Greenwode

by J Tullos Hennig

  “’Twasn’t… easy,” Rob husked, and Cernun chuckled despite himself.

  “Fool.”

  “He called me that.”

  “And He was right. Get up,” Cernun said. “You’re too big for me to be carrying you anymore. I’ll give you a hot drink, though I think I should more boot you all the way home.”

  HE HAD been in Blyth’s cavernous chapel for over an hour, waiting.

  Gamelyn had not spent it idly; he had been on his knees for much of that time. The rest he had spent in lighting candles for his mother. Beneath the reminder that Johan had thrown at him, Gamelyn was particularly mindful of her.

  I’m sorry, Mama. I didn’t mean to… I swear I didn’t.

  Was she even now looking down upon him, disappointed in everything that he had done, and become?

  Usually the quiet, and the welcome darkness lit only by wall sconces, and the wisps of flame on the altar before him, were all he needed to cleanse his heart, to rededicate his soul to his world and his God.

  Today, it wasn’t helping.

  Today, everything that he had ever done, from the birth that had killed his mother to what had happened yesterday, was flensing him like tiny, keen knives.

  Gamelyn had begun his devotions with a prayer to the Virgin—then had thought that rather inappropriate, considering. Instead, he had bent his thoughts toward her Son. Jesus had broken bread with whores and misfits. Surely Jesus would have it within his great heart to listen to one poor, confused sodomite….

  Then it came to him that Jesus’s most beloved had betrayed him, with a kiss.

  And his brain started whirling with everything Eluned had told him. Stories. Myths.

  Truths.

  What is truth? Pilate had asked, and washed his hands.

  Pressing his head upon his clasped hands, Gamelyn wished he could do the same.

  It would do him no good, any of this, until he’d made his confession. Some matters were too grave. He’d no right to seek comprehension from the pure of heart with his own so sullied.

  Steps sounded from the outer hall and Gamelyn leapt to his feet. Grimaced as blood-starved limbs began tingling—he’d been kneeling too long.

  Served him right.

  The tingles were beginning to become stabs as Brother Dolfin rounded the corner. Almost hidden behind a large armload of rolled parchments, there was no hiding that his tonsure was somewhat shaggy and two goose quills were stuck behind one ear. Broad and tall, the bulk of muscle gone slightly to fat, it was Dolfin’s habit to tuck one edge of his cassock into his woven belt—he didn’t much like the confinement of the long garment. His muscular legs and long, brown bare feet made quick progress over the flagging stones and his sandals dangled at his belt, as they often did, opposite of where he’d tucked his robe.

  “Gamelyn! Have y’ come for the library? I’m sorry, I’ve started locking it if I’m away on errands; we’ve had some folk not taking proper care unless supervised….” His thick brows twisted together, seeming to ken Gamelyn was in distress.

  “Not the library, not now,” Gamelyn said, quiet. “Can you hear my confession?”

  Dolfin blinked. “Straight away?”

  “Please.”

  Whatever pending matters the monk might have had, Gamelyn’s desperate tone seemed to decide him. “Of course. Let me shift these to the library, I’ll be right out—”

  “In private. Please.”

  Again the furrowed brow, then Brother Dolfin nodded. “Then we’ll both go in. You know there’s no way to hear anything there, ‘less you’re hanging from the upper stacks. But,” He gave an apologetic grin. “The keys are hanging from the back of my belt, if you’d be so kind?”

  Gamelyn unlocked the door and let them both in.

  The library was small, mostly shelves and cubbies, but boasted a long table, several stools, and an old, padded horsehair chair. Dolfin unloaded his parchments on a spare stretch of the table then motioned for Gamelyn to close the door. He had a moment of hesitation as Gamelyn went straight to the chair and knelt before it, but recovered quickly and came over, sat.

  “Ignosce mihi, Pater, quia peccavi,” Gamelyn began, leaning his forearms on the chair, closing his eyes gratefully as he began. The ritual of the Latin was its own magic, taking Gamelyn elsewhere as it always did. Brother Dolfin’s responses were soothing, and finally… finally the words came to his tongue as if they also had been pent up too long, were just waiting for the comfort of the familiar, formal expression to spill over, transform writhing, horrified silence into speech.

