Flesh and Spirit tld-1

by Carol Berg

  “And does Brother Gildas always supervise your schooling?”

  “For the most. Brother Fidelio used to tutor me with Gerard, who is great of heart and beloved of Iero as he saw an angel once, but who is slow of eye and head when it comes to reading. We’d work here, and Brother Fidelio would allow me to read whatever I would from the shelves while he taught Gerard. But when Father Abbot found me reading Aurellian plays by Vocaachus and Aerno…” His face brightened. “Do you know them?”

  I shook my head.

  “Well, they are very…worldly. Frivolous, the hierarch would call them.” A trace of indignation in his posture. “But their words make music in your head and lead you to consider all manner of things. Father Abbot says they are worthy of study, but perhaps not for boys, even ones who read Aurellian fluently.” His enthusiasm quickly overruled his resentments. Neither secrecy nor resentment were at all his nature.

  “Ah, so you were given a new tutor to oversee your reading.”

  “Father Abbot said that Brother Gildas could assign my books and lessons as he did for Horach, and I am not complaining, for I am allowed to read and learn all manner of things that—” He glanced up and bit his lip. “We should go down. The bell.”

  The damnable bell was ringing its second course, but I could not let the moment pass. I bent over and planted my hands on my knees, which put my face something on a level with his. I hated what I would ask him. “Jullian, certain of these monks…Brother Gildas, say…they don’t…hurt…you, do they? Beat you, or threaten you, or…press…you in ways you would rather they not?”

  “No! Never!” His pale cheeks took on the blush of an Erdru’s-month apple. “I am sent to pray without supper or to work extra hours in the pigsties or the stable when I err. No more than that.”

  “But you’ve secrets with them…”

  He stiffened, clamping his mouth shut with the pious stubbornness I had come to recognize.

  “I ask because on Black Night you said Brother Gildas had reprimanded you, and you’ve seemed different these days since. And because when I was not much older than you, I lived rough, and sometimes, so as to eat and stay warm, I would allow men to do things I didn’t like. Some in this world, even persons who are greatly respected, will take advantage of a boy, and I would not have such things happen to one so clever as to read Voc…cernus and Ern—whoever they are. You are my brave rescuer, and I mislike secrets that damp your spirit.”

  “But those have naught to do with—” He snapped his mouth shut again and examined my face as if to judge the story of my rough living for himself. After a moment, he blew out a great puff of air and lowered his voice until I had to crane forward to hear him. “The secrets are not of beatings or unwholesome things. Brother Gildas would never! He exhorts Gerard and me to guard our virtue and says everyone should be as pure as we are.”

  He leaned forward, his forehead almost touching mine. For a moment a fire of excitement and conspiracy pierced his veil of caution. The child was near bursting. “The secrets are of Iero’s work, most excellent and righteous that I would tell even my mother did she live and were I given leave to. But you must not ask me. I was rightly reprimanded for my loose tongue, and again after Black Night when I took your warning to mean you knew things…things you didn’t know. Now I’ve sworn upon my mother’s grave that I will not speak to you of these matters until Lord Stearc—” He closed his eyes and thumped his head backward against the doorpost.

  I was not yet ready to exonerate Gildas. Blackguards could misuse a child’s trust in many ways. If Gildas had not posed a personal threat to the boy to compel my obedience, then the danger must lie in these secret matters that linked the boy to my book and the contraband pages. So I caught the strand of Jullian’s guileless exuberance and tugged on it again.

  “Until Stearc…the Thane of Erasku…until he does what? Come on, lad. The One God himself arranged our meeting. He likely gave me the book of maps as well and instructed his saints to guide my feet to your abbey gates. Why else would your tongue be so eager to tell me these mysteries? I’ve seen Prince Osriel’s vassal in your guesthouse. I’ve seen your abbot rally dead men to protect a prince even the sainted Gillare would abhor, and I’ve seen Brother Gildas cause that prince to vanish so a pureblood could not trace him. I’ve seen the Hierarch of Ardra nosing around your scriptorium finding deviance in almanacs and drawings of mill cogs, and meek brothers subject themselves to water drinking and lashes to hide those same works. And these only begin to touch the mysteries in this place. Truly, I think Iero intends you share the burden of your secrets with me.” The god had certainly piqued my curiosity beyond common bounds.

