Byzantium

  After twenty days, my hands toughened and my blisters no longer bled; after forty days, I no longer smashed my fingers against the rocks with the unwieldy pick. Sometimes, we were able to work near other Danes and we could talk to them. Mostly, however, we were kept apart, save for meals—which were little more than flat bread and a thin, watery cabbage soup—and at night when we were taken back to the huts to sleep.

  We worked every day, with no rests—except during the more important Arab holy days, and then it was not for us, but for the guards, that we were allowed a day of peace. These days were infrequent, and always welcomed with profound, if pathetic, gratitude. And so the days passed.

  The only solace—if solace it could be called—derived from the fact that the Sea Wolves actually enjoyed finding the silver. They would have gladly dug up all of Byzantium to get such wealth if they had but known where to dig. Thus, they approached the work with a sly enthusiasm that was exceeded only by the ingenuity with which they hid the silver they found.

  Of course, they did not hide all of it; Jarl Harald made certain that they provided a fair account of their work to our Sarazen slave masters. It would not do, he said, to make the overseers suspicious. “Better to keep them happy,” Harald counselled, “then they will leave us alone.”

  Thus, the chief overseer received a goodly portion of the silver the Danes mined, and seemed content with his new slaves—content, and oblivious to how much wealth they actually unearthed. I do not exaggerate when I say that the Sea Wolves obtained half again as much as they gave up. And all that they kept for themselves, they hid against the day when they would escape. In concealing their wealth, they showed a genius that rivalled their proficiency in finding it. Truly, the Danes are supreme masters at hiding treasure.

  The same guards remained always with us, though the ones that watched us during the day were relieved from duty at night. Thus we came to know very well their habits and dispositions. It was during the changing of the guard, when the night watch arrived and were settling themselves, that Harald took the opportunity to pass along his thoughts for the day.

  Usually, this communication took the form of whispers relayed one person to the next down the line, although sometimes—when the guards were very lax—Harald gathered us together to exhort us and praise our efforts personally. It was important to do well, he insisted, for that way we would win our freedom the sooner. Never forget, he insisted, that the king was working on a plan of escape.

  We could speak this way to one another, because no one else understood Danespeak. Most of the guards knew some Greek, and a few could speak it fluently. As time went on, I began to learn a word or two of the Arab speech, but no one knew what the Sea Wolves said to one another, which Harald considered a good thing since it meant none of the Greek slaves or Arab guards could betray us. This, he maintained, would make our escape all the easier when the time came.

  When we weren’t plotting escape, we concocted ingenious tortures for Nikos. That traitor died a thousand times over, each death more hideously painful and protracted than the last. Thoughts of revenge kept many a man going through the endless days of mind-numbing, body-wracking labour.

  Gradually, the season passed and the desert land blushed briefly—tiny spots of crimson and gold flowers flecked the bleak hillsides—and then the sun entered its summer house and the heat began to oppress us mercilessly. I could match neither the Sea Wolves’ ardour nor their greed, and so the work went ill with me. As summer progressed the mine-shafts grew hot and stifling; the dust choked me, the darkness weakened my vision. I continually knocked elbows and knees, arms and legs against the rocks, and the oil lamps burned my hair. I found the dull gleam of silver meagre compensation for the loss of my freedom and slow starvation.

  Gunnar bore the hardship more easily than I, maintaining an even temper, encouraging me when my spirits faltered. To take my mind from my misery, he made me talk to him about the Christ, which I did, at first grudgingly, though as time went on I found maintaining such virulent rancour tedious. Sure, I still felt a cold, hard place in my soul, and my resentment towards God was more, not less. But arguing over theology gave us something to occupy our minds, which is the better part of survival, I believe.

  In our quiet periods, when the guards were close by, he would think about all I told him. Then, at meals, or when we reached the vein we were working—far from the guards’ eyes and ears—he would ask me questions that had occurred to him. In this way we proceeded, and he began to learn some skill in close-reasoned argument. His was a practical mind, not quick or nimble, but solid and untroubled by much in the way of extraneous philosophy. Thus, most of what I told him came to him fresh, and the few superstitions that he held were easily swept away. In short, he revealed a genuine facility for the subject at hand.

