Fenrir

56

In the penitential cell Jehan’s chest was wet with drool. The odours of the battles on the beach were all he smelled — iron on the breeze, a salt that didn’t come from the sea but from blood. Horses were there, the deep smell of their sweat seeming so strong that it clung to his skin.

He broke free of his bonds, tearing them with his nails, biting them, gulping down mouthfuls of rope, unable to stop the instinct to swallow what he bit. Jehan scrabbled on the floor, rolled and stretched, turning his head round and round as if that might clear his thoughts. He stood but that felt wrong. Instead he crawled on all fours around the cell. Something was happening to his legs. His knees felt very odd, too flexible, as if they could bend the wrong way; the whole geometry of his body seemed unfamiliar and strange. He couldn’t stop stretching his back, which felt too long for his body. His shoulders too seemed wrong, restricted, though large and powerful.

He stroked the thick hair on his arms. His teeth were large, and he ran his tongue back and forth in his mouth, picking out the shape of the canines. It was as if he had a mouth full of boat nails. Jehan put his hand to his brow and ran his fingers through his hair. When he brought his hand down he could smell blood on it. He examined his fingers. They had become long and muscular, the nails talons. He had cut himself just by touching his head.

Jehan was unaccountably hot. He panted and slavered, writhing on the flagstones trying to take their coolness in. His skin crawled on his skull; his cock was hard and he seethed with lust, though he fought to force it from his mind. And he was thirsty, terribly thirsty. When had he last drunk? He couldn’t remember. Days before.

The confessor breathed deeply, trying to find himself in the thought storm. There was a screaming inside him, a sound like that of an animal caught in a trap, of something scraped and scratched, like metal on stone. An aggression he had never known was in him. He laughed.

‘I am such a thing that will tear the enemies of God.’

No, he told himself. He fought for clarity. The truth, when it came to him, was terrible. He had been cursed. Some pagan, perhaps the one who had forced that vile and bloody mass on him, had cursed him, and he was powerless to resist. And God had let this happen to him. Why? Because he had not been holy enough, not tried hard enough, not sacrificed enough of his mind to Jesus.

He came up to a crouch, feeling the strength in his limbs. He could break the door, he knew, splinter it to nothing, but he would not. How long had he been in that cell? The question came into his head and vanished again, meaning nothing to him any more.

The power in him was from the devil and he would not use it. It was a test. His senses sang. His teeth were spikes, sharp and ready and his nails were blades, itching to tear and kill. He stretched and clenched his fingers — they were tense with the desire for murder.

But he would not.

‘I will not be this thing,’ he said out loud, his voice rasping like a rain-swollen door on the flagstones. He prayed: ‘Jesus, hear me now. Jesus, strike me down. Afflict me again, Lord. Blind me and wither my limbs. These hands turn only to evil, these eyes profit me nothing. Return me to the piety of darkness.’

From down on the beach he could hear someone calling.

‘Vali, help me! Feileg, I am dying.’

He recognised the voice. It was the Lady Aelis. He remembered the Viking camp, her touch on his shoulder.

‘Help me now!’

She was calling him, he knew. And then something seemed to break open his consciousness like it was a walnut. The scream, the animal howl, shaking his thoughts to nothing.

‘Vali!’ He saw himself as the fit young man he had never been, walking on a hillside hand in hand with a girl. She was blonde but he couldn’t see her face. The sun was on the meadows, and the buzz of bees was in the air. He heard voices.

‘Prince, prince!’ A man was next to him — a big old Norseman with a battle-scarred face — but he didn’t recognise him. ‘Where is your spear? Where is your bow?’

The man looked angry but Jehan was not afraid. Was this a vision sent by the devil? It felt so real.

The mountain seemed to fade away and he was by a waterfront, a small landing stage. Out to sea three Viking ships sped towards the shore. She was in front of him again, the blonde girl, holding his hands, looking into his eyes.

‘Kill a hundred of them for me,’ she said.

‘I have known you before.’

‘I have always known you.’

‘I will find you.’

‘That is your destiny,’ she said.

Jehan came back to himself. The corner of the cell was rank with shit and piss; vomited blood lay all over the floor. How long had he been there? A long time, he sensed. He heard the woman’s voice: ‘I am dying.’ He felt tormented and hot as if he had a head full of flies. ‘I am dying.’

It was time to leave. The door cracked under his first blow. He hit it again and the wood gave some more. The effort of smashing the door bored and frustrated him, and he looked up at the broken roof. It had not occurred to him to climb before. The walls were smooth so Jehan jumped, his strong, long fingers forcing their way through the thatch. He pulled himself up and through it.

The fat moon hung above him, the sky swarmed with stars and he felt as if all of creation had turned out to watch him, as if the night was a city and he was its champion going out to battle under its anxious eyes. The thick beat of his heart was in his ears, the scent of blood in his nostrils and the thatch cool beneath him.

He looked out over the silver sand. Something was happening. Figures were on the beach. His eyes were sharp and he saw clearly in the dark. A man struggled with a large burden. Jehan’s ears picked up the man’s exertion, the coughs and retches of the woman in his arms. Next to him stood six figures, upright but their presences dull. It was the sense that had awoken in him in the cloister, the ability to feel the quality and the direction of attention of all those around him, to feel the focus of their thoughts without even looking at them. In some strange way, he knew, the men down there were different to normal humans. If he closed his eyes he could feel how focused the man who was pulling the woman from the water was, feel the desperation of the woman in his arms, almost as if she was fighting to regain her senses and bring her mind back to the beach and sanity. The men who waited by the water, though, the six who watched impassively as the figures struggled in front of them, were not there. In some sense, the werewolf knew, they were both present and not.

Across the sand strode a man, a curved sword flashing in the light of the moon. And there was a woman, her body reeking with blood and filth, her hands stretched to the couple who staggered from the water.

Jehan leaped from the roof into the dunes and made his way down to the beach under the burning moon, Slinking low to the sand, he moved forward as swiftly as the shadow of a bird in flight.