Chapter Four
The next day at vespers came the evening meal, and all gathered in the refectory for the evening portion of their daily bread as specified by Benedict’s omnipotent Rule. The Duke sat at the head of the table, conversing with the brusque and easily offended Prior. Macduff arrived late.
The Prior looked with a scowl at the gray figure that walked through the door. Had Macduff been a monk, as the novice Adam had supposed, he would have been admonished for appearing after the first prayer at mealtime and perhaps been deprived of his portion of wine. But of course the Prior could see to none of these things. Macduff could come, could stay in a cell and bloody well act like a monk, but if he felt like appearing late at mealtime—and indeed it was rare that he would appear at all—the only thing the Prior could do was be offended. William exacerbated this by gesturing at Macduff and inviting the one-eyed soldier to sit beside him.
“Macduff,” said William. “Sit down. How rare to see you actually near food.”
Macduff nodded and took his seat, sweeping aside his red cloak. “I don’t get very hungry,” he said, quietly, looking around at the guests at this end of the table. He nodded at the Prior.
“Of course you know the Prior,” said William, “and I know I’ve introduced you to our good Abbot, Ralph de Beaumont, and my brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeaux. Isn’t it pleasant, gentlemen, that our guest has deigned for once to grace us with his presence.” William leaned over and whispered to Macduff: “I didn’t say I’d make it easy on you.” The three men smiled weakly. None of them knew the strange guest very well, and only the Duke seemed comfortable around him. It was beginning to be the subject of much gossip as to what Macduff’s role was here. Was he being groomed for some sort of placement when they went to England? Was he supposed to take over Scotland? Or was he a new advisor? Did that make him dangerous? What did Macduff know, and what are we supposed to know about him?
“Good evening,” said Macduff. He held up his goblet and nodded at the server who appeared from nowhere to fill his vessel with wine. The Thane of Fife took a piece of bread from a platter in the center of the table and tore a hunk off it. He placed it in his mouth self-consciously, for everyone around him was staring at his every move. Macduff swallowed and cleared his throat. He realized that he missed home, for an instant. In a tiny flash of mind’s time he saw Fife, and all of Scotland. As he looked at the finely set table with forks and knives and all sorts of newfangled French tools for not soiling one’s hands, he wished in that instant for rugged terrain and the Scotland of Duncan and Macbeth. God, even Macbeth. But it passed. Even Scotland did not know herself anymore and he was content to be in Normandy with books and papers. He decided to try to take the attention off of himself. “I did not catch what you were discussing when I came in. Please continue.”
The Prior scowled for a split second and then took on a pleasant demeanor. “Nothing of great consequence, merely … internal matters of the abbey.”
William gave a short laugh and put down his drink. “Don’t mind the Prior’s secretiveness. It seems that one of our ducklings has wandered away from the pond.”
“A monk?” said Macduff. He turned towards the Prior. “Yesterday you came and asked about the boy’s master, is this the same …”
“The same,” said the Prior. “Lucius of Avranches has disappeared.”
“Has he been known to wander off before?”
“No,” said the Prior, curtly.
“From what I understand,” said William, “you would have enjoyed Lucius’ company. He is apparently a scholar deeply engaged in the study of old religions.”
The Prior looked at Macduff. “There are heresies of today and heresies of yesterday. One would be advised not to meddle in either kind.”
Macduff nodded. “Right. And yet learning what one can is not the same as meddling, and I am certain that a monk under your Priorship would conduct himself always with the proper demeanor and respect for what is true.”
“I am not about to take responsibility for the actions of a monk who has always kept to himself entirely too much … in my humble estimation. Now I fear that he has fallen away, and this is what comes of turning away from the True Light.”
“Well,” said de Beaumont, smoothly. The Abbot had been silent up to this point and finally chose to speak. “It is true that we must be careful, but we cannot say for certain that Lucius has done much of anything except to disappear.” He looked at William. “And I am certain that the good Duke would rather not be bothered about what, for him, must be quite trivial matters.”
“Oh, no,” said William, “It’s very interesting. Please keep me informed as you learn more. After all,” he said, with a laugh that Macduff alone recognized, “he could be a spy.”
The men laughed, and continued talking. Something watched them, and waited.
Something saw the lick of fire and felt the burn against its lips. A pair of eyes saw the room through the flames, and the men talking and eating the food of worms, and the vision warped and bent. Undone … all undone … there was a man rising, a large one with a bull neck …
William of Normandy rose from his place and raised a glass aloft. He looked around.
Plans of men, golden chessmen, laying in the grass …
“Gentlemen of the court, right reverend fathers of Le Mont Saint-Michel,” said the Duke.
Out of void, into void …
“… as we gather for supper on this bright day full of hope, I wish to propose a toast …”
“All undone! All undone!” cried a voice that struck William dumb where he stood, still holding the glass in mid-sentence. “Plans naught and knots undone. All undone!” the voice cackled, and William furiously spun around to see who spoke to him. A clatter of dropped vessels rang out, and William found himself blinded for a moment by the light that poured into the room for an instant and then died down.