  Even though I no longer believed…no, I did still believe, but as one rejected by God—cast out from the hearth of faith, as it were—I found to my surprise that I could speak the words of faith, and explain them, without having them touch me. Strange perhaps, to be so angry at God and yet eagerly participate in reasoned discourse about him and the wonder of his ways, but that is the way of it. Curious, too, that Gunnar’s interest in the faith should increase as my own waned.

  As summer drew on, the vein of ore our group had been working dwindled. Eight of us were taken to another pit nearby and put to work with the fifty or more slaves who laboured there. This pit was larger than the one we had left, with more shafts and tunnels and corridors. There were Bulgars among the slaves, as well as Greeks, and several black Ethiopians, along with some others. Gunnar and I had never seen a black man before, but after getting used to them, we agreed that they were a handsome race in all. Perhaps slavery makes a man look at such things differently, but, save for the swart hue of their skin, they seemed more like us than not.

  We seldom saw them, however, because the pit overseer was a harsh and cruel master who made them rise before dawn to begin work; thus, they were already toiling away by the time we arrived. Likewise, they were made to work past dark, so that we quit the mine before they did.

  A few days after starting at the new pit, Gunnar found a particularly productive vein which lay at the end of a long tunnel that had not been worked recently. We crawled in on hands and knees, clutching our oil lamps and pushing our tools ahead of us.

  When we came to the end of the shaft, Gunnar stood up. “Look here, Aeddan,” he said, raising his lamp. “There is no roof.”

  Standing beside him, I looked up to see that indeed the shaft had opened out into a wide crevice whose top, if there was one, was somewhere far above us, lost in the darkness our feeble lights could not penetrate. “There is much silver here, I think,” he observed. “We will get a—”

  “Listen!” I hissed.

  “What is the—”

  “Shh! Be quiet!”

  We listened for a moment, holding our lamps high in the silence.

  “There is noth—” Gunnar began.

  “There it is again!” I insisted. “Listen!”

  The faint echo of the sound I had heard was already fading, and the sound did not come again. “Did you hear it?” I said.

  “It was water dripping,” Gunnar confirmed.

  “Not water,” I replied. “Singing—someone was singing. It sounded like Irish.”

  “You are hearing things,” he answered, placing his lamp in a notch someone had carved. “It was water dripping. Come, let us find some silver or we will not get anything to eat today.”

  We worked through the day, and though I listened intently all the while, I never heard the sound again; nor did I hear it the next day when we returned to the shaft. Three days later, however, the pit overseer made us go to another shaft, near where some others were working. The veins here were so interwoven that there were many connecting rooms and corridors, and sound travelled easily, if confusingly, from one to another. We had just found a good place and had begun working, when I heard the singing again. Gu
nnar allowed that he had indeed heard something, but that it did not sound like singing at all. “More like crying or weeping,” he said.

  I became so agitated, that I upset the lamps and spilled out most of the oil. “Now we have to fill them again,” I sighed, for it meant a long crawl back to the primary shaft.

  “Then we must hurry,” Gunnar reminded me, “or we will be scratching our way in the dark.”

  We left our tools and made our way back to the main gallery and the oil tub. Two other slaves were standing at the vat when we got there, so we waited our turn. As it happened, the pit overseer appeared just then, and began shouting angrily at us. I suppose the sight of four slaves standing idle offended him; perhaps he thought we were trying to avoid work, for he ran at us, uncoiling his whip.

  The lash caught me around the throat before I could dodge away; I was yanked to the ground. The guard, under whose less suspicious eye we had been filling our lamps, ran forward and began striking the others with his wooden stave. His first blow struck Gunnar, who fell down beside me clutching his head. The other two slaves, in a clumsy attempt at protecting themselves, pushed the guard aside. Seeing they had overcome him so easily, they kicked him a few times for good measure.

