Then the curve of the road cut off the view, as it always did. Each path drew its own landscape. He understood that now. Something always got left behind, and sometimes it was even something you wanted to lose, but mostly the things you wanted to lose stayed with you.
He laughed, and Sigfrid, riding awkwardly astride a donkey, turned to look at him.
“How are you come to us, Ivar?”
“Let us ride until nightfall. Then I’ll tell the tale.”
They rode in silence, despite their joy, for it appeared Constance’s schola were too weary and exhausted to sing. Their pace was killingly slow, burdened by the grind of the two carts and the awkward seats of several of the monastics who, like Sigfrid, had never learned to ride and yet were too weak to walk far. Through stubbornness and God’s will they turned east onto a half hidden trail into the deeper forest and made it as far as that same clearing where Ivar had met Erkanwulf the previous summer. The thatched roof that covered the old stone chapel still held. They settled Biscop Constance and the weakest nuns in its shelter while the soldiers set up a half dozen traveling tents for the rest of them, in case it rained. The sergeant set out sentries and ordered a big fire built in front of the chapel. There was plenty of deadwood to be gathered and split for burning. Wind soughed through the leaves of the giant oak.
“Erkanwulf and I saw shades here,” said Ivar, chafing his hands as he stood before the fire. “They killed some of the men pursuing us and drove the rest away, but they didn’t touch us. I don’t know why.”
“We heard no news of that,” said Sigfrid. “Do you mean to say Captain Tammus suspected all along and sent soldiers to fetch you back?”
“I must believe so. Did no one confront the biscop?”
They turned. She had come forward, leaning on her stick and supported by Sister Eligia, one of the survivors.
“We have heard nothing, no news at all from the outside world for the last nine months, Brother Ivar,” she said. A pair of soldiers rolled a log up behind her as a bench, and she sank down and thanked them graciously. “Sabella passed by to gloat that same day you left us, but she did little more than inform me of Tallia’s latest stillborn child as well as rumor from the south that the Wendish army had been lost in the east and that a cabal of malefici meant to cast a spell to drown the world in water. I could not make sense of her report. There came a night soon after when unnatural lightning coursed through the skies and a powerful wind ripped past us. Poor Brother Felix was crushed by a falling tree limb. Sister Gregoria broke her leg so badly that it festered and even Sister Nanthild’s medicines could not heal her. That was a grim omen, for soon after, the sickness struck us down one by one. Give us your report, I pray you, Brother Ivar. Did you reach my niece, Theophanu? Is it she who has sent you to aid us now?”