His head turned as someone thundered a mount up the line. Petrin’s prayer faltered. Herfod’s brother had come forward up the column. A sandy-haired monk sat the horse behind him. It was the hero who had fought at the side of Ugoth and the angel.
Ufrid watched Vik work the horse in toward the wagon. The moment they were close enough, the monk tossed wild flowers on the bier. Without a word or glance in Ufrid’s direction, Vik headed his mount back out of the column, his single hand guiding firmly.
Not long after, someone else approached with flowers, this time a soldier who jogged in quickly and away again. Ufrid observed in silence.
By the end of the day, the wagon was filled with blossoms, the bier buried beneath them. The divine glow rose and covered all the offerings. Ufrid stared and knew he would be marching behind this unwithering testimony of love and devotion to his brother for the rest of the journey home.
Chapter Twelve
Brother Herfod walked alone in the forest. His boots crunched through a crust of ice. A freezing rain had passed in the night, and the autumn day was not the most pleasant, though the glinting icicles were rather beautiful if he cared to notice.
He stopped to listen to the quiet surrounding him. The scent drifted to him again. He turned in the wind and walked onward. After a few more steps, Nicky stepped out from behind a tree, a small figure in boy’s clothing, almost enveloped by an overly large coat.
“Kehfrey,” she whispered.
He came to a standstill yards away. The smile on her face faded and she stared in dismay at him. She walked the remaining distance herself. Her small hand rose and pushed the cowl off his head.
“Oh, Kehfrey!” she said. “Your hair! Your eyebrows! Why?”
His voice was hoarse from disuse when he answered. “I’ve always found my hair a distraction to me. It attracts too much notice, too much comment, too much unwanted attention.”
“But it was so beautiful!”
He remained silent a moment, looking down at her expressionlessly. When he spoke, he was grim. “Beauty has never helped me. It has gotten in my way.”
She sighed sadly. “You haven’t succeeded, Kehfrey. Taking off your hair hasn’t made you ugly. You’re still beautiful, only now you’re completely bitter.”
“I don’t feel beautiful, Nicky,” he whispered. “I feel uglier than a sin.”
She cried out softly and reached for him. He backed off.
“Don’t! Don’t touch me!”
Tears leapt into her eyes. “I’m sorry! I know it was my faul—!”
He interrupted her. “No. It’s not because I don’t love you. I have a task before me. I cannot fail this one.”
“But it was my—!”
“Nicky. Don’t.”
There was nothing to be done, not words of self-recriminations, not sorrow. He refused the former and had suffered enough of the latter. She brushed the tears away.
“I brought them. I’m sorry about the inquisition. I couldn’t get them off the hill. Our people and theirs overwhelmed the place. I had to hide until later.”
He nodded in understanding, no blame or rebuke in his expression.
“Do you have a safe place to keep them?” she asked.
“Yes. The abbot showed me it, though he wouldn’t let me inside.”
“Not inside? Why not?”
“It’s an underground ancient temple,” he said bluntly.
“Oh! Kehfrey! It can’t be safe, then!”
“She’s not trying for me anymore. Trust me, Nicky. The goddess has other things planned and taking me isn’t one of them. At least for the moment.”
As she stared at him in concern, the image of him as a very old man flashed across her mind yet again. She nodded concurrence. “I’ll get them.”
She walked back to the tree. He followed her. She had hidden the bones under a pile of leaves that had been crusted over with ice the night before. She cracked the upper layer with her boot and pulled out the rope handle of the rolled bundle. After a few tugs, she freed the package. He received the relics in respectful silence and bowed his gratitude. When he rose, she knew he would send her away immediately. There would be no relenting.
“Promise you won’t come back,” he demanded.
She refused. “No! I will come back! I have seen you! I have seen you, old man! You are there in a hallway with three sets of doors. There are stained glass windows high above. You are still wild and you still caper like a mad fool when you are angry. I see you! I will be there to see the end of this!”