  Anger. Pride. Lust.

  Brother Dolfin sat for some time in silence after Gamelyn had finished the formalities. It did not worry Gamelyn; Dolfin usually took his time, made sure he was speaking with God’s consent and not just his own. “Ah, Gamelyn. Young men are quick to anger. Pride is ever a struggle for you. But lust? I m’self must confess to you this much. I’d wondered how one with such a warm heart could be so cold to the body’s desires. Your confession relieves me; you are human, after all.”

  He was tired of hearing it. Tired.

  Conversely, it soothed him. If he was so cold, then surely this heat would die, leave him once again untrammeled in his own skin, untouched.

  “Did some lovely peasant girl give her young lord a temptation past all reason, then?”

  Temptation. It lurked even here, within the confessional—the temptation to just nod, go along. His chin even ducked down farther, bodily response trying to take him along the easiest path.

  Of course, that was most of the problem, wasn’t it?

  Trying to make his voice work was more than difficult, but Gamelyn forced it outward, hoarse and unsure. “It was a peasant, but not a girl. It was a… lad.”

  You’re the one as mentioned kissing….

  Demon indeed. Get out, Gamelyn told Rob—or his avatar, or his ghost—of my confession.

  “Ah,” Dolfin said.

  Then, silence. Gamelyn didn’t want to look up, to see the revulsion that would surely be on Dolfin’s face, the affront. And as the silence dragged, Gamelyn became possessed with the need to fill it with something. Anything. “I… it… it just happened. Somehow. I don’t know how, I’d never even thought of him… not like that….”

  Liar.

  His own voice, this time, remembering how it had felt when he’d seen Rob with the stable lad. Or watching as Rob glided naked from the mere, water caressing him as Gamelyn dared not.

  How Rob had ripped that dare from Gamelyn, pinned him against the oak tree, and dared him back. How Gamelyn couldn’t resist….

  What I’ve done. To you. This time, it was Rob. It’s all my doing, then, is it?

  Shut up. Oh, God, shut up!

  A large, long-fingered hand descended gently atop his head. “It would seem,” Dolfin continued, very soft, “that you are not altogether contrite.”

  Shame burnt Gamelyn’s cheeks. To hear it spoken aloud, to have another ken, just by looking at him, this weakness of spirit that even guilt could not tear away.

  “I am,” he breathed into his clasped hands. “I am! But I cannot stop… stop thinking about it. About him.”

  “I am correct in the assumption that this was your first experience, aye?”

  Gamelyn nodded, eager, into his hands.

  “One’s first sexual experience is either disaster or ecstasy.” Dolfin’s voice almost seemed musing. “It seems you were fortunate enough to enjoy the latter—”

  “Fortunate!” Gamelyn couldn’t help but choke out; he almost looked up but at the last moment checked himself, kept his eyes respectfully his own. “It wasn’t just… it was sodomy!”

  “I know what it was, Gamelyn. But you weren’t some thirteen-year-old virgin trembling in a marriage bed awaiting a groom who’d already outlasted three other brides. You weren’t some crofter’s wife taken against her will by some mercenary brute—”

  He raped and killed a woman… wife and mother to the two foresters….

 
“It sounds as if the peasant lad was good and gentle to you, and while you pray for your own soul, you must pray for his, and give thanks to God that you were not unkindly used.”

  “I… I don’t…. How does a holy brother know such things?”

  “Mother of God, you’re so young.” Dolfin’s voice, so quiet-sure before, seemed to tighten. “Did you really think that amongst a society of men such things would be unheard of?”

  This did made Gamelyn look up. Dolfin’s face did not hold the loathing or scorn that Gamelyn had feared. Only an odd kind of… sadness?

  “We are,” Dolfin said, “only human, after all.”

  The blue eyes were kind. It was almost… disappointing. Which made no sense to Gamelyn. Had he wanted to be ridiculed? Excoriated?

  Perhaps he had. Then it would be done, over with. Penance, pain, punishment… all had their own release. Simple, meaningful, light at the end of a tunnel of darkness and confusion. The road to true strength.

