The Church and the Devils 2

Stanmode woke. His throat was bent over a pain, and his belly was full of piss. His hands hurt him. His cheek, where Andred had struck it two days before, was swollen and hot. He sat up suddenly, frightened, and the fists unfolded as his fingers loosened. No one would see how his hands had been clenched. But that wouldn’t save him.
The light coming from round the curtain was thick and heavy, showing that it was just before dawn. The only sound, other than his quick breaths, came from a cock crowing, resting then crowing again. Stanmode jumped up from his bed by the hearth and pulled a tunic abd wound bindings loosely round his legs, knowing that he only had a short while before the rest of the village woke too. He’d barely stopped shivering by the time he was outside, going as fast as his weakened legs would carry him. He felt sicker than he ever remembered.
The huts were strange to him, all greyed and bulging. It was like a dream, but not like the dream he’d just had. And he didn’t dream. He wasn’t a man who dreamed, unlike fools like Swefrith. But if it wasn’t a dream, it was true. He almost had to bend over double as his heart and his belly melted into each other. It couldn’t be true.
Here was Andred’s hut. He came close to it, rested his hurting hands on its roof. He swayed as he did so, and he closed his eyes while the hot sore skin of his hands cooled off. He’d come here in his dream, carrying a long knife. He remembered an instant of approaching, the feel of the knife handle, the narrowing of the world until there was just Andred, facing him. The bruise on his cheek glowed like burning wood. He didn’t remember raising the knife. It was as though it had been in his hand, and his hand was at Andred’s belly, at his eyes, at his throat. The old man had made no noise. His body had opened up like a pig’s.
Stanmode pressed his ear to the wall of the hut. It was silent. Birdsong in the trees got in the way of his hearing. He listened again. The sickness burst up inside him. It was in his nose, and he fought it back down. His ears couldn’t tell him if his dream was true. He staggered, hands out in front of him, round the door. He had to be quiet. Animals around the village were beginning to wake up, and the clouds in the sky could now be seen. He whipped aside the curtain from the doorway, knowing that it had been a dream. And what if it wasn’t? he asked himself, despairing. No one would weep for Andred, except Erderinca, perhaps. No one would know it was Stanmode who’d done it. Only God…But God wouldn’t be value the life of a heathen, surely. Surely He wouldn’t. But Stanmode had better hide himself. Even as he went backwards he steeled himself to go back to his hut.
Then his foot knocked something hard in the grass. It didn’t roll like a stone. He looked down, terrified. It was a knife. The blade was clean and dry. The knife was not covered in dew! It had not been there long. Stanmode looked around wildly as though the knife’s owner would still be waiting nearby. What he saw was Andred’s shape coming into the village from across the fields.
It was only with the last of his strength that he managed not to scream. Andred was whole, alive, striding towards Stanmode and with fury in his reddened face. The memory of the force of the blow on his cheek crushed the builder’s spirit. He picked up the knife and turned towards his hut, afraid to turn round in case Andred was reaching out at him with those heavy hands.
Stanmode stayed in his hut while the dawn broke. Perhaps he should have gone to Father Owain, as he often did, but he didn’t. He prayed and waited, with the knife on the ground in front of him. At every moment he expected Andred to come for him – Andred dead, or Andred alive – or someone else, telling him that Andred had been butchered. No one came. At last Stanmode grew calm and his fingers stopped shaking. He began to remember who he was, and sat down to look at the knife.
It was not the knife he remembered from his dream. The blade was too short, and the handle was bound with string rather than being pure wood. He though for a while. Someone else might have had the same dream.
Someone else must have had the same dream, and believed in it. Perhaps they had run away when they saw Stanmode coming. He felt angry suddenly. Why should he have to feel frightened when someone else was to blame? It would have been better if that person killed Andred. After all, if both of them had dreamed that they would kill Andred on the same night, surely it was a sign that it should be done. Dreaming it had made Stanmode believe he had done it, and someone else had chosen to do it. What was the difference if it really was done? God wouldn’t value the life of a heathen, surely. He had sent the dream. Surely.
But the anger faded as he realised what he was thinking, and he started trembling again. Outside, the light was full, and Stanmode could hear a group of hens pecking round the front of his hut as though they’d never been asleep. He was tired, but the village was awake. It was time to be working, not wasting time thinking, making himself frightened. He wished his wife were still alive so she could shout him into getting up…but there was the church. It encouraged him even more than she could. He must start working on it with Godric.
He got to his feet, remembering that he hadn’t yet drunk or pissed that morning, and went to the door. But before he pulled back the curtain he remembered the knife. He went back and picked it up. He weighed it in his hand, looking at the wide blade. There were many like it in the village. It wouldn’t be missed. He slipped it under his tunic, near the hip, then pushed aside the curtain and went out into the cold morning air.

“Up here on the hilt, look, there’s some good workmanship. Simple, but good.” Swefrith turned the sword’s pommel towards its owner. One delicate finger pointed out the marks cut by the careful craftsman.
Aethelsunne nodded. He had a thick head that morning – he hadn’t slept well for some nights now away from the comforting sounds of the thane’s household and within hearing of his sister’s dreams. “It’s a good sword.”
Swefrith smiled but kept his eyes on the sword. This was the first time the two of them had had chance to talk at length since Aethelsunne’s arrival. The following weeks had been filled with so much activity – except for the Sundays, on which everyone had remained silent throughout Father Owain’s observances. Many had been exhausted by the extra work on the church, and others were unwilling to disturb the dull peace brought by the cold, cloudy days.

