The All Father Paradox Read online

  Produxitque Dominus Deus de humo omne lignum pulchrum visu, et ad vescendum suave lignum etiam vitae in medio paradise, lignumque scientiae boni et mali

  The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil… of course, the tree and its fruits were not themselves evil, because everything that God created was good. It was disobedience of Adam and Eve that caused the disorder in Creation, that saw mankind thrown out of Paradise. Just like the disobedience of the Saxons threatened disorder now, threatened to upset this little patch of perfection, his home now as much as theirs. He frowned, his face flushing with annoyance.

  Folkward dearly hoped the king’s army had no cause to ride out. The monks had been forced to flee west before, more than once. But after the last uprising, he had been convinced the troubles were over, especially as the rebel leader had escaped north. A warrior called Widukind or Widuking, or some such, although it was clearly a nom de guerre. The Saxons told him it meant child of the wood. Willehad said he was just a story to frighten Frankish children.

  The surrounding woodland suddenly felt more ominous, and it flashed through the monk’s mind—and not for the first time—that he was the intruding wasp. Karolus was a great king, fourteen years on the throne of the Franks, and most of those at war with his Saxon neighbours. He was already proclaimed a new Constantine, equal in might and magnificence to the old Emperors of Rome. But he was a stubborn king too. He preached with a tongue of iron that grew more severe with each rebellion. Folkward had debated the campaign often with Willehad.

  If you used evil means to achieve the peace of God, were you a good man? Faith required free will, not compulsion by fear and bloodshed. And thus the cycle was doomed to repeat itself. He knew that old Eahlwine, the new master of the palace school, thought the persecution of the tribes was too harsh. They had studied together at York and still exchanged letters. Eahlwine reasoned that, if the king trusted Northumbrians to establish his church in foreign lands, perhaps together they could persuade him to practice leniency, to gladden hearts and minds rather than alienate them. Folkward didn’t reply. Karolus might ask for his books, but he certainly didn’t ask for his counsel.

  Nor was the old monk under the illusion that the heathens were impressed by him—either his age or supposed wisdom, or the fact that he had the gall to enlighten their ignorance with his sermons. The Saxons had their own sly learning; nothing like the lessons of Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine of course, but their own sources of cunning and revelation all the same. Their chief idol, the archfiend Woden, was an elusive figure, lurking at the fringes of the forest, wandering widely in its shadows.

  To a pagan, the idea that there was only one True God was baffling. Folkward had made it a point to understand their thinking—you couldn’t hope for conversions without a little insight and understanding—and found it simplistic but practical. When famine or disease was rife, why bet on just one God when you can gamble on the intervention of any number of them? The crucial thing he’d realized was that the Saxons had lots of these demons. There was probably a god of pigs out there, rooting around for sacred acorns. Folkward knew most of them, by name at least, all the better to affect their abjuration. That was the real battle, for the newly baptised tribes would just add Christ to the list of spirits and elves to be appeased each day then think no more of it. Folkward knew how they thought—baptise now, take the Frankish linens and jewels, and carry on as before. Greedy creatures. Perhaps he should write to Eahlwine with his thoughts. The distraction might help calm his nerves.

  He opened the wattle shutters and scanned the treetops from the window. There was no smoke. In his experience, rebellions always began with smoke. Perhaps it was just the huntsman’s horn after all, rather than anything more disturbing. Nothing more worrisome than that. There had been two years of peace after all. Folkward tried to smile and told himself he worried easily in his old age, that the ache in his back shortened his temper. He was certain that God guided and protected their efforts, that He ensured no harm would come to the brethren. There were plenty of proofs. Willehad himself had survived a blow from a heathen sword, the blade diverted by a box of relics suspended around his neck at the last moment. And had not Bishop Wynfrith cut down Thunaer’s Oak and done so with impunity? At the time, at least. He later found martyrdom in Frisia, so perhaps the heathen gods were just biding their time. Still, if Woden were out there, in the forest, he’d hardly blow a horn to signal his arrival, would he?