  “Listen to me, Gamelyn. Often the urges of the body are so strong as to take over a young man. Don’t mistake my meaning; lust is sin. But man will be sinful.”

  If that’s what your god calls damnation, then damn me, love, because I’ll not turn from it….

  “Is it not our duty to rise above sin?” Gamelyn protested. “To not succumb?”

  “Ah!—there speaks your pride, Gamelyn. Pride is the most… egregious of sins, and one that will be the death of you, even more than lust.”

  Gamelyn dropped his gaze back to his hands, clenched his teeth. All he’d wanted was to root the wickedness from his heart. All he’d wanted was absolution. I just want this… this feeling—this thing—taken from me. “I’m… trying. To understand.”

  “Try harder. This lad, is he one of our people here?”

  Gamelyn shook his head. “He lives to the west.”

  “So he is not… convenient. That is just as well. Unless.” A pause. “Have you wanted others? Other lads?”

  “I’ve never… never wanted anyone like this. It was… unexpected. He… he was….” Beautiful, Gamelyn wanted to say and could not. It was too intimate. His voice dropped down, nearly a whisper. “He seemed so comfortable. In his own skin. As if we weren’t doing any wrong.”

  “If he is of the old religion…. Many of his kind still are, the old gods are not as dead as many would like to believe. As long as one wee mouse drums his hind feet in a burrow, as long as one blade of grass bends over a stream, waving in the wind, they are with us.” Dolfin shook his head. “Our peril, to forget such things. If this peasant who woos you is a Heathen, he surely would heed such matters very differently.”

  Heathen? Old gods?

  Of course, he’d had it thrown in his face rather violently of late that Rob and his family… his people… were not exactly Christian… but again, to hear it spoken aloud, so matter-of-fact?

  “He’s your God too!”

  “Nay. Nay, he ent.”

  Confusion coalesced, hard and eager, into probable cause. “Do you think…. Have I been bewitched?”

  Dolfin frowned. “What do you think?”

  “I… don’t… know.” It was as if he could scarcely get the words out, that they betrayed something deep within himself.

  “I don’t know, either, Gamelyn.” Dolfin was quite grave. “But I do know this. There is precious little magic left in our world, and most of what would be called ‘enchantment’ is practiced more by those who claim they’ve fallen victim to it.”

  Gamelyn blinked. “That makes no sense. If—”

  “Listen, lad. People love to cry their own innocence, even if they’re guilty as murder. Devil, enchantment, call it what you fancy, it’s so much easier to claim someone—or something—made you do something than it is to take responsibility for your own acts.” Dolfin twisted his mouth sideways, sighed. “If only it were so simple.”

  Sweet Lady, why do your people insist on making everything so simple? This was not Rob, but Eluned. When you shoot an arrow, it will kill, wound, or miss. Everything has three faces, lad….

  “The first step to your redemption, however, is simple. You would do yourself—and the lad—a kindness to never see him again.”

  This was expected.

  Then why did it feel as if he were being rent into pieces?

  Dolfin was still speaking, somewhat thoughtful. “My Bishop would say that a pagan does not know any better, that we must take the higher ground, pray for pagans and sinners that they not remain damned in ignorance. But His Holiness the Bishop is also human. Prey to the same follies as us all.”

  Of all the things Gamelyn had expected to hear, that was not amongst them. Brother Dolfin sensed his confusion, cocked his head and smiled, just a little.

  “I lived amongst Heathen folk, fought with them, even prayed with them. They are not any more or any less than we. Their gifts and curses come to them even as ours do us. Perhaps they are more willing to accept… oddities.”

  “Curses. Gifts,” Gamelyn murmured. “But they’re not the same.”

  “That would depend upon who you ask. I saw some strange things before I came to God.” The monk shrugged. “And things no Christian soul should have to witness, then and since. But this is not my confession, my son,” Brother Dolfin said, returning to the careful, neutral compassion he always displayed in the confessional. “It is yours. Pray for mercy, for yourself and this lad you are so conflicted over. There are many kinds of love, and not all need the huddlings of sex. Remember your love and duty to your father, and heed him carefully. He is too ill to be worrying over you. You must take care.”

