Fenrir

63

Aelis put her hand to Jehan’s head. He was cold but sweating. His eyes toured the hut in circles as if they could make up in industry what they lacked in effectiveness.

‘You have a fever.’

‘Yes.’

‘It will pass.’

But it didn’t pass, and Aelis sat watching Jehan weaken on the straw bed. She was not alone. The runes were with her, breathing and singing inside, floating at the edge of her vision. She reached up towards one and allowed it to settle in her hands like a snowflake. It was shaped like a cup, and when she held it she thought it was deep enough to hold the sea. She peered into its depths and saw the cause of Jehan’s fever. The stone. She parted her hands and the rune vanished. Then she took the stone from his neck and set it on the table.

She sat beside him, listening to the chiming, the low wind moan and the ocean crash of the runes. She slept. When she awoke Jehan was gone and it was night.

Aelis felt no alarm but followed him, his trail clear to her in the moonlight of the silver wood. She was no tracker, but the magic inside her told her the way to go, or, rather, made any other way to go seem ridiculous and awkward, like someone who had turned right out of her door to her flock every morning for thirty years might find it strange to have to suddenly turn left.

He was among the corpses, the rotting dead men. She guessed he had come to them by smell because she knew wolves find the dead an irresistible lure.

The confessor was sitting on the ground, his blind eyes moving in mad circles, as if searching for some elusive scrap of light. The head of one of the bandits was on his lap.

‘Do not feed, Jehan. Let the wolf starve inside you.’

Jehan was mumbling to himself in Latin, making the sign of the cross over the head of the dead man.

Aelis recognised the Office for the Dead, translating the words in her mind, as she had been used to doing in church ever since she was a girl: The fear of death confounds me. The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came upon me, I was overcome by trouble and sorrow, then I called on the name of the Lord. O Lord, save me!

The confessor fell to weeping, holding the head of the corpse as he might have held the head of a lover, as he had held her head.

‘Jehan, come away from this.’

‘You are a sorceress. You have bewitched me!’

His voice was full of anguish rather than hatred.

‘I have not bewitched you. My love, it has always been the same between us. We are here, flowers of the flesh to wax and then die. But we, like the flowers, only know a seeming death. We go on to bloom again for ever. I have seen it — the runes have shown me.’

‘There is no future life, only the resurrection of the flesh through Christ,’ said Jehan. He collapsed sideways on to the ground, coughing. ‘I will not be this… devourer.’

‘Nor need you be. The fever will pass. Come back and be my love.’

‘It will not pass. It is the stone or the monster. I will weaken or I will eat.’

Aelis looked inside herself. Who was she? Could she really recall? There was a memory of the girl who would have been repulsed by the sight in front of her but it was like the smoke of a campfire in the hills — distant, faint, then gone. Then she saw herself clearly. She was the thing that stood beside him. He made her what she was, like the sea makes the land the shore.

‘God will not let you suffer like this. There is a prince in the east, a sorcerer. Let us go to him.’

‘I will not consort with the worshippers of idols.’ Jehan’s religion had returned, it seemed, along with his infirmity.

‘The magic of the stone saved you from being the wolf. Why cannot magic save you now?’

‘God has made me weak and set this trial to punish me. I will wear no pagan stone, but the wolf will go unfed, muzzled by my will.’

A caul of sweat was about his head, his hands and voice shook.

‘And yet here you are, among the corpses.’

Aelis looked for the runes to help her, to heal him, make him well. But in his presence they seemed to tremble and wither and the sound she heard in her head was of that of searing and burning. She went away from him, walking through the moonlit forest, the trees shining white like a foretaste of winter. She wanted to help him, to comfort him, but she knew that Jehan would only ever find his own way, or rather God’s way.

When she returned, Jehan was still kneeling among the corpses, drooling out his psalms. There was blood on his lips and the corpse in front of him was torn and ripped, its guts spilled.

‘I cannot command it. I am a man, not an angel. I cannot command it. It is my love for you that has weakened me.’

‘I would be your strength.’

‘Our love has been a sin against my deepest vows. God has turned his face against me.’

‘How can He hate you for loving?’

Jehan had tears in his eyes. ‘I do not know, but He does.’

Still she felt his will, the strength of his soul.

‘What will you do?’

‘The choice is infirmity or abomination, the unholy and proscribed use of magic or to be the victim of magic. One way or another I am bound for hell. The choice that faces my mortal body is its pain or the world’s. In imitation of Christ, I choose my own. I will be what I was. Tie on the stone.’

She put it about his neck. As she did so, the runes returned to her, shining, chiming, melodious. ‘You can remove it when you become too weak.’

‘I will not remove it.’ He swallowed hard and stiffened his jaw.

‘Then what of us?’

‘It cannot be. It cannot be.’ Tears were in his eyes and he was panting great reedy breaths like a man dying of consumption.

‘Whatever you become, I will be by your side,’ she said. ‘I will take you to Helgi. He will make us both whole again, free us from the magic that holds us in its grip.’

She reached out with her mind to the horse rune, its golden lustre colouring her sight, turning the silver trees to a breathing bronze.

‘We will need,’ she said, ‘an animal.’