His eyes shut. “Oh!” he said. “You promise?”
“I promise! I promise, Kehfrey! Some day! Some day we will see each other again. We will see the end of this together.”
His eyes opened.
There! The supernal light had returned. And then he kissed her, one arm around her back, the other clutching the precious bones. He kissed her until they both shook. But soon, too painfully soon, he tore his mouth away and ran.
She didn’t protest. She understood. He had accepted her promise. That and the kiss would sustain him for the remaining years of his life.
***
The church was filled, filled with mourners and filled with an ominous silence. The silence was intense and disapproving. Everyone seemed aware of it, but for those who stood in the chancel facing the congregation. Only the dead separated these few from the throng.
Five small biers, the coffins on them each progressively smaller, lay in a row before the steps of the chancel. A carefully placed flower rested on each small casket. Guards prevented the mourners from approaching with more. The mourners who should have had flowers, the blood relations, bore none at all in their hands.
The queen was a white-faced figure in stark black. She was noticeably pregnant, her face swollen from too much fluid. Rumours abounded that she might die of the pregnancy before grief felled her, if she felt any grief. No sign of sorrow marked her pale face. She faced the congregation with blank, stolid endurance.
The regent, Prince Ufrid, stood tall at her side. He stared straight ahead, not turning his eyes toward the five almost accusatory coffins, nor toward the crowd of nobility and commoners who had come to observe the funeral mass.
Heavenly Light priests paced up the aisle to begin the mass, and the silence took on the weight of deep censure. No welcome expression displayed on any face for the clerics of the new sect, only grim contempt. Bishop Petrin was fully aware of the condemnation, but he gave no sign of it. He steps were sedate, his expression carefully beatific. Royal guards held the lane open for him. Royal guards would hold the lane open for him from here on out.
But the times were changing. The people would change with it. They were blind. They did not see the truth. But Petrin did. The Church of Heavenly Light was the one true church. The Turamen holy brothers would no longer chant mass in the city of Durgven.
In fact, the Turamen monks had been banned from performing any services within the city. It was their fault, the injunction. There had been riots in the streets the evening the last of Ugoth’s children had died. Turamen supporters had attempted to bring a holy brother into the castle and failed.
If Abbot Anselm would just have listened to reason, taken his brethren in hand, been a bit firmer of mind and spirit! But no! No. The old set were a stubborn lot, that Brother Samel included. He’d been the monk with the rioters that last night. He’d spent several hours in the city gaol after, and all Ufrid had done was set him free on the flimsy excuse that his incarceration would lead to more riots.
Petrin had decided he must work on the younger men of the monastery, woo them from the indiscriminate use of divine power and onto the brighter, narrower road of true enlightenment. If that monster, that false saint Brother Herfod, continued to hide in the monastery with a cowl of silence over his head, this would be a most pleasant and simple task.
Rumour had it that he suffered a debilitating illness which refused all curative prayer. Some said it was a lingering curse levied on h
im by the Shadow Master, but Petrin believed it a blight laid on the demon by the gods themselves. During the three nights the royal children had succumbed to the sickness, Brother Herfod had purportedly been stricken with a brain fever, afflicted so badly he’d become catatonic. Even so, on the very morning the bells had tolled little Prince Uthel’s death, he had been found outside the city gates, his body lying athwart the road as if he’d frozen in the night.
Unfortunately, city guardsmen friendly to the Turamen sect had returned him to the monastery; otherwise Petrin would have rid the world of the sinful creature once and for all. But the gods had done their will despite the demon’s attempt to thwart them. The children were in heaven, safe from spiritual pollution, safe from the dirty brush of their father’s deplorable conduct in life.
