They seemed almost fragile to him now, their bones too slender to hold together, too brittle for the men to move without them cracking. An image came back to him. A man tied to a pillar, his legs submerged in water, his face contorted in agony as cruel fingers pared away his flesh.
Blood. There was the taste again. He was full of it, and the person he had been, Jehan the Confessor, was revolted by what he had done. He had fallen on Christian warriors like a lion upon martyrs in the Colosseum. Something else though, a part of him that was waking and edging out the thoughts of the monk of Saint-Germain, could not find it wrong. His shame rose and grew and then fell away. How did he feel? Exultant. Scripture came back to him. Leviticus: And you shall eat the flesh of your sons, and the flesh of your daughters you shall eat. And John, the gospel that bore Jehan’s name: Therefore Jesus saith to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, but ye eat the flesh of man’s Son, and drink his blood, ye shall not have life in you. He was aware that his mind was warping, that he was misinterpreting the word of God, but it seemed not to matter any more. At the siege of Samaria, in extremis the people had eaten their children, and the Lord had not punished them.
‘I cannot baptise you. Cannot save you.’
‘Convert us to your faith.’
The girl by his side looked up at him. Jehan shook his head. ‘Choose someone else for that.’
He walked down the valley towards the horses. The Vikings followed him. Nine now. Two had died in the snow. They were carried to spare horses and put over their saddles. The Norsemen wanted to take their dead with them, to honour them in their own way. Jehan thought of the bones of his brother monk, now discarded in favour of much greater riches. He wanted to care about what happened to them but couldn’t. It was all he could do to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.
Jehan mounted. The sweat of battle was beginning to freeze on him. The pale girl sat in front of him on the saddle.
‘Leave the monk. We have riches enough. Leave him.’ It was Egil, fear in his eyes.
Ofaeti shook his head. ‘He is a great warrior. This man brings luck. Let’s stick with him.’
Jehan just shook his head and turned the horse down the valley. The bodies of their comrades secured on the horses, the Norsemen came after him at a trot.
Five days later they paused at a stream to water the horses.
‘Here, monk, great monk, wash us for your god,’ said Ofaeti.
‘I will not.’ Jehan hadn’t eaten in days.
‘Why not? You were keen enough to do it on the way here.’
Jehan knew that he would not baptise these men. He had tried to leave but they had followed him. Although the girl at his side guided him, he didn’t know where he was going or how long it would take. Francia and Flanders were to the north, Christian lands.
How long had it been since the abomination in the pool? A week nearly, and he still didn’t feel hungry. But Jehan knew that one day he would, that the hunger would descend upon him in a way that would not be denied. There would be no kitchen, no table that could satisfy him. The scent of blood was in him, and he knew that he would need the taste of human flesh again. He thought of suicide, but when he prayed received no guidance from God. Augustine, that learned father, said, ‘He who knows it is unlawful to kill himself may nevertheless do so if he is ordered by God.’ Aquinas had shown it to be the gravest of sins ‘because it cannot be repented of’. Theology was clear. Cannibalism was the lesser sin. Was his thinking clear though? It seemed so but his head buzzed with a new energy, leaving him sleepless though not tired, unfed but not hungry. His thoughts were a jumble. Only one thing seemed clear. He had been hungry before. He would be hungry again.
He followed the child. Why? Because she had a direction. If he could not damp down the bloodlust that had grown inside him then he could at least ameliorate its effects. As he travelled north he would kill no Christian men. That, he realised, was why he had refused to baptise the Vikings.