The picks and other instruments Godric had made cut the ground on the chosen site as soon as enough hands and shoulders could be spared.
Godric had asked Father Owain to call for men who would do the Lord’s work. Aethelsunne had been one of the group of men who agreed to go. Straelisth had been among them as well. The young herdsman’s limbs were pulled defensively tight around him. Stanmode stood behind him in the short line with a bruised and worried face.
Straelsith had thrown himself into the work with all his strength, but Aethelsunne had worked beside him with less eagerness. He believed in it all, he was sure – but it had really been Aelfleda’s face, wide-eyed with expectation, that had driven him to step forward in front of all those watching eyes and grasp the beech shaft of the last pick in Godric’s hands.
Swefrith had watched from a distance. Before Godric could turn to him and offer him a place on God’s new earth, he quietly went back to his hut. Aethelsunne noticed Leofa, who had grown into a woman while he was away, standing watching him as he walked with the others towards the river. She looked at him intently but without smiling until they were out of sight.

The ground was soft and easy to turn. Stanmode had marked out where they were to dig with lines of hazel rods that ran alongside each other. He and Father Owain had lingered in the dawn air debating the size of the building, deciding where the sun would rise so they could place the altar. Aethelsunne had been surprised at how prepared they all were. Father Owain had stood for a moment in prayer on the altar-place, the part that was to be the most holy in the church. The robes on his shoulders rose and fell as he breathed beneath whispered words. Aethelsunne saw heads bow around him. It was a short spell of calm. Men leaned on their digging tools and the wind moved their cloaks against their legs. A blackbird had hopped down inquisitively from branch to branch above their heads. Aethelsunne moved his feet slightly and felt more grass fold under the flat soles of his hide boots. Then Father Owain moved, and suddenly Godric was released from bonds. He lifted a spade in his hands. He spoke: stand here, stand there, dig, now dig, in the Lord’s name.
At first Aethelsunne was angry at letting himself be persuaded into doing this. The fine cloth on his legs was dirtied and its colour lost. Earth even got under the bindings that held them to his legs, and his hands, used to the lighter feel of weapons, quickly grew sore. But then, later, there something good in it. He found that he enjoyed feeling his body moving more and more easily, and the regular sensation of the pick blade biting into the earth beneath his strength. He and Straelsith as often as not worked together, one striking as the other raised his blade. There was a healthy sweat on his body – he could feel it running over his ribs.
They worked without pause, except for midday, and soon in places the space between the two lines of hazel rods could hold a man up to the height of his thigh. When the herdsmen had come in from the fields, the diggers had been pleased by what they had done. Father Owain had blessed them all and spoken about Ninian’s church, and how it was built.

“It’s a good sword,” Swefrith repeated. “But look at these.” He stood up and went over to a corner of his hut, where he crouched and threw back a heavy piece of undyed cloth. He remained in the corner for a moment, occasionally reaching forward to pick up whatever it was that lay there. Aethelsunne gazed at the dark hair on the back of his head while his hand moved slightly on the smooth wood of the bench beside him. Then Swefrith turned back, clutching bright things between his hands. “Look.”
Aethelsunne examined, one after the other, a beautiful flat shoulder brooch delicately beaten out in bronze, a steel belt buckle covered in interlocking images of leaves and plants and a necklace made of objects so smooth and bright that it was as if the firelight slid off them, making them too beautiful even to see. This last, Aethelsunne lingered over, letting it run between his fingers. His skin, still sore from the church-work, were unable to let go of them. “Where did you get these stones?”
“From a trader who passed through here. He said he got them from a village by the sea. I’ve seen that kind of stone before, but never so many. They are perfect, aren’t they? I traded them for nearly all the leather and bone I had” His eyes at last shone into Aethelsunne’s, and both men laughed.
“When the church is built you could make it beautiful.”
Swefrith’s eyes looked away at once, towards the door. His breaths were shorter, and though he tried to smile at the praise, his mouth remained set in a grim line. “Do you think so?”
Aethelsunne did not reply, startled by the response he had provoked. “Don’t you believe me?”
“Well – well, the church isn’t built yet.”
“It will be, Swefrith. There’s nothing to be frightened of.”
The craftsman stared down at the feet of his kinsman, his long fingers running the beautiful beads of the neck-chain between them. “But they – you – will take stones from the city. Did you ever go to the old city?”
“We were never allowed. Even before the monks came, they’d always tell me that horrible things happned to children who went there. That scared me wnough to stop me wanting to go.” Swefrith nodded serioulsy. “Then I got too old to care about it any more, then I left here. Is that what the trouble’s all about here? Everyone frightened of the cty? Hasn’t Father Owain been over there to say prayers over it yet?” He could not keep a grin off his face.
“You haven’t seen what happened in Edricsham.” Swefrith mumbled, his eyes still on the floor. “Remember the year you went to fight –“
He stopped as Aethelsunne clapped his hands together. The sharp sound broke through the tense air. Swefrith started at the sound and turned towards a new one, that of hard-soled shoes on his wooden floor. Aelfleda and Leofa had come in.
“Aelfleda, look at what Swefrith has made. Good evening Leofa.”
“I know, I’ve seen it. It’s very good, isn’t it?”
“Everyone says the stones are wonderful.” Leofa’s voice was soft and she looked in turn at the three other people in the hut as she spoke to make sure it was safe to agree. Her hair was untied and uncovered, falling across her shoulders as befitted an unmarried maid. Aelfleda noticed that even though she looked from one to the other of people in the room as she spoke, her eyes rested longest on Aethelsunne. They were wide eyes with deep brown in them, and she knew that Aethelsunne would notice before long. He would enjoy being looked at as though as though the looker was trying to guess his next move or word. That sort of pride was in his nature, though Aelfleda found it almost as tiring to her mind as milking, brewing, cloth-making and animal feeding were to her body.
