The Land of the Silver Apples

Chapter Thirty-four THE WILD HUNT

Jack woke. He didn’t know if it was morning or night, but he felt more rested than he had since reaching the Land of the Silver Apples. His sleep had been shallow and unsatisfying in the hobgoblins cave. Glamour must drain your strength. Perhaps sleep did not exist at all in Elfland, where illusion was strongest. A lamp burned in the privy, but the main room was almost completely dark.

Jack cleared a patch of floor, leaving a small heap of straw, and called to the life force. He didn’t need to start a fire. He did it simply because he was comforted by the force’s presence, like an old friend. The straw blazed up, and he saw Father Severus sitting at the table. His face was like a skull stretched over by a thin layer of skin. Jack shivered.

“You’ve learned a trick or two since we last met,” said the man. “You do know wizardry is a sin.”

Once Jack would not have argued with a monk—Father had filled him with awe for such exalted beings—but much had happened since the days when he was a frightened boy being carried to a slave market. He had stood at the foot of Yggdrassil and drunk from Mimir’s Well. “I call to life. Life is not a sin.”

The monk laughed. “Hark at you, lecturing your elders! Life is an opportunity to commit sin. The longer it lasts, the more evil clings to your soul, until you sink beneath the weight of it. Next you’ll be telling me magic is the same as miracles.”

“I was about to say that,” Jack admitted. “They did miracles every day at St. Filian’s, and no one thought twice about it.”

“Those weren’t miracles,” Father Severus said. “Those were vile perversions. They preyed upon the weak and plucked them clean. If I were in charge of St. Filian’s, I’d whip those so-called monks into shape. Hard work and fasting for the lot of them. But we don’t need to sit here in darkness.” He placed a lamp on the table. “None of your magic, please. We’ll use honest flint and iron.”

To Jack, the appearance of fire from pieces of metal and stone was as much magic as the fire he called with his staff. But he didn’t want to argue. Father Severus was a frail, possibly dying, man, and in spite of the monk’s gloomy outlook, there was a deep kindness in him. His reverence for “the simple fact of God’s world” wasn’t that different from the Bard’s reverence for the life force.

“Could you fill the pitcher for me, lad?” asked Father Severus.

Jack hurried to obey. He passed Thorgil, who woke up instantly, and Pega, who had burrowed into the straw like a mouse. Jack could see only the top of her head. When he returned, Father Severus was setting out cups and trenchers.

“The Picts will arrive soon.” The monk smiled morosely. “Occasionally, I tell time by the rumbling of my stomach.”

“Why are they here? The Picts, I mean,” asked Jack. “They don’t seem to be slaves.”

“They’re enthralled,” said Father Severus. “Long ago, when Romans ruled the earth, they fell under the spell of the Fair Folk. These are not ordinary Picts, but the Old Ones who have turned their backs on God’s world. They no longer marry or have children. No mortal woman is good enough for them.”

“If they don’t have children,” said Jack, confused, “why haven’t they died out?”

“You don’t understand. These are the same men who battled the Romans and fled beneath the hollow hills. They have not aged, except for those rare occasions when they must enter Middle Earth.”

“How… old are they?”

“Hundreds of years,” replied Father Severus. “Do not envy them. Long life has not given them wisdom. It has only allowed them to sink more deeply into corruption.”

Jack felt cold, trying to imagine so much time. One year seemed endless to him. One week could drag by if you were waiting for something. Pega appeared from the darkness, scratching her head, followed by Thorgil and Brutus. Father Swein was still holed up somewhere.

“I don’t hear Guthlac. Does that mean it’s morning?” said Pega, yawning.

“Actually, it does,” said Father Severus. “The Picts take him for a walk before they bring food. Otherwise, it’s too difficult getting in and out.”

They heard voices and the sound of the door being unlocked. Brude led the way with a torch. Others brought bread, cheese, apples, and roast pigeons—normal ones with two legs. Brude found Father Swein asleep in a corner and bent over him, whispering, “Ubba ubba.”

“What? What was that? Don’t hurt me!” screamed the priest, leaping up. The Picts roared with laughter.

“You commmme,” Brude said, crooking his finger at Brutus.

“No, thanks,” replied the slave.

