Conqueror by Stephen Baxter Read Free Book Online Page B

duties here under the stern but holy eye of the abbot, that their bodily needs were tended to by Domnus Wilfrid who made sure they were fed and clothed, and their souls guided by their tutors, such as Dom Boniface who watched over Aelfric herself. But in the underworld of the novices and deacons there was another power, wielded by the likes of Elfgar. Monks were humans too, and in some ways the monastery was just like the thegns’ halls where Aelfric had grown up, Elfgar like a bully among the athelings. Aelfric didn’t know what he wanted, but she knew her time with him would come.
    And what she really feared was losing her secret: that Elfgar might find out that her name wasn’t Aelfric at all but Aelfflaed, that she wasn’t a young man but a woman, and that she shouldn’t be here at all in this all-male house of God.
    When Matins was over, the monks were released for a bit more sleep before Prime, the first of the day’s six services. But that morning Aelfric didn’t want to go back to bed. As the monks filed out of the church the dawn light was enticing - a deep rich blue that had a trace of purple in it, she decided with the eye of one who was learning to master colour in her inks. On impulse she ducked away from the others and cut south towards the shore. She walked briskly, swinging her arms and pumping her legs, relishing the crisp sea air in her lungs and the feel of the blood surging in her veins.
    At the sea she walked into sharp-cold water up to her ankles. Gritty sand, speckled with bits of sea coal, slid between her toes. She was seventeen years old, and she had grown up hunting and play-fighting every bit as hard as her brothers. She longed to throw off her heavy habit and run, naked, into the ocean’s cold water. But that, of course, was impossible; this moment of paddling must be enough.
    With her ankles in the water, her habit hitched up around her knees, Aelfric looked back at the monastery she had made her home.
    The island of Lindisfarena was round, like the shield from which it took its name (lind was an old British word), and small enough that you could walk across it in an hour. A sandy spit ran off to the west, which the monks called the Snook - like the arm of the warrior who bore the shield-island. Lindisfarena was only sometimes an island, however. A causeway, a trail of sand and mud flats, linked the western end of the Snook to the mainland, but it was drowned for five-hour periods twice each day. Aelfric could see wading birds pecking for food along the length of the causeway, and seals gambolling like hairy children in the shallow waters.
    The monastery itself was unassuming. Within a low wall huddled the cells of the monks, crudely-built domes of stone that everybody called ‘beehives’. Aelfric herself shared a wooden-walled dormitory with other novices, smooth-faced boys, mostly the sons of thegns, too dull-witted even to notice that they were living with a woman. More square-built buildings clustered, a refectory and kitchen, an infirmary, a hospitium for any guests - and of course the library and scriptorium. A thread of smoke rose up from a kiln for bread-making.
    From here it looked austere, frugal. Tiny and remote the island was, modest its monastery might look, but Lindisfarena was one of the most famous Christian sites in the world. It was to its off-shore isolation that King Oswald of Northumbria had summoned Saint Aidan of lona to convert his pagan people, more than a hundred and fifty years ago. From that beginning Northumbrian Christianity had become so strong that where once Rome had sent missionaries to a pagan Britain, now Northumbrian missionaries worked in the lands of the Franks and the Germans.
    And it was rich. Aelfric mused that if the church’s wooden walls could be turned to glass you would be dazzled by the gold and silver revealed within. A century ago Lindisfarena had become the shrine of Saint Cuthbert, and pilgrims had come here ever since, all bringing