Macduff sprang up, looking about for the speaker. The room was silent except for the murmurs of the diners and the monks who began to whisper prayers. The weird, blue flicker of the fireplace caught Macduff’s eye for a second, then he saw it.
“William,” said Macduff.
“Eh?” William was still dumbfounded, holding out his sword, exactly as Macduff was doing.
“I think we have found your monk.” Macduff gestured toward the fireplace. William looked.
“Good Lord.” Behind the wood that burned in the fireplace, behind the flames, blackened by heat and puffed with death, sat the head of Lucius of Avranches on a stone. The shriveled lips opened to speak again: “Undoooone.”
Adam, the boy under Lucius’ tutorship, rose and cried out “Master!” while the fire itself flared wildly for a few brief seconds.
Adam ran to Macduff’s side in hysterics and pointed at the fire. “That can’t—that’s not his voice …”
“I should think not.” Macduff scowled and strode toward the fireplace. “All right,” he said, and he looked around him as he did. “That’s enough!” The head was chanting, laughing as it went, in something that sounded like Old Norse. “Lucius, that will be enough!” These cenobites may be afraid of a talking head, but I have seen worse.
The curse went on as the Abbot began to utter the Twenty-third Psalm. He had reached “he anointeth my head with oil” just as the head said once more, “Undone! A moon’s life do I allow!”
As the light from the fireplace filled the room and cast malignant shadows upon the holy fathers and secular rulers, the head exploded, sparking and screaming, laughing and cursing. Stopping. Dying down. Silent.
Macduff blinked. He waited a few seconds for his eyesight to return. Of all the God-forsaken … He turned to the Abbot and said, almost in annoyance, “Ralph.”
“Yes?” Ralph was visibly shaken, as made perfect sense. Even William still stood silent, trying to fathom whether this might be some sort of divine comment on his plans.
The Iron Thane stood at the fireplace, poking at the ashes with his sword. Why me? “What was Lucius working on, did you say?”
The Abbot shook his head. It was Adam who tugged at Macduff’s sleeve and whispered something in his ear that caused the former Thane of Fife to motion to William and take a torch off the wall. “Come along, Duke,” said the Thane of Fife, and to the court’s amazement, William did.
O O O
“What is this?” asked the Duke, as Adam led them down the stone corridor. His voice echoed, long and deep, as did the splashing of boots against the damp steps.
“Very old,” said Macduff.
“Look at this.” William bent down for a second and ran a finger along the carvings in the steps.
“Runes,” whispered Macduff.
“Eh?”
“Runes. Old ones. It’s a pre-alphabetic code.” Macduff motioned to come along.
Adam nodded. “Yes. My master told me never to reveal this, but under the circumstances …” His voice trailed off as they turned a corner.
Macduff noticed that Adam, at least, did not have to stoop in the tunnel. He was growing tired of bending over, torch in hand, like a hunchback in a church tower. “How much farther?”
“This part is nearly finished,” the boy was saying, as he turned around a corner and was gone for a moment.
Macduff gave William a quizzical look in response to the sudden silence. They turned the corner that Adam had gone around and found him. The boy was standing silently in front of a large, stone door.
“Well?”
“Well,” said Adam, “this is as far as I ever got. Or was allowed to come, anyway.”
Macduff held his torch up to the door. “Hullo.”
The Duke stared at the incomprehensible swath of tree-limb scratchings. “Can you read it?” he said to the boy.
Adam shrugged. “No. Lucius promised to teach me someday. I acted solely as an assistant and scrivener.”
“I can read it,” said Macduff. “Barely.” He was bent close to the door, running his hand along the carvings, as if feeling their shape made it easier.
“Where did you …”
“Long story,” sighed Macduff. “At any rate, this is an invitation, but it is also a test.” He tapped on the stone for a moment. “A vow, of sorts. Do you believe in magic?”
“What?”
Macduff was tracing along the sides of the door. “If this works, I cannot explain it to you.” He said something else, in a language William did not know. Yes.
Write? Read? Stain? Understand …?
Yes … Yes … Yes …
… Sacrifice?
Yes!
Macduff stood for a moment, apparently anticipating … something. Nothing happened. After a few moments he leaned on the door with one hand and said, “Forget I asked, William.”
Macduff suddenly pulled his hand away.
Adam gasped.
“Movement,” said Macduff. The stone was rumbling, and indeed, the door was pulling up and out of the way, over the Thane’s head.
The doorway lay open. The Duke stared incredulously. “How does that work?”
“Don’t ask,” said Macduff, as he stepped inside with the torch.
A sea of Runes. The figures and the Runes danced in the glow of torchlight as the three stepped in. The room was not large, really, only about fifteen feet square, but every inch covered in carvings.
The Duke said, “What is the … why is this here?”
Macduff shook his head. “I don’t know. It has a religious meaning, I know that. Some of these pictures tell a story. This is a drakkar, a Viking sailing vessel … nothing surprising there … this really is a magnificent find for Lucius,” he looked back at the Duke, who obviously failed to share his enthusiasm. Oh. Right. We just talked to Lucius’ head. He indicated the carving of the ship. “A lot of … figures of some sort … people on board. Choppy waters.”