  There was a commotion somewhere in the courtyard, raised voices out by the refectory. Unusual, so soon after Vespers, when the brethren were mostly at study, but not unheard of. There were plenty of pupils eager to receive wisdom, perhaps even more so now after the harvest had been collected. The words of Benedict himself decreed, “Let all guests who come to the monastery be entertained like Christ himself, because he will say ‘I was a stranger and you took me in.’” Folkward thought about attending to the visitors himself but found his legs strangely reluctant to move.

  Hemming coughed lightly to attract Folkward’s attention from the window, hoping to avoid startling the older monk. Such a kind fellow, Folkward thought, realizing that his sense of panic was all too obvious. The Dane then nodded toward the door, putting two fingers to his head and taking hold of a hank of his tonsured hair, signalling that the abbot was on his way. The abbot! Of course, that would explain everything. The horns were announcing his arrival, clearing the forest paths. Folkward’s grin relaxed back across his face. A visit from Bremen would inevitably involve good wine. The noise outside the scriptorium was louder now, an unmistakable flurry of footsteps, punctuated by the heavy thud of the staff of office. The footsteps stopped outside the door and, for a moment, silence returned. Folkward tidied his quills with a stifled sigh and reached to seal the ink, but his hand froze mid-action.

  There was a woman in the room.

  She stood in the now-open door, silhouetted against the gloaming beyond the candleflame. Her head was partly covered by a hood made of black lambskin, a dark cloud above the swirling storm of the cloak. A large leather pouch hung on her velvet belt, dangling all kinds of mystifying charms. Her feet were covered by hairy calfskin shoes with metal knobs at the toe, her hands covered by white, supple gloves. Folkward stared at her, stunned by the turn of events.

  When she spoke, the woman’s voice was sing-song, soothing, a lullaby sung to a restless child.

  “Blakkr prestr, hvíta Kristr, rauda Thorr.”

  She used a Northern tongue, but her words were almost discernable: Black priest, white Christ, red Thor. The monk could guess what she meant—the Benedictine habits were black, the linens they gave to the newly baptised were pure and white, which led to Christ’s name in the North. Thor was the thunder demon, maverick son of Woden, and a favourite in these parts. Folkward suspected she was a seer, a völva, a pagan priestess. In her hands, she held a staff with a knob on top that was covered by brass and more gemstones than adorned any bishop’s crozier.

  The hunting horn rang out again, this time with three shorts rasps—a call to arms. On the last note, the seer tossed back her hood, shook out her dark, sooty hair, and slid her staff across the threshold, scraping across the beaten earth as if inscribing her own Holy Writ on the floor. Unbidden, she drifted into the room like an unseasonable flurry of snow, a glass bead necklace dancing around her neck, a dark blue cloak glistening with the countless precious gemstones that had been sewn into it.

  The scribe tried to gather his wits. Why had that dolt of a Dane signed for the abbot? Who was blasting that awful horn again? And how had this heathen woman found her way to his sanctuary? The scriptorium led off the chapel, which meant she had thumped past a half dozen monks. He was also extremely disconcerted by the way she was gyrating around what looked like a pastoral staff and the fact that she was very clearly as savage as a wolf, despite the richness of her sheep’s clothing. Folkward groped for a suitable way to address the woman.

  “Dóttir…”

  He half-pleaded, half-su
ggested, hoping that Hemming might come to his rescue with the right phrase, but the word caught in his throat when he realized Hemming wasn’t behind him. Folkward turned, bodily, on his heel, startled first by the disappearance and then panicked, more so when his companion was not to be found. It was a small, empty hovel of a room, square, bereft of anything but manuscripts and the cases that held them. Had the Dane stolen away so quickly? And how, with the Norse in the doorway and the wattle on the windows undisturbed? Folkward grew more frantic. Was he being punished for his sins, his foolish pride? The Lord knew his true thoughts; the nickname was in jest! Anxiety and anger seized him as he fought for an explanation. He felt compelled to shout, to shatter the silence, to call for his God and for his countrymen. What devilry was this? The monk paused, breathing methodically, running his aching fingers over his rosary beads, quelling his stricken mind. He held his peace and gave a small prayer for the mercy.