“I hope you don’t mind me asking this of you, Leofa,” she said briskly.
“No, not if you think it will be useful.” Leofa’s searching eyes turned to each of them in turn. “And no-one else minds.”
“Of course it will be useful. Aethelsunne, please eat with Leofa and Swefrith tonight. My back is giving me pain and I must rest it. I’ll see you all later.”
Then Alefleda was outside again, with cool air instead of the hot fog of the hut brushing her face. She hurried away, knowing that all of them would be looking from one to the other with confused faces. She had not given very good reasons for leaving them. Her back did really hurt her, though not as much as her curiosity. As she walked, she thought, briefly, that Swefrith and Aethelsunne had not looked happy in each other’s company, which was odd. Then, as her steps took her nearer to her destination in the village, she forgot about that. She slowed her walk, from lack of breath as much as stealth, and stopped and stared at the dark bulk of Andred and Erderinca’s hut against the mistier grey of the swine-woods.

Aefleda’s thoughts had been nagging at her for days now, ever since the first morning when the diggers had returned to the holy site and found some of their foundation holes filled in, and the earth pressed down. Every time she had bent her head to some long task, questions and worries about how this could have happened began to float through her mind. She had though then that Father Owain would have known how to solve this mysterious problem if he had knew what she did – but he had not acted. She was afraid. Father Owain was a holy man, a fair man, he might not have believed her when she spoke to him about it. She imagined herself clutching at his robe:
“Andred and Erderinca go out at night and worship devils! It must be them filling in the church’s foundations!”
He would shake his head at her and gently pull his clothes from her fingers.
Often now it the church-builders, arriving in the mornings, would find the night’s changes – more filled-in earth, missing tools, hazel rods shifted this way and that to mislead them and make them dig in the wrong place. The site itself still seemed peaceful, its grass still gently curved and green, the trees barely moving in the still air, birds flapping and pecking between the pale buds, the river flowing strongly by as though it knew nothing of what had happened in the night. Father Owain had talked of evil’s efforts to destroy the church – because in the church was evil’s destruction – but, good man as he was, as she always said of him, he did not know its source.
Aelfleda, did, but she couldn’t simply point a finger. She had to see with her own eyes what Andred and Erderinca did, and then she would be able tolead men to the spot, to show them what had happened. And so, as night began to fall more fully, she stood outside Erderinca’s hut feeling the day’s weaving and washing weigh heavy on her, waiting for the old woman and her husband to go to their evening ritual.
As she waited, she remembered Erderinca as she had seemed to her as a child, before the winter that had killed Aelfleda’s family and that of Swefrith and Leofa. She had always had a cross word for Alefleda’s mother, and her mother always had one for her. Even then there must have been divisions in the village about which faith to hold. But it was not until that long sickly winter that Andred’s wife really had begun to seem apart from the others who gathered despairingly to pray at the foot of the paint-bright new Cross. Then Erderinca had become secretive. In that year, with Father Owain offering hope every morning, the new faith had taken root in men’s hearts, and the people who kept to the old ways had been talked about behind hands on the mead-bench or over the fire, even though no one had thought about being rid of them. The conversion of their kin had not changed their beliefs – like Father Owain’s martyrs, they’d kept a kind of faith, a kind of faith… she pressed three fingers against the spot on her chest where her mother’s stone had hung.
Then she stepped away from Erderinca’s hut, slowly, quietly, trying to avoid stumbling over the length of her woollen underskirt. The sound of a low voice, tired and tender, had been the first sign of life in the gloomy shape of the building. Soon after, two figures, made familiar by years, but looking strange under the weight of heavy cloaks and other cloths in the dark, emerged. Aelfleda saw them look around to see if anyone was watching. She drew further away into the shadows and pulled her dark cap tighter onto her coiled hair. They did not see her and began to walk into the darkness around the village. Their feet made little sound on the earth. Aelfleda shuddered. She could still go back to her own hut, warm herself by the fire, rest her back as she had told her brother she would.
But she couldn’t bring herself to give up, and she began to creep forward, struggling to see the forms made shapeless by distance and night. A dog barked once over by the mead hall and all three of them stopped. Aelfleda wondered if Andred and Erderincas’ breathing was as short and helpless as her own felt. The bark was not repeated and at last they all moved on. She could hear them more clearly now – they were moving less carefully, and their feet knocked against stones and the earth itself. She moved as quickly as she dared, feeling the shape and strength of the soft ground alter under her feet as she followed Andred and Erderinca from the most-walked village paths onto less trodden ones. This, she remembered from daylight, was a route that led to the river. In the darkness behind the huts none of them would be seen.
Her feet slipped in the mud as they got closer to the river. It was colder here and the trees, so familiar during the day, creaked as though they saw her coming and wanted to warn the bulging, shifting figures in front of her. She clamped a hand over her mouth to keep her teeth from chattering in the night-quiet. The breeze had become a wind that cut through to her skin without regard for her layers of clothing. Her forearms were icy below where the sleeves of her overdress ended.
Now the rippling noises of the river were broken by the sounds of waves washing against feet. They were crossing! She swallowed, feeling the air brush coldly into her throat and her chest. She could smell the water in the air, and beyond that, she thought, there was the smell of old stone… Shudders touched her back and legs. They were going to the city.
In the forest behind her, pigs grunted suddenly and something brushed its way through the undergrowth cracking branches. Wolves had not been seen in Ediscum for a few years, but fear of them still lurked in her.
