Fenrir

15

Voices, and pressures in his head. Dizziness, confusion and pain. The confessor had known the Raven was trying to enchant him but he had struggled against it.

They had come at him, knowingly or not, through his weakness for human touch. He had felt the woman holding him, the brush of her hair against his face, heard the beauty of her singing and, against himself, had drawn comfort from her embrace.

It was a woman — he could tell from the shape of her, the softness of her thin arms, even the sound of her breath. He had tried to get away from her at first, to move as best he could, but he was so cruelly tied it was impossible. The pain at his throat from the rope was awful, the Raven’s chant hypnotic, the woman’s voice entangling his thoughts like a coil of smoke from an incense burner entangles a sunbeam. He could have resisted them all, remained as himself fully present in the agony of the rope, had it not been for her touch.

He began to lose track of time. He would drift away from the pain, and her embrace would seem like the warmth of a fire after a long cold journey in the wind and rain. Then the constriction at his throat would begin to dominate his thoughts, his whole consciousness condensing to that tight band around his neck. After a while he couldn’t tell who was asking him the questions, or if he was replying. He seemed to be somewhere else, not in the clearing at dusk but somewhere much darker. He was underground, he could sense it. The air felt close on his skin, damp and cold. Was this hell? Voices were around him. He recognised one as his own but, bizarrely, he couldn’t tell which one it was.

‘Where will we find her?’

‘Who?’

‘The girl who was with you in the church at Paris.’

‘She has always been with me.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I know.’

‘Where is she?’

‘She has come to me.’

‘Where is she?’

‘I must fortify myself for the struggle ahead.’

And then he moved, the rope dug into his neck and he choked. He felt hands adjusting his position, alleviating the tightness slightly. The odour of putrefaction was in his nostrils, the horrid voice of the Raven in his ear, resuming that blasphemous chant.

‘Odin, who gave his eye for lore,

Odin, who hung for nine days on the storm-racked tree,

Odin the bold, the furious and the mad,

Odin accept our gift of pain.’

Jehan forced the words from his strangled throat: ‘Jesus, who died for our sins on the cross, who suffered so we may be free, forgive my sins and welcome me to your heaven, Lord.’ The confessor was certain he was to die there and offered a prayer against pride that God had selected him as a martyr.

He heard the Raven snort in frustration. Then the woman’s voice changed, took on a different quality, more cracked, urgent, imploring. That was when the first bird came to him.

It had been more of an irritation than anything when it had first dropped onto his chest. He hadn’t known what it was, its touch as light as a spider’s until he heard it call. Of course he had heard the birds gathering in the trees, but in his pain and his anguish he hadn’t registered the noise above any of the other sounds of the evening. When the second bird descended, dread set in. He had heard them pecking but couldn’t feel them on his own skin; they were tearing at something about his neck. Then the first wound had come, just an exploratory nip at his cheek. He gasped but then there was another stab at his cheek, harder, and the rasp of the bird, hoarse and exultant. He tried to writhe away but the rope bit deeper into his neck. The birds were on him then, shredding his flesh and his willpower in a torrent of pecks like the fall of an agonising rain. He managed to turn; the rope tightened and he blacked out for a second.

When he came back to consciousness he heard voices.

‘Adisla, come back to me!’

‘No, Vali, no. You are trapped in the schemes of the gods and I want no part of that.’

‘I love you.’

‘And I you. But it is not enough.’ He recognised neither of the names, but they seemed to resonate within him, like the shadow of a memory, known and then slipping away, leaving no more trace of itself than the feeling that something of huge importance lay lurking at the limit of the mind, ungraspable.

Then the memory sparked in his mind, as real as if it was happening right there. The Virgin Mary was in front of him gathering to herself the light of the cornfields and the blue of the sky. She was beautiful and she touched him on the shoulder.

‘Do not seek me,’ she said; ‘let me go.’

He was crying out, screaming and moaning as the birds tore his flesh to a bloody lace.

‘Where is she?’

The voice brought him back. He had betrayed himself, not known himself. Who knew what he had said, who knew what he would say, under such torture? They wanted the lady. He knew where she was; he needed no divine presence to tell him. She was with the merchant. He could stop the pain and the sharp tac tac tac of the bites, the stabbing and the tugging at his skin, in an instant. The confessor knew he could not hold out much longer. As a bird tore a red string of meat from his lips, he recited the words in his head: I put my faith in Christ. Then he opened his mouth to the savage beak. After that a blackness seemed to come up from inside him and his senses failed.