The Reluctant Berserker (18 page)

He was a tall man, Wulfstan’s rescuer, but a slight one, and he grunted with the effort of keeping Wulfstan upright. As he guided him over to lean against a saddled horse, his tone gained a faint flavour of mockery. “What?”

“You. Thought you were…”

“An elf? I?” There was a pause, then forced laughter. Wulfstan had the vivid impression that he had done another one of those things Ecgbert spoke of—been insensitive, not subtle enough to spot something important. In tired apology, he let his head droop to the side so that his forehead could rest against that pockmarked cheek.

“Would I had their enchantments to hand,” said the tall young man, ruefully. “I didn’t expect that you would forget me so easily. I felt sure I had made more of an impression.”

“…know you?” A thought gave a skip in Wulfstan’s heart, like a spring lamb gambolling. He steadied himself on Fealo’s neck—Fealo was here? When, when had that…? He drew back enough to look the other man full in the face for the first time.

The creatures that jumped for mere joy in his heart kicked up their heels in disbelieving gladness. Pale blue—the eyes he had thought fire coloured proved under sunlight to be the palest shade of grey-blue. Not fire but ice. They burned him all the same.

“You,” he breathed, astonished. “How can you be here? This is…this is as miraculous as any elf.” Because his blood was thin and his mind exalted by it, beyond natural caution, he went on. “Were you summoned to me in dreams? I have dreamed about you often.”

This second laugh was no less complicated, though it was a shade warmer. The harper ducked his head, as if hoping the words would fly over him and not land. “Come,” he said, “we can reminisce on the way to shelter. Is there strength enough in you to get onto the horse? Here…” Wulfstan held on to mane and saddle, while the harper leaned down and guided his foot onto a fallen log. “Up and over.”

“I ca—”

“Of course you can. It’s all you have to do today. When you’re on, you may sleep, and I will take us both to the house at Cotanham, where the nuns can look after you. Just this one little thing, I swear. Then rest.”

Now they were not at odds—now he had the excuse of a wound to cover his weakness—Wulfstan felt free to notice that he liked the harper’s voice. The gentleness of it and the way it cajoled. He didn’t wish to be more disappointing than he already had been.

Taking deep breaths that seemed to slice him in two each time, he called up what remained of his strength, bent his watery knees and jumped, and between them they hauled and manhandled him into the saddle.

The other man kept hold of him as he slipped into place behind him, and Wulfstan found himself locked between long, slender legs, with a pair of long, slender arms about his waist, and hands—narrow and elegant as a woman’s hands—gathering up the reins of…of…

“’S this my horse? How did…?”

He could almost feel the smile, like a warmth on the back of his head. “Yes. Not a brave beast, but a loyal one. It returned of its own choice last night.” The supple voice shaded abruptly into darkness. “It came as soon as it knew it was safe to do so. There are no heroes here, save for you, Wulfstan Glede.”

“’S there water?”

“Here.” The man shifted the reins into his left hand. His sharp hipbone pressed into Wulfstan’s arse for a moment as he twisted to get to the saddle bags. A moment later and he pressed a wineskin into Wulfstan’s hands.

Fealo had begun to walk gently forward, and as Wulfstan choked on a mouthful of unwatered coarse red wine, the slosh and rustle of travel lulled him with its long familiarity. The wine lulled him too.

“Did I ever…”
Thank you? Ask you your name? I don’t remember.

He chased after the memories of their first meeting. Had the old man mentioned his apprentice’s name? The imp had clearly found Wulfstan’s out, but a good memory for names was part of a scop’s training. Wulfstan had no such advantage.

As he worried about this, it came to him more and more strongly that it was almost worth the wound to be treated with such tenderness. How good it was to be hurt, if it meant one could lean back into another man’s strength and be embraced and cherished without having to be ashamed.