She stood for a moment, glancing into the gloom around her, frozen, frightened by the whole world. She should have gone back, made what she had said to her kin the truth, rested her aching limbs. Father Owain always said, with his smile, that lying was wrong at all times, and he was right. The cracking of branches began again, and a bird, startled, crashed up towards the sky, flapping heavy wings. She ran forwards a couple of steps, suddenly seized by a crazed desire to cry out to Andred and Erderinca, to beg them to protect her. She stopped again, swallowing air in gulps, listening, trembling, sensing something listening to her.
A voice! Not too far away – on the other side of the river. A woman’s – Erderinca’s. Aelfleda moved forward again, quickly, carefully until she reached the flowing and ebbing of the river at the spoiled earth of the ford. She stared into the dark, screwing up her eyes and trying to make shadow from shadow. What had happened? Had Erderinca fallen in? Or - ? Her hand went to the missing stone on her chest. She stepped slowly into the water. Its chill seemed to take everything that kept her alive from her body, but she struggled to the other bank, each step more laboured and pained than the last. On land again she slipped, and jarred herself against some unseen stone. She lay still for a moment and then heard the cough of outraged breath in her throat. As she lay and felt earth-damp weave its way between the threads of her clothes, her straining eyes blinked, dazzled. The torch was some way away and its light was broken up by long-reaching tree branches. Aelfleda dug her fingers deep into the wet ground, which surged up round them and coated her knuckles. It was a light to lead her to evidence of the sinners’ wrong-doing in shameful darkness. She pulled herself to her feet. Her soaked skirts dragged down on her legs. She swayed unsteadily and raised a hand out of real fear of striking her head against something that might hang there in deep night.
Closer now, she could see the folds of cloth around their heads and smell the torch’s flames as they billowed black smoke. It would lead her to sin – but it wasmore comforting than the tripping tree-roots, whose joints were like the fingers of old men under her feet. The torch was the signal her father and mother had often followed, the signal even Godric had followed occasionally in his youth. It was a signal that men recongnised, even sinners, and was ignored by the walker in darkness she trembled at, who came gliding over the river at her shoulder leaving the grunting of pigs behind.
Andred and Erderinca did not speak, not even when, after a long while stumbling between trees, the thrashing wind-blown flames of the torch fell on the staring stones of the city. Though she was afraid of what pursued her as she walked, Aelfleda could not hold back an even greater fear as Andred and his wife passed under the first high arch, whose stones were bare even of moss and lichen.
The stones were cold to the touch, smooth, clean, as though new-built for mysterious ungodly purposes. There was hardness under the wet soles of her shoes, not like the hardness of trees, but the hardness of stones’ age, of things crushed and broken but still keeping their own life. She hurried, breathless, feeling as though the flames of the torch were avoiding her. It dodged to and fro behind high walls, branching arches, broken pillars, shattered images. Once it lit something crudely scratched, angular, high up. The brightness and shadow made by the shapes struck hard on the back of her eyes. She gasped and fell to her knees. She had seen images like that in Father Owain’s hut, rolled up on calf’s skin – words. In the priest’s hut they were the words of God – but here – words of God could not be here! When the light came again she could see her breath’s mist carried up by the quiet wind that had managed to get between the barriers of ruined wall-stones. Was Swefrith right? Could Godric have been deceived by a devil?
The light stopped moving. It flickered up to a high wall some way away. She got to her feet, drawn by its glow. There were walls and gaps in walls between her and it, and she moved slowly, sliding her hands over the rounded corners until she could peer through a great breach that split a towering stand of stone in half.
Erderinca was naked. She had even removed her cap. Her folded flesh glowed gleaming white against the grey around her. She moved slowly, rhythmically, her owrinkled skin shaking as her limbs moved. Aelfleda stared, dry-mouthed as the old woman moved closer and closer to the wisp of smoke rising from the fire Andred had lit. He knelt over the flames, his back to Aelfleda, his scarred hands snaking swiftly round the burning wood. Aelfleda gripped the wall and rubbed her cheek against the rough rock, making it raw. Sickness welled in her, and a desire to step out from her hiding place, to stride into the ring of light with her voice raised, but what she would shout and to whom she did not know. She lingered, fascinated, watching while all around her the old stones bent closer to the worshipping figures and the night-thing that had followed her from the swine woods laid its fingers over the bright flesh of the old woman.
Now Erderinca was hovering over the flames. Aelfleda could almost feel their heat licking at her soft skin even though her own body was battling in judders against the river-cold. There was a pause when everything but the flames remained still. The Andred stood, and turned, and the fear that had come from the woods was no longer in the air but in his eyes, which sought her out and stabbed with strong evil into her face.
She choked soundlessly and put a hand up to defend herself, afraid of the burning, afraid that flames had taken hold there too. She ran, but remembered Andred’s eyes. She darted from left to right, but they were always in front of her and the city was allied to them, thrusting out jagged half-walls and jutting boulders at her feet or at her face, striking her again and again so that blood rolled down her cheeks. She was lost, stumbling on stone, stumbling, fallen, and the river-cold was in the stones. She did not remember the grass on the stones, but there were falling stones too, claiming her as their own for having been tempted to touch them. The city took her and beneath its ruins she rolled onto her back, staring sightlessly into Andred’s eyes.

