But this monk was a real priest from Hammaburg, a clerk regular who could preach, administer sacrament and educate others, yet was also religious in the strictest sense of the word, professing solemn vows and the solitary contemplation of God. It stung Drostan that this strange cleric claimed to be the united perfection of the religious condition and did not share the same beliefs as the Cele Dei, nor seem to possess any Christian charity.
Drostan swallowed the bitter bile of it, flavoured with the harsh knowledge that the priest was right and Sueno was dying. He offered a silent apology to God for the sin of pride.
I wait for a sign, the Hammaburg priest said, after a long silence. I offended God and yet I know He is not done with me. I wait for a sign.
He shifted a little to ease himself and Drostans eyes fell to the priests foot, which had no shoe or sandal on it because, he saw, none would have fitted it. Half of it was gone; no toes at all and puckered flesh to the instep. It would be a painful thing to walk on that without aid of stick or crutch and Drostan realised then that this was part of the strange priests penance while he waited for a sign.
How did you offend God? he asked, only half interested, his mind on Suenos suffering in the cold.
There was silence for a moment, then the priest stirred as if from some dream.
I lost it, he said simply. I had it in my care and lost it.
Christian charity? Drostan asked without looking up, so that he missed the sharp glitter of anger sparking in the priests eyes, followed by that same dulling, as if the bright sea had been washed by a cloud.
That I lost long since. The Danes tore that from me. I had it and I lost it.
Drostan forgot Sueno, stared at the hawk-faced cleric for a long moment.
The Danes? he repeated, then crossed himself. Bless this weather, brother, that keeps the Dyfflin Danes from us.
The Hammaburg priest was suddenly brisk and attentive to the fire, so that it flared briefly, before the damp wood fought back and reduced it once more to a mean affair of woodsmoke reek and flicker.
I had it, out on the steppes of Gardariki in the east, he went on, speaking to the dark. I lost it. It lies there, waiting and I wait for a sign from God, who will tell me that He considers me penance-paid for my failure and now worthy to retrieve it. That and where it is.
Drostan was millstoned by this. He had heard of Gardariki, the lands of the Rus Slavs, but only as a vague name for somewhere unimaginably far away, far enough to be almost a legend yet here was someone who had been there. Or claimed it; the hermit-monk of this place, Drostan had been told, was head-sick.
He decided to keep to himself the wind-swirl of thoughts about his journey here, half carrying Sueno, whom he had visited and found sick, so resolving to take him down to the church where he could be made comfortable; he would say nothing of how God had brought them here, about the storm that had broken on them. It was then God sent the guiding light that had led them here, to a place so thick with holy mystery they had trouble breathing.
The cynical side to Drostan, all the same, whispered that it was the fish oil and woodsmoke reek that made breathing hard. He smiled in the dark; the cynical thought was Suenos doing, for until they had found themselves only a few miles of whin and gorse apart, each had been alone and Drostan had never questioned his faith.
He had discovered doubt and questioning as soon as he and Sueno had started in to speaking, for that seemed to be the older monks way. For all that he wondered why Sueno had taken to the Culdee life up there on the lonely, wind-moaning hills, Drostan had never resented the meeting.
There was silence for a long time, while the rain whispered and the wind moaned and whistled through the badly-daubed walls. He knew the Hammaburg priest was right and Sueno, recalcitrant old monk that he was, was about to step before the Lord and be judged. He prayed silently for Gods mercy on his friend.
The priest from Hammaburg sat and brooded, aware that he had said too much and not enough, for it had been a time since he had spoken with folk and even now he was not sure that the two Culdees were quite real.
There had been an eyeblink of strangeness when the two had stumbled in on him out of the rain and wind and it had nothing to do with their actual arrival he had grown used to speaking with phantoms. Some of them were, he knew, long dead Starkad, who had chased him all down the rivers of Gardariki and into the Holy Land itself until his own kind had slaughtered him; Einar the Black, leader of the Oathsworn and a man the Hammaburg priest hated enough to want to resurrect for the joy of watching him die again; Orm, the new leader and equally foul in the eyes of God.
No. The strangeness had come when the one called Drostan had announced himself, expecting a name in return. It took the priest from Hammaburg by surprise when he could not at once remember his own. Fear, too. Such a thing should not have been lost, like so many other things. Christian charity. Long lost to the Danes of the Oathsworn out on the Great White where the Holy Lance still lay among fox turds and steppe grasses. At least he hoped it was, that God was keeping it safe for the time it could be retrieved.