He rolled his head to the side, until it was cradled on the harper’s shoulder, and shut his eyes again, keeping out the painfully shattered sky. Could actually feel the smile as the corner of the man’s mouth tipped up against his skin, and he thought, unwelcomely, that while it was true he need not be ashamed, he possibly ought not to wallow in the freedom and comfort of this quite so much. What must the man think of him? He knew, more than any creature alive, the depth of Wulfstan’s weaknesses, and they had not parted on good terms.

Should he say sorry for that?
Sorry I hit you for giving me what I wanted. I still want it. Thank you for saving my life.
He really ought to tell the man that before it slipped away. As he braced himself to actually say the words, sleep, the stealthiest of thieves, stole his senses and left him once more in the dark.

When Wulfstan woke again it was in a bed. Cool sheets were tucked firmly around him, and cool stone walls rose to arching traceries over his head. Nothing else in the room but his outer clothes lying folded on a stool, a crucifix on the wall, and a flood of whey-blue light from a window high in the eaves above his head.

He stirred, and the mattress crunched comfortably beneath him, giving out the summer scent of dry grass, the aniseed and lime perfume of ladies’ bedstraw. He was moving to check the wound at his shoulder—it felt as though a horse had kicked him, but it was now more carefully dressed, and the dressings were dry and white—when the door opened and a crush of folk blotted out the torchlight of a larger room or corridor outside.

Wulfstan seized his pillow and leaned it against the wall, struggled into a seated position, just as the first nun put down her pitcher of beer and tutted at him for moving without permission. She and the second were at his side almost at once, taking him under the shoulders and positioning him, and he thought they had some lax rules in this house, that allowed the brides of Christ to manhandle mortal men with such impunity.

One of the sisters was a round-faced girl with a smile tugging at her lips, who looked to him like a woman who could take a joke in that direction and return an answer. The other, however, was not. She was an elderly, stern-faced woman with a backbone like iron and creases in her face that spoke of a lifetime of discipline.

He took the beer she offered him and drank it down thirstily, trying not to close his eyes in ecstasy as his body flowered from it like dry places after rain. His guilt awoke alongside his flesh. He wondered if the older woman could see it. If God, in exchange for all she had given up, had graced her with the ability to dredge the sin from a man’s silences. His levity disappeared like the quickly waning evening light.

Wulfstan submitted quietly while the older woman checked his bandages. She didn’t speak, but she gave him a quick nod of approval once she was done. After which the junior propped a basin on his knees and let him wash his hands and face, handing him a linen towel when he was done. They both departed together, and when they returned it was with a tray of meat pottage, and a lantern.

Their brown habits and the long white veils took on notes of topaz and gold in the lamplight, and their silence—which at first had been awkward—settled into the serenity of the stones. It ebbed its way into the quietness of their faces and the grace of their movements, and became more restful than his blankets. He tipped his head back against the wall and let the quiet soothe him. No, this was a place his sin could not follow him. Nor could Saewyn’s curse penetrate these high and holy walls. Here he was safe even from himself.

He ate the pottage, tasting pigeon and sage, the bitter-mustard tang of watercress and the chewy plumpness of barley, scraped the bottom of the bowl with his spoon, willing to take more if there was any.

There wasn’t. Instead, the younger nun took the bowl, her gaze now resolutely fixed on the floor. The older ushered her charge into the corridor, stepped to one side and with a gesture of her arm invited a tall figure to stoop beneath the lintel. When he straightened up, she closed the door behind him.

The silence lay thick as wood smoke between them. Faintly, from beyond the wall at Wulfstan’s right, the sound of high, sweet voices lifted in plainchant filtered through the mortar and raised Wulfstan’s hackles with its eerie power. His visitor smiled but seemed as conscious of the moment as he was himself.

So there you are
, Wulfstan thought, with a satisfaction as startling as the taste of peaches. It felt like the first time he had seen the man while the light was good, and Wulfstan was in his right mind. The first time he had seen him with leisure to stare, with an appetite to look his fill and the chance to take it.