He shifted his weight slightly so that most of it rested on one bent leg. His hand rested lightly on the long handle of his knife. He had watched like this a few nights before, but none had ever seemed so cold. His ears pained him, but to cover them to warm them would be to deaden any sounds that might come near him, and he was expecting sounds. The work on the church had been set back again by interfering hands, whether they were mortal or from hell. Someone had taken tools, had pushed earth back into the pits they had dug. If they – he – it – came tonight, Godric would be waiting for them, ready to shed his own blood, if it came to it, for God’s earth. He did not think that it would come to that. His own knife was sharp enough. He shifted again, moving his weight to the other leg, and looked around him at the shadowy shape of the plot of earth he protected.
The village was still, except for the movements of animals. He watched the lumpen shapes of huts uneasily. It seemed impossible that men would stir on so cold a night, not while fires still glowed and thick cloaks could be pulled tight. He shivered and thought of the red heat of the smithy. He pulled his own cloak up higher on his neck.
Then – a sound, a splashing further down in the river near the ford. He stood upright, his hand half-drawing the knife. But no noise followed it. He crouched again, and his breathing lost its raggedness. If there had been starlight it wouldn’t be so bad. But God had closed his eyes for the night and his ground was guarded by his loyal servant –
A second sound, from the village this time, a low voice calling, calling, moving, a rattling sound of feet on wet mud, more calling. The animals woke, startled, adding their yapping and the sounds of their feet to the disturbance. Then a light flared up, dazzling images of itself onto Godric’s eyes. It moved quickly to and fro and lit in turn the sides and roofs of the huts around the long curve that formed the edge of Ediscum. Godric stood again, but slowly. This was not the approach of a skulking coward who filled in earth when men were asleep, nor was it the stealthy step of some hateful night-creeping thing. The light moved with the rhythm of a running man. Behind it, other lights began to flicker as people shook themselves awake. Godric turned his face full to it and strained to see the side-lit face of the man who carried it. Now he saw… rish clothes, and a clever face, like and not like Aelfleda’s…
“Aethelsunne!”
The jolting of the light stopped and Godric saw the young head turning left and right, its brow furrowed in confusion. He felt, against his will, a sense of satisfaction at the sight. But he came forward quickly into the light.
As Aethelsunne saw him his shoulders relaxed and what almost seemed a smile crossed the concern on his face. His voice was not loud, but it was harsh against the bubbling backdrop of the river. He spoke rapidly, his eyes rarely resting on one spot for more than a moment. He managed, though, to look directly into Godric’s eyes.
“Has Aelfleda passed by you?”
“No. Might she have done?”
“She’s not in the hut – but she said she would be – she said she was resting her back. Have you seen her?”
“No I haven’t. Are you sure she isn’t somewhere in the village – at Erderinca’s hut maybe?”
“I expected you, of all people, to be concerned, Godric.” The troubled eyes were on him again. “You must want to help me find her. What are you doing here?”
For a brief spell Godric could not speak. He had not expected Aethelsunne to know about his – thoughts about Aelfleda. But he was right. In the dark, lost, she could be, she could be –
“Watching the church,” he answered curtly.
Aethelsunne stared at him while his heart beat a few times. Then the young man’s head dropped slightly. “I believe you. Help me search.”
The lights in the village behind Aethelsunne began to die away again. Their carriers had found no answers to their questions. But Aethelsunne had forgotten about them. His head was high again, and his shoulders squared under his light-coloured cloak. Godric almost shuddered at the sword at Aethelsunne’s hip. He remembered nights like this in Mercia when he and his kin had gone raiding raiders’ settlements.
Aethelsunne walked quickly with long legs and Godric panted slightly at his side. They had not gone far when a furtive shift in the trees on the edge of the cast of light made them turn. Eyes were met by eyes and for an instant Andred caught them with a glittering stare, frightened and angry. Then he was gone into the dark, and branches cracked to mark his movements along the bank of the river. Godric, shivering, found his hand at the handle of his knife again. He looked at Aethelsunne questioningly. The weight of his body shifted forwards and his feet twisted towards following the greybeard. But Aethelsunne shook his head and his hands were far from his sword.
“Aelfleda.”
Now Aethelsunne’s stride was purposeful. The sight of the old warrior seemed to have confirmed something in his mind. Godric followed, to the river, through its currents and out, dripping and cold as dead skin in the rain, until Aethelsunne’s steps slowed and he began to look around him carefully, moving to and fro on the wide path, each pale stone receiving his attention. Godric walked a little behind him. He was afraid here in this grim dark after his sight of Andred’s face. They were moving towards the city, the site of his revelation, but he had never been near it after nightfall. The image of the cross triumphant over the thin faces of the men of Ediscum shone inside the front of his head. But he felt nakedness on the back of his neck, and a sense of the depth of the dark. He did not want to share these things with Aethelsunne while Aelfleda was still unfound.
They found her lying to one side of the great entrance archway, bloodied, chill to the touch, her eyes open but white and sightless. Both the cross and the fear that had risen in Godric’s head were suddenly engulfed in flame. Aethelsunne knelt, gasping, at her side, but Godric was running back to the village crying “Murder! Murder!” so that birds shot screaming from trees. Even his second crossing of the cold stream did not douse the fire in him. He shouted as each man’s new-lit light rose up round him and faces pressed close to him and noises babbled in and out of his ears. The Andred’s face turned like a hunted beast’s to Godric’s light and did not leave him.

“I was afraid that evil had not tried hard enough enough to stop God’s work. The things done to obstruct the building of the church are bad, but they are not the worst evil can do. And nor is this, my poor child, the worst evil can do. It may do worse against us before our work is done because it knows that its defeat is in our church. When it sees that we have not been distracted from our task by what it has done, its outrages will worsen. I am sorry for you my child, but we must be thankful that no worse was done.”
