He found his voice then, and cried out on me for a despoiler of the Church, and that I should leave such ways to the Sea Wolves.
“Listen, Old Father,” I said. “It might well have served me better to wait until the Sea Wolves had overrun this place, and taken them in the Fens farther westward, farther from their ships. I might have lost fewer men and fewer horses had I done that. And why should I do as I have done, and then ride away, asking for nothing in return?”
He said, “For the love of God.”
It was my turn to be silent. And a sudden quiet came over the hall, so that I heard the drone of the wild bees that nested in the thatch. I had thought him grasping, without either justice or charity in his heart, willing to take the lives of a score of my men and the sweat and blood of the rest of us, and give nothing in return; but I saw now that it was simply that for him the love of God had a different meaning to the meaning that it held for me. And my anger died away. I said, “I also have loved God in my way, but there are more ways than one. I have never seen the flame on the altar nor heard the voice in the sanctuary; I love my men who follow me, and the thing that we are prepared to die for. For me, that is the way.”
His face gentled a little, as though at the passing of his own anger, and suddenly he looked old and tired. But I did not relent; neither of us relented. After a few moments, he said coldly and wearily, “We are not strong enough to persuade you to leave us until you choose to go; and if we were as many and as strong as you, God forbid that, remembering your blood shed for us, we should deny you hospitality when you demand it. Stay then, and take the four horses for your guerdon. We shall pray for you, and it may be that our prayers and our hunger before next harvest will soften your will toward another community at another time such as this.”
He sat back in his chair, signifying with one old thick-veined hand that the thing was over.
We stayed out our three days, encamped in the monks’ orchard while the horses grazed under escort in the marsh pastures, and Caradawg, our armorer, set up his field forge and was busy with his mate, dealing with sprung rivets, beating out the dints in shield boss and war cap, and replacing the damaged links in mail shirts. We had a fair number of mail shirts by now, though they were slow-gathering, since only the great men of the Saxons possessed such war gear and so it was only when a chief was killed or taken that we were able to add to our store. (And the winning of a war shirt had become a matter for eager rivalry among the Companions, in consequence, who wore them as a hunter cuts a notch in his spear.) The rest of us took our turns of horse guard, and sprawled about the fires mending here a broken sandal strap and there the gash in a leather tunic, and ceaselessly trapped and hunted for the pot. But there was no longer friendship between us and the Brothers.
My lads did not take it kindly when I told them what had passed; Cei, I remember, proposed that we should fire the place as a sign of our displeasure, and some of the wilder ones were with him. And when I cursed him and them into a kind of sense, he consoled himself by eating himself almost to bursting point at every meal, in order to make as big a hole in the grain store as might be. The Brothers went about their own life, whether at prayer or at work on the farm, so far as possible as though we were not there, save for Brother Lucian and the boy Gwalchmai, who came and went in their care of the wounded as before. I knew that, even as the old Infirmarer had assured me before the trouble started, I need have no fear for the wounded after we were gone. They were good men, these brown-robed Brothers, though I longed to shake them until their back teeth rattled in their shaven heads. When, on the third morning, I ordered Prosper my trumpeter to sound for breaking camp, and at last the pack beasts were loaded and all things ready, they came out with the Abbot to the place before the gateway, to see the last of us, without anger. The Abbot even gave me the blessing for a departing guest. But it was done for duty’s sake, and had no warmth in it.
The horses, fresh after their days of rest, were trampling and tossing their heads. One of the pack mules tried to bite his neighbor’s crest and started a squealing fight. I turned to mount Arian, and as I did so, met the gaze of Gwalchmai the novice fixed upon me, where he stood on the outer fringe of the Brothers. I have never seen any face so wide open, so completely without defenses, as Gwalchmai’s that moment. The wind from the marsh was ruffling the fair hair on his forehead; he licked his lower lip, and half smiled, and then looked away.
“Gwalchmai,” I said, with the purpose scarce formed in my mind.
His gaze whipped back to mine. “My Lord Artos?”
“Can you ride?”
“Yes.”
“Come then, we can do with a surgeon.”
I would have left him to follow with our wounded when they came back to us, but Gault and the rest would want for nothing in Brother Lucian’s care, and I knew that if I did not take the boy now, I should not get him.
“Stop! Are you not content with our four best horses, that you must take from among our Brothers also?” the Abbot cried; and he made a strange gesture, spreading his arms like wings in their wide-falling sleeves, as though to protect the huddled Brotherhood behind him.
“The boy is but a novice, and still free to choose for himself! Choose, Gwalchmai.”
He took his gaze slowly from mine, and turned it to the Abbot. “Holy Father, I should make but a poor monk, with my heart elsewhere,” he said, and came out from among the Brothers to stand at my stirrup. “I am your man, my Lord Artos, for all that there is in me.” And he touched the hilt of my sword as one taking an oath.
The Abbot protested once again, more vehemently than before, then fell silent, while his monks and my own Companions, silent also, stood looking on. But I do not think that either of us heard what the old man cried out.
I said, “So, that is good, for I think there is in you that which we need among the Companions,” and turned in the saddle to bid a couple of the drivers to bit and bridle one of the monastery horses and fling a rug across his back.
While they did so, Gwalchmai, as composedly as though his leaving with me had been arranged for many weeks beforehand, set to tightening his rawhide belt and girding up the hampering skirts of his habit.
“Have you nothing that you wish to fetch? No bundle?” I asked.
“Nothing but what I stand up in. It makes for light traveling.” He never looked at the Abbot, nor at any of the Brothers again. Someone gave him a leg up, and he settled himself on the riding rug, and gathering up the reins, wheeled his horse among the rest of us. Man after man swung into the saddle, and we clattered and jingled out and down toward the fenland fringes and the old legionary road that runs due north from the Glein crossing toward Lindum.
NOT unnaturally, the Abbot complained of me to the Bishop of Lindum; but the Bishop, though zealous, was a small man, shrill but ineffectual, like a shrewmouse, and not hard to quell. Nevertheless, that was the start of the ill blood between myself and the Church, which has lasted almost ever since . . .
Six years went by, and all their summers were spent in arms against Octa Hengestson and his son Oisc who was now of an age to lead men. Lindum, with its ill-kept roads radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel, was the perfect base for the campaigning of those years, and there, in the old fortress of the Ninth Legion, made over to us by Prince Guidarius, we set up our winter quarters, from which to strike out southward toward the Glein and the shores of the Metaris Estuary westward along the open sea coast, northward to drive the Sea Wolves back into the Abus River.