“Well, I’m not going to be stupid,” declared the chief. “You, Blacksmith! Organize the women to clear the houses. We’ll drive the sheep into the hills.”
“Speed might be advisable,” said the Bard.
“Right! Everyone move on the double. We’ll show those pirates. They won’t take
The Bard signaled Jack to stay with him. “Our work begins when theirs is over,” he said in a low voice. Jack watched as women carted out furniture and hid it in the hedges dividing the fields. Girls ran down to the beach to bury pots and utensils. Boys thrust squawking hens into baskets. Grain was poured into carrying bags, fruit piled into packs. The blacksmith strode around bellowing directions, although it seemed the women and children were doing fine on their own.
In the midst of this bustle Jack saw a distant figure stumbling along the road. It came over a rise and almost fell. The person managed to right himself by leaning on a staff and dragged himself on. “Look, sir,” whispered Jack, pointing at the road.
“Oh, my stars, it’s a monk,” said the Bard. He made his way through the villagers with Jack following behind. No one else had noticed the man.
As they drew near, Jack saw that the monk’s robes weren’t black as he had thought, but smeared with soot. A reek of smoke blew toward them. The monk stumbled again, and this time he didn’t rise.
The Bard hurried to him. “It’s all right. You’re among friends,” he said.
“Gone, all gone,” moaned the monk. “Dead. Burned to ashes.”
“Fetch help, Jack. This man is no longer able to walk.”
Soon the monk was lying on a makeshift bed of dry grass. Jack’s mother was feeding him lettuce juice to ease his pain, and the blacksmith’s wife was rubbing goose fat over his burns. Jack’s father and the chief knelt by his side.
“I think it’s Brother Aiden from the Holy Isle,” whispered the chief.
“Yes! Yes!” cried the monk. “That was my name.” He thrashed his legs, knocking over the pot of goose grease. “Flee, all of you. The End of Days has come.”
“We were about to do so when you showed up,” said the Bard, who was sitting on a stone nearby.
“What about the Holy Isle?” said the chief.
“Gone,” Brother Aiden moaned.
“How can it be gone?” said Father, his eyes widening.
“Dead. Burned to ashes.”
“That’s not possible!” Father lurched to his feet. He looked ready to faint. “No one attacks the Holy Isle. It’s the one safe place on earth. God protects it. God would not allow such a thing!”
“Be quiet, Giles. The man doesn’t have the strength to out-shout you,” said the Bard.
Little by little the terrible story came out. It had been a wonderfully warm day, and the monks were in the fields cutting hay. The nuns were churning butter and sewing a new altar cloth. Servants were piling stones to make a new cattle barn.
Around midday someone spotted the ships. Four of them, or perhaps five. They were speeding for shore.
Brother Aiden ran to tell the cook. They would prepare a meal for the unexpected guests. But when the ships reached the shallows, men streamed ashore, swinging axes and screaming curses. “They chopped the first ones into mincemeat,” wept Brother Aiden.
Grim warriors tied stones around others and threw them into the sea. They killed everything in their path: men, women, servants, cattle, and sheep. Then they destroyed the buildings. They tore down the silk tapestries and trampled them. They smashed the stained-glass window.
“Not the window,” groaned Father.
“Yes, that and more,” said Brother Aiden. “They overturned the altar and urinated on the books. They ran through the library and ripped manuscripts that had taken the monks fifty years to copy.
“That’s where I was,” said Brother Aiden. “I was hiding in a loft just under the roof. They tore up the manuscripts and then they set fire to them. I dared not leave. I stayed curled up under the roof while the smoke came on thickly and the heat almost set my robe on fire. When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I dropped down into the flames and ran.”
By then the whole island was afire, the monastery and nunnery, the church, the granary, the barns and fields. Brother Aiden had stumbled around, looking for anyone who might have survived, but there was no one. The longships had gone with their cargo of treasure and slaughtered animals. There was nothing left but smoking ruins and corpses.
“Oh, horror, horror!” cried Father, falling to his knees. Mother burst into tears. The blacksmith’s wife ran to the other villagers, who were still packing, and gave them the news. Cries of disbelief and stormy weeping spread outward like a wildfire. Jack was crying too. He had never seen the Holy Isle—few of the villagers had—but it had always been there like a kindly light on the edge of an uncertain world.
Suddenly, Jack remembered the Bard’s words:
“Very good,” said the Bard, and Jack saw that he alone was not weeping. “Sometimes you quite surprise me with your intelligence.”
“I should have been there,” groaned Father. “I should have been a monk and fallen like a true martyr. Oh, horror!”
“Giles, you idiot. If you’d been a monk, you would never have had this good woman for a wife or these fine children. You’d be lying there in the ashes.” The Bard stood up and spread his arms to the sky. From the distance came the harsh cry of a crow. Presently, it appeared, circled overhead, and came down to rest in a tree.
“It’s probably been feasting on the dead,” said Father.
“We should be going,” the Bard said to the chief, ignoring Father. The chief shook himself.
“Of course,” he said in a distant voice.
“I’ll organize the boys to make a litter so you can take Brother Aiden along.”
Soon a line of villagers, many still crying, made its way west to the forest. The squawking, clucking, hissing, and bleating of the livestock faded away. Silence settled over the fields.
Jack felt sore inside. Every time he thought of the Holy Isle, tears came to his eyes. It had been an enchanted place where they ate roast lamb flavored with rosemary and rowan-berry pudding and flummery—the best kind, with nutmeg and cream. Gentle monks prayed over the sick beneath a stained-glass window that shone with the colors of the rainbow when the sun was behind it.
“The women did a good job,” remarked the Bard, breaking into Jack’s thoughts. “Of course, I trained them. They’ve been practicing for months.”
“You knew this would happen?” said Jack.
“Not exactly. I knew some kind of trouble would arrive when the winter storms were over. I sent directions to the other villages as well. I hope they listened.”
“Now what?” said Jack, talking to keep the silence of the village from depressing him.
“Now we make the biggest and wettest fog you’ve ever seen.”
Chapter Eight
THE RUNE OF PROTECTION
They sat outside the old Roman house, calling to the life force. Rivers in the earth quickened their flow. Rivers of the air began to churn. Never had Jack felt them so strongly. Tears flowed down his cheeks at the wonder and beauty of it, and just as quickly the tears curled off his face as mist.
A flock of crows dropped out of the sky as though felled by arrows. They landed clumsily on the roof and clung to the thatch. Their beaks opened and shut. They were too dazed to even squawk.
The sea rolled far below, a dim white ribbon in the fog, glimmering and then gone. Cold wetness sank into