“I beg you, don’t repeat what I’ve said about Andred – I’m afraid – I’m afraid – if others were to find out there’d be no peace for any of us…”
“Very well, my child. I shall say nothing about what you’ve said. Now let me bless you so that no evil will try your soul again.”
After giving her his blessing, Father Owain rose frowning from Aelfleda’s bedside. He walked towards Aethelsunne, Godric and Swefrith, who stood in a gloomy group beside the warm fire-hearth. The filth encrusted on their trousers and leg-bindings were legacies of their efforts to carry Aelfleda back from the gates of the old city. For much of the night, until her eyes had fluttered and she had coughed, they had not known whether she was alive or dead. Each of them watched the priest, each mindful of what they had heard Aelfleda say while she lay under Father Owain’s ministrations. He motioned for them to go outside.
“It’s probably best that we don’t say what we have heard,” he said, folding his hands in front of him and turning his sharp eyes on each of them in turn. “But if men do ask what has happened, we can tell them that evil is beginning to end. If it commits its greatest outrage against us, it will in that moment commit its last, because the church will be built in spite of the worst it can do. In the mean time we must pray for our kinswoman and give thanks that God has granted that she will live.”
“Yes, Father,” murmured Godric, while Aethelsunne stared straight ahead. Swefrith’s eyes bored into the floor, before darting to glance at his companions and then towards the door way.

“What’s this?” Stanmode growled, swinging his heavy arms to and fro. Godric took in a deep breath and raised his eyes to heaven. A drop of rain splashed painfully against his eyeball. After the horrors and surging feelings of the night, the crowning insult was to find that the church had been visited again while he had been distracted by other, more terrifying things.
After he had followed Aethelsunne to the river, the hazel rods on the building site had been removed, and one broken, left in pieces in the grass. The peace he had found the first time he had stood beneath these trees had gone completely. Now it even felt as though the bright wet branches were creaking with laughter, mocking his feeble attempts to glorify God.
“I don’t know,” he snapped back.
Stanmode grunted. He too was angry at what had happened, and also at the rain that made the earth wet and fall into the holes they had dug. “It’s not so bad as before. We can still go and get stones for it.”
“No, not today. Tomorrow. We’ve got to sort this out and then we can start getting the stones.”
Godric was strange, Stanmode thought. He had had a vision in the city. But he did not want to go back there. If he, Stanmode, had had a vision like that, it would be different. He swelled with the pride he might have felt if God had chosen him like that. But God had wanted Stanmode to build the church. Godric had had the vision. Father Owain had blessed the ground and the builders. Now Stanmode must use what he had learned about working stone in Ediscum and when he had visited the bishop’s town. Godric walked backwards and forwards in front of him carrying a pick.
“Well, there’s work to do. Give me that if you don’t want to dig.” Godric gave him the pick.
As he worked and the sweat sprang out on his body, he looked at the smith and his face. It looked closed up, as though even doing this holy building didn’t give him satisfaction. And no-one else had come out to work this morning. Aelfleda had been hurt, yes, but that didn’t mean that men shouldn’t work. Perhaps someone had been whispering in the village, saying that the church shouldn’t be built. He still kept the knife he had found in the grass in his tunic.
“Stanmode!”
He turned. Godric had his hands on his hips, irritated. Perhaps he had called and Stanmode had not heard. “Am I digging in the wrong place?”
“No, that doesn’t matter now. Put down the pick. We shall go to the city today after all.”
Stanmode let the pick fall. He had made the smith see sense, though he didn’t really know how.

Leofa smiled at the priest and wondered how long he would let the silence last. She wasn’t going to speak. If she said the wrong thing her brother might be upset, or Father Owain might. It wasn’t worth it.
“You speak little when your brother is not here, my child.”
Leofa smiled again. “Perhaps you’re right, Father.”
She had not said much for the last two days, not since they had brought Aelfleda in from the city. The events in the village, although only Father Owain, Swefrith, Godric and Aethelsunnes really knew what had happened, and wouldn’t say, had brought a general quiet that was odd for the time of year. Normally, after the shearing time until the lean summer, everyone was cheerful. But now each man seemed to be listening for some news from Edricsham. Swefrith had said that he couldn’t help thinking that people were still in the unfortunate village. Leofa supposed that others might feel the same way. Perhaps, too, they were quiet because they knew that the sounds they were expecting weren’t going to come. No one had been to any of the abbeys either, not even when they had goods to trade.
Perhaps they had remembered to be afraid of the empty paths between the comfort of the village and the noise of the settlements round the abbeys. Swefrith had always said he never felt happy when he was between two places. The men went out to the city to work on the church were even more quiet.
Swefrith had spoken to Aethelsunne, and he had said that only Godric spoke while they were there, and then only in a whisper. Aethelsunne had said, smiling in that friendly way of his, that all the others kept looking over their shoulders. Even Aethelsunne had been afraid, he’d said. This fear had kept her brother cowering here in Ediscum, she guessed. Aethelsunne had said that he had sat on a great pillar of cold rock after they had felled it like a tree. He was a strong and brave man, admired by everyone. Leofa admired him too. But Swefrith had not gone to the city, and so she was sitting here in silence in Father Owain’s hut.
“Has your brother made many things for our great church, my child?”
“I don’t know, Father.”
Father Owain had asked her to wait with him. She couldn’t go against his will, even though she was beginning to want to go out into the fresh air.
Silence again. Father Owain’s face betrayed no impatience. He was to go to the new abbey tomorrow to talk to the bishop about the church, and Aethelsunne was to go with him to see the thane who owned Ediscum. Father Owain was certain that all they were doing would please God. He had said so. Perhaps Swefrith could follow his example.
