Brothers Of The Wild North Sea by Harper Fox

Author:Harper Fox [Fox, Harper]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

Full moon, midsummer—the Feast of St. John, and a sweet, sultry darkness had come down at last. The sea stirred restively, little white horses whispering to painless destruction on the warm sands. Bronze wands of hypericum nodded in shifts of night air too lazy to be called a breeze, the tiny glands in their leaves glistening with oil. Great trumpets of bindweed gaped their silent music, and silvery seedpods of honesty, their skins already shrivelled after a fortnight of heat, gave the moon back her light. In the spectral, shifting radiance, the so-called abbot of Fara crouched by a stream, washing streaks of afterbirth from his hands.

A lantern appeared briefly in a gap between the dunes. Brother Hengist’s broad face shone beneath it, grinning. On his hip he bore the grain sack for the night’s baking, ten good loaves that would rise in the dark hours and be thrust, as if into the fires of dawn, into the monastery oven at first light. “Is all well, Abbot Cai?”

Cai plucked a water-lily root from the streambed and lobbed it at him accurately, muddy end first. “Yes, all’s well. Once there was one ox and now there are three.”

“Nature is bountiful. Good night, Abbot Cai.” Another lily root, this time bouncing harmlessly off the baker’s broad rump. Alone, Cai finished washing his hands, then splashed water into his face for good measure. “Abbot?” he said to the moon, who seemed to be expecting conversation, her weary face attentive. “I’m not sure an abbot has to doctor beasts as well as men. Or spend his day up to the hips in mud before that, helping dig ditches and drains.”

“But you looked so fetching while you were about it.” Cai jumped. He tried to smooth the reflex away but knew he failed. He didn’t look up—plunged his hands into the stream again and watched smilingly as the water wove patterns through his fingers. “How would you know? You were off with Wilfrid.”

“The view is good from those hills. A handsome soldier with his cassock hitched up and a spade in his hand… A much finer sight than the goats.”

“I should hope so. But I notice they fascinate you, whenever there’s work involving mud, blood or innards to be done.”

“Abbot Cai, you’re a false-tongued excuse for a Christian.”

A shadow fell over the water. Still Cai didn’t look. It had become a complex pleasure to deny himself the sight of his lover until the last instant. He didn’t want to see too soon. He didn’t want Fen to know the changes seeing wrought in him each time—the heat, the helpless flush. And Fen was right—he was a liar. There wasn’t a single task the Viking had evaded since their return from the sea. He had built walls, helped unblock the channels that ran from the latrine, turned his hand to the dozens of jobs where his strength and persistence had been needed.

Fara was coming to life again. All the daily work that had fallen into

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