A dozen folk waited for them at the gateway of a palisade dimly seen in the murky night. A cluster of buildings huddled within its safety, but it was too dark to note more than shapes scattered across a clearing. He was hustled into the blessed warmth of a long hall while his companions took the carcass elsewhere to hang. Erkanwulf sat on furs beside the hearth fire, talking to a wakeful child crouched beside him.
“Ma!” The child called to a woman who had led Ivar in from the gate. She pushed back her hood to reveal a face more handsome than pretty. She had an infant bundled against her chest in a sling. “He says he was at Gent! Just like Da!”
“You’re out of Gent?” asked the woman in surprise.
“Nay,” replied Erkanwulf, “I was only there one time, when there was a big battle. That was years ago. I was just a lad.”
“My husband was a refugee out of Gent. Mayhap after that big battle you speak of, the one with the Dragons.”
“They all died!” cried the child happily. “All those Dragons! All but one! That was the captain. Nothing can kill him!” he added confidingly to Erkanwulf. “He’s a great warrior, the best who ever lived.”
Ivar was too cold and wet even to work up a smoldering burn at the mention of Prince Sanglant, that most noble and attractive of creatures. It just didn’t seem important.
Erkanwulf smiled at the child, then nodded at Ivar. “You’re a sight, my lord cleric,” he said with a mocking lift of his head.
The woman stopped dead, and turned to Ivar with her jaw dropping open. She had all her teeth and good, clean, healthy eyes. Her grip, when she caught his elbow, was uncomfortably strong. “Are you a churchman? We haven’t had a deacon, or a frater even, out our way for years and years. We’ve been wanting….”
Laughing, Martin and Bruno came into the hall, pausing in the dug-out entryway to take off their boots.
“Martin!” she called, and Martin looked up at the sound of her voice and grinned at her. What they shared, Ivar felt as a joyful presence, like the perfume of the first meadow flowers of spring, that penetrated even in this dank and fetid winter hall. The hall had stood up to the gale; the presence glimpsed in their shared gaze had withstood the storms of life. “This one is a cleric! Maybe he could give us God’s blessing on our marriage.”
“Surely we have God’s blessing already,” said Martin as the child ran over to him and leaped up into his arms, cuddling there.
“Hush!” She made a sign with her hands, and spat, and then looked embarrassed. “Begging your pardon, my lord cleric. Old ways die hard. I mean nothing by it. But it’s bad fortune to say what might attract the evil eye. Would you do it? We’ve nothing to offer but a place to sleep and something to eat and drink for as long as you must bide here until your companion is healed and you can go on. And these unnatural rains end. Can you speak God’s blessing over us? We’ve been handfasted these six or seven summers but never had God’s blessing spoken over us.”
I can’t.
But as she stared at him, eyes wide and a hopeful smile on her lips, he could not say “no” to her. He didn’t know the words. He’d forgotten most things and learned little to begin with. He hadn’t paid attention because he hadn’t wanted to. He’d wanted everything else. Anything out of his reach had seemed so bright and ripe to him, like the perfect apple dangling from a branch too high to ever reach.
“I’ll sing God’s blessing over you,” he said, “in the morning.”
Ai! She was so happy as the rest stamped in and by lantern light stripped down to shifts and cozied into the pallets and platforms tucked up under the eaves that they slept on, all snugged together for warmth. They offered him an honored place close to the hearth, and he lay down beside Erkanwulf and the little lad, who had taken a liking to the rider, but although he closed his eyes, he could not sleep.
After a while Erkanwulf stirred, and whispered, “I’ve never heard you sing a blessing, not once in all this time. You’re just a heretic, not a real churchman, aren’t you?”
“Is there any harm in it?” Ivar murmured. “I served as a novice at Quedlinhame. It isn’t as if a frater or cleric is likely to wander through here. Anyway, they’ve served us a good turn.”
Erkanwulf grunted softly. “I suppose there’s no harm in it. Funny, though. That one, called Martin, he came out of Gent years ago, so I hear. He was a lad then and he settled here and married a local girl. This is their boy.” The child was snoring softly on the other side of Erkanwulf. “The wee lad has never heard of Autun or Lady Sabella or Biscop Constance, but he knows all about Gent and roads east.” His voice got rough, or perhaps his leg was paining him. “What will we do? We’ve only one horse now. You know as well as I do that we’ve nothing but empty promises to carry back to Biscop Constance.”