Better in the Dark An Historical Horror Novel

9780312859787

0312859783

1 In the smaller of the two graves lay the swaddled bodies of three children, none of them older than five; in the other, set apart from the rest of the little churchyard, the body of their mother sprawled in the sodden garments she wore when they drowned her that morning. A restless, biting wind blew off the sea and scattered sandy earth onto her wet hair. "A pity," said one of the monks at the side of the grave as he looked down at the mother. "She was an adulteress," said his superior, Brother Haganrih, in a quelling tone. "She died as she deserved to die." "It is still a pity," said the first monk. He was taller, younger than his superior, and in spite of his recent vocation he had not rid himself of his attitude of command, a fault for which he was often chastised and which he prayed daily to be rid of. He could not easily bow his head even now. "She should not have done the sin. That is the pity, that she was weak," said the superior. "She let another man than her husband touch her." The first monk sighed. "She said she was forced." "What woman does not say that when she has been found out? It is the way of women to lie, especially about their fleshly passions. Eve said a similar thing to Adam and to God, that the Serpent forced her to eat of the apple, not that she wished to have forbidden knowledge. Women are ever thus." The superior stared into the grave once more. "Best to cover her up. There's nothing more we can do for her in this world." The first monk Signed himself and reached for the wooden shovel. "May the White Christ have mercy on her and upon all Christian souls," he said as he began to fill in the grave. "The father will have to pay for killing the children," the superior reminded the first monk. "He will have to give forty pieces of gold." The first monk nodded as he worked: Brother Giselberht was aware of the law of King Otto; it was not so long ago that he would have been the one to enforce it. He could not deny the justice of the sentence on the woman or the wergeld for the children. Still, as a man who had killed his first wife, he had the uncomfortable knowledge that such acts lingered and ate at the soul. He added his own petition to Heaven along with prayers for the repose of the dead woman and her children. By the time he was finished, the wind had become fiercer; the sea was now a deep grey-green, rolling heavily like entwined sleeping monsters, whitecaps showing as far as the monk could see. Somewhere, beyond the horizon, a storm was gathering, the first gale of winter, he suspected, and coming almost a month earlier than usual. All the signs warned of hard times ahead: at dawn he had observed a fox-cub attacked and carried off by an owl as night came to an end. It was an evil omen, one he had pondered through his recitation of morning psalms. He took his shovel and started along the low headland toward the squat wooden buildings surrounded by a stout log fence that housed the Aceomataec or Cassian Benedictines and was dedicated to the Holy Cross. This place was not so much a change from the fortress Brother Giselberht had commanded two years ago as it first appeared: both were isolated, both were less than sixty years old, and both had been established when the Danes had been pushed back and the Wagrians and Obodrites had been brought under the rule of the King of Germania. Life in one was hardly less austere than life in the other. In the monastery church the None Choir was chanting their prayers, part of the continual song of worship that rose from this place without ceasing. The monk stopped long enough to kneel at the entrance and prayed to be worthy to enter this holy g