“Ladyyyy wannnts you.”

“Ah! That’s different.” Brutus brushed the straw off his clothes and ran his fingers through his hair. “Duty calls,” he told Jack.

“What duty?” said Jack.

“Entertaining Nimue. She must have talked Partholis into forgiving me.”

“You’re leaving us?” cried Jack, irritated beyond belief by the slave’s casual abandonment of his friends.

“Have to, if you want the water back at Din Guardi.”

Brutus went off whistling a maddening tune between his front teeth.

Why haven’t you already restored the water? Jack wanted to ask, but he knew. The man was having the time of his life in Elfland.

The Picts slammed the door. “Witch’s whelp,” muttered Father Swein, piling his trencher with as much food as he could manage.

The joy went out of the room with Brutus’ departure. Jack was annoyed at him, but the slave’s lazy charm had kept everyone’s spirits up. A breakfast in prison with a gloomy monk and a half-mad abbot was hardly a good substitute. When Guthlac was returned shortly thereafter (“Ubba ubba”), Father Swein retreated to the darkness with his trencher.

Jack, Pega, and Thorgil told Father Severus about their adventures. The monk filled his water clock and listened until it ran dry. “No more,” he commanded, holding up his hand. “You have to do things by turns. Otherwise, time will hang too heavily. I personally enjoy prayer interspersed with meditations on sin, but you lack the discipline. Chores are better for young folks.”

“How many chores can there be in this place?” said Pega, eyeing the vast, empty room.

“Dozens,” Father Severus replied heartily. “You can sweep, wash the trenchers, pick fleas out of the straw, measure the floor by handbreadths—”

“Measure the floor?” cried Thorgil. “What good is that?”

“A great deal if it keeps you busy. It doesn’t matter whether work is useful, only that you keep a worshipful mind while doing it.”

“Hel,” muttered Thorgil, swearing by the goddess whose icy halls awaited oath-breakers.

“Hell is exactly what we’re worried about,” Father Severus said. “I’ve seen what happens to monks who have too much time on their hands. Some of them turn vicious, and some”—he nodded toward the shadows where Father Swein was sucking the marrow out of pigeon bones—“go mad.”

Would that be small demon or large demon possession? thought Jack, stifling a laugh.

“I assure you this is a serious business,” said Father Severus, frowning. “We might be down here for years. Or you might. I won’t last.”

“Yes, sir,” the boy said.

In between chores, the children told stories, exercised, and answered riddles—Father Severus had an endless supply of them. He taught them Latin words and a strange kind of magic called “mathematics”. Six times a day he led them in prayer, except for Thorgil, who said it was beneath her dignity to worship a thrall god.

Without that structure, Jack thought he would have gone insane. The days passed monotonously without the least ray of natural light. It was like being buried alive. Jack snapped at Pega, who didn’t deserve it, and came to blows with Thorgil, who did. Father Severus scolded him. But the monk understood Jack’s despair and set him chores to calm his mind.

Jack was told to capture the tiny animals that fell from the roof and release them into holes in the floor. He didn’t know whether they fared better there, but they were certainly doomed if they stayed in the prison. Father Swein delighted in crushing them. If he captured one alive, he took it to his corner, where the others could hear its pitiful squeaks.

The abbot was growing more dangerous. He demanded most of the food and, because he was the largest, got it. He allowed the food he didn’t eat to rot. The stench poisoned the air, but no one dared to approach his corner to clean it out. At times he swaggered around, threatening punishment to those who defied him. Then the mood would pass, and he would retreat to his corner, uttering loud groans. Father Severus prayed over him, but it did no good.

Thorgil whispered that if he attacked anyone, she would kill him. Jack’s worry was that she wouldn’t succeed.

One day—the sixth or seventh after they arrived—Jack asked Father Severus how he’d found Brother Aiden. They had been practicing “mathematical magic” for two turns of the water cup, and Pega had burst into tears over a problem: If you have ten smoked eels and you eat two the first night and eight the next, how many are left? “You can’t eat eight eels at one sitting,” she sobbed. “They’re too big.”

“Olaf One-Brow could,” said Thorgil.