  The cursed bell ceased its clamor for the moment. Its third summoning would signal punishments for latecomers.

  Inside the Ardran boy’s soul there ensued such a struggle as to make the mud-soaked wrestling boys in Elanus look like pecking chickens. I thought I’d lost when he stood up straight and said, “Come on.”

  But he didn’t set out for the cloisters. Rather, he led me through the inner doorway and down the passage toward the dorter. Only our footfalls and the spatter of rain sounded in the deserted corridor. Between the library and the monks’ dorter, a daystair descended to the cloister garth. Opposite the head of the stair, the passage wall bulged outward in a bay. Each of the five window niches of the bay had its own stone seat, damp from the drizzle that blew through the window port. Jullian stepped up on the seat of the centermost niche, motioned me to crowd in behind him, and pointed a finger out the port.

  Most of the world had vanished into the mist. Off to our right lay the river and the low, ghostly structures of the infirmary garth. Directly below us several steep-roofed buildings crowded together, the most prominent of them very like the guesthouse in size and grandeur—the abbot’s house, I guessed. At least twenty mounted knights had mustered outside it, along with several pack animals. A liveried servant bore the red, white, and gold banner of the Hierarch of Ardra. I was amazed that no hint of such a large and well-armed escort had penetrated the cloisters when I’d climbed the stair not an hour since.

  “Watch,” said Jullian quietly. “I cannot tell you secrets I’m sworn to keep. But there’s good reason the hierarch departs while everyone is summoned to the cloister.”

  Riders and servants milled about for a tedious time. The bells rang their third summons.

  “His Excellency must be napping,” I said. “We’d best go. You’ll just have to tell me.”

  But Jullian caught my sleeve and pointed again. I leaned farther forward, allowing the damp stone seat and his muddy sandals to soak my knees so I could peer closer into the gloom.

  Two men stepped from the door of the house. The one fellow was thickly draped in red, a broad-brimmed hat shielding hair and face from the rain. As he was handed up to a white palfrey from a carpet quickly spread across the mud, his sartorial splendor denoted him the Hierarch Eligius. The second man, slender and pale-haired, swung himself up with practiced ease to the back of a dappled destrier. His short cape revealed a jeweled sword hilt at his waist, fine tight-fitting boots snugged to his knees, and the purple and gold trilliot of Ardra on his surcoat.

  “The hierarch came to fetch him!” I said, wishing I could disbelieve my eyes. I needed no device to identify Perryn, Duc of Ardra. “Your treacherous abbot hid the coward, and the damnable hierarch escorts him back to Palinur. Men of god! Holy men!”

  “Shhh!” said Jullian.

  But I was unable to keep silent. “This despicable villain dragged good men from their homes, starved them and bled them for months, promising help that never came, and then abandoned them to die. Now he sneaks away under the cloak of a traveling clergyman.”

  “The abbot would not have him dead,” said Jullian. “Gillarine is neutral ground, holy ground. Sometimes duty and faithfulness demand unpleasant things.”

  The riders, scarcely visible in the rain, wound slowly out of sight behind the ramparts of the church.

&n
bsp; “What of the men the abbot kept from sanctuary to save him? What of the men this prince will lead into another slaughter? What have your tutors said of them? Is faithfulness only for the benefit of princes?” It wasn’t fair to chastise the boy, who only repeated what he’d been taught. He could not understand the world. “I suppose you pray for them, eh?”

  The bells fell silent. “We’ve got to go now,” said the boy, his thin face knotted in concern.

  “We’ll talk again, Archangel,” I said. I yet saw no pattern that linked Jullian’s safety, Cartamandua maps, and conspiracies involving abbots and hierarchs and royal dunces.

  We raced down the daystair into the east cloister walk. The crack of a whip echoed from the alley between the chapter house and the library. The accompanying groan was muffled as if they’d given the little monk something to bite on. I clenched my fists and wished the man strength for this and the rest of his trial.

  Prison cells were not as familiar to me as alleys and bawdy houses, but I’d experienced enough of them. Never for long, thank all gods. So close…unable to get out…no air to breathe. I’d felt lashes as well, many at the hand of purebloods who could amplify the sting with magic. But in any hour, I’d choose lashes over confinement.