“Scales,” said Adam. Adam was fishing in the leather pouch he had with him and extracted a pear. They never fed you enough in the monastery …
“Mmm. Aye,” said Macduff. “On the boat. Scales, or …” He stopped. He held the torch before him and stepped closer to get a look at the carved image of the crew. Now the sailors did not appear human at all but, crude though they were, demonic, monstrous. He peered at the figure at the helm of the Viking ship. There were warped horns at his head …
Was that a glimmer of blue he saw there, or just his imagination? Was that a laugh he heard, or just the echo of dripping water? Macduff stepped back and turned around to look at the opposite wall. As he stepped closer the picture came into view. Flickering in the torchlight, tall, thin, bound in serpent-like cords, a figure even a non-Viking would know.
“Loki,” said Macduff. “This place is a shrine to Loki.” A slight shiver ran down his spine, for he suddenly felt as if he were trespassing on ground he had no wish to invade. He looked over his shoulder. “Brilliant spot for a monastery.”
The Thane of Fife looked from the wall with the portrait of Loki to the picture of the ship opposite. “This is Loki bound,” he said. “And that is the end of the world, Loki unbound, on his ship.”
“What are the scales?” asked Adam. He was slightly annoyed that Lucius had left out the interesting parts in his education.
“Not scales,” said Macduff, placing a finger to his lip. “Nails—human nails.”
“And what is that?” said William, indicating the wall that joined the two.
Macduff turned around. The wall was covered in pictures, all in sequence. He murmured to himself as he read. “This is almost too much, you know, Thorfinn only taught me so much … and that was so long ago …” He was waving the torch along the top of the wall, staring with his one eye at the tree-limb scratches in the walls and the pictures with them. “This is a witch, a guileful woman, and Loki eats … her heart …”
“Ugh,” said Adam.
Macduff nodded. “Gruesome business, eh? And then,” he turned back to look at the Duke. He was obviously pleased with the discovery, even if one of the monks had died for them to find it. “This is prophecy, you see, not history. Myth!”
“Right,” said the Duke, making it known that the statement was obvious. “So what killed Lucius?”
Macduff waved a finger. Don’t rush me. “Why would Lucius … what would lead him … here’s Loki with the heart, now he’s … pregnant …” Macduff stopped murmuring now, racing his finger along the line of Runes and pictures. I can’t be reading this correctly. “What was it … here … ‘a moon’s life’ …”
Macduff stepped back. “Oh, no.”
“What?” William and Adam asked, simultaneously.
“Food,” said Macduff, quietly. He heard a chewing sound and turned around to see the boy with his half-eaten pair. The boy stopped eating, pulling the fruit away from his mouth. “What?”
“Put it down.”
“Wha … why?”
“Adam,” said Macduff, pointing at the floor. “Down. Drop it.”
The pear bounced softly to the stone floor.
Macduff unsheathed his sword. “Step back,” he looked up. “Both of you.”
William grinned, “Macduff, what the devil …”
Macduff was murmuring something in a tongue that William did not recognize. “I hope, William … Adam … that this is nothing.” He murmured a few more words.
Macduff stepped back now, and gently nudged the half-eaten pear with the tip of his sword.
It began to move. There was no doubt about that. The skin of the pear itself began to crawl with tiny lumps, and in the core a rift opened up. A tiny shaft of light, blue light, shot out, wilting the skin of the pear at the rupture, and then, all at once, the fruit itself flared up just as the fireplace above had. Macduff covered his eye for a brief moment and then looked. Worms.
Or, rather, maggots. Macduff heard Adam suddenly get violently ill and retch in the corner, and Macduff, had he been younger, would have joined him. The Duke, on seeing the blue maggots squirming around in the now decomposed fruit, seemed a little ill himself.
Macduff stepped on the worms and ground them underfoot, and the light died underneath the heel of his boot. “Wonderful.”
“Macduff,” said the Duke. “That is truly disgusting.”
“It’s worse than that,” said Macduff. Adam was standing up now, his stomach empty. “These were still in the fruit. All of us ate today. Nits turn into lice, William, and maggots into flies. These, I am afraid, will be worse.”
“What are you saying?”
The Iron Thane glanced back at the wall. “If I am reading this right … and I am afraid I am … we have twenty-seven days to live.”
“Twenty-seven …”
Macduff nodded. “Give or take. A moon’s life.”
William shook his head. “That’s impossible. How could Lucius …”
“Loki,” said Macduff.
“How can you believe that?”
“I can believe a lot,” said Macduff.
“Can something be done?”
Macduff looked around at the walls. “Perhaps.” The end of the world. That’s what this is about. “There must be a way.”
“How do we find the … how do we stop this?”
“Our answers won’t be found here,” said Macduff. “This is just a shrine.” He scraped the bluish slime off of the sole of his boot. “And I’m going to need help.”