“Anyhow, you can’t have no smoked eels,” Pega insisted. “You can have nothing to eat, but you don’t know what it is.” She was having trouble with the concept of zero. So was Jack.

Father Severus announced it was time for stories, and that was when Jack asked him about Brother Aiden.

“I was living in the forest,” replied the monk. “Doing penance, you understand.”

Jack remembered Brother Aiden mentioning a scandal between Father Severus and a mermaid. He longed to ask about it.

“It was a grand place,” said the monk, the memory softening his grim expression. “I had a hut surrounded on three sides by a giant oak, to keep off the wind and rain. The spring-water nearby was as sweet as dew, and in summer the ground was covered with strawberries. In fall I ate my fill of hazelnuts and apples and had enough to store for winter. It sounds lonely, but it wasn’t. Deer, badgers, and wild goats played at my door. The branches were always full of birds.”

“Doesn’t sound like penance to me,” observed Pega.

“I assure you, I was suffering,” Father Severus said. “At any rate, one night I heard the sound of a chase through the forest—at night, mind you, when all good Christians should be in bed. ‘How do they see where they’re going?’ I wondered. The bushes were thrashing, the hounds were baying. I heard men running and the sound of a horn.

“Then I knew it wasn’t a Christian hunt, but something Other. I got on my knees to pray for deliverance, or at least for the courage to bear whatever fate brought me. After a while the Hunt died away. I gave thanks to God for His mercy. And then I heard it.”

“What?” said Thorgil, who had been drawn in by the monk’s vivid description.

“A child crying. Out there where all was wild and deserted, I could hear a small boy weeping as though his heart would break. I took my lamp and searched, but the voice fell silent. He was afraid of me. I had a general idea of his whereabouts, so the next day I put out a pot of porridge.”

“How did you get porridge in the middle of the forest?” said Pega.

“I was allowed to take oats, peas, beans, and barley with me,” said the monk with a slight edge to his voice. “Satisfied?”

Jack nudged Pega to warn her not to interrupt again.

“That night the porridge was gone, and I knew the child was alive.”

“By Freya’s teats, this is as good as a saga,” declared Thorgil.

“I had tamed many a forest creature,” Father Severus said, frowning at the shield maiden’s choice of words. “A child was no different. Day after day I put out food, and I sat under his favorite tree and told stories. He couldn’t understand me—I found that out later—but the sound of my voice must have reassured him. One day he emerged. I didn’t move. I merely sat there and continued to speak. And finally, he trusted me enough to come back to the hut.

“Poor, starved, mistreated child! His body was covered in bruises. His bones stuck out. He was half dead, and when I saw the marks on his skin, I understood.” Father Severus paused to drink some water. He was an excellent storyteller and knew exactly when to stop.

“Understood what?” demanded Thorgil.

“I’m feeling tired,” said the monk. “Perhaps I’ll finish the story tomorrow.”

“You can’t stop now!” said Pega.

Jack noticed a slight quirk at the corner of Father Severus’ mouth. It was how the Bard looked when he knew he’d captured everyone’s absolute attention.

“Are you sure?” said Father Severus, sighing deeply.

“Yes! Yes!” cried both Pega and Thorgil.

“Very well: The boy had the tattoo of a crescent covered by a broken arrow. Below it was a line crossed by five other small lines, the rune for aiden. Aiden means ‘yew tree’ in Pictish. The crescent stood for the Man in the Moon and the broken arrow for the Forest Lord. You probably don’t know about them.”

“Oh, we know about them, all right,” said Jack.

“They’re the demons the Picts worship, and that mark meant the child was destined for sacrifice!”

“No!” cried Pega.

“Yes,” said Father Severus. “He was the aim of the Wild Hunt. He’d been intended for death, but he’d escaped. I knew he’d never be safe in the forest. The Picts would return, and so I took him to the Holy Isle. I taught him Saxon and Latin, but I didn’t have to teach him goodness. He already had that. The boy grew into Brother Aiden and became the librarian of the Holy Isle.”

“A wonderful ending.” Pega sighed.

“A better one would have been for the monks to go back to the forest and slaughter the Picts,” Thorgil said.

“Monks don’t do that,” said Father Severus.

“That’s why they’re so easy to pillage,” said the shield maiden with a self-satisfied smile.