No. He had promised Dom’s shade to release Hilde, and keeping his promise was important. The girl could always go back or to a different convent if she found life on the outside intolerable. Without protection from a family or a husband or a landlord, he had no idea how she might survive, let alone thrive.
He yawned again, wishing Father Blaine would read the lessons with at least as much inflection as a plainsong. Henry was already asleep on the verge of snoring. Nick jabbed him in the gut with his elbow. Henry spluttered and snorted, then opened his eyes wide, realized where and when he was, and resumed a pose of attention.
No one was fooled. The littlest boys dozed with heads dropping in an attitude of prayer. The men and older boys ignored them.
“I’ll get them a good rousing game of tag tomorrow afternoon,” Nick promised himself and them. They all needed something to break the monotonous routine, something that stretched their bodies and brought laughter to one and all. Father Blaine—not even a novitiate at the time—had done the same for him when he was but six. Why was the man so frowning and . . . timid about breaking the rules now?
Too much responsibility thrust upon him before he was ready. Blaine had not had Elena’s gentle laughter and thoughtful tutoring.
Finally, Father Blaine recited the benediction in the same monotone as he read the lessons while making the sign of the cross in the air.
Wearily, Nick got to his feet and herded the youngsters toward their beds. His responsibility, just as Hilde had become his responsibility.
When each of the boys was tucked in with a kiss to the forehead and a bit of a hug, with no help from Henry, Nick flung himself onto his cot, asleep before he could pull up his blanket.
All too soon the Welsh monk from the infirmary woke him with a brisk shake to his shoulders.
“Nicholas,” he hissed in an urgent whisper. “Nicholas, wake up.”
Nick swam upward through waves and waves of sleep. “Wha . . . what?” He didn’t find the courage to open his eyes. “Is it Matins already?” He felt as if he’d only been asleep for a few minutes. Every joint and muscle ached with exhaustion.
“Almost dawn,” said the infirmarian.
How could I have slept through the bells? Nick wondered as he struggled to a sitting position, eyes barely opened enough to discern a faint glimmer of pre-dawn at the edges of the small window.
“We grow slack here without the bells to order our day,” the physician said. Then he shook himself and captured Nick’s gaze with his own. “Nicholas, when did you last see Brother Luke?”
Nick had to think hard. He’d stumbled through yesterday half-asleep without minding where or when he did what. The day before—was it only the day before?—that Tuck had summoned him while Brother Luke dozed in the garden, too tired of life to speak further about his beloved herbs.
“Not yesterday,” Nick admitted, ashamed at neglecting his assigned duty to the old man. “I don’t remember speaking with him yesterday.”
“He’s gone now. I thought him beyond the days of wandering without memory. He’s so weak, I fear for him. What if he took it into his head to collect new plants in the forest? What if one of the wild creatures killed him? What if . . .”
“I know a place in the water meadow where he might have gone,” Nick said, yawning again. His stomach growled, and his bladder ached. “He spoke often of the abundance of herbs and flowers at the water’s edge. May I grab a crust of bread and a mug of new ale before I go look for him?” He didn’t remember if he’d eaten last evening or not.
“If you hurry. Clouds are forming to the north, and the wind is blowing up a storm from that direction. It’ll likely rain before Prime.”
“I won’t linger.” With more energy than he thought possible, he grabbed his robe and slipped on his sandals as he ran to the privy. Three steps along the cloister he remembered to touch his pocket and make certain Elena still resided there.
I am with you.
“You’ve been so silent, I wondered,” he murmured.
After being on my own for so long, I needed rest.
A chilling thought wiggled into his brain in the thoughtless time while he answered the call of nature. “Am I so tightly bound to you that I needed more rest than usual because you did?”
She replied with a light chuckle. No, silly boy, you needed more rest than usual because you’ve been out wandering half the night rather than sleeping as you should. And you are growing. Your body needs more sleep to accept the newness of a bigger size. Now tell me why you’ve been out and about.
“If you will tell me how Lady Ardenia saved herself, and you, while in Nottingham Castle.”
A fine bargain!
In an instant, he relived the adventure of the water sprite pouring the trickle of pond water on top of her head. With little substance to her limbs, she then slid her hand into the lock and flicked the metal latch so that the guards would be blamed for not locking her in. Moments later she relaxed into a thin stream of water and slid beneath the door to join with the drain runoff at the depressed center of the corridor.
Nick felt in his own hand the smooth transition from liquid to solid, then back to water.
The heavy wooden planks of the door seemed to scratch Nick’s back right where it itched the most as he flowed beneath it. He joined with Elena, clinging to the depressions in the stone floor that allowed water from the leaky roofs to drain. He flowed downward with them, ever downward as water is wont to go, into the undercroft and the cellars, then down again into the dungeons and the intricate labyrinth of caves and natural tunnels until they met a stream that traveled out of the city and along the system of creeks and streams, the tiny cup bobbing along invisibly atop the trickle of water and a part of it at the same time. He felt the relentless need to join with . . . with the pond that was the sprite’s natural home. Ardenia concentrated so hard on staying fluid and not spreading out to dry, that neither Nick nor the spirit of the water noticed where and when Elena floated.
