you stand?”
Before I could answer, Nielsen came over, helped me from the bed and sat me at the table. “I have had a doctor look you over twice already, Mr Haye. I can assure you that you are not seriously harmed, although you no doubt feel unwell at the moment.”
A cup of steaming black tea, a jug of water and a glass were on the table in front of me. The hangover pounded on the inside of my skull. I moaned and propped my face up on my hands, shutting my eyes to block out the almost blinding light. Suddenly I felt depressed, unable to fathom the violence of the night before as it returned to me in terrible flashes.
The glass looked filthy. I wiped it with the blanket Nielsen had dropped onto my shoulders, but the blanket was also dirty and I spread what looked like thin fat all over the glass. I used my shirt to clean it, and poured some water out of the jug. It tasted good, and I had two more.
“What happened to that man on the bed, Mr Nielsen?”
“He was murdered, sir.”
I shuddered: I had seen one human being murder another. “Why?”
“I do not know yet.”
“It was horrible. That man … cut him open …”
“Tell me everything you saw,” said Nielsen, “starting at the beginning. Please do not leave anything out, however unimportant it may seem.”
I told him everything I could remember. Dinner and a few pints with my best friends. The message from the publican. Using the telephone in the hall. I was just making the call when I heard a scream from upstairs. No, I didn’t hear any other voices, or people shouting, nothing like that. Just an old man screaming …
I reached for my tea, which tasted unusually bitter, and continued.
“I’d had a few drinks, and wasn’t thinking, and I rushed up the stairs. I opened a door, but the room was empty. I tried another, and saw a man in white clothes gutting the old man on the bed. The old man looked frightened out of his wits. I fought the white man briefly, but he smashed a bottle of something on the wardrobe and I got dizzy. I couldn’t see properly, my head was spinning. Then the man jumped out of the window - the closed window - for some reason that I didn’t understand. I vaguely remember looking out onto the street below, and seeing he was gone. Then I passed out.”
“It was chloroform,” said Nielsen. “He had an entire bottle of it. That’s what put you to sleep. Tell me more about this man in white clothes.”
I thought hard. “He had brown hair. He looked about forty, forty-five years old. Everything he wore was white, even his shoes. It looked like a uniform, a male nurse’s uniform, perhaps.”
“How tall was he?”
“Shorter than I am. Say five-five, five-six. He moved very quickly. And he seemed extremely tough. I’m a handy boxer, but when I hit him he didn’t make a sound. Not even a whimper.”
“You had consumed several pints of beer before this. Do you think you simply didn’t hit him particularly hard?”
“No. I distinctly remember hitting him very hard in the ribs with my knee. Another thing I noticed was that the room smelled completely disgusting when I got there.”
“That was the old man’s small intestine.”
“What do you mean?”
“The small intestine is full of half-digested food. If it is split open, it releases a foul smell, a mixture of excrement and stomach acids.”
Remembering the smell made me feel unwell, and I sipped my tea as though its bitterness would wash my palette clean. It didn’t. It tasted awful. But Nielsen did not give me the chance to dwell on it.
“Is there anything else you remember about him, sir?”
“His eyes were extraordinarily bloodshot, and he had a strange look on his face.”
“Please be more specific than that.”
“He looked …” I paused, searching for the right word. “Ah, he looked cold.”
“Cold, sir?”
“It looked as though he had no feelings at all. He did not look angry, or hateful, as you might expect a murderer to look. His face was blank, as though he was in a trance of sorts.
There was simply nothing in him. And he moved so quickly, it was -”
Nielsen stopped me. “Please finish your tea, Mr Haye. You must translate something for me.”
11
To his most beloved master, bishop Ecgwulf, invested with authority by Christ’s love; Ohthere, priest and humble servant of the servants of the Lord, sends greetings and expressions of unfailing devotion.
My lord, forgive me for permitting a full year to pass before I wrote to you again. I confess that I have been angry with you, my dear old and trusted friend, for keeping me away from home. For many months, it felt as though my heart would lack the will to beat again if I could not see Eulalia.
I will also confess that I have thought often and violently of prince Sigeheard. And I have struggled to forgive myself. The trouble I have caused! Now that some time has passed, I have come to understand that it is well that I am here. I cannot help but love Eulalia more with every moment. I have found it hard to never tell her how she lifts me with her company; how I have longed to claim her for my own since the first spring of our meeting many years ago. Perhaps, if I were still the Prior of the men at Barking Abbey, the situation would be exactly as you feared. I ask you, as your friend, to know what I have felt and forgive me.
Of course, not all has been ugly since receiving your letter. I began preparing the mission you have commanded me to undertake, and Duggo’s good cheer was tremendously comforting to me during those first few dark months. Through his agency, I found twelve brothers to aid me in bringing the Word to the forest. One of them, Dettic, speaks several of the pagan tongues. I am, alas, the only priest on our mission, for there is a dearth of ordained men here.
Duggo also helped me gather a body of forty escorts. Some are from our homeland, and are experienced with the pagans. We also have some Frankish escorts, including two strapping brothers who seem very confident; and a number of Hessians, Thuringians and Saxons. The others are from here in Frisia. Although a few are volunteers, I could not have raised such a substantial body without the shillings you sent from England.
I spent the first winter training them in the defensive tactics I learned as a young warrior. At first it was difficult to train them to fight together. The Germans proved especially hard to discipline, as they are blessed with an abundance of famously and frighteningly large young men and are therefore inclined to charge and overpower their adversaries rather than rely on skill or strategy. Knowing well that these tactics would be unsuitable for the defence of our mission, I resolved to temper the men with the spirit of team-play.
This was far from easy, since between us we speak so many languages. The solution was to give orders in Latin, which Dettic could usually translate into the