With perfect piety, with perfect conviction, Petrin rose to the dais behind the biers and turned. He gazed down at his unwilling congregation and opened his mouth to say the service. He spoke of divinity. He spoke of calling. He spoke of the innocent and the pure, the loved. He propounded over how the gods often summoned early these specially chosen, of how divinity wove them out of this mundane life, but just at the end of this important, very true point, someone hissed loudly from deep within the flock. An angry murmuring ensued. Petrin attempted to speak over it, but could not. The outcry rose with the volume of his voice.
Prince Ufrid stepped forward, and there was a sudden hush. “Do not desecrate the mass of my brother’s children!” he snarled at them all. The silence became profound again, but still sullen and disapproving. Ufrid stepped back to his place and nodded to the bishop to continue, but a terse whisper between his teeth ordered the priest to cap the ceremony now.
Petrin almost scowled. He’d been pleased with Ufrid’s castigation of the people. He felt the service should continue as planned, but as he looked down on the staring faces, the beatific haze over his eyes evaporated, and he perceived at last a small measure of his peril. The faces of the congregation were lit with antagonism. Something violent lurked beneath their skins. It threatened explosion. Petrin thought it best to obey the prince regent and pronounced the prayer consigning the souls of the children to the heavens. The caskets were lifted, and the funeral procession marched down the guarded aisle.
Out in the street, the silence of Durgven’s citizens was yet more ominous. The people lined the avenue that Ufrid’s soldiers kept open. Their breaths rose in the chill air of the spring, hiding sullen, angry eyes until the wind whipped the small clouds away. Ufrid knew without turning his head that his subjects were near the breaking point. He was blamed for these deaths. He was accused. He was convicted. Durgven’s citizens wished to carry out the sentence.
“They should have been healed!” someone dared to shout. “The sickness should have been healed!”
Petrin stopped to utter an angry protest. Ufrid grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him onward.
“Highness!” the priest objected. “The people must be corrected of this serious error in thought!”
“Do you think your priests will heal you when the gods let these people tear you to pieces?” Ufrid hissed through his teeth. “Do not make them more angry. Be serene. Be sorrowful. Do not chastise them! It is you they believe to be the sinner just now. Play on their grief, not their anger!”
His mind now racing with anxiety, Petrin nodded. The cries of protest and accusation were spreading. He ordered his juniors to commence a poignant hymn. The juniors raised their voices, but Petrin, not a very good singer, only pretended.
Still the crowd hissed and muttered offensive words. The venom lurking beneath the skins of the citizens was ready to burst outward. Petrin began to shake beneath his white ceremonial robes.
The caskets rounded the curving path the soldiers forced open, and the first coffin turned in toward the entrance of the mausoleum. Someone crouched upon one of the grey gate stones. Some twelve feet up, the hunched figure appeared unconcerned with the height of his perch. Ufrid at first didn’t see him. Strangely, no one did, perhaps because the figure was as grey as the stone he waited on. And yet perhaps not, for he was an odd addition to the gate. He just didn’t seem there to the people in the streets.
But then he moved, rising to a stand upon the pilaster and attracting the eyes of the uncrowned king. He then drew the eyes of all, not because he’d shifted, but because he took up the song the priests now sung with frightened warbles. His voice lifted out from beneath the cowl, steady and strong and compelling. The muttering and hissing faded in a wave of astonishment that spread outward from the gate.
“It’s Brother Herfod!” someone cried. “He sings the mass for the little prince and princesses! He’s broken his vow of silence for them!”
After this single outburst, not a protest sounded. The caskets filed into the mausoleum grounds, and the procession continued unmolested. The singing of the junior priests had lapsed. The only voice to be heard was Brother Herfod’s. The birth of the mob had been aborted. Anger had been driven back by reverence, solemnity and tears.
“That demon!” Petrin spat.
“That demon just saved your sorry hide!” Ufrid snarled softly. “Stop looking at him like that! You’ll start them off again!”
Ufrid almost slapped the priest’s stupid head down. Someone threw a rock at the bishop. It hit the ground next to his feet. Petrin averted his gaze from the Turamen interloper.