  This action made the overseer livid; he began cursing and shouting like a madman, and striking wildly with his whip. The other two slaves, seeing the furor they had caused, ran away, quickly melting into the shadows while Gunnar and I rolled on the ground, writhing under the lash. I heard people shouting, and saw that a number of nearby slaves had come to investigate. I pushed myself up on hands and knees, and, with Gunnar beside me, tried to scramble out of the way of the whip and its crazed wielder.

  Unfortunately, this action was seen as trying to avoid further punishment. The overseer, in a spitting rage, renewed his frenzied attack. I felt the lash rip across my shoulders—once, twice, and again. Pain lit my vision with crimson fireballs. I rolled on the ground, tangling with Gunnar, to whom I was chained at the ankle. We could not move fast enough to avoid the whip.

  Each stinging lash tore at my flesh. My eyes filled with tears and I could not see. I began shouting for the whipping to stop. I shouted in Greek, I know, and in Danespeak. I cried out in every tongue I knew and begged for mercy.

  And miracle of miracles, my cries were answered!

  For all at once I heard a shout that sounded like, “Célé Dé!” The whipping instantly ceased: abruptly and in mid-stroke, the whip went taut and the slave master’s arm froze. There came an odd cracking sound and, in my somewhat confused vision, the furious Arab seemed to rise from the floor to hang in the air.

  He hovered above me for a moment, his bewildered face growing round and red; he gasped for breath, but could not breathe. Suddenly, the slave master flew sideways through the air and I did not see him any more. The instant he disappeared, another face swung into view above me—a face which for all the world looked like someone I knew.

  Still squirming in pain, I gaped, gulping air to keep from passing out. A name came to my lips. I spoke it out.

  “Dugal?”

  45

  Dugal!” I rolled to my knees, straining up at him. “Dugal, it is myself—Aidan! It is Aidan here.” I lurched towards him. “Do you not know me, man?”

  Dugal stared at me as if at a monster risen from the bowels of the earth. “Aidan!” he cried, leaning closer. “Sure, I knew it was you! I heard you cry out and I knew it must be Aidan. But…but, you—” Words failed him.

  “The same and no other,” I replied, and made to stand, but my legs would not hold me and I fell again. Tears came to my eyes and I wept like a child to see my dearest friend once more.

  Dugal gave a shout of triumph so tremendous that the whole mine reverberated with the sound. In one swoop, he raised me up and enfolded me in a fierce hug. The touch of his hands on my raw shoulders made me cry out in pain, whereupon he dropped me to my feet again.

  “Dána!” he cried. “Christ have mercy, brother, what are you doing here?”

  “Dugal, I can hardly believe it is you,” I said, dashing tears away. “I was certain you were killed…the battle—I saw you fall.”

  “That I did, but the blow was never fatal.” He beamed at me with such joy, it warmed my heart to see it.

  Gunnar, still lying on the ground, climbed to his feet to stand beside me—as we were still chained together, he had nowhere else to go—and he gazed at Dugal with an expression of slightly amazed admiration.

  “This is Dugal,” I told him, “my brother monk from Éire.”

  “I remember him,” replied Gunnar.

  “God bless you, Aidan,” murmured Dugal, gripping my hands tight in his own. “And here was I thinking you were lost forever. Oh, but it is a fine thing to see you again.”

  “And you, Dugal.” I hugged him to me, feeling the solid flesh and bone beneath my clasp, as if to make certain that it was no mere phantom. “Ah, mo croi, I have so much to tell you, I cannot think for wanting to say it all at once.”

  We fell silent, just looking at one another. Dugal’s hair and beard, like my own, had grown long and shaggy. I had never seen him without his tonsure, and long hair made him look more like a Sea Wolf than a monk. His clothes, like mine, were little more than filthy rags, and he was powdered with rock dust head to heel, but had he been covered in mud with a beard to his knees, I still would have known him as my own reflection.