Swefrith had done a lot of work, on what Father Owain wanted, though he said he had precious little to show for it. He had lain awake these last two nights, and he had been afraid. It had been a relief to Leofa when he had gone outside and she could close her eyes without hearing his endless shifting to and fro in the hut and his muttering that he didn’t know where to turn. Had what happened to Edricsham not taught Ediscum anything? he would ask as dawn broke and he came in from his short walk.
“He says he found making things for the church very hard, Father.”
“It’s not always easy to follow God’s way, my child.”
Leofa glanced across the dark interior of the hut. Father Owain was glancing away from her towards the calfskin parchment lying on a low stool near the open doorway. She wondered if his air of patience really was that. He was probably thinking about his visit to the new abbey, half a day’s journey away.
Here at last was Swefrith, with a small pouch held carefully between his hands. She breathed out slightly in relief and leaned back on her seat so as to make herself less visible in the gloom of the hut. Father Owain returned from whatever reverie he had been in and smiled.
“I’m glad you’ve offered to help in your own way, Swefrith. You’re right: your hands were not made for working stone blocks, but for more delicate things. They’ll make the church more beautiful once it’s built. Show me what work you have done.”
Leofa saw that her brother’s hands shook as he delved into the pouch. He dropped the bright objects he took into the priest’s lap as though they were hot. Father Owain’s eyes were bright as he saw the gleam of metal and stones.
“The beauty of holiness,” he breathed and Leofa saw his hand move to take up one of the pieces, a wooden pendant cross, and hold it close before his eyes. For a few moments Leofa watched her brother and the priest, one in a red tunic, the other in the pale soiled robes he wore from day to day. She saw their heads close together, dark hair and bald scalp, both shining differently in the firelight. Then Father Owain dropped the last of the things into his lap and sighed with irritation.
“They are not, Swefrith, as good as you might have made them. These were not made by hands that wish to glorify the house of Our Lord.”
“I’m sorry Father.” Swefrith’s eyes reached out to Leofa, afraid, then left her and took in the parchment, the low bed, the round hazel rods visible in the wall. The priest’s gaze did not follow but remained firmly fixed on her brother’s forehead.
“Swefrith,” he said more gently. “I know you can make better things than this. Let the Lord’s goodness come to you and you will make much more fitting things. Will you do that? Only the best things, not these trinkets.” He gathered them up in his smooth hands and held them out over the bag that Swefrith dutifully held open. They dropped together, clinking.
Leofa didn’t clearly hear what her brother said. He gabbled the words as though his tongue was trying to run away. She thought it might be something like: “I can’t work. I don’t think the Lord is with us.”
Whatever it was, it was murmured towards the rejected treasures with a bare stirring of the lips. The stillness of which it was a part was broken by a storm, sudden and unforecast, in Father Owain’s face and voice. He was on his feet, shouting. Leofa could see spit shooting out between his teeth as his jaw moved. She ran the short distance to the door, avoiding the confrontation. Once outside in the light, she turned to see Swefrith standing his ground, though more out of frozen fear than courage. She shrank back further, now feeling shame as the covered heads of wives in the village turned to see the strange scene. Before she hid herself behind the bulk of the great hall and cut herself off from the sounds and startled faces, she heard some terrible phrases from Father Owain’s forgiving lips.
“Evil is at work in you, Swefrith! Evil that this village will defeat in spite of you! The church will be built even though you work against it! Go, before the devil causes you more sickness!”

Aethelsunne paced backwards and forwards across the hut. He swung a small skin bag from one hand and his head moved to and fro distractedly, half-looking for something half-forgotten. The remainder of his mind was concentrated on what he was telling his sister. She watched every step he took because the bruises healing on her face and hands meant she couldn’t work while she listened. But her idleness was not leisure – her face was creased with worry.
“Andred was talking to Upheahric, up by the church site. I don’t know what about, though I could guess. He’s spoken of nothing but the church and the kin since I came back. Upheahric looked upset.”
He stopped and Aelfleda watched his throat move up and down. “There’s some water in the bowl in the hearth.”
He drank, smiling at her in surprise that she had guessed that he was thirsty. He still hadn’t really realised that after watching her husband for years she could understand men better than they knew. When he had finished, he came and sat beside her in the flames’ flickering glow. She could see he was tired and reluctant to set off for the new abbey with Father Owain in the morning. But he went on with his story. “I wanted to speak to Upheahric to see if he had any requests for Thane Berhtic, since I was going with Father Owain at dawn. Swefrith came with me. He’s been following me around since Father Owain decided he wanted to speak to the bishop. Even Swefrith’s pleased that Father Owain is still friends with the bishop, even though it’s years since he was in the Frankish country together?”
Aelfleda nodded. Why wouldn’t Father Owain be respected by other priests?
“Then, just as I greeted them, Godric appeared beside us, as though he’d just come up out of the earth. I suppose he’d been around the foundations doing whatever he does there when everyone else has stopped working. The first thing I noticed was that Swefrith’s face had gone very pale. Godric really frightened him. I don’t know why, because Godric’s anger was directed towards Andred.
“I don’t know, it’s strange, Father Owain’s fury at Swefrith did more than frighten him. Everyone who was in the village heard it and it feels as though suddenly everyone is angry. It’s as if Father Owain has unstoppered something in us all. Even Leofa-“
“It’s not Father Owain’s fault.”