He knew the sense of exhilaration at the moment of Ardenia’s glorious reunion with the spring of water that contained her essence. A shiver of delight passed along Nick’s spine, as if he’d just risen from a cleansing bath, barely noticing the bite of cold water on skin.
“I feel much the same every time I wander far and then at the point of exhaustion I spy the church tower rising above the abbey walls and I have a new spurt of energy to carry my feet home.”
Because this is your home. This is where you will always return.
“It’s more than the sight of the bell tower. It’s the voices. Our brotherhood sings the plainsong all the time. Sometimes they sing it as a prayer, alone or in a group. The brothers sing as they go about their daily chores, practicing to get the intonation just right. I can’t imagine the abbey without the soothing cadence of our music. It’s the chant that calls me home long before I can see the walls. And I feel foolish trying to match my voice to theirs.”
Give it time. The notes and words will settle in your throat before too long.
With that, he sang the benediction very softly to keep his voice from cracking and destroying the smooth recitation.
The sun had risen high enough to paint the underside of the cloud cover shades of rose and gold when Nick left the forecourt of the abbey by the main gate. He shivered in the cold wind the moment he stepped free of the sheltering walls. “I’d much rather be asleep,” he muttered, letting his feet drag. He chewed the last of his bread and sipped from his wooden mug. A ball of hard cheese rested comfortably in his scrip at his waist. That was for later, if he didn’t find Brother Luke quickly and return in time for a meal in the refectory. Even bland and sometimes bitter turnips sounded good right now.
There are no apples yet to sustain you. I will show you some roots and bulbs you may safely eat down in the water meadow. But only if you tell me what kept you up and wandering whil
e I was away.
Nick breathed deeply and launched into his tale of finding Hilde and her need to run away from her convent.
A door locked by sorcery is no problem for me, Elena admitted. My worry is about who locked it, why, and who now holds the magical key.
“Is the sorcery dangerous?” Nick’s feet squelched in the sodden grass that wouldn’t dry out until high summer. He needed to retreat to solid ground. “More important, I can’t see Brother Luke anywhere. Could he have fallen into the shallow pools and drowned?”
I cannot sense him nearby. But I think I know where he has sought refuge. Turn north until you reach the ford, then go west without crossing the stream. You need to hurry.
Nick had never traveled that path. But he trusted Elena more than his own instincts. Once on dry ground with solid footing, he asked again, “Is the sorcerous lock at the nunnery dangerous?”
The sorcery itself does not sound dangerous. But one person inside must control the opening and the closing, someone with a powerful need to remain inside and keep all others out. A convent is a place where they fear sorcery so much they deny its existence. For someone to use it there is considered blasphemy.
“I think I need to tell Abbot Mæson about this.” Not Tuck with the horn buds, but the abbot with authority that he hid beneath his rough clothing and broad-brimmed felt hat.
Eighteen
Little John paused and lifted his head from the plate of eggs and cheese and rough bread the Woodwose gave him every morning. He joined them around the central fire surrounded by makeshift huts. Something was different in his forest. A strange, halting step at the edge. He sniffed and smelled only smoke from the wood fire.
Hastily, he rose from his place to the north of the rocks containing the flames. Once clear of the smells normal to any village—pig, chicken, damp thatch, unwashed bodies, and the privy downstream—he found a trace of someone new. Someone who didn’t belong.
Someone who had belonged once, but no more. He let the essence of the man tickle his senses a few heartbeats longer.
“Lyndon?” he asked the air.
None of the current humans was old enough to remember Lyndon. He’d been born to this village when their hovels huddled together at the base of the mound covered with linden trees. They had to move all traces of the village every few years to avoid the sheriff’s agents finding them. But Lyndon had heard the enchanting call of the abbey and the prayerful songs they intoned. His soul, like Tuck’s, yearned for something greater than the life of an outlaw. He answered the call of faith and took a new name, then after only a few years he’d gone off to someplace called the Holy Land for a Second Crusade.
Little John knew of no land holier than his forest. People had worshipped at sacred springs, standing stones, and at the feet of giant trees for as long as people had lived on the land. Land he’d inherited custody of from his sire, grandsire, and many grandsires before.
He splayed his fingers wide, letting each begin to transform into a twig, his new bark more sensitive to changes in the air than his skin. One by one, he absorbed an awareness of each entity who fell within his duty to the forest. He acknowledged and dismissed as normal each tree, creek, boulder, insect, animal, and person.
One more remained. The essence of the person gave him a direction and showed him the unseen route of the old man. Why had he come back in what for him must be very old age?
Little John strode off toward the fringe of his awareness to confront Lyndon.
A lump of threadbare dark gray wool lay collapsed inside the verge where forest met meadow. It stirred awkwardly. Little John hastened to kneel beside the shapeless mound.
“Ah, Lyndon, you’ve waited too long to reclaim your heritage,” he sighed.