  The woman spoke again in the same sing-song voice.

  “Tonsured and torn, shaven now shorn.”

  Folkward turned, slowly and very deliberately, back to the woman. She loomed over his writing stand, tracing the curves of his lettering with one long, wicked fingernail, smiling guilefully at him. Soft answer turns away wrath, the monk determined—and hopefully, rhyme too. He had enough riddles for one day.

  “I am delighted you speak English, dóttir. My name is Folkward, a humble servant of the one True God and—”

  “Frakkar,” she said and gave a short winsome sigh. “Grikkir, Serkir, Gyðingar. All the same lies, whispering across deserts, blinding men as surely as sand in the eyes.”

  Her eyes peered around the chamber, then alighted on the Holy Scripture. She was evidently reading the Latin, and translating, haltingly at first, then with an eerie fluency.

  “And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth: and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul.

  “And the Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning: wherein he placed man whom he had formed.

  “And the Lord God brought forth of the ground all manner of trees, fair to behold, and pleasant to eat of: the tree of life also in the midst of paradise: and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

  Folkward felt his breathing hasten again. Perhaps it had been unwise to drink the mead so quickly. He wasn’t accustomed to loud debate, or heathens who read Latin, and he felt unsteady on his feet.

  The woman looked up from the manuscript and grinned.

  “You know what the Hebrew word for ‘In the beginning’ is? Bereshit. Bear shit. That’s what we say in the North.”

  She stepped away from the books and walked slowly towards the monk.

  “There is an order to a well-told story, I’ll grant you, but you are mistaken in your tale here. The trees were here first, and Askr and Embla—or as you call them, Adam and Eve—were fashioned from their great trunks. Only a Kristin would build with slime.”

  Folkward opened his mouth to reply but found he was gasping for air. He stumbled and fell to his knees. His heart was racing now, his eyesight blurring. The woman’s voice droned on, coated with honey and the hum of the hive.

  “But in fairness,” she said, “there are similarities. Which do you think was written first? Óðinn’s Rune Song or the Gospel of Matthew? Perhaps only time will tell. You do know, Folkward, fulltruí of Kristr, that writing things down doesn’t render them true? What is written can be rewritten.”

  His mind skittered through Psalms, snatching at scraps of verse. The plainsong vibrated inside his skull, the same refrains melding into one. He was only dimly aware she scratched at the ground with her staff again, and began to yawn, over and over, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.

  “Tanahk, Avesta, Quran, and Bible,” she said. “They all repeat the same stories. A Lord of such celestial majesty and terrifying power there is no question in portraying him as a man. And so you use a book instead. Books, old in years, bearing inscriptions in ancient letters and long dead tongues, written by men, copied by men and used to justify your earthly realms. Meanwhile, you fast, sing psalms and avert your eyes from temptations—and the greed of your kings. But as you sow, so shall you reap. Your petty, punishing God has created a world he teaches you to scorn. You commune with your Lord with song, bread, and wine, yet your God replies only to the few. You pray, and you fear, and you seek to be saved. You maim and murder for a reward of everlasting glory and eternal love.”

  Then she started to sing—hauntingly, beautifully—the beads and gems joining her, a slow procession of stars in the darkness that swallowed him. When her voice returned, it was as cold and deep as a well.

  “You should know, my people have been gifted Midgard and are protected here. We laugh, and we love, and we meet our end well. My Gods are here all the time. I celebrate them with every breath, every touch. And they fade and falter as surely as summer turns to autumn or winter turns to spring, but I know they will stand again. Folkward, dear Folkward, did you know I have watched you these three nights from by the river?”