  Brother Sebastian glared as Jullian and I slipped into the back row of the monks gathered in the lay brother’s workyard. The entire population of Gillarine encircled a bonfire blazing brightly in the afternoon’s sodden gloom.

  The abbot’s voice, calm and precise, pierced the smoke and mist. “The Hierarch of Ardra has chastised us for failure and distraction in our work to preserve humankind’s knowledge—the holy charter assigned us by King Eodward and ratified by the hierarch and his predecessors. These pages are the hierarch’s evidence of our ill choices. His Excellency has left us much to consider as to the divine ordering of this world, our place in it, and our duties to our god and king. Let us pray to the One God, Creator and Preserver, to guide us onward in the path of His choosing.”

  A brother emptied the basket of crumpled vellum into the pit. After an initial smoky darkening, the sheets took fire with a thunderous rush, green and blue flames dancing amid the gold, illuminating the faces in the circle as the pages curled and withered. Tears dribbled down the withered cheeks of the stoop-shouldered monk from the scriptorium. No tears scored Brother Gildas’s face, though. Only resolve. Jullian stood beside me looking as if he might reach into the flames and drag out the blackened pages with his teeth.

  “And now, my brothers,” said Luviar, “let a holy fire ignite our souls as we redouble our commitment to the work we have been given. Iero grant us wisdom and give his eternal protection to Navronne’s righteous king.”

  Left unspoken was his opinion of the hierarch’s judgment, though I’d come to think the two had concocted this event as a shield for their political chicanery. Then again, perhaps I’d best give the rumor of a Pretender more credence than I’d done before. Nothing gives a rumor foundation so much as a clergyman naming it deviance.

  The faint honks of geese drew my eyes upward. Long, wavering black wedges arrowed southward, far too early. Eqastré Scrutari-Consil stood out of the rain, just inside the shadowed undercroft. He leaned his back against one of the columns, his arms folded across his chest, watching and listening.

  Sleep eluded me. Despite my near sleepless vigil night, despite the exhaustion of high emotions and taut nerves—or perhaps because of them—my eyes refused to close in the quiet intervals between the night Hours. An oppressive hostility permeated the deepening night, as if the eyeless shades of Black Night’s victims had gathered at my bedside. I could not silence the memory of Boreas’s wails, nor of his choked ecstasy as I wrought his murder. Danger. Villainy. By Lauds, I was near sick with it. When I glimpsed Scrutari-Consil observing our procession down the nightstair into the choir, my overstrung nerves snapped.

  I could not stay here. Not with a hunting pureblood in residence. No matter my missing book; no matter coming famine. Twelve years I had remained free by moving on when I needed, forgoing attachments that might tempt me to linger past safety. With silent apologies to the monks who had welcomed me so kindly, and to the god Iero who had received so little service from my vows, I slipped out of the dorter into the cold mist and drizzle in the dead hours between Lauds and Prime. By the time I reached Elanus, I’d have daylight.

  Life was never so simple, of course. I retrieved my nivat bag and other contraband from the hedge garden and tucked them securely in my rucksack along with my secular clothes and the blanket from my bed. But when I emerged from the abbey gate tunnel, a near impenetrable fog had blanketed the fields. The route through the bogs remained clearly mapped in my head, but just traveling the half quellé from the abbey to the road without getting turned around would be no easy matter. I had no time to waste. Two hours more and I would be missed. And the pureblood would surely hear of it.

  Damn all! I ground my walking stick into the mud. Foolish to travel in such conditions. And even the ascetic accommodation of the abbey was a prince’s comfort beside what awaited me on the road. But neither argument could persuade me to risk one more day at Gillarine.

  I glanced upward to the windows above the gatehouse. I would chance the main track from the gates to the road, rather than going cross-country as I had the previous night. If I was quiet, there’d be no danger of being spotted by the sanctuary watch. I poured the last dram of ale from my vigil night flask onto the path, praying holy Deunor and Saint Gillare to bless this fool’s journey. Then I gripped my stick, shouldered my pack, and set out. Fifty paces and I was lost.