  Then he laid both hands on Gamelyn’s bowed head, began the soft singsong of prayer. “Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi, merita beatæ Mariæ…”

  Surely it wasn’t wrong to imagine it like to a soft, warm breeze rustling through green trees….

  “… Et præmium vitæ æternæ. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Gamelyn whispered.

  Entr’acte

  RALPH FITZAARON, High Sheriff of Nottingham, was neither young nor obliging. He was but the latest play in a crooked game; worse, he knew it and tended to heed his laws more by letter than intent. Crooked game, sure enough, but it was easy to spot the way of him even before the bones were thrown and knuckled. Adam walked a tightrope as it was—it depended on the day which shire Loxley village was considered owed to.

  But Scathelock had done the crime in FitzAaron’s shire, and for once Sheriff de Lisle had agreed to let a Yorkshire yeoman come to justice in Nottingham.

  Worksop’s new abbess was, it seemed, de Lisle’s sister.

  “Loxley.” FitzAaron’s face pinched more sour. “I wish you could keep your litter of scruffy dogs at heel. First your son, brawling with my soldiers over some tavern wench, and now this. Murder, no less.” He leaned forward on the huge table in the even larger main hall of Nottingham Castle and barked at his steward, “Well? Is the villein in custody?”

  “Aye, my lord,” the steward answered. “He’s in the hole now. I took possession of him at the main gate and escorted him there m’self.”

  Indeed the steward had. He and two guards had kicked George’s feet out from under him three times before they’d dragged him away. Adam had felt every blow, but kept it locked beneath a set face and clenched teeth. They’d not dare touch him—his sinecure protected him, even as it had once protected George—and they resented it.

  “I have done my duty to the Crown,” Adam stressed. “If I might now have your leave, milord, I shall return to—”

  “You’ll stay, Loxley.”

  “Milord Sheriff, surely—”

  “You’ll stay until the Abbess of Worksop arrives and I can see to the fate of this murderer. Then you will carry a copy of my interrogation to Sheriff de Lisle.”

  “An interrogation, milord?” Adam was careful.

  “Of course. The man is charged with sorcery and witchcraft. Abbess Elisabeth demands that he be questioned as to his accomplices.”

>   “He had none.”

  “You sound so sure. But a witch always has a coven, Loxley. You live amongst pagans; surely you know that much.”

  Adam crossed his arms, lifted his chin. “Then, milord, I’ll need to send a message to my household. I’m expected to some duties in Barnsdale anon. The Earl de Warenne has asked for a tally on his lands.” Let the rheumy old clot chew on that for a moment, and perhaps decide that, after all, he didn’t need to detain Loxley from doing an earl’s bidding.

  “Send your message, then. Surely someone can take your place. Or,” FitzAaron said, pettish, “are the rest of your men in gaol as well?”

  Adam met FitzAaron’s eyes and wished him to his hell. “Nay, milord.”

  XVII

  “WOLVES DON’T hunt you because they’re cruel; it’s their nature. If you’re weak, they attack. Aye?”

  Rob nodded, finding inordinate interest in a bit of branch caught in Arawn’s black mane. Both twig and horsehair clung to his fingers with the damp. It was a fine, soft day; more commonplace and welcome than the wet hanging over as of late, sultry and refusing to fall. A poor woman’s face cream, his mam had opined for as long as he could remember.

  Unfortunately, she was determined to slather a few more opinions onto the road this day. Even Arawn’s mien seemed more of sullen endurance as they rode eastward.

  Or he could just be sulking because their pace had been more walk and trot because Willow’s short legs couldn’t keep up with him at the canter.

  “Well, that lad is one of the conquerors, son, born and bred ’neath Frankish rule. He’s not of us. Not so special to shrug away all of it because of the light in your eyes.”

  Rob was feeling decidedly sulky himself. “Are you going to lecture me the entire way, Mam?”

  Eluned shifted in her saddle and fiddled with Willow’s rein. “I wasn’t aware that I was giving a lecture.”

  Rob slid his gaze to meet hers, brow furrowed.

  “Aye, well, then. You’ve not had to live with your temper the past se’nnight—”