“He has disobeyed a royal edict!” he muttered darkly. “No monks were to approach the royal family during the funeral service. You must arrest him immediately!”
“Do you want us to die?” Ufrid hissed. “He disobeyed no edict. We approached him.”
“That is just a technicality! He placed himself on a path we must cross.”
Ufrid’s lips thinned. He refused to answer. Whatever his reason, Herfod had saved their lives. Ufrid was certain that if he listened to that pontificating, asinine fool of a priest, he’d end up dead, and so he marched by the gate stone and did not look up. Herfod sang without pause. Whether he looked down or not as they passed, Ufrid couldn’t guess. He’d ask his men after.
The mausoleum door was already unlocked and open. The bearers carried the coffins straight within and laid them down at the side of the children’s dead father. Queen Eshaia walked in, pressed a kiss on each casket and walked out.
By then, Brother Herfod had ceased singing. The queen’s swollen face canted up toward him. No emotion displayed on her features. She just looked up and waited.
The monk had not turned from the crowd. The grey cowl was still upon his head. He stood bowed with his hands in his sleeves, almost a statue on the rock but for the chill wind whipping his habit and mantle, and the smoke of his breath rising in the freezing air. The massed observers stared with great anticipation. They thought he might speak, say something, reprove, castigate, flay the upstart prince and his unwelcome priests, but he did not.
His head turned, and he looked down at Queen Eshaia. The queen spoke.
“I am ready,” she uttered. “You may take me to the convent.”
“What?” Ufrid said. “What did you say?”
“I go now to the Convent of Saint Emalie. I go into the hands of the Virginal Sisters, to give birth and to await my death. I go to seek my peace with the gods.” Her voice carried clearly in the stillness.
Ufrid stared in dismay. She had done it. She had freed herself from him before the entire populace of Durgven. She would be free and give birth to her bastard. She would be healed. She would live.
The conniving, perverted bitch!
“Queen Eshaia! You must remain with me! How will I rule the kingdom without you?”
She and the bastard must die!
“The crown is yours,” she pronounced. “This child is not Ugoth’s. A malign spirit sent by the Shadow Master raped me. I will go into mourning for my true children. I will go where I belong.”
A wave of horrified astonishment spread through the crowd. Eshaia stepped away from Ufrid and towar
d the grey figure looming above. Her voice lifted higher, hushing everyone.
“I beseech you! I plead for sanctuary! Take me to a place of safety!”
Herfod answered. He said the rite clearly and without hesitation. “I give you sanctuary. I give you protection. By the grace the gods have placed in me, I will see you to safety, and I will see that you know peace.”
He leapt from the stone. The crowd gasped as one. They thought to see him injured, but he landed safely on a large memorial not far off. He jumped from there to a lower one and alighted near the queen. He stepped forward and placed a hand on her elbow. She heard the chant even before he touched her. The healing sank in like a warm wave. Such an upsurge of soothing energy; peace spread from her elbow to every fibre of her being.
“It won’t last,” he whispered after. “You’ll still burn with want.”
He pulled her forward. She felt lighter. She felt thinner. The amassed witnesses observed the change he had wrought. She had lost the water of a pregnancy gone bad. She was healthy. She almost glowed with vigour.
“This child will live!” someone shouted. “This child will be born!”
The outcry against the Church of Heavenly Light lifted to new heights. The moment Herfod passed through the gate with the queen, the mob closed in. Ufrid pulled his sword and backed into the mausoleum. The priests rushed inward as well.
“Go to your dead brother and beg forgiveness!” a wild voice screeched.
Rocks flew. The angry crowd pressed in on the line of soldiers.
“Shut the doors!” Ufrid shouted at his guard. His soldiers fought the mob and gained enough room to haul the heavy stone doors shut. Ufrid grabbed the bishop and thrust him toward the entrance. “Ward it!” he snapped. “And don’t tell me crud about the gods willing this!”
“The gods did not will this! That demon did it!” Petrin cried angrily.
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