“Please . . .” A gnarled and spotted hand emerged from the vast folds of dark fabric. “I must touch them once more.”
Little John knew what the cracked and hesitant words meant. “So, in death, you’ve forsaken your new faith for the old ways,” he grumbled as he lifted the slight weight of the ancient monk into his arms. Lyndon had once been tall and robust. Now he weighed less than a child half his size, little more than skin and bones.
“There is a place for the old and the new,” Tuck said, hastening through the underbrush. He raised his right hand, gnarled fingers naturally curling inward below the extended fore and middle fingers. “May the Lord bless you and keep you,” he whispered, sketching a cross above Lyndon’s lolling head. “May the Lord let His face shine upon you and give you peace.” Then the old priest stepped aside, clearing the path to the center of the forest.
Little John bowed his head, acknowledging a prayer that came from the heart no matter which god he addressed.
“I’ll follow. Hurry, Little John. He cannot last long now. An hour at most.”
* * *
“Take me with you,” Henry demanded, panting as he ran to catch up with Nick.
“I’m in a hurry,” Nick protested. His hand automatically patted his pocket to make certain Elena’s pitcher was safely hidden.
“I never get to go anywhere, Nick. How am I supposed to learn how to minister to these people if I don’t know them?”
“So you aim for the priesthood rather than a life of isolated contemplation,” Nick said. He thought being an itinerant priest was the life he wanted. There was so much to learn and see and do beyond the walls of the abbey. He might want the monastic life someday, when he was as old as Brother Luke. Not yet.
“Henry, if you come with me, you will see some things I cannot explain. You will have to accept and figure things out on your own as we go along.”
“Agreed.” He folded his hands into his sleeves and ducked his head. But he peered upward at Nick beneath lowered eyelids.
Nick eyed him skeptically. Henry wasn’t going anywhere but where Nick walked, so he took his first step away from the crossroad on the path Elena had indicated. He had never encountered any true danger in the forest, only friends, both human and Wild Folk. But all his life, adults had warned him of the evil that lurked in the forest. So had Little John. Outlaws and marauding mercenaries mostly, and they grew fewer each year now that King John resided in England instead of France and tried to impose something resembling order upon his barons. Of the Wild Folk, only faeries with their traps contained any meanness, and he’d spotted a trap quite easily. But he had heard about other dangers. Stories grew with each telling. He knew that. But they all started with some glimmer of truth.
Maybe the forest, with its long and deep shadows, had been dangerous once.
“Where are we headed? I didn’t think old Brother Luke was strong enough to walk this far,” Henry said. He walked in an awkward circle, surveying the trees that closed in on them almost immediately. He stumbled backward over an exposed root.
“Watch where you step. The forest gets dangerous away from the road.” Or so the brothers who cowered in the abbey said.
“I won’t get lost,” Henry said on a pout. “If I step wrong, I’ll just call for you and you can rescue me.”
“If something awful doesn’t eat you before I can find you.” Nick paused in place and lifted his head, sniffing in all directions.
“I thought you were friends with all the local creatures.” Henry stopped in place as well. His words sounded hesitant rather than bouncy and curious.
“A few. Not all.” He turned his attention to his right. He had no idea of the real direction. They’d been walking west. But the trail twisted back on itself and the trees all looked alike, old and covered with moss. In the section of forest he’d visited, around Lady Ardenia’s pond at the Woodwose village, the trees grew in a good mix of young, old, and ancient. Every time a massive elder succumbed to age and storm and rot, a dozen seedlings sprang up to replace it, germinating new life from the ruins of the old.
Here, he didn’t think any of the trunks, so big around that fi
ve grown men linking hands couldn’t completely surround one, had fallen since time began. The dead forest giants remained standing, crowding so close together he’d have trouble squeezing between them. And the canopy was so tightly woven of overlapping branches that little if any light penetrated. They walked into perpetual deep twilight.
Groundcover withered and died from lack of light. The trees crowded closer and closer to the path.
He touched the outside of his pocket again, wondering if he had taken the correct path after all.
This is the shortest way to the triad of standing stones. Keep moving quickly, and we will reach the center of the forest in time.
“Is that where Brother Luke will go?”
Yes.
Nick and Henry moved forward warily, pausing frequently to study the path and make sure they followed the real one and not one of the wandering openings to either side—a trap for the unwary.
Had the faeries set those traps? Or something else?
Whenever Nick hesitated and directed a foot off to the side, Elena nudged his mind back to the real path.
Henry crept closer to Nick, frequently clutching at his robe, making a slight connection. Then he’d release his hold and whip his hand back inside his own sleeves.
An icy breeze sniffed around their ankles, sending chills all the way to the roots of Nick’s hair.
“Something smells rotten,” Henry whispered. “Sort of like the midden on a hot day, but worse.”
“I know,” Nick replied, suddenly aware of the odor that invaded his nose and penetrated his skin. He didn’t feel safe to speak loudly.
You must walk faster! Elena demanded. A sharp, hot prod to the center of Nick’s mind followed her thoughts. He’s dying now!
Walk the Wild With Me Page 14