  He was somewhere else now. There was Eahlwine, the schoolmaster, in all his court finery, cavorting, naked with his assistants. He saw Willehad, saddling an eight-legged horse and galloping to the sea. First Hemming, now Willehad! Why had his friends forsaken him? He felt a gnawing grief. Someone was dead. And true enough, there was a body, attended by hundreds of concerned and watchful figures, all in black, all in mourning. He felt very distant from God, but surely this place was Bremen Cathedral, somehow completed, already consecrated with great riches and relics. The crowd parted to reveal a mitre atop a skull, then flapped up into the rafters, a flurry of jet black feathers and unkind eyes. They cawed and shrieked as they flew. Folkward flailed his arms to protect his face, only to find he was in the air too, his screams adding to the cacophony. He pecked, once, twice, a third time and his tongue flushed with warm blood. He hopped between three broken bodies, recognizing each in turn—Benjamin, Artrebanus, Genoald. Shrouded by ravens, always pecking, tearing, watching.

  Then the black fiends were gone, and only ash, soot, and smoke remained. Folkward flew above the land, beseeching God for mercy, but his penance went unsaid and unheard. Far below, Saxons strode from the forest, their princes now returned from across the Danevirk. He saw the Frankish army ride east, ordered by their king to end this temerity. They were led by the highest of the high, chamberlains and counts, seeking a reckoning but finding only judgment. Saxon knives flashed, and rivers ran with blood. Folkward watched as the skies darkened, as daylight shrank to a thin white line on the horizon. Now came Iron Karolus, the cross in his hand, a wild beast gnawing at his genitals. The river grew darker still, alive with human heads, thousands upon thousands, bobbing like bloodied apples. The Ring of the Fisherman applauded with ancient hands, the Ring of the North thundered, his dog-headed children broken free of their chains. And then the Norse woman was there, her thighs pinning him down. He could feel himself engorge, and he shuddered as she mounted him.

  Complevitque Deus die septimo opus suum quod fecerat: et requievit die septimo ab universo opere quod patrarat.

  Words tumbled through Folkward’s fevered mind. He was worried about his books, all his work going up in flame. He tried to imagine himself, standing at his desk, busily writing. Happily writing. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had done. Perhaps this was all a dream. The Lord would protect him.

  The monk kept his eyes firmly closed and mentally recited the scripture again and again. He grimaced as the Norse shifted her weight. He was still pinned. Folkward tried to struggle, but he was bound too. He strained to see his fetters but saw no rope or chains. In frustration, he started to weep, silent, anxious tears. The seer bent towards him and whispered straight into his ear.

  “Henbane, Folkward, from the Vanir. Quite potent when imbibed. And, yes, you are right, it is Sunday. But today, there will be no r
est, at least for the wicked. What do you think, priest? Can you hear the oncoming storm?”

  THE HORNS CARRIED ON CALLING long into the night. The monastery provided ample wood for fires, and its slaughtered pigs warmed the bellies of the many Saxon warriors who answered. Meat was boiled in large pots, blood splashed with ritual abandon. The tribesmen drank mead, passing drinking horns, one after another, around the circle formed by the steaming cauldrons, swearing oaths to kith and kin. Tomorrow, they would take the hidden paths through the beech trees, up onto the Süntel ridge to wait for the Franks. The riders of Karolus scared no one here, their horses just more sacrificial flesh this side of the ford. Lord Widukind had returned, and with him ran the wolves of Sigurd Hring, newly crowned King of Danes and Swedes, and mortal foe of the Kristin. They would meet the Franks with spear and seax in Woden’s name. The camp rang with toasts.

  “Til árs ok friðar.” Good health and peace.

  The völva stood alone by the small altar of stones she had made by the monastery well. The sacrificial ceremony, the blót, would gain favor with the Gods, maybe it would direct their wrath at the Frakkar. But peace was not what she had seen. Peace would be a long time coming.

  The warriors were wary of her divinations and magic, the seiðr. To them, she was the path to the hidden, the healer of the sick, the blight on the land, the weaver of destiny. Only the bravest of them even stole a glance in her direction, in case she happened to be staring back and put them under a spell for their insolence. She didn’t begrudge them their fear. It was the simply the way of things.