  There came a shout from some of the slaves looking on across the way. Gunnar prodded me in the side and said, “I think our trouble is not finished yet.”

  Into the pit rushed five or six additional guards; the Arab with the wooden stave led the way, pointing to us, and to the pit overseer still lying crumpled on the floor where Dugal had hurled him. Before we could move, the guards seized us by the arms and dragged us out of the pit and into the bright sun outside. It had been many days since I had had the full light of a noonday sun in my eyes, and it was a fair few moments before I could see.

  I stumbled over rocks and fell, pulling Gunnar down with me; we rolled and writhed, regaining our feet only to fall again as the guards dragged us down the hillside. Battered and bruised, cut in a hundred places, we were finally brought to a huge chunk of stone which surmounted a heap of jagged rock shards discarded from the mines. At various places, iron spikes had been driven into the stone to which chains and shackles had been affixed to iron rings. The three of us were chained to the rock and left to bake and swelter in the heat.

  As the sun was directly overhead, there was not so much as a shadow wherein we might find refuge. So, we sat with our eyes squinted tight against the blinding light, sweating, our pallid, sun-starved skins slowly turning fiery red.

  “I am sorry,” Dugal apologized after awhile. “I have brought this misery upon us. If I had not seized the guard, we would not be here now.”

  “That may be so,” I answered. “But if you had not pulled the madman off me I might have been killed. At the very least, we would never have found one another.”

  “True,” he allowed. “That is very true.”

  “What will they do with us, do you think?” I wondered.

  “God knows,” replied Dugal. “For myself, I do not care what happens. It is the Red Martyrdom for me, one way or another.” He paused, dismissing the thought from his mind. “Ah, well, we are in God’s hands, Aidan. He will see us right whatever ill befalls us.”

  At his words, anger welled up inside me. But as I did not care to contradict him, I said, “Tell me, Dugal, how did you come to be here? Tell me everything; I want to hear it all.”

  “I wish there was more to tell. In truth, we had an easy time of it—for the most part, that is.” He opened one eye to a narrow squint and regarded me. “But you, Aidan, you must have tales worth hearing. Tell me how you have fared.”

  “I will, and gladly, but after you, brother. Now then, after the Sea Wolves attacked the village and I was carried off—what happened?”

  Casting his mind back, he beg
an to tell me about all that had taken place since I had last seen him. He described the night raid and its aftermath, saying, “We lost two only: Brocmal and Faolan were killed; Faolan died outright, and Brocmal followed a day or so later. We buried them at Nantes and continued on, taking three brothers from the abbey to complete our number. Forgive us, Aidan, we reckoned they had taken you for a slave.”

  “Truly, that is what they did.”

  “I wanted to go and search for you, but Bishop Cadoc said you were in God’s hands now and that we would never find you again.”

  “Cadoc! Is he still alive? Where is he?”

  “He is alive, yes, and he is here,” Dugal told me. “We are all here—leastwise, those of us left.”

  Although I dreaded the answer, I had to know. “How many—how many are here?”

  “Four only,” came the reply. “Cadoc, Brynach, Ddewi, and myself.”

  “And the rest?”

  “Dead…all of them dead.”

  My heart sank within me as the faces of my brother monks passed once more before my inward eyes. I saw them again as I had seen them in life, each smiling and laughing, calling to one another greetings of fellowship and good will. I saw them and regretted the loss of their lives. They were gone: Maél, Fintán, Clynnog, Brocmal, Connal, Faolan, Ciáran, Gwilym—all of them gone.

  “A friend in Constantinople told me that ten of you had been there.”

  “Aye, we were,” confirmed Dugal gloomily. “Would that we had stayed there; the monks were good to us, and we were learning many things from them—and teaching them as well.”

  “What happened?”

  “I do not know the whole of it,” he answered. “Bishop Cadoc made application to see the emperor—to present him with the book, and to put forth an appeal regarding some other concerns which the Britons had prepared. I cannot say what these concerns might be, but Brynach knows.”