Slender as a willow wand and dressed in rich men’s cast-offs, his forest-green tunic of the finest wool, his tawny cloak held by a great brooch of silver, the young harper looked the part of importance and success. He wore his round hat of green leather like a crown. An embroidered band of golden horses was galloping there, their limbs intertwined.

Only on a second glance did one see the dirt of rough sleeping and the knife-thin delicacy of famine. His slender face, all angles and hollows, had something frail about it, thin as blown glass. Despite his big smile his silver-blue eyes remained wary.

Not an elf, perhaps, but elf-sheen—beautiful as an elf.

The man lifted the folded clothes off the stool by the bedside and sat.

“So, Glede, you are—”

“I need to thank you, and to beg your pardon. I don’t even know your name.”

“Leofgar.” The man leaned forward when he spoke, shrugged, and the bag that sat between his shoulders slid into his crooked elbow. Recovered, Wulfstan saw it was not wings at all. It was, of course, the bag that contained his harp. “Son of…Anna of Cantwarebyrig.”

The old man, the one who had clung to Wulfstan’s knees and wept on his feet, had been called Anna. Wulfstan sighed and supposed he understood at least some of what haunted Leofgar’s gaze. His master had looked like a skull even then.

“I remember Anna,” he offered, carefully, “who got between us and stopped me from doing something I would have regretted. Is he…?”

“It was a hard winter.” Leofgar’s brows pinched together, and his eyes swam for a second before he covered his face with both hands so that Wulfstan would not see him weep. “He has gone to his eternal reward.”

The silence returned, soft as feathers, while Wulfstan gathered his courage. Then he reached out and curled his hand around Leofgar’s upper arm, making him startle and quickly swipe his tears away on his cuffs.

“I’m sorry. If only there were more men, like him, clever and brave enough to get between me and the target of my anger, to softly reason me out of it. At least one of my friends would be alive, who now is dead, if there were.”

Leofgar looked in his face, intrigued at that. Not at all as horrified as Wulfstan felt he ought to be. Even so, why was he telling this? He knew nothing more of this man than his pride and his readiness to resort to cruel tricks to get revenge, if he thought himself wronged. Why spill any more guilty secrets than the one huge shame the harper already knew?

Perhaps
because
the harper already knew. How much worse could Wulfstan make it by telling all? And the thing clamoured in the back of his throat, raged to be set free, confessed. Perhaps, God willing, forgiven.

“You have had a hard winter too?” Leofgar asked, with just the right amount of sympathy to make his curiosity seem kindness. “I thought you no longer seemed quite the fool you once were. The Lord has tempered you?”

“If you think murder is the Lord’s work.”

A clatter, as Leofgar leaned back with too much haste and banged the legs of the stool against the wall. There his flight stopped and his instinctive alarm turned into thought. Wulfstan swallowed hard against hope and fear alike, and at length the harper leaned towards him again, elbows on knees, gaze very clear.

“I have known men who were the kind to do murder. Coldhearted, clear-thinking men with a great deal of patience. You seem to me quite the opposite. Hot-tempered, impulsive, untimely.”

Wulfstan twisted his beer mug between his hands. “It’s true,” he said, accepting some comfort. “I shouldn’t say murder. I struck him down in the open, in a moment of fury, because he had given me the worst of all insults.”

He picked at his nails, aware of the scop’s head angling, as though an angel on his shoulder had whispered to him and he tilted his head to listen. The pale gaze felt terribly heavy on the top of his head.

“You treated with him as you did with me?”

If clear sight was a mark of his profession, he was a master of it.
I did
, Wulfstan thought, and the cut of the realisation was so deep and clean it hardly hurt.
Dear God, do I make a habit of this? If Anna had not intervened, might I not have killed you too?

No. No, I would not. No matter how out of my wits I was with rage, I would not.
“Except that you did not betray me. Not even though I gave you a beating.”

He had allowed that to pass unremarked at the time. But thinking on it, now he saw it as an act of lavish, undeserved mercy. “Why did you not?”