  The short-lived battle of Black Night had churned the field that fronted the abbey into muck. Without vision beyond my outstretched fingertips, I could not distinguish the well-defined track that had once crossed it. Mumbling curses at the need to spend magic—and on this field of all places in the blasted world—I knelt, marshaled what strength might shield me from the horrors wrought here, and touched the earth.

  Spirits of night! How far had I wandered? I lifted my hand, shook my head to clear it, and then touched the cold mud again. The impression was the same. Bloodshed…yes. Seething anger…grief…the death terrors of men and beasts. A hundred quercae to my left, men had screamed out their last moments in focused torment of fire and blade. But as runners of nandia vines and sprouts of fireweed and hearts’ ease recapture a blighted field in one season’s turn, so had a certain sweetness veined this ground. Not a mask to hide the taint of war, but a balm to soothe its raw wounding, to quiet the din of sobs and screams, to blunt the lingering pain enough to counteract its ruinous poison. No music played here as yet. What heart that perceived such sorrow could sing? But someday…perhaps…the tread of happier lives could overlay the lingering horror. Seeds slept beneath the cold mud. Living.

  Wondering, I turned my mind to business. Year upon year of crossing had created a solid track across the wounded field, easily visible to my talent. Only half a day since the hierarch’s party had slunk out of here, and some monk had left traces of his sandals since then. Still wary of Moriangi watchers, I stretched my awareness all the way to the road and swept it across the foggy landscape.

  Deunor’s fire! Riders lurked in the wooded hollow at the joining of track and road—five…ten…I could not tell how many. I sat back on my heels and listened. Naught of man or beast scored the night this far away—which likely meant they did not wish to be heard. Wary travelers, perhaps. But the aura of villainy that had plagued me all night of a sudden had focus. Even a small party could spell danger in such times as these. They could be Harrowers. They could be Scrutari-Consil’s cohorts—Registry. Before I decided whether to retreat or run, I needed to know.

  I touched earth again and sought an approach from the open fields—the direction they’d least expect. Once the route felt sure, I slipped through the pale night, following the guide thread in my head. Fifty times I thought I’d gone wrong; I’d never traveled wholly blind before. But just as the gui
de thread gave out, my feet felt the sharp rise of the hollow’s lip, and I came near breaking my fingers when my extended hands encountered the bark of a young oak.

  Lamenting my bulky monk’s garb, I crept from tree to tree, now following soft voices and the weak lantern light that gleamed deep in the treed hollow. Somewhere beyond them, horses grazed.

  “Dawn approaches. Are you prepared?” The woman’s voice, cold and clear as a knife blade, chilled my soul. Only one night removed from her depraved rites, I could not mistake the priestess were a thousand other voices yammering in my ear.

  The muffled answer was a man’s voice, but I could not decipher his words.

  “Witness this noble sacrifice, sister and brothers,” said Sila Diaglou, “even as you remain vigilant. May the sweet odor of his suffering serve the Gehoum, drawing out our enemies that we might confound and crush them.”

  A few of them shifted position in the fog, and I used their footsteps to cover my own as I slipped closer. Embracing one tree and then another, I honed my every sense, so that I would not collide with one of the shadowed forms. Four of them besides the priestess…no more. Likely the same I’d seen at Graver’s Meadow. Not gathered close as they’d been there. But somewhere in the center would be the priestess and the victim…

  “Sanguiera, orongia. Scream, Monk. The trump of your pain shall open this battle and win the night.” Sanguiera, orongia. Bleed. Suffer.

  A whistling split of the air. A crack, as if a limb of dry oak had snapped. A heart-tearing scream told me they’d stood him upright near one of three trees, some twenty quercae from my position. I gripped the reins of my fury and held still, listening. The next lash told me which tree.

  Not again. This would not happen again. And certainly not to one of the brothers…

  Blocking out the cries ripped from a man’s pain in the name of purity, I touched earth and mapped the grove, recording every tree, every shrub, every rock, stick, trench, or dip that might betray my steps or slow them. I searched out true north and etched the sense of it into my bones so that I could orient myself without thought. It took longer than I wished, knowing that the lash continued to fall, but I also knew they had no intent to be quick about their brutal game.