A new sense seemed to have opened in the confessor. He could tell very precisely where the Vikings were focusing their gaze, understand very clearly that he had not been seen. It wasn’t just the movements of the warriors that seemed slow; their attention seemed to shift sluggishly. One of the men had a seax drawn — a cheaper alternative to a sword, a kind of very big knife. He was scanning the darkness of the room but his gaze seemed to take an age to move from one point to another.
‘Can you hear something?’ said one of the Vikings.
‘What?’
‘Breathing.’
‘He’s dead. His head’s half off.’
‘Not his breathing, you fool. Something else.’
Jehan heard. In the dark his senses were wide and deep. He heard the insects all around him — in the thatch of the remains of the roof, on the walls, in the woods outside. He heard them as never before. It was as if the night seethed with seduction songs and battle cries, tiny couplings for procreation or for slaughter all around him as the moths entwined, as the gall wasp fought the spider, a birthing aphid fell to a beetle and a bat swooped to carry off them both. He felt creation in all its slaughter and sex. Nautre’s song eternal, sung since God breathed life into Eden.
The men stopped talking and seemed to freeze. Jehan struck.
The Viking with the seax went directly back into the wall, his head smashing into the stone in a wet crunch. The man nearest to Jehan was crouching with his back to him. Before the Viking could react, Jehan had grabbed him by the tunic and hair and rammed his head into the face of the man who knelt at his side. Both men were knocked cold. The entire attack had taken three heartbeats.
Jehan listened. No one was coming. The Vikings were creatures of habit and had gone to the church looking for gold. Some had lights now, brands that raced across the opening of the doorway in bright streaks.
Jehan’s mind was almost gone. The confessor was just a distant voice inside him, as if heard through wind, his words just whispers, his thoughts unreachable. He crawled to an unconscious Viking and put his hands about his throat. Jehan crushed his neck and his teeth sank into the man’s skin. Flesh and beard were in his mouth. He swallowed them down. The sniggering inside him became a snuffling sound that panted and slavered and howled in his head. He killed the second Viking as he had the first. The taste of the flesh seemed to fill him with strength. He sat in the moonlight, not caring if he was seen. To him the moonbeams were like showers of silver pennies, like something from the fairy tales that the monks had whispered to each other at Saint-Germain when he was a boy and was willing to listen to such things.
He stood. His body was liquid, the ease of movement intoxicating. He breathed in the scent of the salt and weed of the sea, the wet spring grass, the men who sweated and searched all around him.
Jehan crept out of the scriptorium, his body seeming to flow rather than to crawl. In the alley a Viking was taking a piss. He died with his trousers around his thighs, his neck broken with another quick twist. Jehan looked around, his personality drowned under the sensual tide that swept over him. Everything was more intense — the sounds of the raid, the feel of the cobbles beneath his feet, the black daubs of the thin clouds, the brightness of the moon that raced beneath them, and the taste, above all the taste, of blood in his mouth. He crouched low to the floor. The lattice of shadows was a forest, and he was a wolf hunting within it. Jehan let the corpse drop then doubled back towards the church. He was killing to kill now. The hunger was there but a more insistent sense had taken over — survival.
Voices behind him: ‘There’s someone dead here. One of us. There are defenders here!’
Footsteps running. ‘In this room too. It’s a slaughterhouse.’
The shadow was a blanket to him, cosy and safe. Some men came down the alley. The last was very young, no more than fifteen. Jehan took him at the throat, his sinuous fingers encircling his neck, denying him even a scream to mark his own death. He lowered the body quietly and stepped back into the darkness, sliding along the wall of the alley and out into the courtyard. Torches, men searching. The burning brands cut bright lines in the dark. Jehan felt his heart pounding but not with fear — with excitement, the excitement of the fox as he approaches the hen house. He clung to the wall knowing he was unseen. The blunt senses of the men around him were very clear to him. By a pillar he stood almost next to one Viking while the man cursed and shouted, ‘Show yourselves, you cowards, unmanly you are, like maids cowering in the dark!’
Jehan took him, ripping back his head by the hair and tearing out his throat with his nails. He shoved the man away and the Viking staggered forward into the main square, his hand at his neck. Torches lit up the stricken man. It was as if the Viking had taken the floor at a country dance and his companions were crowding in on him to the cue of the music. The man fell.
‘What? What was it?’
‘A monster. A troll and a wolf of the night!’
‘Fetch Munin. She’ll flush it out. Fetch Munin!’
Jehan watched again from the shadows as the Vikings vainly tried to help their comrade.
A huge man stood up and banged his shield. ‘Let’s find this fen dweller!’ he screamed. And then it was as if they all went mad, as if they were rats and the corpse of their comrade a cat. They rushed from him, each man going in a different direction weapon out and swinging. They hacked into the shadows as if they thought they could kill the dark itself. Men were everywhere, tearing through the darkness, hacking, stabbing, screaming and slashing.
‘Wolf, wolf, we’ll have you, wolf!’
‘Odin is here for you, troll witch. Your end is upon you!’
‘Fen dweller, monster, show yourself.’
When an axe hacked into a shadow, Jehan was gone. When it moved on he was where it had been.
He slipped away from the courtyard and found himself in a tight alley between the church and the monastery wall. He slunk forward, low to the ground.
‘There’s no one here.’ The voice was virtually on top of him. He had come across a group of four raiders. One of them held up a burning torch and was looking directly towards him, twenty paces away.
‘What’s that down there?’
‘It’s a monk.’
The words were the last the Viking ever spoke. Jehan’s movements now seemed beyond his control. Faces loomed at him in the dark, eyes bursting with terror; limbs were on him and then gone, torn or snapped. Things were under his nails — hair, necks, eyes and arms. Jehan was squatting on the chest of a man — he thought it was a man. The Viking’s face had been torn away, his scalp ripped clean off. He resembled a wax figure left to melt in the sun.
Something was coming slowly towards Jehan. It shone in the moonlight, twinkled like some precious rock. Jehan put out his hand and took it, studied it. It was attached to something long. He knew what it was, this thing. His mind fought for the language to describe it. It was a harmer. A harming thing. It was on the tip of his tongue. Something had thrown the harming thing towards him. Something living. He stepped forward and broke the living thing, the creature, that had thrown this object. What was it called?
The name came to his lips: ‘Spear.’ Yes, a spear. He dropped it and stepped over the body of the creature who had hurled it.
Words came into his mind: Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts.
Saliva was in his mouth. The prayer meant something to him. Torches flared in the darkness. What was that prayer? It was grace. He sat down on the floor to eat, fingers and teeth working the meat from the bone. He savoured the many tastes — the iron of the muscle, the sweetness of the liver, the farmyard pungency as he tore open the bowels and inspected their contents.
Voices. The war jabber.
‘Grettir! Grettir, he is here. The prophecy is yours to fulfil. The wolf is here for you.’
The words meant nothing to Jehan as he guzzled at the meat. He had eaten too much of it, so he vomited and ate again.
Vikings were at both ends of the alley, sealing it. Jehan didn’t care. He was lost to his feeding. There were so many of them, thirty each way at least.
‘Grettir!’
The throng at the end of the alley towards the sea parted. A huge man came through, shield and sword in his