“Whatever caused it, Godric isn’t an exception. After what happened to you, he’s been different. He wouldnt look at Andred until today, and then today…” Aethelsunne’s voice became weary “… he broke Father Owain’s ban on repeating what you said to him, which we overheard. I didn’t tell you I knew did I? I didn’t think I’d need to. He said in public that Andred was heathen. He said he’d seen him in the old city with Erderinca, performing unholy rites. He made the claims as though he’d seen them and not you. We did see him that night, but he was alone, in the woods.”
Aelfleda let out a pained moan. “What I said was for holier ears than his, or even yours, brother. Only Father Owain should have heard. He was the only one who could have acted against it.” She shuddered, suddenly afraid again. “I said there’d be no peace if other people got to hear of it.”
“Well, it can’t be undone. Let me tell you the rest. Andred didn’t reply and Upheahric couldn’t speak. I could see his tongue moving about in his mouth, but it might as well not have been there. Godric called on Swefrith and me to swear an oath with him that he spoke the truth. He said Stanmode would also be his oath-helper. I would’t swear, of course. Swefrith wouldn’t either, but became even more afraid. Godric stamped and spat. I remembered his warriors’ tales and I had to reach for my sword. If Andred had replied to him I might have needed it. But he didn’t. He just stared and I knew what he was thinking, about kin and this anhaga trying to come into it. Poor Upheahric began to sway between them. I thought he would fall over, his eyes were so wide. He didn’t, like old trees don’t. Godric turned his back on us. Andred knew when the danger was passed. He laughed, and he muttered something that made Godric look back. It didn’t matter though. He left.”
Aethelsunne almost laughed as he finished his story, but it was a nervous attempt. After a short pause he said quickly, as though without care, “It’s probably a sign that everything’s that’s wrong will stop short of what we’re afraid of. Godric didn’t choose to fight Andred. That passed over, so may this anger.”
Aelfleda knew that he only said this to calm her nerves. He was looking at her too closely. His hand was on her shoulder too – he was concerned for her. She smiled, to pretend to him that his pretending had worked. “Perhaps you’re right,” she said quietly. Then, more loudly, “I think you should think about marrying Leofa.”
He brother started, and she saw a flush spread over his face. “Why?” His laugh was nervous again.
“Because your home is here. It would be best if you married someone from Ediscum. Our family has always married in the kin-circles. I married a man from Edricsham and that was very bad. And you’re not so noble yet that your lord will spend his time choosing you a wife.” She raised a hand because she saw him blushing and thinking of protesting. She smiled. “And I know your heart isn’t wholly against it.”
“You always know things like that. Very well, sister, I’ll think about it.” He grinned, and looked very young. He looked as young as he had in the last year before the sickness came. Aelfleda felt a pang of sadness, thinking about the winters on her back. Aethelsunne stood and swung his arms in the fire’s warmth. “But that will be on the ride to the bishop’s town tomorrow, and while I’m sitting there during the long talks between Father Owain and the bishop.”
“You should go to some sleep in that case, so you’ll have a clear head. Especially since you’ll be riding at dawn.”

Aethelsunne was gone when Aelfleda woke. She stood and leaned against the wooden post of the doorway as a watery sun began to make his slow way through the sky. Anger and affection fought briefly when she thought of her brother climbing onto the broad back of his battle-horse in the darkest hour dawn.
He should have woken her to say farewell so she could say goodbye, to Father Owain as well, who was a spirit brother to her. But then he had not wanted to break the sleep she needed to heal. That was what a loving brother would do. Her anger faded and affection remained, although it was frustrated by the fact that he wasn’t there. She wanted to speak to them both, priest and brother, to complain to each one about the departure of the other. She had to content herself by thinking of them travelling the road together, welcoming the sunlight as it broke through the trees. They would have passed by the city by now. Once they were on the other side of it they would be safe, in God’s hands.
Some children a little way from her hut were pretending that their mothers’ stories had come true and wolves had come back to the village. Aelfleda wished they would take that game somewhere else, even though their piercing shrieks were of laughter and it was only grass and mud that stained their clothes. She walked between their bobbing heads, trying to break up the game, but they just closed up again like water once she’d passed. She left their fast-moving colours behind and tried not to think about them.
Today would be her first day spent working in the village since the night she had followed Andred and Erderinca. Her body felt strong and her mind was clear again. She had dreamed of Andred’s eyes sometimes. They flared red in the dark, but in the daylight they didn’t frighten her any more. He had kept away from her while she was recovering, and all the days between her and that night had cooled her memories until she remembered that Andred was a man like any other, and her kin.
She moved slowly towards the cesspen on the riverside. Her body was stiff with healing wounds and inactivity, and she noticed people looking at her as she limped. But she held her head high. She was not ashamed of her injuries.
A little later, as she went past the high cross on her way to where the goats were knocking the side of their pen, waiting to be milked, she dared to send up a brief prayer of thanks for the strength to recover she had been granted. But as the words rose up from her head, a shout went up from the green spread of the swine-woods. It was the bellow of a group of men, but choked, as though by sickness. She saw figures running like stags before a hunt, tripping in the recently ploughed furrows. She heard voices crying out, not words that she could understand, but with some fear in them that made the trembling in her belly reach up into her throat. She found herself running towards them in spite of her stiffness, and her palms wet and her breath hard in her ears so that she found it hard to hear what Straelsith said as he leaned against the low roof of a hut. Sweat streamed off him and his young eyes were terrified.
“What? What have you found? Say it again.”
He spoke again, his words pouring from his mouth. He made the same sounds, over and over, like Godric’s hammering of iron, beating hearing into shape. But Aelfleda’s mind could not take in what he said.